Results that time had meant wagonloads of right hands. And the results had pleased the Governor and won praise for the cohort commander.
“I don’t see anybody here with a beard,” Lycon said, as he straightened and turned again to the teamster.
It didn’t mean he enjoyed it, Lycon told himself; it meant that he did what he had to do. No matter what. “Are you sure,” Lycon continued impassively, “that the barge was proceeding normally until just before you boarded her yourself?”
“It was,” the foreman agreed quickly, bobbing his chin upward in a gesture of assent. “And I had to bring it in to dock then myself, even with all this here, because we couldn’t block the towpath.” He turned his back. The teamster had thrown away his sandals and washed his feet compulsively when dawn emphasized what the rushlight had only suggested. Seeing the state of Lycon’s boots when the hunter stepped out of the barge recalled to the foreman what he prayed to forget.
“Then,” Lycon said wearily, “I think we’re ready to report. I suppose that’s what he wants from us?” He raised an eyebrow, as much a gesture as he dared to indicate the Emperor’s palanquin above.
“Yes,” Vonones agreed without following the gesture even with his eyes. “He wants us to report directly to him. After that . . .”
The two men began walking down the slip toward the ramp. It took the teamster a moment to realize that he had been released from the nightmare. He ran after Lycon and Vonones. He was fleeing his memories more than the presence of the blood-spattered barge.
“It was reported to Domitian as soon as it was discovered,” Vonones whispered to his friend in a hasty, hidden voice. “The Prefect of the Watch has orders about such things—things that our lord and god wants to know. He came out in person to view it.
“I was unloading the shipment in my compound this morning, when Lacerta and the emperor’s personal guard came riding in. Well, Domitian wanted to know about the animals that escaped from my caravan. No, not the tiger, but the other beast—the lizard-ape thing he’d heard talked about. Where was it? Well, I offered to show them the skin of the tiger, and explained that you’d seen them fight to the death—seen the sauropithecus fall into the Tiber, where it doubtless died from its wounds or drowned, and was washed out to sea. Unfortunately, they had proof to the contrary . . .”
“I should have made certain it was dead,” Lycon said bitterly. “I know better than to allow a wounded man-killer to slip off into the brush.”
He more regretted his own loss of nerve that night than his mistake in ever allowing Vonones to involve him in this mess. Well, the merchant’s neck was on the block more surely than his own, if that was any comfort.
The palanquin was of ebony inlaid with mother of pearl. In the sunlight it glowed without dazzling. Inlays—though the ebony was solid, not a veneer as Lycon had assumed at a distance—were sure to be knocked loose in the chaos of Rome’s streets. However, in this case the way would be cleared for the palanquin not by staff-wielding slaves and retainers of lesser rank, but rather by men with long swords drawn and no reason to fear using them. The palanquin had the least patina of wear, but no sign at all of abuse or battering.
The litter bearers were Syrians, solid men in scarlet tunics. They squatted at a little distance from the palanquin instead of sitting on the poles as most bearers would have done when the litter was at rest. Their voices and their shifting weight might have disturbed their owner within. The Emperor could have no greater control over his slaves than the power of life and death, granted by law to any slave master. The normal realities of human society took precedence over the law in all but the rarest circumstances.
The eight litter bearers, sitting apart and even then silent, suggested how rare the present circumstances were.
Two slaves stood at the far end of the palanquin. One of them held a set of wax tablets with his stylus ready. The other was reading aloud from a well-produced scroll. The edges had been sanded smooth and dressed up with saffron stain. The subject of the book seemed to be astronomy, so far as Lycon could tell from its hexameter verses in a Greek that seemed to him to be less pure than absurdly stilted.