Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

"Master, why are you leading me this way?" Nyke asked in a whisper. "Morini is on the west slope of Mount Fotia. You are leading us to the east."

The night was dark and they had placed sacking on the hooves of the horses and were moving as silently as possible. It was a moonless night, and the only illumination other than the stars was the glow from atop Mount Fotia, which had been smoldering and sending up clouds of ash and noxious fumes since before Nyke was birthed.

"Yes," Xanthos answered with a low laugh. "And why is it that your searchers from Brixia have never found our secret entrance into our city? It's because you look on the wrong side of the mountain."

Hours later, standing on a shelf of rocks outside the yawning entrance to a cavern on the east slope of Mount Fotia, Nyke held back in fear when Xanthos would have plunged right into the mouth of the cavern.

"This is the Labyrinth of the Underworld, isn't it?" Nyke muttered in awe. "I've never been here, but I have heard of it. Our foretellers came here for signs until they all died of mysterious illnesses. I've heard that to enter here now is to die."

"Yes, it is, and it indeed is a home of the dead," Xanthos answered. "But if you follow me, very close behind me, we will soon be inside Morini. You must trust me, Nyke."

"Yes, yes, I must," Nyke answered. And indeed he had to. His mission was to get inside Morini and return to serve as guide or not return at all.

They walked into the dark, and Xanthos lit a torch. Nyke saw that it was a maze of many choices, many decisions to be made. There were far too many passages leading off from the entrance cavern for him to have any idea which to follow. And it was not in total darkness here, any more than it had been on the trail around the base of the mountain from Brixia. There was a soft glow down some of the passageways and trails of vapors wafting out of the entrances to these shafts as well as others.

Xanthos was doing something strange with the torch. He was not holding it high; he was holding its tip close to the ground and was training his own gaze there as well.

Nyke instinctively moved to his left, assuming that passage they sought was the one farthest away from the ones with the glowing interiors. But as he moved to the entrance, Xanthos grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

"Not that one, little one." He skipped a rock into the dark of the entrance to that passage, and Nyke's stomach turned over as he heard the hollow sound of the rock tumbling down into a hole.

"As I said, stay close to me," Xanthos said. "And watch along the base of the rock walls."

Nyke looked down and then he saw them—painted symbols, small and noticeable only if you were watching closer. But they were there, and by following them through the many winding passages and across crystal-columned caverns, at last they came out into the rear room of a small, unoccupied house in the mountainside wall of Morini at the start of a busy and noisy market day.

Nyke was completely surprised as they led their horses through the bustling streets of the city state toward the consul's villa. He had been led to believe that the three-year-long siege of the town by the forces of Brixia had reduced it to a starving cesspool, but, as much as the smell of the place—indeed of any healthy city state in the world—was that of a dung heap, the town looked prosperous and the inhabitants appeared to be perfectly pleased with their living conditions. And they seemed pleased with Xanthos too, which was the most shocking to Nyke. He was not seized upon as a deserting traitor but was hailed by the more prosperous-looking citizens, who no doubt knew him, and was given way to with bows and admiring looks by all others, who seemed to know of him.

But then the truth dawned on Nyke. Xanthos was held in such esteem in Morini that the citizens had not been told he had deserted lest this imperil the false sense of security they had all taken upon themselves.

"We shall see what we shall see when we get to the consul's villa, though," Nyke thought.

And when they did, Nyke was not all that surprised that as soon as they strode into the reception hall, four hefty guards formed up beside Xanthos, with one of them prodding Nyke off to the side as inconsequential. A tall, straight-limbed and imposingly toggaed man of many years appeared in the doorway opposite to the entrance to the villa.

"Hail, Consul Aeneas," Xanthos boomed out in a voice dripping with affection and totally absent of fear. Nyke admired his courage at this moment.

"So, you return to us, do you, General Xanthos? Enjoy your little excursion, did you? Perhaps you will join me within for a little meeting of the minds."

The consul turned and disappeared from the doorway, and Xanthos followed him, hemmed in closely by four burly, straight-legged, empty-expressioned military guards.

This was what Nyke knew would be one of the trickiest times for him. The plan had never been for Xanthos to regain his place in Morini and serve the interests of Brixia. The functional leaders of Brixia, the senator Ixsandr and general Lykaios never had any use for Xanthos. All that they wanted from him was to show Nyke how to get into and out of Morini. And all Nyke wanted to do at this point was to get safely out of the villa and back to the Labyrinth of the Underworld while he still had the route of the maze in his mind.

"I wouldn't wait around here, if I were you—not unless you want to share the punishment that is being meted out to our traitorous Xanthos." Nyke turned and found he was looking up into the eyes of a handsome, well-built man with auburn hair and laughing hazel eyes, dressed as a servant, older, taller, and more solid than Nyke was and obviously very comfortable in his environment.

"If you come with me and would like to have food in your mouth and a place to sleep in the lap of luxury, I'll perhaps make a position for you here," the young man said. "My name is Cirillo, and I serve the consul Aeneas. But unless you want to be here to explain yourself when the guards reappear, you'd best come with me."

Nyke blindly followed Cirillo into a passageway that led beside a garden atrium and into the bowels of the villa, which was some sort of labyrinth of a century of haphazard expansion. They stopped and then walked more gingerly at the sound of lashing and a man crying out. Cirillo paused at the corner of a doorway and motioned Nyke to peek inside.

Xanthos, naked, was on his knees at the foot of a couch, with his lower belly on the edge of a low divan's surface and his torso stretched up to where his arms v'd out above his hanging head and were bound to posts at either side of the couch. The consul, also naked, and superbly fit for his many years, was crouched over Xanthos's hips and fucking him while half-heartedly lashing at Xanthos's back and buttocks with a many-thonged whip.

After only a glimpse of this, Cirillo took Nyke's hand and led him quickly back into the back labyrinth of the villa, where the furnishings became coarser and the rooms smaller and with less access to the sun. When they reached a small room off a side corridor, with a single narrow couch in it, Cirillo pushed Nyke down in a seated position on the couch and turned to him.

"I serve Aeneas in every way. Am I to surmise that you have served Xanthos in the same way?"

"Yes," Nyke said. It was no shame and he saw no reason to deny it.

"And are you pleased with Xanthos?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't mean politically. Hades may have the lot of them for their politics. I serve no man but myself. And if I could leave this hell hole of a city pretending that life is just as it should be as it quietly starves and creeps to its enslavement, I would do so."

"You would go over to Brixia?" Nyke said, trying to fill the tone of his voice with disbelief and censure.

"In a moment's time, yes. They are the ones who live free on the plains as we grovel here inside our trapping walls. But that's not what I meant. I meant does Xanthos have a cock as good as this one?" Cirillo pulled his tunic over his head and stood there in the nude. His body was beautiful, but neither his body nor his cock were any more beautiful than Xanthos's were. Nyke saw no reason to disappoint or alienate this young man who had rescued him from a quite possibly very sticky situation at the entrance to the villa. And, besides, the young man was very nice and Nyke did need a place to hide until he could return to the labyrinth. And, Nyke did like to be fucked; otherwise he would not be in Ixsandr's special service.

"No, you are beautiful and manly, and superbly manned," Nyke answered.

Cirillo seemed pleased. "I told you back at the entrance that perhaps I could give you a place here. The perhaps is if you will serve me as well as you have served Xanthos. I know you are no simple wine holder. I know a catamite when I see one. Do you service well?"

"As well as you may wish, sire," Nyke said, as he reached out for the cock Cirillo had been stroking. As Nyke opened his mouth to Cirillo's cock, he was thinking, "My good fortune that you take me for a mere catamite and not for a spy."

When Cirillo lifted Nyke's tunic over his head and pushed his back down onto the couch, Nyke spread and lifted his legs and rolled up his hips, and then gasped and cried out and moaned as Cirillo thrust inside him and made him feel that, indeed, the cock of the consul's man was longer, thicker, and more vigorous than that of Xanthos.

Not fully trusting him, Cirillo kept Nyke bound and imprisoned in his room for several days, appearing occasionally and fucking the beautiful small blond with the curly golden hair until, after purposely letting Nyke go for two days without sex, Nyke begged him for the fuck. Then, deeming Nyke completely within his control, Cirillo released him and let him work in the kitchens during the day and come back to his bed in the evening.

For Nyke's part, he played Cirillo's game, always looking for the opportunity to leave, but being totally lost in the maze of the villa. He would not have been impatient about the time it was taking except that the longer this game went on, the less sure he was that he could renegotiate the Labyrinth of the Underworld.

Cirillo solved that problem for him.

One night while they were languidly fucking, Nyke asked, as innocently as he could, "Were you speaking truthfully that first day when you said you had no allegiance to Morini."

"Truthfully," Cirillo answered, and then he let loose with a long litany of all of the ills that Morini had done to him and those he had lost.

"Would that I could leave, I would take you with me," Nyke whispered, worried lest the walls have ears. "But I have no idea how to leave."

"I do," Cirillo answered. "There is a way through the Labyrinth of the Underworld. I know it well."