As I lie in my cell, listening to the sounds of nails being hammered into hard wood – one can't have a crucifixion without crosses after all - I drift in an out of a semi conscious state, where the flood of memories comes at me. I see my mother's smiling face, and feel the wet grass as I kneel on the ground waiting for the new skirt she's been sewing for me for the last three days. I smell the fresh ink on parchment as I follow the wrinkled hands of the elderly scribe that came to live at our village at the end of his full and adventurous life. How I envied him the stories, and the calluses from the quill. I look at my own hand now - it's small and smooth, and bears no trace of the life it lead. It shall die this way.
The glimpses of my happy childhood are frequent. But most of my memories are fairly recent - memories of her. She came like a thunderstorm into my quiet village life and changed it forever. I remember waking up to a sound of cries and shouting of men - my mother bursting in through the door and hauling me and my little sister out of the beds. The acrid smell of burning houses and thick black smoke was everywhere. Someone's rough hands grabbed me and a stifling burlap sack was pulled over my head. I remember the sensation of being carried, then tossed onto a moving heap of other bodies and being carted off. I passed out then, I think. I was brought back by a harsh slap, pushed off the cart and then down to my knees. When I raised my head, there she was.
She prances like a mountain lioness, with her wild mane, along the kneeling row of us - slaves now. Sell! Sell! Keep! Her commands deciding the future course of people's lives in a split second. I hold my breath as she moves closer. I cannot explain this, but I am past being scared. I keep my head high, let all the hatred I feel show on my face, and look up - right into her eyes.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" Her voice is low and mocking, but I detect a faint hint of a surprise. "A defiant kitten!" Her men laugh out loud, but when she hisses they stop as if silenced with a knife. "I'll make a good obedient mouse out of you, kitten. Keep!"
She moved on, and I felt my heart contract with sudden terror. What has just happened? Have I just asked for a death sentence, or avoided it? I couldn't bear the not knowing. I didn't recognise the people next to me - they must have been taken from a more distant village. I could not see anyone I knew. My Mother, my Father… Lila... What happened to them? I was torn between wishing to see them here, alive and unharmed, and hoping that they escaped the hell of slavery and hid in the woods.
I'm shaken out of my reminiscing by a warden that has been coming into my cell fairly regularly for the past week or so - I'm losing track of days. He brought some fresh water and a change of clothes. He's fairly young and his hangdog face is kind and showing sorrow at my misfortune. In a different life, perhaps, we could have been friends. In this one, he will be my slayer, even if unwilling. "It's a lovely day today. The whole town is preparing for Bacchanalia..." He stops all of a sudden with a realisation that I am not of this world any more, and cannot possibly hold any interest in it. "I'm... I'm Joxer, by the way." He says, clearly flustered, looking at his large feet and pushing hands into pockets of his warden uniform. I look at him and smile, but don't answer. I might have been Gabrielle before, but now it no longer matters. I do not know if we keep our earthy names in Tartarus.
“OK, then” he says after an awkward moment, and leaves, closing the heavy door behind him with care. I drink some water, then wash quickly and change into the clean set of prison rags - they are harsh but pleasant against my skin. I have been in this cell for - weeks? months? - now, and lack of anything to do is my worst enemy. The feeling of coarse cloth is something to relish and ponder on, even if for only a few minutes. I compose a poem in my head, but it will be lost soon with no means of recording it for posterity. I, a bard, will die without penning the story of the last moments of my life. I lie down on the pallet again and escape into the world of semi-consciousness.
I'm standing on a table in a tavern - someone's helpful hands put me there so that my voice can reach the darkest corners and the deafest ears. "Hear me, good people of Laurel ! We must not cower and hide, and let the soldiers take everything from us! Today it's the soldiers, tomorrow it's the warlords - and we have nothing to show for our hard work, and our families starve! And one day a Giant will come along, and flatten this village because you have nothing more to give. We must stay together, and fight!". "Shut up!" I hear. "You're not one of us, what do you know?". "She's right!" - I hear from the other side of the room - "We're nothing more than slaves to anyone with a sword that comes along!". A tall woman, built like an ox, is standing there holding a bullwhip. "We should form an army! I can be the general and my boyfriend Hower..." Whistles and laughs interrupt her, and she storms out with a burning face, dragging some hapless peasant out with her. Hower, presumably. I try again, despite it clearly being a lost cause. "You could do it, you know. If several villages stood together, there would be too many of us to ignore. And maybe we could even stop... Her!". It's always "her", for I dare not say the name in front of this crowd. Everyone knows who I mean though, and people fall silent. And slowly they start leaving the tavern, shaking their heads in defeat and desperation. I look down into frowning faces of my two companions - Theodorus and Glaphyra. They also think it's a lost cause, but they tag along regardless - I don't know if it's because of their habit of protecting me, which did not die with the person who issued them with this order, or is it because they feel they owe it to me. Whatever the reasons, I am grateful. I do not want to be alone. I step down from the table, and we leave after the last of the village crowd, and head in the opposite direction.
Lying on the tough wood of the pallet, and looking at the sunlight coming through the narrow window cut in stone at the top of the wall, I can't help wondering if my speaking out in random villages on my trail, and trying to make people I did not know anything about, rebel, was not the same kind of pointless defiance I showed as a young peasant girl kneeling in front of a monster slaver. The "I will die anyway so I don't care any more" kind. For when she died, I wished for death myself. I held a waterskin filled with poison in my hand, but I could not force myself to drink from it. She would not want me to. So I kept on living.
If you told me back then that I would tie my life to her, and willingly, I would have laughed in disbelief. She was everything I was taught to loathe – a wild killer tethering on the brink of insanity. A slaver bitch. She must have sold hundreds of peasant girls like me, and paid no more attention to any of them than to a mere commodity. After all, that's who we all were. But she did keep her promise to try and break me. On her orders I was chained up and forced to work – initially in the kitchen, then in the laundry hut. I can still smell the blood and gore on the leathers that I had to clean – often piercing my skin with damaged studs that her army seemed to favour. I cannot say however that I was physically abused – I heard the stories and expected to be raped and beaten on a regular basis by the slavers, for whom I was nothing. But no one touched me. I started suspecting that she told them not to, and imagining what kind of fate she had in store for me. It was indeed a cat and mouse game – one where the mouse sees that the cat is toying with her, and that the length of her life depends only on his whim. I was left alone, but there was no peace in my mind.
It was months until she came to speak to me again. I fell into a routine of sorts by then. I stopped trying to make friends with other slaves – too close contacts were severely punished. I was never harmed though, the others bearing the whole burden of the warden's wrath. So they stayed away from me, and I just kept on doing my job. I've always been a storyteller, since I was a little child, so I passed the time making up lavish tales of princesses, and noble warriors, and freedom, and telling them to everyone and anyone who would be around to listen. They were helping me forget about the unknown fate I felt hanging above my head every day and night. I would carry on with my stories during the working day, and then at night when we were chained up by the fire and served supper by the kitchen slaves. There were around 30 of us, slaves, serving the army, and in retrospect I have to say that we were treated reasonably well. Food was plentiful, to keep us healthy and strong, and we had enough of rest time. If any of us broke the rules though, they would be severely punished and usually not return to their pallet at night. They would be replaced soon enough with a fresh slave from a new village. From the bits I heard, and the amount of blood I had to clean on a regular basis, I knew that the woman in charge was a cruel fighter and her army spared no one – be it man, woman or child, but she took care of what was hers. And we were hers.
I am polishing an ornate belt – one with an intricately carved skull and a row of bones; a fitting accessory for a slaver indeed, when I hear quick footsteps and she's there, looking at me. She pushes my chin up with a long index finger, and holds it there, looking deeply into my eyes. She is thoughtful, and searching; she sees right through me. I cannot stand it and avert my eyes. She laughs. “There's a good mouse”, she says. “Come, mouse”. She pulls the sword out and strikes at my chain, breaking it in half. Then she leaves and I follow her, the belt still in my hands. I enter her tent, larger than the others; I've never been inside before and I'm surprised how comfortable it looks with bear skins draped over the bed and chairs. “Sit” she commands and I obey. “I hear that you tell stories, and that you can write. Is that true?” I nod, for I don't trust my voice at that moment. The waiting game's over and I fear the inevitable. “I need a scribe. I need to start recording the villages we conquer, and the dinars we make.” She pauses, and then starts talking in a muted voice, as if she was talking to herself more than me: “Darphus is stealing from me and I know it. But I can't kill him. Not yet. But when I have the proof, I will show it to everyone and then make him squeal like a pig. Here, piggy, piggy, piggy…” She tosses her head back and laughs out loud, showing a row of perfect teeth. I'm frozen in place, looking at such a clear display of insanity. She snaps back to reality, moving her attention to me again. “So it's agreed then? Good. You'll have your own tent, but you will be expected to follow me everywhere I go. You will stay away from battlefield unless I tell you otherwise, and you will write down everything I tell you. You will also guard these scrolls with your life, and if your writings are inaccurate, you will die.” She pulls her knife out, and slowly licks it as if already tasting my blood on it. “Say something! Cat got the mouse's tongue?”. “Yes”. I manage to utter. She backhands me, but without much force. “Yes, MASTER”, she says slowly and I repeat. Then she calls out and two people come in – a man and a woman, both clearly seasoned soldiers with many scars to show. “This is the scribe”, she says pointing at me. “Give her a tent, some parchment, what she needs, things; and guard her; she dies, you die”. “Oh, and you can keep the belt” she tosses in my direction. Then she exits, leaving my two newly appointed guardians looking at me in disbelief. I stare down at the slaver's belt that I've been clutching with both hands the entire time. The woman is the first one to break the silence. “Very well then, if that's what the boss wants – let's go. My name's Glaphyra”.
Glaphyra led a full and dangerous life, and it's pure irony that her death was so ordinary and accidental. She was a thief, and an assassin; then a slaver, a warlord and finally a bodyguard to a hapless scribe. She met a carpenter in one of the villages we stopped by on our quest for rebellion, Darnell, and fell for him. She did not want to let Theodorus and me carry on alone, but she did not want to leave Darnell either. She was as starry eyed as any teenager I have ever seen; I even saw her feeding him apples! I persuaded her to stay with him, and she eventually agreed. Theodorus and I also stayed in the village for a number of weeks. Trying to taste a bit of a normal life that we were all denied, I suppose. But the local villagers were none too happy to have a travelling rebel bard, and a former warlord, endanger their quiet lives, so we had to make the move eventually. The day we were leaving, the house Glaphyra's new beau was building for her collapsed, burying her beneath. Darnell joined us for a while on our travels, but ultimately went to Rome to become a gladiator. I wonder what happened of him.
There are steps outside my cell, and a bowl with thin vegetable broth and a chunk of bread is slid under the door. I wish for a rabbit stew, or a bit of mutton. Or chicken gizzards fried in sheep fat. To no avail. No meat for the dead.
I sit with her by the fire. We are alone, and I write down everything she says, word by word as she told me. She is clearly tired, and yet she recites the names of people she enslaved today, and the prices she got for them. Her memory is so good, it's scary. Why does she even bother with the names? I doubt she even knows mine; she has never asked. She makes me write down the exact number of men, women and children that were slain, and the location of the village. She makes me write down the names of men and women that fell fighting on her side.
She drinks wine, and slowly her words become slurred. Over suddenly she stops, and just stares into the burning fire. “It's your fault!” she screams and I jump up, petrified, but she is not looking at me. I doubt she knows I'm even here. “This blood is on your hands, you made me do this!” She collapses on the ground and whimpers like a child, in low wail. No one is coming; people spent the night drinking to celebrate a profitable day, and are mostly sleeping or otherwise engaged in the relative privacy of the tents. I'm alone with her, and she is alone with her demons. I don't know why, but I put my quill down and go to her; I pick her up and lead her to her tent. She comes willingly, her mind absent from her body. She shivers and I put my arm around her. I lead her to the bed and lay her on it, tears streaming down her face. I want to comfort her, strangely, but I can't. I wrap her in a bear skin and leave.
I did not see her the next morning – she rode out early and came back two days later, covered in blood, and visibly tired, but with that maniacal grin firmly back in place. She brought news of new villages to pilfer, which meant packing up the camp and travelling further North to be closer to prospective area of business. She called me later that day, and told to put the new locations on the map, and write down the observations she made en route. It was more of the usual – trade trail this way, castle that way, reinforcements on the castle. Lords interested in slaves. Routine. By that time I stopped wondering if my participating in this procedure made me a monster slaver too. I was afraid of the answer.
She stops dictating and just looks at me, not with her usual absent eyes, but clearly – at me. Gabrielle of Poteidaia. “Do you think I'm insane?” She asks. I want to deny, but I can't. I have nothing left but the truth in my heart. “Yes, master” I reply, as I did many times previously, close my eyes and wait for the pain. It does not come. I look at her and I hold my breath, for I have never seen her so young and vulnerable; not much older than I am. I reach out and she clings to me like a child. “It's not my fault!!” she says and shakes with silent tears. I hold her and stroke her hair, and whisper a children's tale in her ear for comfort. I stay with her that night, until she sleeps.
Without it ever being said, it became a routine of ours. I would come to her tent to have supper with her, then take down the notes from the day, have some wine, tell her a story of sorts, and just wait for her to fall asleep. Then I would leave for my own quarters. I slowly started noticing a change in her behaviour – the lists of slain or enslaved women and children became shorter, and within a year completely ceased to be. She was still making good money however, from all the able men she captured and sold.
I never mentioned my observations to her. I was not certain if she was aware of this, and I dared not risk turning her back to her old ways. There was something else noticeable – each camp location was bringing us closer to the feared capital of the Empire. What was her plan? I did not dare ask back then.
I have drunk too much of the good wine she pilfered from the local king's castle, and I fall asleep on her bed in the midst of telling her a story. I'm brutally woken up when she thrashes next to me, crying in her sleep. She is incoherent, calling for her mother, and wailing about the flames. “It burns!” she cries. I hold her close and rock her in my arms like a baby until she falls back asleep. Only then can I feel the hot tears streaming down my face. I cry both for her, and my lost family. It does not occur to me that I lost my family because of her. I stay with her till the morning, guarding her, and slip out when she starts waking up.
I did wonder many times before, and after that night, what made a young girl like her turn to the world of blood and gore and cruelty. What triggered her insanity. I had no doubt that she was not a well woman; her random outbursts of hysteria both frightened and fascinated me. I saw her gut a man once; she did not even bat an eyelid when the blade of her knife tore through his belly and the intestines spilled out. And sent me running to dispose of my breakfast in the nearby bush. But I also saw her save a kitten from a tall tree, and patch up her men after a battle. And offer a meal to a hungry orphan we met on the way. She was a woman of contrasts.
I was told later that she killed that man, Perdicus, because he tried to bed her. Not that I could blame him – she clearly was an attractive woman, with a feline like quality in her moves, and beautiful eyes. But she had a specific outlook on sex and love. Her men knew that very well and did not let themselves even look at her in an inappropriate way.
Coming back to her nightmares, she never told me the full story and I was never able to piece it from the bits I heard. The one time, I think, she was talking about her past, was when she said something about a monster created by the one everyone thinks a God. She was talking of herself, the monster. But by that time I already forgave the monster she undoubtedly was. I no longer saw a maniac, a bloodthirsty warlord, and a ruthless killer. I saw a girl taken too early from her family by horrifying circumstances, and longing for warmth and friendship. And I offered it with all my heart, despite my mind telling me not to.
“I could love”, she said once. “But it needs a heart. I no longer seem to have one.” I knew for a fact that was untrue. She cared for me as much as I did for her.
I no longer slept in my tent; I went to bed with her and held her through her nightmares. They became rarer and less violent after a while, but we kept the routine, both of us comforted in our closeness and mutual acceptance. She started involving me in her battle planning, listening to my input with utmost attention. I was timid to express my views at the beginning; after all what did a peasant girl know about battle plans? But when I started getting into the feel of things I discovered I could predict possible dangers and indicate weak points. Oh, I did not become a master slaver. We were long past enslaving peasants back then; our battles were against the biggest army the world has ever seen. HER army.
She sits in a chair, the one she favours. I do not understand why and she never told me that. It's a prisoner's chair, blackened wood, bronze and leather, with straps to hold the head and limbs in place. It's a souvenir from a previous life, she said once. She holds a heavy goblet in her hand, and offers another to me. “To the death of a slaver!” she toasts and I drink with her, not yet understanding. She then tells me that it's time to concentrate on her real goal, but says no more. I do not push her as I see that she's withdrawn deeply into her mind, where I do not go.
It became clear in the coming months that her goal was to engage in a direct war against the army of the current ruler of the Known World. Did I think it was insane? Yes I did. But I knew she was insane, so it did not really surprise me. I started suspecting that the whole slavery business was only so that she can build an army with the wealth she amassed, and then strike out at her real enemy. HER. She would not speak of Her directly to anyone, including me, but she would often cry out her name during the nightmares. That's how I knew it was personal.
I never found out what really had happened between these two, and I never dared ask directly, although my bardic mind created quite a few stories, one less probable than the other. Neither Glaphyra nor Theodorus knew anything either, although they said it must have been an encounter from a distant past, since they had been with the boss for almost 10 years then. I decided to leave it, and wait for the day she would willingly share her story. It was not meant to be.
I wake up and she's not there. Her armour and horse is gone. I fret as she had one of the more violent nightmares that night; neither of us got any real sleep. I can't find peace the whole day; I try to write down one of the stories I heard from a passing bard, but my mind is drifting to her. I try talking to Glaphyra about my concerns, but she is not taking me seriously – the impromptu solo escapes are nothing new, she says, and I have to agree. Finally, late at night, she bursts into the camp on her Palomino, grinning dangerously and with fire in her eyes. “She knows who I am” she shouts triumphantly, and jumps down. She grabs my hand and pulls me to the tent, describing the next battle plan she has in her head. I'm not listening; I'm tired and all I want is to go to bed, now that she's back safely. I lie down and fall asleep, with her pacing around and talking out loud, not paying any attention to her surroundings.
We had a few months of successes, but then the tables turned and our defeats proved that her insanity, my strategic planning, and the brutal strength of her men were no match for the army of the one who ruled the Known World. Each encounter left us with more soldiers dead on the battlefield, and some started deserting with no prospects of easy gains and death the only viable option. She became more withdrawn, and the spark was gone from her eyes more often than not. We still spent a lot of time together, but mostly I was the one speaking, and she just sitting there looking absently ahead or pacing like an impatient child, or rather a raving lunatic with lethal combat skills. I tried to reach her, I did, but ultimately the barriers she built around herself were impossible to crack.
I'm sitting by the fire, with Theodorus and Glaphyra flanking me. We are alone. The army is gone. She is gone; her last command being for these two to protect me. Her bloodied face will be imprinted forever in my mind. I could see the light going out from these wild eyes, and a smile forming on her lips – not the usual full manic one, but a small, peaceful one. I think ultimately she welcomed death, and death embraced her like a caring mother. I try to find comfort in this, but I can't. If I find the strength to live another day, I will dedicate it, and then each remaining one, to bringing down the enemy in the only way I know. With words.
I hear a loud noise and stop daydreaming. The door opens, and an unfamiliar face of a warden comes into the dim light. He looks at me, then laughs and spits on the floor. “Enough of rotting here, bitch. Your time is up tomorrow; the cross stands tall and ready”. With that, he leaves; the heavy door crashing loudly behind him.
I sit back, pulling my knees to my chest. I am neither scared, nor relieved that the waiting is over. I feel nothing at all. I look at the stone walls of my prison, and the beam of sunlight high up. I wished I could see even a sliver of the outside world for all these days; I guess I will see it all tomorrow, for the last time. Will I see Her again? Doubtful. She was done with me the day she issued the death sentence and had my legs broken. I stay like this for a long time, not thinking, not reminiscing, not feeling.
I fall asleep covered in the thin blanket, and let the dream claim me. The same dream I've had so many times that I can no longer say whether it is a real memory or just a creation of my tormented mind.
Unusually, I go to the battlefield with the army. There are not many of us left, and no men can be spared to guard me in the deserted camp. I stay in a villager's hut, on the outskirts. Theodorus and Glaphyra join the battle, leaving me to eagerly listen to the sounds of fight. She would be in the heat of the battle, of course, spreading fear with her battle cry and death with her weapons. I'm alone in the hut; the occupants fled before we arrived. It's getting louder outside, and I can smell the smoke. There's an explosion nearby – Greek fire – and the hut shakes. Then a wall collapses and suddenly I'm in the midst of it - blood, and gore, and torn flesh. I don't recognise any of the fighting men - they must be the new recruiters from the last prison coup. I grab the first object I see to defend myself. I put my back against the remaining wall, and pray to the mighty Athena to spare me in battle. And whack at everything that comes close, enemy or not. I doubt this frying pan will be of any use afterwards.
No one pays much attention to me, to be honest - a slip of a girl in clothes that blend easily with the mud coloured interior of the peasant hut. The sounds of battle are becoming muted and I can see the fatigue of the remaining fighters. I can feel mine. But I'm starting to believe that I might yet live till the next day - and then I see a reflection of the fire on the knife thrown my way, like a ray of a dying sun. I dodge, but it hits its target - I feel the flesh on my cheek tearing and warm blood spill in abundance. There is no pain, only a feeling of numbness and resignation.
Suddenly I see her, running through the mayhem and seeking with those crazed eyes - she is frantic, screaming and thrashing wildly, dispensing blows with terrifying speed. She spots me and freezes; then starts tearing through the mass of fighting people, leaving no one alive in her path. She grabs me and pulls me close. I can feel her heart beating wildly and her armour digging into my flesh. I close my eyes and let myself be held. Then I feel her warm breath on my cheek, and then her tongue - she laps at my blood as if it was the nectar of gods. The sensation is overwhelming, and I feel weak at my knees. I collapse against her. She supports me with strength that never ceases to amaze me. I can feel her grab my face with both hands - I open my eyes to stare into hers, burning, and bright with insanity, fear and something else entirely. She crushes her lips against mine, and lets me taste my own blood on her tongue.
I wake up, shaken. I hug myself and rock slowly, trying to bring my pounding heart under control. I think of the two women that shaped my life and death. Xena, the Conqueror. And Callisto, my soulmate.THE END