“Water?” he asked, and Agrippa laughed. His throat was swollen and so sore that he could not imagine swallowing, let alone swallowing a drink provided by the very man who’d poisoned him.

“Where are my men?” he croaked.

“They live,” the priest said. “We do not kill our guests, unlike the men of the emperor’s armies.”

“Why did you poison me? I did nothing to wound you.”

“You did not?” the priest asked. He ran his finger over his throat. The scratch was already healing. “One does not steal from Apollo. We are guards, and this is our lifelong task. Perhaps you do not understand that there is a reason for our devotion. I would not have thought Augustus’s general was a fool.”

“You guard something precious,” Agrippa said.

“We guard something lethal,” the priest informed him. “It kills. It has always killed, and yet it still exists. We keep it safe from the world.”

“It’s true, then,” Agrippa said. “The arrows are here.”

“Everything is true,” the priest informed him. “Once a story is told, it becomes true. Every unlikely tale, every tale of wonders, has something real at its core.”

“I need them. There is an enemy greater than any Rome has known,” said Agrippa, shifting painfully in his bonds. Though he’d fought for years, he’d never before been captured.

“So you say,” said the priest. “Just as anyone would, to gain possession of the arrows. They are too dangerous to use.”

“It is too dangerous not to use them,” Agrippa countered. “We fight an immortal, and there is no other way to kill her. We fight to save the world from a monster.”

The priest looked at Agrippa and grimaced.

“And what monster will you create in using them? No one has ever used Hercules’ arrows without paying the price. Now we have them here, safe from fools.”

“I am no fool,” Agrippa said. “I act to save Rome.”

“Perhaps Rome should not be saved, if you need such a weapon to save it. Only a true hero may wield the bow of Hercules, but heroes are fools, too. The venom on these arrows killed the greatest hero of the world. Hercules died screaming, begging his friends to light his funeral pyre while he still lived, and that was from only a droplet of blood mixed with the Hydra’s venom and smeared on his tunic. Do you know what happened to Philoctetes, the patron of this temple?”

“I do not,” Agrippa answered. He did not care.

“Philoctetes was the only one who dared light the pyre, and so Hercules willed the bow and quiver to him. He wounded himself in the foot with his new arrows, on a ship destined for the Trojan War. He was left on an island by his friends, and his wound festered for ten years, while he went mad with the pain. At last, his friends returned. There had been a prophecy that only those arrows could win the war. In some stories, it is said that Philoctetes was healed on the battlefield, that by the time he fired the shot that killed Paris and won the war, he was cured of his agonies. We know better. There is no cure for the Hydra’s venom, and these wounds take a long time to kill. Hercules knew this much, and he should never have saved the Hydra’s poison. I do not trust you to make a better choice than he did.”

“Trust me, then,” someone said. The voice was familiar. Agrippa turned his head, stunned, just as the priest made a strangled sound.

Blood splashed, speckling Agrippa’s robes.

Augustus stood in the window, sweating and pale, his eyes furiously bright. With him stood Nicolaus, whose mythic hopes had sent Agrippa on this doomed mission, and Usem, whose face was lit with the fire of war. He wiped the priest’s blood from his dagger. Usem looked at Agrippa and smiled.

“You should have let me join you,” he said. “Did you think I was only a sorcerer?”

“I made them bring me here. I will not stay hidden in my study any longer,” Augustus said. “I will not stay in Rome, waiting to die in my sleep.”

He swayed, the skin beneath his eyes bluish. The hand that held the sword trembled, but he was resolved.

“You must leave here,” Agrippa said. “You must not risk yourself!”

The emperor put his sword to Agrippa’s bonds and slashed them. Agrippa stood, and rubbed his wrists.

“I climbed a wall,” Augustus said, grinning suddenly, his crooked teeth lending a strangely youthful expression to his face. “I crept undetected into a fortified temple. You would not have thought I could do it, but I have! Cleopatra’s scholar acquitted himself nicely, by the way. It was kind of you to leave him with me. He rode hard beside me, though he is a scribe and poet, not a warrior. I would imagine you would do as much for me as my historian has done, would you not? Nicolaus has trusted me to save my own country. Will you do the same?”

Agrippa bowed his head.

“I will do the same,” he said, and took the priest’s walking stick from the dead man’s hand. He removed the covering that—yes—hid the suspected blade, and tested its sharpness on his finger. He tossed it to the scholar, who flinched slightly, but then gripped it. Agrippa turned the priest over and found his own knife tucked into the man’s belt. He smiled.

The priest had feared his prisoner. They were not so secure here as they seemed.

He took the priestly robe from the man’s body and threw it over himself. Augustus and Nicolaus pulled their hoods up over their heads, and Usem slipped out the window, pulling himself up onto the roof of the temple, followed by Augustus, wavering but courageous, and Nicolaus, gulping. Usem held out his hand for Agrippa, and the general took it.

“Watch them,” Augustus said, pointing into the courtyard. A guard walked a circle around the statue of Philoctetes. Another guard walked in the other direction, and they crossed each other. The priests were perfectly synchronized, perfectly prepared, though Usem could see only swords, not crossbows.

Agrippa nodded. He was meant to be unconscious in his room. The rest of his legionaries were similarly captive. The temple was not at the same level of readiness it had maintained the night before.

“The quiver will be in a box,” Nicolaus said. “A metal box. The arrows are too dangerous to be left uncovered. The priests will have them secured.”

Agrippa looked at Augustus and smiled. Long ago, in their youth, they’d fought and tricked, learning techniques for attack from a leader of the guard in Apollonia. The emperor smiled back at him. Still, he was not well. He’d lost weight over the past months, and he looked spindly and pale. It was a miracle he was on his feet. He seemed hardly to be drinking the theriac now, and that was a blessing, but Agrippa mistrusted the shaking of his hands.

They were barely concealed on a rooftop overlooking their quarry. It was time for action, not worry. There would be time enough, should they survive this.

Usem waited, counting. The rhythm of the guards marching regained its previous perfection.

“On my signal,” Usem whispered, and he positioned his dagger over his head, aiming carefully. He’d have only one chance. He threw the dagger, watching it twirl through the air, end over end, like a metal bird, a flying, winging thing.

The priest it was aimed at did not see it coming until it slid up to the hilt into his chest.

Agrippa was already leaping down from the rooftop, his sword drawn, Augustus in his wake, gasping with exertion.

The remaining priest had instantly drawn his blade, and he crouched, defending the statue behind him. His eyes were wide and startled, but his hands were steady, and Usem could see by the graceful way the man moved that he’d been trained as a fighter. He motioned to Nicolaus and retrieved the bayonet from the scholar, whose breath could already be heard in panting wheezes. The first fight was never easy. He motioned him back, away from the fighting. He’d be more of a liability than an asset.

Followed by Usem, Agrippa began to circle around the guard, Augustus more tentatively behind them. Agrippa’s focus was divided in order to monitor the terrain. More priests could arrive at any moment, and he needed to hear them. He could hear Augustus’s heart pounding. The priest clearly could as well, for he lunged toward the weakest of the three fighters, his sword flashing in the air.

Augustus seemed to momentarily rally, his back straightening, his jaw tensing. He parried fiercely, in a way that Agrippa remembered from their youth. Suddenly, he saw Augustus as he had been, the wiry fighter of their training days, how he’d fought up and down the hillsides, his small size and reach balanced by his determination to win.

Augustus edged forward, his blade meeting his opponent’s, gaining ground. Behind him, Usem closed in, jabbing with the bayonet.

The priest looked up over the emperor’s shoulder, and squinted. He raised a hand to shield his eyes.

A ploy, certainly.

“Out of the way!” Usem shouted, and Agrippa glanced up, certain he’d see nothing, and instead saw a tremendous blaze of light, a fireball, speeding across the sky.

Agrippa threw his body against the emperor and heaved him clear. At the same moment, he heard Nicolaus shout. The historian waved a metal box at Agrippa.

“Run!” he yelled.

Agrippa grabbed Augustus by the arm, half carrying him to the gate, pursued by priests and swords. Usem was close behind them, defending their rear, his bayonet slashing.

As they launched themselves through the gate and toward the horses waiting for them outside the wall, the fireball arrived in the air above the courtyard.

Agrippa glanced up and glimpsed something with thousands of teeth, something made of molten metal, something with maddened eyes, something humming a strange, ecstatic song. Then it was gone.

“Ride!” Usem shouted. “We cannot stay here!”

Agrippa stumbled and fell against Nicolaus, who dropped the box containing Hercules’ arrows. Agrippa grabbed the arrows and bow in his arms, smashing them back into their vessel.

Usem flung Nicolaus onto his horse, using strength he did not know he possessed. He took Augustus in his arms and pushed him atop his horse as well.

Agrippa started to mount. They must get away from here before the beast, whatever it was, noticed them. None of them were strong enough to fight it.

Agrippa’s eyes blurred suddenly, and he staggered.

The world went dark. Agrippa could hear shouting, feel hands pounding his shoulder, feel himself being dragged along the stones and heaved onto the back of a horse.

He could see nothing. He could hear running feet, the clashing of swords, shouting, and a searing heat overtook his body, beginning in his calf. He could smell metal. A naphtha firepot? The contents would attach to a soldier’s skin and ignite, not quenchable with water but only by smothering. Agrippa had seen them in the Circus Maximus. He’d spent a fortune to obtain the fire that had failed to burn the queen, but he’d never been touched by naphtha.

He prepared himself for the end, whispering what prayers he could remember, wishing only that he had been able to save Augustus. He felt himself beginning to detach from everything he’d been.

In Agrippa’s mind, the world was white and covered in snow.

Then the world was black and covered in raining ash.

Hades would take him. It was an honorable death for a soldier, to die protecting his commander. He tasted his own blood filling his mouth. He inhaled the scent of burning. A pyre, he thought. The rites were being performed for him. He would not wander the shores of Acheron, improperly buried.

Suddenly, though, the smell of burning was replaced by that of sea.

He opened his eyes and found himself tied to a saddle, seated, the ground bouncing beneath him. He thought in a flash of the many captives he had carried over his own saddle. He’d been captured by some invading, fire-wielding army. Were they Parthians? Warriors from Babylonia? He strained his ears for their language, flexed his muscles for any give in the ropes.

Agrippa gritted his teeth and began to twist in the saddle. Before him, he saw a dark, muscled arm, decked in war ornaments.

He became aware of a pain in his calf. It felt as though a red-hot ember had lodged beneath his muscles, as though he were caught in a million-toothed trap. He moaned.

“He wakes,” a voice said in Latin. The horse slowed, and Agrippa found himself looking into the gray eyes of his oldest friend. Augustus’s face showed deep concern.

“My leg,” Agrippa managed.

“You fell on one of the arrows,” Usem said grimly, from in front of Agrippa. The general discovered that he was riding on the Psylli’s horse.

“The temple,” Agrippa managed.

“Sekhmet’s Slaughterer hit it, just as we got you on the horse,” Nicolaus said.

Slaughterer? Agrippa felt himself writhe, his leg cramping and contracting. There was a piece of fabric tied tightly about his thigh. He looked down, expecting his leg to be grievously injured, but it was not. There was a tiny wound on his calf, its edges bright and swollen with inflammation. A clean wound made by a sharp arrow, but pain radiated out from it like lava from the mouth of an erupting volcano. He felt himself, shamefully, screaming in agony. A vial was pressed to his lips, and a caustic, sickly sweet liquid dripped into his mouth.

He knew nothing more.