Killer

Vonones and Lycon backed away to avoid being trampled by the litter bearers. The merchant dusted his palms against one another, then began to wring them unconsciously. "Well, Lycon. We're both still alive, and you're a wealthy man. My advice is to spend it quickly."

"Idiot!" Lycon snorted. "Don't you realize that if we don't produce that damned lizard-ape and quickly, Domitian will have not only us but our households as well feeding tigers in the arena!"

"Lycon," said Vonones earnestly, "I'm honestly sorry I ever got you involved in this mess. I know you were doing me a favor, but if I'd had any idea what this would lead you into…"

"Forget it," Lycon answered roughly. "I didn't enter into this blindly. We'll just have to catch the damned thing. That's my profession, after all-catching beasts."

The merchant licked his lips. "That's what we'll have to do," he said. "After all, the Numidians managed to catch it."

"Yes, in open country," Lycon reminded him sourly. "Who knows where the thing is hiding now-or how we'll catch it."

Vonones had a sudden thought. "I wonder who's going to cover all these expenses? Probably me. You noticed that our lord and god made no mention of payment for the sauropithecus."

"He damn well indicated what sort of reward awaits us if we don't catch it!" Lycon reminded him, as they walked toward Vonones' tethered horse. "The trouble is, it may well be that all we can do is just go through the motions of hunting the damned beast, and hope the Emperor loses interest."

"Do you really think the sauropithecus might have drowned in the Tiber, then?" Vonones asked. "I almost hope it did, even though that's the worse for us. I'd rather not have to see any more massacres like that, that mess on the barge."

"There's a good chance it went over the side in a struggle with the helmsman," Lycon said. "After all, it didn't attack the teamsters when it was finished on the barge. That's one good thing about the lizard-ape's savagery: if it's still alive, we'll know about it as soon as it makes its next kill. We shouldn't have long to wait."

The mount Lycon had ridden was that of one of the German guards who had remained with the Emperor when he summoned the beastcatcher. He had ridden off with the remainder of the troop once the audience was concluded, but Lycon had never needed more than his own legs to get him around. Dockworkers, released by the absence of the guards, were streaming down to the slips to get their own view of the bloody carnage. It was much closer than men of their class would ever be able to get at the amphitheater.

"The problem that bothers me," said Vonones as he clucked to his horse, "is that the barge made it as far as it did-without a helmsman."

Lycon nodded. His face was tight. The thought had occurred to him also.

"I don't think that would have been possible," Vonones continued. "The barge would have grounded, just as it eventually did when the teamster foreman boarded her. The current and the thrust of the towline both would have driven the bow into the bank without a hand on the tiller."

"That's true enough," Lycon agreed.

"Let's go back to my house," Vonones suggested. "We'll need to get organized on this right away, and we'll use my men." He looked for landmarks. They might do better to hire one of the City Watchmen as a guide through the unfamiliar streets between the grain docks and his house on the Caelian. But the merchant did not especially want anyone else present during their conversation.

"The lizard-ape had a couple of days to recover from its fight with the tiger, probably holed up under the river bank along there. Either it had escaped serious injuries, or else it heals exceptionally fast-perhaps both. We know it couldn't have been crippled or badly hurt to have killed all those men without causing an uproar. It may well be that there was an hour or more between the separate attacks, while it caught its breath and… ate its fill. And that means it didn't go into the river at Portus."

"All right," Lycon said grimly. "What else do you think it means?"

"I don't…" Vonones began, not liking the conclusion he had reached. "I don't see any reason to assume the beast went into the river at all. Lycon, on the tiller-I saw that you noticed it too-there were fresh notches cut into the wood. I don't believe it was from the helmsman whittling at the tiller with a knife just before he was killed. And I don't think you believe that either."

Lycon spoke, but he spoke so softly that Vonones could not hear him. A great derrick lay halfway across the street ahead. Its axle squealed as men paced within the winding cage, providing power to raise a twenty-foot beam to the building crew awaiting it on the third floor of an apartment under construction.

Instead of trying to force his way around the obstruction, Vonones reined in and dismounted. He put his arm around Lycon's shoulders and bent his ear to the other's voice.

"I said," repeated the hunter with finality, "that if the sauropithecus is still alive, we've got to get it, and quickly. I've seen it kill, my friend. If it was smart enough to steer a barge up the Tiber, then it's too dangerous to be alive, that's all."

"Too dangerous to be loose, at any rate," said the merchant.

"I mean exactly what I said, Vonones," Lycon shouted, more loudly than Vonones thought prudent. "I hope we find it dead. I really do. Because no matter what, it's going to be dead the next time I leave it. I'm not turning it over alive to anybody." His voice dropped to a whisper that Vonones understood only because he knew what the words would be even before they were spoken: "Especially not to our lord and god, the Emperor."

Vonones pulled himself onto his mount again, lifting his weight with one hand on either of the pair of forward pommels on his saddle. Under normal circumstances, a slave would have given him a leg-up, but he would not ask a friend for that service.

"We'll see when the time comes," Vonones agreed cautiously. "We'll see when we've actually found the sauropithecus."

Chapter Eight

The imperial lodge east of Rome was not itself very large, but its grounds enclosed over a thousand acres of the Alban Hills. The Emperor was at his leisure in a clearing within sight of the main house. There were over a hundred men around him: guards, slaves, and a half dozen of his closest advisors.

"Loose!" the Emperor called.

A slave opened a basket and gave it an underarm swing that tossed the pigeon within airborne in the right direction. One of the bird's flight feathers on either wing had been clipped. That slowed its rise, but it also gave the bird a deceptive stagger through the air. Domitian drew his bow and tracked the pigeon's flight against the arrowhead. When he shot, the bird was almost twenty yards out. The release was part of the same smooth motion with which the Emperor had drawn the bow. The arrow's flat arc flicked it across the pigeon and past. The bird fell in two pieces, the head and the remainder.

Onlookers cheered wildly. The boy who was sprinting to pick up the arrow well down-range began to turn cartwheels. A microcephalic dwarf in a saffron tunic waddled up to Domitian and hugged his knee. The Emperor reached down and caressed the dwarf's head.

"What do you think of Glabrio for Upper Germany, Crispinus?" the Emperor asked, as he handed his bow to a slave to have another arrow nocked.

Crispinus, a greying man with a wizened face and eyes like a shark's, shrugged. "I think he's trustworthy, lord and god. I just don't think he's bright enough to tell dung from mincemeat."

"With four legions under him, I think we'll go with trustworthy," Domitian remarked languidly, as he reached for his bow.