As Lycon opened his mouth to ask where the creature was now, N’Sumu forestalled him by saying: “It’s gone, just the one flash. But it’s stalking us.”
For the first time, Lycon and Vonones felt what they were sure was fear in the Egyptian’s manner. N’Sumu had been coolly arrogant in his dealings with them, and he had showed a clear willingness to enter the lizard-ape’s lair with no support or very little. Evidently this hunter had very little stomach for becoming the hunted instead.
The beastcatcher looked at his friend. Vonones voiced their mutual puzzlement, saying: “You wanted it to come to you, didn’t you? Wanted to wait for it even after the building was starting to collapse?”
Lycon lifted the netted creature in his left hand and added, “I’d planned to use this for bait—back at the compound, where we’d be able to determine the direction the lizard-ape would have to approach from. Listen, N’Sumu—you can deal with it here, can’t you? Do whatever it was that you did to its brood back there in the loft?”
N’Sumu whispered something inaudible and possibly in an unfamiliar language. His face continued to be emotionless, but there was evident nervousness in the way the tall Egyptian twisted and jerked his head in an attempt to look everywhere at once. More intelligibly, he went on, “It didn’t know I was here looking for it. It would have attacked just as if I were one of you. Now it’s sensed me. It knows . . .”
The words were spilling out in N’Sumu’s accented Latin, but Vonones had the feeling N’Sumu was unconsciously begging their companionship in danger, without fully considering the import of his words.
“It knows I’m its only real threat! It knows it has to kill me first!” N’Sumu burst out in something between a shout and a scream. “And it can come from anywhere!”
He whirled about, bumping Vonones away and extending his index finger toward the shutters of the fabric shop beside them. Lycon felt the air seethe as it had when the bronzed man struck down threats in the loft, but there was no green flash on this occasion. Neither, of course, was there anything alive in the direction N’Sumu had pointed—unless someone within the shop had made the mistake of listening with an ear to the shutter.
What in the names of all the gods was N’Sumu? Or was the correct question: what god was N’Sumu? Lycon had never believed the tales of mortals coupling with deities—of stories like that of Memnon the son of Zeus, who had ruled Ethiopia in the times that were now a myth and a memory. But, who or what was N’Sumu?
“Then we need more space about us,” Lycon decided. First things first, and unless they survived this night, N’Sumu’s parentage and provenance were of no matter at all. “There—by the fountain! It’s the best place we’ll find in a hurry.”
Twenty yards away, half the distance to the oncoming imperial guards, the street met two others in the Y-intersection normal for all cities, save those laid out on bare ground by military surveyors. The pavement widened there and held the fountain that supplied water from the Appian Aqueduct to all the buildings within a one-block radius on the intersecting streets. The intersection was crowded, especially since the arms and curses of the cavalrymen had diverted those who might otherwise have scrambled over the load of bricks—easy enough to do on foot, but a perfect barricade against men who refused to lower themselves by dismounting in the midst of a mob.
“Come on!” Lycon thrust his way through the crowd, holding the struggling lizard-ape chick ahead of him—let it vent its rage on those who moved aside too slowly. Vonones and N’Sumu surged through behind him. The beastcatcher was too busy with the press of bodies to keep an eye on the rooftops and overhanging balconies. He didn’t like to trust to luck, but tonight he had to. N’Sumu was obviously quite correct—the lizard-ape could leap upon them from any direction, and in the narrow confines of the street they would have no effective warning no matter how carefully they attempted to watch. Their best hope was to reach the cleared area around the fountain, and after that they could make a stand. First things first. . . .