Killer

by David Drake

  And if they let him out on his own feet instead of being dragged from the arena through the Gate of Death by his heels.

  Lycon let his face shape itself into normal human lines from the mask into which it had drawn itself to hide the pain that might have accompanied movement. It hadn't been too bad, though it might be a while before he wanted to eat again, especially the sort of food he could expect to be offered here.

  If Zoe and the kids were offered slops this time around, there were a lot of people who'd better pray Lycon did leave the Amphitheater by his heels.

  "Right, ah," the beastcatcher repeated, remembering to smile at his family. The baby was still asleep, thank the gods, and Perses was clutching the side of his mother opposite his elder brother. Lycon did not reach toward them. Eight feet was too far for the gesture to be other than pathetic or absurd, and they didn't need either of those things. "I'd like to hear you recite, Alexandros. Good way to pass the time, and good for you too."

  He licked his lips as he paused. They were dry and hot; he wondered if he'd picked up a fever, gods, Rome was worse than the fetid swamps of the Nile Delta, for things to send you to Hades in screaming delirium. "Look, I don't know how bad things are, the situation I mean," he went on, because it was better to speak the truth than have them afraid of bogies which were worse—and this was the truth, there was a fair chance of it working out. The door at the head of the corridor clanked, promise of a meal of sorts . . . or perhaps a visitor, Vonones with a diploma releasing at least Lycon himself. . . .

  Speaking very quickly, the beastcatcher went on, "I'm here now because things went wrong last night, but the decision was at a pretty low level. I'm pretty sure Vonones can square things—he knows how bad they need me if any of this is going to work."

  Zoe nodded understanding with her lips sucked tightly together in hope that this would, by sympathetic magic, prevent the tears from slipping from her eyes. By looking down she managed without that disaster to say, "Then you aren't condemned to the, to . . . above, I mean." She lifted her head in a gesture and the tears did burst out, not single droplets but runnels that wavered as Zoe twisted her face away again and wiped it on the shoulder of her shawl.

  "Oh, Pollux, nothing like that," the beastcatcher said with a brusqueness and near-anger that cloaked his own reactions—all but the catch in his voice, just a brief catch. There was only one set of footsteps rasping down the corridor, so it was the slave with food after all. Who knows, maybe he could eat something now that he'd stood erect for a while, a chunk of bread at least to scrub the tastes of bile and exhaustion from his mouth. "Look, I don't say it won't happen, but I've been in worse places," Lycon said, making himself believe it.

  The slave was not carrying a lamp. In fact, he did not appear to have a tray of food.

  "Father," Alexandros was saying, "I'm sorry about the way I, I ran away from you yesterday. And—before." The boy was looking at the floor of the intervening cell, but he had the courage to keep his face turned in the direction of Lycon as he spoke. "I won't make you ashamed of me again."

  "You there!" Lycon called as he shifted his body and his full attention to the front grating of his cell. He was no longer conscious of his body, of the aches and nausea against which he had been struggling in the time since he had awakened. The slave who shuffled down the corridor past Lycon and toward the cell holding his family wore a Gallic cape with the hood pulled close over his face. "Come here, damn you, or I'll have you flayed this afternoon when they let me out of here!"

  "Who is it?" Perses called as he ran to the corridor side of his own cell.

  The man in the cape, maybe a woman, of course, the figure was so short, did not look aside despite the beastcatcher's shout. Lycon made a desperate snatch through the bars, but the figure was too far away as it passed.

  "Father?" said Alexandros, his voice rising an octave in the course of the two syllables.

  "Perses, come h—" cried Zoe, grabbing for the child as he started to repeat, "Who—?" to the figure in the corridor.

  "No!" screamed Lycon, and the arm came out from beneath the cape, one arm only but quite sufficient for its purpose. It was quick, cat-quick or even more so, and its claws caught Perses not by his tunic but under the breastbone, punching their multiple paths through the boy's diaphragm and then curling back around the lowest ribs to penetrate the skin again. They held Perses like a fish hooked around the jawbone.

  The arm snatched back into the corridor and the boy followed it to the narrow gap between the bars, jerked off his feet. Then the breastbone with associated muscles and cartilage ripped free and the remainder of Perses flopped back onto the floor of the cell. He was still alive, but he could not scream because his chest could no longer force air through his throat. One of the four-year-old's lungs, hooked by the tip of the claw, flopped outside his ruined chest.

  "Zoe, Alexandros," Lycon ordered in a calm, clear voice, "get to the back of the cell. Leave Perses, we'll take care of that when it's safe. Move!"

  Though they were safe where they stood, you could never tell. They might lunge forward to caress Perses or grapple with the thing in the corridor—equally suicidal, equally pointless. You couldn't change death, not even the gods could change that if there were gods; and there would be a time to kill the blue thing, the lizard-ape, and it would die hard, very hard.

  The beastcatcher no longer felt his body, though he knew it would respond as he thought, perhaps even quickly enough to grip the thing's arm if it were extended into Lycon's own cell. He bunched his tunic with his left fist, balling it out from his chest so that the claws would not snatch away his heart and life until his own hands had a throat to grip.

  The sounds and everything Lycon saw within the cellblock were preternaturally clear, but they were distanced by the fact that he could not change any of them. He had been afraid when the figure shuffled down the corridor, but there was no longer any fear, any emotion whatever, only the taste of blood in his mouth as Alexandros shouted and stepped toward the thrashing remnants of his brother.

  Zoe caught the older boy by the wrist and jerked him back, as she had done when he was an infant crawling toward the scorpion which had ridden Lycon's clothing back from the docks. As she held her remaining son, Zoe turned her back to the corridor so that the thickness of her body was between the infant at her breast and the sauropithecus. She was silent, and she held Alexandros in safety against the wall, though he flailed and screamed to get at the thing which had murdered Perses.

  The sauropithecus turned its hand, the only part of its body not still covered by the cape. The gobbet of the boy's flesh and bone dropped to the floor of the cell. One of Perses' feet kicked at it blindly as his back arched and lifted his gaping chest toward the ceiling.

  The creature's long claws slid into their sheaths, clearing them of the clinging gore. The paw—hand—twisted back toward the cowl, and a slender tongue lapped at the congealing stickiness which smeared the delicate scales. The claws re-extended.

  Lycon ran to the front of his own cell. He gripped the bars with both hands, all his icy planning forgotten. "Guards!" he shouted. The grating was solidly welded so that the bars did not rattle among themselves, but the whole clashed loudly against the locking bar. "Guards! Somebody!"

  The click of the sauropithecus' claws working the wards of the lock down the corridor were inaudible under the present conditions, but they rang as clearly in Lycon's mind as the drooling whisper of the blood filling Perses' chest cavity.

  "Somebody dear gods! N'Sumu!"

  The creature dropped its cape as it swung open the door. The tiger's claws had left long scars of leprous white against the scales. It had been very badly hurt, and it could surely be killed, would be killed, but for now it stepped with the balance of a rope-dancer into the cell with Zoe and the children, two of them still alive. Had he thought it was an animal? The look in the eyes the lizard-ape turned on Lycon now was quite human, as human as the eyes of N'Sumu when he ordered the arrest of t
he beastcatcher's family . . .

  "Guards! Gods!" Lycon screamed.

  But no god came; and hammer the bars as he might, Lycon could neither tear them loose nor drown the noises in the adjoining cell. The noises went on for a very long time. He did not notice when they finally stopped.

  The beastcatcher was open-eyed, his hands and arms as rigid as the iron which they clutched, when the figure left the cell: It donned the cape and shook the hood again over its features. Lycon did not see it leaving, nor did the creature appear to have any further interest in the man responsible for destroying its brood. As it moved off down the corridor, it could easily have been a shuffling beggar-woman, bent and wasted by age.

  But there was nothing human about the footprints it left on the stone behind it, except for the blood of which they were made.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  "Where—" muttered Lycon, aware for the moment only that there was sunlight on his face and that there shouldn't be, though he did not recall why. He recalled nothing, but he lay on a soft bed with the odor of food and light perfume nearby and that was all wrong. . . .

  And then he did remember.

  "Herakles!" Lycon shouted. His eyes opened and he tried to leap from the bed, but three days in and out of coma made his legs nerveless, and he fell back onto the feather mattress. He tried to focus his eyes, blinking dizzily. There were a half dozen men around him in the richly-appointed chamber, all of them slaves except for Vonones.

  "Well, hold it to his mouth!" Vonones urged the boy who had just dunked a wedge of bread into a cup of undiluted wine. A warming rack over a brazier held a simmering pot of beef broth, and there were dainties of fish and vegetables waiting on a separate tray against the beastcatcher's possible whim when he awakened.

  "Lycon," Vonones said, peering earnestly at him, "lie back and eat this bread."

  "Can't do both, can I?" Lycon whispered. His voice did not sound like one he had ever heard before. He shifted himself upon the couch so that he faced the side where the slave knelt with the bread and wine. He did not attempt to take the morsel from the boy. Simply resting on one side was enough to overtax his reawakening muscles at the moment. He chewed slowly and carefully.

  "You're all right, then?" said Vonones, looking away from his friend's face as he spoke the question. Only the slaves thought that the words had anything to do with Lycon's physical state.

  The beastcatcher swallowed his mouthful of bread. He nodded away the boy's attempt to feed him more at the moment. A doctor in the background shifted from one foot to the other, waiting to offer the potion he held in his hands. "I'm all right," said Lycon. "Why am I here?"

  "I arranged for it," Vonones said. He took the dripping bread from the slave and offered it with his own fingers. "Here, try a little more and then we'll help you sit up. I—offered Crispinus an arrangement which he found satisfactory. He explained to our lord and god that you were quite necessary for the hunt to succeed and that Lacerta had badly misinterpreted the events of that night. A party arrived with the documents for your release somewhat—" he swallowed and looked away "—a great deal later than I would have wished."

  Lycon mumbled around his bread. Deliberately the beastcatcher lifted himself into a sitting position, swallowed as a pair of slaves stacked pillows behind him unbidden, and said, "It wouldn't have made any difference. Don't . . ."

  "Lycon, I—" the merchant began in the pause without any real notion of where he was going to take the sentence.

  "I said it didn't matter," Lycon said. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and let the motion stir the blood throughout his body. "It was going to happen the same way, in the apartment or wherever, because I wouldn't have believed it could happen until it did."

  "Don't stand up yet," the doctor blurted from behind the other slaves.

  Lycon stared at him for a moment. "Right," he said at last. "And don't you open your mouth again."

  No one moved until Vonones reached for the bread again.

  "The soup smells good," said Lycon mildly. "I think I'd like the soup."

  As the slave hovering over it handed him a steaming cup, Lycon continued, "What are we expected to do now, you and I?"

  Vonones sat down on the bed beside him and said, "Catch the creature, the same as before. I understand that our lord and god has become increasingly interested since the . . ." Vonones had not been looking at Lycon. Now he turned so that he could do so. "The whole staff in the guardroom was killed. I'm not sure Domitian knows about what we found in Mephibaal's loft, all the details, but he knows about the Amphitheater."

  Vonones reached over and touched his friend's arm, pretending not to notice the tears. "Lycon," he said, "it's been three days. I've taken care of all the arrangements. There's a memorial plaque on the side of the monument I built for myself, and we can go there any time you like." He fumbled again for words. "I had over a hundred witnesses to the cremation. It was a nice one."

  "We're going to kill it," Lycon said. He stood up, looking into the cup of broth, and took a deep drink from it before he tried to walk unassisted to the far wall. "I thought we should from the start, and now I think that would be a nice memorial. Better than stone."

  He, too, was pretending there were no tears on his lined, weathered face. Keeping his back to Vonones made it easy for both of them. There was no one else in the bed chamber, only slaves, property with voices but no place in a computation of human beings.

  "N'Sumu is still in charge," Vonones said carefully. "I don't know how he feels about your release, but I'm quite sure that he still intends to capture the sauropithecus alive."

  "He could have killed it," Lycon said, staring in the direction of the wall. It was a fresco of a scene from the Odyssey—the Laestrygonians wrecking the fleet with huge blocks of stone hurled from their clifftops—but to Lycon it was simply a monochrome blur bounding his memories. "When it leaped at me that night at the fountain. He must have stunned it, and that saved me . . . but it didn't save Zoe and. . . ."

  That was not a direction in which his thoughts should have turned. He slammed his cup into the wall, denting the thick plaster and shattering the delicate vessel—a cup fashioned of porcelain ten thousand miles away, by the same folk who wove worm cocoons into silk garments.

  "Pollux, I'm sorry," Lycon blurted, shocked into full consciousness by the splash and the prickling in his hands of shards of porcelain. A lifetime ago, he had killed a lizard-ape chick thus. "That was a good one, wasn't it? Probably worth more than I'd fetch on the block myself." He faced the Armenian with a crooked smile, holding a sliver of the cup between his thumb and forefinger.

  "I think it's one you brought me yourself one year when you were trading on the coast of the Red Sea," Vonones said calmly. He recognized Lycon's mood and repressed a shiver. "I've got a really valuable one—a cup of hollowed out agate. If you like, I'll smash that one myself to show you how little I care about any of that now." He paused.

  "Of course," he went on in the same tone, "that won't help us with what we need to do. To kill the lizard-ape ourselves."

  Lycon flicked his eyebrows upward in assent. He walked to the tray of food—he was moving almost normally by now—and, ignoring the efforts of a slave to serve him, took a handful of crab paste and a wedge of bread to use for a napkin.

  "All right," Lycon said, filling his mouth, "what do you think of N'Sumu?"

  "I don't know what to think," confessed Vonones.

  "We'd best go talk to him," Lycon said quietly. "After I've eaten. And after—" he ran his knuckles down the skin of his thigh, wrinkled and clammy with the days he had spent unconscious and unmoving "—I've had a long steaming at the bath."

  He smiled at Vonones, dismissing the worry etched on the merchant's features. "You always try to get me to sit in the sedan chair with you. Well, today I won't argue."

  Lycon hesitated. The brave efforts at sociability evaporated. His face had all the reassurance of a bleached skull. "Don't worry about me, Vonone
s," the hunter said. "I'm going to finish this one. Whatever it costs."

  Chapter Twenty-four

  "Gaius Cornelius Sempronianus?" asked the centurion wearing the scarlet tunic and sandals of the Praetorian Guard.

  The doorkeeper who had opened the panel to an authoritative knock now blinked in amazement to see the third-floor hallway filled with troops and their servants. The Praetorians did not carry spears or shields for this assignment, but their helmets and belted swords left no doubt of what they were.

  "But sirs, he's only a schoolmaster!" the slave in the doorway blurted.

  The centurion grinned and knocked the door-keeper aside as he strode within. Some of the servants behind him were carrying lamps, others held lengths of rope. The first three of the soldiers following the centurion simply trampled over the doorkeeper, but the next pair paused long enough to pinion the fellow's arms behind him. A servant trussed the doorkeeper wrist to wrist with one of the cords he carried already cut to length.

  There were no proper doors within the small suite. The Praetorians ripped down the curtains hung over internal doorways for privacy. The lamplight and the slam of hobnails on the floor brought the inhabitants off their couches, wearing tunics and frightened expressions. In one alcove a man and a woman, the latter with an infant in her arms, babbled in Greek, "But we just rented the bed today! Please!" as the soldiers dragged them into the center of the main room. More of the Praetorians' servants moved in for the menial task of binding the captives.

  Lycon caught the nearest servant by the arm, halting him, and said to the soldiers with the couple, "Let them go. They aren't covered in the order . . . and anyway, the baby."

  There was a curtained bed in one corner of the main room. The centurion himself tore away the orange-dyed linen. The gray-bearded man on the bed was holding an embroidered coverlet over himself with one hand as if the cloth were some protection. He wore a tunic. The boy cowering beside him was of a smoothly-olive cast with only a hint of pubic hair visible when the Praetorian jerked the bedclothes down. His mouth was covered by the older man's other hand. "Cornelius Sempronianus, I'd judge," the centurion said in a tone of grim satisfaction.