Part Three
Amazons in Chains
Gabrielle shifted in her chains, trying to keep her tortured muscles from snapping under the strain. What is it about me that makes everyone want to manacle me?- the bard thought. A groan from the pile next to her let her know that the girl was coming around.
"Tanit?" She called, softly.
The young Amazon rolled over, her eyes flickering open. "Oseye?" She said, groggily.
"It's Gabrielle. From Melossa's tribe." The bard said.
Tanit's eyes gradually cleared, and focused on the Greek Amazon. "Gabrielle. The Greek. Yes. What happened?" The girl asked, seeing the chains that bound both of them.
"We were attacked." Gabrielle said, grimly. They'd been talking in the guardian's hut, the small stone building on the border of Dahomey. Gabrielle had heard running feet, felt the prick of a dart bite into her. She'd yelled for Tanit to get down, but the girl was an Amazon, out on her coming of age, looking for a man to kill. Tanit had charged out the door with her stone dagger raised, and promptly gone down under the darts. The drug acted fast, robbing Gabrielle of her senses. She'd collapsed next to Tanit, thinking as her sight faded, that Xena would be disappointed to wake without her.
When she came around, she was chained hand and foot, in a box or wagon, along with Tanit. Her staff, and the girl's knife, were gone. Tanit sat up, sullen fear and recognition in her eyes.
"We were captured." She said, her voice hollow.
"We were drugged. We're in a wagon of some sort. We've been moving since I woke. I haven't seen our captors yet, so I don't know anymore about them." Gabrielle stopped at the bleak look on Tanit's face. "What is it?" She asked, gently. She'd been around Xena so long that her mind went directly from recognition of the situation, to possible solutions. She looked at the Amazon girl, remembering how terrifying being kidnapped could be for someone who didn't go through it weekly, as she seemed to. The girl looked ready to cry.
"We are Amazons. We should have died fighting before we let them take us."
Gabrielle shook her head. "We were drugged, from a distance. There was nothing we could do."
The girl's eyes were large and round in her face, like a skittish colt's. "I've heard what men do to captured Amazons."
Gabrielle's heart went out to her. Though she was as tall as a warrior, and bore herself with the warlike pride of the daughters of Nzinga, the girl was still fourteen, on her trial run as a candidate for adulthood. She wasn't yet a warrior, hadn't earned her spear. And she certainly wasn't inured to kidnapping the way Gabrielle was, after years spent with the most dangerous woman alive.
"Listen. We're still alive, so they must want us that way. We haven't been harmed yet, so maybe we are worth more to our captors unharmed. That's always to our advantage. For now, we have to hold on, keep our minds sharp and our spirits up, until we find a way to escape. If we give in to fear, they have us." Gabrielle said, as gently as possible, hearing Xena's voice in her mind. Where was the warrior, anyway?- she wondered. She should be kicking the walls in any minute, Gabrielle thought.
The look on Tanit's face told her that her speech had the desired effect. "You are an Amazon." The girl said, slowly.
"Why are people always so surprised by that?" Gabrielle asked, and laughed. "Come on. Tell me about your home, your family. What is Queen Nzinga like?"
Tanit's face relaxed. She sat up cross-legged and started talking. Her Greek improved with every moment, as the girl remembered her lessons. That was one of the first things she told Gabrielle, how her mother had insisted that each of her daughters learn to speak many languages.
"Any one of us might be Queen someday, so we each need to know how to talk. My sister Oseye speaks Phoenician, Egyptian, Nubian and Harrian. I speak Greek, Harrian, and Persian. Izegbe and Enomwoyi both speak Greek, Ethiopian, Harrian, Egyptian, Nubian, even the languages of the desert raiders. Mother is odd that way. We have to learn to speak at least three languages before she lets us earn our spear."
"You have three sisters? Let me see, Oseye, Izegbe, Enomwoyi, and you. They all are warriors?" Gabrielle asked, trying to keep Tanit engaged.
"Oh yes. They all have their spears. Izegbe and Enomwoyi are both old, twenty five and twenty seven, both long wed, wives and children. My closest sister, Oseye, is mad for this girl, but won't let anyone know about it. She thinks Mother won't approve." Tanit said.
"Nzinga won't approve of her being involved with...?" Gabrielle asked, unsure.
"A griot. Apprentice, really, but she's not a warrior. Everyone thinks a Queen's daughter should only marry a warrior. A griot won't be able to afford the bride price of a princess. They have no cows. But I've told Oseye all this; she doesn't care. She wants this girl, and no other. I think she'd pay the bride price herself, just to have her. When I am a warrior, I will have a great herd of cattle."
The Amazons of Dahomey certainly seemed to reflect their Greek counterparts in their romantic habits, Gabrielle thought. Wonder what Xena would do if I told her she had to pay a bride price for me?- the bard thought, then giggled.
"What's a griot?" Gabrielle asked, interested.
Tanit frowned for a moment, then said something in her own language. "Eyha! Greek...isn't right. Doesn't have the words. Griot is a storyteller, one who keeps the history of the people, knows the tales of gods and ancestors. They take news from village to village, they advise Queens and tutor Queen's daughters. They lighten the hearts of warriors after battle, they ease the grief for loved ones lost, they sing and celebrate marriages and births. They belong to all the people, not their family. They travel throughout the whole land. What Greek word...bard? Like a bard. The girl Oseye wants is apprenticed to a griot. It's said the ancestors listen to her, she will be very great."
The movement of the wagon halted. From what Gabrielle could tell, they'd been moving all day, and now it approached evening. The air in the wagon was close and stifling. A grill opened in the roof, and waterskins were dropped down. Gabrielle caught the glimpse of a hand, a tiny corner of a night sky, but nothing more. Dry flat bread followed the water, then the grill closed.
"At least we have food. Come, eat some of this. We have to keep our strength up." Gabrielle said.
The girl took the bread, tearing into it with strong white teeth. "What are you doing so far from Greece, Gabrielle? So far from your tribe?" Tanit asked, passing her the bread.
"I travel with a warrior, Xena. We were just in the City of Har, helping the Great King gain the throne." The bard said, the very mention of Xena's name causing an ache in her chest. It had been at least a day, perhaps longer, that they'd been captured. The warrior hadn't come for her yet. What could be keeping her?- Gabrielle wondered.
"You are Queen, but you travel with one warrior? What about your tribe?" Tanit asked, stunned.
"Well, actually, Ephiny rules them as Regent. I chose to continue my life on the road with Xena, helping people. She's a hero, and I record her adventures." Gabrielle said.
Tanit dropped the waterskin. "You are a Queen, and a griot, a bard, yet you travel alone with one warrior. She is too poor to pay your family for you, and so you run away?" Tanit asked, trying to understand. She had heard that the Greek Amazons were different, but not that different!
"No. Well, yes, but- that's not the way we do things. I don't give her family cows, and she doesn't give my family cows. We just travel together." Gabrielle said, trying to picture Xena leading a herd of cows to her father's doorstep in Poteidaia.
"But you love her. You say her name like you love her. Like Oseye says Malika's name. " Tanit said, stubbornly. If love were involved, there had to be an exchange of cows somewhere, she knew.
"I do. More than my own life." Gabrielle said, in a low voice.
"Tell me an adventure of your hero." Tanit asked, and Gabrielle was glad to comply.
The wagon continued it's journey for a week, the heat and silence broken only by the grill in the ceiling being pulled back in the evening for the food and waterskins. It became the way Gabrielle and Tanit reckoned time, the sliding of the grill, the glimpse of evening sky, the hint of cool, live air from the outside. The days were spent in a gray haze. Sleep became a sweet reward, an escape that Gabrielle longed to fall into. She knew how much she was coming to rely on escaping, and so she rationed her sleep to just barely more than her body needed. It would not serve her companion to become lost in dreams, unable to face the reality of their confinement. She'd heard of prisoners, long caged, that became like sleepwalkers, living inside their own minds. It led to a blurring of the edges of reality, a weakening of the senses and the will. It had been the third day when she realized that Xena wasn't coming for her.
It was an idle thought, at first, indulging in the daydream of the warrior kicking through the wooden walls, her battlecry echoing in the hot air. Like she did in Megabyzus' camp, Xena would chop through the guards, hack the manacles from her limbs. Gabrielle pictured the warrior flinging the chains aside in disgust, then sweeping her up into a fierce embrace. The feel of Xena's strong arms, the smell of dust and blood and leather, bronze armor pressing into her cheek as she held her lover were so real that for a moment, Gabrielle believed. It was sweet, to sink into Xena's arms, let the warrior's low voice soothe her- then the wagon struck a stone, knocking her head against the wall.
Gabrielle rubbed the back of her head, fully restored to the present. The image of her lover faded into memory. Tanit's eyes were half closed; the rich brown glazing over with despair. Zeus, Gabrielle thought. While she was indulging in her Xena fantasy, the girl was left to sink into her own imagining. From the look on the young Amazon's face, they were not pleasant thoughts.
"Tanit. Hey, are you okay? Tanit?" Gabrielle called. The girl's head rolled against the wall, her eyes slid open, but there was no vitality in them.
"Your warrior hasn't come for us. I think there will be no rescue for us. I am sorry, Gabrielle. We will soon join her in the ancestor's halls."
The though hadn't even occurred to Gabrielle that Xena might be dead. The remembrance of her days in the Amazon village preparing for Xena's funeral pyre came back like a blow to the chest. Gabrielle's body recoiled from the memory of waking next to the sarcophagus, every morning opening her eyes on nightmare. Xena was gone and it was like the weight of gravity evaporating. The future she'd imagined, the life lived with the warrior until they were old and gray was swept away and nothing stood in its place. She'd tried to picture a future without Xena, and found nothing. Her imagination failed. There was the image of work, yes, and helping people in need, of things left undone, of battles to face, of the emptiness left by a hero the world needed. But for herself, there was no joy, no pleasure, nothing but toil for what was right, with her heart ashes in her chest.
Nothing had been enough to replace Xena, not the Amazons, not philosophy, not the gods. Gabrielle remembered touching the sarcophagus, telling Xena they would meet again on the other side, hoping that she wouldn't be left here too long. The grief was quiet and thorough, like sinking into still water without a protest. Gabrielle could see the bleak landscape that yawned for her, the hills of gray under an iron sky, the blinking out of all color and light. Oblivion called to her, soothingly, to leave behind the pain of the world. Hadn't Xena left her alone to endure this, again?
"No." Gabrielle said, in the stillness of the wagon.
"No?" Tanit asked, raising her head.
"No. There might not be any rescue coming for us. That means that we have to get ourselves out. Review what we know about our situation. We're in a closed box, traveling for a week. They feed us well, for prisoners, so they must want us healthy."
"We don't know who they are." Tanit said, surprised by this surge of energy in the Greek.
"So we find out. When the grill opens tonight, we try to engage them in conversation. And we keep it up, every night, until they break." Gabrielle stood, as much as she could under the heavy manacle. "We need to move around, wake up our limbs. When we get a chance to bolt, we'll need to be able to move."
"What happened, Gabrielle? You have a fire lit under you!" Tanit said, awed.
"I'm an Amazon, we have to be resourceful. You're right, Xena probably won't be coming for us, if she hasn't yet. That means she needs our help, we'll have to go to her." Gabrielle said, practicing crouching and standing with the chains.
"She might be dead, Gabrielle."
The bard smiled, hearing the words out loud. "I'd know if she were." It was true, and saying it released the remembered grief that held her hostage. Her body relaxed, her heart started beating again. I know what that grief is like, the bard thought, and this isn't it. Xena was still out there, and she would find her.
Birth of the Ghoul
Shaitan, the Syrian, had intended to take Nzinga's daughter alive and slaughter the rest of the caravan. One member might be left alive to carry the rumor that the girl was taken by slavers for an Egyptian, but if they proved troublesome, that was not essential. The caravan had been skirting Dahomey's border for days. Shaitan would slip out of the camp and keep watch on the stone huts, where the guardian masks marked the edges of Amazon territory.
Girls on their coming of age sometimes journeyed near the border, looking for trouble to blood themselves with. Shaitan imagined that a Queen's daughter might have a lot to prove, and would want to kill a man, not a lion or a boar. And there were no men in Dahomey. If the girl wanted one to kill, she'd have to venture near the border, near the trade routes.
This was the third caravan he'd traveled with, to stay in this area without arousing much suspicion.
His supposition had borne fruit. The hired men he'd purchased from a desert raider brought him word that the girl's tracks had been seen nearby. He left instructions to watch the caravan camp and slipped out to watch the guardian's huts. There, in the dawn light, he had seen her, tall, magnificent, wearing an armband of hammered gold in the shape of a running lioness. Nzinga's own symbol. He reached for his darts. Another had stepped out of the stone hut, talking familiarly with the girl. It was the blond Greek, the black haired warrior's whore. She seemed to know the Amazon. They clasped arms, like old friends.
A tremor went through Shaitan's hand. He knew that he should just kill the Greek and leave her body for the vultures. He pictured the black haired woman howling in agony, and smiled, his lips stretching against closed teeth. Yet…there was something cold in his chest, a fear that woke when he imagined the Greek warrior's steel blue eyes. He could see skulls looking back at him out of those gemstone depths. The tremor shook his hand, spoiling his aim. Kill her, he thought, but he could not get his hand to obey. They image of bleached skulls against endless blue taunted him, dared him to strike down the blond woman. At last, nerves frayed like rotted string, he convinced himself that it was good strategy to leave her alive. So he sent his darts, and took them down.
A quick visit to his desert raiders, instructions to pick up their cargo outside the stone hut, and he was back to camp. The morning cookfire had just been lit. Shaitan smiled, baring his teeth now in his lean face. The drover was up, setting tea to boil over the fire. He waved to the Syrian to join him. Shaitan did, one hand flicking open the pouch at his waist. It was a simple movement, really, to empty the pouch into the fire. Simple, to watch the drugged smoke bring down the unknowing drover. He stepped over the body and heaped more fuel on the fire, letting the smoke drift through the camp. The caravaneers would pose little threat to his raiders, drugged and sleeping. When they drifted like ghosts into camp, he nodded and they began their work.
It should have been an easy task, easy kills. One of the Egyptian brothers on the holy pilgrimage had woken, and seen a raider over him with a dripping knife. He'd shrieked like a woman in childbirth, and roused the camp. The drug from the central fire had done its work, and the raiders managed to hew down groggy caravaneers like wheat. The noise had dragged the Greek warrior from her tent.
Unlike the caravaneers, she came awake as a tiger wakes, instantly and thoroughly, ready to deal death. Her armor was on, steel was naked in her hand. She had charged into the camp circle, giving tongue to her unearthly battlecry, and gotten a lungful of smoke, enough to fell a prize bull. Shaitan smiled, thinking her contained. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Xena recognized the smoke as drugged the minute she breathed it in. She knew she didn't have much time before the effects robbed her of her fighting prowess, so she moved like a razor edged hurricane, bringing the fight to the raiders with a leap none of them could believe. Her sword came down like Zeus' judgment, splitting a skull to the teeth as she landed. Her foes were unknown to her, but they were slaughtering sleeping people, and Gabrielle was missing. The thought of the bard added fuel to the bonfire of her rage, and five more raiders went down in as many strokes.
I'll have to cut through their circle and get to the road, she thought, her sword arm slowing. The picket line had been cut, the horses careened madly through camp. She reached out and seized a saddlehorn, swinging her leg up, but the drug ruined her coordination. She landed on the other side as the horse ran on. She shook her head to clear it, but the fog was internal. Her fingers clutched her hilt.
Shaitan had screamed at his raiders to get her, to bring the unnatural woman down, before she leapt again and finished the rest of them off. They did, swarming over her like jackals on a wounded lion. The weight of numbers dragged her down, a dozen hands clutching her sword arm, a dozen weapons striking her, eager for her blood. She managed to thrust her point through the throat of one more raider, before the blow to her skull brought her down. They kept striking at her after she folded to the sand, unable to believe that she wasn't moving, wasn't slaying them. She lay like a broken doll, blood pouring into the greedy sand.
"Leave her. She is dead. Grab the bodies of our dead and wounded, leave no trace. Burn the tents."
Continued in Part 4.