Chapter Three: The Rules of War

The battle continued to rage. With no Geneva Suggestions to control either side, the rules of war remained remarkably simple: Kill the guys rushing at the line before they can forcibly get more metals in your diet. Passively, I wondered where Ares was in this melee. With the smell of blood and rotting corpses that filled my nose, I knew The Slayer of Men either watched the battle from the hills or, more likely, participated under a mortal guise. I pushed thoughts of the brutish god down and focused my attention on the lines of footmen I currently cut down with my blades. 300,000 at long estimates, if we can keep this pace… A sword cut tore at my flesh. I gritted my teeth and bit back the urge to scream. Later, I thought with a grimace before I "tuned out" the wound with practiced ease. Years of experience in pain management due to my disability actually had its uses at times. I can worry about him after I'm clear. My mind raced and held back the Tiger. If I could help it, that form would be my Trump Card. Lione grinned at me in my mind and flashed a sideways "V" level with her right eye. I shook the image away and growled, "Focus! Damn you!"

One of the soldiers who fought next to me smiled. My stomach rolled. I knew that look too well because I'd given it myself on more than one occasion when I saw a pretty woman. I was never fool enough to openly gape, though. "(What's wrong?)" He asked. "(Getting flustered?)" The grin widened from openly flirtatious to predatory.

I took a deep breath and felt my eyes flash golden before they returned to their native brown. With a roar, I focused my momentary fear and rage into the enemy. I charged the lines and began cutting down every poor schmuck fool enough to get in front of me. Blood roared in my ears. Men screamed as I slashed and actually began to back away in fear as I pushed myself deeper into the line. I wanted them to all suffer. No Geneva made war simpler, but it also made it more barbarous with rape and plunder commonplace in the ancient form of war. I wanted Xerxes himself to kneel in defeat for all the lives he'd taken in his conquests. Death was too good for the flea-bitten mutt.

To that end, I kept carving a path through the men. I could hear a few Greeks follow behind me in an attempt to bring me back to their lines, but I paid no heed. I knew Xerxes led from the rear like the coward I knew him to be. My previously dirty tunic now seemed bathed in scarlet from the blood of my own wounds and the blood of the fallen before me. With wild eyes and a grittiness I felt every time someone told me I couldn't, I forged on. When men did try to slash at me, I moved with an automatic flourish: block the blade or cut the spear and stab with the other blade. In the edges of awareness, I could feel my wounds throb, but they pulsed distantly, like stars in the night sky of my mind. I had a single target, and no half-trained slaves were going to stop me.

When I came to a gap in the formation, I smiled as the king's ornaments glittered in the sun at the back of the formation. An M107 would make a meatloaf out of his head easily with all that flashy shit he's wearing. I thought with a dry chuckle only to be punched to the dirt with enough strength by an unseen fist to knock me out.

I woke slowly and looked around the room. The tent was dimly lit, and I could make out a mass of writhing forms on the floor. A gasp and groan from that area made my face heat up. Did he really just drop me in the… My thoughts stopped as I heard a man approaching the tent. Even in the dim light of the torches, his form glowed slightly from the refracted light of his pompous jewelry. With all his finery, the king couldn't sneak up on Hellen Keller.

When our eyes met, I had to fight not to spit at him. "(What do you want?)"

The man actually smiled! It made my skin crawl. "(Your people don't afford women fighters,)" he said in an accented Greek. "(I have heard stories that your gods exile such women to an island where they fight and love in peace.)"

"(Were the gods so kind, they would destroy vile people without mercy,)" I responded as I met his eyes again. "(Kings would rule with peace and kindness rather than iron and whips.)"

He nodded slowly. "(Where is your land of birth?)"

I sighed and looked around at the harem. He seemed to favor dark skin with shapely forms. Unconsciously, I felt energy begin to arc unseen by Xerxes on my fingers at the mere thought of him attempting to bed me. I closed my eyes and listened, trying to control the urge to attack him and rip him to shreds with my claws. A few of the women around us didn't seem to care about a stranger in their king's chambers and kept enjoying each other without pause. I could hear the tent flap rustle under a gust of wind. "(My home is far from here,)" I moved closer to him. "(We have mastered many forms of magic. Carriages can fly and move without horses. Any person can attain the knowledge of scholarly repute within a few weeks to make your wisest magi seem simpletons. One man from our army has the power to kill a man from many leagues away or thousands within bowshot.)"

Xerxes laughed. "(Surely, the battle has made you mad, woman. No man can do the things you describe.)"

I shrugged and let the "woman" term of address slide for now. "(Even if I am beside myself, why did you have me brought to your house of women?)" I smirked. This will fuck with his head. "(Did you bring me here to choose a bride I from your…)" I purposely trailed off and looked around to make like I was surveying wares in a shop. "(…selection?)"

The man looked completely flummoxed. It was hard to keep a laugh from spilling out as I watched him appraise me anew as if I was some new beast he'd never seen before. I shook my head. "(It's such a shame you have no knowledge of my people.)" I sighed and tried to give him the impression I was beginning to relax. "(If it pleases the king, I will educate him on the customs of my people in relation to waging war.)"

The man waved his hand and smiled at me again with a little less lust in his eyes. "(Say on, woman.)"

"(First, my name is Nichole,)" I informed him. "(It doesn't matter who a person is in my homeland; we always say our names to address each other.)" I growled. It galled me to no end. To keep the nonthreatening ruse, I continued. "(I understand you are a king, but no one, king or slave, shows such disrespect.)"

The man sighed, "(As you wish…)"

I shivered at the words and fought not to puke as the scene that played in my mind every time I heard the phrase from The Princess Bride became corrupted with his appalling visage, "(Right.)" I cleared the bile from my throat. "(War is more deadly among my people. It is such that when we war with each other, strict rules govern that action. If someone were to lead a nation to break these rules, the person or people in charge of the army would be executed for their crimes.)"

Xerxes looked genuinely stunned to hear this. "(Do you lead armies?)"

I shook my head, leaned in, and whispered, "(No, I'm an assassin by trade.)"

The man's face went ashen. He opened his mouth to scream but froze when I let my biped Tiger form come out, covered with floor-length chiton. The king's eyes seemed to vibrate in their sockets. I walked over to him and raked my left-hand claws across his cheek. The man jerked back and choked as he tried to scream from his seat while the man also tried in vain to cover the five deep lines of blood in his face. "(I'm not here to kill you, but I want the Greeks to know you are nothing but a mortal man who nears the bounds of his power and yet thirsts for more.)"

I looked around and disappeared into the night even as shouts for my head echoed across the battlefield. A quick scan of the Greek lines made me smile. It seemed the Greek coalition had advanced during the time I was unconscious and in Xerxes' chamber. When I last saw them, the Greek lines were just beginning to edge out in the pass. Now, they sat comfortably about three quarters of the way to the Persian lines. It was a wonderful sight to my eyes, but I also noticed the Greeks remained at only about fifteen or twenty percent of their original strength. In the morning, there would be one final push to turn Xerxes back from his thoughts of Greek conquest. I just hoped my little demonstration shook Xerxes to his core and broke his spirit for the war.

I dreamed. I was on a cliff that overlooked the pass where the Persian and Greeks arrayed for war. I could see everything. It seemed the Greeks pushed harder this day than the day before. They didn't fight like wild beasts, but the fury was stronger than should be possible regardless of how it came to be so.
"(They are calling you 'Aphrodite Areia', Tiger.)"

I fought the instinct to jump at the voice and instead focused on the anger in my belly at the sound of the voice. I dared not look at him and kept my eyes on the battlefield below. "(Lord Ares, I thought you might be around.)" I responded even as a small smile pulled at my lips. I wanted so badly to make a reference to Kratos but worried I'd unintentionally piss of the god, so I kept that tucked away in the back of my head. "(Didn't want to miss the bloodbath, huh?)"

Ares looked at me; I could feel his eyes going over me in the same way a soldier would check his weapon. "(The Persians have some stiff gods of their own.)" Ares said, "(I'm surprised they don't crush Greece.)"

I shrugged, "(I heard there's a god worshipped there who works to destroy Persia from the inside and replace her with Greece.)"

Ares stared at me.

"(Not me,)" I willed a knife into existence and nicked my pinky until droplets of red blood dripped down my finger, "(I have never been, nor will I ever be, an immortal.)"

Ares nodded at me. Then, he spoke, "(You've done well, kid,)" he frowned. "(You fight in an unusual way, but you fight with the heart of a Spartan.)" The god seemed to look off somewhere beyond me for a few seconds. "(Beware of your heart,)" he said calmly. "(Aphrodite doesn't like it when people imitate her, even her…more aggressive side.)"

I nodded as I felt the dream begin to fade.

I jarred awake out of my sleep with an odd sense of panic in my chest. I jumped out of the simple bedroll and quickly grabbed my blades. My heart throbbed in my chest. I wanted to scream but couldn't. Instead, I pushed the pain to the back of my mind and pushed my way out of my tent. In the middle of the battlefield, I saw a vaguely Human shape concealed in a wreath of smoke with an impact ring around it. No, the thing in the smoke was not an it but a her! Tentatively, I reached out with The Current to get a read on the person. My heart nearly stopped when I recognized the person's signature in The Force. "AMBER?!"

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