The two tents stood together in the middle of a barren field. It was late autumn, and an ice cold wind sweeping through the countryside reminded everyone that this part of northern Greece wouldn't have to wait much longer for the onset of winter. The tent on the right was a rough, heavy affair, a tent for the common soldiery, easily big enough for ten men. Through a hole in the top, smoke from a fire rose into the air to be grasped and carried away on the wind. Outside it, eight horses were tethered. The tent on the left might once have been a pavillion fit for a prince, and in other times certainly wouldn't have deigned to stand next to one such as the other. It was obvious to the more careful observer that the owner of this second tent had had misfortune lately, however: the tentcloth was stained with mud and grime, and ripped and hastily repaired in many places. Animal skins hung suspended from the frame to serve as further protection from the wind. At the entrance, a man clad in armor and the skin of a wolf stood, a sword by his side, spear in his hand, his face the expressionless demeanor of the professional soldier who knows that the only way he'll survive being put on guard duty in such weather is to pretend the cold wind doesn't exist. As with the other tent, smoke rose from this one as well, to be carried away on the cold fingers of onrushing winter.

"Where is he?". The question wasn't directed at the other three occupants of the pavillion, but at the world in general, and it was at least the seventh time the speaker had asked it. He was a heavy-set man in his early fourties, with a balding pate and the stubble of several days gathering on his face. Clad in chainmail and the skin of a black wolf, he carried a short sword and a dagger on his belt, and the air of a man used to command but also of a man not having much to command these days. "Oh, be quiet, Balog! He said he'd be here at sunset, and there's an hour 'till that". The retort came from the other side of the tent, from a man sitting on a simple soldier's cot. This man was at least ten years the junior of the man called Balog, and had a full head of sandy hair. He, too, was stubbled from several days of not shaving, and his cloak stained by the mud of travelling. His armor was the banded mail of the Roman legionnaire, and like the tent they were sitting in, it had seen better days. He wore a faded medallion of copper or brass around his neck on a heavy chain, and a Roman dagger at his belt. "He'll be here soon enough. You know how it is: he let our messenger return in one piece; that means he's interested in our proposal", the younger man smiled a thin smile that didn't look as though it was brought out very often. "He'll be here soon enough....", he repeated.

The two men warming themselves by the fire exchanged glances. This inter-play between the two other occupants of the tent had been going on for the past two hours, and it told them that the younger man, whose name was Varus, was just as nervous about the coming meeting as Balog was, his outward indifference all the more transparent for his attempts to hide it. Not that they themselves weren't nervous; the man they were awaiting was said to make the gods themselves nervous. The men at the fire were brothers, twins at that, and this meeting had been their idea in the first place. The man on the left had nightblack hair and a goatee, and his face, which might otherwise have been quite handsome, was marred by a hideous scar running down the full length of its left side. He wore an eyepatch to cover that left eye which would never see again. His brother had a shaved head but a full black beard. The most striking aspect about him was the fact that his left arm ended midway between the elbow and where his wrist had been. The stump was encased in an intricately carved piece of studded leather, held in place by leather thongs. The two brothers bore no weapons, but the motley assortment of axes and swords leaning against the sparse furnishings of the tent mere feet away meant that they could arm themselves within seconds. The tent itself was dominated on the inside by the small fireplace in the middle, but next to that its most commanding feature was an iron-bound wooden chest of medium size, against which one of the brothers' sword was leaning. All four occupants of the tent occasionally shot glances at it when they thought the others weren't noticing. Aside from the chest, the tent had as little to recommend it on the inside as on the outside. It was clear that it was meant to be furnished in a much richer fashion, and not the meager way that was in fact the case. It, and the men occupying it, all had the same air of having seen better days about them. The most maddening aspect of it all, they seemed to agree by unspoken consensus, was the waiting. In earlier times, these had been men who'd never had to wait for anything. When they had shouted "Jump!", people had either jumped or died. Now they had to wait, and for every hour that had passed, all four of them had gotten more and more edgy. Still, the waiting for their guest was almost over.

An hour passed, and outside the pale autumn sun began to sink under the western horizon. As the cold began to get worse, the scarred twin threw a few more pieces of kindling on the fire. When the first piece snapped in the flames, it made all four men jump. "What a sad sight we are", the scarred brother, whose name was Laertes, thought, "and how far we have fallen". He looked over at his brother, whose name was Toros, and saw him fingering the leatherclad stump of his forearm. When the temperature dropped the stump ached, Laertes knew, but he also knew that his brother would rather die than admit to being in discomfort. "Or have someone else die", he thought, and his mind wandered for a brief second back to earlier times. A particularly harsh gust of wind brought him out of his reverie. At the next second, the guard they'd set came into the tent. The guard was Balog's man, and he looked up gruffly to signal him to speak. Instead the soldier very, very slowly fell to his knees and keeled over onto the ground. The four men jumped to their feet and quickly armed themselves, but in the next instance another man entered the tent. He was clad in a long black cloak with a hood, under which he wore black traveller's clothes, meant to protect their wearer from the elements during long travels, not from the blows of enemies in battle. He bore no obvious weapons. Taking a step forward, hefting his sword, Balog snarled, "Who are you? Name yourself, cur, so I'll know who I'm killing!" The stranger half-turned his head to him and answered in heavily-accented Greek, "I'm someone who doesn't appreciate being invited somewhere, and then being met by a spear-toting fool at the door. I am the man whom your message reached. I am Rory." With these words, he threw back his hood and stepped into their midst.

As the man named Rory stepped forward, stretching out his hands to warm himself at the fire, Laertes quickly looked him over. He was of indeterminable age. His face was pale and angular, the complexion making Laertes think of something that lived deep underground. It was also utterly expressionless. It betrayed no emotion whatsoever at just having murdered the guard, and none at Balog's reaction to its owner's entrance. Despite being mostly obscured by the cloak, Rory seemed to be of unremarkable build and height, the kind of man you'd instantly forget having seen in a crowd. "Which is probably just fine with him, considering what he does for a living", Laertes thought. There were many rumours, but very few hard facts about this man who'd just entered the tent. Some people said he came from the east, others from the north, but these people were never very specific: noone seemed to know for sure. It was said that he'd killed complete strangers in cold blood for merely making the mistake of asking too many prying questions, and looking him over, Laertes found that very easy to believe. As Rory turned around to face him, a thought flashed across Laertes' mind: "He's probably killed people for looking at him too hard...."

With his emotionless eyes fixed directly upon Laertes's own, Rory said in a flat, factual tone, "You are Laertes, the one who sent the messenger to me. A former warlord of these lands, until your army suddenly dispersed to the four winds six months ago." Continuing his bland dissertation, Rory looked at Toros, "You are Toros, brother to Laertes, and warlord of Thessaly. Until, that is, you were defeated and humiliated in single combat last year around this time." Scanning the room, Rory's eyes came to rest upon Varus, "Marcus Octavian Varus, rogue son of one of Rome's finest noble families. The terror of Thrace with the tacit approval of Rome, until you suddenly found yourself without an army as well. Now ostracized by your nation and your family, and hunted like a common bandit." He finished his sweep, "and you, Balog, 'Black Wolf of Dalmatia'. You had one servant left to you until a few moments ago. Now you have nothing." His eyes coming back to Laertes, Rory continued, "Nothing but the same lust for revenge shared by your three companions in misery here. Revenge on the common cause of all your downfalls. On the woman known as Xena, the warrior princess." His lecture apparently over, Rory returned his gaze to the fire, and there was a short pause. "You know of her as well, then?" Laertes ventured, suddenly feeling like a schoolboy daring to interrupt his teacher. "Of course", Rory replied, "I know she cost you your eye because she was better with a blade than you. I know she cost your brother his hand for the same reason, further adding to his humiliation by binding his wound so he wouldn't die of the blood loss. I know she set an ambush for Varus' band of marauders, luring them into a trap and defeating them with the help of a few peasants armed with sickles and pitchforks. And I know that she infiltrated Balog's camp one night, entered his tent without alerting his guards and left him hogtied along with a message telling him and everyone else in the camp that they were lucky she hadn't killed them in their beds, and that they should seek other employment. It worked, too, didn't it, 'My Lord Balog' ?" Although Laertes couldn't see Balog's face, he was sure that the man was about to lose his temper. He was just as sure that loss of temper would be shortly followed by loss of life; Balog's, not Rory's. He cleared his throat, unexpectedly gone dry. "Since you know what the situation is, there remains only for me to ask this: Will you accept our mission to hunt her down and kill her? Will you become the instrument of our vengeance?" There was another pause. The tension mounted as the seconds of silence went by. "Yes, I will", the man named Rory finally replied. "And I assume that since you sent for me, you already have my payment ready." It was not a question, but a statement of fact, and Laertes could only nod and indicate the chest on the ground. Another pregnant pause followed, and then Toros went to open the chest. It was filled to capacity with Dinarii. Rory favored the treasure with but a cursatory glance, and then said, "Understand this. Once I leave here tonight, you cannot call me back. There will be no getting cold feet by any of you. I will find and kill this warrior woman for you, and deliver her severed head into your midst as proof." With these words, he stepped forward, tipped the lid on the chest shut with his foot, and then lifted it off the ground and onto his shoulder. Laertes and the others had to fight back gasps of astonishment at the man's unexpected strength; the chest had been carried into the tent by two men, and Rory had lifted it with barely an effort. While this sank in, the man in the black cloak left the tent and the four fallen warlords were alone among themselves again. After several moments of uncomfortable silence, Balog was the first to speak, "I still think it was a mistake to pay him everything in advance." Laertes ignored him; not even Varus felt like retorting with one of his usual barbs. Outside, the wind picked up again.

Two months passed, and the land was now slowly succumbing to the stranglehold of the cold darkness of midwinter. One day, around noon, the weak winter sun casting its rays over a landscape of barren trees and frostcovered soil, two travellers were wandering along the road to a village named Potidaea. One was a tall, striking woman with brown hair and eyes the color of the pale blue sky above her head. Under her cloak, she was wearing brown leather armor and kneelength boots. In deference to the icy cold, she had covered the otherwise bare parts of her shapely legs in a pair of dark brown hose. From her belt hung a sword in its scabbard, relocated there from its usual place on her back, and a peculiar metallic disc, which the layman would have been hard pressed to identify as a throwing weapon called a Chakram. She held the reins of a horse walking along behind her at a leisurely trot. Had she been alone, she would have ridden, but she knew only too well her companion's aversion to horses and riding in general, and so she walked. Her companion was also a woman, shorter with strawberry blonde hair. Like her friend, this one had made the concessions in clothing that the winter weather had demanded. Under her green cloak, the short trousers and cutoff top she usually favored had been replaced with long leather pants, a white doublet and a brown woolen vest. She carried a fighting staff as long as she herself was tall easily in one hand, and walked with a spring in her stride and a smile on her face. Her name was Gabrielle, and she smiled for two reasons. For one thing, she had almost reached her home, and for another, she had succeeded in persuading her friend Xena to come to Potidaea with her for the winter. This had been no mean feat, for Xena wasn't much for the company of others, aside from Gabrielle.

Xena watched Gabrielle with a sense of mild amusement. Her friend was as giddy as the teenager she'd been only a few short years ago at the prospect of seeing her family and friends again after a very long time indeed. Xena felt certain that if Gabrielle wasn't travelling with her, she would have started running to get home as quickly as possible, and Potidaea was still a ways off. Xena herself wasn't quite as enthusiastic. She'd been racking her brain for the last few days of travelling, trying to think of a reason why she'd let Gabrielle talk her into this, and had eventually had to attribute it to her friend's gift for talking and talking incessantly until you gave in. Not that Xena thought of the villagers of Gabrielle's hometown as inferior or such, that wasn't the point. No, the point was two-fold. First, on the few occasions she'd been back to Potidaea since that first day when she'd met Gabrielle, the villagers had treated her like some barely tame predator, ready to fly into a murderous rage at the slightest excuse or, worse still, draw other predators to the village. Secondly, Xena just wasn't the type that enjoyed sitting still for long stretches of time. She could see the intelligence in finding someplace to wait for the spring, for the winter had been harsh and seemed to be nowhere near its end, but the thought of being cooped up in the little town for weeks on end filled her with dread. And still, she'd not had the heart to refuse Gabrielle. "As usual", Xena thought with a slight smile. Her friendship with this little girl.... No, she wasn't a little girl anymore, Xena had watched her grow into a young woman over these past few years. A young woman with whom Xena felt the closest connection she'd ever felt with anyone, and someone that she'd never hurt for anything. That, more than Gabrielle's gift for smooth talking, was why Xena had agreed to come, she realized. This was why she'd chance her sanity against the mind-numbing boredom that threatened just over the next hill.

A bare week later, Xena was sitting in the little room she'd been given in Gabrielle's parents' house, thinking that it might be nice if some evil army would come charging over the hills surrounding Potidaea so she could at least DO something. Everything had happened according to her worst fears. When they'd arrived the first day, there'd been smiles and teary welcomes for Gabrielle, but the temperature in the house had cooled ever so slightly when Gabrielle had asked her parents if Xena could stay for the winter. Gabrielle's mother and father had only hesitated for a few moments before they'd welcomed Xena to stay until the spring, as Gabrielle's father had said, "it's the least we can do". Oh, they'd tried as best they could to make her feel welcome, and Xena was sure that she herself was at least partly to blame for the fiasco. It had taken less than two days for restlessness to set in, and even though she trained with her weapons every day and rode through the countryside on Argo, she was certain that she could feel her skills as a warrior atrophy even as she was sitting there on the bed. On top of everything, last night one of Gabrielle's childhood friends had come to visit with her husband and their newborn son. As she saw the infant, swathed in blankets, the memories of her own son, Solan, came flooding back. Memories of holding the little life in her hands, memories of giving him up to the centaurs to raise in the hope that no harm would come to him. Then, such a short time ago, mother and son had been reunited. She had looked upon her boy, and felt a sense of longing such as she'd never felt before. A longing for a normal life, a home, a husband.... Then her son had been murdered by the demon child, Hope. She'd thought she would lose her mind as she sat there on the ground holding her son's body in her arms. She had lost her mind in a way, to the point of almost killing Gabrielle. She blamed her for Solan's murder, because Gabrielle hadn't killed Hope as an infant like she should have done, and as she'd told Xena she had. At that point, she'd almost lost the only real friend she'd ever had, and had it not been for their journey into the dreamlands of Illusia.... Xena shuddered to think of what might have been. It had gotten worse when the young mother had held the child out to Xena. She couldn't cradle that little boy in her arms, couldn't bear to look into his innocent face. In the end, she'd had to leave the room, leaving Gabrielle to deliver an explanation in her stead. As she'd run out into the cold night, she hadn't cared what anybody thought, she only knew that she had to get away. That feeling hadn't diminished during the rest of the night, and now her only problem was breaking it to Gabrielle as gently as possible. Maybe they could agree to meet some place once the spring came. Xena had just finished that thought when her reverie was interrupted by shouts from outside the house. She looked out of the window, and saw a horse gallop by. It took her a moment to realize what had been wrong with that otherwise ordinary picture: the rider had been headless....

She quickly left her room, and almost collided with Gabrielle just outside her door. She'd heard the shouts as well, and was likewise on her way to investigate. The two friends ran outside together, and saw that the horse had been stopped by a group of men, who'd somehow managed to calm the frightened animal down to the point where they could reach the corpse who sat in the saddle. It was the body of a man in ordinary clothes with his arms tied behind his back, and his legs fastened with a rope tied around the horse's belly. Someone quickly cut the rope, and the body was gently levered out of the saddle and taken aside. As Xena looked the horse over, she found that it had been driven to its wild ride by several nasty three-pronged thorns placed under the saddle. She was about to turn around to examine the dead man, when Gabrielle called to her. As Xena stepped over to where her friend was standing, Gabrielle handed her a bloodstained piece of parchment. "This was stuffed inside his tunic. It's... adressed to you." Xena took the proffered parchment and saw to her astonishment that the folded note indeed bore the name "Xena" in large letters. She quickly unfolded it and read,

"To the one called Xena, known as the warrior princess. I await you two miles down the western road into Potidaea. If you choose to ignore this letter, I will kill another traveller every day and send him into Potidaea in the same manner as this unfortunate. If I should run out of wayfarers, I will come into the town itself for my victims, starting with the outermost houses and working my way towards the center. I will save the house you are staying in until last, and your friend Gabrielle will be the last to die before you yourself fall victim to me. Rest assured that you cannot stop me in any way except by coming to meet me at the place I have indicated. At the two mile marker you will find a trail branching off to the south just on the far side of a small stream. Follow it until you get to a clearing among the trees. There I will wait for you. Bring no others, especially not little Gabrielle, unless you wish to watch her die. My business is with you and you alone."

Finishing her reading, Xena slowly lowered the note. She did not resist as Gabrielle took it out of her hands and read it. "You're not going to go there, are you?" was Gabrielle's first reaction after having read the note to its end. Xena turned to look her friend in the eyes, "Yes I am. I have a gut feeling that whoever sent this letter means every last word of it." She started to turn away, but Gabrielle grabbed her arm. "Are you crazy? You're just going to calmly walk straight into such an obvious trap? I know you're bored here, but..." Xena wrested her arm free, turned back to Gabrielle and grasped her by the shoulders. "It has nothing to do with being bored, Gabrielle. Somebody out there went to a lot of trouble to send me a message. Whoever it is had no qualms about killing an innocent man to get my attention. Well, he's got my attention. I don't know which ghost from my past has just drifted out of the floorboards, but I intend to find out. Now." Gabrielle, recognizing the look of familiar fierceness on her friend's face, smiled slightly and replied, "Okay, when are we leaving?" Xena calmly replied, " 'We' are not going anywhere. You are going to stay behind here." She instantly regretted her choice of words. The look of disappointment on Gabrielle's face was so total and complete, Xena immediately continued, "Gabrielle, we don't know what's out there. He said I would watch you die if I brought you. For all I know, there could be archers in the trees all around to remove any obstacles to whatever little one-on-one duel this bastard has planned. You're not going, and that's final." With these words, Xena gave her friend's shoulders a little squeeze, and went back into the house to get her weapons and armor. If she'd had eyes in the back of her head, Xena might have spent a little more time talking to Gabrielle. As it was, no one saw the look of stubborn determination that Potidaea's most famous daughter wore on her face as she followed Xena into the house.

A few minutes later, Xena was heaving the saddle onto Argo's back in the little stable. A little voice at the back of her mind told her she was crazy to go off half-cocked like this without even knowing who or what was waiting for her. This voice was drowned out, however, by the call to action. She'd had her 'evil army' served to her, and now it was time to go and defeat it. As she pulled her horse out of the stable and into the cold noon air, Gabrielle was nowhere in sight. She'd last seen her going into her room inside the house, and a quick check with Gabrielle's mother found that she hadn't left since then. After admonishing the older woman to make sure that Gabrielle didn't leave on her own accord, Xena swung herself into the saddle and rode out of Potidaea, heading west.

As Xena rode along the road to the described point, she quickly went over her options. Following the trail into the forest as described in the note was clearly out. She'd be much better off taking a circular path in among the trees. Gabrielle had been right, of course, it was a trap so obvious it was almost painful, and Xena intended to place herself in the most advantageous position she could find before springing it. As Argo quickly covered the miles, Xena felt the familiar exhilaration of the coming action course through her veins. After her long inactivity, and the week had felt more like a year, her whole body tingled in anticipation. She even imagined that her horse felt eager under her. Soon, she saw the little bridge over the stream ahead. As she got closer, the trail she was supposed to take also became visible among the trees. "Not today, whoever you are", she thought as she crossed the bridge. She rode another couple of hundred meters down the road, until she fought an appropriate spot to tether Argo so neither he nor she herself could be seen from the road. She tied the horse to a fallen tree trunk and started out across the forest floor, letting her sense of direction guide her back towards the designated meeting place. Every so often, she stopped to listen to the sounds of the forest: there were but few, with most animals inactive during this cold weather. As she crept closer and closer amongst the naked trees, her own breath turning to steam in front of her face, she briefly debated with herself who this unknown enemy might be. There had been so many, many enemies made over these last years, and too few precious friends. She shook herself out of this reverie; she'd know soon enough. It had been strange, though, the way that the unknown enemy had used the word 'business' in the letter. She didn't think of any of her many entanglements over the years as 'business'. Maybe a hired killer, then. Well, she'd make him tell her who'd employed him. She knew the ways to make men talk, and this thought brought a fierce smile to her face. This was the life.

After she'd walked far enough into the forest to take her around the rear of the clearing, Xena doubled back. This way she would approach it from the exact opposite direction of what she'd been directed. As she began moving in a northerly direction with the little stream just visible through the trees, all her senses seemed to sharpen themselves to an even higher pitch than before. The trees soon began thinning out, and she could eventually see the clearing ahead of it. Not only that, but she could also see a black-clad figure standing stock-still in the middle of it, back to her, watching the trail entrance that she was supposed to have come by. Something wasn't right here. This one was much too cool. As if he knew something she didn't. Still, standing around wouldn't solve this mystery, so Xena crept closer. As she was nearly into the clearing, a man's voice said, "What kept you?" The sentence had come from the black figure, who was even now turning around to face her. "So, it's this sort of game we're playing today", Xena thought. As she came fully inside the ring of trees, she studied her opponent. He was clad completely in black, a hooded cloak obscuring his face and most of his body. She could see no weapons. As the man completed his turn, he resumed his neutral stance, and seemed not to acknowledge her presence. "Or maybe he wants me to make the first move. Well, so be it". She took another step forward.

Xena began circling the man, and found that despite her moving around him, he didn't make an effort to follow her. "Will you not tell me who you are, and why I am here?", she asked. That, at least, got a response, The hood on the cloak was thrown back, revealing an angular face of remarkable pallor. Then the man spoke again, in a heavy, unrecognizable accent, "My name is Rory, and you are here to die." One hand came out of the cloak and tossed a leather sack on the ground. "I will use this sack to carry your head back to my employers as proof that my mission is complete." Xena had stopped when she was directly behind the unmoving man, and now she drew her sword. "So much for the gentle art of diplomacy. Well, if he won't turn around, maybe I can make him..." With that thought, she raised her sword and brought the flat of it down on the man's head, thinking to knock him out and make him talk. Or she would have liked to do it that way. However, just before her blow could connect, the man finally moved. Not to duck, or move aside; instead a huge sword materialized out of the cloak, was brought over the man's head, and parried Xena's strike with a force that made her think she'd hit a stone wall. As she recovered, and prepared to strike again, the man called Rory spun around, and brought up a sword that was nearly half again the length of Xena's own blade. The two combatants began circling each other, looking for an opening. Xena began swinging her sword in front of and above herself, and tried to read the expression on her opponent's face to gauge the moment of his next attack. To her surprise, she found that she couldn't. The face was totally devoid of emotion, even the eyes were as hard and impregnable as stone. Her opponent expertly mimicked her own swordplay, which was quite a feat, given the huge size of his blade, which made little thrumming noises as its point bit through the air. Then, his face betraying no more emotion than that of a man throwing a stone into the ocean, he swept his blade around in a waist-height slash. Xena parried it, and got the first real indication of her opponent's strength when her sword was nearly torn out of her hands by the force of the impact. Still, it beat having her upper and lower body halves separated from one another. While her opponent brought his blade up for another strike, Xena regained her grip on her own weapon, and swung at his shoulder. With what seemed to be barely a flick of his wrist, Rory brought his sword around and deflected her stroke aside, like a horse wafting a fly away with its tail. "Fast and strong", Xena thought, as she resumed her fighting stance, "and he's not even sweating! Who is this guy?". Her train of thought was interrupted by the blade of her opponent descending on her like a falling star, and she quickly threw herself backwards, rather than run the obvious risk of losing her sword to another attempt at parrying him. As he recovered from his swing, Xena sommersaulted over his head, landing right behind him, and delivered a kick to the back of his right knee. It was like trying to kick a mountain, and the man never wavered as he turned around to face Xena, who'd gained nothing by her attack, but instead lost most of the feeling in her foot. "Is he a god?", the thought flashed across her mind. "Is that you again, Ares?" She quickly dismissed the idea; she could usually feel it when the God of War was around: it made her flesh crawl. "So, not a god then...", Xena ducked another round-house swing of the huge sword, and rolled to her feet a couple of meters on the other side of the clearing. As Rory turned to follow, Xena launched herself into the branches of the strongest-looking tree she could find, to get a few seconds to think of how she could defeat this opponent. She wasn't even given that. Without even looking up, without so much as a taunt at Xena's apparent cowardice, the man swung his sword, and neatly sliced through the foot-thick trunk of the tree. The tree fell, and Xena threw herself off it to avoid getting entangled in the branches when it hit the ground. However, her intended roll and leap to her feet as she landed became a chaotic tumble as her boot slipped on the frost-hard ground. She landed on her hands and knees, and in the next moment, Rory was upon her. His sword fell towards her in a deadly arc, and Xena barely had the time to lift her own blade to parry. The two weapons met with a sound like thunder, and at the next second, Rory's sword went past her field of vision and impacted with the ground. Her eyes went to her own weapon, and she saw that she was holding nothing but a hilt and a few inches of blade in her hand. Looking in shock at what remained of her sword cost her precious moments, and at the next second, Rory delivered a kick to her midsection that knocked all air from her body and sent her spinning. As she crawled across the ground, trying to remember how to breathe normally, another kick impacted with the side of her head. Seeing every star in the sky explode in front of her eyes, she tumbled onto her back, and lay there gasping for breath, as a dark shadow fell across her. "Up". The command was simple, final, and reinforced by the point of his sword hovering in front of her eyes, and she slowly got to her knees. As she tried to rise further, her opponent reversed his blade with the speed of a striking snake, and struck her across the face with the pommel. As she felt the blood streaming from her broken nose, she heard him say, through the ringing in her ears, "to your knees is far enough, warrior woman." Shaking her head to regain at least a few of her senses, Xena looked up to see Rory lift his sword, and as it passed before her eyes, for a moment eclipsing the winter sun, he said, in his flat, emotionless voice, "Time to die."

"NOOOOO!!!!" The scream rang through the forest. Xena's senses, dulled by the pounding her body had taken, sent a confused message to her brain. That had been Gabrielle's voice, hadn't it? But she was back in Potidaea, she couldn't be here as well.... Xena looked around her. On the other side of the clearing, partly blocked from view by Rory's black cloak, Gabrielle stood, her staff in her hands, her breath coming out in little puffs of vapor. As Xena's hearing returned more fully, she heard her would-be executioner say, "You are Gabrielle. My employers gave me no instructions regarding you. I would advise you to leave." "So you can kill my best friend in peace and quiet? I don't think so! You want her, you have to fight me for her!" Struggling to regain at least some control of her aching limbs, Xena saw out of the corner of her eye how Rory turned away from her, and with never a spoken word covered the short distance to where Gabrielle was standing. As Xena fumbled in her boot for the dagger she kept sheathed there, she saw Rory parrying Gabrielle's first swing of her staff with ease, and disarm her with a mere flick of his sword. As Xena stumbled to her feet, dagger in hand, Rory grabbed Gabrielle by the throat in one hand, holding his sword in the other, and lifted her off her feet with no effort at all. Xena saw the man holding her friend up in the air in a outstretched hand, and saw him lifting his sword to impale Gabrielle like a fish on a spear. Gathering all the strength left in her body, she threw herself forward, the dagger out, and collided with the black-clad form in front of her. In the next instance, she found herself on her back, staring up at the sky. He had shrugged her off like so much water on the feathers of a seabird. She lifted her aching head off the cold ground, and saw the same hideous scene as before: Gabrielle dangling in the air, trying to free herself from Rory's steel grip, the huge sword raised to run her through. She had accomplished nothing with her last-ditch attack. At the next second, she saw his knees begin to buckle, then the sword tumbled from his hand followed shortly thereafter by Gabrielle, who hit the ground with an "oof!" As Xena watched, black-clad hands feebly tried to reach a point on his upper back, from where the hilt of her dagger protruded. His struggles to reach the offending object became gradually weaker, and at last his knees collapsed fully underneath him, and he fell on his face onto the hard earth.

Picking herself up as best she could, her body aching like she'd just run a marathon, Xena crawled across the frozen ground to where Gabrielle was lying. She reached her, and saw that her friend was only just aware of her surroundings, an ugly bruise spreading across her throat where Rory had held her in his vise-like grip. "I thought I told you to stay at home", she whispered weakly, as Gabrielle's eyelids fluttered open. Gabrielle managed a small, pained smile, and wheezed back at her through an obviously bruised larynx, "Yeah, but I bet you're glad I disobeyed you..." Xena said nothing at first, she simply picked Gabrielle off the ground and held her tightly, feeling the warmth of their bodies intermingling in the cold air. Then she whispered into her friend's ear, "Let's go home..." The boredom of Potidaea in mid-winter suddenly didn't seem like such a bad thing anymore.




NOTE: As with my first story "No more games, Xena...." I'm hoping for comments on this one. They can be sent to this address.