Kronos was driven by fear and rage. He feared the chains of his old life, feared being owned, feared being exposed and used, but his rage at the mortals who had so used him overwhelmed the fear. The fact that those mortals and their generations of descendents had died long ago mattered not to him.
So the three rode forth spreading slaughter and fire like water across their desert land blood soaked the parched sands and fire lit the midnight sky. By day they slept corpulent and sated in their hellish feasts.
Caspian appeared in the midst of a raid. He did not move to protect the people being slaughtered or to gather the riches strewn about. He moved to the choicest corpses and began to feed, once sated he turned his mad gaze upon the immortals and demanded a challenge. He fought Silas and lost, fought Methos and lost and finally fought Kronos and lost battered, bloodied and crazier than ever he knelt and swore fealty to Kronos unbidden.
Kronos was fixated and fascinated by Caspian's madness. A sort of sick thrall overcame the fearsome man. Whether he saw his future in Caspian or was drawn in by the elaborate grotesqueries of Caspian's nature was hard to say. But slowly Kronos controlled his little brother, tamed and guided him so that he could be trusted with the others, made sure he did not kill all the slaves when left alone, made him . . . civilized.
They became the horsemen one creature with eight arms and four heads, moving like the wind a natural force, like the devastating dust storms and crippling droughts of the region the people came to expect and accept the horsemen, fighting them, killing them would be like killing the wind or defying the gods themselves. So they rode, and they killed, and they owned the land.
But Methos was dissatisfied. Once he had defied Kronos, fled his reign and suffered mightily. He hoped at times alone in his tent when the camp was silent and even the slaves were asleep, when his courage was up he hoped that one day Kronos would let him go, would content himself with the company of Silas and Caspian. He knew it would never happen, the bond between the two men was too palpable too permanent.
In his darkness Methos saw himself in Kronos, the joy in the kill, the satisfaction of knowing you were the deadliest thing under the sun knowing for a fact that no man and no woman could face you, save Kronos of course. Methos wondered how he had lost Kronos, how the hardened half crazed gladiator had become his own master and brother in everything.
