The Lost Labyrinth

FORTY-FOUR
I

All his life, Mikhail had known in his heart he was destined for greatness. All his life, he'd known his time would come. That was what they didn't understand, the little people who sought to hold him back and subject him to their petty rules. But it hadn't been until this very moment that he'd understood exactly what form his greatness would take.

The golden fleece. His golden fleece.

He reached out reverently and touched it. It was made from exquisitely fine threads of gold twisted together into amazingly lifelike tufts that rippled as he brushed them. He set the sledgehammer down on the rock floor, then picked up the fleece with both hands, expecting it to be so heavy that it would take all his strength to lift. But not only was it an artefact of indescribable beauty, it proved an astonishing achievement of craft too, for it was little heavier than the rucksack full of rocks he'd sometimes take on his runs whenever he feared he was growing unfit. He swung it around onto his shoulders in the almost certain knowledge that it would fit perfectly, as though it had been made for him; and it did. It had a chain and buckle for clasping around the neck. He fitted them together and laughed exultantly when they locked. Then he stood there for a moment, his chest swelling with pride as he imagined how he'd look on the world's television screens when he wore it on his return to Georgia.

A Nergadze would be Georgia's next leader after all. Nothing could stop him, not now that he had this. And fuck the elections; fuck the ballot box. Popularity had always been his grandfather's conceit. But their president had declared war, and Mikhail was the man to give it to him.

He looked along the avenue of double-headed axes down which Knox and Gaille had fled. They couldn't be allowed out of here, lest they blab and ruin his triumph. He tried to unbuckle the fleece, but its clasp had jammed, and its collar was too tight around his throat for him to pull it off over his head. He reached for his hunting knife, to cut through one of the links, then hesitated. It felt too like sacrilege. He put his knife away again. He was Mikhail Nergadze, after all. He could take out Knox and the girl by himself, hampered by a thousand fleeces.

He picked up his sledgehammer once more, then set off along the walkway.