Killer — David Drake

IT WAS IN A CAGE THE FIRST TIME HE SAW IT

Lycon was the greatest of the beast hunters who fed the bloody maw of Rome's Coliseum. He had trapped tigers in India--lions in the hills of Macedon--elephants where the Mediterranean surges against the foot of the Atlas Mountains.

How was he to know that the beast he hunted this time came from a star whose light had not yet reached Earth?

The beast's ferocity had been obvious from the first. But when it escaped and Lycon followed its track of slaughter from the grimiest tenements of Rome to the heights of Imperial splendor, he realized two things more: the creature wanted his life as badly as he wanted its; and the creature was just as intelligent as he was. Only one of them would survive--and the fate of Earth itself depended on the winner of their savage duel.