by David Drake
The shopowner bowed and snapped his finger to a waiter who scampered off. Bowing again, the owner backed away also. Vonones, thought Lycon, probably spent more lavishly on his wine than he did on his animals. And that brought them back to the business at hand.
"All right," Lycon said bluntly before the merchant could waste more time with small talk. "You've hunted sauropitheci in your own homeland, so I can see you might do a better job catching the lizard-ape than we would. When I'm in the field, I always talk to the local hunters before I set up my own plans. Even when the quarry is an animal I'm familiar with, the local terrain may affect hunting conditions. Good enough—you know lizard-apes and I don't. But that isn't going to help either one of us capture something that's at the bottom of the Tiber by now."
N'Sumu shook his head in a gesture unfamiliar to Lycon and Vonones. It was sometimes difficult to fit particular gestures into the correct cultural setting on a world as fragmented as this one. The bronze-skinned man then bobbed his head downward in the proper sign of negation for the locals whom he now faced.
"There is a very good probability that the sauropithecus is not on the bottom of the river," he said confidently. "The beasts are quite at home in the water, being in some aspects related to fish. And I very much doubt that the beast would have died from its wounds. In my homeland we often find it necessary to chop them into their separate parts to make certain we have killed them, so quickly do they recover from seemingly mortal wounds. Besides, we know what it did on the grain barge. I suggest that you have simply been looking in the wrong place."
Lycon, his face blank and his voice emotionless, said, "We've been looking in a lot of wrong places, then, I guess. We've got a network of informants throughout every farm and hamlet between Rome and the coast, fifteen miles to either side of the Tiber. We've caught or killed maybe a dozen packs of feral dogs, so I wouldn't say the effort was wasted—but it didn't bring us any closer to the damned thing we were looking for."
"Because you weren't looking in Rome," N'Sumu said. This time he suited the correct gesture, a lift of his chin and eyebrows, to the words. "Because you were looking for a wild animal, Lycon, when in reality the creature is very cunning—and practically as human as you are."
N'Sumu was smiling when the waiters arrived with the order. There were five of them: one with a mixing bowl and three cups, one with two jugs of wine, and one with a larger jug of water—dark with the moisture that sweated through its unglazed surface to evaporate and cool the remaining contents. The last pair of waiters carried a freestanding stove of bronze by the handles on either side. They walked gingerly with their burden, because live coals had already been shoveled into the firepot.
The stove was of hollow construction. When the men carrying the piece set it down by the arbor, one of them lifted the lid from the container, which was cast integrally with the firepot. A servant with a wine jug tipped it to fill the stove container. The wine gurgled as it rushed through the passages cast into the walls of the firepot. The thin bronze popped and hissed as the fluid cooled metal which the charcoal had already expanded. The other wine bearer poured from his jug into a cup, while the man with the water filled a second cup for N'Sumu with a flourish.
"We can serve ourselves, boys," said Vonones. He did not offer to pay. That he would do discreetly at ten-day intervals, feeling that the show of credit was more impressive than an open display of silver would have been in a business setting. The waiters—one was the cook, Hieron; the owner must be alone in the front—bowed and backed away obsequiously.
The wine in Lycon's cup merged and blended in the swirls it cut through the previously poured water. Slowly the richer color smoothed itself to blanket the buff glaze of the cup's interior. "Where would you look for a lizard-ape, then?" he asked. "And no more jokes about looking for it in Rome."
The Egyptian hunched forward. "A grain of sand would hide on a beach, would it not? A wisp of straw in a hayfield. Where would something human hide, beastcatcher?"
"Well, now, we don't want to overestimate the lizard-ape's cunning," Vonones scoffed, wondering if they were meant to laugh. He held his cup beneath the spout of the mulling stove and opened the cock. Steaming wine gushed from a bronze faucet cast in the form of a lion's jaws. "The lizard-ape, it isn't human, not at all. It couldn't just walk around in the midst of Rome—no more than could an escaped lion, or any other large and dangerous beast."
"I remind you that it isn't like any other beast known to you," said N'Sumu with his dreadful smile. "The sauropithecus is right here. In Rome." He touched the faucet of the mulling stove, opening it just enough in curiosity to jet a thin line of Caecuban onto the brick paving.
"If you know that," said Lycon sarcastically, "then you can tell us how you know." He sipped his diluted wine and savored the bite of resin and alcohol, as he stared at the strange Egyptian.
N'Sumu paused with his fingers still on the lion's head. He met Lycon's eyes. "Simple logic, my friend. We know that it was on the barge. Now where could it have gone from there?"
As N'Sumu talked, he lifted the lid of the container portion of the hollow stove and peered inside. "It did not jump to the bank of the river between here and Ostia. Either bank. It would have been easy to track if it had done that."
Lycon was trying to hold his cup still, but the tension in his grip set the wine adance in the shallow vessel. "True enough. We've found no sign of tracks, and we've had our noses to the ground up and down both banks of the Tiber. That's why I'm convinced the beast must have drowned."
"It seems reasonable that the sauropithecus stayed with the barge even after it had finished with the sailors," said N'Sumu, as he let the lid fall with a rattle of hollow bronze. "If it had been watching other barges pass along the Tiber from its place of concealment, it is cunning enough to have understood their navigation. Whether the helmsman fell overboard in the course of the struggle or whether his body was deliberately let fall into the river by the lizard-ape is an interesting question for speculation. Since there was no report of a large splash being heard that night, I've drawn my own conclusion.
"Regardless of that though, the lizard-ape almost certainly manned the steering oar until it drew close to Rome. At that point it may have then left the barge, but more likely it clung to the hull for the remainder of the distance. In the darkness, it might well have even hidden within the hold—it sees very well in the dark, you understand, while the teamsters had only sputtering rushlights for illumination. Quite possibly it left the barge only at the docks. Now the sauropithecus has all of Rome to hide in—and to hunt in."
Lycon downed half his wine. "An interesting theory. But why hasn't the lizard-ape been seen? And even if it's managed to hide, why haven't we heard reports of wholesale slaughter?"
"I warned you that the lizard-ape is extremely cunning," said N'Sumu, as his eyes returned to the mulling stove. He began scraping with one square-cut nail at the soot that coated the interior of the open cylindrical firebox.
"I think it will have found a lair—a ruin, an abandoned building, perhaps the sewers. I can't say where. But if it hunted by night, and killed only for food instead of sport . . . Well, how many murdered corpses greet the dawn from Rome's alleyways, or vanish forever during the night? I tell you again, these lizard-apes are very cunning."
"Well," said Vonones, holding in both palms the cup of warm wine from which he had not drunk. "Then we need to set up a reporting network in Rome like the one with which we've covered the countryside. That shouldn't be very difficult, Lycon, should it? We'll operate through the Watch commanders, offer rewards for any information that might be in point—mutilated bodies, or reports of disappearances that center upon one particular district. It won't cost us all that much—and if we do manage to learn something concrete about the lizard-ape's whereabouts, we can call in all our men from the countryside."
The hunter spat into the firebox of the mulling stove. The gobbet of saliva struck the bright metal where N'Sumu's finger h
ad scraped away the soot. The spittle hissed in serpentine anger as it boiled away from the hot bronze. Lycon pointed the index and middle fingers of his right hand at N'Sumu's chest. "So you really think the lizard-ape's lurking about right here in Rome? I find that hard to accept, but it's a new tack, and maybe that will impress Domitian for a while at least. You know you're going to be standing there in the arena beside Vonones and me if this proves to be another waste of time."
"It's unlikely that I will end up in the arena," said N'Sumu, and the other two understood his threat. "I know I'm right. I'd capture the sauropithecus by myself, but I need good men, and that's why I chose to work through you. My authority from our lord and god is as great as may be required for my purposes. But you have the experience—" the smile spread across his face without showing any teeth beneath the broad lips "—of working in local conditions. And you will have the credit when we succeed."
Lycon swallowed the last of his wine without taking his eyes away from N'Sumu's face. "Then we'd better get started, hadn't we."
Lycon's tone gave Vonones the same feeling as would the sight of a lion in the grass—its body taut, its haunches raised slightly, and no part of it moving but the tip of its tail, quivering like the trigger that would shortly launch the beast upon its prey. But after blinking up at his friend, the merchant's gaze returned to the sizzling bronze that N'Sumu's bare finger had cleansed.
Chapter Eleven
Lycon was running—running a hopeless race, for he knew his pursuer could run faster by far than he could. He wanted to risk a backward glance to see how close behind it was, but he knew that with that glance he would die.
The problem was these hedgerows. It was impossible to run when he had to crawl through all these hedgerows, one after another. Their branches already were slippery with blood, and their thorns tore at his flesh as Lycon plunged through. He told them he couldn't run any faster, but Domitian danced easily ahead of him—leaping over the hedges on his scrawny legs—and N'Sumu raced alongside him, laughing at him past his deformed smile.
"Old man! Old man! Old man! Old man!"
He had to keep running. He was too slow, too old—and he desperately feared the thing that pursued him.
There sat Vonones. The Armenian's stout chest had been folded open like a broken loaf of wine-soaked bread, and his hands kept fumbling inside his chest cavity in search of his missing lungs.
"Why didn't you kill it?" Vonones asked in a tone of betrayal. He held out a dripping bag of coins. "Didn't I pay you well?"
"I have to get through this hedge!" Lycon explained, plunging forward into the next thorny barrier.
Pamphilus, the first man he had ever killed in the arena, wagged his head back and forth upon its broken neck, and said: "Here's the door." But Lycon had seen the retiarius' net swimming through the air, and he bolted headfirst through the hedgerow instead.
The lizard-ape was waiting for him this time, and Lycon cursed himself for having paused to talk with dead men while the lizard-ape had vaulted the hedgerow. The lizard-ape had Domitian's face, and N'Sumu and Lacerta were carrying his bright-blue palanquin back and forth about the grain barge.
"You should have killed me when you had your chance," said the blue-scaled Emperor. His long talons reached out for Lycon's face, and needles of agony drove into the hunter's skull.
* * *
"Lycon! Lycon! Wake up!" Zoe was shaking him. "You're having another bad dream! Wake up! Please!"
Lycon opened his eyes, gaping at her stupidly. The nightmare was still full in his mind.
"What . . . ?"
"A bad dream, Lycon." Zoe's face was taut with concern. "You're having another bad dream."
Lycon blinked into the darkness, recognized the familiar surroundings of their bedroom. He was sweaty and he was cold, and the familiar shakiness was returning.
"Can I get you something?" Zoe begged. She was slimmer than since they had married and more lovely than Lycon had ever remembered.
"Wine!" he muttered thickly. "Yes, wine. Bring me more wine."
Zoe slipped out of bed and opened the door. The lizard-ape was waiting for her there, and it tore off her face as casually as a man pulls off his hat.
* * *
"Zoe!" Lycon's scream pierced the night.
"Lycon! Wake up!" Zoe was shaking him. "You're having another bad dream! Wake up now!" At her breast, Glauce was wailing out her protest.
This time Lycon swung his feet to the floor and sat up—rubbing his face as if to scrape the nightmare from his eyes. Zoe anxiously massaged his shoulders and back, trying to ease the tension there. Lycon considered the opaque greyness within the apartment light shaft beyond his bedroom window, decided it was close enough to dawn. Pulling away from Zoe, he stood up and began to dress in the darkness. He would not risk sleep again this night.
"Where are you going?" Probably there would be no more sleep for Zoe, either. She was crooning to their daughter, trying to soothe her as well.
"Over to the compound. Vonones will be there soon, and maybe there'll be something to report from the Watch. Maybe something from our men who are still positioned between here and Portus. It was N'Sumu's great idea that we concentrate our search here in Rome."
He found her face in the dark for a quick kiss. "At least I get home nights now."
"I'd almost rather have you away on some collecting expedition," Zoe murmured. "I keep thinking you'd be safer off in some far wilderness, stalking the beasts you know."
"There's always some new beast to be found, if you go looking," Lycon tried to reassure her. "And N'Sumu is in charge now—at least he thinks he is. He's hunted lizard-apes since he was old enough to crawl."
Lycon couldn't imagine N'Sumu as a child, although the fantasy of a crawling N'Sumu suddenly conjured forth an unpleasant image of the tall Egyptian—bronze-scaled and wriggling on his belly like a monstrous man-snake.
"Have Geta bring Alexandros to the compound, once he's had his breakfast," Lycon said, changing the direction of his thoughts.
"Lycon! Won't it be too dangerous?" Zoe protested. "Alexandros is just a boy!"
"Time he becomes a man, then," Lycon told her. "Besides, there's no danger. Vonones' people can show him around the compound—let him get a close look at the beasts his father hunts. No more faggot schoolmasters for my son!"
"But I'm not sure Alexandros will want to go!"
"I didn't ask about what he wants to do! See that he's there! Chances are I'll be sitting on my ass in the office with Vonones all day anyway. I'll keep an eye on Alexandros. Stop worrying about the boy."
Lycon didn't add that the actual danger arose from just this sort of inactivity. Domitian's patience—even with his imported lizard-ape specialist—was not going to last much longer. If they couldn't produce a sauropithecus for the Emperor soon . . .
Well, he and Vonones had discussed it often enough. The merchant had discreetly arranged to have a ship in readiness at Portus. They might be able to flee beyond Domitian's wrath, but Lycon didn't like to think about having to try it. In the field he had only his own life to consider—that was quite acceptable—but if he failed here, Domitian would spare not even the lowliest household slave.
Chapter Twelve
Carretius the rent-taker climbed the stairs to the sixth level between his two assistants, Smiler and Ox. Carretius was wheezing. It was growing dark, this was the third and last building on the day's rounds, and each flight of stairs grew longer as the day dragged on.
Besides, he'd been a fool at one of the initial stops. A cobbler rented a nice ground floor location for his shop and workroom that should have guaranteed a decent living, had the fellow not insisted on drinking all his profits—and the rent money. In a voice thick with tears and redolent of the heavy, sweet wine lees to which poverty had reduced him, he had offered the services of his daughter in exchange for the rent money. Carretius had badgered him down to an extension—a minor misjudgment for which he would have to account next month when the
craftsman inevitably missed another payment, and the bailiffs were sent to seize the fellow's chattels.
As her father had promised—saying that he should know—the girl was quite accomplished. Too accomplished for a man of Carretius' flabbiness and years. He had only a hazy remembrance of that morning's dalliance, and now he was not only running behind schedule, but his back ached beyond endurance.
The close weather amplified the odor of the huge waste jar at the bottom of the stairwell. It held the contents of the chamber pots—at least those of the tenants sophisticated enough to understand what a chamber pot was for. The upper levels, not only of the units Carretius serviced but of all apartment blocks in Rome, primarily held displaced country folk of one sort or another. One lot of Numidians had been found keeping a live sheep on their balcony, planning to slaughter it for a wedding feast in a day or two. They had objected strongly when the animal was removed, but that sort of discussion was what Ox and Smiler were along for.
Smiler led on the stairs as he always did. Carretius himself, with the wooden-backed wax tablets of the account clattering on waist thongs, was in the middle. Ox closed the rear. He carried the collected rents in a leather pouch hung against his chest on a neck strap. The real advantage of Ox's size was that he literally blocked the staircases in the buildings Carretius serviced. It was impossible for a footpad or desperate tenant to reach the rent-taker from behind.
Nor was Carretius worried about a frontal attack. Smiler was a nondescript fellow, a Gaul by birth, Carretius suspected. The rent-taker had never asked; questions about his assistant's background were at best impolitic. Smiler's nickname—and the only name by which he was known in the city—had nothing to do with his expression. He was a generally morose man but no stone-face, especially when he had downed enough wine to loosen up a little. But when his hand moved just so, the razor he carried could open a throat all the way around before the victim even felt the sting of the metal.