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crunched into the mass of mangled corpses.

    Pol held the shoe with the heel sticking out like a fantastic dagger. Wearing only tiny shorts, he looked like a mythological hero, himself, as he leapt forward and, with the grace of an athlete, launched himself through the air at the Minotaur's back.

    Before Pol reached him, the beast turned.

    Pol jumped sideways, fell awkwardly just in front of the beast, who bellowed, outraged. Its sharp teeth clamped onto Pol's left arm. Pol screamed, but shoved the shoe's heel into the Minotaur's eye with his right hand, pushing hard, madly.

    The Minotaur bayed. It shook the arm it had clamped onto.

    Pol screamed higher, a high, insane screech, as the creature lifted him off his feet, and Pol's body arched back in pain.

    Sweat flowed down my back. It would kill Pol. And then I'd be left alone in a labyrinth with a rampaging beast. Sooner or later I'd scream, or sneeze. And be killed.

    I bent to pick up the other one of the dead woman's shoes.

    As I stood up, the Minotaur's strange cat eyes fixed on me, its gaze betraying only madness and hatred.

    It opened its mouth to bellow, dropping Pol to the floor.

    I jumped with artifact speed and strength, using it to compensate for the lack of a running start.

    It stepped on Pol as it lowered his head and charged me.

    The Minotaur's horn, aimed at my chest, caught me in the thigh. Pain burst through my body like a succession of electrical shocks. Everything spun around me. I screamed.

    The Minotaur lifted me, in preparation to throwing me.

    But I had a moment. Long enough. I grabbed onto its ear with all my strength, as I lay half-across the Minotaur's massive head, steadied between its horns, my leg impaled by the right horn. With my free hand, I pushed the heel of the shoe into the back of the creature's neck.

    It bellowed and grunted, and it tried to bite me, but it couldn't because I lay astride its head.

    It shook its head, crushing my bone. A red veil filmed my vision.

    I knew I was going to die, yet something in me refused to give up. I'd survived the crèche and my harsh training as a courier.

    Humans were born to coddling and family, but artifacts were ejected from their crèches like objects in an assembly line. No one had ever cared if I lived or died, and yet I'd lived. I'd survived years of being treated like a machine I wouldn't—damn it—die now. I wouldn't let another artifact, some bio-engineered beast destroy what not all the spite and indifference of natural borns had managed.

    My hand, as though of its own accord, kept on digging the heel into the monster's neck, as my vision grew dim and dark.

    Pol muttered obscenities, whimpered. I heard him move. His harsh, panting breath rasped from behind me.

    My hand on the broad shoulders of the beast, I turned my head to yell at him to go back. Nats couldn't survive what we artifacts could. And, gigolo though he might be, he'd shown courage enough to be an artifact himself. He shouldn't just be killed now.

    But I couldn't find the strength to talk and warn him off. My mouth was too dry.

    Pol, his left arm hanging like a limp rag at his side, lurched up behind me and, evading the creature's teeth with speed and reflexes worthy of the best artifacts, stuck the shoe heel into the human chest beneath the bull's head.

    The beast bellowed and shuddered. Its great head snapped up and back.

    My thigh ripped. I flew up and then down again, landing against the wall. Darkness closed in.
    * * *

    "Wake up, please. Wake up." Pol's raspy voice sounded like he'd cried himself to exhaustion.

    I tried to open my eyes and saw his eyes—sea green and full of tears—floating as if in a sea of darkness.

    The Minotaur . . .. A dream?

    Sudden stabbing pain from my thigh brought me to full consciousness.

    The pain came from a tourniquet which Pol was tying on my leg. He held an end of the cloth in his good hand and the other between his teeth.

    He tied the frayed, bloodstained