David Drake - Killer

"Wait a minute!" said Vonones, stepping toward the tribune swiftly enough that another of the guards pinioned him from behind. Caught like a cricket in a spiderweb, the Armenian continued to shout: "That's not going to help anything! Without Lycon, we'll never catch the lizard-ape! Master N'Sumu, please tell them we need Lycon!"

"Shall we take the merchant as well?" Lacerta asked pleasantly.

"Not just yet," said N'Sumu in fluting, silvery Greek. "This one may yet prove useful to me-now that he knows the penalty for insubordination. Do with the beastcatcher as you please."

Lacerta nodded, and the guards who had paused with Lycon between them now proceeded toward the horses again. "We'll take him to the Amphitheater," the tribune decided aloud. "The Greek won't be lonely there, because we'll soon find a nice cell for his family as well. They can all discuss what our lord and god is going to choose to do with them when he hears about this latest slaughter."

The breath caught in Vonones' throat. The German holding him spun the animal dealer around and pushed him, hard, in the opposite direction from the retreating guard troop. The crowd had thinned enough that Vonones had no one to grip to prevent him from falling over one of the corpses lying ten feet away.

Vonones staggered back to his feet, forcing down panic. He had to remain calm if he were to save himself, much less Lycon.

N'Sumu smiled at him like a hungry shark.

It was probably mid-morning, but light in the cellars of the Flavian Amphitheater depended on lamps, not the sun.

They had talked a little after Lycon's family was brought in, dragged in, and locked two cells away so that eight feet and a double set of bars separated the beastcatcher from them. Zoe quieted the children almost immediately, however. She had long experience of her husband in his present state: the utter torpor that followed total immersion, mental as well as physical, in a project until he had nothing left to give. Every night after he had played for the blood-mad crowds in the arena, he had collapsed this way… and Zoe knew he had done the same more recently in the field after the days he survived but only just. She could forget about that, however, because she had not seen him as she saw him now…

Lycon rolled abruptly, bringing himself to full alertness though he still lay on the floor of the cell where he had been dropped. The concrete surface was slimy with various grades of filth, but the beastcatcher had been in worse places-and he had more important things on his mind, now, anyway.

A single-wick lamp sat beside Zoe, lighting the left half of her face which was suffused with enough concern for the whole. Lycon smiled mechanically, falsely-but the wish to reassure her was not false, and that counted for much at this juncture. "I-" he tried to say, but he croaked instead with the phlegm clogging his mouth.

"Daddy's awake!" Perses squealed. "He's awake, Alexandros!"

"We almost had that thing , my love," Lycon said in a normal voice and with a normal expression on his face-the face itself normal, because it was normal enough for it to be scratched and bruised in any of the lines of work Lycon had followed during his life. "We could have tracked it from there-and then that bastard N'Sumu screwed it up or… something."

Zoe heard the words, but she could not fathom her husband's meaning. There was no need for her to understand the story, of course: the real point of it was that something had gone wrong but that he was all right, lucid now and healthy enough to discuss events without screaming in pain. The way he lay, ostensibly relaxed now but at full length on the concrete, his torso lifted by his left elbow and flat palm, belied the impression he was trying to give of being in reasonable condition.

Aloud, Zoe said, "Alexandros has been reciting the Iliad to me, darling. It was so very clever of him to bring the volumes with him. Would-" the plump woman reached beside her without looking; her hand caught that of her older son and the two stepped together, side to side, as they both kept their eyes on Lycon "-would you like him to read to you, too? Because he does it so well."

"Are we going to leave now, Daddy?" Perses demanded.

"Not quite yet," the beastcatcher said with the touch of wry humor that made the truth speakable, "unless things are even worse than I think they are." He reached out with the hand that had braced him on the floor and caught one of the bars. " Up we go," he coaxed himself in an undertone, and it wasn't too bad. Herakles, he'd be fit for another try tonight just like the last one, if they could only find the lizard-ape again.

And if they let him out on his own feet instead of being dragged from the arena through the Gate of Death by his heels.

Lycon let his face shape itself into normal human lines from the mask into which it had drawn itself to hide the pain that might have accompanied movement. It hadn't been too bad, though it might be a while before he wanted to eat again, especially the sort of food he could expect to be offered here.

If Zoe and the kids were offered slops this time around, there were a lot of people who'd better pray Lycon did leave the Amphitheater by his heels.

"Right, ah," the beastcatcher repeated, remembering to smile at his family. The baby was still asleep, thank the gods, and Perses was clutching the side of his mother opposite his elder brother. Lycon did not reach toward them. Eight feet was too far for the gesture to be other than pathetic or absurd, and they didn't need either of those things. "I'd like to hear you recite, Alexandros. Good way to pass the time, and good for you too."

He licked his lips as he paused. They were dry and hot; he wondered if he'd picked up a fever, gods, Rome was worse than the fetid swamps of the Nile Delta, for things to send you to Hades in screaming delirium. "Look, I don't know how bad things are, the situation I mean," he went on, because it was better to speak the truth than have them afraid of bogies which were worse-and this was the truth, there was a fair chance of it working out. The door at the head of the corridor clanked, promise of a meal of sorts… or perhaps a visitor, Vonones with a diploma releasing at least Lycon himself…

Speaking very quickly, the beastcatcher went on, "I'm here now because things went wrong last night, but the decision was at a pretty low level. I'm pretty sure Vonones can square things-he knows how bad they need me if any of this is going to work."

Zoe nodded understanding with her lips sucked tightly together in hope that this would, by sympathetic magic, prevent the tears from slipping from her eyes. By looking down she managed without that disaster to say, "Then you aren't condemned to the, to… above, I mean." She lifted her head in a gesture and the tears did burst out, not single droplets but runnels that wavered as Zoe twisted her face away again and wiped it on the shoulder of her shawl.

"Oh, Pollux, nothing like that," the beastcatcher said with a brusqueness and near-anger that cloaked his own reactions-all but the catch in his voice, just a brief catch. There was only one set of footsteps rasping down the corridor, so it was the slave with food after all. Who knows, maybe he could eat something now that he'd stood erect for a while, a chunk of bread at least to scrub the tastes of bile and exhaustion from his mouth. "Look, I don't say it won't happen, but I've been in worse places," Lycon said, making himself believe it.

The slave was not carrying a lamp. In fact, he did not appear to have a tray of food.

"Father," Alexandros was saying, "I'm sorry about the way I, I ran away from you yesterday. And-before." The boy was looking at the floor of the intervening cell, but he had the courage to keep his face turned in the direction of Lycon as he spoke. "I won't make you ashamed of me again."