The sun burned over head like a never ending act of cruelty, her heat and unfeeling light washing over a white earth in white rays of suffering.
For two months Cassandra had stumbled on, directionless except for what lay behind her.
Pain and humiliation. Monsters and raiders in masks. Death and his cohorts.
She had escaped the horsemen but here in this vast landscape of brightness and heat she was trapped again. Starvation and dehydration were constant and each time one of them claimed her she came to know her immortality just a little more.
The thought of what lay behind her however kept her going. Each time she revived she found the strength to move again and though the desert seemed unending and brutal she knew it had an edge somewhere.
There would be an end to this, just as there had been an end to the horsemen.
She had fought Kronos, survived him and the rest of them. . . Silas, Caspian. . . Methos.
Methos who haunted her dreams. . . His kindnesses just as cruel as his violences. His touch burning her either way.
Kronos scared her but it was him who had gotten under her skin. The fragile relationship they'd had. . . Master and slave and whatever else that had swam around them. . .
She hated them all for this and nothing had felt so good as to sink a blade into Kronos.
She had nearly trusted Methos.
Nearly but he had betrayed her. Handed her over to Kronos and with her any hope for decency he might have ever had.
The nights in the desert were a relief. Cold and cooler they were still a break from the scorching sun that lingered overhead each day, baking the earth hard like her heart.
She had been made a slave by them. She would never allow that again. She would never be brought so low or made to serve men like them. . . If she had an ounce of control in her life she would prevent it.
Now however she was at the mercy of nature and her own body. Even as the life was taken from her over and over by an unforgiving sun she struggled on, each time she revived she pulled herself to her feet, desperate to be as far from the horsemen and their camp as possible.
She lost track of the days quickly, dry mouth more important and the weakness that had taken hold of her body in the heat.
Time meant nothing. She died and came back over and over. What could time mean like this? The unending desert stretched out under a still wider sky and she found herself wondering at the size of the world.
Had she ever been so arrogant as to think it could not be so big? Perhaps she had been merely ignorant and perhaps ignorance could be forgiven.
Her ignorance was gone now. She knew so much more than she had. She understood the world and the people in it more. She understood the depths of cruelty and the prices of greed. She understood what it was to be collateral in a world that cared nothing for the ants that crawled upon it.
Her skin dried and cracked after a while, flaking under the sun as she felt more weary and older than she ever would be.
She suffered hallucinations. Memories of an earlier life in ignorance and memories from their wretched camp.
She had visions of the horsemen riding up around her and at one point threw herself to the ground in terror, weeping into dry sand and covering her head from the eyes of the world. She had tried to bury herself then before the night had come and sanity had returned and with it terrifying shame.
She feared them and in the desert there seemed no shelter. She saw no one either and wondered if perhaps they were all dead. . . The people of the world. . . Were there any left or had the horsemen killed them all?
Days and days. . . So many days spent stumbling onwards, desperate for some sign of human life. Animal life would have been good but here in this barren place there were not even birds over head.
This was a place fit for death and his victims only.
She watched the sky for signs of life however. Like the ocean birds would mean there was hope. She knew it without ever having seen an ocean. A sky without birds was unnatural. Frightening even and though she had an idea that she could not die now she just the same feared the empty sky.
A single drop of rain would have been a blessing but now these many days and weeks she had seen and felt none. The sky was merciless like her former masters had been. Existence hell.
She could still feel them upon her, their fingers and hands and mouths playing across her flesh. . . Methos and the others. . . She could still feel the stinging slaps that had spun her head so many times.
She was weak now but she would learn. She knew that now. If they could learn then she could as well.
She would survive in this new world. If she ever made it out of the desert. She knew now what she was and that she was not alone.
It was this thought that pushed her onward, that encouraged her to survive. She could endure this because she had already endured evil and hell.
When at last however she finally saw people it was not to be. She came across a band of nomads who traveled the same tired paths their ancestors had years and generations before.
They were careful people, wary of the stories that spread across the sand, stories of vicious killers on horse back.
She saw them and fell to scabby knees and cried into the dry earth. She had not seen another human in so long now and with cracked lips she called out to them, gathering herself from the ground and running towards them.
Their men turned and looked at her, faces swaddled in cloth wraps. The looked to each other as she fell again in front of them.
"Help me!" She begged not caring if they too were slavers. Anything was better than what she had left behind.
They muttered in a language she did not know, turning their heads swiftly back and forth and shaking them. Their horses were uneasy too.
"Please!" She sobbed, crawling to their feet. "Please help me!"
One of the men was shaking his head and pointing in the direction from which she had come. He said something in a worried voice, speaking loudly.
She didn't know his words but she understood his meaning. 'Go back'.
She shook her head and clawed at his feet pathetically. "No, please you have to help me!"
They spoke quickly amongst themselves and then a skin of water was thrown into her hands.
She turned it over in confusion before understanding what it was and began gulping down as much as she could in a messy display of indignity. She came away gasping.
"Go back." One of them said in a language she did know. "Go back."
She shook her head desperately, still kneeling on the hot sand. Their wives and daughters stood back watching her with guarded expressions. They were scared too. "I can't." She said. "Please take me with you."
"Go back." He said again. "Go."
She began to weep, ragged and burned and starved. She was pathetic and now the first people she had found were refusing to help her.
"There is death where you come from." The man said and horribly he sounded almost sorry for her. "Go back. You bring evil here. Go back."
She shook her head again. "No, no evil! I swear, I have nothing. Please. you must help me."
The horses neighed and her heart broke. They were shaking their heads again, their women were clustering together and whispering to each other. They were forming a wall against her and her desperation.
They would not help her.
"Death is behind you. Go back."
The water wasn't enough and they were taking their horses by the reigns and trying to gather their people. They were going to leave her here.
"Please I can't." She sobbed.
The man who had first spoken to her gave her a sad look and a chunk of bread was thrown to her.
She held it along with the water skin and didn't know what to do.
They were leaving, walking away from her now, their horses still laden with their belongings and lives. They would not help her and she was left again on the desert sands with only a little water and bread to get her to the next sign of civilization and as she clutched the bread to her chest she curled around it and wailed, the sun uncaring over head as it burned down on her exposed skin and the world around her.
This was too much, even now the horsemen were tormenting her. Even now they were in control of her life. Their influence was destroying her still.
She lay panting and half mad until the sun set and the world turned dark. Only then did she find her mind again and pulled herself up into a sitting position.
She looked at the bread in the dark and sniffed. She had wasted precious water on her tears and wetly she tore a piece from the loaf and began to eat, trying to save what she could despite her shrunken stomach.
In the dark, without the sun she could think again.
The nomads were long gone, their tracks all that remained now. Their tracks and what they had left her with.
She sat in their tracks, petulant and tired. She had really believed she had had a chance. She had really believed that she had found rescue.
Now she had nothing except the little food and water swirling in her stomach. She looked out towards the sky and stars and then the tracks that lingered across the earth. She would follow them. They could not stop her from doing so. Even killing her would do nothing.
Slowly she tucked her bread and water under her arm and began to trudge through their steps.
It was her only hope.
On unsteady legs she followed them, hoping against hope that they might lead her to some kind of civilization. . . to some kind of mercy.
Her hope was slim however but it was all she had and it was the closest she had come to finding safety.
Even when the water and bread was gone and she had thrown the skin behind her she followed.
She could do this. She had no choice. She wasn't going to die and she couldn't stay and so on she marched.
