Lycon had worn only a simple, light tunic tonight-wanting freedom of movement. Thus far the tension and activity had counteracted the effect of the night chill in this, the month Germanicus-September, until the Emperor had renamed it following his triumph over the Germans. Lycon had sweated in the loft and during their escape from it. Now he shivered. His garment was torn loose from one shoulder and shredded on one side where the chick had clawed at him. The trembling in his limbs was both emotional as well as physical, but that would not prevent his muscles from reacting when needed.
It was questionable whether his reactions could save him this time, but a failed hope is nonetheless hope for a time.
"There!" cried Vonones. Lycon turned, but there was nothing in the direction his friend pointed, not even hinted motion.
Because the light was diffused from above, the nearby facades looked as if they were veiled by cobwebs that thinned as they hung closer to the street. Cornices and eaves of red tile, whose true color was only hinted by the light that washed them, dripped long shadows downward. Something could have leaped across a roofline, have clung like a shadow-drenched bat beneath a projecting beam, but it would be invisible.
"Here it is!" Lycon shouted. He struck again with the baton, letting rage drive his arm. He heard a dull crunch of bones; blood spurted from the tiny body broken within the net. Vonones shouted. The adult sauropithecus launched itself toward Lycon, forty feet beneath the ledge upon which it had hung.
The lizard-ape was no more than a blur, an impression too sudden and ill-lit to be seen in detail. Another man would have frozen there, gaped stupidly, and died an instant later. Lycon knew well the blinding speed, the razor-edged deadly claws-and at the first shimmer of movement from above, the hunter was already in motion himself.
Lycon raised his ivory baton-the lizard-ape's scales might turn tiger claws, but in another instant he would know how hard its skull was.
N'Sumu had already reacted to Vonones' shout. A split second after the lizard-ape leaped, midway between the ledge and its quarry, its hurtling form was caught up in a sudden glow of verdant light. Lycon had hoped for the eye-searing emerald flare that had shattered blue-scaled bodies apart earlier in the loft. Instead, the hurtling lizard-ape seemed to stagger in midair-to lose full control of its muscles-but its leap carried it full onto Lycon.
Stunned or not, the lizard-ape struck Lycon and knocked him backward-carrying the hunter from his precarious footing atop the column. Lycon cushioned its impact as best he could-there was no room to duck, nor time to try. The lizard-ape was heavier than he had expected-its flesh must all be of iron-hard muscle-and the force of its fall would have broken half his bones had Lycon not twisted aside, merging with the creature in midair, falling with it into the fountain. The belly-ripping stroke of its claws had no strength, brushed him with only a shadow of their lethal intent-shredding his tunic even so.
Lycon hit the water backward, half-way into a somersault, and the tufa coping grazed his scalp an instant before his back struck the floor of the basin. Water sprayed across the screams of everyone around the fountain. Lycon's arms flailed, but he struck instinctively with his baton, felt it strike hard. The net was slung to one side, balancing the thrust of his right arm in the opposite direction-arm, ivory baton, and the blood-mad creature locked by its teeth to the ivory, as water exploded in all directions.
Lycon was screaming, "Kill it! Kill it, N'Sumu!" The fear and fury in his voice would have made the words unintelligible even without the surrounding chaos.
The wand struck the lip of the tufa as Lycon and the blue killer crashed down again. Ivory was denser than the porous stone, but the stone provided a fulcrum against which Lycon's hysterical grip and the teeth of the lizard-ape could lever with all their strength. The ivory baton shattered at the point of stress-fragments spalling away in layers of concentric rings.
Lycon sprang upright as the baton shattered, narrowly averting the claws of the lizard-ape's hind legs-a kick that would certainly have gutted him had the creature not been stunned by N'Sumu's magic. N'Sumu himself was shielding his eyes with one hand-the other hand pointing threateningly toward the falling spray. A green nimbus burst over the stone nymph.
Whatever magic the Egyptian commanded, the lizard-ape indeed recognized the danger. Abandoning its attack on Lycon, it darted amongst the panicked onlookers. Either the fall or N'Sumu's magic had weakened the sauropithecus, for Lycon was almost able to follow the lightning-quick movements of its claws as it ripped apart anyone too frozen with fear to leap out of its path.
A green lambency snaked through the heart of the crowd, twice, again and again-toppling people as they fled. Weaving through a cover of human bodies, the sauropithecus had already disappeared. Twenty feet from the fountain, the slab covering a sewer catchbasin rocked back onto its seat. The lizard-ape could not have sprung so far, so quickly after N'Sumu had stunned it and it had absorbed the shock of its fall. But the lizard-ape was gone, and the slab clacked as it settled, still ajar, over what had just used the sewers for a bolt-hole.
"You heard me, Armenian!" said a voice in easy Latin, high pitched and angry. "I ordered you to stop!"
Lycon turned. The Emperor's bodyguards had dismounted at last and by now had advanced in a wedge about their tribune. Civilians scattering from the brief, nightmarish struggle at the fountain rebounded in turn from armored chests and bare swords held forward by flat and hilt as fenders and threats. Panic can overload nervous systems, but even those in that dazed condition retained some urge for self-preservation. Cringing citizens curled back from the Germans like clods from the mold-board of a plow.
As the merchant turned to face Lacerta, one of the bearded guards used his own blade to swat the loosely held sword from Vonones' right hand. Vonones shook himself and drew stiffly upright, expecting the worst.
Lycon would have vaulted out of the basin, but the water and his weakness trapped him so that he stumbled. He no longer had normal control over his body. It was a puppet whose strings he could play, but every motion was unexpectedly delayed. He bent to brace himself on the fountain coping. The water still bubbling from the pillar washed blood from his thighs. He was aware of it for the first time.
Lacerta stared at the beastcatcher and swore. The order he barked to the nearest men of his troop was a curse in itself. Two of the big Germans paused long enough to sheath their swords. Lycon had started to clamber out of the basin, embarrassed by his lack of agility but too exhausted to care much. The net still hung from his left hand. Gripped in his right was the lower half of the baton. The lizard-ape's teeth had scarred the smooth ivory as they slid along it before finding purchase. The parallel gouges stood out down to the shattered end of the stump. Those same teeth would have cut far deeper into the bones of Lycon's forearm, and the muscles of that arm would have been no more to them than grass to a scythe blade.
The armored guards caught Lycon, one to either wrist and armpit, and hoisted him unceremoniously from the fountain. His laced boots squelched as the Germans thumped him down in front of the Tribune. Another man shoved Vonones forward.