“Doesn’t mean she has anything worth taking,” Formion argued. He was cold from dozing against the wall, and his thick bunches of muscle seemed to grate together as he flexed them.
“Ass,” Dulicius chided. “Any woman has something worth taking. Besides, it’s growing late, and I’m near frozen.”
“True enough,” Formion acknowledged. Maybe it would be the blonde Gallic woman of his dream. He stretched his stiff muscles, glided outward into the fog behind Dulicius.
The two footpads had a simple routine, and it had always worked—at least, always worked when their mark was alone and more likely than not dull from drink and the late hour. Dulicius, a ferret of a man, approached directly—just another ragged beggar whining for a handout. Formion, moving quite silently for a man of his size, crept up from behind, choosing his moment to throw an armlock about the throat or to swing his weighted cudgel, as the situation required. If that situation required anything further, Dulicius could move very quickly with his knife he carried in one ragged sleeve, and that knife could pierce ribs or slit a throat with equal suddenness and finality.
“A cold night,” Dulicius greeted the cloaked figure.
She had seemed to pause an instant before she could have been aware of his smiling approach, and that only confirmed his impression of tonight’s victim. Coin or no, they would have a moment of pleasure, and then the Tiber awaited. In truth, she seemed hunched and thin within her cloak. Well, as was said . . .
Formion arose instantly from the darkness behind her—his strong right arm hinging across her throat, his left hand clamping over her face, doubly to stifle any outcry. Her feet lifted from the paving as the Greek drew back—she was smaller than her billowing cloak had indicated—and Dulicius glided in with his knife, to prove to her the sure outcome of any resistance.
The Greek’s muscular forearm closed upon empty air and an emptier hood. His free hand only bunched her cloak together stupidly, as Formion’s mouth opened impossibly wide and the big man stumbled backward. He sat abruptly down on the damp paving—damper now from the blood and fluids that spilled from his belly. He folded his hands over the tumble of intestines that rolled onto the paving. His eyes, as they focused dully upon his partner, were accusing.
He had never seen the backward kick of the spurred heel that had gutted him.
Dulicius had been expecting a short hopeless struggle, a leisurely rape, then all evidence into the Tiber. He and Formion had done it so often that any break from routine seemed unfair to him.
Whatever the cloak had enclosed—and he only had the briefest impression of blue-limbed nightmare leaping forth from the enveloping cloth—Dulicius would never see, for its talons closed upon his face in the same instant that the footpad knew something was dreadfully wrong. Needles dipped into his eyeballs, flipping out their lenses, as long talons expertly pierced his larynx and robbed from him the breath he needed to scream. A moment later the same probing talons searched the base of his spine, and then only consciousness—blind, mute, and helpless, but consciousness nonetheless—remained to Dulicius.
For a space he vaguely sensed that he was being carried.
He never knew how long it took Formion to die, but very shortly he would envy his partner that by far more merciful death.
Chapter Ten
It was raining again, and that only seemed to force the stench and the smoke of Rome downward onto the city. Still, Lycon gave thanks for a solid roof and a dry place to sit. After a week or more in the field, of chasing shadows and rumors along the banks of the Tiber, it was a welcome relief to rest here in Vonones’ office. He had returned to the merchant’s compound ostensibly for fresh supplies and additional men; in point of fact Lycon was more interested in seeing his family and enjoying one last night of good food, a soft bed, and Zoe’s warm embrace.
The search for the lizard-ape had drawn a total blank—as Lycon had rather suspected and indeed hoped that it would. Vonones had gone to Crispinus with their latest report of failure, and Lycon no longer very much cared whether tomorrow would find him back in the field or hanging from a cross. Perhaps Domitian would order them to Africa; if there were no lizard-apes to be found there, Lycon knew of places where an exile might find a haven beyond the reach of the Emperor’s wrath. For now the hunter only knew that he was tired, apathetic, and would cheerfully die tomorrow for one quiet night with his family.