David Drake - Killer

"You there!" Lycon called as he shifted his body and his full attention to the front grating of his cell. He was no longer conscious of his body, of the aches and nausea against which he had been struggling in the time since he had awakened. The slave who shuffled down the corridor past Lycon and toward the cell holding his family wore a Gallic cape with the hood pulled close over his face. "Come here, damn you, or I'll have you flayed this afternoon when they let me out of here!"

"Who is it?" Perses called as he ran to the corridor side of his own cell.

The man in the cape, maybe a woman, of course, the figure was so short, did not look aside despite the beastcatcher's shout. Lycon made a desperate snatch through the bars, but the figure was too far away as it passed.

"Father?" said Alexandros, his voice rising an octave in the course of the two syllables.

"Perses, come h-" cried Zoe, grabbing for the child as he started to repeat, "Who-?" to the figure in the corridor.

"No!" screamed Lycon, and the arm came out from beneath the cape, one arm only but quite sufficient for its purpose. It was quick, cat-quick or even more so, and its claws caught Perses not by his tunic but under the breastbone, punching their multiple paths through the boy's diaphragm and then curling back around the lowest ribs to penetrate the skin again. They held Perses like a fish hooked around the jawbone.

The arm snatched back into the corridor and the boy followed it to the narrow gap between the bars, jerked off his feet. Then the breastbone with associated muscles and cartilage ripped free and the remainder of Perses flopped back onto the floor of the cell. He was still alive, but he could not scream because his chest could no longer force air through his throat. One of the four-year-old's lungs, hooked by the tip of the claw, flopped outside his ruined chest.

"Zoe, Alexandros," Lycon ordered in a calm, clear voice, "get to the back of the cell. Leave Perses, we'll take care of that when it's safe. Move !"

Though they were safe where they stood, you could never tell. They might lunge forward to caress Perses or grapple with the thing in the corridor-equally suicidal, equally pointless. You couldn't change death, not even the gods could change that if there were gods; and there would be a time to kill the blue thing, the lizard-ape, and it would die hard, very hard.

The beastcatcher no longer felt his body, though he knew it would respond as he thought, perhaps even quickly enough to grip the thing's arm if it were extended into Lycon's own cell. He bunched his tunic with his left fist, balling it out from his chest so that the claws would not snatch away his heart and life until his own hands had a throat to grip.

The sounds and everything Lycon saw within the cellblock were preternaturally clear, but they were distanced by the fact that he could not change any of them. He had been afraid when the figure shuffled down the corridor, but there was no longer any fear, any emotion whatever, only the taste of blood in his mouth as Alexandros shouted and stepped toward the thrashing remnants of his brother.

Zoe caught the older boy by the wrist and jerked him back, as she had done when he was an infant crawling toward the scorpion which had ridden Lycon's clothing back from the docks. As she held her remaining son, Zoe turned her back to the corridor so that the thickness of her body was between the infant at her breast and the sauropithecus. She was silent, and she held Alexandros in safety against the wall, though he flailed and screamed to get at the thing which had murdered Perses.

The sauropithecus turned its hand, the only part of its body not still covered by the cape. The gobbet of the boy's flesh and bone dropped to the floor of the cell. One of Perses' feet kicked at it blindly as his back arched and lifted his gaping chest toward the ceiling.

The creature's long claws slid into their sheaths, clearing them of the clinging gore. The paw- hand -twisted back toward the cowl, and a slender tongue lapped at the congealing stickiness which smeared the delicate scales. The claws re-extended.

Lycon ran to the front of his own cell. He gripped the bars with both hands, all his icy planning forgotten. "Guards!" he shouted. The grating was solidly welded so that the bars did not rattle among themselves, but the whole clashed loudly against the locking bar. "Guards ! Somebody ! "

The click of the sauropithecus' claws working the wards of the lock down the corridor were inaudible under the present conditions, but they rang as clearly in Lycon's mind as the drooling whisper of the blood filling Perses' chest cavity.

"Somebody dear gods! N'Sumu!"

The creature dropped its cape as it swung open the door. The tiger's claws had left long scars of leprous white against the scales. It had been very badly hurt, and it could surely be killed, would be killed, but for now it stepped with the balance of a rope-dancer into the cell with Zoe and the children, two of them still alive. Had he thought it was an animal? The look in the eyes the lizard-ape turned on Lycon now was quite human, as human as the eyes of N'Sumu when he ordered the arrest of the beastcatcher's family…

"Guards ! Gods!" Lycon screamed.

But no god came; and hammer the bars as he might, Lycon could neither tear them loose nor drown the noises in the adjoining cell. The noises went on for a very long time. He did not notice when they finally stopped.

The beastcatcher was open-eyed, his hands and arms as rigid as the iron which they clutched, when the figure left the cell: It donned the cape and shook the hood again over its features. Lycon did not see it leaving, nor did the creature appear to have any further interest in the man responsible for destroying its brood. As it moved off down the corridor, it could easily have been a shuffling beggar-woman, bent and wasted by age.

But there was nothing human about the footprints it left on the stone behind it, except for the blood of which they were made.

Chapter Twenty-three

"Where-" muttered Lycon, aware for the moment only that there was sunlight on his face and that there shouldn't be, though he did not recall why. He recalled nothing, but he lay on a soft bed with the odor of food and light perfume nearby and that was all wrong…

And then he did remember.

"Herakles!" Lycon shouted. His eyes opened and he tried to leap from the bed, but three days in and out of coma made his legs nerveless, and he fell back onto the feather mattress. He tried to focus his eyes, blinking dizzily. There were a half dozen men around him in the richly-appointed chamber, all of them slaves except for Vonones.

"Well, hold it to his mouth!" Vonones urged the boy who had just dunked a wedge of bread into a cup of undiluted wine. A warming rack over a brazier held a simmering pot of beef broth, and there were dainties of fish and vegetables waiting on a separate tray against the beastcatcher's possible whim when he awakened.

"Lycon," Vonones said, peering earnestly at him, "lie back and eat this bread."

"Can't do both, can I?" Lycon whispered. His voice did not sound like one he had ever heard before. He shifted himself upon the couch so that he faced the side where the slave knelt with the bread and wine. He did not attempt to take the morsel from the boy. Simply resting on one side was enough to overtax his reawakening muscles at the moment. He chewed slowly and carefully.

"You're all right, then?" said Vonones, looking away from his friend's face as he spoke the question. Only the slaves thought that the words had anything to do with Lycon's physical state.

The beastcatcher swallowed his mouthful of bread. He nodded away the boy's attempt to feed him more at the moment. A doctor in the background shifted from one foot to the other, waiting to offer the potion he held in his hands. "I'm all right," said Lycon. "Why am I here?"