“Guards! Gods!” Lycon screamed.
But no god came; and hammer the bars as he might, Lycon could neither tear them loose nor drown the noises in the adjoining cell. The noises went on for a very long time. He did not notice when they finally stopped.
The beastcatcher was open-eyed, his hands and arms as rigid as the iron which they clutched, when the figure left the cell: It donned the cape and shook the hood again over its features. Lycon did not see it leaving, nor did the creature appear to have any further interest in the man responsible for destroying its brood. As it moved off down the corridor, it could easily have been a shuffling beggar-woman, bent and wasted by age.
But there was nothing human about the footprints it left on the stone behind it, except for the blood of which they were made.
Chapter Twenty-three
“Where—” muttered Lycon, aware for the moment only that there was sunlight on his face and that there shouldn’t be, though he did not recall why. He recalled nothing, but he lay on a soft bed with the odor of food and light perfume nearby and that was all wrong. . . .
And then he did remember.
“Herakles!” Lycon shouted. His eyes opened and he tried to leap from the bed, but three days in and out of coma made his legs nerveless, and he fell back onto the feather mattress. He tried to focus his eyes, blinking dizzily. There were a half dozen men around him in the richly-appointed chamber, all of them slaves except for Vonones.
“Well, hold it to his mouth!” Vonones urged the boy who had just dunked a wedge of bread into a cup of undiluted wine. A warming rack over a brazier held a simmering pot of beef broth, and there were dainties of fish and vegetables waiting on a separate tray against the beastcatcher’s possible whim when he awakened.
“Lycon,” Vonones said, peering earnestly at him, “lie back and eat this bread.”
“Can’t do both, can I?” Lycon whispered. His voice did not sound like one he had ever heard before. He shifted himself upon the couch so that he faced the side where the slave knelt with the bread and wine. He did not attempt to take the morsel from the boy. Simply resting on one side was enough to overtax his reawakening muscles at the moment. He chewed slowly and carefully.
“You’re all right, then?” said Vonones, looking away from his friend’s face as he spoke the question. Only the slaves thought that the words had anything to do with Lycon’s physical state.
The beastcatcher swallowed his mouthful of bread. He nodded away the boy’s attempt to feed him more at the moment. A doctor in the background shifted from one foot to the other, waiting to offer the potion he held in his hands. “I’m all right,” said Lycon. “Why am I here?”
“I arranged for it,” Vonones said. He took the dripping bread from the slave and offered it with his own fingers. “Here, try a little more and then we’ll help you sit up. I—offered Crispinus an arrangement which he found satisfactory. He explained to our lord and god that you were quite necessary for the hunt to succeed and that Lacerta had badly misinterpreted the events of that night. A party arrived with the documents for your release somewhat—” he swallowed and looked away “—a great deal later than I would have wished.”
Lycon mumbled around his bread. Deliberately the beastcatcher lifted himself into a sitting position, swallowed as a pair of slaves stacked pillows behind him unbidden, and said, “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Don’t . . .”
“Lycon, I—” the merchant began in the pause without any real notion of where he was going to take the sentence.
“I said it didn’t matter,” Lycon said. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and let the motion stir the blood throughout his body. “It was going to happen the same way, in the apartment or wherever, because I wouldn’t have believed it could happen until it did.”
“Don’t stand up yet,” the doctor blurted from behind the other slaves.