Alone in his cell, Caesar huddled on the stones of the floor. There was nothing left for him to do, but wait.

Every part of his body hurt. Pain stabbed into his side at each breath. His mouth was filled with the metallic taste of blood; he thought he had lost a tooth, maybe more than one, but it hurt too much for him to be sure. His arm felt strangely numb; it didn't seem to be working right. Xena at her worst had never damaged him this badly. Such injuries would take months to heal.

He had hours left. At best.

That bard Gabrielle was gone. She had abandoned him to his fate, and so he had lost his only chance of escape. There was no other way out, and no hope left to him. Tomorrow at dawn, Callisto would burn him to death, on Xena's funeral pyre. Xena had decreed it so. He had escaped it once before, when that bard had saved him. There was no one to save him this time.

How had it come to this?

Had this….had this been his destiny all along?

No. No. The remains of his pride stirred within him dimly. He had long since given up the idea that he had been destined to rule the world, but he refused to believe that it had always been his fate to die here in this filthy camp at the hands of a madwoman. He wouldn't believe that. He couldn't.

But how could this have been averted?

Rome, he thought dimly. It was the same question he had asked himself, over and over again, about the destruction of Rome. Somehow, as he huddled in a heap on that cold, stone floor, in more agony than he had ever been and with nothing to do but wait for his death at dawn, his mind was drawn back to this question. He was somehow convinced that if he could find the answer, the other question—how he could have averted his death at Callisto's hands—would be answered as well. What was it? What was the similarity?

The question was like a puzzle box Xena had shown him once, a gift from Lao Ma, the empress of Ch'in. See, slave? she had said, holding it up. Look what Lao Ma sent me. Isn't it nice?

He had spared it a sullen glance. I don't care.

Now, slave, she had told him, smiling a small, secret smile. Just because you're jealous is no reason to be rude. See, look—the object is to make all the sides line up together.

It can't be done, he had said, interested despite himself; the object in Xena's hands was a misshapen tangle of blocks, and he could not see how it could ever be solved.

Easily. See? There's a trick to it—one simple catch, and…. She turned it over, examining it. Before his eyes, the unsolvable tangle reduced, its sides lining up neatly into coherent shapes. Just that simple, once you know the secret.

Just that simple. The pain fell away from him. The fear for the dawn fell away from him, the walls of the cell, the bars, everything. Right then, finding the answer to the question of Rome seemed like the most important thing in the world. His mind worked at it, worked at it, turning it over from every angle, focusing on it like salvation. This was his last chance, now, on the last night of his life. If he did not answer this question now, he would never find the answer.

Could the destruction of Rome have been prevented?

Najara had told him that surrendering himself would have changed nothing, that by then it had already been too late. So his surrender could not have done it. Could he possibly have defeated Xena on the battlefield if he had done something differently?

No. He knew the answer to that almost before he had formulated the question. No army, no general born could have defeated the all-powerful goddess that had brought her limitless horde to march on Rome. Only Callisto, or Najara, and he knew now only too well that he was not their equal; Callisto had pounded that into his bones with a force that made him cower to think of it. No power, mortal or immortal, could have turned aside the wrath of the Dark Conqueror. No, the chance to avert the destruction of Rome would have had to have been earlier.

He closed his eyes, grinding his teeth together, heedless of the pain in his damaged jaw. The ship. It all kept coming back to the ship. That had been his chance—his only chance. If he had not betrayed her there—if he had not crucified her and left her for dead—

But how could he have known?

That was the sticking point, the place beyond which he could not see another path. It was a stone wall, stopping his train of thought dead in its tracks. She had been just another pirate back then, he repeated to himself helplessly, as he had so many times before. If he had had the slightest inkling of the titanic force she would one day become, he would have pulled her to him and never let her go, not ever. What an empress she would have made…. He couldn't have known. He never would have betrayed her, if he had only seen…

You couldn't have known. Some excuse. You'd have done the same thing if she were a goddess, and I'm not so sure she isn't.

The memory of Pompey's words caught him, made him frown slightly, unaware of it. That's not true, he told himself. He would never have betrayed her—

Would he have?

His cracked rib was stabbing into his side, but he barely felt it. His twisted, broken legs ached where they pressed against the stones of the cell, but they could have been in another world. All his attention was focused on the question, as he strove to remember his thoughts of ten years gone.

It had seemed so obvious, he remembered, thinking back to the tossing boat deck, the spray of the salt wind. It had been purely a policy decision. He had to make an example of her. It was as he had told the bard—he'd had to. She had thought she could challenge Rome. He had to demonstrate the consequences for crossing Rome's path to all who might dare consider it. He had even warned her he would, after a fashion, had warned….

Yet as he thought that, Pompey's words suddenly came back to him:

You never could leave well enough alone, could you, when your goddamn ego was involved….You had to go back and kill her. Not just kill her, conquer her, isn't that right? Because that's what she did to you. No one conquers Caesar. Gods, do you even realize how stupid that sounds?

You arrogant bastard.

His resistance collapsed. It was true. He couldn't even pretend otherwise. Whatever he might have told himself, his crucifixion of Xena had been nothing less than sheer arrogance.

Arrogance.

It was as if he had been blind since birth, and then, at that moment, started to see. The clarity of what he saw stunned him.

It was just as Pompey said—just as everyone had been telling him all along. His pride—his ego—his arrogant sense of his own destiny and place in history, had led him to make the biggest mistake of his life. And this mistake had cost him everything, including that destiny itself. More than that, he realized dizzily. It had led him to hurt her. Xena.

She was broken, that bard had said, and he knew it for truth. Now who could have done that to Xena? That was one question to which he had always known the answer.

He remembered the expression on Xena's face, the night he had come back to her—open, eager and trusting. She'd thought that he was coming back to fulfill his promises—to take her to wife, to conquer the world with her. And he had repaid her….That was one look she'd never given him again.

He had broken her. He saw that clearly now, and the thought did not fill him with satisfaction as it might have once. It was as if he were standing outside himself, seeing his actions for the first time as others might have seen them, and it made him writhe. He had used Xena—Xena!—callously and tossed her aside, secure in the knowledge that he had had every right to do so. After all, she was simply a nameless pirate—one who had committed the sin of thinking herself worthy of him, either as friend or foe. He had done this to the woman who should have been his empress….

….the woman who had, despite it all, loved him. Callisto had said as much. She had loved him, just as he had, in a way….

...loved her? Did he love her? Yes, he realized dimly and too late, yes, perhaps he had. For all that his arrogance had blinded him to it, he loved her.

Arrogance. That was the connection. Like the puzzle box, once he had the secret, everything else fell into place. It had been the same with that little bard, he saw now, saw clearly. She had freed him, had guarded him, protected him, killed for him—I killed for you! she had shouted at him in Salmoneus's encampment. I killed for you! She had aided him almost beyond reason, and it had never even occurred to him that she might behave otherwise. After all, it was no more than his due. She had been kind, and at every step of the way, he had repaid her kindness with cruelty, theft, and scorn. It was no wonder that she had abandoned him, he realized as he thought back over the abuse he had showered on her; the only wonder was that she had not done so long before.

He could see now, see clearly. Both fates could have been averted. If he had not betrayed Xena, then Rome would still stand; if he had returned to the bard the slightest fraction of the compassion she had shown him, then he would not be here now.

He had been blinded by arrogance. That was the lesson he had to learn. Not a difficult lesson, but one that had cost him literally everything he had—his destiny, his city, even his legs. It had cost him the woman he had, after a fashion, loved, and at this night's dawn, it would cost him his life. And not just my life, he realized dimly—how many had died when Rome burned? The sudden realization staggered him, on top of everything else; he shrank from it instinctively.

Yes, a costly lesson indeed, and the hell of it was, he had come to understand it only now, when it was far too late to be of use. There was nothing he could do. Not to avert his fate, or even to make restitution. Rome had burned. Xena was dead. Gabrielle had left him, and he had no hope of escape. He could not even pray to the gods he had long since stopped believing in.

He closed his eyes, and lowered his head to his knees.

Xena, he thought, then, Gabrielle. Forgive.

Alone on the last night of his life, Caesar waited for the end.

The guards came for him at the first light of dawn.

He had slept a little that night, fallen into a half-dozing state which at least allowed him some escape from the pain of his injuries. He had dreamed, but not clearly, of things past and dead; Pompey had been there, mocking him, and Crassus, both of them bearing the marks of their deaths. That young Roman boy that Gabrielle had done for had looked at him sorrowfully, he remembered; and at his back there were a crowd of others—he did not recognize them, but he knew that they were Romans all, men and women and children that had died when the city burned. The walls of Rome rose behind them, pale and translucent, and over it all, for just a moment, he might have seen a flash of blue eyes framed by long dark hair, a warm and brilliant smile. Whatever he had dreamed was gone when he heard the rattle of the bolts to his cell.

They had to lift him to his feet; he could not stand on his own. A tingling had begun to return to his left arm, prickles in his hand and the tips of his fingers that felt as if they would rise to pain later. He knew he would not live long enough for that to happen. His cracked rib bit into his side at each breath. They took him, one gripping either arm, and led him out, through a warren of passages, up flights of stairs, through a pair of doors that opened to the outside.

He was not afraid. He was meeting the end he had long dreaded—being burned to death on Xena's funeral pyre—but somehow he did not feel it. If anything, he felt only a sense of regret that he had found his answer too late, at such great cost. Perhaps in the afterlife he would meet Xena again, and tell her what he had learned. He wondered what she would say.

Callisto had set up Xena's pyre some distance from the camp, on a barren space of ground to the east of the fortress, to one side of the main eastern road. Stakes and skulls and piles of ashes lined both sides of the highway for as far as he could see down it; apparently, Xena would be added to the other examples Callisto had set here, for a lesson to the travelers to the fortress. The first rays of the sun washed the flat land with brilliant gold. His legs were aching, but not as badly as the rest of him; he squinted against the rays of morning.

Xena's sarcophagus was there, he saw, resting on a huge pile of fuel—kindling, tinder and sticks, larger logs lying at crossed angles to each other. The gilding on the sarcophagus seemed to glow in the light of the morning sun. Callisto was standing by the pyre, a bright look of anticipation on her face, as the soldiers brought him to the edge of the ground. Her blonde hair shone in the sun; she looked even more ethereally beautiful than she had last night. He felt no fear of her, despite how she had hurt him; he seemed to have passed to a place beyond fear.

"Are you ready?" she called to him eagerly; she was smiling as if she were a child promised a treat. She winked at him and turned away to discuss something with a small group of men beside her. After a moment she cried, "What?"

"G-Gabrielle, the—the bard, my lady," the man said, pale and stammering with fear. "She—my lady, she is not in the dungeon. She and the King of Thieves, we—"

"Ohhh…" The Bright Warrior stamped her foot petulantly, her face screwed up in an expression of dismay. "Well, that's no fun!" She put her hands on her hips. "Who were the guards on the gate last night?"

"Lares, Paranthius and Daron."

"Are they dead yet?"

"Yes, my Queen—I killed them personally."

"Well, at least that's settled." She frowned in thought, stroking her chin with one delicate hand. "Theodorus!"

Theodorus stepped forward. "No worries, my lady," he said, grinning. "They can't have gotten too far. We have men looking along the main road. I'm sure we'll find them."

"Well…it's a shame they're going to miss it, but the show must go on. Isn't that right?" she asked with another wink in his direction. "We might as well get started." She glanced over to where the guards held him again and gave that sharp smile. "Apply the torch!" she called.

Torches were brought, and bright tongues of fire began to lick at the pile of wood and kindling. The wood caught rapidly, and within moments it seemed as if the pyre was ablaze, roaring and crackling with light. Caesar watched as the flames rose into the sky, flickering around Xena's sarcophagus; her beautiful, serene smile shimmered through the smoke.

Callisto watched too, he saw, her face as solemn as a child's; the sparks of the flames glistened deep in her large brown eyes. "First, the horse," she commanded. "Bring Argo forward!"

Argo was being brought up, he saw now; she had been held off to the side. Now one of Callisto's soldiers brought her forward; she came docilely, her ears out to either side, as calmly as if she were being turned out to graze. Caesar saw that she was caparisoned with all her gear, and spared a brief moment to wonder if she knew what was in store for her. Perhaps she doesn't care, he mused. After all, she too might join Xena on the other side.

"Cut her throat first," Callisto was ordering her men. "After she's dead, toss her body on the pyre."

Goodbye, Argo, he thought to himself. He had known Argo for years, and had never wished this fate for her. At least it would be over soon. He wondered if he would see her on the other side as well.

One of Callisto's soldiers was moving toward Argo with drawn sword, Caesar saw now, the steel blade flashing in the early morning sunshine. He watched the soldier approach the horse, trying to prepare himself for the brightness of blood spread over the blade. Horses had a lot of blood; that he knew. Argo was growing skittish, he saw, sidestepping and tossing her head.

"Hold her still!" the soldier complained to the man at her head. Argo whickered and tossed her crest right up, nearly yanking the reins out of his grasp. The soldier cursed, and hauled her back down again.

As he watched, awaiting his turn to be thrown on the pyre, one of the horse's dark eyes found him. She seemed to be looking right at him. He held her gaze, unable to look away. For what seemed like a timeless moment, Argo stared at him…..

"Look out, she's loose!"

With a ringing scream, the mare reared, swinging her head and pulling herself free of the handler. As she came down, Argo smashed both her hooves down on the man's head and he dropped like a stone. She whirled and kicked the man holding the drawn sword in the chest, sending him flying several feet away to collapse to the ground.

Alarmed shouts were rising into the early morning air. More guards were rushing toward Argo, weapons drawn; the horse was rearing, bucking, lashing out with her hooves and teeth. Soldiers went flying in all directions. No one could so much as touch her. Caesar had known her for many years and had never seen her fight like this before; he watched, fascinated.

"Stop her! Stop her!" Callisto was shrieking furiously. He felt the men on either side him drop his arms, as they ran forward to join the brawl around Xena's horse. If his legs had been better, that might have been his chance to escape; as it was, there was nothing he could do. He watched as they ran forward to engage the furious Argo; her eyes showed white all the way around and her squeals of rage rang in the air. Argo kicked the first guard in the chest with both her hind hooves at once, and there was a loud splintering crack; the second one fell as Argo struck him full on the head with her hooves. Callisto gave a shriek of rage.

"You idiots!" she screamed. "Can't you handle a simple horse?" As he tore his eyes from the sight of Argo and looked over at Callisto, he saw her snatch Xena's chakram from her waist. With an ear-splitting shriek, she threw it at Argo with all her strength. Argo pivoted on her front feet and lashed out with her back hooves, catching the flashing disk in midair; there was a loud clang as the chakram deflected off her horseshoes and went whirring through the air to thwack harmlessly into a pole nearby. More men were running to join the fray as he watched. It's almost a shame, he thought; as valiantly as Argo fought, it was a foregone conclusion that she would fall….

But she did not.

As more men came to surround her, Argo gave a ringing, triumphant scream. She turned, lashed out, clearing some space behind her and sending soldiers flying, then backed up. She advanced three paces; her haunches bulged, and as he watched in wonder, she leapt.

But leap was scarcely the right word; it conveyed nothing of the ease and power of the movement. It seemed more as if Argo simply pushed off from the ground, into a jump that carried her not into but actually over the heads of the men surrounding her. He had never seen a horse make such a leap before, and it was clear that Callisto's men hadn't either; their faces paled as her shadow passed over them, and more than one of them cowered, covering their heads with their hands. Argo seemed to soar over them; her forehooves struck the ground in a spray of dirt and she kicked out with her back legs, knocking two or three more of Callisto's men to the ground, then launched herself immediately into a gallop. Straight toward him.

Argo was coming toward him.

His eyes found Callisto; she had left off shrieking and was staring at the chaos before her, her mouth open and eyes gleaming in what looked like fascination. She met his gaze, and he could have sworn he saw delight in those brown eyes. There was no time to think, or to contemplate what was happening; as Argo skidded to a plunging halt in front of him, shaking her mane and trumpeting defiance, he moved. The pain in his battered, damaged body seemed miles away. He would never afterwards be able to figure out how he did it, but he reached up, grabbed her saddle horn, raised one foot to the stirrup, and pulled himself up into Argo's saddle.

No sooner had he settled himself than, as if she had been waiting for it, Argo sprang into a gallop.

He bent low over her neck to shield himself from the wind, though her mane lashed his face. He caught brief glimpses, fragments of images—Callisto's men, running helplessly after Argo on foot or racing to their own horses to give pursuit; Callisto, with her head back, laughing in manic glee; Theodorus shouting orders that nobody heeded. He saw Xena's funeral pyre; the flames had reached her sarcophagus now, and were blackening and charring the gilded wood, but the serene smile on her carved lips was the same, as if she knew a secret. He could not help but think that smile was for him.

"After them! After them!" Theodorus was bellowing furiously while Callisto's wild laughter rang over the fray. Several men had actually managed to mount their horses and were beginning to give chase. As they flashed past the pole in which Xena's chakram was embedded, some instinct made him put out his hand; there was a sharp pain, but he snatched it out of the wood easily enough. Almost the moment it was in his hand, Argo stretched out and began to run.

Gabrielle had never asked it of her, but he had seen her run like this before, for Xena. He had never thought to experience it himself. Argo moved as smoothly and easily as if she were on water, and yet the world flashed by on both sides of him in a blur. This was not running, this was almost flying; it was like riding the wind. She was running flat out and even increasing speed, but her strides were effortless. As they sailed beyond the boundaries of the encampment, leaving the stronghold farther and farther behind, his heart lifted; Callisto's horsemen would never be able to catch them now. Only Callisto on her mare Charybdis, and Callisto had not given chase. What a horse you are, he thought. Carry me, Argo—carry me!

She carried him; on the wings of the wind, she carried him; chasing the dawn, she carried him, and the road to the east opened up beneath her hooves like something out of a dream. He sat up against her strides, his eyes stinging from the streaming wind that snatched the breath from his throat, and squinted against the intense light. Directly ahead of them, as they swept down the clear and open road away from the darkness behind, shone the rising sun.

The sun had climbed halfway up the sky by the time Argo slowed to a trot; she dropped her pace further, to a walk, and finally came to a halt underneath the shade of a grove of apple trees. Despite her run, she was neither winded, nor lathered; she seemed as fit and as fresh as if she had come from a relaxing day in the meadow. He rubbed her crest gently. "You think we're far enough away they won't find us?" he murmured. "You're probably right." He himself had no idea where they were, or how far they had come.

The pains that had seemed miles away were returning; his jaw hurt, his side was flaming agony, and his left arm was alight with fiery needles that prickled over its entire surface. Somehow, despite the pain, he felt good—better than he had in a long, long time. He had made no attempt to guide Argo during her run, but now, tentatively, he touched his heels to her sides; without too much trouble, he managed to direct her over to a large boulder, directly underneath one of the trees. Moving slowly and carefully, and using the boulder as a step, he managed to dismount without falling flat on his face in the dirt. He looked at her.

"Why did you save me?" he wondered aloud. "You don't even like me."

Argo's ears went lateral; her only reply was a whicker. She nuzzled him briefly.

The pain in his right hand reminded him that he still held Xena's chakram; he examined it now. He had apparently cut himself with it when he had snatched it out of the post, he saw; blood had trickled down his arm and dried in streaks. He awkwardly hooked the chakram over Argo's saddle horn. It was hard to open her saddlebags with one injured hand and one hand that was barely functional, but somehow he managed it. Bandaging his hand was more difficult, but he was eventually able to accomplish that too.

Argo was nuzzling at some apples hanging from the lower boughs; she liked them, he remembered. He plucked an apple from a low-hanging branch, heavy with fruit. While looking through Argo's saddlebags, he had come across Gabrielle's little belt knife; now he retrieved it. Moving unevenly, with jerky, awkward steps, he made his way over to the boulder he had used as a mounting block, and half-sat, half-fell down. With the little belt knife, he cut into the apple, dividing it into slices. He could not eat—his jaw hurt too much—but he offered a piece to Argo; the mare took it from him, nibbling on it with evident enjoyment.

"So," he asked her, "where do we go now?"

Argo had no answer.

"Yet he smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks—an existence of soft and eternal peace.

"Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the leaden rain clouds."

—Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage.

The End.