Labyrinth

"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."

* * * *

Weeks later, Cirillo was standing on the terrace of the Senator Ixsandr's villa in Brixia, waving to the vanguard of the army of Brixia as it was departing the city for the eastern side of Mount Fotia. At the head of the army was General Lykaios, and beside him rode the servant Nyke, put in the front of the column as guide through the Labyrinth of the Underworld.

Cirillo waited until dark, giving Brixia's army time to enter the maw of the labyrinth. Then he stole along the corridor of the senator's villa, meeting no one to challenge him, as Ixsandr had assured him would be the case. Cirillo had spent considerable effort cultivating the senator since he and Nyke had escaped from Morini. Cirillo had become Ixsandr's favorite, which was why Cirillo had not accompanied the forces of General Lykaios as auxiliary guide—there had been quite a row over that between the senator and the general, but the senator simply would not part with his new lover.

As Cirillo massaged Ixsandr's back, his mind wandered to the image of the forces of Morini entering the maw of the labyrinth and following the signs at the base of the wall, the signs that Morini's consul, Aeneas, had caused to be reset after he and Nyke had passed through, the reset signs that would pull the Morinis ever deeper, ever more confusingly into the heart of the volcano and the welcoming arms of its noxious fumes.

Ixsandr raised his hips, which was a sign for Cirillo to pull his cock through and stroke it as his lips went to Ixsandr's hole, opening it up for the last cocking. Once Ixsandr was moaning and begging for the thrust, Cirillo reached under the couch and then crawled over Ixsandr and mounted his hips and thrust inside him. Ixsandr yelped and cried out and clawed at the sides of the couch as Cirillo's cock thrust inside his channel and, with each of those thrusts, Cirillo's dagger thrust into Ixsandr's back.

Across the plain, on the western slope of the glowing Mount Fotia, the Brixia consul, Aeneas, had just finished fucking and whipping his lover, Xanthos, the two now exhausted after a coupling that brought out the depths of passion in both of them. Aeneas unbound Xanthos, and they stretched out on the sleeping couch in each other's arms, as Aeneas kissed the welts on his lover's torso.

"There has been no alarm from the street," Xanthos murmured. "That is a good sign. None of them have made it through the labyrinth and to the wall. We have men in force there just in case, but there seems nothing for them to do. Cirillo has done well. He sent word that he would take care of Senator Ixsandr personally. Brixia decapitated in one blow. We can open the gates of the city again."

"Yes, but it is a big price for Cirillo to pay," the consul murmured. "I did so enjoy Cirillo. And he was the best of my special spies."

"No, master," Xanthos answered. "Cirillo should be safe if he's kept his wits about him and the gods are favorable. I told him to steal out of Brixia in the confusion and to remain in the wilderness at a town called Theron for a week. By then we will have remarked the passage through labyrinth. We have it marked by cuttings as well as the painted symbols, so we can easily restore the route. Cirillo will be back in your arms soon and with many an interesting secret to tell us about Brixia."

As the two cooed and kissed and ran their hands over each other's bodies in anticipation of the return of Aeneas's man strength and desire to be moving deep inside Xanthos, a figure felt safe at last to move from the shadows near at hand into the deeper shadows of the chamber and beyond. As he silently glided out of the chamber, the consul's night steward, Dymas, kept going over the phrase in his mind so that he would not forget it, "Cirillo in the village of Theron." He would go directly to his messenger who would then contact the men of Cenopolis who lingered outside of the city to the north of Mount Fotia. The time was ripe for his city. Not only was Brixia crippled by the loss of its army and of its functional rulers, but Morini also was ripe for the picking in its false sense of security. And the spy Cirillo was the key. There was so much he could tell the men of Cenopolis with a bit of persuading. Not only the secrets of Brixia but the way into Morini as well.