“Will she fight alone?” Augustus asked the boy.

The boy shrugged.

“It will not matter,” said Agrippa. “We are Romans. Have we not fought on plains and in mountains? Have we not fought our way through the cities of Babylonia and the forests of Germany? We have fought at Cumæ and at Avernus.”

“Not well,” Augustus pointed out. The fumes of the crater lake had sickened the men. Birds were said to die midair above the place.

“My men are prepared, and we have our weapon now.”

Augustus returned to the messenger, outside the doors of the study, and handed him a coin.

“Tell your mistress we will meet her.”

He wondered if he imagined what he saw next. The striped, shining fur, the boy mounting the beast’s back as though he were mounting a horse, the liquid stalking motion of the thing, and moments later, the lashing tail disappearing around the corner of the courtyard wall.

Shaking his head to dispel the vision, he returned to his study, where Agrippa had taken the bow from its box. Wincing at the pain in his still festering calf, Agrippa attempted to draw the bow, straining at its string.

“We need not use Hercules’ bow,” Augustus pointed out. “The poison is in the arrows.”

Agrippa was still weak, Augustus knew, and moreover, the bow was meant to be drawn only by a hero, which Agrippa clearly was not.

Augustus had no doubts about himself in this regard. He would draw the bow when the time came. He would fire the arrows. He would kill the queen. It was his fated task, and he was the only one who would perform it.

Agrippa looked nervously at the arrows.

“I prefer the sword,” he said.

“As do I,” said Augustus. “We do not have that luxury. One arrow, and this will be done. One arrow, and she will be gone. Think of that. Do not worry. I will take charge of the bow.”

“I must prepare my men to march,” said Agrippa. He wanted the Hydra arrows returned to their grave, far from here. His calf blistered and seeped. It was wrapped in layers of bandages, and still it did not heal. He’d die of this wound, if not soon, then eventually. He knew it in his bones. He tightened the bandage about the leg and limped from Augustus’s study.

Augustus deliberated about the princes of Egypt. At last, he decided to leave them in Rome, safely caged in their silver room. They were children, and he would not bring them into battle. He could not bring himself to kill them. He could not bring himself to let their mother kill them, either, as he was certain she would.

He would win this battle with the arrows of Hercules, and she would be conquered, completely this time. He had the seiðkona and the Psylli. He had the powers of the Western Wind and of memory. He had Agrippa’s armies. What did she have?

No matter what Cleopatra and Sekhmet were capable of, they could not beat back all the forces of Rome.