They had seen the great red mud-walled city from the far bank of its wide river, the smoke of their cooking fires meaning it had not been long abandoned at our approach. The Legion crossed ahead of them at the narrow stone causeway to its opening that faced the river with instruction to take the walled city and signal when it was secured.
Within, the Legion marched, the path narrow, allowing no more that two at a time. And warriors lining the high mud walls of the city of death on both sides. The legions encountering no hostility or violence. But the Labyrinth, long and winding down its single path reached an end that led to no palace or marketplace.
And then there were Women. The one above the end of the path, Tall, Physically strong and beautiful, black-skinned and short cut black hair, in armour, and a spear in her hands like the rest of the warriors, though she did not wear the face-obscuring helmet of bronze common with Greeks that every other warrior, man and woman, lining the wall of the Labyrinth wore.
I would like to tell you the Commander at the front of this intruding army spoke politely, and conveyed to her that we were not here to sack and burn her city, and rape her fellow citizens.
Rather that the commander approached to speak with the ruler of this place. I would like to tell you that is what happened. But this man was a soldier of the Empire. The sum total of his negotiation skills involved the point of a sword. He might have once negotiated with a merchant in a village market place of whatever tribe he hailed from in his youth before military service, but years of rape and murder with an army at his back had made him a different kind of man.
He insulted her. I can't tell you the words he would have used. And though several Legionaires scaled the walls quickly, taking the conflict to the battlements with the aid of those they climbed up, it was still a massacre with no survivors. Warriors with long bronze spears stabbing down into the confined army.
A few legionaires, facing the reality that there was nothing here but ambush and death, retreated back along the miles long length of the winding labyrinth, one at last even approaching the entrance and its causeway before he was cut down.
The stone causeway was marked by large circlular stones, the tops of columns sunk deep into the river and its silts. But the rest of the causeway was as though it were cobbled stones. No citizens fetched water at the river bank, nor were any in view around the odd building that looked like a cluster of close, windowless dwellings, but likely was the palace of the King of the city. It sat unwalled on the bank of the river to the right of the walled 'city' and did not have pathways between the dwellings indicating they were a single structure.
The causeway entrance was being swept by an old man. Elderly and pale having not burned under the daily toil of the Sun. He was going bald but for a white laural of hair, and a long white beard and moustach down to a point on his chest, hanging over his heavy grey wool robes. And he stepped onto the second Chariot behind the armoured rooster driving its horse, the King of the Labyrinth placing his left hand on the driver's right shoulder reasuring them to their slaughter.
And I, the ghost of Theseus, followed them into the Labyrinth, having myself never truly escaped, enthralled by the horror of their end. And bound to guide them from the Labyrinth to far off Hades on their death.
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