Chapter 40: No Minotaur, Just a Coward

The ground changed instantly, one stride the horse was pounding along packed earth, and the next it was picking its way over broken slabs and half-buried walls.

Dawn caught the tops of the stones, in places the broken walls stood taller than a man, built by hands that had finished the job before Rome existed to steal the idea. The sky had gone the hue of a fresh bruise, while everything below remained buried in darkness.

Vito had wanted to see this place with his own eyes since he read about the myths. Now he was seeing it at a gallop, mostly blind, chasing a stranger through the ruins of.

He shouted to nobody in particular, his breath tearing at his chest. "If there is a bull-headed bastard waiting in here, I want it known that I came unarmed! And I would appreciate a moment to negotiate before we begin killing one another!"

Instead of a minotaur’s cry, hoofbeats answered ahead and to the left, then disappeared behind a stretch of the wall.

Vito hauled the reins in that direction and let the horse run, because at this point speed had proved considerably more useful than judgment, and judgment had very little to say about where they were going.

He had to cut passage between two collapsed walls, his knee scraping stone as the horse squeezed through at a dead run.

On the other side the ground climbed in a mess of fallen blocks. The horse misjudged it, caught its front legs, and pitched Vito forward hard enough to bury him against its neck.

"Ma va’, amico. A little warning next time," he muttered into the mane.

The horse recovered and kept going as if it had not just tried to throw its rider into a thousand-year-old wall.

The hoofbeats disappeared behind another long stretch of stone, swallowed as neatly as if the ruins had been built for the purpose. For many strides Vito had nothing to follow except instinct.

Then a stone shifted under the ground to his right, still rocking from the hoof that had kicked it loose moments before. Some torn scrub dragged across the stones in a narrow line, toward a gap in the wall.

That was enough.

He turned the horse into it, cutting down a run of ancient, shallow steps. They had been worn smooth by feet that climbed them for reasons nobody had bothered to remember, let alone write down, for a thousand years.

Vito had no idea where they led, but he had already learned that ancient places were full of surprises and that most of them were waiting to break.

Then he heard hoofbeats again, closer this time.

The distance between them was shrinking, either by instinct or dumb luck.

The ruins parted open into an ancient court, ringed by the stumps of pillars so thick that two men could have linked arms around them and still failed to meet.

Across the open ground, low and fast, Vito finally saw the man he had been chasing. He was hunched over his horse’s neck, his cloak snapping behind him like a black flag, giving the broken pillars a generous berth.

Vito did the opposite.

He drove the horse straight between the stumps while stone flashed past close enough to scrape his boots. When he burst out the other side, he was close enough to hear the man’s breathing.

The man looked back.

That was when Vito got a good look at his face, and whatever hope the fellow had possessed of escaping with his identity was already in serious trouble.

Beyond the court, the ground flattened into the remains of an old road, broad enough for two desperate horses to run side by side. Vito drew even, boot against boot.

The other horse was already blowing hard and beginning to lose ground.

There would not be a better moment.

So Vito did not waste time looking for one.

He released the reins, braced his boot against the stirrup, and threw himself sideways across the distance before the smart part of his mind could object.

His shoulder struck the man squarely in the ribs and both men came out of their saddles together, wrapped in cloak, reins, and general bad judgment.

The ground rose to meet them at considerable speed and with no sympathy whatsoever. They hit hard, rolled once across the broken pavement, and came to rest in a cloud of dust, Vito’s weight landing mostly on top of the other man.

The horses screamed and bolted in opposite directions.

That left the two men alone in the dust.

The fellow underneath him made a cry that contained no cleverness at all. It was high, startled, and perfectly frightened.

One hand clawed toward his belt, but Vito caught the wrist first and drove it against the stone.

A short blade came free, pulled more by panic than by any plan. It skittered across the pavement and vanished beyond them before either man could get hold of it.

Vito planted a knee across the man’s chest and finally got a nice look at him in the thin gray light creeping down the walls.

No bull-headed monster, nor legendary beast waiting at the heart of the labyrinth.

Not even some grand enemy worthy of the stories.

Just a perfectly ordinary man in a travel-stained cloak, with a cut over his own cheekbone bleeding down onto his neck, staring up as if he already knew exactly how this story ended for men in his position.

Vito growled, more out exasperation.

"Sta’ bon, can de paia. Save the heroics for somebody who cares."

The man sucked in a breath.

"Heroics? Signore, you have mistaken me for a man with an alternative."

The tongue was not Vito’s own, but close enough to pass for a sister, and perfectly serviceable. "Is this really necessary? I surrender, signore. Entirely, gloriously, you have won. Perhaps we might now stop celebrating it on my elbow?"

Vito blinked.

For half a breath, he was too surprised to do anything else.

Then he finally replied, easing his grip by perhaps the width of a finger. "Well, look at you. Another Italian, out here of all places. Small world, isn’t it, amico?"

The man’s face went through a dozen emotions in quick succession, his wounded pride fought its way past genuine fear and, by a narrow margin, won.

"Italian."

He said the word as if Vito had just spat on his mother’s grave. "I am Pisan, signore. There is no such thing as Italian, only Pisa, and everyone else. And everyone else, I assure you, is nowhere near as good at bookkeeping."

Vito laughed outright.

It tore loose from a chest that had spent most of the night either fighting or riding, and once it started he had no particular reason to stop.

A real Pisan.

Vito’s laughter dwindled to a grin.

"What’s your name?"

The answer came so quickly it nearly tripped over itself. "Just Ansaldo, nothing grander than that. And at present I am very interested in whatever will allow me to keep both arms attached to the rest of me."

Vito looked him over again. The hour he had chosen to run, the door he had chosen to run through, and the fact that he had been caught trying to escape all made the situation sound rather convenient.

"Working for whom?"

Ansaldo’s eyes wandered toward the darkness where his horse had disappeared. He was looking for something, anything, that might give him another way out of this.

Fear made the decision for him.

"The Count of Malta." He winced as soon as he said it.

Vito clicked his tongue.

Then he laughed again, harder than before, until even his ribs began to hurt..

"Pescatore. Cazzo, I knew he’d come, but didn’t expect him to come so prematurely."

"I could tell you considerably more," Ansaldo offered.

He was already trying to turn the confession into a bargain.

"For a price, naturally. A reasonable price, between two men of business..."

"Later."

Vito stopped him before Ansaldo could bargain himself into another broken bone. "First, I’ll invite you for an extended stay in a fine room with glazed windows and a locked door. Then you can take your sweet time remembering every little bit of information that might interest me."

Vito led him back toward the horse, standing among the pillars stumps with the reins dragging through the dust. It looked almost pleased with itself, as though it had returned simply to see how the evening’s entertainment had ended.

He tied up and hauled Ansaldo up behind the saddle, then looked over now that there was enough light to see what he had caught.

There was not much to see.

A small, wriggling, thoroughly Pisan fish, caught in the middle of a labyrinth that had been old when most of the world was young.

Vito had every intention of finding out exactly what that fish was worth before throwing it back.