From the street where Lycon waited with the others, the preparations on the rooftops around them were invisible. An occasional wedge of broken tile pattered between outthrust balconies to smash on the pavement, and the fitful glow of lanterns overhead provided uncertain evidence of the men who moved into position above the streets.
There were laws regulating set-back from the street against building height—intended to guarantee sunlight for every stretch of pavement in order to burn away the noxious effluvia that would otherwise, according to the best medical opinion, propagate themselves in shadows. Save for a handful of major boulevards, however, the laws were an excuse for Watch commanders to extort bribes instead of being genuine subjects for enforcement. There had been nothing about this portion of the north slope of the Aventine Hill that precluded the builders from developing it as they pleased—and at a price.
So the close-shouldering apartment blocks hid the direct sun from the streets except at noon on certain days. It also meant that a fire in one building involved potential disaster for the region or the city as a whole—as had already happened twice since a blaze had given Nero room enough for a sprawling palace and grounds in Rome's center. So far as Lycon was concerned at the moment, the interlocking balconies and eaves might prevent him from directing his men by sight, but this amounted to no more of a handicap than the scrub or high grass in which he normally worked. The narrow interstices made it possible to reach the roof of their objective without going through the top floor that Mephibaal leased.
Had leased until recently, at any rate. Lycon wiped his palms on his tunic, not for the first time.
A three-note call drifted down from above. It was from no certain direction by the time it bounced through the maze of walls and projections.
"That's Hippias," said Vonones, gripping the stock of his whip with his hands and firmly enough to flex it into a bow. "They're all in position."
N'Sumu waited with the placid arrogance of one of the huge stone dolphins at the horseraces, ready to tip and signal completion of a lap but utterly disdainful of all other matters of human endeavor. Lycon noticed that when the Egyptian turned his gaze upward toward darkness, his eyeballs frosted into dull opacity. The beastcatcher thought that it might be a trick of the light, until the same thing happened when N'Sumu looked directly down the street past him, and his eyeballs gleamed, dulled, and gleamed normally again without any change in external circumstances. N'Sumu grinned starkly when he noticed Lycon's attention, but he made no comment about what the Greek thought he had seen.
Lady Fortune, Lycon thought, we need you now and always. But especially now. "Right," he said aloud. "Time we made our move." His fingertips checked the net slung over his left shoulder, then the dense ivory baton he had slipped through the sash of his tunic in preference to a weapon with an edge. "Let's go."
There were seven in the party that Lycon led up the only staircase of the apartment block. Two of the men were Vonones' slaves, recent arrivals from Ethiopia who did not even speak Greek. They would be a deadly liability on the roof, where coordination was crucial and only shouted orders were possible in the darkness. They could, however, accompany Lycon on the direct assault, carrying large lanterns. One of the slaves was directly behind Lycon on the stairs, holding his light aloft and so close that the back of the hunter's neck quivered with the heat of the triple lampwicks flaming within their cage of lead and horn. The other Ethiopian brought up the rear.
Most of the Watch unit, with their Centurion, were on the roofs with the bulk of Vonones' crew and the additional specialists Lycon had hired from the Amphitheater for such need as this. Two patrolmen accompanied the beastcatcher up the stairs. Except for spears, they wore the full military equipment that was normally a matter for parades and riots only. Lycon was not certain how much use the men's laminated-linen body armor and shields of spruce plywood would be, since protection had to be offset against weight and the lizard-ape's awesome quickness. Still, it was worth trying tonight, since only N'Sumu professed to have any knowledge of the beast they stalked.
N'Sumu himself followed the first lantern-bearer. The Egyptian carried no weapon at all, and he walked with both hands outthrust before him as if in benediction. His palms were of the same richly tanned, almost bronze shade as the rest of his skin, and Lycon again shivered at the unbidden thought of some huge bronze serpent looping its way along the branches of a jungle forest. Lycon had heard of certain warriors who were skilled in some sort of open-hand combat technique, but he thought such men were said to live beyond the Empire's easternmost frontiers, not in the lands south of the Nile's first cataract. If N'Sumu chose to wrestle with the lizard-ape barehanded, that was fine by Lycon.
Vonones was directly behind N'Sumu. The Armenian merchant was so nervous that Lycon could hear his sandals catch and skip as he repeatedly missed his footing. Vonones need not have come at all, and certainly there was no reason for him to be one of the group that entered the loft. He had insisted, however. With so much at stake, Vonones was determined to see it through personally, whatever the risks. Lycon hoped he wouldn't get in the way.
They had not attempted to evacuate the lower floors of the building. The noise and confusion would have been colossal—and in the event their supposition about the creature's lair was incorrect, the probable riot caused by the affair might have led Domitian to indulge one of his whims. There were ragged men and women sleeping at each landing. Lycon and the boots of the patrolmen prodded them into the hallways where others of the very poorest already huddled. The presence of those folk was mildly troublesome—they would almost certainly drift back to block the stairs down which the assault party might need to retreat abruptly. Still, they proved that the creature had not made its escape in this direction when it heard the boots and murmured orders of the men taking up positions on the surrounding roofs. If the lizard-ape indeed had made its lair here, Lycon assumed it would normally reach its lair from the adjacent rooftops. By night it could easily leap across from roof to roof—silently, unseen . . .
The top flight of stairs was closer to being a ladder of rough poles than a proper staircase. There was no railing, but the wall was worn and slimed by the hands of a decade of beggars. The lantern-bearer following Lycon cursed and stumbled and cursed again: some of his obscenities, at any rate, were Greek. The remainder of the group, especially Vonones and the heavily-armed patrolmen, were also having difficulties. N'Sumu, though graceless, mounted the stairs without actually touching the wall over which his open hand glided in readiness to brace him.
Lycon moved up the steps on his tip-toes, only the faint creak of the wood beneath his hobnails betraying his ascent. The beastcatcher held his net in both hands, swinging it waist-high and ready for an underarm cast in an emergency. It wouldn't stop the lizard-ape for long, but anything that would slow the beast down was worth trying.
The door beyond the topmost landing was a solid one, out of keeping with the upper levels of this or any other apartment block. If the sauropithecus had chosen this particular place for its lair, the choice was either a very lucky one for it—or else luck had nothing to do with it.
It's nearly as human as you are, N'Sumu had said.
"We may have to cut this down," Lycon whispered toward the men behind him. "Didn't expect anything this sturdy, or I'd have brought axes."
There was scant room for three on the landing proper. Lycon had half expected N'Sumu to squeeze aside and let pass the Watch members with their swords. Instead the Egyptian himself stepped to the door and ran his palms over its framework. The gesture was not casual, but rather a precise survey of the edges of the panel where they butted against the jamb and where, presumably, the bar or bolts were engaged. So far as Lycon could tell, N'Sumu did not actually touch the heavy wood.
The slave with the lantern cowered aside with a look of rigid fear—directed at N'Sumu rather than what might be beyond the door. Neither of the Ethiopians had a good grasp of what was going on—they were present to carry lights, and nobody had bothered to explain the business further. It was reasonable enough that the slave would not regard their quarry with the taut anxiety of those who knew what they were seeking—but why the fear of N'Sumu? It was almost as if the slave, who might well know the Egyptian peoples of the Nile south of Elephantine Island as familiarly as Lycon did Thracians, nonetheless found N'Sumu both unique and unpleasant.
"It's wedged in place," N'Sumu decided. "Not firmly at all. If you want, I think that I can . . ."
Lycon shook his head in negation. A drop of sweat from the climb stung his eye and made him blink. Vonones panted two steps down from the landing. Behind and below him on the stairs, the backlighted bronze helmets of the Watch patrolmen gleamed like halos. One of the men had drawn his sword and was trying to brace himself upright against the wall with his elbow.
"You," said Lycon, pointing over the rolled and ready net at the lantern-bearer. He spoke a sort of bush dialect that worked well enough in the field and which the Ethiopian understood as much through Lycon's tone as his words. "Jump in and put your back to the wall to the left side of the doorway, while I go to the right. Any delay, any foul-up, and I'll feed you to a hyena. Believe me. One bite at a time."
The slave nodded with his lower lip sucked between his teeth. It would be worth any unknown danger to get away from N'Sumu.
"All right, then," said Lycon. He kicked in the door and it fell with a crash like that of a catapult firing.
The lantern-bearer followed orders with an alacrity that impressed Lycon himself. N'Sumu was inside as abruptly, his eyes blank as marble, and his palms again outstretched.
Lycon spun within to the right, because he was right-handed and his direction of movement would aid a cross-body cast of his net. The shadows cast by the lantern slid across walls and beams in a counterfeit of activity, but for a moment only the newcomers themselves moved in the low-ceilinged attic.
The man who was already sprawled just inside the doorway certainly did not move. He had worn the usual two tunics, the inner one of a fine close weave of linen, before it was stripped away in threads and tendrils. Now he lay in a semicircle of fluff. His face was upturned and frozen in a startled expression. His arms and torso were naked and from his hips on down all that remained were bare bones that gleamed yellow beneath the dried blood and thin patches of adherent flesh. Blood still oozed from the exposed tangle of guts and organs laid bare above his pelvis.
Most of the other corpses humped against the floor of the loft had not been stripped with anything like the same playful enthusiasm. In general, the clothing—rags to begin with mostly—had been slashed apart crudely, and the flesh beneath treated in a similar fashion. Lycon could not guess how many corpses—most of them no more than picked and scattered bones—were strewn about the loft. The number itself, a hundred or so perhaps, would not be particularly startling to one who had seen a thousand bodies dragged from the Amphitheater on a long afternoon. Those had been fresh, though—and most of these . . . such flesh that remained had heated to dripping liquescence under the roof tiles.
Always before, Lycon would have said that a smell was something you got used to. He did not want to believe that now. Not even the accustomed stench of Rome's slums could have continued to mask the presence of this charnel house much longer.
Vonones and the two patrolmen burst into the loft behind N'Sumu. The second lantern-bearer stopped in the doorway, his nerve failing. Vonones snarled a command, and the slave entered—increasing the amount of light available without in the least improving the scene it displayed.
"They're," said Vonones, "they're all . . ." He slashed out with his whip, not aiming at anything in particular.
"Is it here?" one patrolman demanded as he twisted—fearful that the sideguards of his helmet were keeping him from seeing the taloned demon that approached him.
Recovering from the sight, Lycon jerked his own head to the side. Nothing seemed to move—only N'Sumu, who was walking cautiously toward the man who hung from a roof truss, held there by a swath of something that seemed more like spun metal than any fabric, even silk, N'Sumu's hands were raised and his eyes, when Lycon stepped alongside, were dull.
"By Isis, that's Smiler," muttered the other patrolman. "Ox's partner, and—why that's Carretius!" He pointed toward the half-consumed body whose torso lay before the entrance—only now was the man's memory grasping some sort of awareness out of this nightmarish scene.
"What . . . ?" Lycon said to N'Sumu, and something leaped at them from the hollowed ribcage of one of the corpses.
The shadow thrown by the lanterns distorted and exaggerated both the creature and the motion. It was that exaggeration that called Lycon's attention to the movement while it was within the capacity of his reflexes to respond to it. The creature that launched itself toward his eyes was not the lizard-ape he feared, nor yet was it anything that he had ever seen before.
It was cat-sized and perhaps quicker than a cat, but its leap was a long one—long enough for Lycon to react. Lycon's net, cast by reflex, opened like a spider's web catching the sun. The bronze weights, as delicate as the silken cords themselves, held the net in a momentary orb that collapsed around the leaping thing in midair. The motion with which the beastcatcher had cast his net, still gripped by the cord that pursed shut the outer edge against the weight it held, carried the furious creature safely past Lycon's left shoulder.
The net had been intended to tangle the lizard-ape for the minimal instant Lycon might need to press his attack or to escape. This creature—whatever it was—was well within the size of the prey for which the net had been designed. His unexpected success gave Lycon a momentary thrill of triumph—one that stuck in his throat as he saw the floor and walls of the loft seethe with sudden movement like bubbles rising in a cesspool.
Something the size of the first creature twisted in the air toward N'Sumu. An instant before touching him, its blue-scaled body exploded in a burst of light as green as spring hay. In the fluff that remained of Carretius' linen garment crawled a dozen bright blue things no larger than baby rabbits and fully as blind, but with the bloody determination of so many gadflies. One of them clamped to the ankle of the leading lantern-bearer, and his shriek was louder than that of the two patrolmen—who knew from experience what the hurtling lantern meant in a place like this.
Smiler hung with his mouth and muscles slack. Lycon had assumed the man was as dead as those he had accompanied here, Ox and the halved corpse facing the doorway. Now Smiler's eyelids opened and his head rocked back, trying to tear loose from the shimmering band of stuff that clamped and supported him. One of the dangling arms lifted and pointed toward the beastcatcher. There was a touch on Lycon's sandal, something crawling, and his hobnails ground it against the flooring as he started for the hanging man.
Smiler's throat convulsed. Then his lips moved and spewed not words but blue-shimmering larvae the size of men's fingers—dozens of them, gouting up to flop onto the wood and writhe on vestigial legs toward the man who had just approached. Blood sprayed from Smiler's lips and throat together as the entire substance of his body seemed to convulse and give way to pass more of the things that had just hatched within his living flesh.
There was a second green flash—something incomprehensible that N'Sumu seemed to conjure forth. Lycon had no time to think about it, as Vonones' whip popped close enough to draw blood from the hunter's ear—ripping a cat-sized horror that had just dropped down from a roof tile and onto Lycon's head. The thing in Lycon's net was squirming; he swung it against a pillar to quiet it, as he jumped back toward the door and safety.
The clot of men blocking the opening was to be expected, but the effect two men carrying shields would have on the tight doorway was a shock even to Lycon, as he caromed off the back of one of the patrolmen.
"The mother isn't here!" shouted N'Sumu. His right hand moved as if to fend something away. Although there was no visible motion beyond that, things curled off a truss ten feet away like spiders swung through a flame. A nimbus the color of copper burning danced over the timber and nearby tiles, but it was pale in comparison to the yellow flame of the olive oil that spread from the shattered lantern. Oblivious of the crackling flames, N'Sumu was raging: "Wait! She must have left by the roof! She'll be back! We've got to wait here for the mother to return! I order you to wait!"
The wicker screens closing the outer walls shuddered as the fire began to suck in its breath. The panel directly across the loft from the doorway had been smashed out and replaced by a tunic—neatly opened and hung to conceal the interior of the large room from eyes in adjacent buildings. The cloth flapped inward, drawn by the breeze, and drew with it the edge of the boar net that had been hung around the entire top floor of the building. Men on the roof shouted at what they thought was success—the sauropithecus slashing its way through a wall panel to escape the powerful party by now blocking the stairwell exit.
Of course, it had also been possible that the lizard-ape would burst through the roof instead. For that, there was no help but to trust to the expertise of men with hand nets like the one Lycon himself carried. The operation might or might not have succeeded if the sauropithecus—if the mother—had been in its lair. Lycon had not, at any rate, sprung his trap on empty air.
Only now it was they who were trapped—or soon would be—in this rapidly spreading conflagration. N'Sumu seemed to ignore the danger. Either the man was possessed—or else the danger of being trapped inside a blazing building was something beyond the Egyptian's experience. Assuming N'Sumu was an Egyptian.
Assuming—there was another green flash, a very brilliant one; an arm that might have been a small child's, only blue-scaled and with claws already longer than a leopard's, was blown past N'Sumu from where its owner had crouched twenty feet away—assuming that N'Sumu was even human.
The two patrolmen and their shields were crossed like X-shaped barricades in the doorway. Both men were screaming unintelligibly. Because their oval shields were strapped on, it would have taken greater coordination than either man was showing to drop them. Even so, they could have got out easily had they simply backed up and tried the opening again, with their shields and bodies parallel—the way they had entered the loft. Panic, whether from the fire or the charnel house itself, did not permit that.
Vonones and one of the Ethiopians were tugging at the outer Watch member—their efforts hampered by their own fear and the need to watch for what might be creeping toward them. There seemed to be no more of the larger creatures, though quick motion at the shadowy edges of the loft suggested what might happen if N'Sumu relaxed his blank-eyed vigilance.
"Don't let the one you've caught be harmed," N'Sumu shouted to Lycon in piercing Greek that filled the loft. "Domitian is certain to want it if the mother escapes us."
The second lantern had been set on the floor with the caution it deserved, but the horn lenses of the first now burned as well and added a bitter stench identifiable even through the general foetor of the loft. Lycon snatched up the shortsword a patrolman had dropped. The wooden hilt was greasy with something from the floor, but the hunter's hysterical grip would have held the trotter of a pig in a mud wallow.
The Ethiopian who had flung down the shattered lantern sat with his knees slightly raised and his expression frozen as he appeared to stare at the creature on his ankle. It was small, really not much larger than the tarantulas of the coastal regions of Italy and Provence. No one would confuse it with a spider, however, because its four blue-glinting limbs were patently wrong in number and in excessive strength. They wrapped around the slave's instep and leg, while the creature buried its tiny head into the ankle joint. As Lycon slapped down at it with the flat of his sword, the head withdrew from the red-rimmed hole it had dug, and its eyes winked in black fury at the steel that crushed it.
The slave toppled over. A similar creature, on the side of his face that had been hidden from Lycon, had its two arms dug the full four inches of their length down into the Ethiopian's eye-socket. The claws of one hind leg were anchored under the base of the jaw, while the others drew up the corner of the slave's mouth in a false snarl into which the humors from the eye had begun to drip.
Lycon struck this time with the edge. He fervently hoped that the lantern-bearer was already dead.
He had grasped the sword not as a weapon but as a tool. Now he struck the wall behind him on the follow-through of the tug that had cleared the blade from the cleft skull. The wall over the stairwell was of the same construction as the panels that enclosed the exterior, though here at least, the wickerwork had been plastered over to give it the look of solidity. Though the paneling was light and provided no vertical support, the woven twigs—even desiccated as they now were—comprised a resilient surface of considerable strength. A man like Ox could tear through them by main force, but there were few men like Ox and one fewer now.
Lycon had many times relied upon his quickness in moments of danger, but just now he thought he would prefer to carry a good bit more heavy muscle. He drew back and followed his first blow with a second—this time putting behind it the full strength of his right arm. Plaster exploded away from the sword in a choking cloud that gleamed saffron in the light of the conflagration behind it. Roof tiles were beginning to shatter as the flames licked upward. Upon the roof above, men had noticed the flames and were shouting out warnings as they scrambled to leap to adjacent buildings.
"Vonones! Help me!" Lycon shouted, as he smashed shoulder-first against the ragged opening his blade had torn. The wicker rebounded, but then the merchant's weight struck Lycon's back and sent both men head-first in a tangle of dust and broken twigs out onto the rickety staircase.
Lycon tucked himself under—head, knees, and elbows—and saved his neck through the same reflexes that had responded once when a treelimb sheared as he crawled along it to reach the cerval cat at the tip of the branch. Vonones might have come out less well without his friend to break their mutual fall. As it was, they caromed together from the stairs—which flexed but did not shatter, to the outer wall which had a brick core and ignored their impact—and at last came to rest on the landing at the next level down.
The two Watch patrolmen in the doorway had finally sorted themselves out to the extent of tumbling through in turn. Vonones, wheezing like an angry bear, caught the first man, used him as a shield against the second, and hurled both of them over his head and the huddled body of Lycon between his feet. The men pitched on down the farther flight of stairs—helmets dancing loose and shields buffeting their owners and the walls.
"Idiots!" Vonones screamed after them.
Lycon twisted smoothly to his feet, ignoring pain. That he was battered and bruised was inevitable; the awareness of that could wait for the morning, for the next few days, if he lived that long. Nothing had been damaged that would keep him from functioning—and by all the gods, nothing short of death would stop him this time.
Lycon had flung the sword ahead of him as he broke through the wall. The blade still rang and clattered somewhere on down the staircase, in the general direction in which the two patrolmen had gone tumbling.
The surviving Ethiopian slave now leaped down the stairs, screaming mindlessly as he fell. There was a look of horror on his face, and something blue was squatting on his scalp. As the slave plunged by him, Lycon reached out with his right hand and peeled the creature from its hold.
It resisted like a tick imbedded firmly into flesh. The Ethiopian's head snapped back, as if Lycon had snatched a handful of hair instead of something so alien and malevolent. Momentum carried the victim on, and the beastcatcher's hand and arm held as if worked from iron. The four clawed limbs of the creature, itself no larger than the hand that caught it, pulled loose with bits of the Ethiopian's scalp and hair still dangling. Blood washed across exposed skull where the creature had gnawed into the bone.
A lance of pain touched Lycon's palm just at the instant that he drove his open hand against the brick wall. The impact left a blotch of glaucous ichor on the wall, framed by the red of his own human blood. The hatchling burst apart between brick and a hand as unyielding as brick, dropped twitching onto the floor.
Something stabbed at Lycon's left calf. He had let his net dangle too closely to his leg. The lizard-ape chick within had managed to hook one arm through the mesh; its claws gashed into Lycon's calf, only momentarily foiled by leather straps. Lycon backhanded the creature twice against the wall to quell its murderous activity once again.
"Come on!" he shouted up the staircase. "We've got to get out of here!"
The two Watch patrolmen were rousing the lower floors of the building. It was either a triumph of training over panic, or else they hoped to drive the madness of the loft above from their thoughts by concentrating on familiar duties. Out in the street, others were shouting now as well, while the orange flames winked with a hellish intensity through the interstices of the paneling. There was no part of Rome in which fire and disease were not the constant companions of the residents; of the two, the brutal suddenness of fire made it the more feared. The apartment dwellers beneath would block the stairs in their attempts to save their goods as well as themselves—bedsteads and braziers, clothing or even a cracked bowl made important by the fact that it was the owner's sole chattel.
"It will come back to save its brood!" N'Sumu called over his shoulder. He had backed into the doorway now that the rest of the party had escaped the loft, but he remained poised there instead of descending. The firelight threw his shadow, more lumped and awkward than the man himself, onto the wall of the staircase behind him. The ragged hole Lycon and Vonones had torn in the inner wall glowed now as well with the sooty yellow flames. "We have to wait here until it . . ."
The last of whatever N'Sumu might have said was drowned in the crash as the central section of the roof collapsed. That crash was echoed when the weight of tiles struck the fire-weakened floor of the loft and precipitated it and N'Sumu down onto the fifth level. Residents gabbling in a dozen languages had already crowded the hallway and begun to force their way past the two men on the landing. Now flames and debris showered down onto the hall and those within it. Air pistoned through the hall, then sucked itself back upward through the new opening with a roar and a column of sparks.
N'Sumu twisted as he fell, landed on his feet, struggled toward them. At last the Egyptian seemed to recognize the danger of their position.
Lycon was willing to use his elbows or the ivory baton he still carried, if that could have broken a pathway down the stairs. The press of terrified humanity was too solid for such tactics to be of any help.
A woman from a fifth-floor apartment hurled herself against Vonones, as if the screams of those buried under blazing coals were scourges to drive her away. Vonones struck her twice with the stock of his whip, pulling the blows. She continued to scream and claw at him. Vonones smashed at her a third time, with the terror of a trapped animal bursting through his civilized restraint. The woman fell backward, nose broken and a vertical welt along her forehead from nose to hairline. The infant slung at her breast bawled as the rest of the crowd in the hallway surged forward.
N'Sumu reached past his two shorter companions and touched the head of the nearest of those who blocked the four flights of stairs remaining.
Lycon was dizzy with pain and the heat, barely able to focus on one clear idea at a time now. He turned his head and shouted to the Egyptian who leaned over him: "We're going to have to cut through the outer wall and take our chances we can find handholds to climb down!"
The man N'Sumu had touched slumped to the side like melting wax. The hunter could have beaten in the back of the fellow's head by brute force without achieving such an instantaneous effect.
N'Sumu slid between Lycon and Vonones without their objection. A bald man with a short club raised stood on top of the mother Vonones had bludgeoned down. The snarl on his face transformed itself into a look of amazement as the second body slumped toward him without a struggle. Lycon punched the man in the solar plexus, just in case the wonder wore off and his thoughts returned to the cudgel.
N'Sumu swept down the narrow staircase like fire through dry grass. Men and women sprawled at his touch, either clearing the way as they fell or at least proving easier to maneuver past. They did not appear to be seriously injured; their hearts beat and sometimes their mouths moaned soft nonsense, but their limbs remained flaccid.
There was an odor like that of hot bronze. It grew stronger as they forced their way downward, clinging to Lycon's nostrils despite the choking smoke. N'Sumu began to flutter his hands in the air as if to cool them; then he would reach out again, and another body would sag like a deflated bladder. Occasionally there was a green nimbus, and a pattern of blisters marked the victim's skin at the point of contact. Lycon sweated and tried to ignore what he could not change, as he slung humans and their possessions behind him and out of the way. He worked with his right hand only, despite the fact that his palm was swelling badly. The tiny creature had bitten him there in the moment that he crushed it, and for all Lycon knew its bite could have been venomous.
It was too dark to examine the lizard-ape chick trapped in Lycon's net, even had there been time for that. After being slammed against the wall, it moved only as it jiggled within its silken wrappings. That might mean the cat-sized killer was dead, and thus useless to the beastcatcher's half-formed plan—but it had come this far, and it was going the rest of the way.
The full complement of the Watch for the district had been present before the fire broke out, so matters were in surprisingly good order at street level. One squad had wrenched the stairwell door off its pivot pins, and patrolmen were tossing people and possessions into the street with scant ceremony. Half the value of chattels rescued from a fire went to the State purse, but it was necessary to get the humans out of the way before the more important work of salvage could proceed. Ladders were raised to windows as high as the third floor, and there the shutters had been beaten in and furnishings were being passed into hands of teams ready to secure them. If the building itself could be saved, so much the better, because the value of the structure would also be applied to the Emperor's share. But such was unlikely here, since the upper floors were already fully involved. By the time the fire was low enough for bucket brigades to reach it, collapsing masonry would have cleared the area of even the boldest.
Hands seized N'Sumu as he reached the street door. The Egyptian was stumbling now with fatigue—or some more doubtful reason. Nonetheless N'Sumu was enraged at being manhandled. He snarled something in a language Lycon had never heard, and pointed his finger in a motion quite different from the casual touching movements with which he had cleared a path down the stairs. Lycon, staggering himself, caught N'Sumu's wrist from behind—certain that the lethal flash he had glimpsed in the loft was sure to follow. Whether N'Sumu was an Egyptian wizard or a god who might hurl lightning bolts, Lycon judged that the fewer witnesses to his strange powers, the better. Roughly he steered N'Sumu clear of the melee.
Vonones tumbled out after them. The merchant had been facing backward against the press that would have overwhelmed them despite N'Sumu's best efforts, had Vonones not threatened its leaders with the sword he had picked up from the stairs. There was blood on the sword-tip now, besides the plaster grit the blade had been covered with when Lycon hacked through the wall. The dealer's bare skin was scratched and sweaty and spattered with blood not solely his own. His whip was in his left hand, his palm gripping the tip against the base of the stock—a leather-wrapped staff whose core was the penis bone of a lion. Vonones looked wild and deadly, and he was both those things at the moment. The men of the Watch lurched back to let the three pass through their ranks.
"Come on, we've got to get back from this!" Lycon called out. He had no idea in the world where they needed to go—nor did it matter, so long as it was out of the chaos and congestion caused by the fire.
Refugees, spectators, and those trying to limit the damage of the blaze clogged the streets. Many of those who had made their initial escape were now trying to return to the building in hope of saving some of their belongings. Of the spectators, some watched with the greedy wonder brought out by any major disaster—an expression that Lycon had seen multiplied by tens of thousands in the seats surrounding the arena. Others, though, wore something closer to the look of victims waiting for the lions. The orange claw that dripped cascading sparks might not be satisfied with a single kill. If a breeze sprang up, if the hinted rain chose not to fall, fire would maul the whole quarter—dozens of buildings, perhaps hundreds. Those watching from their windows or from the street outside their shops saw sooty victims weep for the dead and the lost, in full realization that in another hour they themselves might join the parade of mourners.
Lycon put his right palm on N'Sumu's shoulder. The Egyptian felt hot, even through the pain throbbing across Lycon's injured hand. "We'll gather up a light and some of my men, then lock this thing away in the compound."
He hefted the net with the lizard-ape chick—now fighting once more to escape the mesh. The column of fire roaring from the stricken building was reflected from low clouds in a yellow-orange glare. It was the first time Lycon had both light and leisure adequate to inspect what he had captured.
In general, the immediate victims of the fire shuffled along too absorbed in their own concerns to pay any attention to the creature Lycon now viewed at arm's length. Even those who did look up let their eyes dully drift away without the curiosity they might have displayed under other circumstances.
Not that there was anything particularly terrifying about the little beast—not so long as it was safely ensnared. It was about the size of a cat, as Lycon had thought from the initial glimpse, although this thing was tailless and had fangs like broken glass. It was snapping crookedly at the net, unable to close its jaws properly—Lycon guessed he likely had broken its jaw when he slammed it against the wall. One of the chick's eyes was open and glaring murder; the other had swollen shut. Its rib cage seemed almost skeletally thin due to its coating of scales where fur would have given it a greater appearance of bulk. Its sides quivered at a rate too rapid for lungs, even driven by fever and injury; perhaps it was the thing's heart beating.
One of its arms reached through the meshes of the net—slashing at whatever came near. The claws were extended and dark with the blood they had earlier snatched from Lycon's calf. The head of a human baby looks large because it is nearer to its adult size than is its body. The claws of this month-old chick could not have really been as long as those of its mother, but they gave that impression—and they were surely as sharp.
"Let me have that," N'Sumu demanded unexpectedly. "If you've harmed it, you fool, you'll . . ."
"Don't be an ass!" Lycon snapped. "It's bait to bring in its mother! How would you bait your traps back home in Nubia, N'Sumu?"
"Save your quarrel for afterward!" Vonones broke in. "We've got worse trouble than the lizard-ape to deal with now. Look!"
Beyond the barrier of the milling crowd, a double file of troops was riding toward them from the north. The troops must have made good progress to have covered the distance between here and the palace in the time since the first sparks had cascaded into the sky. There could be little question of where they came from—hulking Germans in bright armor and the tribune, Lacerta, one of the pair in the front rank.
There could be little doubt about who had sent them to investigate, either.