Free Dark Horse by Marilyn Todd Page B

well.
    After Medea sailed away with her Jason, the Trojan hero Odysseus had been so captivated by the enchantress's beauty that he stayed seven years as her consort. She had borne him three sons and with each generation, that knowledge had been passed down. Fresh. Undiluted. Pure in its wickedness and guile.
    For much of the time, the evil remained dormant. But every now and again the dark demon stirred.
    Bulis had been a good start.

Thirteen

    Psst!'
    Claudia beckoned her bodyguard round the side of the weaving shed, and that was another thing she'd picked up about the Villa Arcadia. So many perfect places for someone to lurk with pots of lilies.
    'Here's what I want you to do,' she told Junius. 'I want you to go and pick a fight with Leo.'
    'You . . . you aren't serious, madam?'
    'Any pretext you can think of. Only make sure you knock him out cold, there's a good boy.'
    'You're asking me, a slave, to knock out a patrician?' The young Gaul had received many outrageous instructions since being promoted to the head of Claudia's bodyguard, but this, surely, took the honey cake. 'Madam, with respect, he'll have me fed to the lions a limb at a time.'
    'Junius, you were asked to pick a fight with Leo, not with me. Now I don't wish to remind you that I could have been chargrilled in my bed last night because you were negligent in your duties—'
    'Negligent? But it was you who insisted I spend the night in town to find out what I could about—'
    'Spare me the grovelling apologies, Junius. The Medea sails in less than five minutes.'
    'And I'm supposed to stop him?' The young Gaul's Adam's apple was working overtime. 'Would you mind telling me how exactly?'
    'With a strong right hook, you dumb ox. '
    Funny chap, that Gaul. Tall, tanned and muscular, his most attractive trait as far as Claudia was concerned was his ability to keep his eyes wide open and his lips tight
    shut. Oh, yes, and the fact that he always did what he was told. Eventually.
    Claudia moved across to the steep-sided rock face to see how her bodyguard would handle this particular task. Although she had no idea what was going on concerning those messages impaled on the spears, she had a strong gut feeling about Jason. Like a cat, he enjoyed taunting his prey. Had he wanted to kill Leo outright, wouldn't he have set fire to the house? Done his dirty deeds at night and by stealth, the same way he'd delivered his notes? No, no. That slow bow said it all. The sick bastard was milking the situation for all it was worth, inciting Leo to give chase by taunting him with a warship that wasn't even primed to take flight. Leo has something Jason wants and so, in another turn of the psychological screw, Jason intends to humiliate him in the most public way possible.
    Now, if Claudia could see this as plain as the nose on her face, then surely so could a highly educated scion of society like Leo. Yet he was walking straight into the trap, and why? Because Leo, the arrogant sonofabitch, thought he could win.
    The scrubland on the cliff where she was standing had been laid to flagstones, affording a perfect view. Down on the jetty, a preposterously small and ill-armed boat was being made ready for sail. Leo, who had changed out of his patrician robes into serviceable boots and a short green working tunic, was galvanizing the Medea's crew into action. Further out, on the warship whose oars still remained firmly shipped, Jason mimed a slow sarcastic handclap.
    Since taking over the Imperial reins, Augustus had waged war on every bandit, footpad, robber and pirate in the Empire. It was his belief that, day or night, winter or summer, every traveller on any main road or shipping highway had the right to make his journey in safety. Note the key words there. Main  road. Shipping highway. With the best will in the world, no army could patrol every square mile of an Empire which stretched from Iberia in the west to Syria in the east, and from Egypt