Rogovi zvanove idvat. Napreyte pat na voyina! Tapani biyat va ritam. Princesata ye pak tuka….
Horns sound as she approaches. Make your way to war! Drums beat in rhythm. The Princess has returned…. [x]
Amphipolis's legacy, Cyrene's mother used to say, would be as a battleground. Conflict bred easy in Thrace, and their high bluff was contested territory, generations of Athenian settlers hoarding its precious minerals and shipping routes.
The Encircled City, they called it, but to Cyrene, it was simply hers. The high plateau with its sturdy whitewashed walls, stone-paved streets, and Father's bustling tavern were hers. The blue river and fields of the vale, swollen with produce and livestock, were hers.
Atrius and his band of Spartans swept in with the first heat wave of summer, bringing peace talks to the city for their southern king. He was caught in the ebb and flow of war the way most men were and talked about killing barbarians for kings' gold like it was a game, but he was also striking and tall and full of laughter. He charmed her, and charmed her father. When he rode away in the autumn, he left her a married woman growing new life in her stomach.
Cyrene's first child was an easy birth. A hardy boy with her hair and her eyes, born with little fuss and less noise. A pride to his father, had the man been there to see.
They hung olive branches on the door in celebration and named the boy Toris.
She didn't see her husband that winter or the next, until the haze of summer had nearly passed. He returned with no word of warning and no retinue of soldiers, arriving at the inn late and with hands still red from sacrifice to Ares.
She didn't ask after the state of the Peloponnesian campaign, and he didn't offer. He looked in on his son, brushed a hand across the boy's head in acceptance, and then let her lead him away to her room.
Their coupling was - different. Sudden, and rough, and good in a way she'd never experienced. He left again the same night, pressing his fingers to her stomach before he went as if in prayer for another son. Then he was gone, leaving her sated and the sheets smelling of temple incense.
Xena came to her on an unnaturally cold day in middle spring.
The pains started with the first hours of the barley harvest, and a full day's searing labor left Cyrene limp in her chair and soaked in sweat. Her hands were shaking as she took the squalling bundle from the midwife, and her first view of her daughter was bleary, through salted lashes. The baby had thick black hair, tiny fists, and healthy lungs. Had her mother's blue eyes, not her father's.
Was worth the pain.
There would be no olive branch this time, and she'd seen women turn from their men in shame of that. But Atrius was gone, as he often was, following his king and his god to battle. There was no battle here - only Cyrene's mother, the women of the house, and the sounds and smells of Amphipolis.
Through the window she could hear singing as women reaped the fields of grain. It was the song her mother's people had sung, and her mother's mother's.
Gledai ma, gledai, pilence lale, nagledai misa. Dneska sum tuka, pilence lale, utre ma niama .
" Look at me, delicate tulip, look right at me, " Cyrene murmured into her daughter's hair. " Today I am here, delicate tulip, but tomorrow…."
There was, she decided, no shame to be had.
Cyrene nearly lost her second boy to illness in the womb. She had been lucky to bear two to completion and was due for a loss, but she felt the sharp grief in her gut all the same.
Eight hours passed. Nine, ten.
As the women plied her with herbs and in between whispered prayers to Ilithyia, she saw Xena slip into the room to watch the busy work. Her second child had started walking before the first could run, and often caused twice the bother of the first. Now her canny eyes flicked silently between Cyrene's pained face and the herbs in the hands of the distracted midwife.
Fourteen hours, fifteen.
She watched her daughter get ushered away and wondered what she would tell Atrius if the girl's birth had torn something vital inside her that would now kill their son.
Twenty, twenty-one.
Lyceus was born in the early morning hours, sandy-haired like his father and bawling lustily. Healthy, the midwife assured her, if a bit small. They recovered together in the pre-dawn quiet.
Toris and Xena were both in awe of him, and patted his soft cheeks cautiously, milk-tooth grins splitting their faces.
"This is your younger brother," she told Toris, giving the speech that Atrius would have if he hadn't followed Ares' call. "It's your job to protect him."
Toris nodded, serious.
Beside him, hands curled in the baby's blankets, Xena did too.
Old Xenophon Had A Farm
The farm, Xenophon had declared when he first set foot on it, was the finest in all of Thrace.
This was hardly true - he had been born adjacent to status but held none himself, so the farm was small and its bounty of fruit drew even less money than their tavern, now passed into his daughter's capable hands, did inside the town walls. But lying a half-day's ride from the Lion Gate and nestled in the valley of the wide river, it was home.
Xenophon had married here when the forests were younger and the great wars freshly ended; his was the first generation born to freedom after Solon's seisachtheia. He'd seen his children raised here, tended his livestock and crops here from dawn to dusk. And when he passed into the realm of the underworld, the judges of the dead willing, the Fields would reflect this place in peace and beauty.
The Athenian conflicts had taken Xenophon's sons and brothers from him. It had left, in their stead, his distant cousins, his only daughter, and her brood of children. The two boys were good warriors in the making, and the littlest one outpaced the eldest in all things but running, his short legs not yet to make up for his darker brother's stride.
The girl was curled at the feet of Xenophon's wife in the shade of their porch, embroidery forgotten in her lap, giggling as she rested her dark head against the arm of her grandmother's chair. She ran rough-shod with the village boys, Cyrene said, tumbled in the dirt and played at fencing with kindling rather than attending to her reading. But she was docile as a fawn by the side of that rocking chair, listening to the ballads about heroes and Gods and humming the parts she knew. The two of them alone in the family were blessed by the Muses in voice and song. Their hands spun pictures in the air in mimicry of the Fates, weaving imaginary threads as Xenophon's wife told her tale.
Peace was Xenophon's reward after paying his dues to Ares as a young man. Dues that his Lacedaemonian son-in-law was paying now - more than paying, if rumors were true.
They heard the hoofbeats first, then the man on his red warhorse swept across the road.
The children turned to run toward him, voices raised to drown each other out; Xena sprang up from the porch and was the first to reach him. He laughed, turning the stallion to meet her, and swept her up into his arms like one of his boys. The other two, dusty and grinning, met them as he dismounted, but he kept the girl wrapped in his armored embrace even as he stooped to greet them.
His hands were rusty red around the edge of his bracers. Diligent, Cyrene had said he was, in his sacrifices to Ares. He had taken the boys to the temple last year, and returned disappointed that both seemed to find the slaughter distasteful. Cyrene had turned away to hide the relief on her face.
Xenophon had a vision of the little family suddenly, an aging father with an attentive wife and their grown, married children. No longer a man of war, but someone the times had changed into the head of a peaceful household with a well-tended farm and fruit trees that blossomed while chickens pecked at the yard.
Surely the Fates could grant them that much.
Oresteia
Cyrene's world ended for the first time - abruptly, nightmarishly - very late on a winter night. It wouldn't be the last time she felt the walls of reality collapsing around her - the second would come a decade later, staring at her youngest son's cold, still face on a bloody battleground. These things always seemed to revolve around her daughter, her Xena, her gift and curse to the world.
Atrius staggered home after sixteen months away from the village, his first hours of leave from the army already wasted on drink and taverns and worship at the temple of his War God.
He was ranting in a way she'd never seen, not even when stinking drunk or shaking apart at night from memories of death and slaughter. He wept and rambled, red-faced with anger.
"She belongs to Ares," he said as he paced. "She belongs to the God of War. She must die, must die, must."
Who , Cyrene tried to ask, but then his gaze drifted toward the closed doors that their children slept behind and the word died on her lips.
She wondered which of his fellow soldiers had been feeding his obsession with sacrifice. Which of the overly-pious temple priests had reminded him of debts owed to the patron of his profession, or - Gods, Xena's odd conceiving, had he done the math and realized - she'd never asked -
Atrius's hands were at the belt in his knife, now, thumb running across the textured pommel as if it gave him comfort. "She must die," he muttered again, and blinked slow.
Cyrene's own mother came from bardic tradition. The woman used to sit a child on her knee and rock them as she told tales of the Olympian Gods, or the kings in the south and their golden thrones. Tales from Ovid, the Aeneid, Theogony, the Oresteia.
Was Atrius now Agamemnon and she Clytemnestra, weeping as he offered their own flesh and blood to the gods? Would Cyrene slice his head from the neck with a labrys axe one day in revenge for her Iphigenia, her Xena, her only daughter? Would Lyceus one day pick up the sword himself and slaughter her in turn, for his father's sake?
Or was Atrius her Orestes, already tortured by the Fates for the intended murder of his own kin?
"I won't let you," Cyrene said, and her hands shook.
"Then you'll follow her to the crows," her husband replied. The words were the clearest he'd uttered all night.
Cyrene was not Clytemnestra. She was not weeping, and he was not a king.
She followed his stumbling gait to the stables, watched his worn hands search for a whetstone. Watched him sit and sharpen his knife like he planned to slaughter a chicken. She could imagine the tip of it wavering at her baby's neck.
Then the axe from the firewood was in her hands and there was so, so much blood -
My mad, mad Orestes , she thought as she scrubbed the blood from the dirt, splitting her skin, breaking her nails on his armor as she dragged the body -
She made breakfast for four that morning, hands steady on the chopping knife. Her eldest washed the vegetables while Xena and Lyceus roughhoused in the back, chores forgotten as they splashed each other. She would let them think he had died heroically in war, or that he had run off with someone younger and brighter -
She watched Lyceus more carefully after that. He and Xena were birds of a feather, and one of the two rarely ran wild without the other. But her youngest looked so like his father, with the same strong will and outspokenness. Toris would never hurt a fly but Lyceus, for all that he seemed uninterested in war, was already better than all the boys his age with a practice sword. He rarely lost, except when he let his sister win, and Xena - a girl and a growing beauty with a natural healer's touch - was hardly going to follow Atrius's footsteps into the army.
So if one of her children was infected with their father's madness - if one of them would turn to violence unexpectedly, shift as men do when drink is in them and a weapon to hand, then surely -
Cyrene would laugh at the irony, later, and wonder if she had done the right thing. When reports came of burnings throughout the countryside and men flayed apart on spikes, she wondered if her husband had been given a prophetic vision. If he'd known the havoc their daughter - or the thing with the face of their daughter - would wreak.
If she should have let him kill their child, or even helped him to snuff the life out of that sleeping seven-year-old body.
She would wonder how much he hated her, wherever he now rested in the Meadows of the Underworld. It couldn't possibly be as much as she hated herself.
Fins
The Strymon River swelled in the spring, flowing over the banks of its deepest bend and bringing colorful fish out of deep hibernation.
Toris lead the way toward the bank, fishing poles over one shoulder, buckets for bait and catch in the other. The other, smaller members of his party lagged behind, caught in a tussle at the last bend in the road. His sister, last he'd seen her, had had their younger and shorter sibling trapped in a headlock and was gleefully knuckling the Tartarus out of his fluffy-haired head.
Now she tore past him in a whirlwind of hair and flailing arms, skirt tucked up above the knees and tunic askew. Lyceus pelted after, tripped over himself and took a tumble. He leapt up with his pout unbroken - though distinctly dirtier - and disappeared behind the reeds of the riverbank. In the distance he could be heard wailing that he didn't want to go fishing, Xena, why do you always do this?
"Slow down ," Toris yelled, knowing they were already too far to hear and uncaring besides.
They had all wanted out of the house today. Grandpa and grandmother had come up from the farm with hopeful smiles on their faces, a cousin from the council of elders in tow, and an eligible man's name on their lips. Cyrene had still been watching them, unmoving, jaw clenched, when the three siblings fled out the door.
Xena had declared it no type of day for needlework - as if she ever considered it the right kind of day for needlework - and pulled her siblings outside into the sunshine. As Toris rounded the bend to the shore he saw her crouching by the muddy bank, arranging her dolls in a ring around her fishing basket like an army meant to protect her share of the catch.
"They just want us to have a stepfather," he tried as soon as he was within hearing distance, picking up the thread of unspoken conversation because someone here had to be logical. Someone had to be the man of the household until a better came along, though Zeus knew no one ever listened to him.
"Stepfather," Xena repeated, face scrunched like she was smelling rotten cheese. She then piled her mess of hair into a twist, twirled her fishing rod once like an unwieldy sword, and waded into the water, as if declaring the subject over.
Beneath the water's edge, something stirred.
"I see him," Lyceus yelled, tripping over his line in excitement. His earlier protestations were forgotten and his eyes glued on the Strymon's rippling surface. "The big one."
"It's not the same fish," Toris tried, because again, logic, but the words had the same effect they always did.
"You see Solaris?" shouted Xena, who had apparently named the blasted thing.
Lyceus pointed, jumping a bit. "He's hiding by the cattail reeds, but I've got him."
Midday faded into afternoon. The fish bucket slowly filled. The siblings' aquatic rival remained elusive but they were enjoying themselves nonetheless, worries forgotten, laughter filling the air -
Then Toris blinked and his sister had disappeared with a splash, rod left floating lazily atop the water, its line tangling with reeds on the bank.
Panic.
Xena could swim, because there were frustratingly few things his sister wasn't skilled at, but she was only little - if she'd hit her head, if she'd -
He dove into the water, feeling blindly, searching desperately for her hands, her clothing, her hair. Nothing. He came gasping to the surface -
A jet of water hit him square in the ear.
Xena was crouched low near the river back behind him, grin unrepentant. She ducked down and spat more river water into his hair.
"What in Hades were you doing?" Toris yelled, furious in a way he didn't know how to quantify, and pulled her with him onto shore.
"I thought I had him," she said, insulted like a cat interrupted at its play. She wrestled out of his grip. "The big fish - I was so close!"
Of course she was. Of course his stupid sister nearly dove to her own death because she thought she could catch the stupid trout with her bare stupid hands .
Toris didn't realize he was shouting until he saw Xena staring at him in shock and Lyceus, still up to his ankles in water, gaping at them both. He bit off his next words.
"It was just a fish," he said tiredly, stooping to reel in his own sagging line.
"It was Solaris ," his sister hissed at him, eyes wide.
Toris grabbed the closest doll to them both - a raggedy centaur that grandpa had carved - and hurled it as far as he could into the river.
"Hades," said Lyceus, sounding hilariously shocked.
They all watched while the toy sank under the water.
Xena's eyes bugged out slightly. Toris had a second to laugh at her face before she let out a scream like a harpy and tackled him straight into the water, fists and feet flying. They wrestled with deadly ferocity for five seconds, ten. Then Xena collapsed into helpless cackling and the tension broke.
Toris laughed, he would think in later years, more on that afternoon than he ever would again in his life. The memory would grow to have the dreamy quality that idealized childhoods often do, with flashes of sun glinting on the water, mud itching between his toes, his stomach aching from laughter. His siblings' high young voices, one in tune and the other cheerfully not, humming a fisherman's song. His brother's fair hair in the fading sun and his sister's white grin.
Lyceus - somehow wetter and dirtier than either of them - led the merry way back to the tavern, Xena digging a bony toe into Toris's ankle every time she sensed him getting quiet again. They got more amused looks than disapproving ones as they trooped through town, which Toris supposed was the best that could be hoped for.
When they reached home the guests were in bed and the main room was quiet.
Cyrene was up late, marking careful notches on an inventory ledger by candlelight. She gave them an exasperated smile as they trooped in, clothes still clinging half-wet, Xena's skirts a mess, mud on Lyceus's nose.
She was alone. The tavern was peaceful.
Young Wolf
"C'mon." The hand waved just above hers, fingers beckoning impatiently. "C'mon, you can do it."
The oak tree was very tall, Flora decided, and the branch that her friend rested upon was very high. She could hit it with her fingertips, maybe, if she took a running start, but if only someone would pull her up -
"C'mon." A second voice had joined the first, and now two pairs of eyes peered down together. The newcomer was tousle-haired and grinning gently from his perch in the branches.
Flora reached for the waiting hand. The second their fingers touched, it withdrew.
" Xena ," she cried, and stamped her foot.
Xena leaned over the branch, black hair hanging toward the ground, cheeks round with a suppressed smile and one eyebrow curled in mischief. Her blue eyes were pale in the early light, and, Flora thought, surely prettier than anyone's but Aphrodite's.
As Xena and her fair-haired brother jumped down, standing shoulder to shoulder and both far too tall to be allowed, Flora wondered if she was a little bit in love. Although she surely wouldn't say it - surely couldn't.
"You'll get there someday, little Flora," said her favorite person, finally letting a grin break out and ruffling her hair. "Just gotta have a little faith."
"I want to get there now, " Flora said, appropriately in the manner of girls not yet in their double digits.
"Aw, don't be a baby," Lyceus said with a smile that eased the sting. "Babies don't get to train at swordplay, right Xena?" He stooped to pick up two objects from the base of the tree - practice blades of the type garrisons trained with at gymnasium - and tossed the longer to his sister. She caught it with ease.
"Mama says you're the best in the village," Flora told him, because it was true.
"Nah, Xena gets me on the ground nine times out of ten," Lyceus said without envy. "It comes to her so easy that she forgets that it's hard for the rest of us."
They watched his sister weave patterns with the sword her hands, smooth and steady like she'd been born with it attached. She moved lightly beneath her tied-up skirts, stepping and pivoting like the dancing girls in the spring festival.
Flora wanted to ask so badly -
The other girl caught her looking, grinned, and stepped forward, holding out the wooden sword for her to hold.
The temptation nearly hurt. "I never tried before," Flora said, digging a toe into the dirt. "Mama says I'm not allowed."
"Yeah, well times change," Xena said, twirling the makeshift weapon. "It's okay if you change a little, too." Her teeth flashed when she grinned.
As Flora grew, as war came to the village, as her family picked up everything they owned and moved to a new land with new laws and new masters, what she would remember was -
The way Xena's calloused teenaged hands wrapped around Flora's own, shifting her small fingers carefully on the sword hilt. The way the older girl guided her through one swing, then two, fixing her grip and her shoulders with a patient touch. The way Xena taught her to bear the sword's weight and walk with it, straight-backed, unyielding.
Femmes and Gems
The bracelet was red, and pretty. Tiny bronze charms dangled from its beaded length, draping elegantly against her wrist as Xena turned it in the sunlight.
It suited her, and she liked it. She liked Maphias too, she supposed, believed his promises of love and loyalty, but he was so… so….
He'd handed her flowers and recited poetry. Poetry . Then he'd gone to Toris to ask for her hand and Toris, the bastard, had promised to consider it .
She'd pummel her brother for that, but later, not in front of her childhood friend and his near-wealthy family. For them she'd dropped a neat curtsy in her best dress, painted a smile on her face, and raised her voice half an octave as she thanked them prettily for the gift.
Maphius's parents hadn't noticed the fakery, but her own mother certainly had. Cyrene had unleashed a verbal thrashing as soon as they were alone, to which Xena had half-listened until her mother paused for breath.
"It's too soon," she'd interrupted, still considering the bracelet. Flowers and poetry , by the gods, an old verse from her grandmother's mountain people, and he wasn't even one of the village boys that she'd fucked. "Besides, there's barely anything in my hope chest."
This had set her mother off again. "And whose fault is that? Your needlework is on half the linen in Flora's dowry, though Antiocles and Hermea won't get offers for her for years yet, but you neglect your own -"
The conversation would have included a swatting if Xena had been any younger, and she would have almost felt contrite by the end of it. She loved her mother, she liked her friend, and she wanted to cause neither of them grief.
The problem lay in the fact that she couldn't play-act contrition for long, not without getting the urge to bite . She could take discipline by her mother's hand or a vicious beating on the training field with only a few yelps of complaint, but fling words like weapons and it was only a matter of time before she started spitting back.
Midway through this first, not last, argument with Cyrene about her betrothal status, Xena had stomped out of the house without apology.
Now, lying hidden in the reeds of the Strymon with the sun glinting off the bangle, she wondered if it would really be that bad. If maybe time could change her into a person who wanted everything that a marriage offered.
She pictured herself standing in front of Amphipolis's white walls, the people cheering, every eye fixed as she slipped on the same ring her mother had once received from that bastard -
Maphias was gentle, intelligent, compassionate. Well-off, with his distant family of former slave-owners from the Peloponnese. He cared about others and was a born peacemaker. Unlikely to ride off in the night and leave a family behind. Always trying to find the compromising path, was Maphias. She wondered if he'd be a good lay -
Footsteps.
"You're holding it like a trophy, you know."
Xena snatched her hand out of the air, bracelet curled in her fist.
"Yeah, well, not all of us are so sentimental about our trinkets," she said, nodding at Lyceus. He stepped over her to flop on the grassy riverbank, crossing his ankles to mimic her pose.
"I'm perfectly comfortable with my Virillus Token, thanks," he said with a grin.
"You're of age - it's starting to give people ideas about your virility ," she said, swatting at him.
He just laughed. "I bet mother wishes fewer people had ideas about yours. Keep sneaking out at night, pop one more grape into your mouth when the blacksmith's son is looking, and she'll make you commit yourself to Hestia. I think she's just relieved someone wants to make a respectable woman out of you."
"The blacksmith's son got clingy," Xena said, waving a hand to encompass both the man and the entirety of Amphipolis to their east. She didn't mention that the blacksmith's daughter had proven happily less so. "What's with that?"
Lyceus eyed her. "Don't even pretend you don't like the village boys worshipping you."
"I don't like them bothering me," she countered, which wasn't a denial.
"It'll have to be someone, even if it's not Maphias - who loves you, by the way. He's composed sonnets about your eyes and your many talents. Or, well, he's tried."
"He called me the 'Agnodice of Amphipolis'," said Xena in aggrieved tones.
"You'll notice he didn't mention your cooking. Ouch, put that down, I give! The point is, if you turn him down -"
"You don't have to tell me that Maphias is a good man, I know that. How do you know I'm not completely desperate to marry him but simply terrified of the ghost of the madman Atyminius -"
"Grandfather's old folktales again?"
"- smothering me in the bath before my wedding nighbbffft -"
She spluttered as Lyceus ground a handful of grass into her hair, took the retaliatory shin kick with good grace, and rolled away laughing.
They lay in silence for a moment, the sound of insects and rushing water broken by the laughter of village girls washing clothes in the river. One had hiked her skirt up, knotting it about her thighs. Her legs were long and tanned and wet. That was Galene, the butcher's daughter. Her hair was aglow and piled high to expose the nape of her neck. There would be water droplets there, probably -
"The redhead, right?"
Xena snapped her head around, but Lyceus just grinned at her lazily through the grass.
"Relax. I'm pretty sure we've got the same taste in women."
Xena didn't have words for her jumbled rush of feeling for her brother. She only knew that she would fail in navigating the life they knew without him.
"C'mon," she said, jumping to her feet and giving him a friendly kick in the shin. "Swords in ten. I've suddenly got a lot of excess energy I want to burn."
Xena pulled him to his feet. They were of a height, eye to eye, he in boots and she barefoot. With a gentle finger she reached out to flick him on the shoulder.
"You've got dirt on you again, farmboy," she said.
In Sparta, Before the War
The training grounds of the agoge were barely recognizable, scrubbed of tumbled earth, scattered in flower petals, and revitalized for Hyacinthia. They smelled of blossom water where they usually smelled of sweat, and this suited the audience fine.
From her position on the royal dais next to her mother and father, Helen looked over the crowd and felt it look back.
The throngs were swollen and loud, as they always were on the second day of the festival; musicians piping through the streets on their aulos, citizens piling into the hippodrome for the races, men spilling libations and sacrificial blood down the temple steps, all of them celebrating rebirth and the mandated days of peace.
Even here, away from the choirs and the dancing, there were banquet tents in every street and courtyard from the palace to the helots' fields. The tables beneath them overflowed with fruit and breads and thin wine. The banquets brought everyone, citizens and foreigners alike, to the capital. Some came to eat and dance, some to entreat King Tyndareus on this day of famous hospitality, and others to watch sport.
The rest were here to catch a glimpse of Sparta's other most famous commodity. The gaze of the citizens in the crowd and the visiting nobility on the dais felt heavy, and Helen shifted, uncomfortable, under their attention.
Chin up, eyes down, and best to keep her own line of sight trained elsewhere.
There were Perioeci and peasant-folk here, too, bustling in their standing seats and straining for a better look at the training grounds. Among them stood a young man and woman, their unadorned dark hair, shocking height, and pale eyes similar in the way only family could be. Even in the faded blue and cream linen of poor merchants, they stood half a head above the crowd. The boy, clearly the elder, had his hands on his hips and jaw clenched as he spoke. His sister flashed a grin and then turned away, waving a hand at him as if to dismiss his words.
A horn sounded, and Helen turned to look back at the square as the crowd leaned in. This was Sparta's biggest tourist attraction, after all, despite the fame of its women and its poets; the boys of the agoge and their martial skill.
The skill was undeniable; the wrestling bouts were long; the afternoon was hot. At Helen's right shoulder, an elderly lord from Euboea cleared his throat and leaned in to explain the points system for each match. It soon became clear that he had almost certainly confused the grappling for chariots, and the minutes dragged. Helen found herself looking toward the cluster of peasants again.
The dark-haired girl was looking back. As Helen watched, those blue eyes went half-lidded and slender fingers snatched a cherry from the nearest table. The girl brought it to her own smirking lips, where it was welcomed by the pink curl of her tongue.
Helen's whole mouth went dry.
Another petty king now had King Tyndareus's ear, and Helen's father, always afraid to cause offense and risk the loss of foreign loyalty, listened and nodded.
This time, Helen barely noticed.
The square had been cleared for pankration and an official was now beckoning the tittering crowd forward, calling on brave and drunken men and boys to join the free-for-all. In Sparta, there were no rules in the contest of force, but for Hyacinthia, participation was part of the festivities. Across the crowd, families erupted into tiny arguments as fathers and brothers and spouses moved to try their luck in the square.
The dark-haired siblings were arguing too. Then the girl, lips still red from cherry, hitched her skirt above her knees in a practiced knot and walked onto the training ground.
Whispers erupted. Helen could see her father the king begin to frown, but hesitate before declining to speak. Always the peacekeeper at heart.
The pankratiasts settled themselves into position, left feet forward and hands held before them in the air, ready to attack or defend. The unknown girl was grinning, wiggling her upheld fingers like it was a game, like contestants hadn't been known to break bones and spill blood in a match.
A signal and the pairs on the training ground converged -
The dark-haired girl's opponent didn't seem to know what to make of her. He hesitated, went for a doubtful chokehold, and then went down into the dust, felled by a single straight kick to the abdomen. He lay there, blinking, mouth slightly open.
"Glory to Apollo," said Queen Leda as a horn rang and the bout officially ended. Helen murmured the same under her breath, giddy.
The third day of celebration passed mostly in private ceremony, but still Helen's time was not her own. In the morning she was poked and prodded into her best finery; in the afternoons her time was taken by lessons; in the afternoons, suitors vying for her glance and her father's ear.
After the final feasts and the closing of the festivals for Apollo, the city emptied somewhat, but not entirely. Aside from the usual entreaties and delegates and parties interested in the hand of King Tyndareus's daughter, there were throngs of merchants, traders, and craftsmen from Thessaly, Thrace, and Ionia. Many came from cities that Sparta had claimed decisively in the old wars, and most of these still had functioning trade contracts with the state. Others had fallen from their previous days of glory, their mines of precious metals having long since begun to dry up and their citizens largely having turned in their goldsmithing hammers for farming and herding tools.
Still, even these had a right to try their luck in trading at the great markets and entreating Sparta for renewed interest in old promises.
Helen watched from within the circle of her handmaidens as one such group, led by a thin older man whose hair was hidden under a complex wrap, entreated the Assembly before being turned away. As they departed, one lone figure slipped from the back of the cluster and returned to speak with the most wizened of the guards guarding the Agora steps.
It was a familiar figure, Helen realized as she drew closer, even if many of her mannerisms seemed alien. Helen herself was innocent of many goings-on outside of her palace education, but even she could see the deception clearly - neither the girl's high, sweet voice as she appealed to the guard, nor the shy way she curled her hair around one finger, suited the figure so recently seen on the training grounds of the agoge.
Helen's elderly handmaiden Aethra shot her a quizzical look, but left promptly when Helen waved her away. Then Helen walked down to the pair.
The conversation broke apart as she approached and she never heard what they had been discussing, but she did learn other things instead.
It turned out that the stranger girl's name was Xena. She was a year older than Helen, and Thracian, with no pedigree to her name. She also kissed like she'd been born of heavenly sea-foam herself, bent over Helen and cradling her gently where they huddled for privacy in the maze of sun-baked brick behind the palace gardens.
Everything about her was sweet even when it was sharp, from the smug pull of her lips, to the fruit she stole when she knew Helen was looking, to the way she glared at the men who tried to take up their attention.
"He's my grandfather's age," Helen gasped, feeling ungracious as they ran giggling into the gardens, fleeing the long-winded lord of Euboea and his wandering eyes. "The thought of marrying him and bearing his children -"
"So don't," Xena interrupted, hair windswept from their mad dash. "Marry someone as sweet as you are, who'll love you."
Helen learned many things about her new Thracian companion over the next few days. That she was a native of far northern Amphipolis, a former jewel in Sparta's crown that had long since gone to seed, where she spent her days scrubbing the family tavern and learning healing arts from the old women. That it was her first time in Laconia. That she and her eldest brother had accompanied their city councilmen here out of a sense of duty and a vague connection as second cousins, but also that this was not Xena's true reason for journeying to Sparta.
It seemed that Xena was searching for someone. She asked at the palace for a history of the city's lost kings and princes, then in the barracks of Spartiates who had come through the agoge in years past, then about the town of Perioeci who might have served in Sparta's wars when young.
As she asked, she learned. There were a thousand stories of traitorous kinsmen to the crown; the long-dead Hippocoön, adversary of the throne; young Orestes, madman from the doomed House of Atreus; murderous Nelo, a young Messenian slave whose Helot uprising nearly killed Helen's grandfather.
None of the stories seemed to suit Xena's needs.
But as Xena looked for blue-eyed, war-skilled old men in every tale the city had to tell, Helen learned sweet things. Like how Xena could sing as true as the court musicians but would rarely be entreated to perform, uninterested in using her talents for profit. How she could read and write more than expected for a peasant girl, and better than most palace children by the time a week had passed in Helen's library. How she gasped, laughing in the still air of the secluded palace gardens, dress pulled up around her thighs as she dripped warm honey onto Helen's jeweled fingers.
"Your hands are soft," Xena said much later as they lay curled together in sweat. Helen's chambers were silent, her minders looking for her elsewhere.
"And yours feel like a young Spartiate's, as if you've spent a lifetime -"
"- toughening my grip with wood, I know." Their fingers were softly linked, and the other girl's expression was far away. "My father once told me."
Helen looked down. "And have you found him yet?"
"Maybe he was never here," Xena said, smiling and shrugging as though it didn't matter. Her eyelashes were wet. "Maybe I never knew his real name. Maybe he was a petty Laconian king, or a royal Mycenaean cavalryman, or Zeus in disguise..."
Helen thought of the many things that her own father was - fearful, loving, a near-stranger to her - and wrapped her fingers around the other girl's wrist, pulse thumping fast. "Then it doesn't matter."
"Oh, no?"
"No."
Xena rolled onto her side suddenly, bracing herself to look into Helen's eyes. "I'll challenge all your suitors for your hand, if you want," She sounded as though she were only half jesting, excited at the daydream. "I'll make every last one of them swear loyalty to you, no matter who your father crowns victorious."
Helen felt her body shake with laughter, lips pressed together against the fine linen sheets. "I can see it. Sparta's new-crowned princess, a Thracian innkeep with mud on her dress and straw in her farmgirl braids."
"Aha, but I'd have you to lend me pretty, silly things that can impress the king and queen. And when we ruled together, you and I, we'd free the helots... ban the old men from our court... All I need is for you to fall victim to my wiles." It was all said in jest. Her fingers traced the gold-thread embroidery of the bedsheets almost unconsciously.
Helen was quiet, gently walking the tips of her fingers across Xena's collarbone until they reached the silky hair where it fell over her shoulder. Sun had begun to filter through the curtains, chasing away pre-dawn dreams. "And what if I'm the one who needs you?"
Xena's eyes were nearly colorless in the pale morning light and her grin was blindingly white. "Then it's only one week's sailing. I'll come if you call, princess. Send a messenger to Amphipolis and they'll find me."
Death Masks
The traveler was ragged and exhausted, swaying on his feet in the doorway of the tavern. It was late, the other guests long in bed, but Cyrene's children sat him down with wine and Lyceus's soup and refused the paltry coins offered from his limp purse in return.
"Raiders," said the man finally, when there was food in his stomach and his hands had stopped shaking. He called himself Aeschylus, an elderly farmer from Apollonia, an inland city between the Strymon and the mouth of the Nestos. He had, as far as they could tell, not slept in more than a day, and spoke most of his tale directly to Lyceus. Whether it was because he assumed Lyceus to be the innkeeper, or because the apron, curls, and dishwashing-red hands set him apart as the antithesis of a warlord's strongman, it was hard to say. "Swept down on us like locusts from the hills. I've never seen the like, not since the Persian fleets sailed through these parts in my father's time."
"Did they make any demands?" Lyceus asked quietly.
Aeschylus made an aborted movement to drink more wine, but his hands were still unsteady. "They wanted everything - took loot and slaves too when they were through. We'd have given it if we'd known to surrender, but they just tore through with fire and sword, burning as they went. We had no resistance to offer, but they killed those who tried. The women, the children…."
Lyceus shared a glance with Xena, who had given up all pretense of wiping down the closest table.
"This warlord," she said, and the man jumped as if he'd not expected her to speak. "Did you get a name?"
After a moment, the traveler shook his head. "No names, no faces. Never seen the like, not this side of Thrace." He began mumbling to himself again.
Lyceus was hardly listening. "No faces?"
The man waved a hand toward his own eyes. "Masks. The leaders, they wore masks and sat back, watched their cavalry do its work."
Lyceus felt a small chill slip down his spine, and out of the corner of his eye saw his sister lean forward.
"Cavalry?" she asked. "Aeschylus, these men, the bandits who carried out the attack. How well were they equipped?" She was rewarded with a blank look, and a note of impatience entered her tone. "Were they Thracian, foreign? What kind of armor, weapons, horses?"
The traveler opened and shut his mouth once. "Thracian, at least most of them. I heard them speak, I didn't think… most of them were on horseback, bearing longswords, spears… well-made armor." He shook his head. "There were so many of them, and in strong armor, leather and bronze…."
Xena met Lyceus's eyes over the man's head. They'd both lived in Amphipolis long enough to hear of bandits and their rag-tag armies passing through the lower valleys. They both remembered Atrius's stories of campaigns in the south.
What had destroyed Apollonia sounded like a fully-equipped professional fighting force, not a roving band of outlaws.
"We'll talk to our officials," Lyceus promised, showing the man what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Our late grandfather's cousin, Nicias, he can speak for us. They'll rouse a militia. You'll be safe here."
Aeschylus said nothing - the shaking had started again - Xena nodded toward his right arm. There were bandages, stained red, under the man's dirty clothes.
"That's going to fester if it's left much longer," she said in that gentle way she could when she chose, and lead him away to wash and re-dress the wounds.
Lyceus gathered their refugee's used dishes and returned them to the kitchen, where he took a moment to brace himself against the low counter.
If there was a warlord on the loose, Amphipolis was surely in his path. Their old silver and gold mines, however depleted, would be tempting enough to any band of outlaws, but an army as large as Aeschylus suggested might wish to take the town and hold it. If they used it as a base to control travel along the coast, they could monopolize access from the valley to the Hellespont and the trade routes that ran along the Strymon….
Since its founding Amphipolis had been warred over by Athenians, Spartans, local Thracians, and even invading Persians. In Lyceus's grandfather's time they could have called to many cities for help, but these days its allies were in trading partners, not overlords. And even if they rode to aid….
Apollonia was a day's hard ride away for a single man. For an army weighed down by loot and heavy equipment, perhaps several days at most.
There would be no help from the southern kings.
When dawn broke it saw Lyceus and his sister both among the clamouring crowds that swelled from the doors of their small acropolis and down to the eastern gate. Gossip traveled fast, and the people of Amphipolis spilled into the white streets as their elected men spoke. The young seemed restless and the elderly uneasy.
"Our walls are tall and strong," one elderly man was shouting now from atop the square. "We have held them against invaders before and our city guard will do so again -"
"- haven't had a standing army in decades, by Zeus, and the walls will fall without men to guard them," another interrupted. "A citizen militia -"
"Our people are farmers and merchants, not soldiers." That was Nicias, cousin of their mother's father and their shaky claim to status in Amphipolis. All thin cheeks and headwrap, he looked worried. "Our citizen workforce knows the sowing of fields, the shearing of sheep, the felling of trees, not the art of war. If we call for aid -"
"To whom? Athens? Sparta? They have no care for us now. Echinus, rebuilding from earthquake? The Thasian colonists with eyes on our mines or the cattle-herders in Cirra? And Stagira - the Stagirans would sell us to the enemy for table scraps -"
Lyceus tuned the men out as he and Xena left, threading through the crowd and back along the cobbled streets.
"I don't suppose your Spartan princess would lend us her men-at-arms," he said, knocking his shoulder into his sister's. He was only half-joking.
"She's not my princess," was the only reply, in tones of passing regret.
Of course. Every man from Gaul to Persia had heard the news by now; a king from golden Mycenae had become champion in the contest for Helen of Sparta's hand, the richest suitor and most beautiful woman paired like an inevitability, and preparations were underway for the most lavish wedding of the age.
The Mycenaen king held the Spartan army and pursestrings in his hand now. And even if he swayed under his wife's influence, their bright city was hundreds of miles away. Spartan aid would not arrive for weeks.
Still, they wouldn't be entirely without allies, Lyceus was sure. Echinus sat to their west, no more than a day's ride. Stagira was no friend of theirs, but surely against a common enemy they would rally - they kept a small standing army, a garrison like Amphipolis once had, and could defend their own without intervention. With this support Amphipolis could surely maintain its position, what remained of its minerals, and its trade routes.
Unless someone stronger and more powerful was supporting the brigands.
"Doesn't it bother you?" he said at last, voicing the thoughts he'd been worrying at all night. "We've not had news of a warlord in Thrace for years, and then these men appear out of thin air, bearing professional arms and no standard. Where in Hades' name do you think they came from?"
His sister turned back to glance at him, eyebrows raised. "I could guess, but I know you're going to tell me."
"Humor me," he said. "I can't be the only one thinking it - tell me I'm not going crazy."
Xena waited for him to catch up and then leaned in close. "Crazy for thinking that travelers should have brought news of a would-be king in the valley already? That we should have gotten word someone was raising an army and clashing with the local regents? You're not crazy, Lyceus." She leaned back and, darting quick as a snake, ruffled his hair. "At least, not for that."
Their feet lead them further up the hill and toward the city walls. The guard captain, a young man named Diocles, nodded as they passed up the makeshift steps.
Atop the wall they could see the stone sloping gently beneath them, reaching from the high plateau to the river hundreds of feet below. Visible to the north was their largest bridge across the Strymon, the easiest place for an army to cross from the outlands into the city proper. To the west, the longest unbroken stretch of stone, and beyond it the path to the Fates' temple. To the south, rolling hills beyond the more slender bridge at the lion gate.
"The elders say they'd likely circle around us, attack from the north."
"Yes," Xena murmured. Her eyes were distant, and the wind nearly bore her words away.
She was looking toward the vale and its patchwork of forest, orchards, and fields. There were herders, loggers, shipbuilders. Hundreds, maybe thousands lived around the town rather than in it. The fertile land between the river and the town ramparts housed many farmers that Amphipolis depended upon for survival.
"We could bring them into the town," Lyceus said, a half-hearted suggestion.
"And after they laid siege to the town and starved us into submission, there'd be nothing to stop them from coming back again and again and again." Xena's eyes were particularly bright in the clear morning.
The rural population, the townhouses, the farmers and merchants and craftsmen, could hardly fit within the walls if they tried. At best it would keep them safe while they watched the warlord raid everything that they raised or grew and burn the rest. Then the warlord could return with ladders or ramps and override the meager wall guard, blockade them from food or water, and they would fold against the pressure like wet parchment.
Lyceus raised his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, I'm just exploring all our options before anyone decides to go raising a reluctant army. If this warlord is financed by a local land regent then he's in the area for good, and his resources - our generation hasn't known battle, hasn't seen bloodshed in the streets. Our wealthy spend their dinars on luxuries, not war gear. Men like Diocles have armor squirreled away like we keep grandfather's - helm and shield, spears and the like, but most of the rest don't have the means for anything better. If an army attacked from the water we'd have ships and rowers aplenty, but most of our boys don't even train at the gymnasium. There's got to be thousands at risk here -"
"Exactly," his sister whispered, face alight. It was the voice that he had, in childhood, followed into a hundred misadventures as a willing partner in crime. "Thousands. Imagine meeting a warlord with that much force."
"I'm with you, but they're farmers," Lyceus said with half a laugh. "And they're not like you or I. Most of them are old, plenty of them children. Less than a thousand men of fighting age for sure."
"Men and women," Xena countered, eyebrow arched.
He raised his hands again. "Well, obviously."
The following morning brought news that Stagira had offered shelter, bounty, and use of their garrison to the warlord's men.
Amphipolis, the elected officials announced, would proffer an official surrender. The women, children, and landed or wealthy would make for the mountain passes and hide there with as many precious goods as they could carry. The rest of the men were to stay behind with wagons of loot from their meager coffers to tempt the warlord into a parley.
The younger men and women of the village listened with accusing eyes, shouted into silence by their elders, by their neighbors, and to Xena's utter fury, by Toris.
"They want our people to climb into the mountains without farms or their livestock. To come back to burned homes and starve or freeze through the winter while they survive on with their gold." Xena had marched right up to where her eldest brother stood with Nicias and the others, bristling like a cat and ignoring their admonitions. She didn't try to lower her voice as she gestured at the rich men around them, and behind her a little crowd of their peers was gathering.
"We would be alive , Xena," Toris shouted right back, hands out, placatory. He didn't look angry. He looked afraid.
"Alive until the warlord's men hunted us down and enslaved us or hacked us into pieces," Lyceus said. "She's right, and you know it."
Toris whirled on him. "You keep encouraging this madness - can't you see what her fear-mongering would do to this town? She's a - a healer's apprentice at best, not a warrior prince. Do you want bloodshed?"
"None of us want bloodshed," Xena said, stepping closer to their brother's shoulder. "But maybe - Toris, maybe if we don't give it to them they'll slaughter us like dogs."
Murmurs of approval rose from the younger crowd. Among them Lyceus spotted junior guardsmen, unmarried men and boys, and all the friends they'd grown up with running wild around the Strymon. He saw the same fire in them that he felt in himself, that he saw in his sister, that he knew could drive them to counter these marauders with resistance like they'd never seen.
All of the friends, except one.
"Xena," Maphias was saying, tone exasperated, "sometimes you've got to go along to get along." His palms were on her shoulders and his eyes were sincere. "This is our surest bet for keeping everyone safe."
Xena shoved his hands away. "You're both yellow-bellied cowards," she said, before turning on her heel and disappearing through the crowd.
Lyceus and the others followed her.
The first group of men attacked at midnight.
What the guards saw, stationed atop their walls under a moonless sky, was this:
A blossoming of torches on the near horizon, swarming like ants across the Strymon bridge and laying the rural settlements below to waste. Homes and villages being looted as the terrified and the injured escaped to safety behind Amphipolis's walls. A fire that grew like the unrolling of a great blanket, razing swaths of valley habitations to the ground.
What Lyceus would remember was drifting off atop a rickety table, the quiet sounds of their grandparents' old farm lulling him to sleep despite Xena and Toris's whispered and increasingly bitter arguments.
Still, all would be well. They had left their mother and elders in the city, then traveled by foot with a small force of volunteers to stay in the outskirts of the countryside tonight. They were far outside the walls, with plans to move the other farmland villagers northward into the safety of the mountains early the next morning, before returning to Amphipolis. Whether they fought or surrendered, surely they could take these steps to minimize the bloodshed... surely they were safe for this one night….
Lyceus dreamed, drifted, until he was shaken awake by his brother's rough hand and heard the clanging of guard bells in the far distance.
Weapons, thought Lyceus blearily, but there were none to be found here, only farmer's equipment and even that outside beyond his reach. He sent a prayer of thanks that their mother was safe inside the town, and that his siblings - true innkeeper's children, never a job left undone - had been scrubbing down the dusty room by candlelight as they bickered. But now he could hear hoofbeats on the dirt road outside and there was no time -
There were only tables and chairs here, buckets and cloth, maybe knives if luck shone on them.
The hoofbeats stopped, and then there were footsteps. Without speaking Xena stepped lightly away from her position by the window, her back to the wall, bucket in left hand and scrubbing cloth running rivulets of water down the fingers of her right. Beside her, behind the door, Toris hefted a chair.
The first man to enter walked slow, hand casual on his sword hilt, surveying the room like a master returning home. He went down quickly under Toris's chair, but the wood splintered and broke against his armor, rendering itself useless.
The second man entered on guard and his first sight was Xena, the cloth in her hand dripping a tiny puddle onto the floor.
Pat, pat, pat.
The man gave her a slow, trailing look from head to toe. She was barefoot in her short sleeping shift, but where Lyceus saw the strength in her limbs, this man did not.
"And what do you have to offer us for loot, girl?"
Pat, pat , dripped the cloth.
Toris made an aborted movement toward another chair, but Xena moved faster. With a yell she brought the rag whipping around to catch the man on his unprotected neck, face, head. He half-drew his sword, was caught unawares by a vicious knee between the legs, and crumpled against the wall. Xena smashed her bucket across the bandit's head and he lay still.
"Nice work," Lyceus said, slipping toward his sister. The horror of these monsters being in their grandpa's little village hadn't quite sunk in yet, but the pride he felt for her was real and fierce and warm.
Outside there were more hoofbeats, then distant cries of alarm and panic. This was a sleepy and sparse little village, made for the quiet humming of bumblebees and the shafting of wheat and the clucking of chickens, not for raiders and their sharp weapons. Those people screaming were the people they'd grown up with, now in danger -
The three siblings raced toward the kitchen, rifling through cupboards and hanging pots and pans. Lyceus settled on the sturdy iron poker resting beside the vast fireplace. He had wielded a practice blade but never stabbed a real man before, and didn't trust a short knifeblade against their armor if he had a moment of hesitation or doubt. Across the room, his sister gave a cry of triumph as she found the item she was looking for and then was racing for the door.
Lyceus chased her through the door, weapon in hand, and this is what he saw when he stepped into the night air:
Flames in the far distance. His distant village neighbors screaming and attempting to run as masked men kicked down their doors. Bodies, more than one, splayed on the nearest road; a mother and her adolescent child, both dead in the dust. And his sister, still barefoot, walking into the dusty road with their grandmother's longest cooking knife in her hand.
The man in the lead had dismounted, masked like the rest, a small number of bandits following behind him. He had a close-trimmed beard and wore fancier armor than the others, with great rings on his fingers. Those around him were tall, armored, and grizzled like men who had dealt in death their whole lives. They hung back from the attack, flanking him like bodyguards.
Lyceus moved to stand behind his sister, hefting the poker in his left hand. There were eyes on them - villagers in the process of fleeing, or weeping over the fallen, who now stared as if dumbfounded by their resistance party of two.
Where in Hades was Toris?
"Nice signet ring you have there," Lyceus said, nudging Xena where she stood staring at the dead woman and child, and thanked the gods that his voice came out steady. "Looks expensive."
The man slowed his steps, fingers twitching, and the guard to his left glanced between them. "Orders, my Lord Cortese?"
Cortese, their mystery warlord. The name sounded more Roman than Greek, but Lyceus had never heard it before in his life. After tonight, he was sure that he would remember it until he died.
When Xena spoke, her voice was uneven. She had finally ripped her eyes from the corpses in the road. "Cortese, is it? And which half-rate lord are you serving when you don't wear that mask?"
Cortese stared at them for a moment before jerking his head once. "Kill them."
The warlord's men were wearing armor, Lyceus none, but this left him lighter on his feet. He was almost shocked at how easily the first man went down. In the farmhouse they'd had the element of surprise, but even here in the open, the warlord's guards had underestimated him. It happened like a practice match with the village boys - a quick step and a parry and then the bandit was lying on the street, groaning, chestplate dented. He heard his sister's opponent fall to the ground too and turned -
"Termin, kill them ," the leader snapped, impatient now as he turned to his last guard. This one was clean-shaven, hair hidden under a peaked cap, cloak closed with a silver brooch. His sword when he raised it was already bloodied and Lyceus felt, more than saw, the rage that passed across his sister's face.
The tussle didn't last long. The man attacked, they traded blows, he struck Xena across the face - and then she was spinning under his guard, bracing herself against him, and with a cry -
The spray of blood when she slit his throat was like a fountain that had sprung a leak. It splattered across Xena's cheek, her jaw and shoulder. It washed over her hands as she pulled the knife away, and the man fell to the ground, twitching as he bled rivulets into the dirt.
The warlord Cortese hissed, eyes glancing over the two of them - three, now, there was Toris, finally - four, five, as men and women and their children left off their weeping over the fallen and joined the defensive line with farming implements to hand.
The warlord turned back to his horse and fled -
"Get back here, you bastard !"
Xena lead the pack as they chased him, flinging her knife over-hand as she went. It grazed the man as he ducked, and he kept riding, far beyond their reach.
There was a distant horn. A shout went up through the streets as the other mounted men halted their attack and then turned back the way they had come.
"I'll remember your face, Cortese," Xena shouted at the retreating figure. "You're going to die by our hands, do you hear me?!"
Lyceus blinked and the firelight had wreathed her in bronze armor; now she was a grown woman watching the valley burn from horseback, dripping red like some wild thing out of a song. He blinked once more and she was his eighteen-year-old sister again, feet dusty, the small braids in her hair coming undone as she watched a warlord flee.
The fallen guards had been left behind. The dead warrior was splayed face-down in the dirt, limbs askew, red still pouring from his neck into the dust. With one foot Xena pushed him onto his back and then reached down to pull the mask from his eyes. He was unremarkable, perhaps the age their father would have been. His hazel eyes were dulled in death.
Lyceus's sister pulled the fancy silver trinket from his cloak as the little crowd of battered villagers watched her.
Toris was standing by the door of the inn, weapon limp in his hand. His eyes moved right past the crowd to Xena, staring like he'd never seen her before. She ignored him, stepping past him and through the doorway, Lyceus close on her heels.
The first round of funeral pyres burned late into the next afternoon.
Cortese's barbarians, it turned out, hadn't fully penetrated the valley, and had not even approached the city walls. A blessedly high number of people had managed to flee the raiders' blades, but crops were destroyed, animals slaughtered, and valuables taken.
That village had held their grandparents' friends, their mother's friends since they were old enough to crawl. Now too many of them were left with nothing to their names, and the dead numbered too high.
A problem for the next day, Toris agreed with Nicias and the others, undoubtedly already fretting about the logistics of stocking wood, food, and sleeping space for Amphipolis's outlands. They spoke in low tones about the prisoners, too; a half dozen men in varying stages of injury whom Cortese had left behind to be killed or questioned. Was it best to trust them, beat them, feed them, execute them, let them starve? The discussion carried on and Lyceus watched them silently, hands rough from hauling wood and bodies, vision hazy.
Amid the wailing and the crackle of flames, a chorus of low voices rose into the air. The women of Amphipolis sang the dirge the way their mothers had, and their mothers' mothers. It lilted like a sob, weaving through the mourners and into the blue sky.
At the front of the group Lyceus saw his sister, eyelashes wet but cheeks dry, the dead warrior's brooch pinned in her hair like a laurel. Her voice rose strongest, and the others fell neatly into line behind her.
In Battle
Flora's family was one of the first to leave.
"I want you to come with us," the girl said, during her final lingering hug goodbye.
"This is our home," Xena replied, managing to return the embrace. "Who would I be if I didn't help protect it, huh?"
"Times can change people," her little friend countered, scrubbing at her face. Tears leaked through her fingers, but they were silent ones. "You always told me."
"Yeah, well." Xena brushed her fingers lightly through Flora's hair. The girl was young, but she'd be strong someday, and brave too. Braver than her parents. "Today we need people to change the times."
Flora looked back to wave again and again as the wagon, piled high with all their livelihood, pulled away through the gates and down the road.
Xena waved back, but turned away before they were out of sight.
Amphipolis was bleeding its people, those spineless or monied enough to uproot their lives and start anew in a safer town far away. Many of the elders, the high-class and notable citizens, fled to other towns. Maphias was a more unexpected betrayal; he left with his family and without a goodbye, headed straight for the mountain passes on roads that only locals knew. Aeschylus, refugee from Apollonia, followed them. The sad train of carts and horses wound northward toward the Pangaian hills and Odomantoi land, leaving a skeleton crew of young peasants and farmers spitting at their heels as they passed.
Toris left early that same morning, shame-faced on the eve of battle like a goddamn coward.
"Come with me," he said before he left. He was looking at their brother, their mother, and refusing to meet his sister's eye.
Cyrene said nothing in return, face drawn and tight, arms wrapped around herself as if to stop from reaching out for him. Lyceus embraced him, but offered no words of comfort. Xena refused to even watch him go.
Many of the farmers stayed, along with the workmen and the wall guard. Those who couldn't leave without losing everything, or who had the guts to stick up for themselves and defend what was theirs. Many of them were young, not yet parents themselves - the girls and boys that Xena had grown up with, wrestling and running across the countryside. The blacksmith's children Kosmas and Talia, Galene the butcher's daughter, and farmhand upon farmhand. There was an anger behind their grief that matched the fury Xena could feel bubbling under her own skin.
Elder cousin Nicias was there too, a small cluster of elder men and women who refused to condone a battle but also refused to leave. There was a rift in the town, now, between those who looked to him for guidance and those who looked to Xena and her brother.
"Alright," Lyceus said to his sister, as the last of the wagons left and the gates closed behind them. "Let's get to work."
They bypassed their small agora and turned the tavern into a war room, Xena and Lyceus holding court while Cyrene and the elders stood at the fringes of the crowd, lips pressed thin. A number of citizens stepped up with enthusiasm and knowledge - young men and women bearing their father's arms, a few old men who'd defended the town in years gone by, and first among them Diocles, the youngest wall guard captain in years and a deft hand with a spear.
"We've already pulled most of our remaining vulnerable people in behind the walls," he said, gesturing with one hand at the rough sketch of Amphipolis spread across the table before them. "But none of the northern settlements will last the winter if their fields and livestock are left to slaughter again. This bridge -"
"We could dismantle it?" Xena shared a quick glance with her brother. "Funnel Cortese's men through the Lion Gate to the south."
"Still, they'll know of Amphipolis's defenses," Lyceus said, "and they won't have the patience to starve us out. They'll come with ladders or rams, maybe fire for the wood."
"So we don't meet them on their terms," Xena said. "We meet them on ours."
After their unexpected retreat back to Apollonia, Cortese's several hundred riders would return to Amphipolis via the winding southern road. The land south of the Strymon's curving bank was hilly sheep pasture and scattered clusters of cottages with little flat farm ground.
It was prime conditions for a smaller fighting force to meet a larger, Xena thought, fingers tracing the lines on their map. A gods-sent advantage for people who knew the land like the back of their hand, but had little experience in the art of war.
"The moment our lookouts spot Cortese's approach on the road, Lyceus and Diocles will lead the wall guard and our strongest citizens to this hill," she said, circling one just on the far side of the river crossing. "Only our most experienced shield-bearing men and those with sufficient arms." The others, with heavy work tools and bladed farming implements, would be held back until the last possible moment. "They're expecting a scared village, not a surprise attack. We hit them hard and we hit them fast before their defenses are prepared. Don't give them time to rest."
"We're still in trouble if they bring projectiles," Lyceus said, tracing the river crossing with one finger. "Those with shields can't cover everyone without. We're sure that Aeschylus saw no archers or missile men?"
No, came the general consensus from the crowd; they weren't sure. The prisoners would have to be questioned again, and then the trustworthiness of their answers would have to be discussed.
"Then we keep a weather eye out," Diocles interrupted, voice calm, "and don't give Cortese the chance to use them if he has them."
Outfitting themselves was an odd task. Their grandfather Xenophon had left behind the sword he once carried as a young man, better than what the wall guard had to spare - far better than a wooden practice sword - but clumsier and in need of sharpening, too. Lyceus took this and also a breastplate and bracers stripped from one of the prisoners. He looked uncomfortable in it, but determined, buckling the wristbands tighter like a boy in his father's boots.
Xena wore a soft red jerkin - half-embroidered, pulled from her hope chest - over her usual ankle-length blue and white homespun. Today instead of tying up the trailing skirts she took a knife to them, slitting them up the sides and leaving the dress to end ragged below her knees. She had leather around her wrists, pilfered bronze strapped around the jerkin's padding, and in her hand -
"Take this," Cyrene had said shortly after dawn. "It's strong, and it was favored by Ares in its time." The long package that she held was fabric-wrapped and dirty, too heavy for her to hoist easily in a single palm. She had pushed it toward her startled daughter's chest, not meeting her eyes.
As Xena had withdrawn the scabbard from the dirty wrappings and the sword from the scabbard, something in it had tickled her memory, brought back joyous afternoons as a young girl when she heard the beating of hooves on the road and ran down to meet -
"It was your father's once. He left it with me years ago, the last time I saw him. It will still be sharp." Then her mother had turned away as quickly as she had come, ignoring Xena's attempt to call her back, slipping out the door to rejoin the line of mothers and sisters carrying bandages and poultice for the doctors. She hadn't tried to convince her daughter to join her.
Now, as the siblings left the tavern together for the final time, Lyceus paused at the doorway to his room, lifting something over his head and coiling it upon the bookshelf.
Xena raised an eyebrow. "Leaving your Virillus token behind?"
He half-smiled at her in a way that the light made look sad. "A battlefield's not much place for it, I figure."
She clapped him on the shoulder as they left and no more was said about it.
Xena and Lyceus parted at the Lion Gate early the next morning, the air crisp and light still thin, with Cortese's men on the horizon and a smell of rain in the air. Commander and commander, different to the eye as night and day. Sister and brother, eyes bright and boots dusty. They clasped arms and turned away without words.
Xena watched from her vantage point as Lyceus and his men positioned themselves on the rugged slopes to the direct south of Amphipolis. Hidden crouched among poplars, stranglewort, and wild tamarisk, she saw Cortese's band of some hundred arrive at the river crossing. Their leader was not with them; instead, a few figures on horseback dotted the top of a distant hill.
Well, then Amphipolis would give him something to see.
The murderers looked at the rubble-strewn stone bridge, the high slope and barred gate of the quiet town above them, and began to make their way across. Their blood was high and their voices loud. Their formation was sloppy, their progress slow. Half of those in the lead had dismounted to pull their mounts forward on foot, laughing as they went.
As they touched grass, the party still stretched across the whole of the single, slim bridge, Xena watched Lyceus's men rush and then break against this disorganized line. The first clash was loud, struck through with cries of shock and the clashing of weapons, slowly pushing the barbarians back toward the riverbank.
For years to follow, Xena would be able to pinpoint the exact moment the first man from Amphipolis died. The scream was pained and sharply truncated, and Xena felt doubt in her plans for the first time, a tug of fear in her stomach. Doubt that they could win the day, fear that her people would never hold their own against an experienced warlord's lackeys, and the knowledge that she had sent them to die here.
But ah, Cortese's masked men were floundering, the element of surprise still on Lyceus's side. The warlord's numbers worked against him as the attack crushed his horses against the narrow stone and slippery river side, struggling to push past the bridge. As the front line struggled to regain footing and mount their horses amid the slippery reeds, their formation wavered and then caved like a bowl on a potter's wheel.
The cavalrymen would recover quickly, their greater strength and experience serving them well, but Xena couldn't go to her brother's aid. Not yet.
Moments ticked by. The mass of bodies at the bridge seemed to roil, the clashing of weapons almost drowned out by the shouting. Lyceus was no longer visible from afar, disappearing into the knot of fighting men that now was treading on bodies as they fell, the grass around them beginning to stain dark from the melee. For every son or daughter of Amphipolis that the marauders cut down, one of their own fell too. Standing on unfamiliar ground and braced against the marshy riverbank, the left wing of Cortese's army was slipping toward the water and collapsing back across the bridge.
Still a little voice inside Xena whispered to wait.
Thunder rolled, distant.
One body, then two, fell from the bridge to the rushing river. A few men on the far side who had yet to cross broke free of the crush to unsling their bows and take aim at Lyceus's men, whose sides were open and unguarded -
Now.
Xena unsheathed her sword and descended from their hiding place among the farm houses and thatched cottages, earth pounding under her feet and wind stealing her breath as she ran. The hills shook around her with the roars of a hundred battle-eager young men and women at her back. They crashed into Cortese's disordered left flank at full speed, the hammer to Lyceus's anvil.
There was a cry of dismay among the warlord's troop, demoralization clear in the eyes of the first unlucky soul Xena sunk her sword into. It was easy, the way her father's iron sword cut through flesh and muscle. How simple it was for her to duck, weave, and parry as the first hesitant raindrops fell from the gathering clouds. How silly a game this was.
Xena felt the press of the men behind her, the heat of them as they plowed through the unsuspecting army; to her left were the youngest of the guardsmen with spear and shield, to her right Talia the blacksmith's daughter with a great hammer in her hands. They pushed forward first over the marshy grass turning muddy in the light rain, then over fallen bodies.
It was as the skies opened fully, drenching the bloody grasses and the men's hair with water, that Cortese's army finally and truly started to break. They turned and fled from where the bridge trapped them like rabbits in the crush, scattering through the road back south and the farm houses that framed it.
Blinking rainwater from her eyes, Xena was tempted to hack her way straight through to Lyceus, to find him safe with her own eyes and stand back-to-back with him amid the battle. But with blood splattering her arms, her feet slipping in the wet grass, they hadn't the luxury, not yet.
On the far distant hill, Cortese and his personal guards turned their horses and left without a word to their flagging army.
And now -
Lyceus, son of Atrius, was fighting among the thatched farmhouses where they had driven the last holdouts of Cortese's men. He'd been injured by the same sword-thrust that had killed the man at his shoulder and blood darkened the fabric of his arm, but the grip on his sword was still sure.
The sons and daughters of Amphipolis filled out the ranks behind him, fewer now, but their blood was up, sure-footed even in the rain on the earth that had raised them. They had to be careful, now, because their mothers and sisters were not far away, watching and waiting inside the nearby walls with bandages and balms for the wounded to come pouring in.
At a shout Lyceus's sister and her fellows fanned out along the unpaved streets, encircling their beleaguered attackers. He could no longer see Diocles - they had lost sight of one another during the fighting at the riverbank - but he could still hear Xena above the clash and downpour, and could just see her dark hair tossing through gaps in the thinning crowd.
No chance to catch her eye or to send her a signal. They had to press on. Only a few more yards and the last of Cortese's men would be fully routed, driven out to Amphipolis's farmland and put to the sword.
There was no need to kill them all; just as many as it took to deplete them, to send them running and make Amphipolis a prize not worth snatching.
There would be time, later, to reunite.
Because -
Victory was hovering just beyond Xena's grasp. It was a tangible thing, like the air before a lightning strike, perhaps, tense and dry as Zeus scanned the landscape for where to descend next. Or maybe it was the smell of sweat and heat and blood mixing with the wet hayfields and sheep dung.
It was all so easy . Cortese's men were dead on the ground or long-fled or in scattered disarray. And there, a group of them had even stopped in their tracks as they ran, throwing down their swords and spears and turning back on their heels as if wildly seeking an exit -
Xena's blood raced, spurring her on -
"Wait," and that was Lyceus's voice across the field, above the clash of swords. She could just see his light curls, darkened with rain and sweat as he called his young men back into formation, holding back as they scattered left and right to rout the retreating bandits. "There's something - wait ."
A cry went up from somewhere within the crowd.
" Arrows! "
Xena looked up a fraction before the rest did, and saw the group of bowmen as they aimed. She would replay it a thousand, ten thousand times in her dreams before the end -
The way she broke free of the crush of bodies, slipping in mud, reaching out toward her brother as if to snatch the arrows from the air like Artemis herself. The way they shot easily past her fingers, yards away, and struck home.
These last of Cortese's men rushed in, pressing their advantage as the ranks of Amphipolis's children fell apart, pulled out short blades and slid them home.
When Lyceus fell, he fell with scores of others, toppling to the sodden ground like wheat at harvest.
Oh Brother, Oh Brother
Cyrene's world ended for the second time on a cold spring day under a gray, gray sky.
Lyceus looked pale lying in the wet dirt. It may have been the rain that still fell on his face, sapping him of heat before he ever was a corpse, or the way the sky reflected in his open eyes like he was already seeing the realm of the gods. Or maybe it was the blood. So, so much blood, spilling out around the arrow that pierced his ribs and the knife-slice across his guts into the mire beneath.
There was a scream as he fell, hoarse and painful but the world was spinning and Cyrene didn't know if it had come from her own throat or from -
There was her middle child, dark hair in disarray, weapon spilling from her hand as she collapsed at Lyceus's side. Xena's hands grew bloody as she knelt, fingers dancing desperately around the stomach wound, dark blue dress nearly black in the rain.
But there was no miraculous recovery, no tender last words. Lyceus gasped and bled and died. He looked younger than ever, fair hair slicked to his temples, coltish limbs sprawled in the mud.
They were both so, so young.
Cyrene slowly became aware that she was shouting, that her vision had blurred with both rainwater and tears. Her hair and clothes were wet, too; she had left the shelter of the healer's building and run into the fray without noticing.
Strong arms were helping her drag her boy's corpse to shelter with the wounded, safely indoors beyond the arrows. Cyrene collapsed through the doorway and clawed those arms away, trying to hold her son.
The blacksmith's son was being pulled in too, muddied and unmoving. His mother, the midwife who had delivered Cyrene's living children, was desperately trying to rouse him. Around them, young wall guards with rent armor gasped under the careful ministrations of the healing women. The butcher wept over the still form of his fair-haired daughter, already lying stiff among the many farmer's boys never to rise again.
The world beyond the doors seemed to tilt. In a haze, through the storm carving rivulets through the battlefield, Cyrene saw the dark shape of her daughter, still fighting, eyes wild, chasing a bowman into the ground and running her sword through him.
As if it would fix anything. As if it could bring their boy back.
Time stuttered. The mud had not yet begun to dry and crack around her fingers, but the blood had ceased to flow from her Lyceus's wound. The only people Cyrene could perceive were herself and Xena, who now stumbled in through the doorway to fall beside the cold body with gasping sobs like a child. Her weapon clattered to the floor and her hands hovered, useless.
Blood still flecked Lyceus's lips. His eyes were closed finally, lids shut on that dulled blue. There was mud on his cheekbones and his temples from whatever rough hand had done it.
"What do we do?"
That was Diocles, the one who'd been acting as her daughter's second-in-command. His hand was on Xena's shoulder, but she seemed not to notice. The sounds of clamoring outside hadn't faded. Cortese's men, those that remained, seemed determined to fight to the point of extermination.
For the first time in minutes, Xena moved. The lost look in her eyes and the unconscious grief on her face faded. The steadiness of her bloodied fingers as they groped for her sword left a chill in the air.
"We're gonna kill them all."
They burned Cyrene's son with the mounds of Amphipolis's other fallen and interned their ashes in one of the arched marble tombs that lay scattered northeast of the walls.
Carved before her grandfather's time, guarded by the unseeing eyes and broken claws of stone sphinxes, the tomb was of an era when the city had been a war ground for kings who warranted such heroic burials. More recently they had lain empty for decades, raided by looters and repurposed for new building materials. No longer.
Cyrene did not cry as her daughter sang the funeral song alone, eyes dry now, the tattered remnants of her youth army encircling her like a bodyguard, looted weapons on their backs and hips.
Her father's kinsman Nicias and the rest of the townspeople stood some distance away, as if the adolescents were plague carriers. As if they still wore the blood that had painted them to the elbows by the battle's end.
For just a moment, Cyrene hated her daughter. She wished to make the girl quiet , because how was mourning so loudly and so deeply her place or her right, now?
Xena had done this. She had laid the wood and struck the spark and fanned the flames. And the woman who stood there now, nearly as tall as Atrius with funeral fires reflecting in her pale blue eyes, scared Cyrene to her bones.
Make Your Way To War
There was no sign of Cortese or his decimated troupe in the following weeks. No news came of a warlord hiding in the farmlands or raiders threatening the local lords.
Perhaps the man had been betrayed by his own army, or thrown by his horse to die alone and unnamed in the wilderness. Perhaps he had fled to the coast, never to return. The prisoners couldn't, or wouldn't, reveal whatever town or fortress he called home. They insisted that this was kept secret from them too.
Whatever the reason, by the time the last of the funeral pyres had burned out, both Cortese and the bandit threat had melted away as though it had never existed.
Without him as the common enemy, the citizens of Amphipolis were fracturing.
Xena's single interaction with Cyrene had been distant. Her mother had looked pale and drawn and still stunk of funeral smoke. She had stood in her kitchen as if she hardly recognized it, stared at her only remaining child, and asked if she felt that the battle had been worth it.
It was a funny little sentence, Xena thought, because most days she felt nothing at all.
As she'd watched sobbing families clear their dead from the fields, hauling them onto carts for washing and burial, the last of Xena's wild grief had tucked itself away. She reached for it sometimes, but it had yet to make itself known again. She ate and slept and walked among the people of her town like she had every other day, and she did not grieve.
In fact, there was very little time for it. While the elders dealt with funerals and rebuilding, with calling home those deserters who would return to Amphipolis and the greater number who wouldn't, Xena had other plans.
Under her hand, plans slowly formed for a hunting party to track down the absent warlord and his men, starting with the ransacked Apollonia and the traitorous Stagira. These were hypothetical, for now. They had lost too many to risk a fight in unfamiliar territory or a hostile town. They would need a larger force first, and equipment too.
Until then, Amphipolis was still vulnerable. It had proven itself to be a lion instead of a sheep, even after years of decline, but now would have to rely on its poorest neighboring villages for stability.
A group from tiny Drabeskos, which boasted no soldiers or walls, arrived with a cart full of spare food and sympathy. Western Myrkinos, which had spent winters in the past begging for grain from Amphipolis, sent young men as volunteers to clear the burned wreckage. All were too small to have been targeted by Cortese, but surely would have been in his path if he had continued raiding. All had been unable to help in their hour of need, but stood to benefit from the lives that Amphipolis had spent on its own defense.
All, Xena thought as a nervous man from harborside Eion clutched his cap and left by way of the tavern steps, were unsure what to make of the Encircled City now that it had shown its claws.
Well, good.
"We lie here," Diocles said briskly, bent over a large table and marking a smudge on parchment with a charcoal stick. He nodded as Xena joined him at the center of the small crowd. "These outlying villages sit at the edge of our influence, perhaps half a day's journey on foot."
"So we hit them first, sweep for Cortese's men and make sure that none of them are harboring the enemy." There was a space at Xena's side as she spoke, a void where bright eyes and a steadfast voice should have been backing or countering her plans. She ignored this and continued. "We can try to raise supplies there, once we know that they're loyal. Maybe even find volunteers and weapons before we move on."
Behind her Talia nodded, stone-faced. They had a common goal, the both of them, in wanting to kill the sonofabitch responsible for their brothers' deaths. The blacksmith's daughter carried enough rage for two but was uninterested in the logistics, content to stand at Xena's elbow and follow her plan.
There were sounds of support, too, from all around; the inn's main room was full of boys just as eager to hunt down the surviving raiders and secure Amphipolis's position in the river valley.
"The council won't like it," Diocles warned. "Your mother's cousin, my own father - they are quiet now because we won the battle, but there are plenty of angry elders in this town. They'll try to forbid it, you know they will."
"And what would these useless pampered pigs know about it?" Xena spat. Ah, contempt; that one still rose to the surface as easy as ever. "They wanted us to run and hide while women and children were slaughtered, and they let us fight to save their own skins. They've lost all right to have a say in what their sons and daughters do."
In the end they resolved to set out in ten days' time, enough to question the prisoners again in a less civilized setting and to gather supplies. They had armor and even horses aplenty now, from what had been salvaged during the battle. It was not enough to outfit their entire band, but certainly enough to ease their way out the gates.
On the morning of their departure, Xena woke to unseasonable cold and a summons to their little agora. The white-walled streets of Amphipolis were nearly empty, with most of the usual morning bustle still subdued. Diocles and his men were waiting at the gates with Talia and the rest, having already loaded the supplies and said their goodbyes.
On a coin-toss Xena followed the summons, which had been for her and her alone.
What she saw when she reached the place was a sizable gathering, filled with familiar faces and strangers both. The muttering died down as she walked up the step to the square. Her mother was there, but said nothing.
Nicias took his place at the head of the crowd, because of course he did.
"What is this?" Xena asked, because she had proven so recently that the best self-defense was in making the first strike. "Our plan is to reach Drabeskos by mid-day, and this is wasting our time."
"There," said Nicias, almost triumphant as Cyrene looked away. "Do you see contrition? Do you see dutifulness, faithfulness, docility?"
"Don't talk to me about duty," Xena nearly hissed. Contempt, again. In her mind, she prodded her insides for anything that might accompany it, but nothing came.
"Your brother lies slain, and it may as well be by your hand!"
Like the hollow of an old tree, Xena felt the dead space inside of her grow deader. She waited for fury or sorrow, and then kept waiting.
"You have tempted our sons and daughters," he continued, louder now as if passing an official sentence. "You have taken them from the town -"
"We saved this town," Xena told him, taking a step forward. He did not back away from her, but some of the others did. "We saved all of your skins."
"- as you lead them to slaughter -"
"It was the only way -" Xena stopped speaking abruptly at the sudden moisture on her face. She turned but couldn't tell who in the crowd had spat at her; they were of her mother's generation, all disdainful, all condemning.
Cyrene could have beaten her with a switch and she'd have stood and taken it. The elders, the grieving parents, the angry men and women could have lashed her with rope or pelted her with rocks and she would have let them take their due.
After all, if she did deserve a punishment of some kind this would be the only place that she could get it.
Instead, they spat at her. Instead, Nicias demanded her submission, and any show of contrition that Xena might have made shriveled and died right there.
She would leave without goodbye, she thought, turning on her booted heel and sweeping toward the steps. They would grow to regret it, the things they'd said to her, and Cyrene would be begging the elders for her return before the season's end -
"Xena." Her mother's voice stopped her on the stairs.
For years to come, no matter how much time she spent carefully turning this memory over in examination, Xena would never be sure what she hoped for in those seconds of silence. Ridicule, apology, well-wishes, hatred?
What she saw instead was a tired woman drained by anguish, clutching her own arms to her stomach as if to soothe an ache.
"Take your boys and your weapons and go," she said. "And perhaps it's best if you don't come back."
Ah, and there was the sorrow. Just a flash, just for a moment. It faded and was replaced by insult, by scorn, and by derision, her new friends always ready to serve.
Maybe this was the easiest way to leave after all.
The morning sun rose bright and hot as Xena departed Amphipolis. Her chin was high and her steps light.
Then the gates opened, and she set her sights on the world beyond the walls.