A shout went up in the garden and there was a sudden flurry of movement as out-of-work animal tamers, lazy day laborers, paid mourners and their wives began running toward the back wall. Thyatis sprinted at an angle across the garden. The Persian, knowing his own business, had ig nored her imprecations and was quickly walking along the top of the crumbling mud-brick wall, his arms outstretched for balance. Thyatis reached the corner of the garden wall only an instant behind the Persian. She scrambled, up a squishy pile of offal and broken pots to snatch at his heel.
He skipped aside and swung around the side of the building, his hands catching at a series of knock-off Etruscan bas-reliefs that studded the brickline between the floors. Thyatis hissed in rage at missing him and swung up onto the roughly finished wall-top, cutting a long scratch in her leg. Nimble fingers slid a flat-bladed, hiltless knife from her belt, and for a moment she leaned out over the tiny alleyway between the garden wall and the warehouse beyond, gauging the distance for a throw. A shout from behind her caught her attention and she glanced over her shoulder.
A burly man in a striped black and yellow shirt had clambered up onto the wall behind her, and with a start she realized that he was one of the Persians’ confederates. He lunged toward her, his knuckles wrapped in leather bindings. The sun glittered off the hooks set into the leather, She swung away out over the alleyway, her left foot wedged against the corner of the wall, her left hand clinging to the embrasure, as his fist flashed past. Her right foot hit the opposite wall of the alley and she pushed off, levering against her grip on the wall to the left. There was a snapping sound as the bronze-shod tip of her boot flashed into the wrestler’s throat. Her leg whipped back into a half flex and then she kicked him again in the stomach. Slowly he crumpled at the waist and then pitched backwards off the wall into the refuse pile.
When Thyatis turned, the Persian had almost reached the far end of the tunnellike space between the buildings. Biting back a stream of lurid curses, she reached out for the next bas-relief, praying that the cheap pressed-concrete statuette would hold her weight.
Two streets over, the stocky bald Illyrian, Nikos, dumped the body of the javelin thrower back behind a great pile of crates and other rubbish. Wiping sweat and blood from his hands on ill-treated leggings, he peered out into the crowded street. He had seen Thyatis vanish into the tannery, though he had been preoccupied with rushing the gladiator who had tried to skewer her from behind. Quietly he joined the flow of traffic on the street.
Within minutes he had jogged into the alleyway behind the tannery, seen no sign of either his team leader or the quarry, and then rejoined the bustle on the street of coppersmiths.
Fugitives run in a straight line, he worried as he pushed his way through the throng. / hope this one knows what he’s supposed to do.
The street ran into a round plaza where it met with two other roads coming in at odd angles. A great religious procession was clogging the intersection, trying to reach the temple of Helios that stood three and a half blocks up the hill to the left. Nikos hissed in fury; there were hundreds of supplicants, priests, and a whole cavalcade of mules, horses, litters, and no less than three elephants. The din was tremendous, between the braying of the animals, the trumpeting of unhappy elephants, and the clashing of gongs and cymbals in the hands of the priests.
The crowd surged and Nikos found himself ground into the brickwork front of a wineshop by the press of bodies. Gasping forbreath in the throng, he grasped an awning pole and swung himself up onto the sheet of taut canvas. Sweat ran off his bald pate, stinging his eyes. Standing the heat in the densely packed city was not his forte.
See the greatest city in the world, they said, have an exciting life, they said.
Shaking his head, he scrambled along the narrow lintel over the awnings. From this new height, he could see that there was a commotion halting the procession.
The Persian’s booted foot slammed against the side of Thyatis’ head and she slid back a foot or more on the back of the elephant. Her feet dangled over the heads of a crowd of angry, shouting priests. The blur of white sparks that clouded her vision passed and she dug in with her boots to climb back up. The Persian staggered in the howdah as the elephant, distressed by Thyatis climbing up his tail, heaved against the heavy iron manacles that bound its feet. The driver, screaming imprecations, lashed at the Persian with his prod, cutting a long gash in the man’s arm. The Easterner hauled himself back into- the little platform and snatched at the darting metal hook. Seizing it, he slammed it back into the driver’s face. There was the crunch of bone and the driver howled in pain before disappearing off the front of the elephant.
Thyatis swung over the side of the howdah and crashed into the Persian, her leg lashing out to cut his feet out from under him. The elephant, frantic, reared up, and the Persian and the Roman were thrown into a tumble at the back of the fragile wicker box. The slats broke away and both spilled out onto the street. Almost unmarked amid all the commotion was the sound of the iron links on the elephants’ manacles snapping.
The Roman girl hit the cobblestones in a half crouch and was only partially stunned by the shock. The Persian was not so lucky, falling heavily on his side with a sickening thud. The Helian priests scrambled back, leaving a widening circle around the two and the elephant. Thyatis struggled shakily to her feet and slipped a long knife out of her girdle. The Persian, cradling a broken and bleeding arm, eased up into a crouch, his face streaming with tears of pain. Thyatis started to circle, crouched, the knife in her right hand.
“ ‘Ware!’ came a shout from above, and the sound of a frenzied elephant bellowing cut through Thyatis’s concentration. Alarmed, she sprang to the side as the elephant, now berserk, suddenly stampeded in the street. The driver, thrown from his perch, was crushed under massive feet with a despairing scream. The other elephants, hearing the distress of their fellow, also began rearing and trampling. Thyatis, her eyes wide with fear, was frozen for an instant. Then she saw the Persian crawling away from the street, heading for a taverna door.
The rampaging elephant now shed the howdah in a cloud of splinters, wicker, and rope and was dancing in an odd circle. It smashed into the shopfronts and hurled supplicants and priests this way and that. Thyatis dodged across the street to snatch up the Persian from the doorway. Grunting with the strain, she hauled him up over her head and into the waiting arms of Nikos.
A moment later Nikos punched in the window of a second-floor room with the Persian’s head and tumbled the fugitive and himself into a storeroom filled with baskets, pots, and old cheese wheels. Thyatis followed only moments later. Outside, the screams of the elephants rose and rose, blotting out the din of the city.
In the darkness, Thyatis dragged the Persian up and slammed his broken arm into the wall, raising a cloud of plaster dust. The Easterner started to scream but was cut off by Nikos’ scarred fingers closing off his windpipe like a vise-clamp. v
The woman’s face leaned close to the Persian’s, blood trailing down from the cut on her scalp. She smiled, all white teeth in the dim light of the little room. Her fingers dug into his thick dark hair and pulled his head back.
“No man could capture Vologases the Persian,” she whispered, “and none did. But I did.”
A sense of deep contentment filled Thyatis as she stared down at the Persian agent. Nikos’ broad hands were busy, binding the Easterner’s wrists behind his back. She smoothed her hair back and smiled again. Well done, she thought, very well done.