Lycon had attracted little attention when he forced his way to the basin, and little more even when he leaped atop the central column. His shout and the eerie shriek that followed the blow of the ivory baton drew the crowd’s eyes, and then drove back the nearest of those around him.
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.