Out of the Waters (35 page)

The upper register was a frieze of the wanderings of Odysseus. The Cyclops Polyphemus stood on a crag facing the door, holding a huge rock over his head to fling at the ship sailing toward the horizon with the hero in the stern. On the shore below the monster were wrecked vessels and the scattered bodies of men.

Corylus sneezed violently; there was much more smoke inside, welling from a murrhine tube like the one in Saxa's collection.
If they haven't somehow stolen Saxa's,
Corylus thought,
they already had the other one of a pair.

“They” were the three servants that Persica said were controlling Tardus. They were squatting on the floor, facing inward, but they looked up when Corylus burst through the door. The North African had his mouth to one end of a reed; the murrhine tube was cemented to the other end.

Pandareus sat opposite to the North African, his back to Corylus. He didn't move when the door banged open.

One of the servants reached for the dagger in his sash; the hilt was fashioned from deer antler. Corylus kicked the fellow's arm.

The North African blew a ring of smoke toward Corylus and grunted a word.

The amulet from the Etruscan tomb burned like a hot coal. Corylus plunged through darkness into bright sunlight.

He stood on top of a crag, facing a Cyclops. The creature was easily twice his height and weighed as much as an elephant.

 

CHAPTER
XI

Corylus staggered. His feet were still planted firmly, but now they were on gritty soil with a slight downward slope instead of a flat mosaic floor. That had thrown him off balance.

The Cyclops was thirty feet away. It turned its head toward him with a bellow; the sound was like a huge wave smashing into the shore. At the same time it shuffled awkwardly to bring its body around, like a duck trying to rotate in tight quarters. Over its head, the boulder quivered.

Corylus knew from experience that stone weighed three or four times as much as flesh did, and he could see that the boulder was the size of the Cyclops' torso. No man he knew could have lifted an equivalent mass. Even for the monster, it was a strain to be balanced rather than a whim to be toyed with. Still, the sea three hundred feet offshore—half the length of a foot race—bubbled and slapped where a similar missile must have landed.

The surface on which Corylus stood was a few hand-breadths higher than where the Cyclops' feet were planted. It wasn't much of a slope, but rather than turn and run uphill—

“Ears for Nerthus!”
Corylus screamed as he charged the monster. It was the war cry of the Batavian Scouts; well, of the Scouts when they weren't slitting throats silently in the darkness. It wouldn't mean anything to the Cyclops, even if he wasn't a beast without language, but it put Corylus in the right frame of mind.

The Scouts had their own temple grove separate from the altars of the rest of the cohort which Publius Cispius had commanded on the Danube. An oak, a broad spreading wolf tree, stood in the center. They nailed to it the right ear—salted to preserve it—of every Sarmatian they killed.

The Cyclops grunted and hesitated, repositioning the huge boulder. The creature probably hadn't expected its victim to attack, which would have been justification for Corylus' tactics if he'd needed one.

He hadn't. The Batavians were a crack unit, as good as any non-citizen auxiliary cohort in the army—and better than the legions which were deployed in luxury in the eastern provinces, anybody on the Rhine or the Danube would have said. He could either have fled the monster or charged it. Neither seemed survivable, but
of course
you tried to cut the other guy's throat before he finished you.

I can't even reach his throat,
Corylus realized. The thought made him grin.

The Cyclops strode forward, preparing to throw. Corylus stepped on a human arm bone. His foot flew out from under him and the bone—it was just the upper joint; the shaft had been cracked for marrow—sailed skyward.

The Cyclops gave the stone a savage push with both hands, not so much hurling it as snapping it forward in a straight line as though the springs of a catapult were driving it. Corylus landed on his back with a clang, skidding feetfirst toward the monster. He had lost his helmet and there were certainly dents in his thin bronze back plate.

The boulder hit the edge of the crag a dozen feet beyond where Corylus fell and bounced away in a cloud of dust and shattered gravel. He had thought—had imagined, though at the back of his mind—that he could dodge the missile.

He couldn't have. The monster's strength was beyond anything of which flesh should be capable. Only luck and the Cyclops' messy eating habits had gotten Corylus out of the way. The boulder would otherwise have struck him in the middle of the chest and splashed him into the ground like a fly clubbed against a brick wall.

The Cyclops bent, reaching for Corylus' outstretched legs. Corylus kicked, trying to roll himself away. The Cyclops closed a fist the size of a boar's ham over Corylus' left ankle. Corylus bent forward at the waist and thrust. The point of his short sword crunched through the gristle and small bones of the monster's wrist.

The Cyclops bellowed again—the sound felt like an avalanche of sand—and hurled Corylus inland. He wasn't sure whether the motion was deliberate or simply a twitch in reaction to the pain of the wound.

Corylus hit hard and bounced. He was twenty feet from where the Cyclops had grabbed him. He'd lost his sword. He rolled and looked back. The monster plucked the blade from the wound with his left hand and spun it far out to sea. Blood poured from the injured wrist and ran down the creature's dangling right hand.

The Cyclops turned toward Corylus, who drew the sturdy dagger from the scabbard on the right side of his equipment belt. The Cyclops strode forward, shaking the ground. Its eye was bloodshot and unwinking.

Corylus tried to curl his feet under in order to stand up. He wasn't sure that would be an advantage in this fight, but it would make him feel better. White pain exploded in his groin; he screamed and fell back. He may have lost consciousness for an instant. When the monster used his left leg as a handle, it had strained or torn the ligaments joining thighbone to pelvis.

The Cyclops seized Corylus by the shoulder and jerked him off the ground. Its body stank like a tanner's yard from the rotting blood and flesh tangled in its shaggy pelt. It crushed him to its chest and wrapped both arms around him.

Corylus stabbed. He couldn't see to place the point. It was like thrusting into a stack of bull hides.

The Cyclops continued to squeeze. Corylus couldn't see anything, but in the deepening shadows of his mind flickered a nude woman and a creature which stood on two legs but was utterly inhuman. It reminded him of a serpent, despite its fine golden fur and a triangular face like a fox.

The Cyclops was roaring. Corylus couldn't hear sound—any sound—but he felt the vibration of the chest against which he was being flattened like an olive in the press. He thought he still held the dagger, but he didn't know. All he could feel was the fiery pain which spread from his ribs and out through the skin.

Then the blackness was complete, until the woman and the slender, terrifying beast stepped from it and joined him.

*   *   *

V
ARUS FROZE
in the flood of light. He had come down from the mountain on which he had been standing with the Sibyl. Below them in the infinite distance, his body led his companions through the dwelling of Sempronius Tardus and up to the room where three magicians held Pandareus.

But even as his soul reentered his body, a flash had numbed and blinded him. He fell backward, blinking and stunned. When he shook himself alert, he found that Pulto gripped the back of his toga and was holding him upright. The sword in Pulto's other hand searched for something to stab.

“You may loose me, Master Pulto!” Varus said, speaking sharply. He was embarrassed to have stumbled, and he knew that he had been wandering and no doubt speaking without conscious awareness.

What did I say this time? They must all think I'm crazy!

And in the back of his mind:
Maybe I am crazy.

“Where's the boy?” Pulto said on a rising note. He let go of Varus; tossed him aside, very nearly. “Lenatus, where's Corylus? Where's the bloody boy?”

“He couldn't have gotten past!” Lenatus said, but as he spoke, he rushed to the doorway. “You lot! Did you see Corylus? Did the tribune go out this way?”

Varus looked over the trainer's shoulder. The hallway was choked with servants in Praetorian armor, their swords out. No one could have pushed through them quickly, even if the squad had been willing to grant passage.

The three servants whom Corylus said were at the bottom of the trouble had vanished also. Varus had seen them clearly from the Sibyl's eyrie, squatting on the floor of this room where Pandareus sat facing them. Pandareus had vanished with them.

Tardus stood behind the counterfeit troops with an expression of frightened amazement. Varus snapped to a decision.

“Lord Tardus!” he said. “Come join me, please. You men there! Make way for Senator Tardus, our host!”

I'm giving orders to a man whose home I've invaded with a forged document and a band of armed slaves,
Varus thought. He'd always had an analytical mind, but recently he'd become aware of the limits of analysis. Sometimes you simply had to act, whether or not reason told you that the act was courteous, legal, or even survivable. This was one of those times.

Not that Tardus was objecting. Quite the contrary: he paused nervously until he was sure that the “Praetorians” were really making way, then bustled through to the doorway of the room where Pandareus had been held

“Varus?” Tardus said. “You're Gaius Varus, aren't you, Saxa's son?”

“Yes,” said Varus, puzzled at the nervous doubt in the older man's voice. Austerely he went on, “You dined with us the night before last. And after dinner, you abducted Master Pandareus.”

“That wasn't me!” Tardus said, but the denial was a prayer rather than angry disbelief. “Please, you have to believe me. I—”

He paused and looked around him. “Please, Lord Varus,” he said. “Can we speak in private without these soldiers around?”

“No,” said Pulto. He didn't sound angry, but there was only flat certainty in his voice. “Not when my boy's gone somewhere and I figure this fellow had something to do with sending him there.”

Lenatus lifted his chin in silent agreement. Neither of the old soldiers had sheathed their swords, though at this point that was probably a matter of theater rather than real concern that they would have immediate use for the weapons.

“Sending who?” Tardus said. “I've only been allowed out myself when the sages sent
me
somewhere.”

Varus gestured the thought away with his left hand. “Come,” he said to Tardus. “This incense makes me want to sneeze. You and I will go into the library, but we'll leave the door open so that the centurions—”

He nodded to Lenatus. He and Pulto probably wouldn't have minded him using their names, but Varus felt that the less detail he gave about the others involved in this criminal enterprise, the better.
He
was doomed if things went wrong, but it was at least possible that the false Praetorians might escape.

“—can watch us, but you can speak privately.”

Pulto snorted; Lenatus gave Varus a wry smile and said, “As your lordship wishes.”

Varus remembered what Corylus had said about his behavior in the crisis after Hedia was abducted. Soldiers approved of clear, forceful orders, even if the orders themselves weren't what they wanted to hear. Confusion and hesitancy got people killed faster even than bullheaded courage.

He led Tardus across the hall and gestured him to the only couch in the library. That was partly out of respect for a man far his senior, but still more because that resulted in Varus looking down at—scarcely at his host; say rather, looking down at his potential enemy—as they spoke.

“Witnesses watched your servants abduct Master Pandareus outside my father's house,” Varus said. He let the anger he felt as he spoke the words peek through in his tone. “There would be no point in you denying it, even if we hadn't seen them and Pandareus across the hall—”

He gestured.

“—a moment ago.”

“They're not my servants!” Tardus insisted with a hint of fear. “They're sages from the Western Isles. They're magicians, and they were—”

He gestured with both hands as if trying to pull words out of the air. His expression was anguished.

“They were working me like a puppet. You must believe me!”

Varus didn't speak for a moment while he considered what Tardus had said.
Is that true? And whether it's true or not, what does it mean?

“I could see and hear what was happening,” Tardus said. He sat rather than reclining on the couch and he rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. “Mostly I could at least, but it was as though it was all behind a wall of glass. And what I remember seemed to be happening to someone else.”

“Where did they go, the sages?” Varus said. “And where did they take Pandareus and Corylus?”

“I don't know,” Tardus said, speaking with apparent satisfaction. “So long as they were controlling me, I saw what they were doing and heard what they said, even among themselves when I wasn't present. But when you broke in on them, I was freed. Thank Venus and Mercury, I'm free again!”

The goddess from whom Carce's founder Aeneas was descended,
Varus thought,
and the god of luck. Good choices.

Then, smiling slightly, he thought,
A pedant even now. Well, a scholar.