Chapter Six

Asia Minor, circa 470-421 B.C.E.:

Nestor's camp, when I first saw it, was small but well appointed. My soldier's eye took it in quickly as we approached. The cooking fires were near the water, and bathing and sanitation had been set further downstream… so that the cooks had access to clean water.

"I wish only the best for my men," Nestor said smoothly. At the time, I thought it was the truth. He allowed camp followers and families to accompany the men so that they had those they most cared about with them if they wished. Nestor provided for all his retainers. All he asked was that his word was law and that he was to be instantly obeyed.

"Teach them to fight as you fought," he said indicating a training ground for new recruits. "Make them think that if they fight as we fight… they too might reawaken immortal."

"Is it the truth?" I asked.

He laughed. "I feel nothing about them at this time. But I could be wrong. Immortality is a blessing of the gods upon those of us with abilities they treasure. We are their inheritors. Train them well young Greek… perhaps the gods will smile on them as they did on you."

I was eager to please… and eager to know more about the fire from heaven as I first came to know the quickening. It was a glorious thing… and I thought it a wonder that I wished to know again. Nestor laughed. "A wonder young Greek? Aye… tis the life force of the blessed. When the power is great enough… when only a few of us remain… we will fight then to possess it all."

"We would fight?" I asked him.

He smiled as he turned away but I caught the secretive and lustful nature of that smile. Having just felt the power for the first time… and not knowing how often he had felt it… I thought he merely understood my eagerness to join the game more fully. Perhaps he had thought even then that he might have at last found one worthy to host his abilities… one who could successfully challenge all others.

I threw myself into the training of the men. But as Danaë had told me… teach no one all of what you know… I kept many things to myself. But I came to care for these men. I molded them into a fighting unit that could utterly destroy the defenses arrayed against them. They fought without fear of death… and that gave them freedom in battle to be daring.

I fought beside them and urged them on. When we won… we relished the rewards of battle. The smell of blood lay on us… and we knew no greater pleasure than to force our selves and our will on the conquered. It was the way of it then… it had been the same when I was a soldier of Thebes… but there was an unfettered feel to the looting and pillaging under Nestor. Sometimes it seemed as if the war were an excuse for the aftermath rather than the aftermath being an outgrowth of the war.

Still I turned a blind eye to events and drank my wine and feasted after battles, and slaked my thirst on the slaves. I was content. And… I was a fool. I became complacent in that life… and felt akin to the gods. I watched Nestor play on that aspect about us when he urged his troops to battle for immortality. He seemed to enjoy the bloodshed more than winning.

My eyes were opened for the first time after the fall of some nameless walled city. The camp was abuzz with merriment after our victory and the beer stores of that town were greatly depleted. Filthy stuff… beer. I never developed a taste for it. Nestor sent for me.

I slipped into his silken tent where I smelled exotic spices burning on the braziers. It was a heady smell… one that had the touch of opiates in it. Nestor lay reclined on his divan… his silk garments loosely around him and his muscles were oiled and glowing in the flickering firelight. He offered his own wine cup to me. I'd once told him of my first death and that I was wary now of wine being offered without a taster. He tasted it himself and pressed the golden chalice into my hand with a laugh. I drank deeply… and noted that it was laced with something pleasing and relaxing. The dark centers of his blue eyes gazed at me with interest. Whatever it was… he'd taken it into his system as well. I found it intoxicating and called for more. The drug lowered my inhibitions… such as they were at that time. He motioned toward four slaves… stripped and bound who awaited my pleasure.

"These are mine. I'm finished with them. You may choose one for your pleasure… but you must satisfy yourself before me."

It seemed a little thing to do so. I examined the slaves. They were properly drugged and gazed with dark eyes dully at me. I noted the signs of rape on each of them… the smears of blood that the oil on their bodies had not quite erased… the bruising around mouths and genitals… the despondency of them. Their hands were bound behind them but with my sword I could lift their faces up to observe them.

Two were male… two were female. Each was young and well formed. The females had not yet borne children and the males had not yet developed a full beard. "Only one?" I asked with laughter. I wanted them all.

"Only one my apprentice. You may have one for your pleasure. I will kill the others."

At that I hesitated. "Why kill them? Surely there is still much worth in them."

"I have finished with them. I do not allow those I've finished with to be passed on to just anyone. Because you have served me well… I grant you the gift of having one of them here in my sight. The others… I'm through with. No man may have them." He waved his wine steward forward to refill my chalice. I downed the filled cup and tossed it aside. Again whatever was in the drink inflamed me as it had him. I licked my lips as I examined the slaves. Which should I take and save?

Uncertain if this were a test of my loyalty… or my ability to judge flesh… I finally made my choice… the younger of the two males. Gently I positioned him before me and began to take him as I would a cherished lover. Nestor clapped in glee as he rose and drew his sword. One by one he killed the others in swift strokes… watching heads roll as I was involved with the one I'd selected… watching as I became ever more excited by the carnage about me. Then… just as I was reaching the moment of release… he killed that one as well… and I found it even more exciting. When finished… I rolled onto my back and the enormity of what I'd done came to me.

Nestor teased his blade over my neck as I lay there. "Again… you are unarmed and I could take you now," he hissed sibilantly. "Could you stop me?"

"No," I whispered, certain that death had found me.

He laughed and tossed it into a tent pole where it wavered embedded in the wood. He crouched over me, his eyes glistening. "Do you love me? Am I not beautiful to behold?"

"You are beautiful," I agreed. "But there is a darkness in you that makes me ill." His hands cooled my fevered brow. His lips touched mine and sucked at my breath eagerly. His breath felt cold and smelled of a charnel house. I did not know that he had begun eating his victims raw. I did not know that until later. I rolled over retching the wine, the drug, everything. I rose and ran from his tent. But I did not leave him… not then… not that night. To my shame… I remained, hoping the darkness would wane… and that he would be once more the glorious warrior and champion of old.

But as the years passed, I watched his excesses grow. Men were not just killed… they were tortured and for no reason other than it seemed to bring him pleasure. Women were not just raped… they were degraded and frequently before their men. Children became playthings and heads became toys that were tossed about like balls.

At some point, I began to see that all of us were sinking into an abyss that smelled more of the charnel pit than of a future. I left him and his dreams of glory and conquest… at long last sickened by it. And sickened that I had participated in it willingly.

His exploits continued to cut a swath of pillage across the face of the globe for the next five hundred years. In 79 C.E. he finally went too far and dared the gods themselves when he tried to take the head of another immortal on Holy Ground. I wasn't there… but I'm told that the earth rose up and swallowed him. But he didn't die. When he finally escaped, Nero ruled Rome and, broken and ugly to behold… Nestor became his counselor. His words were still honey. Rome burned. By then… I think the darkness had him utterly. He had lost sight of the game, and sought only perversion and pleasure.

Dark quickenings are rare, thank goodness. His is the only one I ever saw. I do not know their source… but have often wondered if they were not some remnant from our early days when the game began. MacLeod, who overcame the one that took him, says I am reaching for answers where there are none. For him, the darkness was a loss of self. He felt he had taken in the quickenings of so many evil immortals… that who he was had become lost in the process.

As I say… I have no answers. The Nestor we faced and banished in the second century felt like darkness and the devil himself by that time. He warned us that we couldn't kill him… and yet we tried, selecting the youngest and most innocent among us to hold him. But the darkness consumed him in moments. Those of us who were there that day found in later centuries that our actions had forged chains of alliance between us that were not easily undone. Whether it was collective guilt or collective fear that Nestor would one day trouble the world again… we who remained noted one another in passing over the years… but did not challenge the other. Methos… whom I knew then as Antoninus, Xanthia of whom I will speak later, Darius, the giant Ursa, Tak Ne, the man you know as Ramirez, Marcus Constantine, Tjanifer of Troy later known as Graham Ashe. Facing and binding Nestor… changed all of us. His descent into darkness warned all of us that it was possible. It was then that each of us… independently as well as with others… began discussing ways to alter the game as we had come to know it. Somehow… we knew that the forces of darkness had to be stopped… and the game ended. To that end… we began seeking alternate ways of survival.

Ramirez found and trained young immortals to be champions. And his students trained others. Darius retreated to holy ground, Methos became a ghost, Marcus turned to history, the beautiful Xanthia… seemed ever more ethereal and not of this world. Ursa… Nestor's tortures robbed him of his mind… but not his love of beauty. Each of us turned from that time and sought to forget what we'd done… and find a way to prevent the future he saw and had warned us of.