David Drake - Out of the waters

She'd thought the trainer might hesitate. Instead he instantly bellowed, "Come on, squad! Batons only until I tell you different!"

Leading the newly-freed servants, Lenatus pushed through the line of lictors who had taken the place of honor in front of the consul. From the way they moved, each man wore a sword under his tunic despite the fact that it would be certain crucifixion to be caught with military arms within the sacred boundaries of Carce.

Hedia followed, holding the borrowed toga over her shoulders with both hands. It was a stupid garment, clumsy and ugly and stupid. She'd like to burn alive the man who decreed it for formal wear!

She knew she was being irrational. She didn't care. She had never cared what other people thought of her behavior.

Lenatus and his bullies formed a wedge that shoved through the crowd. Lann might have been a trifle quicker about it, but he hadn't been clearing a path for a noble lady. Instead of just knocking down spectators who hadn't gotten out of the way, the men in front of Hedia were hurling them to one side or another so that she wouldn't trip over their groaning bodies.

Rain had begun to hammer down by the time they reached the obelisk. One of the men-a bulky Galatian well over six feet tall, named Minimus by a former owner with a sense of humor-shouted at something on the pavement. He jumped back, drawing his sword.

He's alive!

"Put that away or you'll be crowbait!" Lenatus bellowed. "It's dead, don't you see?"

"Let me through," said Hedia. Her voice was clear, her enunciation perfect. She floated in a white stinging cloud.

"Your ladyship?" Lenatus said in concern. His hand was under his tunic also.

"He's dead, you say, so there's no problem, is there?" Hedia said. She brushed past and squatted beside Lann. Beside Lann's body.

Despite the rain, the ape-man's fur was still smoldering. The smell was terrible. She brushed his cheek with her fingertips and felt crisp tendrils break off beneath them.

He was as stiff bronze, though the body was still warm. Brains were leaking from his crushed skull, but he must have died from the thunderbolt. The fall had flattened his head in line with his heavy brow ridges. The poor dear had never had the high forehead of a philosopher, of course.

He couldn't have felt a thing. No pain, nothing. Triumph and then oblivion. Quite a good way to go, and certainly he was now in a better afterlife than that which awaited the noble Hedia…

"Dear heart?" a voice said.

Hedia looked over her shoulder. Lenatus had formed his squad in a circle around her and the body of the ape-man. They had allowed Saxa through, but the lictors were on the other side.

She got to her feet, swaying with exhaustion-mental and physical both. She didn't know how long she had been kneeling on the marble pavement, but the borrowed toga was soaked.

"My husband, I'm glad you've joined me," Hedia said calmly. "I'll ask you to put a guard over Lann here. Master Lenatus and his men will do.

She flexed her knees to pat the big body for a last time, then thought the better of it and simply gestured.

She said, "Please have him cremated as soon as the rain permits. A formal funeral will not be necessary, but I request that you have his ashes interred in the family tomb."

"Him?" Saxa said in obvious puzzlement. "The monkey, you mean?"

Hedia's mind went buzzing white again. After a moment she said, "If you choose to name your savior a monkey, yes."

Then, like a whiplash, "See to it!"

"Yes, my dear," Saxa said quietly. "At once. Ah-I'll go back to the Altar and, ah, leave you and your pet…"

He turned.

Hedia caught him by the shoulder and embraced him clumsily. "No, my dear master," she said. "We will go to the Portico of Agrippa, you and I, where you will take charge of the crisis until someone else arrives-the Urban Prefect or the one of the Praetorian commanders, I suppose. And I see our daughter coming toward us. She appears to need help also."

She pointed to Lenatus, then toward the ape-man's body. The old soldier nodded in understanding. Soldiers got a lot of experience with hasty cremations; he would take care of it.

Goodbye, my friend Lann.

Varus sat on the steps of the public facility north of the sundial, letting the rain beat on him and trying not to think. The Emperor Augustus had built a larger pyre with marble appointments a little farther out on the Flaminian Way, close to where he erected his huge family mausoleum, so this one got little business in recent years.

Today the whole district stank of charred human flesh. Varus didn't know whether there were interrupted funerals on the platforms of volcanic tuff behind him, the fires quenched by the downpour; or if corpses scattered when Atlantean ships burned and crashed were responsible for the odor.

Eventually he would rise and join his father, who had set up a headquarters in the Portico of Agrippa across the road. Since the Urban Prefect hadn't arrived, Saxa had taken charge of rescue and the firefighting-which, thanks to the rain, wasn't the danger which a shower of burning timbers could have posed.

Eventually he would get up; but not now.

"Good afternoon, Lord Varus," Pandareus said from close beside him. "A very good one, in as much as we are both alive and Carce is not a flaming ruin."

Varus jumped to his feet. "Master!" he said.

Then, more calmly and with a smile for himself, "I'm sorry, I was completely lost in myself. 'In thought', I would say, but I think what I was really doing was trying not to think."

Before Pandareus could reply, Varus really looked at him. "Alive, yes," he said, "but what happened to you, Master? Are you really all right?"

The left side of teacher's face was badly swollen. The greasy look was probably unguent smeared on the cut over the cheekbone, but it looked terrible. Both his wrists were splinted, though his fingers seemed to move normally.

"Quite well, really," Pandareus said. The swelling distorted his smile, but it was clearly meant to be cheerful. "Though our ship fell to the ground, I managed to hold on to the railing. Unfortunately-"

He lifted his forearms to call attention to the splints.

"-I appear to have injured myself that way as well, though not as badly as would have happened if I had been thrown out. Pulto assures me that in a month I will be able to swing a sword just as ably as I ever could."

Varus went blank, then giggled in what he realized was release. Only then did Pandareus let his battered face warm in a smile.

"Corylus is all right, then?" Varus asked, raising his head. A pair of mounted couriers raced up the road from the barracks of the City Watch and headed south down the Flaminian Way. Only Hercules knew what they were doing.

Varus grinned wryly, glad to realize that he was regaining an interest in life. The rain seemed to be slacking, though his toga was so sodden already that walking in it would be like wearing a waterfall. Wool could absorb enormous quantities of water.

"Master Corylus is well," Pandareus said, "which is quite remarkable-even granting that I knew from our first meeting that he was an athlete as well as a scholar. He took his companions into the enclosure around the Altar of Peace, and his man Pulto is standing in the entrance to see to it that they're not disturbed. Pulto seemed pleased to see me and bandage my wrists, though."

"I'm glad of that," Varus said. He wondered who his friend's "companions" were and why they needed privacy. He could ask Corylus about that later, if he felt he had to know and if the information hadn't been volunteered. He shrugged in preparation to getting up, but the sloshing weight of his toga made him hesitate a little longer.

"Lady Hedia is in quite her usual form also," Pandareus said, "although she seems to have had received some rough handling in the recent past. She has taken your sister in hand and they're repairing their wardrobe and toilette in the shops of the portico."