Of course, it had also been possible that the lizard-ape would burst through the roof instead. For that, there was no help but to trust to the expertise of men with hand nets like the one Lycon himself carried. The operation might or might not have succeeded if the sauropithecus-if the mother-had been in its lair. Lycon had not, at any rate, sprung his trap on empty air.
Only now it was they who were trapped-or soon would be-in this rapidly spreading conflagration. N'Sumu seemed to ignore the danger. Either the man was possessed-or else the danger of being trapped inside a blazing building was something beyond the Egyptian's experience. Assuming N'Sumu was an Egyptian.
Assuming-there was another green flash, a very brilliant one; an arm that might have been a small child's, only blue-scaled and with claws already longer than a leopard's, was blown past N'Sumu from where its owner had crouched twenty feet away-assuming that N'Sumu was even human.
The two patrolmen and their shields were crossed like X-shaped barricades in the doorway. Both men were screaming unintelligibly. Because their oval shields were strapped on, it would have taken greater coordination than either man was showing to drop them. Even so, they could have got out easily had they simply backed up and tried the opening again, with their shields and bodies parallel-the way they had entered the loft. Panic, whether from the fire or the charnel house itself, did not permit that.
Vonones and one of the Ethiopians were tugging at the outer Watch member-their efforts hampered by their own fear and the need to watch for what might be creeping toward them. There seemed to be no more of the larger creatures, though quick motion at the shadowy edges of the loft suggested what might happen if N'Sumu relaxed his blank-eyed vigilance.
"Don't let the one you've caught be harmed," N'Sumu shouted to Lycon in piercing Greek that filled the loft. "Domitian is certain to want it if the mother escapes us."
The second lantern had been set on the floor with the caution it deserved, but the horn lenses of the first now burned as well and added a bitter stench identifiable even through the general foetor of the loft. Lycon snatched up the shortsword a patrolman had dropped. The wooden hilt was greasy with something from the floor, but the hunter's hysterical grip would have held the trotter of a pig in a mud wallow.
The Ethiopian who had flung down the shattered lantern sat with his knees slightly raised and his expression frozen as he appeared to stare at the creature on his ankle. It was small, really not much larger than the tarantulas of the coastal regions of Italy and Provence. No one would confuse it with a spider, however, because its four blue-glinting limbs were patently wrong in number and in excessive strength. They wrapped around the slave's instep and leg, while the creature buried its tiny head into the ankle joint. As Lycon slapped down at it with the flat of his sword, the head withdrew from the red-rimmed hole it had dug, and its eyes winked in black fury at the steel that crushed it.
The slave toppled over. A similar creature, on the side of his face that had been hidden from Lycon, had its two arms dug the full four inches of their length down into the Ethiopian's eye-socket. The claws of one hind leg were anchored under the base of the jaw, while the others drew up the corner of the slave's mouth in a false snarl into which the humors from the eye had begun to drip.
Lycon struck this time with the edge. He fervently hoped that the lantern-bearer was already dead.
He had grasped the sword not as a weapon but as a tool. Now he struck the wall behind him on the follow-through of the tug that had cleared the blade from the cleft skull. The wall over the stairwell was of the same construction as the panels that enclosed the exterior, though here at least, the wickerwork had been plastered over to give it the look of solidity. Though the paneling was light and provided no vertical support, the woven twigs-even desiccated as they now were-comprised a resilient surface of considerable strength. A man like Ox could tear through them by main force, but there were few men like Ox and one fewer now.
Lycon had many times relied upon his quickness in moments of danger, but just now he thought he would prefer to carry a good bit more heavy muscle. He drew back and followed his first blow with a second-this time putting behind it the full strength of his right arm. Plaster exploded away from the sword in a choking cloud that gleamed saffron in the light of the conflagration behind it. Roof tiles were beginning to shatter as the flames licked upward. Upon the roof above, men had noticed the flames and were shouting out warnings as they scrambled to leap to adjacent buildings.
"Vonones! Help me!" Lycon shouted, as he smashed shoulder-first against the ragged opening his blade had torn. The wicker rebounded, but then the merchant's weight struck Lycon's back and sent both men head-first in a tangle of dust and broken twigs out onto the rickety staircase.
Lycon tucked himself under-head, knees, and elbows-and saved his neck through the same reflexes that had responded once when a treelimb sheared as he crawled along it to reach the cerval cat at the tip of the branch. Vonones might have come out less well without his friend to break their mutual fall. As it was, they caromed together from the stairs-which flexed but did not shatter, to the outer wall which had a brick core and ignored their impact-and at last came to rest on the landing at the next level down.
The two Watch patrolmen in the doorway had finally sorted themselves out to the extent of tumbling through in turn. Vonones, wheezing like an angry bear, caught the first man, used him as a shield against the second, and hurled both of them over his head and the huddled body of Lycon between his feet. The men pitched on down the farther flight of stairs-helmets dancing loose and shields buffeting their owners and the walls.
"Idiots!" Vonones screamed after them.
Lycon twisted smoothly to his feet, ignoring pain. That he was battered and bruised was inevitable; the awareness of that could wait for the morning, for the next few days, if he lived that long. Nothing had been damaged that would keep him from functioning-and by all the gods, nothing short of death would stop him this time.
Lycon had flung the sword ahead of him as he broke through the wall. The blade still rang and clattered somewhere on down the staircase, in the general direction in which the two patrolmen had gone tumbling.
The surviving Ethiopian slave now leaped down the stairs, screaming mindlessly as he fell. There was a look of horror on his face, and something blue was squatting on his scalp. As the slave plunged by him, Lycon reached out with his right hand and peeled the creature from its hold.
It resisted like a tick imbedded firmly into flesh. The Ethiopian's head snapped back, as if Lycon had snatched a handful of hair instead of something so alien and malevolent. Momentum carried the victim on, and the beastcatcher's hand and arm held as if worked from iron. The four clawed limbs of the creature, itself no larger than the hand that caught it, pulled loose with bits of the Ethiopian's scalp and hair still dangling. Blood washed across exposed skull where the creature had gnawed into the bone.