David Drake - Killer

"We've got what we came for," the animal dealer called, overriding the tremor in his voice by sheer volume. "You can down tools. We're going back to the compound." He paused. "And keep your eyes open," he added, without specifying the reason for vigilance-because he did not care to make his fear concrete in his own mind.

The workmen obeyed with a noisy enthusiasm, tossing their equipment into the builder's cart which had been hired along with the construction gang. Vonones' own employees were more circumspect; and when they handed over their tools, they took from the wagon the nets and lassos which their master had ordered them to carry on the march back. The four archers who had watched the proceedings with arrows nocked fell in at the front and rear of the forming column.

"Good work, chief," one of the guards called.

Vonones nodded without really hearing the words. Any one of the offspring would do, Lycon had said, and the beastcatcher was quite certain that the little creatures were tough enough that the body of at least one would exist despite the chances of fire and tumbling stone.

The Armenian dealer had been far more doubtful of success: his memory of flames clawing the sky was vivid and had been strengthened by his subconscious desire that all the events of the night be washed as clean as quicklime.

But of this Vonones was certain: Lycon would have whatever he said was needed to capture the sauropithecus if that thing were in the Armenian's gift.

The temple had been dedicated to a female deity, very possibly Venus in one of her manifestations. Roman gods, unlike those of the Greeks, had tended to be very circumscribed in the extent of their powers. Jupiter Greatest and Best was no more the same-spirit-as Jupiter Stayer of Armies than the Claudius who built the Appian Way was the same as the Claudius who ordered the invasion of Britain five centuries later… and indeed, the latter connection may have been the less tenuous.

That was changing, had changed already since Roman armies had stormed through Greece-and Greek ideas, held as haughtily as the eagle standards of Aemilius Paullus, had taken Rome in turn. The newer temples were Graecicized and eclectic, universal as the emperors wished their rule to be universal. Above all, the cult of the reigning emperor. Scarcely less prominent, the Goddess Rome who personified not a city but the imperial rule. And even the foundations to deities whose names would have been familiar to the Romans who broke Hannibal, Jupiter and Venus and Minerva were cast now in a foreign mold.

A side effect of the distaste for the localized spirits of ancestral Rome was that this small temple and a hundred like it were falling into ruin… and that suited Lycon's present purpose very well indeed.

"Lycon, you're too old for this!" Vonones said, wringing his right hand with his left, his thumb polishing knuckles mottled with the pressure of their grip of the whipstock.

N'Sumu looked around, shifting his feet instead of depending on the rotation of his neck to give a panorama of his surroundings. His nostrils did not flare-they did not move when he breathed, either-but he said, "It's very close, I tell you, its smell is all over. Standing here like this puts us at its mercy."

"Well, I'm not going to get any younger, am I?" said Lycon as he tied off the thongs that closed his body armor of iron hoops. It was of military pattern, giving enough play to his torso that he could at need cast a net, but solid enough to stop a well-thrown spear. Whether or not it would stop the claws of the lizard-ape, pricking through the interstices between the bands of iron, was a question which could be answered only in the event.

Looking over at the tall Egyptian, the beastcatcher added, "It doesn't have any mercy, Master N'Sumu. Let's say 'at its whim,' shall we?"

"Lycon, nothing that's happened is a reason for you to kill yourself," the Armenian went on. "You were the best, and you're very good-I know. But there are younger men we could pay to do this and do it better."

"Do exactly what?" N'Sumu demanded. His hands were generally hidden beneath his toga, but at intervals one or the other palm would flash into sight as the Egyptian saw something… or thought he did.

"Put it down to whim," said the beastcatcher, before the helmet he lowered over his head hid his smile.

Unlike the thorax armor, Lycon's helmet was a gladiatorial style. It was a bronze basinet, an ogive rising to a peak and surrounded by a flat brim a hand's breadth wide. The face, instead of being open as in a military helmet, was covered with a grill of heavy bronze rings-sturdy enough to turn a swordcut if not a thrust by a good blade with a strong man behind it. Lycon hinged the grill closed and latched it. His face disappeared. The full moon highlighted the polished bronze rings so that the shadowed flesh beneath became as insubstantial as air. The beastcatcher lifted his net, one identical in design to that which had been fretted to bits in holding the immature sauropithecus.

"You won't need that to capture the beast," said N'Sumu, nodding toward the short sword belted at the beastcatcher's waist.

The brim of Lycon's helmet lifted in agreement. Unemotionally, his voice slightly muffled by the grillwork, the beastcatcher said, "Guess you've got a point there." He did not move to unbuckle the weapon.

The night was very still, surprisingly still, perhaps because the low arches of the Appian Aqueduct passed directly behind the temple and effectively separated the old building from the northern nine-tenths of the city. The temple stood on a low pedestal, with four columns across the front supporting an extension of the roof and a similar number of pilasters along either side of the enclosed sanctuary. The triangular pediment was decorated by a face and an inscription, both presumably those of the original founder of the temple; but the bas relief was not classifiable even as to sex, and the words were shadows made illegible by discolorations of the underlying stone. The columns had simple Doric capitals, but their shafts were unfluted and the soft stone from which they were carved had pitted badly, especially where the circular section had been joined by iron cramps.

It had never been a prepossessing structure. Now, with the roof half fallen into the sanctuary and the polarized light of the full moon accentuating the flaws pitilessly from above, the temple had the feeling of something to be found on the Street of Tombs outside the city walls.

Five streets met in the plaza which the temple fronted. Two bent around the front of an unusually large apartment block whose ground floor shops opened onto an inner courtyard. The lowest level of the brick facade was pierced only by two doorways: a normal-sized one giving access to the apartments in the upper stories, and a great stone-arched driveway through which goods wagons as well as customers could enter the courtyard.

The third floor-above the shops and the dwellings of the shop keepers-seemed to be given over to the suites of the wealthy. At that level, a loggia was corbelled out over the street. Planting boxes on the tiled roof of the loggia indicated that the inhabitants of the fourth story drew some benefit from the structure as well. The fountain serving the area was built against the wall of the apartment building, between the two doorways, instead of being sited in the center of the plaza. The fountain was something over eighty feet from the doors of the temple across from it.

N'Sumu looked around again, his eyes opaque, and hugged himself in what was clearly a response to the shudder which did not appear on the surface of his rich bronze skin. "You're unbalanced," he said aloud in angry wonder. "It could attack at any time-from anywhere- and you stand here in the open."