"Idiots!" Vonones screamed after them.

Lycon twisted smoothly to his feet, ignoring pain. That he was battered and bruised was inevitable; the awareness of that could wait for the morning, for the next few days, if he lived that long. Nothing had been damaged that would keep him from functioning-and by all the gods, nothing short of death would stop him this time.

Lycon had flung the sword ahead of him as he broke through the wall. The blade still rang and clattered somewhere on down the staircase, in the general direction in which the two patrolmen had gone tumbling.

The surviving Ethiopian slave now leaped down the stairs, screaming mindlessly as he fell. There was a look of horror on his face, and something blue was squatting on his scalp. As the slave plunged by him, Lycon reached out with his right hand and peeled the creature from its hold.

It resisted like a tick imbedded firmly into flesh. The Ethiopian's head snapped back, as if Lycon had snatched a handful of hair instead of something so alien and malevolent. Momentum carried the victim on, and the beastcatcher's hand and arm held as if worked from iron. The four clawed limbs of the creature, itself no larger than the hand that caught it, pulled loose with bits of the Ethiopian's scalp and hair still dangling. Blood washed across exposed skull where the creature had gnawed into the bone.

A lance of pain touched Lycon's palm just at the instant that he drove his open hand against the brick wall. The impact left a blotch of glaucous ichor on the wall, framed by the red of his own human blood. The hatchling burst apart between brick and a hand as unyielding as brick, dropped twitching onto the floor.

Something stabbed at Lycon's left calf. He had let his net dangle too closely to his leg. The lizard-ape chick within had managed to hook one arm through the mesh; its claws gashed into Lycon's calf, only momentarily foiled by leather straps. Lycon backhanded the creature twice against the wall to quell its murderous activity once again.

"Come on!" he shouted up the staircase. "We've got to get out of here!"

The two Watch patrolmen were rousing the lower floors of the building. It was either a triumph of training over panic, or else they hoped to drive the madness of the loft above from their thoughts by concentrating on familiar duties. Out in the street, others were shouting now as well, while the orange flames winked with a hellish intensity through the interstices of the paneling. There was no part of Rome in which fire and disease were not the constant companions of the residents; of the two, the brutal suddenness of fire made it the more feared. The apartment dwellers beneath would block the stairs in their attempts to save their goods as well as themselves-bedsteads and braziers, clothing or even a cracked bowl made important by the fact that it was the owner's sole chattel.

"It will come back to save its brood!" N'Sumu called over his shoulder. He had backed into the doorway now that the rest of the party had escaped the loft, but he remained poised there instead of descending. The firelight threw his shadow, more lumped and awkward than the man himself, onto the wall of the staircase behind him. The ragged hole Lycon and Vonones had torn in the inner wall glowed now as well with the sooty yellow flames. "We have to wait here until it…"

The last of whatever N'Sumu might have said was drowned in the crash as the central section of the roof collapsed. That crash was echoed when the weight of tiles struck the fire-weakened floor of the loft and precipitated it and N'Sumu down onto the fifth level. Residents gabbling in a dozen languages had already crowded the hallway and begun to force their way past the two men on the landing. Now flames and debris showered down onto the hall and those within it. Air pistoned through the hall, then sucked itself back upward through the new opening with a roar and a column of sparks.

N'Sumu twisted as he fell, landed on his feet, struggled toward them. At last the Egyptian seemed to recognize the danger of their position.

Lycon was willing to use his elbows or the ivory baton he still carried, if that could have broken a pathway down the stairs. The press of terrified humanity was too solid for such tactics to be of any help.

A woman from a fifth-floor apartment hurled herself against Vonones, as if the screams of those buried under blazing coals were scourges to drive her away. Vonones struck her twice with the stock of his whip, pulling the blows. She continued to scream and claw at him. Vonones smashed at her a third time, with the terror of a trapped animal bursting through his civilized restraint. The woman fell backward, nose broken and a vertical welt along her forehead from nose to hairline. The infant slung at her breast bawled as the rest of the crowd in the hallway surged forward.

N'Sumu reached past his two shorter companions and touched the head of the nearest of those who blocked the four flights of stairs remaining.

Lycon was dizzy with pain and the heat, barely able to focus on one clear idea at a time now. He turned his head and shouted to the Egyptian who leaned over him: "We're going to have to cut through the outer wall and take our chances we can find handholds to climb down!"

The man N'Sumu had touched slumped to the side like melting wax. The hunter could have beaten in the back of the fellow's head by brute force without achieving such an instantaneous effect.

N'Sumu slid between Lycon and Vonones without their objection. A bald man with a short club raised stood on top of the mother Vonones had bludgeoned down. The snarl on his face transformed itself into a look of amazement as the second body slumped toward him without a struggle. Lycon punched the man in the solar plexus, just in case the wonder wore off and his thoughts returned to the cudgel.

N'Sumu swept down the narrow staircase like fire through dry grass. Men and women sprawled at his touch, either clearing the way as they fell or at least proving easier to maneuver past. They did not appear to be seriously injured; their hearts beat and sometimes their mouths moaned soft nonsense, but their limbs remained flaccid.

There was an odor like that of hot bronze. It grew stronger as they forced their way downward, clinging to Lycon's nostrils despite the choking smoke. N'Sumu began to flutter his hands in the air as if to cool them; then he would reach out again, and another body would sag like a deflated bladder. Occasionally there was a green nimbus, and a pattern of blisters marked the victim's skin at the point of contact. Lycon sweated and tried to ignore what he could not change, as he slung humans and their possessions behind him and out of the way. He worked with his right hand only, despite the fact that his palm was swelling badly. The tiny creature had bitten him there in the moment that he crushed it, and for all Lycon knew its bite could have been venomous.

It was too dark to examine the lizard-ape chick trapped in Lycon's net, even had there been time for that. After being slammed against the wall, it moved only as it jiggled within its silken wrappings. That might mean the cat-sized killer was dead, and thus useless to the beastcatcher's half-formed plan-but it had come this far, and it was going the rest of the way.

The full complement of the Watch for the district had been present before the fire broke out, so matters were in surprisingly good order at street level. One squad had wrenched the stairwell door off its pivot pins, and patrolmen were tossing people and possessions into the street with scant ceremony. Half the value of chattels rescued from a fire went to the State purse, but it was necessary to get the humans out of the way before the more important work of salvage could proceed. Ladders were raised to windows as high as the third floor, and there the shutters had been beaten in and furnishings were being passed into hands of teams ready to secure them. If the building itself could be saved, so much the better, because the value of the structure would also be applied to the Emperor's share. But such was unlikely here, since the upper floors were already fully involved. By the time the fire was low enough for bucket brigades to reach it, collapsing masonry would have cleared the area of even the boldest.