"I bent down, and everything was fine. I looked back up, and that blue thing was already out of the hole. Piso and Liganus were closest, and they were already dead. It just shot up out of there, and its hands were moving too fast to see. It took their heads off on its way by, like it was nothing.
"Then it was on us. I tried to get to my net, but it just came straight at me. I heard the others screaming as I went down. I guess I must have passed out for a while."
He grunted as one of Vonones' men tightened the sodden bandages that attempted to hold the man's middle together. "It just was too fast," Rebilus muttered peevishly, and he seemed to fall asleep.
Lycon sighed and straightened-none too steady himself after hours of slogging through a confusion of tunnels. This was worse than the scene on the grain barge. The lizard-ape had worked in haste, but in a span of only a few minutes it had killed or maimed more than twenty people here-many of them onlookers drawn by fatal curiosity to see what so many armed men were doing down in the sewers. No one here knew where the lizard-ape had gone after the slaughter.
Night had fallen.
"I told you the sauropithecus was clever," N'Sumu said. There almost seemed to be a note of gloating to his attitude.
"Damn thing doubled back, let us chase after these worthless dogs across half of Rome." Vonones sounded too worried to snap back at N'Sumu, and Lycon was too exhausted.
"We'll pick up its trail again from here," the hunter said wearily.
"And chase it down into the sewers again," gibed N'Sumu. He seemed to be deliberately baiting Lycon.
"You're in charge!" Lycon snarled, turning on the Egyptian. "You tell me what to do!" Perhaps he had held his bared blade a little too close to the strange priests throat, he thought afterward.
"I did warn you," N'Sumu smiled. "Lacerta! Your men! Here!"
The tribune had already stood scowling at the three men, trying to decide on a course of action that would not make him lose face again. The Imperial guard had seemed to materialize upon the scene of carnage an instant after the sauropithecus had disappeared.
N'Sumu pointed a long finger at the hunter's chest. "Arrest this man. I will not tolerate insubordination!"
Lycon lunged for the Egyptian, but the hulking German guards were already reaching for him. Something-a rock or a mailed fist-crashed against the back of Lycon's skull, and he pitched headlong onto the bloodied pavement. An instant later he was jerked back onto his feet, to dangle like an unstrung puppet between a pair of the giant Northmen.
"I've waited for this, Greek!" sneered Lacerta. The tribune stepped close to drive a fist into the beastcatcher's belly. "Tie him behind your horse!" the tribune shouted to the pair of men holding Lycon.
The Germans looked at one another, uncertain as to the precise intention of the order, but unwilling to become overly concerned about what some little Italian said-even an Italian with putative control over their lives. One guard shrugged; then both began to stride away toward the horse-holders beyond the circle of bodies.
"Wait a minute!" said Vonones, stepping toward the tribune swiftly enough that another of the guards pinioned him from behind. Caught like a cricket in a spiderweb, the Armenian continued to shout: "That's not going to help anything! Without Lycon, we'll never catch the lizard-ape! Master N'Sumu, please tell them we need Lycon!"
"Shall we take the merchant as well?" Lacerta asked pleasantly.
"Not just yet," said N'Sumu in fluting, silvery Greek. "This one may yet prove useful to me-now that he knows the penalty for insubordination. Do with the beastcatcher as you please."
Lacerta nodded, and the guards who had paused with Lycon between them now proceeded toward the horses again. "We'll take him to the Amphitheater," the tribune decided aloud. "The Greek won't be lonely there, because we'll soon find a nice cell for his family as well. They can all discuss what our lord and god is going to choose to do with them when he hears about this latest slaughter."
The breath caught in Vonones' throat. The German holding him spun the animal dealer around and pushed him, hard, in the opposite direction from the retreating guard troop. The crowd had thinned enough that Vonones had no one to grip to prevent him from falling over one of the corpses lying ten feet away.
Vonones staggered back to his feet, forcing down panic. He had to remain calm if he were to save himself, much less Lycon.
N'Sumu smiled at him like a hungry shark.
Chapter Twenty-two
It was probably mid-morning, but light in the cellars of the Flavian Amphitheater depended on lamps, not the sun.
They had talked a little after Lycon's family was brought in, dragged in, and locked two cells away so that eight feet and a double set of bars separated the beastcatcher from them. Zoe quieted the children almost immediately, however. She had long experience of her husband in his present state: the utter torpor that followed total immersion, mental as well as physical, in a project until he had nothing left to give. Every night after he had played for the blood-mad crowds in the arena, he had collapsed this way… and Zoe knew he had done the same more recently in the field after the days he survived but only just. She could forget about that, however, because she had not seen him as she saw him now…
Lycon rolled abruptly, bringing himself to full alertness though he still lay on the floor of the cell where he had been dropped. The concrete surface was slimy with various grades of filth, but the beastcatcher had been in worse places-and he had more important things on his mind, now, anyway.
A single-wick lamp sat beside Zoe, lighting the left half of her face which was suffused with enough concern for the whole. Lycon smiled mechanically, falsely-but the wish to reassure her was not false, and that counted for much at this juncture. "I-" he tried to say, but he croaked instead with the phlegm clogging his mouth.
"Daddy's awake!" Perses squealed. "He's awake, Alexandros!"
"We almost had that thing, my love," Lycon said in a normal voice and with a normal expression on his face-the face itself normal, because it was normal enough for it to be scratched and bruised in any of the lines of work Lycon had followed during his life. "We could have tracked it from there-and then that bastard N'Sumu screwed it up or… something."
Zoe heard the words, but she could not fathom her husband's meaning. There was no need for her to understand the story, of course: the real point of it was that something had gone wrong but that he was all right, lucid now and healthy enough to discuss events without screaming in pain. The way he lay, ostensibly relaxed now but at full length on the concrete, his torso lifted by his left elbow and flat palm, belied the impression he was trying to give of being in reasonable condition.
Aloud, Zoe said, "Alexandros has been reciting the Iliad to me, darling. It was so very clever of him to bring the volumes with him. Would-" the plump woman reached beside her without looking; her hand caught that of her older son and the two stepped together, side to side, as they both kept their eyes on Lycon "-would you like him to read to you, too? Because he does it so well."