II.
Beauty and ugliness have one origin.
Name beauty, and ugliness is.
Recognising virtue recognises evil.
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (II)
By the time Xena returned to their quarters, the room was bathed in a liquid darkness. The temperature had dropped considerably and she could feel a palpable chill emanating from the river-stoned walls. On the bed, Gabrielle lay curled in a haphazard q-shape with her blanket tangled around her, her body wracked with shivers. A scroll lay draped half-unfurled over the edge of the pallet, the quill fallen to the floor.
Sweeping soundlessly to the bard's bedside, Xena tried to disentangle the blanket without stirring the woman's limbs wound around it. The bard needed her rest––a bad sprain, an arrow wound, a battle and two days of rough travel–– Xena shook her head. Sleep now, Gabrielle, she thought. Sensing, however, that the warrior was near, Gabrielle's eyes drifted open and rested like a lark on olive fronds upon her companion's face. The bard's mouth pulled into a smile.
"You didn't drink the tea," whispered Xena, gesturing to the cooled pot still on the flagstones of the hearth.
"It's freezing in here," said Gabrielle, choosing to ignore the chide.
"I'll re-kindle the fire," said Xena, getting up. Instead, she felt a cool hand on her arm.
"Wait. Come here," the bard gestured to the space beside her on the palette, "and tell me about your meeting with Leonidas."
Complying just for the moment, Xena slid easily beside Gabrielle and shuffled an arm under her smaller body. Gabrielle lay her head on Xena's shoulder, wrapping her good arm around the warrior's midriff. Beneath her cheek, she felt the warmth of the warrior's skin and the steady, rhythmic tha-thump-tha-thump of her heartbeat. Gabrielle released a contented sigh, letting their combined energy lull her beyond the pain.
"Spill," she poked Xena in the ribs, lazily.
"Well, it wasn't as productive as I hoped."
"Why?"
Xena took a breath: "Too many disagreements on which walls to fortify, if the reserves should be called in from the western plains, who should lead the exploratory contingent to see where the Persians are camped- same old administrative cow shit. This is why I didn't conquer the world." Xena felt Gabrielle chuckle.
"Oh, is that why?" teased the bard, nudging her again in the side.
"Among other things," replied Xena.
"So did you solve any of this cow shit?"
"So rude!"
"Your words, Warrior Princess," Gabrielle admonished.
"Yes, we did."
"How?"
"I took command of the army," replied Xena. She felt the breathy Oh, from Gabrielle rather than heard it. There was silence between them like molasses, each moment dripping laboriously into the next. Xena knew Gabrielle was trying to hold her tongue.
"Just say it, Gabrielle."
"Xena, I don't think you taking command is the greatest idea." The bard sat up with some effort in bed, so she was able to see her companion's eyes. Xena merely looked up at her with a mix of impatience and annoyance. "You said yourself that this Tetram's raid is personal, that he's after your blood. Do you really think that you would be the wisest one lead the Athenian army? We risk turning it into a defence of the Warrior Princess' pride."
"What's that supposed to mean?" spat Xena, getting up at once from the palette. She stalked to the hearth and began shuffling the embers with a poker.
"Just that you react to personal attacks in a very… er, strong way," replied Gabrielle, trying to appease the situation. She watched as Xena stoked the fire and added a few more logs. Within moments, she had the fire roaring like it had hours before.
"Strong?" whispered Xena, turning on her heel, still settled on her haunches.
"Oh, come on, Xena! You have a history with Tetram's people, did Gods-know-what to their queen––".
"Which is why I would be the one with the most experience and knowledge to defeat them. This has nothing to do with my pride, Gabrielle––"
"All right, I'm sorry," there was a tense moment, "Then tell me about Artemisia. Tell me what happened" Gabrielle coaxed, trying to ebb the harshness of her tone. She saw Xena's shoulders stiffen and watched as the woman stood slowly to her full height. For however close she was with the warrior, Gabrielle knew that Xena could always inspire fear in her. But Gabrielle had learned not to shrink under the shadow of her friend's darkness, and the way Xena inspired fear preyed on the very chilling witness of her physical gravity of presence. And yet, when she turned, her face half-lit in the flames, her expression wore not malice or anger, but sadness, incredible sadness.
"I…" began Xena, but her hand fluttered up to her mouth, "I don't know where to begin."
"The beginning is always a good place," said Gabrielle, gently.
Xena nodded and then turned to look once more into the mesmerising jump of the flames.
"I was well into my nineteenth year," she began, "when I gathered a sizeable army and moved north to Thrace. It was then that I first heard about the bounty on Artemisia's head. It was only then that I gave a damn that Greece may fall to the Persians, only then that I saw what I might gain..."
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Those at the Thracian tavern were restless. For many years now, this small town of Abdera had maintained neutrality amongst the Greek and Persian warriors. Every man gets thirsty, Vilkos had said, and my bar is good as any to sell ale to those with coin. That was, until a warlording party decided to breach their highland pass in hopes that the war-ravaged people of Abdera would be easily inclined to give up their landrites and fruit of their soil. At least, that's what one young warlord thought when she marched her army north from Thessaly. But she had been wrong; not only had towns along the route not had enough foodstuffs and supplies to give––even under pain of death––but, they had also kept their pride intact. This meant that her army was not getting the supplies it needed, and she wasn't notching one more Grecian territory onto her belt. All this made for one very moody Warrior Princess.
"Barkeep, another!" yelled the young warlord, shooting her mug down the length of the cypress bar. Vilkos turned at her voice, and scowled. Standing not a meagre three wagon wheels high, Vilkos looked on this slender warrior woman with no sense of fear. His crude eyes took in the cracked black leather boots with tarnished silver buckles and the high oxidized copper shin greaves, the sun-bleached leather battledress torn some at the seams from her rugged journey, the finely wired copper breastplate that hugged each womanly curve of her body like a flower on a vine, and finally the sharply drawn features of a beautiful face torn into a scowl and the curtain of thick black hair threaded through clay beads and strands of softened leather.
"How 'bout you show me some coin?" challenged Vilkos.
"How 'bout you choose a side, traitor," said Xena, walking down the length of the bar to stand in front of Vilkos. A few warriors in the tavern loyal to the warlord looked around at her advance, and their eyes read trouble.
"Hey, you want to talk politics, talk somewheres else. Ain't my war," replied Vilkos, turning back to wait on paying customers. "Ain't yers neither," he finished over his shoulder.
In a movement more swift than a hawk snatching a mouse from a field, Vilkos lay spread-eagled on top of his own bar, the warrior woman's hand at his throat. The rest of the patrons glanced from their conversations, arm wrestlings and cards to watch the exchange with drunken interest.
"Bite your tongue, coward!" she hissed, "I am a Grecian, as are you."
"Aye," the barkeep gasped, fear now evident in his expression.
"So why do you serve ale to Persian scum?"
"G-go…" he choked, "to Hades."
At that, Xena slid her service dagger across the man's throat. He jerked a little, an arterial spray arcing up in the air like red ribbons and dotting the warlord's beautiful features.
Another brutish man standing at the bar turned to Xena; he too had Vilkos' blood dripping from his whiskers.
"You put blood in my ale," he growled, his accent thick. Xena appraised the man, taking in his low-hung features, the darker tone of his skin: Persian.
As the man grabbed at the hilt of his scimitar, Xena had the blade of her knife at his throat.
"You wish to fight?" the man challenged, a devilish grin on his face.
Xena merely stared at him, her eyes nearly transparent as they looked down the length of her knife. Getting no answer, the Persian warrior knocked a beefy hand against his comrade's chest and spoke loudly to him in a jest of confidence, "Now I know why these Greeks lose war: they let their whores fight instead of men––" But he did not get a chance to enjoy his joke, for Xena struck him quickly, putting the full force of her boot to his face. At the noise of his heavy body thunking on the stone floor, it was a queue for men to lunge at each other in corners. A massive, tavern-wide brawl ensued: glass mugs were broken over heads and men chucked bodily over tables and shards of wood flying from broken chairs rain down from the rafters. Swords and knives were drawn and blood spilled over the filthy barroom floor. Xena herself thrived in the chaos, taking each man with crude rage and feeling pleasure at the audible cracks of bones and the dumb expressions that suddenly struck their faces proceeding her fists. This was fun.
In merely a candlemark's time, the warrior woman stumbled through the thatched threshold of the tavern, only two of her four men at her side. All three were badly bruised and sported lacerations criss-crosssing down the fore of their arms. One of Xena's eyes swelled an angry red and had already begun to turn a faint purple at the edges; her hair lay sodden with blood, reeking of metal and piss and ale.
"Xena," Rasmus groaned, doubling over to regain his breath, "you must learn to still your tongue... and your sword arm."
Xena merely smiled, the expression making her features betray their youth; and it seemed odd on such a bloodied face. She swung her arms around both Cyr and Rasmus' shoulder, pulling them roughly against her. She liked these two, as they were close in age and equally as keen to fuck-all and kill almost as much as they drank ale; and, most importantly, they obeyed her and were loyal. Rasmus was, in fact, a Persian expatriate, whom she found lingering in the gutter slums of Corinth; he had come in handy as of late, bartering in his foreign tongue to those of his kin they met along the road. And Cyr was just crazy.
"Boys..." she drawled, " a fight is a fight is a fight is a fight!" And they continued on down the cobbled alley, drunk as Dionysian priests, howling with laughter. After a few yards however, Rasmus broke away.
"Gotta piss," he said. Cyr punched his shoulder and grunted his agreement.
"If pissing means fucking!" Xena called after them, as the two lean warriors stumbled into the darker parts of the shadowed alley.
Feeling alcohol swim like a team of fish through her veins, Xena tried to remember the winding route that took her to the edge of town. near the docks where the rest of her army had found lodgings in the ramshackle port dwellings of merchants and thieves. Her thoughts resumed purchase on her failed campaign; she spat onto the street. She had with her nearly thirty men––well, twenty-eight after tonight's activities––and supplies were wearing thin. Her coin purse was much too light and she knew the store of gold she kept hidden in the stitching of her saddle blankets did not offer much more. It wouldn't be long until her soldiers began to desert in searching of work that actually paid. "Damn," Xena muttered, kicking a loose stone. She watched as the stone ricocheted of one wall and hop-skipped over the uneven cobbles and came to rest at the toe of a large black boot. Xena looked upward at the hem of a cloak, to the waist where the material parted to reveal the skull-engraved silver hilt of a sword, then to the broad chest and shoulders and finally to the hooded face. In the shadow, Xena could not make out the stranger's features. The man stood, however, right in the Warrior Princess' path. She felt her blood roil, her neck grow hot in anger; she was too tired and too drunk for another fight.
"Outta my way," said Xena, sweeping a strong arm to shove the man aside. He did not budge, however. Instead, he held up a broad hand and rested it briefly on her chest.
"Bored, Xena?" he asked, in a voice deep and smooth and mocking.
"What?" she seethed, a little surprised at his audacity and his calling her by name.
"You've wasted your efforts here. Pillaging will give you no glory," he said.
"Don't I know it," Xena growled, trying once more to manhandle the stranger out of her way.
"You need to refocus."
Xena's eyes flashed; she was in no mood for a pep-talk, let alone one from this arrogant cloaked prick. Advancing, she poked the stranger hard on his chest.
"Feelin' bold?" she whispered, close to his ear, "It's good a night as any to die."
The man merely chuckled and closed his larger hand over Xena's at his chest. For some reason, she felt a surge run through her, but the moment it passed, she found her legs kicked out from underneath her and her back hitting hard against the ground. Too drunk to care if this stranger killed her, Xena merely lay there in the dust and stared up. Behind his cloaked head, she saw the bright stars in the navy sky, like sparks knocking off a blacksmith's hammer. When the sparks rained down, Xena turned and vomited into the gutter.
"Very flattering," said the stranger, in an amused voice, stooping down to smooth Xena's mane of ebony hair back from her face.
"If you're gonna kill me, do it quick," panted Xena.
The stranger ran his fingers through her hair and tucked the tresses on the opposite side of her shoulder. "I suggest you sober up, warrior, and take a look at your surroundings," he whispered. Xena looked up and could swear that she saw a pair of deep brown eyes beneath the hood. When she turned again to her knees, she felt the ale waving through her stomach. She retched again.
"Ugh," groaned Xena, "what in Tartarus––" but when she looked around, the stranger had vanished. She clutched her head and blamed the vision on her poisoned state. However, when she hauled herself up to stand once more, her eyes fell upon a large page of parchment tacked to the wall. She squinted her eyes and read:
REWARD FOR THE CAPTURE OF
QUEEN ARTEMISIA OF CARIA
1000 DINARI
"Artemisia," Xena tried the name out, liking the way it felt of her tongue. "Yeah," she hissed, caressing the word. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Xena ripped the poster from the wall and continued toward the docks.
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"It was Ares," said Gabrielle, who had by then moved to the floor with her blanket to sit near the fire. Xena's fog broke as she heard her friend's voice, and only then did she realise she had been pacing. "The cloaked stranger..." prompted Gabrielle.
"Yes," breathed Xena, choosing to rest her tired body and sit down next to the bard, her back propped against the palette. "Yes, it was Ares. I didn't know it then, but he appeared to me many times in many forms. Although he never revealed himself until..."
"Until...?"
"Well, not until you, actually."
"Me?"
"When those townspeople thought I killed their kin in the fields and had me in prison. And you were acting as my advocate..." Xena smiled at the memory of the ruddy-cheeked bard in her peasant skirts.
"Huh," Gabrielle seemed to consider this. Xena watch her friend mull over a few silent thoughts as she gazed into the fire. From the window drifted in the scents of failing autumn flowers, the alliums and the ozawa and city smells of roasting nuts and cut flowers and wet-wool bundles of burning incense and that special scent of crowded human squalor. She could hear the sounds of the soldier's boots and gruff voices calling ranks to organise the city's legion. They would have to retrieve the reserves, decided Xena. She knew she should be down there with Ocnus Nilos, the Lieutenant General of the Athenian Army–– but even the Warrior Princess had to sleep some time. She drifted into the memory of her youth, when she could last for days at a full ride, from battle to battle, existing on nothing but the fuel of her rage. She looked at Gabrielle again.
Gods, what the woman must think of her: killing a barkeep for requesting coin, passing out in an alley and deciding on a drunken whim to go after some innocent strange woman. She shivered to think of what she had yet to tell Gabrielle. The thought made her heart go cold, despite the fire. She clenched her teeth.
And yet then, as if reading her thoughts, Gabrielle shifted closer and rested her blonde head on the warrior's shoulder. The action elicited a weary sigh from Xena.
"What is it?" asked Gabrielle, softly, her eyes never leaving the fire.
"How can you stand me?" Xena surprised herself by speaking her thoughts aloud. At the admittance, Gabrielle lifted her head and looked up at her companion. She saw something like a ghost passing before her friend's eyes.
"What do you mean?" she asked, making sure to keep a hand on Xena's arm, sure to maintain their connection.
"Every time I tell you of my past, I feel this great wave of shame wash over me. I will never be worthy of your friendship." There were no tears in her eyes, just the cold resonance of stated fact, an acknowledgment of reality.
"Nobody earns love, Xena. It's freely given. And besides, who can know love without hate," she smoothed her thumb over the warrior's skin and felt goosebumps rise in its wake. "And I love you, Xena. Every time we deal with the consequences of your past actions, it only makes me love you more. It only increases my awe of you."
"That doesn't make any sense," replied Xena, her voice hoarse with emotion and fatigue.
"Sure it does," said Gabrielle, with conviction, "because it reminds me how much strength you have to confront your demons, to want to correct your mistakes."
"I couldn't do it without you. There's no way. You are the strength of me, Gabrielle," said Xena, turning more fully to face her partner.
"If that's true, then whatever it is that you have done to this Artemisia and her people can be forgiven. And whatever this war brings, we'll face it together. We'll make this right, together."