Collected Short Fiction, page 390
But his foot, as he thrust, slipped into an unseen hole. He dropped forward on his face. His sword hand struck a sharp edge of rock, and the blade went clattering out of his fingers.
Pain from his ankle sickened him. He dragged himself back to his knees, groping desperately for the sword. He found only cold blades of stone. Cold dread stiffened him as he heard feet rush toward him, felt that lunging horn.
“Now, mortal Cretan!” That rolling, distorted bellow was still mockingly familiar. “Die to feed your god!”
Theseus dropped flat again, let the weapon pass above him.
“I’m no Cretan,” he gasped. “And we Greeks have a different rule of hospitality—it is the guest who must be fed!” His voice became a whispered prayer. “Here, Falling Star!”
The echoes rolled into silence, and a startled hush filled the cavern, until:
“Greek?” breathed the other voice. “Falling Star?” The whisper was human, anxious, breathless. “You . . . you aren’t—You can’t be . . . Captain Firebrand?”
Abruptly, Theseus recognized that haunting familiarity. “Cyron!” he cried. “Gamecock—it’s you!”
That long, heavy horn clattered on the rocks—and shattered, so that Theseus knew that it had been only a loose stalactite—and the Dorian pirate lifted him into a hairy embrace.
“It’s good to find you, captain,” sobbed the Gamecock. “Even though you have cost me a meal!”
“Better to find you,” returned Theseus. “For I thought—half thought—that you really were the Dark One!”
“So I planned for every man they send down here to believe,” whispered Cyron. “That ruse is all that has kept me alive, through the years since that metal giant dropped me through the portal—how many years has it been, captain, since my ship was taken?”
“No years,” Theseus told him. “It’s little more than two moons since I sailed our prize to meet the Cretan fleet with that little Babylonian wizard—remember him?”
“Two moons!” gasped the Gamecock. “No more than two moons? Captain Firebrand, I’ve been lost in this frightful darkness for half a lifetime, surely. The cold and wet of these slimy, stinking caves have made an old man of me. Else the horn of the Dark One would have gored you through with the first lunge!”
“And you have met no Dark One,” whispered Theseus, “save yourself?”
“I was half dead with terror,” Cyron said, “when that metal monster tossed me into the Labyrinth. All the warlocks had promised me that their god would be waiting to devour me. But in all the years—or the two moons, if it can be so brief a time—there has been no god here but myself. I have played the Dark One only because even here a man must eat.”
THESEUS had found the Falling Star. His fingers caressed the polished pattern of the inlay in the cold hilt, the smooth clinging edge of the blade. In a soft, breathless voice he said: “Then there is no Dark One?”
“Not here, Captain Firebrand,” said Cyron. “Though I had been crawling and leaping and climbing through these haunted galleries for half a lifetime—so it seemed—before I guessed it.”
His fingers were touching the arms and the shoulders and the face of Theseus, like those of one blind. “It is good to find you, captain,” he whispered.
“So there is no Dark One!” Theseus murmured softly.
“Some chance freak of water and stone must have made this half likeness of a bull-headed man,” Cyron said. “And some ancient Cretan, lost in these caves, found it. He was already afraid, and his own frightened cry echoed into the bellow of an angry bull. So the Dark One was born! Or so at least, after this weary time, the truth seems to me.”
Theseus gripped the Falling Star. “The Dark One is a lie!” A newborn power rang in his voice. “All the sway of Crete—all the dominion of wizardry—is built upon a lie! It is fear that sits upon the throne of Minos. Fear that is the blade of wizardry. And fear without cause!” He stood up, clutching the sword. “This truth is the weapon I have sought, Gamecock. We shall carry it back to the world above. For it is the sword that can scatter all the minions of Minos. It is the torch that can fire the wizardry of Knossos!”
Cyron grunted cynically. “Minos would not encourage you to speak,” he said. “Nor would his subjects dare believe your blasphemy.” He sat down on the wet stone. “Anyhow, it is an idle question, because we can’t get out.”
“We can try,” said Theseus. “Now we have a reason.”
“For all this time I’ve had a reason,” muttered Cyron. “And I’ve tried. There’s no way out. None save the portal through which we entered—and only the brass giant can open that.”
Theseus rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “There’s another way,” he said. “You’ve just proved it.”
“I?” Hope struggled with Cyron’s doubt. “How?”
“When you spoke of the birth of the Dark One. Before the Dark One was known, you said, some lost Cretan must have wandered unwittingly into this evil temple.”
“Well?” said Cyron.
“He didn’t wander through the passage by which we entered,” Theseus told him, “because that is a hewn stair that must have been planned by architects and cut by the labor of many men. Their masters must have known of the cavern already. So there must be an older, natural entrance!”
The Dorian grunted hopelessly. “Perhaps there is—or was two thousand years ago. But we’ve no way of finding it. I have followed a hundred winding passages away from this place of the Dark One—and always, in the end, here I am again!”
His teeth chattered, and his voice sank hoarsely. “Sometimes, Captain Firebrand, I think there is a real evil power in this horned stone, that guides men here to die, for the cavern floor about it is spongy with rotting bones.”
Cold, shuddering, his fingers gripped the arm of Theseus. “Perhaps there is a Dark One!” he muttered. “Perhaps the deity merely lets us deny him for a jest, until, after a thousand blind circles, he brings us back to lay our bones before him.”
“Don’t say that—for there is no Dark One!” But the voice of Theseus trembled uneasily. “Come—at least, we can search for a way.”
“I’ll wait for you here,” muttered Cyron. “In a day or two—with the Dark One for a guide—you’ll be back—and thinking you had almost escaped.” He grunted. “Perhaps when you come—if the warlocks have fed their god again—I’ll have meat for you.”
Theseus was silent for a little time. “I think I know how to find the way,” he whispered at last. “The Falling Star will guide us!”
“A sword!” muttered Cyron. “It can’t speak!”
“It has guided me across the desert and across the sea,” Theseus told him. “My father told me that the metal of it fell out of the northward sky. And still, when it is hung by a hair, its point seeks the North Star.” Cyron grunted doubtfully. “Perhaps you can tell the directions, as you used to at sea,” he muttered, “but what good is that, when we don’t know which way to go?”
“Perhaps,” Theseus said slowly, “I do. Anyhow, the Dark One will not turn us back unawares.”
Cyron rose reluctantly. “Then lead the way,” he said gloomily. “It will be a long one, for men stumbling in the dark. And probably—in spite of your sword—it will end here before this evil figure.”
Theseus had pulled a single long hair from his head. He tied it carefully around the steel blade, at the little nick where it balanced. He waited patiently for the swinging sword to come to rest, then touched it with his fingers.
“This is the way that we must go.” He held the blade, for Cyron to feel its direction. “On beyond the horned rock.”
THE DORIAN followed him. It was not easy to hold any direction, even approximately. They came to blind endings, had to turn back, swing the blade again, try another corridor.
They both were weak from hunger, shuddering and stiff and numb with cold. Raw feet left unseen blood upon the rocks. Sharp ledges cut their naked bodies.
Cyron wanted to turn back. “I was never the resolute man that you are, Firebrand,” he muttered. “I like a good fight—but a good meal more. And, if I go back to the Dark One, Minos will send me one. You are too hard, Firebrand. You are hard, bright metal, like your blade—hard enough to fight the gods.”
“And,” Theseus whispered grimly, “to conquer them!”
“Then go on,” Cyron told him. “I am turning back.”
“Not now, Gamecock,” said Theseus, and touched him with the Falling Star’s point. “You are coming with me—one way or another.” Cyron started, rose stiffly. “Then I’ll come alive,” he gasped apprehensively. “Put away the sword! I know you jest, Firebrand—hope you jest.” His teeth chattered. “But you’re a hard man and set on your purpose. I’ll come with you!”
They climbed on, through endless dripping passages. They swam foul black pools and crawled on thenir faces through slimy crevices, explored blind pockets and retraced their way, and forever swung the sword again to keep the same direction.
Then the time came when Cyron fell and would not rise again. “I’m done, Captain Firebrand,” he whispered feebly. “Slit my throat and drink my blood, and you can go on. But I am done. There may be a Way—but only light could show it to us.”
“Then,” Theseus said, “we shall have light.”
Wrapped about his neck, where it was dry from his body heat, he had. carried the papyrus scroll in which Ariadne had concealed the Falling Star. Tucked in it was a hard flint pebble, that he had brought from the cave of that monstrous stone.
He shredded a corner of the scroll, struck sparks from the flint with the Falling Star’s hilt. The papyrus smoldered, burst into flame—the first gleam that Theseus had seen in all the Labyrinth.
“Light!” sobbed Cyron. “A light!”
“The book of the dead,” said Theseus. “But it can guide the living.”
They went on. Theseus extinguished the tiny torch, when it had shown them a possible path. A dozen times he lit it, and put it out—and always watched the smoke. At last there was a feeble drift aside. They followed it. And when the little flame went out again, the dark was not complete. There was a gray, lingering gleam.
Day!
Breathless and trembling, they climbed toward it. But a great boulder, sometime in the ages, had slipped to block the passage. The narrow open fissure would not admit their bodies.
Weak with exhaustion and want, ill with despair, they lay down under that tiny precious light. Slowly it faded above them, and there was only darkness. It seemed to Theseus, drifting into dull oblivion, that this must be the last night.
But he woke, presently, filled with a new hope and strength. A pale ghostly light was filtering again through the fissure, and it guided the point of the Falling Star. Weathered stone chipped and crumbled, and presently Theseus shook the inert limp form of Cyron. “Come on,” he whispered. “The way is open.”
His words roused the sleeping Dorian, magically. They squeezed through the passage that Theseus had cut, and climbed ragged lips of stone, and came out into a tiny beehive building.
Precious white moonlight poured through the pointed entrance arch. It washed the rush-covered floor, and flooded a tiny altar, where lay offerings of dates and barley cakes, a piece of smoked fish, a bowl of pickled olives, and a jar of sour wine.
“Where—” gasped Cyron.
“What—” He fell before the altar, snatched the fish.
“This is the shrine of Cybele,” Theseus told him. “The Cretans believe that their goddess was born of the earth and the Dark One, through the way we have come, to be the mother—” His mouth was full of dates, and he spoke no more.
The full moon stood high in the heavens, when at last they reeled drunkenly through the pointed arch. The olives of the sacred grove made black shadow masses under its silver flood. The Kairatos Valley lay dark and broad beneath it, and the sleeping city of Ekoros sprawled brown about the sinister hill of slumbering Knossos.
“We have come alive from the Labyrinth.” The voice of Theseus was hushed and savage, and his hand quivered on the Falling Star. “And we have brought back the secret that will conquer Crete!”
Swaying with the wine, Cyron spat date seeds and grunted cynically. “But we have no token of proof,” he muttered. “And blasphemy is the blackest crime. They would send us straight back to the Dark One—and make certain that we stayed!”
XIX.
THESEUS CLIMBED a little way back into the passage. He fumbled in a cavity, and found the thing he had left there—the tiny graven cylinder of the wall of wizardry, strung upon its silver chain. He fastened it about his neck.
Cyron, meantime, had wrapped the remainder of the food up in the altar cloth. They left the shrine, and dawn found them in an abandoned, brush-grown vineyard on the summit of a little rocky hill.
There they spread out their loot, and split the linen cloth to wrap their loins. The cool open air was incredibly fragrant and good, after the fetor of the caverns, and the rising sun was thankful to their long-chilled bodies.
They lay in the sun all morning, one eating and watching while the other slept. In the afternoon they found the thin shade of a gnarled abandoned apple tree, and Theseus talked of his plans, countering the muttered objections of Cyron.
“The Cretans won’t believe us,” Cyron maintained, “for every man who does thereby condemns himself to the Labyrinth.”
“Perhaps,” said Theseus, “but there are men who will believe—our pirates! They are slaves, now—those who are left alive—in the compounds of Amur the Hittite—so I learned when I was admiral. They’ll believe.”
Cyron wriggled his hairy brown body under leaf-filtered sun. “They might,” he muttered. “But what if they do? They are a mere handful, starved and tortured and laden with chains, already beaten by the power of Crete.”
“Then they have reason enough to rise,” said Theseus. “As all the Cretans have! And the truth we bring will cut their fetters and be their swords. There is no Dark One—those very words will conquer Minos!”
“They are good ringing words,” admitted Cyron, “but what are any words, against Phaistro’s galleys and marines, and the Etruscan mercenaries, and the brass might of Talos, and all the power of the Cretan gods?”
Theseus fingered the hilt of the Falling Star. “The Dark One was the greatest god of Knossos,” he said, “and we have conquered him.” A faint smile of eagerness touched his drawn, stubbled face. “The vessel of Cybele has yielded.” His face turned hard again. “There are only Minos and the warlock Daedalus and the Man of Brass—and, like the Dark One, they shall die!”
They left the vineyard when the sun had set, and walked down a road toward Ekoros. Theseus accosted a sweat-stained laborer returning homeward with his hoe, and asked directions toward the slave compounds of Amur the Hittite.
“That’s a strange question!” The farmer looked at them curiously. “Most men are more anxious to leave the pens than to find them. But, if tithes and taxes force you to sell yourselves to Amur, take the left turn beyond the olive grove and cross the second hill—and watch that his guards don’t kidnap you and drink up your price!”
DUSK thickened to night, and the full moon came up beyond the purple eastward hills, before they came to the slave compound. A tall palisade inclosed it, and guards leaned on lances at the entrance gate.
Dropping to all fours, Theseus and Cyron crept silently up through the weeds outside the barrier. Through the poles, they watched the chained slaves being driven in from the long day’s toil.
All the fields about, the farmer had told them, the orchards, gardens, the vineyards, belonged to Amur. His were the brickyards, the pottery, the looms, the smelter. And all his slaves were penned here, like cattle, for the night.
The wind changed, and brought a sour, sickening odor.
In an open place, between the flimsy barrack sheds and the stone trough where the slaves were allowed to drink like horses, a fire burned low. In the bed of coals stood a huge pottery urn, taller than a man, soot-blackened. The urn rang, at intervals, with a dull and muffled scream of agony.
The Gamecock’s lacerated hands were clenched.
“There’s a man in the pot!” he whispered. “But what can we do?” His hairy body shivered in the weeds. “Two men, with one sword—against that wall and twoscore of guards! We’ll be roasting, ourselves, in Amur’s pot!”
“We have the Falling Star!” breathed Theseus. “We have at least one ally within—the one-eyed man, chained to yonder post, is our Tirynthian cook, Vorkos. And we have a battle cry—There is no Dark One!” He gathered himself to rise. “Come on to the gate!”
But the pirate caught his arm. “Wait, Captain Firebrand!” he whispered hoarsely. “Here come fighting men!”
He pointed, and Theseus saw torches flaring on the road from Ekoros. Light glittered on the tips of lances. A silver horn snarled. Theseus and the Dorian dropped back in the weeds, to watch.
The torches came up to the compound’s gate. A squad of Amur’s yellow-belted guards led the way. Behind them four slaves carried the Hittite’s yellow-curtained palanquin. Behind the palanquin marched a group of black Minoan priests, with lances.
Amur’s voice rasped to the guards by the gate: “I have promised a gift to the gods. Three strong youths and three beautiful girls. They will be trained for the next bull vaulting, and any that survive will go to feed the Dark One. For the gods have favored me. My enemy, Phaistro, has gone to the Labyrinth for treason. And I am the admiral of Crete!”
His voice was a feral snarl. “Quick, officer! Light torches and drag out the strongest young men and the most beautiful girls—those that came in the last ship from the north—so that the priests of Minos can choose.”
In the shadows, Theseus touched the arm of Cyron. “Wait,” he whispered, “until the slaves are brought.”
“I’ll wait.” The Dorian shuddered. “Even longer!”
