David Drake - Killer

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.