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Hope, Thy Daughter of Babylon
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Chapter One: Honest Hearts
She had been taken under the baring of nightfall, caught unaware by a raiding party led under the crimson banner of a great horned bull.
In truth, she should not have sought them out. Her scouts had spied their signal fires for many days, set far into the western mountainsides where the summits pierced the sky like the reaching arms of an ashen crown. They had witnessed the crossing of shadows along the dunes heading east, followed the sun as taper in the night, and caught the violent caws of the ravens heralding their arrival. By the following eve her people had readied to leave, patched their hides onto the thick woolly backs of the bighorners and doused their pyres in river water.
By the second dawn they would have set out into the wastes, ready to pass over the hidden trails back to the great haven of her land. But she had been curious, far too curious than a young woman of her tribe should have been. When the scouts had fallen asleep, she had set out, alone, to see what manner of veneerer had stalked her steps. In the end, she had been seen. And her wanderlust had bound her hands to the bonds of the Legion.
Tales of the Legion had crossed her covern many, many times, from the decimation of the Blackfoots tribe to the stories of smouldering crusifixes across the hillsides of the Colorado. There were barely any who had not heard of the war in the great depths of the Mojave between the New California Republic and the Legion, warring over the claim of a great, pre-war dam.
Or so the tales told. She remembered such words when they were told by caravaners, often within the arch of great fur tents. Tales of men draped in skirts flaring the sigil of a mighty warrior, tearing at armies with the wind joining their march until all that was left at their heel were steel and bear drowned in sand.
Such stories sung throughout her tribe like clear water from a spring, praying on the imaginations of the women, children; even piercing the men with fear.
She had scoffed at such nonsense. Instead, spoke of her own misguided achievements: of snatching herrings from the rivers, only for local crows to pinch such spoils with spritely beaks. Irony had chose to mock her, though, when they in turn did not to believe.
And now the ropes of the Legion burned the skin from her wrists. The near-eve sun had scorched most of the leather from her boots. She walked, blinded and guided, across the hissing wastes of a foreign road with three others latched onto the same bond as she.
No matter how often she tugged or bit, the rope would not fray, only tighten. There was a bitter taste to it as well, one that clung to her teeth like sour berry. In the end the taste itself persuaded her against another attempt.
In the heat of an open plain, the concealed blade of a sheathed dagger strayed too keenly into her outer thigh. Even the frayed rag she wore would not end the bite of its needle.
Hebe whimpered, straining her legs further apart. If only she could reach for it, but that meant tugging on the rope, which always seemed to rouse the attention of her captors.
By the sands and sun, how much farther must I go?
"Solis occasum erit mox castra," she overheard the distance say.
A shadow crossed her sight and she tilted her head away out of instinct. The fleshy bruise of a beating still stung fresh across her rosy cheek. An attempt to flee, wrong and punished. If only my brothers were here to pluck the skin from their bones.
The thought alone brought her some small comfort.
The cursed mark was a mercy compared to the lashing of other women. She remembered another had fallen behind her. She had screamed. Hebe had felt the distancing warmth of her passing, and the lingering cold reminder of the same woman who had not returned.
Collar us, beat us, prey on us, no men of honour are they. Men, bulls, doused in venom. They will have no mercy.
Another shadow broke the young tribal from her reverie, small and quick along her blindfold. Ahead, the other women stumbled to a clumsy halt and then her face, in turn, was relieved from the sweaty rag.
To the many tattered women in front of her, the release of their blindfolds was a relief. To Hebe, however, the riddance of such a thing was close to a nightmare. She stared along the red sandstone walls of a foreign canyon and far up into a sun-lit sky that only appeared far more distant.
Her tribe had been tucked into the alcove of a mountainside, set by a long river that was rumoured to stretch to the sea. Yet, there was only sand beneath her feet, hard sand that had not felt the crisp wind of a cooler climate or tasted rainwater. There were no trees across the expanse of land, save for blackened, decayed saplings or the occasional tumbleweed. In fact, she doubted there was life further into the canyon other than dust and bone.
It seemed to be the way her captors had planned.
One of those men, called by his lessers as Cassius, looked far into the stretch of the canyon, removing the binoculars from his brow to wipe the sweat with his arm. Dressed, he was, in an odd way for a soldier. Truthfully, all four of her captors were, each wearing a thin red tunic held by a thick sheet of silver plating, connected to a crimson sash fastened over one shoulder. By his hip was a gladius, while the lesser missionaries held only spears or serrated knives.
She would have thought it ludicrous that such frilly dressed men had been such a formidable opponent as to capture her of all people, but then she had spied the thick muscles under their skirts and the patches of deep lines scarring their arms. They were men of bone and hardened flesh. Each lesser missionary bore an unfathomable obedience to their commander, Cassius, never truly taking their eyes far from his presence.
"Expugnationesque es questus profugus," had said a legionary, stepping over to his commander. "Per uicos Numidas periturus erat in occursum nobis hic. Ubi sunt?"
Hebe curled a stray golden braid behind her tanned ear, then knelt to the sand to enscribe words into the dirt with her fingernail.
'The captures are getting restless,' she wrote, 'a scouting party was supposed to meet us here. Where are they?'
She tried to gain the attention of the other women, to show them what the legionnaires were saying, but the women were too afraid to face her way.
Cassius regarded the legionary with merely a sparing glance before peering up to the higher levels of the canyon. "Patience," he had quoted in Latin, raising his hand up to ease the fear from his pupil. "The sun is still high. We have made good trek across this land. Good timing, indeed. It is here we will wait for them to arrive. Hammer the captures to the rock. We will be here for sometime."
Hebe's finger faltered in the dirt. Without looking up, she grazed her hand along her thigh and cupped her blade between two sandy palms. Her foot struck the dirt before she rose, lapping her message in earth and sand.
One legionnaire, a young boy perhaps having seen his seventeenth or eighteenth year of the world, not scarred enough to be a man by any standards, plucked her bound wrists in one hand and threw them against the nearest canyon wall. There he used hammer and nail to crack the rock and splinter the knot of her bind, leaving her bare and bound to nature.
Hebe witnessed the other women tremble in fear. Some were complacent, allowing their hands to be stretched across the canyon wall, shivering. One cowered beneath her captor, inspiring a beating that drew red across the hard limestone. There was a crack that shattered bone.
Hebe looked away, knowing in her heart that in a day the wounded would be dead. There was no other way.
The legionnaires settled their camp, straining bedrolls across the ground, tents across the valley and fires that billowed up into the sky. She was sure they could be seen for miles.
But how far would the smoke trails travel? she wondered, staring up into a moonlit heaven where the stars of a thousand twinkled unhindered. She sunk her feet into the sand, found the difference in texture to her own homeland slightly unnerving.
Her wait was long, then longer and longer. She observed the legionnaires closely, saw how many took turns in their watch over the outer canyon. Just as some begun to switch, another had taken their place just as silently. What she did notice was that only one dared to glance at the captured for every given time, as if they were not even to be trifled with or thought over.
Mindless, must have been what they believed. Yet she did notice one legionnaire catch her eye more than once. She noticed the gladius by his thigh, curved and glimmering in the evening firelight, just like the stories. She knew him to be their chieftain. Cassius.
Rugged by a beard speckled in grey, broad through his tunic, arms like that of an oar, bulged and rippled. He came to her when the other women could only weep, took her soft chin in his veined hand and tilted it up just so her eyes caught the moonlight. Her skin was earth in the day, ashwood at night, her hair was a cropped suede, her eyes tinged rosewood.
Cassius watched them glint in defiance, even if her manner was lax and palpable. "Curious little capture, you are. Untamed unlike the other women. There is still Mars' spark of fire in you, girl. I admire that."
A beautiful treasure, his leering gaze defined. A pretty bauble, to be caged and caressed.
Her plump lips curled back. A snarl escaped her throat.
The legionnaire cupped her neck tenderly, casting her head further up towards the stars. "Na-ah, sweet, look around you. You lash out, you die, and that would be a terrible waste of such good breeding stock. Behave, and you will be rewarded. To be owned by myself, that would elevate you highly amongst the other slaves. You should be proud. My gaze roams many and settles on very few."
Hebe held her tongue between her teeth, choosing to focus on one particular star dimming in its shine, rather than give him the satisfaction of an answer. A moment later, she tasted blood.
Legate Cassius chuckled, releasing her in one swift hand. "Bare me in mind tonight, sweet. It will be so very long."
She waited until his shadow disappeared into a distant tent, waited until the wind began to gnaw the flaps with its teeth, stir the sand with its fingers. When the other captures only shivered, huddling together for comfort, she gnawed at her bind with her blade and teeth, splitting thread from thread. Slicing the root and stem.
The tribal winced when the sight of blood trickled down her palm. Though the pain was nothing compared to the flare across her waist - her stomach growling terribly low, while her mouth grew further parched and dry.
Then, when all hope seemed to wither like a wilted petal, the rope snapped in two. Hebe gasped, instantly soothing the soreness from her wrists. She peered over to the other women. In the midst of midnight, they were indistinguishable from a wild bighorner herd: frail, timid, without the ability to fight back.
Still, she crept to the herd and grabbed a brown-haired's hand, coaxing her out from the others with a wave. The woman merely sobbed, wrenching herself free.
"You will kill us all!" she hissed through clattering teeth, falling inline with the others.
Hebe attempted to gasp her hand once more, only to be pushed into the sand. "Leave us!"
The youngling could only stiffen in the gloom, in wait for the inevitable lash of a whip. Though none came. None truly. The lash of chance, perhaps. For beyond only the funeral pyre grew in heat. The tents only stirred in wind. And to the horizon, the moon glistened in fleeting chance, highlighting clusters of smooth canyon wall. Ripe for the taking.
Biting her dagger between chattering teeth, her toes hooked into cracks, fingers wove into limestone, and she climbed. Up, up. High above until she leapt across the surfaced sand - the stars cascading across her like comets - the very earth a yearning replenish of renewed vigour; a fountain of her own youth eager for the picking.
For days she tarried between the rippling courage of a nightstalker free and a bighorner bound. For days she wandered, searched. Though there were no crowns heralding her people. No rivers to guide her home. Only memories to clear the tears from her cheeks. Memories that had once bleached the very dunes of her homeland in a light far more feverish than the heat of a midday sun, though quickly iced such fondness into cold, dead tarmac. Dreams of tribal innocence that had frayed through the rows of corpses lain at her feet. Plans of a kind, forgiving adolescent that had dissolved within the bitter acidic rain of a new land drowned black.
Days drifted into months, months drifted into a year. Only when the smoke trails finally died, when the scents of ash dissipated from the air, did she eventually seek the rise of a new dawn.
And when the dawn finally met the peaks to the west, she followed the blind roads alone, for there was only trail and sky at her behest.
Still, an essence of tribe clung to her, stayed within her long after the once-child had blossomed into more. Once, the hope of finding adventure. Once, the hope of finding freedom. Once, the hope of finding family.
Now, it was something more. It was the glittering hope of a pre-war shine - it was a spire ascending ever-onward in New Vegas, gleaming in jewels of promise, with her long shadow finally fading into the east.
Because hope. Hope never changed.