Cassandra and the Horsemen

Hope Remembered II: Fury

by Parda, April 1999

And you wonder where we're going,
where's the rhyme
and where's the reason

Seacouver, 31 October 1996

The Eve of the Day of the Dead was a good day to hunt. It would be a good day to kill. It would even be a good day to die.

Cassandra was ready to do either. Usually, during the three thousand years which she had survived, usually she had been the hunted. But today-on this last day of the year, on this day when the wheel turned from the light to the dark, on this day sacred to the Dark Goddess-today on this day she was the Huntress, and her prey was near.

Kronos.

Cassandra had been hunting Kronos for four months, ever since June, when she had found out he was still alive. She had tracked him to Seacouver yesterday, and only a few moments ago she had seen him on the far side of the television studio's back lot. He had smiled and waved, then disappeared into the rows of abandoned storehouses, a flattened barren space where only weeds grew.

She moved silently through the narrow alleys that ran between the buildings, the sand rough and grating under her feet. Even through her jacket, the mid-autumn breeze was damp and chill as it came from the water, bringing with it the sharp tang of fish and tar. Oily scum floated on the puddles left from the recent rain, and the water showed black from the darkness of the clouds.

It would be a good place to die. The hilt of her sword was smooth in her hand, the familiar weight both comforting and exhilarating. Soon.

Cassandra froze as the sensation of another Immortal crawled up her spine and lodged itself at the base of her skull, an angry, insistent ache. She gritted her teeth at the temporary pain and eased back silently into the shadows of the alley. She heard footsteps now, coming closer. It was a careful tread, quick but light, a slight hardness to the sound that meant boots, not rubber soles, a rhythm to the stride that meant man, not woman. Kronos.

He came closer, and she could hear the whisper of cloth against cloth. Cassandra shifted her grip on her sword. Closer still, and now she could hear the faintest hint of breathing, the rough scrape of shoes on concrete instead of on sand. Finally, after three thousand years, she did not have to wait anymore. She balanced over both feet, finding her center. Cassandra was ready to kill. She was eager to kill.

She was dying to kill.

A little closer. Just a bit more... and NOW!

She pivoted from her hiding place and swung her sword in one smooth motion, vengeance and bloodlust tracing fire through her veins. Cassandra felt the hammered shock of steel against steel surging from her hands to her shoulders with relief and hate and joy.

But it was not Kronos. It was Duncan MacLeod, the Highland Foundling.

"What are you doing?" Duncan demanded as he stepped back, his sword still blocking hers, his long tan coat swaying with the force of the impact.

"Trying to kill someone!" Cassandra shot back, wondering how he could ask such a stupid question. "What does it look like?"

She stepped away from Duncan, ignoring him, trying to pick up any hints of Kronos, the faintest sensation. There was nothing. He was gone.

The waiting was not over yet.

Duncan insisted she come with him to his loft, and she finally agreed, planning to ask Duncan for suggestions about where to look for Kronos in Seacouver. She drove her rental car carefully as she followed his T-bird, for groups of children in garish costumes scampered from house to house and sometimes dashed across the streets. It was almost dusk, and candle-lit pumpkins shone from many porches and windows. She had forgotten about the American custom of Halloween, that peculiar adaptation of the Celtic Day of the Dead, where trick-or-treating for candy had replaced food offerings for wandering souls.

In the loft, Duncan offered her a drink, then poured himself one. She had asked him a few questions about where to look for Kronos while they were in the elevator; now he had his own questions for her. "Why don't you tell me about it?"

"I'm wasting time." Cassandra did not want to sit and chat over a friendly drink, she wanted to kill Kronos. She started for the door, but Duncan stood and took her by the arm as she walked past him.

"Then waste it," he said firmly.

"I can't!" Cassandra had stiffened under his grasp, and he let go of her now, but she knew she had to make Duncan understand so he would not stop her again. "He's getting away. I shouldn't even be here!"

"This is exactly where you should be," Duncan corrected, as she backed away from him in case he tried to grab her again. "You're in no shape to fight anybody, Cassandra."

"I'll take the chance!" she said defiantly.

"Then you'll lose." His voice was flat and certain.

She paced between the leather couch and the coffee table, but did not look at him. He was right, and she knew it, and she hated it.

Duncan sat down again on the chair, but he was still trying to convince her to stay. "Cassandra, I know Koren. I know how dangerous he is."

She faced him then, her arms tight across herself, her eyes narrowed. "You don't know him at all." Duncan had no idea just how dangerous he was. Duncan did not even know his real name. "Long before he called himself 'Koren,' he went by another name." She took a deep breath before she said the word. There was power in names. "Kronos."

Duncan merely looked confused and shrugged. He had obviously never heard of him, but Cassandra was certain Duncan had heard of Kronos's little band. "And he was one of the Four Horsemen."

"The what...?" Duncan said in disbelief, then shook his head. "He can't be."

"No?" she challenged.

Duncan came over to her and protested, "If the Horsemen were alive at all, they existed ages ago, maybe thousands of years. They can't exist anymore."

Had Duncan forgotten he was an Immortal? She had existed for thousands of years, and she was still alive. So was Kronos. The Four Horsemen had existed, too.

"I'd give my life to believe that." She sat down on the edge of the coffee table, and reached for the hourglass that sat next to the chess board, the smooth curve of glass cool under her fingers, the sand shifting, sliding. She might indeed give her life for that, to see the last of the Horsemen destroyed. It would be worth it.

"But it's not true. One lives." Kronos lived, and so did she. She turned the glass over, and the sand started to cascade over itself, wave burying wave. Cassandra knew sand. She had been raised in a desert, a land of fierce beauty and awful emptiness, where the night sky was black silk with powdered diamonds, and the day was harsh sunlight and scouring wind. She knew the grit and taste of sand in food, the rasp of sand underfoot, the hot scent of sand dust in mouth and nose, the roughness of sand against cheek upon waking. Sand was endlessly solid and fluid, each single grain angular and distinct as it danced along the surface of the dunes, while the dunes themselves flowed and rippled and cascaded, burying everything in their path.

Cassandra had seen sand bury houses, temples, cities, entire civilizations. Sand had buried her tribe, too, but the sand that had buried her people had been soaked and darkened with their blood. She had not been able to arrange their garments and anoint their bodies, to say the final prayers that would set free their souls. The Four Horsemen had taken that from her, too.

"I can still see them," she said, watching the sand, remembering. She had seen them almost every night for these last four months in her dreams, her nightmares. "They were monsters. They rode across the world we knew and brought terror and death." They were Terror and Death. She had known the Four Horsemen by their real names, but the apostle John had named them well enough in the Christian Bible - Famine, War, Pestilence, Death.

"Where they were, life ceased." Cassandra saw again her childhood playmate Ashiz, her skull split open, her face and breasts covered in blood, her belly ripe with the child who was never to be born.

"They were without mercy." Little Taliq, barely old enough to walk, screaming in terror as the horse thundered down upon him. The Horseman with the face of the skull, the Horseman she later knew as Methos, bending slightly, cutting Taliq in half with a casual swipe of his sword, then galloping on. Methos not even watching as Taliq's head and shoulders went flying through the air, the little boy's mouth still open in a silent, frozen scream. The boy's mother screaming as her son's severed head struck her in the face, spattering her with her son's blood, screaming incessantly until she too was beheaded, and her own blood fountained forth upon the sand.

"They were without fear." The masks of the Horsemen hid their features, but even unmasked, their faces showed nothing human, only savage pleasure at another's pain. Just like all the other raiders she had seen throughout the years-Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Egyptians, Goths, Manchus, Mongols, Vikings, Crusaders, Cossacks, Japanese, Nazis ... every culture, every continent, every century. Over and over again.

Cassandra could watch the sand no longer. She went to the window and stared out, seeing nothing. "They took what they wanted, and left nothing. Hijad, the healer who found me as a baby and raised me as his own; my foster-sisters; the children; my people... Everything I knew and loved was destroyed. It was the end of the world." John the Apostle had been right; the Horsemen had brought the apocalypse, at least for her. She had died that day, too, in more ways than one. "The end of my world."

Duncan spoke quietly behind her, his voice gentle. "I never knew."

She nodded, acknowledging his sympathy, grateful for it, but she did not speak, unable to trust her voice. She had not wanted him to know. She hated telling these stories; she hated remembering those times, reliving that life, those deaths. She struggled to control her breathing, her tears, but she did not seem to have any control anymore - not over her anger, not over her anguish, not over her fear. The only thing she had control over was her hate. Hate would see her through to the end.

"I tried to forget what happened." She forced her voice to some semblance of calmness, of reasonableness. "Years turned into centuries, then more centuries. I thought I'd succeeded." She had succeeded, for a century or so, until the Four Horsemen had turned her adopted son Roland against her, and the nightmare had begun again.

Roland stalked her through the ages, capturing her over and over again, keeping her as a slave for a time, then selling her to another when he tired of her. She did nothing to stop him, for she could not fight him. Her own vows to her son Roland and the ancient prophecy forbade her from even trying. She was forced to wait for Duncan, the Highland Foundling, to challenge Roland.

It had been a long wait. She had been so relieved when Roland was finally dead, when the ordeal was over. She had felt happy, free for the first time in three millennia. But that happiness had lasted only a few weeks.

"Then I learned Kronos was alive." She had not been able to fight Roland, but she could fight Kronos. For over three thousand years she had waited for Duncan to rescue her. She had run; she had hidden; she had suffered and submitted in silence, but no more. Never again. She was never going to let a man to stalk her and hunt her again. This time, she was going to fight back. This time, she would be the one to kill.

And nothing, and no one, was going to stop her.

Duncan was behind her now, his hand lightly stroking her hair, the warmth of his body close by.

Cassandra turned to him, but she could not meet his eyes, knowing she would break down completely if she allowed the gentleness in him to reach her. She needed to be strong. She needed to be hard. "All the hate, all the pain..." The hate surged through her, and that was good, but the pain came with it, and the anguish left her trembling. "I tried to leave behind..."

She should have known there was no escape. The memories would never fade, and the nightmares would never end. She closed her eyes and asked despairingly, "It never leaves, does it?"

"Sometimes," Duncan said, still gentle, his hands caressing her face, her hair. "For a while." He kissed her forehead, then her lips, a simple touch there, nothing more. His arms went about her, and she relaxed against him, feeling safe, for a time at least. They stood there for a moment or two, then his arms tightened, and suddenly she didn't feel safe anymore.

She stood very still.

"Cassandra?" Duncan immediately pulled back. "Is something wrong?"

Cassandra had asked him the same question once. "Duncan, I'm sorry -" She stopped abruptly and shook her head. Why should she be sorry? She hadn't done anything wrong. She stepped back from him. "I'm just..."

He took her hands in his and held them gently. "Are you tired?"

"Yes, but ... It's not just that. I..." She did not want to do this. Duncan was watching her, waiting for her. Cassandra shook her head in amazement, suddenly realizing that she did not have to go to bed with a man if she did not want to. She could choose.

Duncan was still waiting patiently "Cassandra?"

She took a deep breath. "Duncan, what happened between us in June was marvelous; it was wonderful." She smiled at him then, a true smile, and was pleased to see him smile back. "It meant a great deal to me." He would probably never realize just how much. "But, right now, knowing that Kronos is out there, and - remembering..." She looked at him earnestly, hoping he would understand, not sure what she would do if he did not. "I'm ... I don't..."

She was incredibly relieved to see him nod. "You don't mind?" she asked timidly.

"Mind?" He shook his head. "I'm a little disappointed," he said with a quick grin, "but I understand. It's all right, Cassandra." He gave her hands a brief squeeze and let go.

"I'll go back to my hotel room," she said.

"You should stay here." When she started to object, he said firmly. "We shouldn't be separated with Kronos out there."

She looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "But I take the couch," she said with equal firmness. She would take no argument from him about this. When she had been here before, he had taken the couch, and she knew he had not slept well.

"All right," he said, smiling, then asked casually, "Hungry?" At her nod, he said, "Let's make dinner."

During the meal they deliberately avoided all talk of Kronos and the Horsemen. They spoke instead of movies and books and things they enjoyed. After dinner she took a shower and changed into leggings and a loose sweatshirt, then sat on the couch and idly picked up a pawn from the chess set on the coffee table.

"A game of chess?" Duncan suggested, coming over to sit in the chair across from her.

"I suspect you've gotten quite a lot better than you were when you were thirteen," she answered with a smile. She had been the one to introduce him to the game, during that night he had spent with her in Donan Woods.

His eyebrows went up in amusement and acknowledgment, just like Connor's. He was darker than Connor though, with brown eyes and black hair, and a bit taller. "I've had some practice," Duncan admitted. "White or black?"

"I'll take black. Like old times."

They set the pieces up and played in silence. Cassandra tried to concentrate, for Duncan had indeed gotten some practice. He had been quick at the game when she had taught it to him, and he was very good now. She hadn't played much chess at all since Connor had been her student, just before Duncan had been born. She wondered if Connor and Duncan played chess, and, if so, who won. And who won during their sparring matches? They were very different, these MacLeods.

Cassandra started to move her bishop, then looked more closely at the board. Duncan had threatened her rook on the move before, and she had escaped that gambit, but now she saw that she had opened herself up for a trap. It was a simple trap really, but an effective one. His knight was threatening both her king and her queen. She knew she must sacrifice the queen to protect the king. The king was the most important piece on the board, even though the queen was the more powerful.

"Check," Duncan said cheerfully. Then he smiled at her.

Cassandra gazed at him for a second, flushing under that knowing smile and those mocking eyes. She hooked her fingers under the edge of the chess board and flung the board and the pieces off the table. The board cracked when it landed, and the pieces scattered over the floor. She stared defiantly at Duncan, the rage and frustration still boiling within her. He wasn't smiling now, was he?

Duncan merely looked at her. Then he leaned over and picked up the pieces that had rolled toward him. As he set them on the table, he asked, "Do you have these temper tantrums often?"

Cassandra wanted to slap him. How dare he? But even though his tone had been humorous, his eyes were not. Duncan was not laughing at her or mocking her; he was concerned. And he was right. It was a temper tantrum - total, uncontrolled rage.

"No," she whispered painfully, the rage subsiding, but not disappearing. "They used to come every few centuries or so." She had destroyed a small pine tree with her sword when Duncan had been six. "Would you say that was often?" she asked, trying to make a joke of it.

Duncan shook his head, smiling a little, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners, reminding her of Ramirez. "No."

"No." It was a still a whisper, a rueful echo. Duncan was very young. "But ... they're coming more often now, ever since..." Ever since she had tried to take Connor's head in Edinburgh, but she did not want to tell Duncan about that. She hoped Connor had not told Duncan about that. She tried again. "They come, and I can't control..." Her voice was shaking, and she stopped. She could not control even that anymore.

She slipped off the couch to pick up the rest of the pieces, then stayed where she was, kneeling by the table, her head down.

Duncan joined her there, squatting in front of her, waiting.

She did not want to look at him. "I'm sorry. I'm not usually such a ... poor loser."

Duncan leaned forward and took her hands in his. His hands were very warm, very strong. "Maybe you'd better finish telling me about it," he said, and when she nodded he pulled her up gently to sit on the couch next to him. "How did you find out about Kronos?" he asked.

"Roland. He left a letter, to be given to me after he died."

"Roland knew Kronos?" Duncan asked in surprise.

"Oh, yes. Kronos was Roland's teacher. One of his teachers," she amended. "Roland rode with the Four Horsemen for a time. They called him 'Little Brother.'"

"I didn't realize Roland was that old."

"Yes." He was old, but he had never really grown up. "Roland said he sent a letter to Kronos, too." She shrugged. "I'm not the only one hunting."

"So you think Kronos is after you?"

"If he wasn't, he will be now." There was an old score to settle between them. She yawned suddenly, then smiled apologetically at Duncan. "I'm sor-" She stopped herself and said simply, "I'm tired. It's been a long day." She lay down on the couch and pulled the blanket over her. "Good night, Duncan."

"Good night, Cassandra."

continued in chapter 2