Lycon finally let his breath out. “Well, I found the lizard-ape we were supposed to be hunting—while you fools were back there gawking at your fire! Now I think Vonones owes you for a pack of dogs.”
* * *
Lycon waited long enough to make certain the lizard-ape no longer lay in wait beyond the hedge. After seeing the hounds, no one had wanted to be first to wriggle through to the other side. Thinking of those murderous claws, the beastcatcher had no intention of doing so either. There was a gap in the hedge some distance away, and he sent half the men to circle around. There was no sign of the beast other than three more mutilated hounds. In disgust Lycon hiked back to the caravan, letting the others follow as they would.
As he reached the road a shrill voice demanded, “Who’s there!”
Lycon swore and yelled before nervous fingers released an arrow. “Don’t loose, damn you! Fortune, that’s all it would take!”
Vonones thumped heavily onto the roadbed from his perch on the wagon. His face was anxious. “How did it go? Did you get the sauropithecus? Where are the others?”
“Dragging-ass back,” Lycon grunted wearily. “Vonones, there isn’t one of your men I’d trust to walk a dog.”
“They’re wagon drivers, not hunters,” the dealer protested. “But what about the lizard-ape?”
“We didn’t get it.”
And while the others slowly drifted back, Lycon told the dealer what had happened. The damp stillness of the dusk settled around the wagons as he finished. Vonones slumped in stunned silence.
Lycon’s weathered face was thoughtful. “You got ahold of something from an arena, Vonones. I don’t know whose arena or where it came from—maybe the Numidians raided it from some kingdom in the interior of Africa. But the way it moves, the way its claws are groomed—the way it kills for pleasure. . . . Somebody lost a fighting cock, and you bought it!”
Vonones stared at him without comprehension. Licking his lips, Lycon continued. “I can’t say who could have owned it, or what sort of beast it is—but I know the arena, and I tell you that thing is a superbly trained killer. The way it ambushed the dogs, slaughtered them without a wasted motion! And that thing moves fast! I’m fast enough that I’ve jumped back from a pit trap I didn’t know was there until my feet started to go through. I knew a gladiator in Rome who moved faster than any man I’ve seen. He’d let archers shoot at him from sixty yards, then dodge the arrow, and I never could believe I really saw it happen. But that thing out there in the fields is so much faster there’s no comparison!”
“How did the Numidians capture it, then?” Vonones demanded.
“Capture? Maybe they took its surrender! A band of mounted archers on a thousand miles of empty plains—they could have run it down and killed it easily, and that damned thing knew it! Then they welded it into an iron cage, and strong as it is, the lizard-ape can’t snap iron bars.”
“But it can pick locks,” Vonones finished his thought.
“Yes.”
The dealer took a deep breath, shrugging all over and seeming to fill his garments even more fully. “How do we recapture it, then?”
“I don’t know.”
Lycon chewed his lips, looking at the ground rather than at Vonones. “If the lizard-ape sleeps, maybe we could sneak up and use our bows. Maybe with a thousand men we could spread out through the hedgerows and gullies, encircle it somehow.”
“We don’t have a thousand men,” Vonones stated implacably.
“I know.”
Smoky clouds were sliding past the full moon. With dusk the drizzle at last had lifted; the overcast was clearing. A few stars began to spike through the cobwebby sky. Across the twilit fields, shadows crept out from hedgerows and trees, flowed over the rocky gullies.
“I can lay my hands on a certain amount of money at short notice,” Vonones thought aloud. “There will be ships leaving Portus in the morning.”
But Lycon was staring at the nearest cage.
“Vonones,” the hunter asked pensively. “Have you ever seen a tiger track a man down?”