“We can track the unleashed dogs with the rest of the pack,” the hunter explained. “Just now we’re too many, too noisy, too slow. The lizard-ape could keep its distance and lead us on a chase for a hundred miles of sewer, and we’d never catch a glimpse of it.”
“But the dogs might kill the sauropithecus if no one is there to pull them off!”
“Come on, N’Sumu! You’re our lizard-ape expert! You know damn well we’ll be lucky to catch up with the dogs before your little pet turns and kills the lot of them!”
“My pet? What do you mean, human!”
“The Emperor’s pet, then,” Lycon retorted, too focussed to note N’Sumu’s sudden anger. “And let’s be after it.”
N’Sumu checked his panic. Just a chance expression, not a guess. Absurd to think that the Cora might have planted another agent here on this world. Or was it absurd? In any event this Lycon would be dead very shortly, one way or another.
* * *
The phile resubmerged. It had heard enough sounds of pursuit to be certain that its precautions—instinctive though they were—had not been needless. The bipeds had returned with their incredibly noisy quadruped stalkers. It seemed absurd that these creatures would place such reliance upon inferior material for this game, until the demonically gene-designed phile reconsidered the obvious shortcomings of the soft-fleshed bipeds on this world. Their pathetic slowness was plainly evident; their perceptual acuity was apparently no better, since they clearly relied upon other life-forms to extend the range of their senses. The phile, which understood non-phile life only as potential prey, felt contempt for such weakness as this reliance expressed. No wonder the gamemaster had brought in a more worthy opponent for the phile to destroy. The others were intended to serve as no more than a distraction; it was time they were removed.
The phile knew the sewers well. It had come here first when it had entered this city many days ago. For a time the phile considered these underground tunnels as a possible lair, but their sudden flooding with heavy, unpredictable rains drove it to seek a more secure refuge in the tenement that the Opponent had made a holocaust for its young.
The phile waited in the darkness as the pursuit loudly vanished into the tunnels, following a trail it had left hours before. It had discovered long before that the four-legged stalkers could not follow a trail through deep water. It was quite safe here in the main channel, rising from its depths only to take in a breath of air.
Very soon it would be night outside.
* * *
A runner had managed to find Lycon at last, so the beastcatcher had in some measure been warned—although still he was not prepared for the sight that greeted him.
The street seemed to be filled with dead men.
“It came up out the catch basin at nightfall,” Rebilus was able to tell him in small gasps and whispers. Lycon had left him in charge of the group of men stationed behind at the entrance to the sewers. Now Rebilus was the sole survivor, and from the bubbling gashes in his belly, he wasn’t likely to see another dawn.
“We’d all been sitting around,” Rebilus whispered, too much in shock to realize the extent of his wounds. “You know, waiting to hear how things were going down below. Every now and then someone would climb back up and fill us in. Nothing much happening. Even the crowd that had been here at first had pretty well given it up.”
He shuddered and stared at his hands. So much blood staining the pavement . . . how could it all be his. It couldn’t be, could it?
“I’d gone over to the fountain for a drink of water,” Rebilus said dully. “That’s all I did.” He seemed to be using his last strength to establish that the guilt for this massacre was not to be laid on his shoulders.
“I bent down, and everything was fine. I looked back up, and that blue thing was already out of the hole. Piso and Liganus were closest, and they were already dead. It just shot up out of there, and its hands were moving too fast to see. It took their heads off on its way by, like it was nothing.