David Drake - Killer

There could be little doubt about who had sent them to investigate, either.

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.