The sea that caresses the shores of the Pharos lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor is a blinding blue, the blood of sapphires distilled to the purity of angel’s breath. Clear as Truth, pure as Love, in the bright sun of Egypt the city of Alexandria is a vision to restore hope to a jaded heart.
It is said that Alexander the Great, who founded the city and never lived to see it built, brings his godlike luck to his final resting place. Certainly Alexandria is blessed, by the favor of the gods and immortal heroes, by the location on the delta of the Nile, by the three hundred years of Macedonian Pharaohs who have ruled Egypt from her palaces.
In the madness that followed the death of Alexander, when his world spanning empire was being carved into joints by his generals, one of them had the sense to know his limit. Ptolemy knew that the hands grasping at the reins of Alexander’s empire would end up bloody, and ultimately empty.
No mortal alive could hold what Alexander had created, no mortal had his mystery. Ptolemy, one of his generals, and some say his half brother, understood what happened to mere men who grasped at the mantle of a god. He took Egypt and held it, letting the squabble over the empire rage on without him. For his wisdom, he left to his heirs a kingdom united under his rule, prosperous and powerful.
Alexandria became the marvel of his kingdom, a city that brought the ancient Egyptian civilization into contact with the Hellenized West. For three hundred years the Ptolemaic Pharaohs had ruled from Alexandria. Now the sun rose on the rule of Cleopatra VII, a Pharaoh beloved by her people throughout the Two Lands.
Xena, known as the Warrior Princess in Greece, was called many things in the lands around Egypt. In Har, the Kingdom of the Goddess, she was known as the Lord Chabouk , who had saved the throne of Oromenes, the Great King. In the lands of the Amazons of Dahomey, she was a friend of the royal house of Nzinga. Agassou the Panther, chief griot to the house of Nzinga, had herself composed a story about the saving of the nation of Amazons, of the courage of a Greek hero and her beloved Amazon Queen. In that tale, as Agassou recited it to the daughters of Dahomey, were all the virtues an Amazon might aspire to- generosity in peace, fearlessness in battle, wisdom in statecraft, the example of a great love and what miracles might come from it.
The story of Oseye, daughter of Nzinga, and her romance with Malika the griot had become popular- more warriors cast sidelong glances at the storytellers now. Was not the Queen Gabrielle also a storyteller? Had not Nzinga allowed her warrior daughter Oseye to wed a griot?
The names of Xena and Gabrielle were bywords for heroism and sacrifice. Already young lovers among the nation liked to use the story of the Greeks as a model for their own love. "My love for you is a great as that of Queen Gabrielle for her hero, a love that made the gods relent."
The Greek hero famed in story and song now stalked the streets of nighted Alexandria in the grip of a colossal melancholy. Gabrielle was gone, out conversing with the scribes at the famed Library, and wouldn’t be back for hours. The bard’s absence ate into her chest with hungry teeth, forcing Xena to curse her own weakness.
I have led men in war since I was fifteen; I have fought down devils and gods. How can a separation of a few hours break me? - she thought, angrily.
The mood had come on her like the folding of massive, dusky wings, blocking out the light. It was happening with alarming frequency these days. The first time had been in Dahomey, after the wedding of Oseye and Malika.
They’d been sitting around the central fire, drinking rough beer from gourds and talking about travel plans. She and Gabrielle had agreed to escort Dahomey’s new ambassador to Egypt all the way to Alexandria. After the diverted War of Three Nations, Nzinga had decreed a strengthening of ties with Dahomey’s neighbors. She had met in person with Oromenes and Malache of Har to end the war. The Pharaoh of Egypt was in Alexandria, a journey of more than a month by any route, and Nzinga was loath to leave her family after all they had been through.
She had appointed a contingent of Amazon warriors to escort her newly named ambassador, and requested that Xena and Gabrielle travel with them. It was partly as a favor to Nzinga and her family, partly an excuse to see Egypt, that they had accepted. It was along the route they would take back toward Greece, Gabrielle had pointed out. What harm in traveling in comfort?
“We could go by boat up the Nile, see Karnak, Thebes, Memphis-” Gabrielle had said, the excitement of the journey catching her.
In the past month they had traveled lands far beyond the route of many Greeks. They had been to lands where they were considered barbarians, ridden with the desert nomads of Kemet, fought alongside the Amazons of Dahomey, brought peace to warring nations. It had stirred something in Gabrielle’s blood, a wanderlust and hunger for adventure that had first propelled her to abandon her small town and family to follow a warlord across the face of the world.
Ex-warlord, Xena reminded herself. She was a hero now, due to the love and faith of the glorious woman sitting beside her. In the midst of questioning Geb and Nzinga about travel plans Gabrielle paused and gave her a look of such love, Xena felt her ability to think melt away. She was helpless before that look, and the profound feeling of gratitude that stormed her senses. Xena felt a smile break across her face in return. The bard returned to her conversation, but her hand strayed to Xena’s arm, where it rested.
Then it happened. The night sky reeled, the stars swam loose from their places, the flames of the central fire shot out in lurid tendrils, a dozen serpents out of the mouth of Tartarus. Xena cried out, throwing up her arm to ward off the attack, certain that they were about to be burned to death. She sprang to her feet, standing between Gabrielle and the flame, reacting on instinct alone. She stood, every muscle jumping, teeth bared in a snarl-
“Xena! What’s wrong?” Gabrielle asked, concern in her voice. The bard put her hand on the warrior’s arm, unprepared for the savage look on her lover’s face when she turned. The warrior looked ready to kill.
Her blue eyes fixed on Gabrielle, the tension in her body began to ease. “The fire- didn’t you see?” Xena asked, not understanding why no one else had moved out of the way.
They were all sitting exactly where they had been, only now their eyes were fixed on her, in her fighting stance, facing off against nothing.
“Xena, nothing happened to the fire.” Gabrielle said, slowly.
“It attacked us. Tendrils shot out, I thought we were going to be burned-” Xena broke off abruptly, aware now of how Nzinga and Captain Musu were exchanging puzzled glances.
She was surrounded by warriors, women who lived by the might of their spear hands, whose senses were as battle honed as her own. But none of them had seen a thing. Geb the Nubian was looking at her with concern, not a thing she ever expected to see from his laughing visage. She was making a fool of herself; there were no flames, no attack.
Xena forced herself to smile, her face protesting the blatant lie. “Must be too much of that good Dahomey beer. I’m going for a walk, work some sobriety back into my brain.”
“Would you like some company?” Gabrielle asked, her hand sliding down the warrior’s powerful forearm, to clasp her hand.
“No. You stay and hammer out travel plans with Nzinga and Geb.” Xena said, her voice light.
Captain Musu spoke up, pointing with her spear out at the darkness beyond the fire circle. Geb translated for her.
“The noble Captain wishes to send an escort with you, hero. There are lions about tonight.”
Xena turned toward Musu, anger boiling in her veins. “I bore the rage of your warrior goddess and lived. You seek to protect me from cats?” The Greek hero hissed.
Geb had no need to translate, the very tone of Xena’s words made Musu drop her eyes and look away.
“Xena.” Gabrielle said.
The warrior had to steel herself not to hang her head, the rebuke was clear in her lover’s eyes. It made her angrier, that Gabrielle would chastise her like a child in front of the gathered Amazons. Wasn’t she the one who had healed their nation, endured their ceremony, let herself become a plaything for their gods?
Xena clamped her teeth on her retort, knowing it would make her look more foolish than she already felt. She turned on her heel without another word and stalked off into the night.
“What was that all about?” Gabrielle asked, watching the retreating back of her lover. She looked down at the beer gourd Xena had been drinking from. It was still half full. Gabrielle had seen Xena quaff four such gourds with the Amazons before her speech became slurred. She had never hallucinated, not from port, nor wine, or ale.
Geb had grown silent, staring off after the sullen warrior. The look of concern on his face had not abated.
Agassou the Panther, seated in the place of honor beside Queen Nzinga, spoke up. She spoke with great sadness, looking at Gabrielle. She waited for Nzinga to translate for her.
“Agassou believes that Xena is unwell. She is not acting like herself. Sometimes, being Ridden by an Orisha changes a person. Geb of Nubia knows, the presence of Anansi the Trickster has changed him.”
“The lady speaks truly. Anansi stole my hate, the fire that bound me up. It might seem like a gift at first sight, but hatred was the sum of my life as a raider. I no longer have the ferocity to live as I did. The hero was Ridden by Oya, and had to contain her rage. Who knows what lingering effect that might have? ” Geb said.
Agassou spoke again. She touched a hand to her brow, then to her chest, and waited for Nzinga to translate.
“Xena was also Ridden by an eggun- one of the dead. Normally this will not hurt the living, if they are hale. But Xena had just fought down the anger of a god. She might not have been strong enough, after Oya’s rage.”
“Strong enough for what?” Gabrielle asked Agassou. Nzinga answered her, without waiting for the griot.
“Sometimes, when the living are…weakened, in some way, and they are Ridden by the dead, they don’t regain their will. Part of them follows the dead back through the gates to the cemetery. It is hard to see, at first. They lose the desire to eat, to fight, to laugh. Gradually, they fade, until they rejoin their missing part.”
“That’s ridiculous. Xena hasn’t lost any of her appetites.” Gabrielle said. The smirk on Geb’s face made her realize how that sounded, and she blushed.
“Glad am I to hear it, Griot-Queen.” The dwarf said.
“The entire camp could hear it last night. Good thing most of my women don’t speak Greek, or they’d have many new words to add to their vocabulary.” Nzinga said, letting the tension around the central fire fade away. She motioned Gabrielle to come sit beside her in the royal place.
“Xena is not like other women, even Amazons. There is only the thinnest veneer over the fire in her heart. I am sure that I tell you nothing you don’t know, Gabrielle. I have seen people with the ghost sickness, but they were often melancholy people before they were Ridden, in love with death. I have never seen people as in love with life and as determined to hang on to it as you and your hero. I would not worry.”
“She’s not melancholy. She can brood, let me tell you, but even her brooding carries energy. She seethes with it.” Gabrielle said.
“It is perhaps just a remnant of Oya’s anger. The body heals before the mind.” Nzinga said, in a way that reminded Gabrielle of Nzinga’s own bereavement.
“You’re probably right. It will only worsen her mood if I start coddling her. I’ll just keep an eye out for any odd behavior.”
In due course Xena returned to the central fire, and apologized for her curt behavior. The conversation started up again as if nothing had happened. Xena seemed perfectly at ease, and when Musu passed her a beer gourd, she drank from it casually. Too casually, Gabrielle thought. Xena was disturbed by what had happened, and was pretending not to be. That was fine in front of Geb and the Amazons, Gabrielle thought, but it wouldn’t work with her.
She waited until they had retired to their own tent for the night. It was within the circle of the royal family’s ground, set with the door to the east. The battle ax of Shango and the spear of Oya were carved in ebony and set above the flap in recognition of Xena’s status, as well as the running lioness of Nzinga’s house. The Amazons would be breaking camp soon to journey back to their own villages and towns.
The army had lingered together after the war for the wedding of Nzinga’s daughter Oseye and the griot Malika. Many had never been to a royal wedding. Nzinga, in a mood of unparalleled good humor, had thrown a celebration to be passed down in story for generations. Weeks of feasting and games, storytelling, drumming, dancing had left the women of Dahomey exhausted. The warriors had vied with one another in their contests, eager to impress their Queen and the Greek visitors with their strength and speed.
Queen Nzinga celebrated with her women, as she had not for more than a year. She was first among the dancers and drummers, and if her spear casting went not as far as the strongest of her warriors, her presence made them all weak. At night the griots would tell tales of the Trickster Anansi, how he had once gotten a mole to swallow the sun, how he taught the people weaving, the delight he took when girls were rebellious against their mothers. The strength of Oya was praised, she who the Amazons followed foremost among the orishas. Mingled in with these stories were the tales of the Greek hero, her own ferocity gleefully embellished by the Nubian dwarf Geb.
“Ten men she killed with her bare hands, to fight through the press to her enemy the Syrian. A horse stumbled into her way, but the great killer’s eyes were fixed on her foe. She lifted the horse above her head and tossed it aside, as easily as I toss aside the pebble.”
Tonight, the woman that Gabrielle followed into their tent didn’t look like a figure out of myth. She looked like a mortal woman, her large frame sheathed in muscle, the skin that covered it seamed with scars from a thousand fights. Her black hair hung down in her eyes, shielding them but not obscuring the fire that burned there. Gabrielle knew the woman behind the myth, could see with a lover’s eye when weariness and fear ate at her hero. Xena dropped down on the sleeping skins with a creak of leather and a muffled thud, flinging an arm across her face. She made no motion to remove her bracers or greaves, to unlace her boots or unhook her chakram.
Gabrielle sat down next to the sprawled fighter and rested her head on her fist.
“That bad?” She said, softly.
There was a murmur from the giant form, a motion of assent.
“You didn’t drink half a gourd of beer. Tell me what happened.”
Again, a murmur, more like a growl.
“Don’t give me that. Of course I’ll believe you.”
The arm was pulled away from the face, to crash down heavily into the skins. The voice came clipped between her teeth, speaking up at the roof of the tent. “I saw something that wasn’t there.”
“What did you see? You said the fire attacked you-”
“It did attack me! Tendrils shot out, I had to do something.” Xena’s voice was wrought with frustration.
“So you jumped in front of me.” Gabrielle said, matter of factly.
“Yes. As you, and the entire nation of Dahomey saw. I tried to face off with an unliving object.” Xena glared at the roof as if she could burn a hole in it with the force of her gaze.
“You listened to your instincts, and put my life before yours, without thinking.” Gabrielle said, gently.
“So?” Xena said, to the air.
“So you are afraid that your senses betrayed you. It’s written all over you. But they didn’t, Xena. You saw an attack, and rose to meet it. That split second decision might well have saved my life, like it has hundreds of times. From where I sit, your instincts are sharp as ever.” Gabrielle said.
Xena sat up and looked at her lover. “I saw an attack that wasn’t there.”
“You might have been misled. You might have seen something that we couldn’t. The important thing is, you reacted like a warrior. Like the woman I love, and trust with my life.” There was an elemental certainty about Gabrielle when she spoke. It reached into Xena, soothing the rage and dread that had been building in her all night.
“Gabrielle.. a fighter has to rely on her senses. If mine become unreliable, that trust you have will be misplaced.”
Gabrielle’s head rose, her eyes were steady on her lover’s troubled face. “My trust in you will never be misplaced.” She said fiercely.
Gabrielle’s faith drew her out, called to her strength, let her belief in her abilities seep back. There were plenty of reasons to argue with her, but none as convincing as her need to believe in Gabrielle’s vision of her. Xena bade the voice in the back of her head be damned, and leaned down to kiss her lover. When Gabrielle’s arms folded around her, there was no more need for thought.
When the time came to leave Dahomey, Xena was almost convinced it had been a momentary lapse, a trick of the supernatural light, a flicker of a god’s waning influence. There were no more episodes, no flashes of rage, no seeing things that could not be there. Gabrielle had talked to her about Agassou’s suspicion, about the ghost sickness. Xena almost laughed. Her lust for life was as great as ever during their sojourn in Dahomey. She and Gabrielle had enjoyed weeks of feasting and lovemaking, uninterrupted by violence. It was a healing time for them, after the separation of Gabrielle’s kidnapping and Xena’s descent into madness.
That was what the ghost sickness must be like, the warrior thought. The passing of days into an unendurable blur, the mechanics of life impossible to manage. It was like a house of many room, all of them empty, all of the doors opening on nothing. She had walked the empty corridors of that house when she thought Gabrielle was dead, unable to think or eat or sleep. She had lost her will, and longed to die. In the battle of the yellow valley necropolis she had even tried to go down fighting. Whatever had happened to her, it was not even a shadow of that grief.
They left Dahomey to the music of a hundred drums, to the singing of ten thousand women. Ten Amazons had been chosen as an honor guard for the nation’s new ambassador to Egypt, Captain Musu among them. Nzinga’s daughters Enomwoyi and Izegbe had asked to go, but their royal mother denied them. “My family is together for the first time in far too long. Let that be enough for us, for now.”
The Amazon honor guard marched across the grassland, disdaining horses. Sunlight flashed from the points of their long spears, from ornaments of gold and ivory on their wrists and ankles. Their beauty was their armor, their courage their mark of rank. The Greek Queen and her hero rode from custom and politeness, to accompany the ambassador, who insisted on a horse.
“I may never be a desert raider again, but Fortune did not craft this body to go marching across the plains in the wake of giant women.” Geb said, vaulting into his saddle.
"So we ride together as we once did on the sands of Kemet, hero. Yet all things are different. You are a savage killer no more, rending and slaying without thought. You have become quite civilized. Among the desert raiders, there is a phrase for that, when one’s woman makes one domesticated. It is a phrase often used to refer to gelded cattle." Geb said, sociably.
Xena turned her head a fraction and glared down at him. "I can still kill, Nubian."
"Ah. But now you restrain yourself. See, I taunt you, and you haven’t swatted me from the saddle. You have become as docile as a lamb." Geb said.
Gabrielle reined her horse in between Geb and Xena. "Both of you, stop. Killing isn’t a hobby. When the time comes to fight, Xena fights. She fights for the greater good now, not just to shed blood."
"Ah." Geb said, tapping his forehead. "That is the difference! I mistook her glee in combat for pure love of battle. It is love of a higher ideal that lends her that smile when she swings her sword."
"How did you ever end up as Dahomey’s ambassador to the court of Egypt?" Xena growled, leaning back in the saddle to look around Gabrielle. The bard threw up her hands and urged her mount forward, leaving them alone.
"Queen Nzinga, in her wisdom, recognized my gifts as a diplomat. I know the Egyptian court from years as a servant there. It amuses me to leave as an acrobat, live as a brigand, and return as an ambassador for Dahomey. What is unbelievable is how you ended up as escort to the Ambassador." Geb said without rancor.
The warrior looked at him out of the side of her eye. "We’re just riding along with you until we get to Alexandria. We can take a boat to Lesbos or the coast of Thrace from there."
"Oh yes, I have forgotten. You are off for the coast, and your tiny nation. Why linger in Africa, where the majesty of Egypt awaits you. How you must long for the uncivilized backwater villages of Greece, after the delights of the pleasure City of Har! And the company of Thracian shepherds and peasants must seems a relief, after the endless honor and nobility heaped on you by the mighty Amazons of Dahomey. What could the affection and gratitude of a Queen and her entire nation mean, after you have saved a farm or two?" Geb smiled brilliantly as he spoke.
Xena shrugged, and looked away. He expected the barb to reach under the Greek hero’s skin. Geb of Nubia thought himself a good judge of character. It was a necessary skill that people who were born different from the normal run of men developed, as a way of surviving in a world not designed for them. As he had adapted to his height, his place as an acrobat in the Pharaoh’s court, he had learned how to read people. Many wore their thoughts on their faces, not bothering to conceal them around him. It was his size, it deceived them into assuming his mind similarly impaired. People spill their secrets, whether in voice or body, when in front of children, animals, and servants, Geb thought.
When he first met the Greek hero, she’d been reduced to the level of a beast, a bloody handed killer in the grip of madness. Geb looked into her eyes and saw nothingness, a wasteland that made the deserts of Kemet look like a Persian paradise. She was seeking death with all her being, yearning toward that oblivion. He’d judged her a valuable tool, for as long as it took her to kill herself in battle.
He glanced at the black haired giant riding next to him, and marveled. This was a different woman from the killer he had known. She even sat a horse differently, with the relaxed posture of complete confidence. In repose she was as splendid as a panther reclining in the sun, rippling with vitality. He had heard that Greeks sometimes deified their heroes while they lived, gave them divine honors. Seeing this woman he could easily understand why. And the element that crafted a devastated killer into a divine hero, the mystery the Greek warrior possessed, was the blond woman riding ahead of them.
Geb turned his eyes to the Greek storyteller. She rode like a youth in the saddle, distracted by cloud formations, delighting in the passing grassland, stopping her mount and calling the hero’s attention to a herd of antelope springing away across the veldt. And the hero? The sullen killer he had known and come to love? She reigned in her mount, looked out across the grassland and assured the storyteller in the gentlest voice that she had seen them, and yes, they were wonderful to watch in motion. Fortune makes pawns of us all, the Nubian thought. I have been many things since my birth, acrobat and servant, raider and chieftain, now ambassador for a nation of Amazons.
He considered the changes that had come to him, since meeting the Greek. The pain was gone from his body, the pain he had lived with every day of his life. It was never easy to say goodbye to great pain, one grows rather attached to it. There is a secret sweetness in the skills you learn to manage pain, a pride in it. What was his pride now?
Geb considered the question long into the night, and was considering it still when the Amazons has ceased their seemingly tireless march across the plains. Fires were lit against the cough of leopards and the bark of jackals, food was brought forth and prepared. Geb lit on the earth with a sigh and stretched out his limbs. Horses might be a gift from the gods, but the firmness of the ground had a sweetness to it. He sat before the fire and produced a skin of Harrian wine. The Amazon on his left eyed it speculatively, but was conscious of his rank. The Nubian grinned like a jackal with an antelope in its teeth, and proffered the skin to the Amazon.
"We are now of the same people, are we not? Sister."
The Amazon’s hand faltered slightly when he called her sister, unsure of how to take this kinship word from the new ambassador.
"Leave them alone, Nubian." The low voice came from behind his right shoulder.
Geb spread out his hands in a gesture of innocence. "I merely seek to add to the graces of my new nation. Bravery the Amazons have in abundance. But anyone will tell you that the Amazons of Dahomey are not known for their sense of humor. Though, these spearwomen look like court jesters compared with you, oh sullen Greek. Come sit, and share my wine."
The Greek fighter ignored him and kept her post. She always took the first and last watch of the night, not trusting even the spears of Dahomey to protect her woman.
The Amazons seemed to take no offense at the implied insult, and left the Greek hero to the guard watch while they ate and talked. Egypt beckoned on the morrow. Geb listened to two of his soldier companions, veterans of the War of Three Nations; tell the others of the taking of Sekhmet in broad, bloody terms.
The Nubian glanced at the small blond woman seated across the circle. Privately, Geb was glad that the Greek storyteller didn’t speak more than a few words of the language of her sister-nation. How could she be as gentle as she seemed? She traveled with one who all but ate the flesh of her kills. Yet she was shy of bloodshed, even the hearty war talk of the soldiers. Odd, for a Queen of a warrior nation.
Interspersed with the war talk were comments on the Greek Queen, a rough and ribald appreciation of the noises that came from the tent she shared with the hero at night. An Amazon repeated the jest of the she-wolf’s howling and smiled, showing a bright span of teeth in her mirth. She elbowed the soldier next to her, and raised her eyebrows at the grim silhouette of the Greek hero.
The Greek warrior, off on the very edges of the firelight, seemed wholly absorbed by the nighted plain before her. After a moment of laughter from the fire, a single question in perfect Dahomey rumbled out from the darkness. "How do you know it’s not me yelling?"
The Amazons stopped mid conversation, unsure of whether to run and hide, or laugh.
Geb felt a wave of compassion for his new nation, and so diverted the moment. "I have heard your battle cry, hero. This was not it." He said, in perfect Persian. He smiled at the level sullen gaze from the Greek warrior, until she went back to ignoring them and watching the night.
She looks for enemies even here, within the borders of Dahomey. What is it that she misses, as I miss my pain?- the Nubian thought.
They reached the borders of Egypt at early morn and headed toward the river. Queen Nzinga had been sensitive to the terror her warriors caused in the Egyptian peasants and farmers around the town of Sekhmet, and had sent the party farther upland, toward the yellow valley necropolis to meet their boat. Stories of the taking of the town had reached there before them, and people shrank away in the streets from the tall, armed women as if the Judges of the Dead stalked the streets.
For their part the Amazons seemed to enjoy their deadly reputation and played up to it, assuming fierce scowls and feinting at one another with their spears. They are like girls on their first market day, Geb thought, not the deadliest fighters in Africa. He shrugged at the direction his life had taken, and set the thought aside.
Mekere the scribe, nephew to the local Nomearch, had arraigned transport for them. He recollected Geb fondly from the Nubian’s days as an acrobat at Ptolemy Philadelphos court, and enjoyed the excitement and danger that knowing Geb had brought into his life.
Mekere was a thoroughly decent man, quiet, devoted to his family. In the space of s single evening his uncle’s tomb had been disturbed by would be grave robbers, he had unknowingly taken into his home the kidnapped daughter of Queen Nzinga and the consort of a violent Greek killer. Rival bands of desert raiders had made the nearby yellow valley their battleground. Mekere and his men had found the triumphant band of raiders to be led by a Nubian dwarf, who spoke like a gentleman.
When the Nubian accompanied him home for dinner, he found out who his guests were, and all but fainted. Queen Nzinga was making war on Egypt, vowing to turn it into a sea of blood from Thebes to Alexandria if her daughter were not returned. And the small blond Greek woman who’d been entertaining his children with stories all afternoon was the consort of the savage killer known as the Ghoul.
Once the threat of immediate death had passed, Mekere found it all quite exciting. The Greek warrior woman had taken command of the desert raiders and galloped off to avert the war with Dahomey. It had been the highpoint of his recent memory, the war council the Greek warrior held with Geb and his seconds. They’d sat in his dining chamber, listening to the Greek woman’s commands, watching the blond woman bathe the blood from the killer’s limbs.
Fear had turned to a delicious thrill of anticipation for Mekere, listening to these warriors plan the impossible. The Ghoul was some sort of celebrated commander in her own land, a hero. Now this hero was having dinner in his own house, making plans to single-handedly stop the raging Amazons of Dahomey. It was as exciting as anything he could remember, including visiting the Pharaoh’s court.
Some part of Mekere had daydreamed himself into the action, imagined himself as more than a bystander witnessing great events storm across his land. When word had come from Geb the Nubian, now an ambassador from Dahomey, requesting transport, he’d been delighted. For a brief, heady moment, he entertained the thought of traveling with them, the Nubian dwarf, the band of Amazons, and the savage Greek. It would be the journey of a lifetime.
His wife knew his mind better than he did, and let him entertain the fantasy for three full days. She knew that it would take him that long to being to think about the danger, the length of time he’d be away from his family, the discomfort of the road. In the end, he decided to meet the Nubian and his party by the docks to see them off, but not accompany them. Not everyone is made to become an adventurer.
His resolve shook when he saw Geb sitting on his Persian horse, stepping lightly up the street, flanked by ten Amazon warriors. The tall, handsome women shone like basalt in the sun, flashing with gold and ivory anklets and armbands, muscles writhing under their dark skin. It was a sight of barbaric splendor, a sight that made a civilized man quake in fear. How could he let a moment such as this one pass him by? Behind the Amazons came two Greek women on horseback, the blond storyteller who had been his guest, and the Ghoul.
It was the eyes of the Ghoul that changed his excitement into cold fear. She rode relaxed in the saddle, one hand resting on her muscular thigh, one on the saddle horn. Her dark head turned casually toward him, and recognition showed on the planes of her face. But the eyes that looked out of her face were a strange pale blue, eyes with no welcome in them. Mekere was not a religious man by nature, but he looked into the dead eyes of the Greek woman and saw Death. Suddenly the adventure of traveling with Geb and the Amazons paled. Where this woman rode, there would be bloodshed.
He greeted Geb warmly, offering his arm to the new ambassador. "Joy to see you again, servant of Pharaoh. I have arraigned everything you requested, as you may see." Mekere said, nodding to the dock.
The barge was broad and flat, sitting low as a crocodile in the water. Egyptian rowers, in striped kilts and broad leather belts sat with their oars at idle, watching the Amazons with round eyes. The captain of the barge was a lean young man who affected the earrings of a Phoenician sailor. He wore his hair cropped close to the neck, and his chest and shoulders were as bare as his crew. On his feet he wore thick hide sandals of a riverman, on his arms he wore bands of onyx and gold as a nobleman might. He set his foot on the rail and greeted his passengers.
"Welcome to the Feather of Ma’at. I am Horem, her master."
"Delight come to you, Captain Horem, and your fine vessel. I am Geb, late of Nubia, Egypt, the sands of Kemet, now ambassador from Dahomey. These companions are my honor guard, the flower of Dahomey’s strength, led by the noble Captain Musu. And traveling with us are Gabrielle of Greece, and her companion, the hero Xena."
If Captain Horem was impressed by his illustrious passengers, it didn’t show on his face. He merely stepped aside and let the Amazons board his ship. Xena swung her leg over the saddle and landed lightly as a cat. She turned to Gabrielle’s horse and held out her arms while the bard dismounted. Gabrielle climbed down the length of Xena’s body, breathing a sigh of relief.
“A nice quiet ride on a boat looks good right now. No more galloping, no saddle sores-”
There was a stone lodged in Gabrielle’s boot. She bent down, using Xena as a brace, and worked it free. The hero stood like a statute while the bard hung unceremoniously from her.
A chuckle came from one of the sailors watching. He turned to the man helping him coil the ropes and made a joke about a monkey climbing the bole of a tree, in unflattering terms.
The world went red before Xena’s eyes. It took two long strides to cross the dock and grab the startled sailor by his belt and neck, two more to reach the edge and pitch him over.