The ostriches had been bundled for transport with their legs, beaks, and wings tied shut. A nearby slave had cocked his head to listen to Vonones, intent on learning further details of the events that had sparked so many rumors. When he cut the twist of papyrus rope holding the bird’s legs, he nicked a leg as well.
The bird squirmed instantly upright. It kicked sideways with its right leg, even as the handler turned his attention back to his work. The clawed toes ripped across the man’s belly too suddenly for the victim to cry out.
Vonones swore bitterly. The clerks and deputy scattered like quail from the eight-foot apparition with bloody claws. The injured handler writhed on the ground with his hands pressed against his torn abdomen. His fellows sprang up from their own duties. One ran for a net.
Vonones uncoiled his whip in a fluid arc behind him. The ostrich cocked its right leg again. It stood sideways to Vonones, but one black eye glittered at him with cold purpose.
The lash snaked out and around the bird’s left ankle. Setting himself, Vonones yanked back on the whipstaff. He might no longer have the shoulder muscles of his younger days, but the weight he had put on was finally an advantage to him. The ostrich flopped back onto the ground. Handlers leaped onto it from three sides.
Vonones dropped the whip when he was sure the bird had been immobilized. He backed away, breathing hard and dusting his hands. A pair of litter bearers belatedly stepped between their master and the commotion that had been a threat moments before.
“That’s all right,” Vonones muttered, thankful that he was still good enough to make such bodyguards superfluous. “That’s all right.” He felt better for the incident. It had given him an opportunity to exorcise the helpless terror caused by the lizard-ape’s escape. It was uncertainty that melted a man’s nerves, not simply danger. It was a relief to return to familiar tasks and familiar dangers. He turned to where his men were seeing to the injured slave’s wounds. More expense. . . .
The main gate of the compound began to swing open. The deputy manager ran toward it, shouting. Vonones himself snarled toward the gatekeepers: “Not while we’re unloading a shipment, damn you! I’ll have you all fed to the crocodiles if so much as a rabbit escapes!”
A column of horsemen in glittering armor rode through the gateway four abreast. The deputy dodged out of their way, but the newcomers made no attempt on their part to avoid him.
There were twenty horsemen in the troop. All but their tribune were huge men whose hair was red or blond where it spilled from beneath their helmets. They dismounted. Every fourth man acted as horseholder while the remainder kept their hands on their weapons.
The officer in charge—a tribune named Lacerta whom Vonones knew by reputation—wore a breastplate of gilded bronze. In low relief upon it was molded a scene of nymphs yearning upward toward the figure of Jupiter enthroned. “You,” said Lacerta, pointing toward Vonones. “Do you speak Latin, boy? Go fetch the merchant Vonones.”
“I speak Latin,” said Vonones. He drew himself to his full height, although he was even then no taller than the Italian-born tribune. Vonones was twice the tribune’s age as well; boy was purely from the assumption that the man in leggings and a coarse tunic had to be a slave. At that, an aristocrat like Lacerta might have used the same form of address for a man whom he knew to be the compound’s owner. “And I am Gaius Claudius Vonones.” He wiped his damp hands on his thighs.
“You’re wanted,” Lacerta said with a quick one-fingered gesture over his shoulder and out the gate. He frowned. “Get a horse, will you? You’ll slow us up too much if we have to tie you to one of the saddles and let you run.”
The troop of horsemen would have silenced a human crowd, but it had little effect on the compound’s normal cacophony. Even the handlers were forced back to their normal duties by the nervous uproar of the beasts. Three men carried the blood-splashed ostrich to the corral and flung it inside with its fellows. The deputy manager and his clerks hovered between a desire to hear what was going on and a well-founded fear of being noticed. The Germanic horsemen glared about them with pale eyes and disdain for what they saw.