Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

T HE B ULL M AN Fully awake though he remained, the next few hours passed like a fevered dream for Theseus. He had met the woman with whom he was destined to share his life. The gods were good. He had no way of calculating the passage of the hours. The sea-captain was the first of the Athenians to wake. He came over to Theseus and they looked down at the sleeping young people. They lay on the floor, arms encircling one another – the very flower of Athenian youth. ‘They say the monster kills quick,’ said the captain. ‘In with the horns and up with its head, slicing through to the lung and heart. There are worse deaths.’ ‘It is the Minotaur who dies today.’ ‘My lord?’ ‘Let us suppose I am chosen first, but that I return here the way I came. Are you ready to prepare the others for a fight?’ ‘We have no weapons.’ ‘I’ll see what I can do about that.’ ‘It is good of you to plant the seed of hope but – great Zeus, what was that?’ The captain broke off and stared about him, a look of terror on his face. A sound like none that they had ever heard came to their ears from deep within the palace. It had begun as a deep, mournful bellow and was swelling now into a great roar of rage. Theseus put a hand on the sea-captain’s shoulder. ‘Our friend the Minotaur has woken up and is calling for his breakfast.’ As he spoke the door opened and four soldiers marched in followed by an overweight and self-satisfied-looking captain of the guard. ‘Up! Get up, the pack of you!’ he barked, strutting round and kicking the prisoners awake. ‘Let’s see … who shall we pick, eh?’ The young Athenians shrank back and tried to look invisible. ‘You!’ The captain stabbed his forefinger at Theseus. ‘Yes, you. Follow me.’ The other Athenians covered their natural feelings of relief at being spared by offering far from convincing cries of shocked distress. ‘No, no! Not Prince Theseus!’ One even dared to call out ‘Take me! Take me instead!’ Theseus quietened them. ‘Brave friends,’ he said. ‘I go willingly and gladly to meet my fate. Fear not, we shall meet again and laugh at the memory.’ The captain of the guard pushed him towards the door. Theseus pressed the ball of thread into his armpit and trusted that the unnatural way his arm hung could be put down to fear. As they marched away down a dark corridor, the captain gave him a long sideways look. ‘What you do to upset the Princess Ariadne, then? She begged me to make sure the tall one with copper hair be taken to the labyrinth first. What you say to her?’’ ‘I can’t imagine.’ ‘Must have said something.’ ‘Perhaps it’s the way I looked at her.’ ‘Well you’re going to pay the price, sure enough.’ They approached a giant bronze gate into which was set a smaller door which the captain opened. ‘In you go, mate. If you can find your way back to this door, why then … but no one ever has and no one ever will.’ He gave Theseus a push through. ‘Give the bull man my regards.’ The door closed behind him and Theseus was in darkness. It was not total darkness; far above at roof level were gratings that let in enough moonlight to pick out the damp edges and corners of the passageway in which he found himself. He stood for a while, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to these new conditions. A lick of light showed him the small door he had come through. He tried its handle. It was unlocked! ‘Oh no you don’t, mate,’ came the sneering voice of the captain of the guard. ‘I’m staying here till I know you’ve gone.’ Theseus felt the door being pushed closed against him. Never mind, there was a stud on his side around which he could wind the end of his thread. He turned now and walked away from the door, playing out the thread behind him as he went. It was like no other experience he had known. At first he felt the floor rising, then he turned a corner and it sloped downwards. He started in shock as he made out the shape of a man creeping stealthily towards him. He laughed when he d that it was his own reflection in a panel of polished bronze. This happened four more times as he went on. Corners and blind recesses baffled him. He was sure at one point that he had come full circle and yet he could tell from the smell and the continuing downward slope that this could not be so. He became aware of distant sounds that grew in volume the further he pressed on: snuffling and stamping, baying, grunting and growling. There was a forlorn quality to the way the growls and grunts were being pushed out that reminded Theseus of something. He was on the verge of placing it when he stepped on something that crunched under his feet. He stooped to pick up a human rib bone, and then another and another. ‘Asterion, O Asterion!’ he called. ‘I’m coming for you …’ He leaned against a wall and looked down a long corridor from which came more light than he had seen for the past half hour. A high roof, open to the sky, poured moonlight down into what he believed must be the heart of the labyrinth. He had made so many turns; he had ascended and descended more than he could recall and had almost collided with dozens of mirrors and dead ends. Seemingly he had doubled back and redoubled his course multiple times, looping round and up and along the same passageways, but – if the clue he was leaving, the thread, was to be believed – this was an illusion. The genius of the design seemed to lie as much in the appearance of complexity as in its reality. The labyrinth induced panic and eroded self-belief. As Theseus approached the central room, a smell of rotting flesh, shit and urine met his nostrils. He laid the almost depleted ball of thread down and left it on the ground, coughing at the putrid stench. The stone floor was level here and he could be confident that his lifeline would not roll away. He was delighted to find himself completely unafraid, yet puzzled to feel his heart beating thunderously in his chest nonetheless. Could he be frightened and not aware of it? A shuffling, growling and stamping came from up ahead. So much bright silver light poured down from the open roof high above that Theseus had to open and close his eyes wide to see properly. He was in the Minotaur’s lair. He was treading on bones, clods of manure and damp straw which Theseus guessed had been dropped in from the roof above. Silence but for the thudding of his own heart and the alternate crunching and slushing of his footsteps. But now a new noise, a scraping of horn against stone. Something in the corner was moving. A form arose in the corner and emerged from the shadows. Red eyes burned as they looked towards the mortal man who had dared approach. ‘Hello there …’ said Theseus. He had meant his words to be loud and clear, but they came out as a whisper. The great head was raised and the Minotaur let loose a mighty bellow. The roar echoed off the stone and down the four corridors that ran from this central chamber. Theseus stepped in from the head of his corridor. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘you can’t threaten me with that. Any bull in a field can roar.’ Theseus’s eyes were able to pick out more and more detail. The Minotaur was standing upright now on its two human legs. The head was huge, the horns sharply pointed. The neck widened onto human shoulders, the chest below was matted with fur-like hair or hair-like fur that patched the whole body. A great pizzle swung between the legs, almost reaching the two hoofs that banged and scraped on the stone flags. The creature stopped roaring and looked sideways at Theseus. A long string of drool fell from its chops. ‘You’re a sight, aren’t you?’ said Theseus. ‘Does no one ever wash this place down?’ They both raised their heads at the same time to look at the square of light above. Theseus laughed at the comical synchronization. ‘I really believe you understood me.’ The Minotaur growled, snorted and grunted. Theseus realised with a stab of astonishment what it was that had struck him earlier as so strange about the creature’s voice. It mimicked the rhythms of human speech. He was unaccountably certain that the Minotaur was trying to speak, but that the bovine vocal cords with which he had been born were incapable of fashioning the right sounds. ‘You’re trying to speak, aren’t you?’ The hoarse cry that came from the bull’s head was surely an affirmation. ‘You poor thing. Asterion, that is your name? Asterion, listen to me. I know the way out of this maze. Why don’t you come with me? We will sail for Athens. I will make sure you have a field to yourself.’ Something like a howl emerged and the animal’s great dewlaps shook. ‘No? What then?’ The Minotaur stood tall and screamed. ‘Shush now. Try to help me understand,’ said Theseus, quite unfazed. ‘Surely anything is better than a fight? There can only be one outcome. I will kill you. I wouldn’t want that. Now that I’ve met you I find that I like you.’ Now the Minotaur strained to make a new noise. It summoned all its breath and focussed it into a whine that sounded in Theseus’s ears like ‘Hill he! Hill he!’ Then he understood. ‘Kill me? You’re saying kill me?’ The Minotaur dropped his great head in a form of assent. ‘Kill you? Don’t ask me that.’ The Minotaur reared up. ‘Hill he! hill he!’ Theseus rose to his full height too. ‘Let it be a duel at least,’ he said. ‘You kill me … kill me!’ So saying he aimed a kick at a heap of dung. Thick pieces flew up into the Minotaur’s face. ‘Come on, then!’ The creature gave a roar of outrage as flecks of his own faeces stung his eyes. He stamped his hoofs, shook his head and lunged at Theseus. Theseus stepped left and then right, goading the Minotaur to come at him. It shook its head one way and the other in confusion. ‘Yah! Yah! Come on now,’ shouted Theseus, backing towards a wall. It made up its mind, lowered its horns and charged. Theseus leapt aside at the last moment and the Minotaur crashed headfirst into the stone wall. The left-hand horn snapped with a great crack and hung down loose. Theseus rolled forward in a somersault, wrenched the horn free and before the dazed creature had time to know what was happening, he thrust the sharp point deep into the folds of its throat and pulled viciously across, severing the windpipe. The eruption of blood covered Theseus from head to foot. The creature stamped about in a jerking dance as more and more blood jetted out from its neck in a fountain. Its hoofs slipped on the blood-wet stones and it fell, shuddering to the ground. Theseus knelt beside it and talked gently into its ear. ‘I send you to your eternal rest with all speed and respect, Asterion. The world will know that you died a brave and noble death.’ The act of slashing the creature’s neck must have loosed the tight vocal cords that moments earlier had denied it the power of speech. Now, despite the blood bubbling from the open gash in its throat, it managed to speak. Theseus heard as clearly as from an orator on the Acropolis the words ‘Thank you’ before the creature’s ghost departed its monstrous body. ‘Farewell, bull man,’ breathed Theseus. ‘Farewell, Asterion, son of Pasiphae, son of the Bull from the Sea, the Cretan Bull, the Marathonian Bull. Farewell brother of the beautiful Ariadne. Farewell, farewell.’