X.
As an experience, madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does. And the six months…that I lay in bed taught me a good deal about what is called oneself.
-V. Woolf in a letter to Ethyl Smith
"Hold the line steady!" calls Xena. Her muscles strain like the rope she holds firmly in hand. She and three other men lower a barrel of Greek fire over the side of the ship into a waiting rowboat below. Beside them, two other groups do the same.
"On deck!" a sailor shouts from the dingy. A few men hold the barrel and settle it as gently as possible in the bow of the boat.
"Release the line!" commands Xena, pulling the thick rope back over the lip. "Good, now I want you down in those boats and rowing toward the north shore! Wait for me there." The men look at her a little warily. "Now!" she shouts, her face taking on the bent of one driven mad with war. As if that very Greek fire had been lit beneath their arses, the soldiers begin to pour over the ship, scaling down the rope ladders.
"This is madness!" yells the Athenian naval captain, Themistocles. He had been the captain during the Persian wars, a war-hardened man, his face like the porous cliffs of the Grecian coast. "Do you hear me, Xena! Madness!"
Xena merely scowls and turns to keep issuing directives. "Go cry to your King," she dismisses.
But Themistocles rounds on the warrior woman, more incensed than he's ever been. "I will not have my men slaughtered! The Persian scum have the higher ground. It'll be a killing field!"
"Don't you think I know that?!" seethes Xena, not willing to waste time convincing a washed-up veteran gone soft in his old age. "That's why I'm sending them around to the north shore. There's cover in that cove and if Tetram wants to contest them, then he's either going to have to give up his position or split up his forces."
"And the Greek fire? They'll blow themselves to the gods!"
"That's the point," says Xena, turning away once more.
"I'll not take commands from a barbarian witch!" shouts Themistocles at her back. With swiftness and accuracy and with her own frustration strengthening the blow, Xena turns and backhands the man across the face. It knocks him out cold and his body falls like the leaden weight of an anchor upon the deck. Many men pause in their tasks to look on at this spectacle.
Xena merely stares at all of them, "Anyone else here have a problem following my orders?"
Not a single voice is raised in protest. "I'm in command here and there is no time for dissent," she says, her voice carrying with the wind to those scattered both on the bridge and on the main deck. "Now take him to the brig," she says, gesturing to Themistocles' unconscious heap. She turns from the soldiers who take up their legendary naval captain's limbs and drag him away.
Leaning against the side of the ship, Xena surveys the landscape with a severe eye. Through her mind runs endless orderings of the strategy Leonidas and she had come up with. She had taken command of the second ship, leaving the King of Athens on the main ship and the third in fleet to attack from the south shore. She would close in on Tetram like a pack of swarming dogs on a bovine carcass. And if he didn't take the bait, she would smoke him out. When the main contingent bearing the Greek fire rowed to shore, she would follow on her own, using the diversion of the attack to go after Gabrielle. The warrior feels a sense of panic overwhelm her, like she is trying to stare down a tidal wave.
"I'll find you, Gabrielle," she whispers, even if I have to kill every last Persian in my path. The thought startles her. If only my bard were here, she would quiet the bloodlust that I feel like a legion of Roman chariots racing through my veins. If her bard were here, what would she say? Xena shuts her eyes tightly, and her memory flies to a night during the time that the Furies had driven her insane.
Wrapped only in a rough woolen blanket, which scratched at her bare skin, Xena followed the bard through the moonlit path between the trees. Despite the madness of the day, she felt strangely lucid with her hand held tightly in Gabrielle's. If nothing else was sane, then this was: following her bard out of the darkness. Just moments before, Gabrielle had found her standing stark naked in front of a small village on the outskirts of their campsite. Before her eyes had been a massacre: the women nailed to crosses, some with pregnant bellies, the children lying in heaps of congealing blood. The blood. The blood poured over her vision, until she found herself screaming and screaming and screaming.
"Xena?" came Gabrielle's gentle voice. Apparently, they had arrived back at their campsite. The warrior looked at her companion, an unknowing, lost look taking hold in her eyes.
"Xena, why don't you sit down by the fire, huh?" said Gabrielle, resting a hand on her friend's shoulder.
But Xena began to cry, thick unstoppable tears that tangled her eyelashes and made it so hard to breathe. Somehow, the bard coaxed the warrior onto the ground and moved to sit behind her, her back propped on Argo's tack and saddlebags. She pulled Xena into her arms and cradled her head against her chest, making shushing noises that combed through the mire of the warrior's madness.
"Oh gods… oh gods…" Xena cried, her pain like a stone in her mouth.
"Look at that fire, huh?" she heard Gabrielle say, and then her lips pressed against her temple. "It's so bright and so warm. Look at the fire, Xena."
Despite herself, she felt the need to obey, letting the distended light into her blurred vision. Gradually, the flames began to focus, and she felt the heat chase the chill away from her skin. And then she felt the bard's body pressed against hers and a new warmth flooded through.
"Whenever you feel the violence overtaking you," Gabrielle continued, tightening her hold on Xena, "concentrate on your breathing, look at the fire. When fire is controlled, like in a pit, think how mesmerizing it is, how useful. You can dry your leathers near it. You can warm your hands. You can cook good meals, spit a trout and turn it that nice crispy brown color that you like-"
But Gabrielle stopped when she felt Xena's full lips press against the curve of her breast, just at the dip of her top where the lacing drew together. The warrior felt Gabrielle's sharp intake of breath. Taking that as a good sign, the elder woman continued her sensuous assault, kissing the fleshy line of her cleavage. But when her tongue took the place of her lips, she felt Gabrielle shift beneath her.
"Xena," she breathed, her voice reduced to ash. The woman in question turned subtly in her friend's arms and looked up at the column of the bard's creamy neck.
"You taste like a peach," said Xena, allowing the husk that her tears had borne to color her voice. Gabrielle merely flushed wickedly, from her chest to her cheeks. Finding that blush to be rather edible, Xena turned more fully in Gabrielle's arms so she supported herself on both hands and crept purposefully up the bard's body. In that moment, Gabrielle thought she looked like a panther stalking its prey from a darkened tree.
"I'm going to devour you, Gabrielle," said the feline woman, and as she crept, the blanket that had hidden her nakedness slipped from her body. She watched as the bard's stricken eyes slid over her revealed breasts, down the line of her taut stomach, then as they flicked back up and registered the unfamiliar glint in blue eyes. Gabrielle began to shake her head, her face a picture of confusion.
"Don't," she whispered, bringing her hands up to rest on Xena's shoulders. She did not, however, push the warrior away. Xena merely smiled, knowing that look in her friend's eye. Slowly, she took Gabrielle's hand in her own and moved it down to mold it over her own breast. The feeling of the bard's smooth palm cupping her was exquisite. In fact, both women emitted very guttural sounds at the contact. The warrior pressed the bard's hand harder against herself.
"Touch me, please" said Xena, "Make it go away, make the blood stop flowing."
Gabrielle removed her hand immediately. "Stop Xena," she said.
But Xena merely lowered herself down and captured the fold of the bard's ear between her teeth, using her tongue to swirl around its shape. Her pleading was amplified in Gabrielle's mind, nearly driving the bard into making a very bad decision. "Stop it," she said, however not using any force to her words, she would not win this battle with violence. "Remember the fire," she said, as Xena moved on to her neck, licking and biting the sweet tasting skin. "Control the fire," she gasped, placing two hands on either side of Xena's face. With the gentleness of her words and her touch, Gabrielle forced Xena to look up at her.
"Fire rages," said Xena, clarity starting to swim back into the pools of her eyes, "It destroys everything."
"So bank it," reasoned Gabrielle, "control the fire."
A light flares in Xena's eyes as she leans against the ship. Beneath the embarrassment of her memory, she finds a source of inspiration: Control the fire.
"That's it," she whispers, the strong wind whipping her thoughts to the cliffs of Salamis where Tetram and his army sit in wait. Seeing that the rowboats had disappeared successfully around the bend in the cove, Xena checks her sword at her back, making sure it is held secure. Climbing up onto the side of the ship, Xena prepares her body to face the chill of the sea once more and jumps into the waves.