N'Sumu, who had been glowering at Lycon, turned his attention toward the direction Vonones indicated. His uncanny gaze seemed to glance at the oncoming troops without recognition, as his pupils suddenly went opaque. N'Sumu jerked upright, facing the distant roofs—his hands raised palms–outward as if in an exaggerated gesture of surprise. "It's up there!" he hissed. "It's come back!"
Passersby eddied around the men as all three paused to stare skyward. The troop of guards had been halted by a barrier that they could not lash out of the way: a builder's wagon loaded with bricks, overturned in the street when its driver tried to back his team away from the commotion and danger of the fire. Shouts and curses in German and Latin scattered even those refugees numbed by the conflagration, but the heaped bricks were not affected in the least.
"Between the buildings," N'Sumu said, pointing overhead. The cloud glow made a dim, jagged ribbon of the sky, interrupted completely at some points by the degree of overhang and cross-building. Lycon could see nothing, nothing exceptional at any rate—but remembering the way N'Sumu had swatted away dangers hidden in the loft, the beastcatcher was willing enough to believe the other's warning.
As Lycon opened his mouth to ask where the creature was now, N'Sumu forestalled him by saying: "It's gone, just the one flash. But it's stalking us."
For the first time, Lycon and Vonones felt what they were sure was fear in the Egyptian's manner. N'Sumu had been coolly arrogant in his dealings with them, and he had showed a clear willingness to enter the lizard-ape's lair with no support or very little. Evidently this hunter had very little stomach for becoming the hunted instead.
The beastcatcher looked at his friend. Vonones voiced their mutual puzzlement, saying: "You wanted it to come to you, didn't you? Wanted to wait for it even after the building was starting to collapse?"
Lycon lifted the netted creature in his left hand and added, "I'd planned to use this for bait—back at the compound, where we'd be able to determine the direction the lizard-ape would have to approach from. Listen, N'Sumu—you can deal with it here, can't you? Do whatever it was that you did to its brood back there in the loft?"
N'Sumu whispered something inaudible and possibly in an unfamiliar language. His face continued to be emotionless, but there was evident nervousness in the way the tall Egyptian twisted and jerked his head in an attempt to look everywhere at once. More intelligibly, he went on, "It didn't know I was here looking for it. It would have attacked just as if I were one of you. Now it's sensed me. It knows . . ."
The words were spilling out in N'Sumu's accented Latin, but Vonones had the feeling N'Sumu was unconsciously begging their companionship in danger, without fully considering the import of his words.
"It knows I'm its only real threat! It knows it has to kill me first!" N'Sumu burst out in something between a shout and a scream. "And it can come from anywhere!"
He whirled about, bumping Vonones away and extending his index finger toward the shutters of the fabric shop beside them. Lycon felt the air seethe as it had when the bronzed man struck down threats in the loft, but there was no green flash on this occasion. Neither, of course, was there anything alive in the direction N'Sumu had pointed—unless someone within the shop had made the mistake of listening with an ear to the shutter.
What in the names of all the gods was N'Sumu? Or was the correct question: what god was N'Sumu? Lycon had never believed the tales of mortals coupling with deities—of stories like that of Memnon the son of Zeus, who had ruled Ethiopia in the times that were now a myth and a memory. But, who or what was N'Sumu?
"Then we need more space about us," Lycon decided. First things first, and unless they survived this night, N'Sumu's parentage and provenance were of no matter at all. "There—by the fountain! It's the best place we'll find in a hurry."
Twenty yards away, half the distance to the oncoming imperial guards, the street met two others in the Y-intersection normal for all cities, save those laid out on bare ground by military surveyors. The pavement widened there and held the fountain that supplied water from the Appian Aqueduct to all the buildings within a one-block radius on the intersecting streets. The intersection was crowded, especially since the arms and curses of the cavalrymen had diverted those who might otherwise have scrambled over the load of bricks—easy enough to do on foot, but a perfect barricade against men who refused to lower themselves by dismounting in the midst of a mob.
"Come on!" Lycon thrust his way through the crowd, holding the struggling lizard-ape chick ahead of him—let it vent its rage on those who moved aside too slowly. Vonones and N'Sumu surged through behind him. The beastcatcher was too busy with the press of bodies to keep an eye on the rooftops and overhanging balconies. He didn't like to trust to luck, but tonight he had to. N'Sumu was obviously quite correct—the lizard-ape could leap upon them from any direction, and in the narrow confines of the street they would have no effective warning no matter how carefully they attempted to watch. Their best hope was to reach the cleared area around the fountain, and after that they could make a stand. First things first. . . .
The tribune, Lacerta, caught sight of them over the ruined wagon—probably recognizing the tall Egyptian first, but choosing to call out: "You! Merchant! Beastcatcher! Come here at once!"
Lycon heard but ignored the tribune. He continued to barge forward with the others behind him. Vonones threw a backward glance, then followed Lycon's example.
The fountain itself consisted of a square basin six feet to a side and approximately eighteen inches from its upper lip to the pavement. The basin was of tufa, a porous volcanic stone whose light weight and abundance made it the city's single most common building material. The corner blocks were decorated beneath the slime of algae with neat rosettes, freehand reminders by some stonemason, almost certainly a slave, that craftsmanship does not depend upon the craftsman's status.
There was a column in the center of the fountain. Water entered the basin through the cup from which a nymph, carved in low relief upon that column, poured continuously. The overflow dribbled through cuts in the basin rim and along grooves in the pavement, then off into the nearest sewer. Even in the hot, rainless days of the summer, overflow from fountains fed by the aqueducts went some way toward flushing the sewers and limiting the occurrence of fevers and agues. There was no effort just yet to organize a bucket brigade from here, but many of those whom the fire had routed out were bathing their heads and arms directly—and illegally—in the fountain.
"Are you ready, N'Sumu?" Lycon asked. If the Egyptian's magic would not serve them now, they were all dead men. Lycon had made the decision that looked best in terms of survival—and if those terms still weren't very good, then there was all the more reason to act promptly before fear made impossible that which was necessary. The hunter's eyes were bright with a mixture of joy and madness. It was unfortunate that the conflagration had scattered his men, burned their nets—but Lycon would have been dead years ago if he had had to rely upon anyone but himself in times of danger.
"You're going to draw it here?" Vonones demanded. Even as he spoke, he turned his body away from Lycon to scan the roofs and facades in the vicinity—none of them farther than twenty feet of horizontal distance. His words were barely audible above the din.
"Yes," said N'Sumu. He seemed to have regained his composure. "It's just that I've lost the element of surprise. I'm certain that the phile—the sauropithecus—caught my scent . . . We are old enemies, my people and these lizard-apes. It knows I am here—and it will certainly single me out when it attacks."
"You people! Better move away!" Lycon warned the nearest refugees. His tone was so emotionless that he would have been ignored even had he spoken loudly enough to be understood in the uproar. The hunter grinned at N'Sumu. "The lizard-ape won't ignore me," he said. "Watch."
Lycon braced his right foot on the coping of the basin. It was slick with algae, but he had forded streams where a slip meant half a mile of battering along granite boulders. He would not slip now. The nails in his boots gouged into the tufa, as the hunter jumped to the top of the pillar. From this position he now stood two feet above the surface of the basin. Lycon's arms hunched back to balance himself. Vonones thought he looked rather like a bird of prey balancing on its perch. The net, closely bunched, swung in one hand; in the other, the ivory wand shone a smooth orange in the glow of the flames.
The column was rectangular and only a foot across at the top, but that was adequate for Lycon's purposes. He held up the burden in his left hand at just enough of an angle so that the netted chick, squirming angrily, could not tear his forearm.
"Come get it!" he shouted to the rooftops. "Do you want it? Here it is!" The ivory baton flexed no more than a hair's breadth as Lycon slapped it against the net with all his strength. There was a crack of impact, and something too shrill to be a sound raised hairs on the necks of all those clustered about the fountain.
Lycon had attracted little attention when he forced his way to the basin, and little more even when he leaped atop the central column. His shout and the eerie shriek that followed the blow of the ivory baton drew the crowd's eyes, and then drove back the nearest of those around him.
Lycon had worn only a simple, light tunic tonight—wanting freedom of movement. Thus far the tension and activity had counteracted the effect of the night chill in this, the month Germanicus—September, until the Emperor had renamed it following his triumph over the Germans. Lycon had sweated in the loft and during their escape from it. Now he shivered. His garment was torn loose from one shoulder and shredded on one side where the chick had clawed at him. The trembling in his limbs was both emotional as well as physical, but that would not prevent his muscles from reacting when needed.
It was questionable whether his reactions could save him this time, but a failed hope is nonetheless hope for a time.
"There!" cried Vonones. Lycon turned, but there was nothing in the direction his friend pointed, not even hinted motion.
Because the light was diffused from above, the nearby facades looked as if they were veiled by cobwebs that thinned as they hung closer to the street. Cornices and eaves of red tile, whose true color was only hinted by the light that washed them, dripped long shadows downward. Something could have leaped across a roofline, have clung like a shadow-drenched bat beneath a projecting beam, but it would be invisible.
"Here it is!" Lycon shouted. He struck again with the baton, letting rage drive his arm. He heard a dull crunch of bones; blood spurted from the tiny body broken within the net. Vonones shouted. The adult sauropithecus launched itself toward Lycon, forty feet beneath the ledge upon which it had hung.
The lizard-ape was no more than a blur, an impression too sudden and ill-lit to be seen in detail. Another man would have frozen there, gaped stupidly, and died an instant later. Lycon knew well the blinding speed, the razor-edged deadly claws—and at the first shimmer of movement from above, the hunter was already in motion himself.
Lycon raised his ivory baton—the lizard-ape's scales might turn tiger claws, but in another instant he would know how hard its skull was.
N'Sumu had already reacted to Vonones' shout. A split second after the lizard-ape leaped, midway between the ledge and its quarry, its hurtling form was caught up in a sudden glow of verdant light. Lycon had hoped for the eye-searing emerald flare that had shattered blue-scaled bodies apart earlier in the loft. Instead, the hurtling lizard-ape seemed to stagger in midair—to lose full control of its muscles—but its leap carried it full onto Lycon.
Stunned or not, the lizard-ape struck Lycon and knocked him backward—carrying the hunter from his precarious footing atop the column. Lycon cushioned its impact as best he could—there was no room to duck, nor time to try. The lizard-ape was heavier than he had expected—its flesh must all be of iron-hard muscle—and the force of its fall would have broken half his bones had Lycon not twisted aside, merging with the creature in midair, falling with it into the fountain. The belly-ripping stroke of its claws had no strength, brushed him with only a shadow of their lethal intent—shredding his tunic even so.
Lycon hit the water backward, half-way into a somersault, and the tufa coping grazed his scalp an instant before his back struck the floor of the basin. Water sprayed across the screams of everyone around the fountain. Lycon's arms flailed, but he struck instinctively with his baton, felt it strike hard. The net was slung to one side, balancing the thrust of his right arm in the opposite direction—arm, ivory baton, and the blood-mad creature locked by its teeth to the ivory, as water exploded in all directions.
Lycon was screaming, "Kill it! Kill it, N'Sumu!" The fear and fury in his voice would have made the words unintelligible even without the surrounding chaos.
The wand struck the lip of the tufa as Lycon and the blue killer crashed down again. Ivory was denser than the porous stone, but the stone provided a fulcrum against which Lycon's hysterical grip and the teeth of the lizard-ape could lever with all their strength. The ivory baton shattered at the point of stress—fragments spalling away in layers of concentric rings.
Lycon sprang upright as the baton shattered, narrowly averting the claws of the lizard-ape's hind legs—a kick that would certainly have gutted him had the creature not been stunned by N'Sumu's magic. N'Sumu himself was shielding his eyes with one hand—the other hand pointing threateningly toward the falling spray. A green nimbus burst over the stone nymph.
Whatever magic the Egyptian commanded, the lizard-ape indeed recognized the danger. Abandoning its attack on Lycon, it darted amongst the panicked onlookers. Either the fall or N'Sumu's magic had weakened the sauropithecus, for Lycon was almost able to follow the lightning-quick movements of its claws as it ripped apart anyone too frozen with fear to leap out of its path.
A green lambency snaked through the heart of the crowd, twice, again and again—toppling people as they fled. Weaving through a cover of human bodies, the sauropithecus had already disappeared. Twenty feet from the fountain, the slab covering a sewer catchbasin rocked back onto its seat. The lizard-ape could not have sprung so far, so quickly after N'Sumu had stunned it and it had absorbed the shock of its fall. But the lizard-ape was gone, and the slab clacked as it settled, still ajar, over what had just used the sewers for a bolt-hole.
"You heard me, Armenian!" said a voice in easy Latin, high pitched and angry. "I ordered you to stop!"
Lycon turned. The Emperor's bodyguards had dismounted at last and by now had advanced in a wedge about their tribune. Civilians scattering from the brief, nightmarish struggle at the fountain rebounded in turn from armored chests and bare swords held forward by flat and hilt as fenders and threats. Panic can overload nervous systems, but even those in that dazed condition retained some urge for self-preservation. Cringing citizens curled back from the Germans like clods from the mold-board of a plow.
As the merchant turned to face Lacerta, one of the bearded guards used his own blade to swat the loosely held sword from Vonones' right hand. Vonones shook himself and drew stiffly upright, expecting the worst.
Lycon would have vaulted out of the basin, but the water and his weakness trapped him so that he stumbled. He no longer had normal control over his body. It was a puppet whose strings he could play, but every motion was unexpectedly delayed. He bent to brace himself on the fountain coping. The water still bubbling from the pillar washed blood from his thighs. He was aware of it for the first time.
Lacerta stared at the beastcatcher and swore. The order he barked to the nearest men of his troop was a curse in itself. Two of the big Germans paused long enough to sheath their swords. Lycon had started to clamber out of the basin, embarrassed by his lack of agility but too exhausted to care much. The net still hung from his left hand. Gripped in his right was the lower half of the baton. The lizard-ape's teeth had scarred the smooth ivory as they slid along it before finding purchase. The parallel gouges stood out down to the shattered end of the stump. Those same teeth would have cut far deeper into the bones of Lycon's forearm, and the muscles of that arm would have been no more to them than grass to a scythe blade.
The armored guards caught Lycon, one to either wrist and armpit, and hoisted him unceremoniously from the fountain. His laced boots squelched as the Germans thumped him down in front of the Tribune. Another man shoved Vonones forward.
"Caught one of the lizard-apes," said Lycon drunkenly. "Got it right here. It's a little beat up." He held out his net.
The net was badly torn, far more so than Lycon had expected would be the case. The lizard-ape chick had chewed away all the cords within reach of its teeth. Because the chick had been enwrapped and not merely entangled in the net, that had not even freed its head. Similarly, the claws had been sharp enough to make ragged tears in the immensely strong silken cords, but even so the fibers had reknotted into new patterns in the violent struggle. Lacerta took the net from Lycon, but he found it impossible to unwrap the tangled fabric because of the damage.
The damage to the creature within the net had quite clearly been fatal. In death, the thing seemed even smaller than Lycon had supposed. It probably weighed little more than ten pounds, granted the unnatural density of its flesh, and it reminded Lycon of a drowned cat. The last blow of the wand had crunched the chick's skull, but the eye that remained open still glared with unslaked hatred. Even in death, it projected the feeling of a scorpion caught under a boot, not only lethal but strong—a mistake the universe had spawned in some black pit or poisonous desert.
Lacerta paused in unwrapping it, as he began to get a better look at what he held. There was something on his hands, colorless but slimy, like the track of a slug. His aristocratic face worked in disgust, and he thrust the burden toward one of the German troopers with a curt order.
"You killed it, beastcatcher," the tribune accused, in anger that swelled to burn away the disgust and fear that soiled his emotions. His hands wiped themselves compulsively on the studded leather apron that hung to protect his thighs. "You were to capture the animal, but you killed it. I saw you."
Lacerta's eyes flicked reflexively toward the netted thing that one of the stolid Germans was trying to untangle as directed. Seeing the creature again made the tribune's face draw up in a flinch, and he quickly looked away.
"Had to draw the mother in," Lycon mumbled. "That's just one of her brood. The rest are cooked by now." Not even he could have understood his own words. Two of the guards still held him, and that was probably fortunate. Otherwise he would have fallen. Louder and more clearly, the hunter said: "N'Sumu—tell them that we had to get the adult where you could . . . you could catch her. That was the one we were after—the adult sauropithecus."
The bronzed Egyptian squatted at the edge of the catch basin. There were spectators about him, but none of them had moved closer when he ordered them to lift the stone plate for him. Now N'Sumu balanced the slab on edge with one hand, while the index finger of his free hand seemed to point into the opening. After a moment, he waved his palm slowly over the gaping hole.
Men and women knocked down moments ago by the flashing bolts of power that had missed the escaping sauropithecus were now beginning to stir upon the cobblestones. A few of those who had escaped the swathe were kneeling beside victims, weeping and chafing wrists to raise a pulse. Those who had been too slow to get out of the lizard-ape's path lay about where they had fallen, blood seeping in widening pools beneath them. What the crowd had made of it all was beyond conjecture.
Nothing burst out of the sewer. The gurgle of water and the waste it bore toward the Tiber was loud and alone in the pause before N'Sumu dropped the slab back into place.
He stared at Lacerta with an arrogance that made the tribune seethe. "I believe my authority has precedence here, Tribune. See to this rabble, while I give orders to my staff concerning the Emperor's sauropithecus. I'm sure that any problems arising from tonight are entirely within my capacity to deal with."
Down the street behind them, one wall of the burning building collapsed inward, closely followed by the remaining walls. Sparks gushed and dripped back as if the dying apartment block clawed at its neighbors. The sky-reaching inferno did not spread beyond its pyre, however, only cooled and fell away upon its dead.
Rome was fortunate, this time. That danger had contained itself.
But from beneath the lid of a catch basin hundreds of feet from where the phile had last been seen, eyes watched the mounted guards begin to clear the streets of the frightened mob. Its eyes focused upon one man out of all the crowd there, and the stone slab quivered as the clawed hand holding it ajar began to tremble with fury.