Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [59]
Usem threw the leopard skin over his shoulder as the soldiers rode up to his camp. It represented the starry night sky, and his possession of such a thing would show his power to those who sought to use it.
“I will ride with you against your enemy,” he told their leader, his words precise.
“You have no choice,” said the centurion, looming over him. The fact that the legionaries were mounted meant that speed was required. Otherwise, it would have been a march. “It is the will of the emperor that you come.”
The Psylli laughed, a dry rattle of mirth that shook his ornaments and caused the sand around him to rise into a small tornado. The winds were his dear ones, and he called them to stand with him.
Out along the horizon, the sky grew black and whirling, the shapes of great and horned beasts forming in the dust. Their eyes flashed heat lightning as they began to move toward the interlopers.
The soldiers drew back from this spectacle, quaking and disbelieving, just as Usem intended them to be.
“There is always a choice,” said the Psylli, as he leapt atop the horse, kicking his bare heels into its sides. “I have made mine. We ride to war.”
4
The scream was repeated, high, desperate, desolate, and then there was a deep, rattling roar. Nicolaus ran onto the deck, where the sailors were surging about in panic, swearing.
“If the lions are loose,” one said, “I’m going up the mast.”
“They can climb,” said another. “Didn’t you see them draped over the trees? We’d be better off jumping into the water.”
They looked over the rail at the dark, finned shape still accompanying them. More had joined the first, and now the vessel was trailed by a shifting underwater cloud of predators. The captain, a stout, weatherworn man with a lifetime’s worth of steel-gray tattoos on his shoulders, looked down at the sharks, spat, drew his sword, and attempted to instill order.
“If the lions are loose,” he said, “we’ll kill them or we’ll cage them back up. Nothing to be afraid of, boys.”
Another roar, followed by screaming.
Screaming.
Screaming.
And silence. Which lasted much too long.
The swallows launched themselves off the rigging. The moon slid across the sky, and the sun crept about under the horizon, its bright fingers grasping at the edge of the sea. Still, the crew stayed on deck.
No one wanted to be the first to investigate what had transpired below.
“The lions sleep,” said the captain, though he was not entirely convinced of this. There had been something about that roar that had stayed in the pit of his stomach. “The lions have eaten, and now they sleep.”
No one moved. The gladiatorial slaves were an expensive cargo, if nothing else. No one wanted to go below and discover carnage. Least of all, if the creatures that had created it were still hiding there, hungering.
“I’ll go,” said the lone passenger just as dawn broke.
The sailors looked at him.
He was mad, clearly. The passenger talked in his sleep, swinging fretfully in his hammock, and he spoke in languages the sailors had never heard before.
Still, he was not one of them, and so they were willing to let him go to his death.
“How many lions are below?” Nicolaus asked, standing over the locked hatch that led to the animal’s hold.
“Six,” said the captain.
“If one is loose, then they all are?”
“Exactly.”
The captain had armed himself with aconite-smeared arrows. He passed Nicolaus a sword and shield, and then the sailors stood in formations, waiting for the lions to be chased up onto the deck.
Nicolaus eased himself down the ladder, at each rung expecting hot breath on his back. His lantern was not bright enough to illuminate the darkness to his satisfaction. He might only travel in a small circle of light, and beyond the edge of it was something horrible.
What was he doing, climbing down a ladder into a dark and haunted hold?
He was as good as dead anyway, a wanted man traveling to Rome.
He could hear breathing, there, in the far darkness.