Killer

"I called to Ursus," the foreman said, as if only by talking could he bring himself to step closer to the barge again. "I said, 'Give us another squeeze of wine,' you know, because we were out and I figured they had some aboard. And he didn't answer, so I got pissed off. I mean, he was senior man, but he could still be out stumbling along with the torch if I said so, Dis take him."

Lycon and Vonones were watching the foreman carefully. He kept his eyes fixed on the sternpost, as if oblivious both of his audience and of the present condition of the barge. "So I let the stern come abreast of me," the teamster continued, "and I shouted again. And I should've been able to see him at the tiller-there wasn't any moon what with the clouds, but still against the water beyond-and he wasn't there at the oar. Nobody was. And just then the barge ground hard against the bank-hard-and so I go and jump aboard…"

"Which one of these is Ursus?" Lycon interrupted. He gestured toward the heaped bodies.

The foreman did not lower his eyes. "He was about my height," he said to the sternpost. "He never wore sandals, in the boat, said he couldn't get a grip with…"

"Look at them, damn you, and tell me which one is the helmsman!" Lycon shouted.

"He had a beard!" the teamster shouted back. Tears were dripping from the man's eyes, and the veins on his neck stood out. "He wore a beard because of the scars on his chin from when a cable parted and slapped him when he was a lad!"

Lycon stepped into the barge, ignoring the sound his boots made. He began picking through the tumbled corpses. He'd seen worse. He'd done worse-across the Rhine, driving a village of Boii in panic through the woods at dawn. He didn't have enough troops to have surrounded the Germans or even to have beaten them had they stood and fought. But he could frighten them like deer into a pit trap, a covered trench filled with sharpened stakes, because the cohort commander wanted to show results without risking too many men in hostile territory.

Results that time had meant wagonloads of right hands. And the results had pleased the Governor and won praise for the cohort commander.

"I don't see anybody here with a beard," Lycon said, as he straightened and turned again to the teamster.

It didn't mean he enjoyed it, Lycon told himself; it meant that he did what he had to do. No matter what. "Are you sure," Lycon continued impassively, "that the barge was proceeding normally until just before you boarded her yourself?"

"It was," the foreman agreed quickly, bobbing his chin upward in a gesture of assent. "And I had to bring it in to dock then myself, even with all this here, because we couldn't block the towpath." He turned his back. The teamster had thrown away his sandals and washed his feet compulsively when dawn emphasized what the rushlight had only suggested. Seeing the state of Lycon's boots when the hunter stepped out of the barge recalled to the foreman what he prayed to forget.

"Then," Lycon said wearily, "I think we're ready to report. I suppose that's what he wants from us?" He raised an eyebrow, as much a gesture as he dared to indicate the Emperor's palanquin above.

"Yes," Vonones agreed without following the gesture even with his eyes. "He wants us to report directly to him. After that…"

The two men began walking down the slip toward the ramp. It took the teamster a moment to realize that he had been released from the nightmare. He ran after Lycon and Vonones. He was fleeing his memories more than the presence of the blood-spattered barge.

"It was reported to Domitian as soon as it was discovered," Vonones whispered to his friend in a hasty, hidden voice. "The Prefect of the Watch has orders about such things-things that our lord and god wants to know. He came out in person to view it.

"I was unloading the shipment in my compound this morning, when Lacerta and the emperor's personal guard came riding in. Well, Domitian wanted to know about the animals that escaped from my caravan. No, not the tiger, but the other beast-the lizard-ape thing he'd heard talked about. Where was it? Well, I offered to show them the skin of the tiger, and explained that you'd seen them fight to the death-seen the sauropithecus fall into the Tiber, where it doubtless died from its wounds or drowned, and was washed out to sea. Unfortunately, they had proof to the contrary…"

"I should have made certain it was dead," Lycon said bitterly. "I know better than to allow a wounded man-killer to slip off into the brush."

He more regretted his own loss of nerve that night than his mistake in ever allowing Vonones to involve him in this mess. Well, the merchant's neck was on the block more surely than his own, if that was any comfort.