The Bastard of Crete
The moon hung full over Crete, and the Palace of Knossos ought to have been sunk in quiet. Instead, the whole place had been turned on its head.
"Move! Spearmen and shield-bearers, assemble in the central courtyard!"
"Which road, sir?"
"The food stores!"
Ariadne had already gone to bed. The urgent shouting and the rush of feet beyond her door startled her upright, and she found dozens of soldiers pounding down the corridor in full arms. She flung the door open in nothing but a thin nightgown with a robe thrown over it, and a familiar silhouette caught her eye as it slipped out of King Minos's bedchamber.
"Brother!"
It was her own brother, Deucalion.
Brother is armed....
He was. The cold bronze sword in his hand flashed beneath the torches lining the corridor. Ariadne hurried to him and caught his arm.
"What in the world is happening? Why are the soldiers up in the middle of the night...."
At his sister's question, Deucalion clamped his mouth shut. He glanced around, then forced the words out in a strangled voice.
"......A monster has escaped the Labyrinth."
"What?"
Ariadne's eyes went wide.
The Labyrinth. Daedalus's masterpiece, the maze they said no one who entered could ever leave. If something had escaped from there, it could only be the thing inside.
Then....
"The monster of the Labyrinth......? You don't mean Asterion, do you?"
The instant that name left her lips, Deucalion's face twisted, and he seized her shoulder hard.
"Do not speak that wretched bastard's name in front of me!"
"Ah—that hurts, Brother......"
"Because of that monster! Did you not see with your own eyes what became of Mother because of him? Mother lost her mind, and Father lost his laughter. He is Crete's shame and its calamity. He is no brother of ours, and he is certainly no man! He is nothing but a monster!"
His fury rang down the corridor, loud enough to shake it. Ariadne did not retreat. Her voice trembled, but she answered him.
"But...... it isn't that child's fault! He was only born! Father knows that too. That's why he couldn't bring himself to kill him, and put him in the Labyrinth instead......"
"Silence, Ariadne. Speak one more word in that monster's defense, and I will not forgive you, sister or not."
Deucalion clenched his teeth and shoved her roughly away.
"Get in your room and bar the door. No matter what you hear, do not come out. Tonight I will cut short the sin our mother committed. I will end it myself."
He did not look back. His cloak snapped behind him as he strode off after the soldiers.
Left alone, Ariadne sank to the floor, her face gone white.
Asterion.
He had been born in the shape of a monster, and yet to her he was still, unmistakably, the half-brother who had come from the same mother's womb.
He means to kill him......
She staggered back to her room. She could not simply cower in a corner and shake.
Brother Deucalion is shaking too.... Brother is gentle.... He's afraid. Afraid of killing a brother who came from the same womb....
Her gaze fell on the loom in the corner.
The cloth rasped.
With a dagger she roughly sheared free the long, sturdy length she herself had been weaving.
I don't want him to have to live with regret....
She wound the rough, unfinished veil over her head and face, slipped quietly from the room, and set off after the subjugation force, following in silence with her breath held.
At that same moment, before the vast Food Storage No. 1 on the outskirts of the palace.
"Th-there! What is that!"
A soldier standing watch with a torch leveled his spear at a figure walking out of the dark.
"Who goes there! Halt at once!"
The approaching shape gave no answer. It only staggered closer, and when the torchlight reached it, the form came clear.
"Hiiik......!"
The soldier who had aimed his spear recoiled in horror.
"Ugh...... ughhh......"
The one lurching toward them was unmistakably the Junior Guard who had been posted to the Labyrinth watch.
"Hey! Are you all right? You're one of the Labyrinth guards, aren't you!"
A few of the soldiers found their courage, came forward, and caught him as he nearly collapsed.
The Junior Guard was a wreck. His trousers were soaked where he had wet himself, and thick, sticky drops of blood had dried across his face.
And then—
"What in the gods' names happened to you? Did that monster chase you here?"
They pressed him urgently, but the Junior Guard stared into empty air with his eyes completely unfocused, jaw hanging, drool sliding from his mouth. The sound of the Senior Guard's skull being smashed kept repeating inside his head, over and over without end.
"Ahh...... aaaah......"
"Pull yourself together!"
That was when it came.
A wet crunch. From the gap of the open door the Junior Guard had staggered out of, something was chewing and swallowing like a madman. Bone cracked. Hide ripped.
"Huk!"
"M-monster......!"
The color drained from the faces of the soldiers holding the Junior Guard up. The moment they were certain that the ravenous feeding inside the storehouse was the sound of human bone and flesh being chewed, they backed away, weapons trembling in their hands.
"Form ranks! Anyone who retreats will be beheaded!"
Deucalion arrived in that instant. Leading the spearmen, he ringed the square before the food store in layer upon layer, and hundreds of torches lit the entrance as bright as noon. He stood at the very front with his sword drawn, glaring into the darkness still shut inside. Sweat seeped into the hand that gripped the hilt.
I'm afraid.
Deucalion admitted it plainly. Both his legs were shaking. The carnage from the day the monster had first run mad through the palace was still carved into him, vivid as a brand.
That bastard, born of their mother's sin, had taken a mere two years—only two—to shoot up in a grotesque spurt of growth and surpass Deucalion himself, a grown man. Dozens of Crete's finest warriors had thrown themselves on him to drag him down, and every time the monster swung his arms, armed soldiers were swept aside like dead leaves.
That monster has already been shut in the Labyrinth for five years.
Deucalion swallowed hard. It struck him that the thing that had butchered soldiers five years ago had not even been fully grown. He had been nothing but a two-year-old. Then what of the presence now inside that storehouse, chewing on human flesh? How vast had it become? How savage? He could not even dare to imagine it.
But he could not run. He was to be the next king of Crete. That ugly sin their mother had committed—
I am the first son of that womb. I have to wash it clean with my own hands.
As the eldest, he had to put down the last son.
"Draw! The instant you see anything through the gap, loose!"
At his command, dozens of archers drew their bowstrings taut toward the storehouse entrance.
Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.
"Haaah! Fuck, I get to live!"
Outside, Deucalion and his soldiers could burn their guts raw with whatever grim resolve they liked. Inside the food store, I had completely lost my mind.
Crack. Crunch. In one hand I held a smoked ham the size of a man's thigh, and in the other a hunk of salt-cured meat, and I shoved both into my mouth like a lunatic. It didn't matter whether the stuff was cooked, raw, or packed in so much salt it numbed my tongue.
"Keuuuugh! Urk!"
Maybe I'd stuffed it in too fast, and far too much of it.
"Uweeeegh—"
My stomach screamed at the sudden bomb of protein and sodium and heaved everything back up. Half-chewed meat spilled across the floor. I didn't stop.
"If I threw up, that just means there's room in my gut again, right?"
I wiped the vomit off my mouth with a rough swipe, snatched the meat off the floor, and bit straight back into it. I ate in a trance.
When I'd been smashing through the walls, I honestly thought I'd turned into some high Buddhist monk. I'd been soaked in every lofty notion there was—dew boring through stone by single-minded devotion, enlightenment beyond the dusty world.
Enlightenment, my ass.
I swallowed a whole slab of ham and snorted.
"Enlightenment is a luxury for bastards with full bellies! Right now this is the mortal world, and the mortal world is fucking king! All hail meat!"
I crawled through the storehouse, savoring every pleasure the flesh had to offer, until I found the enormous casks stacked neatly in a corner. A thick, biting-sweet smell stabbed the tip of my nose. Wine.
"Water! I was dying of thirst—perfect timing!"
Pop. Crack. I jammed my blunt fingers between the staves and ripped the cask open where it stood. Crimson wine poured down like a waterfall. I threw my mouth wide and drank.
"Kraaaah!"
Sweet, bitter alcohol slid down my throat and lit a thrilling fire. It was the first drink I had ever tasted in this grotesque half-man, half-bull body, and it met a stomach that had been empty only moments before, now packed with an outrageous amount of food. The sudden crash of a food-coma and a lifetime's first alcohol made a combination that was nothing short of lethal.
"Huh......? Why's everything spinning......"
The strength went out of my legs.
I dropped.
Still clutching a chunk of ham, I collapsed onto a heap of enormous grain sacks.
"Belly's full...... my back's warm...... this is nice......"
My eyelids grew heavy as stone. There might have been some commotion outside, but what the hell did I care? I was already sinking into sleep, wrapped in a happy fullness.
Drrrrrng. Puhuuu—
Krrrrrng! Kyaaaak!
A moment later, a snore began to shake the food store, like some enormous beast roaring.
Krrrrrng! Kyaaaaaak!
Outside the food store—
"Hiiiik!"
"Th-the monster's coming out!"
Even the men in the front line, shields locked tight in their fists, flinched and took a step back. Deucalion's face had gone as white as paper.
That dreadful howl. It could only be the war cry of a monster drunk on blood after chewing men apart, lost to frenzy. Any moment now, it seemed, a huge beast painted in gore would burst from that darkness and slaughter them all.
"Hold the line! Do not retreat!"
Deucalion bellowed, the veins standing out in his neck.
Crete's finest army held its ground and nothing more, locked in a standoff around a single Minotaur who was only snoring through a drunken sleep. In the meantime, a woman in a veil with loose threads dangling from it managed to slip around to the back of the storehouse.
Ariadne had followed the subjugation force in breathless silence. She avoided the front of the storehouse, lit bright as day by the torches, and hid herself in the dark behind it.
The night air of the Cretan palace was cool. She had come out in nothing but a thin robe, and her shoulders shivered whenever the wind blew, but she had no room left to feel the cold. Her heart was hammering in her ears. Her gaze climbed the vast wall sunk in darkness, up to the small vent near the top—the only passage through which she could look inside.
"Nnnnngh—!"
She hiked her skirt so it would not tangle her and, groaning, began shoving the wooden crates scattered nearby in under the vent. She was a princess who in all her life had never lifted anything heavier than a gold ornament. Rough grain and a protruding nail scraped the back of her fair hand, leaving a red mark and a bead of blood, but she bit her lip hard and stacked the crates anyway.
I have to see. I have to confirm it with my own eyes.
At first she had been afraid.
Krrrrrng! Kyaaaak!
She lost count of how many times she hunched her shoulders at the roar rolling out of the storehouse, loud enough to split the air. If Cerberus of the underworld ever barked, would it sound like that? It was close to something no human throat could produce, raw rage mixed into the sound itself. While she stacked the crates her heart beat so hard she could barely breathe. Ariadne pressed a hand to her sweating brow and leaned back against the cold wall of the storehouse, and the chill of the stone against her cheek seemed to cool, just a little, the fever boiling in her head.
Maybe...... I should go back. Would it have been better to hide under my bed, just as Brother said?
Fear came over her. They said the thing beyond that door was a monster that tore people apart and ate them. What reckless thing was she doing?
And yet, strangely, every time she leaned against the wall her heart grew calm.
The wall...... isn't shaking.
Yes. Her half-brother, Asterion, had broken out of Daedalus's famously unbreakable Labyrinth by his own strength. With power like that, he could have fled anywhere he pleased, even with Brother Deucalion and the soldiers encamped outside. A mere food-store wall or door should have been smashed long ago, and he should already have burst out and trampled everyone beyond it.
But the wall at her back did not so much as tremble. It was perfectly still. Only the howl rang on at a steady rhythm. She felt no impact at all of anything trying to break its way out.