David Drake - Killer

The stove was of hollow construction. When the men carrying the piece set it down by the arbor, one of them lifted the lid from the container, which was cast integrally with the firepot. A servant with a wine jug tipped it to fill the stove container. The wine gurgled as it rushed through the passages cast into the walls of the firepot. The thin bronze popped and hissed as the fluid cooled metal which the charcoal had already expanded. The other wine bearer poured from his jug into a cup, while the man with the water filled a second cup for N'Sumu with a flourish.

"We can serve ourselves, boys," said Vonones. He did not offer to pay. That he would do discreetly at ten-day intervals, feeling that the show of credit was more impressive than an open display of silver would have been in a business setting. The waiters-one was the cook, Hieron; the owner must be alone in the front-bowed and backed away obsequiously.

The wine in Lycon's cup merged and blended in the swirls it cut through the previously poured water. Slowly the richer color smoothed itself to blanket the buff glaze of the cup's interior. "Where would you look for a lizard-ape, then?" he asked. "And no more jokes about looking for it in Rome."

The Egyptian hunched forward. "A grain of sand would hide on a beach, would it not? A wisp of straw in a hayfield. Where would something human hide, beastcatcher?"

"Well, now, we don't want to overestimate the lizard-ape's cunning," Vonones scoffed, wondering if they were meant to laugh. He held his cup beneath the spout of the mulling stove and opened the cock. Steaming wine gushed from a bronze faucet cast in the form of a lion's jaws. "The lizard-ape, it isn't human, not at all. It couldn't just walk around in the midst of Rome-no more than could an escaped lion, or any other large and dangerous beast."

"I remind you that it isn't like any other beast known to you," said N'Sumu with his dreadful smile. "The sauropithecus is right here. In Rome." He touched the faucet of the mulling stove, opening it just enough in curiosity to jet a thin line of Caecuban onto the brick paving.

"If you know that," said Lycon sarcastically, "then you can tell us how you know." He sipped his diluted wine and savored the bite of resin and alcohol, as he stared at the strange Egyptian.

N'Sumu paused with his fingers still on the lion's head. He met Lycon's eyes. "Simple logic, my friend. We know that it was on the barge. Now where could it have gone from there?"

As N'Sumu talked, he lifted the lid of the container portion of the hollow stove and peered inside. "It did not jump to the bank of the river between here and Ostia. Either bank. It would have been easy to track if it had done that."

Lycon was trying to hold his cup still, but the tension in his grip set the wine adance in the shallow vessel. "True enough. We've found no sign of tracks, and we've had our noses to the ground up and down both banks of the Tiber. That's why I'm convinced the beast must have drowned."

"It seems reasonable that the sauropithecus stayed with the barge even after it had finished with the sailors," said N'Sumu, as he let the lid fall with a rattle of hollow bronze. "If it had been watching other barges pass along the Tiber from its place of concealment, it is cunning enough to have understood their navigation. Whether the helmsman fell overboard in the course of the struggle or whether his body was deliberately let fall into the river by the lizard-ape is an interesting question for speculation. Since there was no report of a large splash being heard that night, I've drawn my own conclusion.

"Regardless of that though, the lizard-ape almost certainly manned the steering oar until it drew close to Rome. At that point it may have then left the barge, but more likely it clung to the hull for the remainder of the distance. In the darkness, it might well have even hidden within the hold-it sees very well in the dark, you understand, while the teamsters had only sputtering rushlights for illumination. Quite possibly it left the barge only at the docks. Now the sauropithecus has all of Rome to hide in-and to hunt in."

Lycon downed half his wine. "An interesting theory. But why hasn't the lizard-ape been seen? And even if it's managed to hide, why haven't we heard reports of wholesale slaughter?"

"I warned you that the lizard-ape is extremely cunning," said N'Sumu, as his eyes returned to the mulling stove. He began scraping with one square-cut nail at the soot that coated the interior of the open cylindrical firebox.

"I think it will have found a lair-a ruin, an abandoned building, perhaps the sewers. I can't say where. But if it hunted by night, and killed only for food instead of sport… Well, how many murdered corpses greet the dawn from Rome's alleyways, or vanish forever during the night? I tell you again, these lizard-apes are very cunning."

"Well," said Vonones, holding in both palms the cup of warm wine from which he had not drunk. "Then we need to set up a reporting network in Rome like the one with which we've covered the countryside. That shouldn't be very difficult, Lycon, should it? We'll operate through the Watch commanders, offer rewards for any information that might be in point-mutilated bodies, or reports of disappearances that center upon one particular district. It won't cost us all that much-and if we do manage to learn something concrete about the lizard-ape's whereabouts, we can call in all our men from the countryside."

The hunter spat into the firebox of the mulling stove. The gobbet of saliva struck the bright metal where N'Sumu's finger had scraped away the soot. The spittle hissed in serpentine anger as it boiled away from the hot bronze. Lycon pointed the index and middle fingers of his right hand at N'Sumu's chest. "So you really think the lizard-ape's lurking about right here in Rome? I find that hard to accept, but it's a new tack, and maybe that will impress Domitian for a while at least. You know you're going to be standing there in the arena beside Vonones and me if this proves to be another waste of time."

"It's unlikely that I will end up in the arena," said N'Sumu, and the other two understood his threat. "I know I'm right. I'd capture the sauropithecus by myself, but I need good men, and that's why I chose to work through you. My authority from our lord and god is as great as may be required for my purposes. But you have the experience-" the smile spread across his face without showing any teeth beneath the broad lips "-of working in local conditions. And you will have the credit when we succeed."

Lycon swallowed the last of his wine without taking his eyes away from N'Sumu's face. "Then we'd better get started, hadn't we."

Lycon's tone gave Vonones the same feeling as would the sight of a lion in the grass-its body taut, its haunches raised slightly, and no part of it moving but the tip of its tail, quivering like the trigger that would shortly launch the beast upon its prey. But after blinking up at his friend, the merchant's gaze returned to the sizzling bronze that N'Sumu's bare finger had cleansed.

Lycon was running-running a hopeless race, for he knew his pursuer could run faster by far than he could. He wanted to risk a backward glance to see how close behind it was, but he knew that with that glance he would die.

The problem was these hedgerows. It was impossible to run when he had to crawl through all these hedgerows, one after another. Their branches already were slippery with blood, and their thorns tore at his flesh as Lycon plunged through. He told them he couldn't run any faster, but Domitian danced easily ahead of him-leaping over the hedges on his scrawny legs-and N'Sumu raced alongside him, laughing at him past his deformed smile.

"Old man! Old man! Old man! Old man!"