The sky was a clear, cloudless blue, the air damp and cool, and the sun still below the horizon when Xena tugged at Homer’s cloak. “Time to go, you two,” she ordered. A pair of heartfelt groans was her only answer. “Up,” she added, and gave the cloak another tug. It came away in her hand. Gabrielle sat up, eyes still closed, and wrapped her arms around herself; Homer mumbled something and curled into a tight little ball. “Atalanta’s out on the road looking for a sign, which way they went from here. Hurry up.”
“I’m dead,” Homer muttered as she walked away. “Dead men don’t go anywhere, not before the sun’s up, anyway.”
“Dead men don’t talk, either,” Gabrielle informed him through a yawn. “Ohhhh,” she added as she staggered to her feet, “I knew I was gonna hate this!” Five short, cautious steps away from the fire; five back. She bit her lip, turned, and tried again. Gabrielle glared at Argo, who was quietly cropping grass a short distance away. “See if I ever get on you again!” It was easier walking back to the fire. Barely. She held out a hand to Homer, who groaned as he took it; she tugged hard, and almost fell into him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Try again.”
She braced herself and pulled, this time bringing him to his feet. “Walk a little bit, if you can,” she said through clenched teeth. “It’ll help.”
“If that’s a joke, it’s a very poor one,” he said, and moaned as he put weight on his right foot. “I don’t think I’ll ever walk again.”
Gabrielle eyed him sympathetically, then winced as she bent forward to massage her legs. “I think you’ll have to, actually. Or sit here forever.”
“You can’t think how wonderful that sounds at the moment.” Jaw set, Homer took three slow, awkward steps that brought him to the nearest tree, eased himself around, and leaned against it. “I asked for this, didn’t I?”
Gabrielle managed a pained smile for him. “No—you asked to come with me. No one would ask for this. Here, lean on me. We’ll walk around the fire a couple of times. If it makes things any better, I don’t think we’ll be going very fast today.”
“It helps—I think.” He set his jaw and concentrated on walking for several moments. “Why slower?”
Gabrielle waved her free arm to take in the steep mountainside, overhanging cliffs, windblown trees. “I wager even Atalanta can’t run in that.”
He eyed the terrain with misgivings. “I must have been mad,” he said.
“It won’t be so awful, honestly,” she assured him. “And there’ll be plenty of chances to rest, especially if the trail isn’t very clear.”
“But—why up there?”
“Well, those men abandoned the chariots here, so they obviously took to the countryside. They’ll have to be tracked, and that takes time.” She frowned. “I wonder if we have time to eat anything before we set out. I’m starved.”
Atalanta stood very still in the center of the road, her back to the chariots, eyes searching the nearest high ground. The surface of the road had been swept clean in both directions; she’d checked. Nothing to see except the prints of the lame horse, and now her own. She turned as something metal clicked against something else: Xena was moving between the cars, glancing into the interior of each. She finally shrugged and came on. “So—you’ve searched. What did you find?”
“Not much,” the huntress admitted. “There’s a tree branch just up there.” She pointed to a notch in the steep ledge that bordered the east side of the road. “Obviously what they used to cover their traces. They must intend for anyone following them to think they went that way—so they probably didn’t.”
Xena eyed her sidelong. Atalanta glanced at her, then went back to her visual search of the mountain. She can’t possibly see anything up there, with the sun below the horizon out there, and everything still in shadow. “Maybe they’re stupid and they really did go that way. Are you going to be able to tell?”
“If they manage to stay on dry, hard rock, probably not. But I know this country, it’s not continuous stone. They’ll have to move onto dirt, or grass, or a game trail, and when they do—” Her voice trailed off, and she sighed. “It’s going to take time.”
“Well, then, we’d better get started, hadn’t we?”
Atalanta cast her a sharp look; her mouth thinned with displeasure. “Wrong. I look first, starting at that notch and working back this way, parallel to the road, until I find some trace of them. Then we go. If you’re all up there tromping around, you might cover sign and never know you did it. I’m the tracker, remember?”
“Oh, I remember,” Xena said softly; her eyes were cold slits.
Atalanta turned to glare at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing at all. You want to start looking alone, you’d better start now; they’ve had all the time they need to get ahead of us.”
“They had to stop at some point for rest,” Atalanta said flatly. “I’ll call out when I see something. Keep your chattery little friends out of my way, all right? This is going to call for concentration.” Xena closed the distance between them in a bound and fastened one hand in the throat of the yellow chiton. The huntress’s mouth sagged, and her eyes went wide and nervous.
“I warned you once. Normally, that’s all anyone gets. Six frightened little girls out there somewhere are buying you a second opportunity. It won’t cost you much to be nice to Gabrielle or Homer, but it’s going to cost you plenty if you treat her like dirt.” She let go of the other woman’s garment and gave her a little shove. “Go concentrate. And remember what I said.” Atalanta tugged the chiton straight, turned on her heel, and strode away. Xena watched as she crossed the road, then entered the narrow cut in the ledge she’d pointed out earlier. She vanished among thick brush and towering stone almost at once. Xena waited an additional count of ten, then turned back to inspect the carts and the road around them more closely.
She worked slowly, steadily, from the notch back down the road, checked each of the abandoned chariots in turn, but there was nothing to see except brush marks in the dust, overlaid here and there with Atalanta’s narrow prints or the horse’s marks. No identifying markings or paintings on the cars themselves, or on what was left of the harness. Nothing special about the wheels, nothing left on any of the floors. She climbed into the sole wicker car last of all and knelt to peer closely at the inside walls. A long, pale hair had been caught in a broken reed—but she already knew the girls had been carried here. And it could be old, the owner’s hair, if he wears it long—his wife’s . . . She swore and returned to the road, brushing off her knees.
“Hey, is it all right if we come over there?” Gabrielle hovered on the edge of the road. Behind her, Homer was walking slowly from a nearby tree to the fire pit; he reached it, turned and started back, his eyes narrowed, his mouth set.
“Sure. There’s nothing here.”
Gabrielle turned to watch Homer’s progress and nodded enthusiastically as he neared her. “Keep that up, you’re doing great!”
“Sure am,” he grumbled. “In another year, I may even be able to walk normally again.”
“Well, you’re doing a lot better anyway,” Gabrielle said. She patted his shoulder as he turned away from her to limp toward the fire pit once more. She crossed the road, peered doubtfully into the wicker car, then looked up at her friend. “Nothing at all, huh? Terrific.” She looked around. “Where’s Atalanta?”
“Trying to find which way they went,” Xena said evenly. “She said there was sign of them that way”—she pointed toward the notch—“but that it was probably a ruse to mislead us.”
Gabrielle studied Xena’s face for a long moment, glanced over her shoulder to see where Homer was, then lowered her voice. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there? I mean—besides the obvious something.”
“Why?”
“It’s your face. You’re giving me that look that says you’re pretty angry and you don’t want me to know.” She sighed and hung her head. “I guess it was pretty stupid of me to bring him along, wasn’t it?”
Xena shook her head and wrapped an arm around her companion’s shoulders. “That’s not it at all, Gabrielle. He’s obviously in no shape for a trek like this. But if you’d left him behind and something happened to him because of that . . . You did the best you could in an impossible situation.”
“Thanks—I think,” Gabrielle said doubtfully. “But—if it isn’t Homer, or something I’ve done, then what?” She paused, searching for the right words.
Xena shrugged. “It just doesn’t add up. Like you said last night, why take a bunch of little girls and run for it? It couldn’t be for ransom, unless they aren’t looking for much money. They weren’t priests of some obscure little cult looking for sacrificial victims—”
“I thought of that last night,” Gabrielle said in a small voice.
“I knew you would. I hope it didn’t keep you from sleeping. Not for fortune, not for a god,” Xena went on thoughtfully. “And it couldn’t be for their company—I’d wager most of them have been in hysterics since they were grabbed. So—why?”
“And why bring them this far, if it’s for ransom?” Gabrielle asked.
“Why take them out of the city at all?” Xena countered. “I don’t like it, and I can’t put my finger on why I don’t like it.” Movement high to her left caught her eye; Atalanta had clambered up a steep ledge and was waving vigorously. “I guess that’s our call,” she said.
Gabrielle squinted, then with an oath shielded her eyes as the sun rising behind her sent brilliant shards of light from water-slicked stone high on the mountain. “What’s that she’s holding?” She paused. “Guess we’ll find out when we—how are we supposed to get up there?”
Xena touched her shoulder to get her attention and pointed toward the gap. “Get your things, go that way. She’ll have marked the way. I’ll be waiting for you.”
It took time. The huntress was visibly trembling with the need to be gone when Homer and Gabrielle finally scrambled onto the steeply tilted ledge. “Here,” she said briefly, and held out a short length of rope, knotted with a loop at each end.
Gabrielle took it. “That’s Nausicaa’s, isn’t it?” Homer nodded.
Atalanta eyed the heavens, then the still and silent warrior at her side, and nodded. After a moment, she said, “It hasn’t been here long.”
Gabrielle tied the bit of rope around the strap of her lumpy bag and sighed. “Well, that was an exciting climb.” Behind her, Homer groaned very faintly. “Which way from here?”
Atalanta shoved the boarskin cloak back across her shoulders and pointed down the ledge and along a narrow ravine that cut roughly northeast. “There. Old streambed; it’s dry now but rough footing. Watch where you step; you break a leg and—”
“I get the point,” Gabrielle broke in hurriedly. “Let’s go.”
The morning passed slowly; footholds in the ravine were treacherous indeed, and signs of the passing men and children faint and few and far between, even for Atalanta’s keen eyes. As time wore on, and the day grew hotter, Homer lagged behind. Gabrielle dropped back to keep him company. “Leave markers if you jump out of this thing,” she called ahead. “I’d probably miss where a whole herd of centaurs went by, the way I feel right now.” Xena merely waved a hand at her and kept going; she had stayed on Atalanta’s heels the entire morning. “Remember, I’m the one carrying the lunch!” she added. The last word echoed from the rocks below them, and she clapped a hand over her mouth as Atalanta turned to glower down at her. “Here,” she said to the panting bard as the two women vanished around a bend not far ahead, “this is as good a spot as any for a quick rest.”
“Are—you sure—that’s a—a good idea?” he asked. Gabrielle dropped onto a flat, shaded stone and patted the rock next to her for answer. He collapsed beside her.
“Something I learned from Xena early on,” she assured him. “You go farther in the long run, faster, and with a clearer head if you rest once in a while.”
He leaned forward, his forehead against his hands. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“You shouldn’t be,” she said. “You’re doing better than I did at first. Besides,” she added, “think of the great story this will make!”
“For people who like horror stories,” he replied. Gabrielle chuckled, and he began to laugh. “Well—maybe long years from now, when I’ve forgotten how awful the backs of my legs feel right now.” He sat up straighter and looked around them. “It’s so quiet here. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere so quiet.” Gabrielle sat still for a long moment, then nodded.
“It feels odd to me, too; after a village, you know.” Another companionable silence. “I wonder where they are.”
“The girls? They can’t have gone too far, can they? I mean, imagine having to drag or carry a girl like Mitradia through here.” He frowned. “I wish I knew why they’d done it.”
“That makes three of us,” Gabrielle said. “Maybe all of us; Atalanta wasn’t saying much about it, was she?”
“Just that she’d get them back . . .” His voice trailed off; he settled his chin on the palm of one hand and stared blankly into the distance. “Funny. Odd, rather. What she said to the old woman—it sounded, well, bardic. Like she’d rehearsed what to say, maybe, or someone had written a speech for her—” He broke off, glancing sidelong at his companion. “But that’s foolish. Forget I said it.”
“No,” Gabrielle said slowly. “You’re right, it was odd. But she’s—she seems like such an insecure person. Maybe she’s daydreamed about what she’d say or do in certain circumstances. Didn’t you ever know anyone like that?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But—insecure?”
“You heard her story last night,” Gabrielle said. She shifted uncomfortably. “I wish rocks weren’t so hard, you know? Her story—I mean, it just—everything she said, almost every single word, I could just see the scared girl under the hero, the one who doesn’t believe she’s really that talented, or that good, or that worthy of praise. No matter what anyone tells her.”
“I—well, I guess,” he said doubtfully. “It seemed to me a lot, taking on not just the boar but the king, the queen, those stubborn old men—and for nothing but a chance at fortune and glory. Why would anyone?”
“Hard to say; I don’t think like that,” Gabrielle said. She sighed and got to her feet. “I guess we’d better get moving before we lose them entirely.”
“Let’s not do that,” Homer said promptly. His eyes were wide as he edged off the rock and slowly got himself upright.
“Oh, we’re not lost or anything,” Gabrielle assured him cheerfully. “I can find our way back to Argo any time; I’ve got a great bump of direction. But since we’ve come this far, I want a chance at thumping at least one of those guys. They’re caused a lot of heartache.” Homer eyed her with as much dismay as he’d earlier shown the mountain. “It’s okay,” she added, “Xena’s a match for any ten brutes, even on a bad day; I’ll be lucky to get in one good thump. And they won’t come anywhere close to you.” Silence. She glanced at him, and her coloring was rather high. “Look, I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”
“It’s all right.” He sighed. “I hadn’t thought about fighting when I asked to come with you. I don’t object to—”
“Don’t,” she urged, and he fell silent, eying her in confusion. “I mean, don’t feel like it’s something wrong, that you don’t fight, or don’t want to, whatever. It doesn’t mean you’re not as good as anyone else.”
“Oh, I know that.”
“You may know it, but you don’t feel it,” Gabrielle replied. “Look, I told you about when I first got together with Xena, and at the time it was great fun and adventure, all that. Well, it was also pretty maddening—it still is, sometimes, because so often she still winds up protecting me, or rescuing me from some stupid situation that, if I were really as good or as clever as I’d like to be, I wouldn’t have needed protection or a rescue from.” She considered this, frowned, glanced back at him. “Does that make sense? Good. Anyway, I want to fight. My village was attacked by Draco’s men—you’ve heard of Draco, I imagine?”
“Everyone’s heard of Draco,” Homer said.
“Xena saved us. Saved me. I was this far”—she held her thumb and index finger a hair’s width apart—“from losing most of my skin to a bullwhip; that close to being run off with every other young village girl and turned into a slave. That—that does something to you.” She went on after a moment, “Well, it did to me. I didn’t want to be afraid like that ever again; to know that some goon with a sword and a whip could break me, body and soul. And then, to see Xena take on all those—those—it was amazing. She was wounded and she still broke heads. I’d never seen anything so impressive in all my life. It was—well, yes, it was fate that brought us together.” Silence.
“You didn’t have the same kind of introduction to the outside world, Homer: you were luckier in some ways. Once I would’ve said you’d lost something by not having to learn how to fight. Well, I’ve seen both sides, and though I know she was wrong about me, personally, I understand better what Xena tried to tell me at first. There’s a—an innocence that shouldn’t be broken. People who don’t have to, or don’t want to, shouldn’t be forced to fight by circumstances, or by what others will think of them if they don’t.” She glanced at him again; the tip of her nose was pink. “I’m not saying this very well,” she said with a nervous little laugh. “Some bard, huh? What I mean is, I think it’s good you don’t fight. And if you really meant what you said, I think it’s great you don’t mind being a guy and having a girl with a big stick defend you—if it comes to that.”
Silence. The ravine had widened just around the bend; Homer caught up with her and took her hand. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t mind at all. I feel—inadequate, and I haven’t felt that way since Father convinced me to alter my tales according to the audience reaction. But I realize that’s—impractical. Foolish, even. No one can master everything. And”—he squeezed her fingers—“and since it’s you protecting me, I don’t mind quite as much.”
Gabrielle turned to face him, her eyes bright; her hand squeezed his in return. “Homer, you’re the sweetest man I ever met.”
A distance away, Atalanta had emerged onto hard stone that was probably a waterfall early in the year, when the streambed below them was full. Thick, spiny brush was everywhere. She glanced over her shoulder quickly; the warrior had lost a little ground on the last steep ascent, but not much. The huntress scuffled at the ground before her, where a little dirt had drifted across the rock, then moved to inspect the brush. By the time Xena hauled herself onto the broad ledge, the other woman was bent double to inspect the heavy growth at close range. “They came up here. I told you we hadn’t lost them,” she said sourly and pointed to the scuffed-up dirt.
“How’d they get off this without getting torn to bits?” Xena demanded.
Atalanta snorted in exasperation. “Maybe they grew wings and flew! Leave me in peace so I can figure that out, will you?”
“Whatever you say,” Xena murmured sardonically, but when the huntress straightened to glare at her, she’d already turned to gaze back the way they’d come. No sign yet of Gabrielle and Homer. The boy had been a mistake from the start. Soft. You’re getting soft yourself; indulging Gabrielle the way you do. Still, the girl asked for so little—and so seldom. And usually with her heart in the right place. A bard torn to bits by an Athens mob—there’d be an interesting addition to Xena’s evil mythos, she told herself. And of course, if Gabrielle hadn’t insisted they come to Athens for the races, the huntress would have been on her own out here, searching for six little girls . . . Xena frowned, then half-turned to eye her companion sidelong; Atalanta was still checking the brush—to see if branches had been shoved aside, or maybe checking the dirt for prints, who knew? It’s been almost as though she’s invented this as she’s gone along, she thought. Something was wrong . . . But the thought wouldn’t form properly; she had only a sense of the wrongness, not of why.
Maybe, with luck, that would come. Atalanta stood up and rubbed the small of her back. “This way,” she said flatly, and was gone through a narrow, and previously invisible, opening in the prickly brush before Xena could respond. The warrior swore under her breath, bent three branches in swift succession until all were pointing the direction the huntress had gone, and dove after her.
Midday came and went; the land around them grew, if anything, more tortured and more difficult to pass. Homer was walking more easily, but now Gabrielle was limping after turning her ankle on a loose rock. Atalanta lost the trail as the sun reached zenith—on a ledge twice the size of the Olympic stadium—and then again not long after that when the kidnappers apparently thought to pull the trick of obscuring their trace with a branch again. Both times she found it quickly. A third time took longer: late afternoon sun lay golden on the woods and reflected in blinding shards from a fast-moving stream, rock-bordered on both sides for some distance.
“I told you!” Atalanta snarled as Xena gazed at her. “There is absolutely nothing to track! There’s nothing to take prints or show passage! Do you want me to produce proof out of whole cloth?” The huntress balanced on rocks midstream just short of a low waterfall. She’d spent the past hour searching the banks on both sides, all the way to the next waterfall—an impassable mess comprised of stone overhangs, fast-moving, chill water, and two shallow caves that went nowhere. Xena, who’d gone downstream, had had no better luck, and the impatience that had driven her since dawn was threatening to shift into temper. Be easy, she warned herself. It’s likely she’s done just as she said; anyone would be angry, being outwitted like that. I would. I am.
“All right, I believe you. Fine. So where do we go next?”
“How should I know?” Atalanta demanded furiously, her cheeks blotched and mottled with uneven color. She shook her head, drew a deep breath, and let it out through her nostrils. “I’m not angry with you, any of you. I just—I don’t have an answer at this moment! And I’m sorry if that doesn’t please you!”
“It’s not the answer I wanted,” Xena said evenly. “You can’t help that, I understand that. Come down from there, eat something.”
“Another of those awful, fat-laden sticks of yours?” Atalanta inquired sharply as she slid down to join the others. Xena’s mouth quirked sourly.
“Nuts and berries if you can find them instead. Food and drink. Even a hero needs those, you know.” The fire of anger kindled again in the woman’s eyes; Xena sighed. I can’t help baiting her; she can’t help reacting. Great. She turned to give Gabrielle a look; the girl was visibly exhausted, and the boy was even worse off. Yet Gabrielle was still unusually sensitive to mood.
She smiled, spread her arms wide in a peace making gesture, and said, “I’ve got a bunch of trail sticks in here”—she patted the lumpy bag—“but I also have some dried grapes, things like that. Some baked wheat and oats and dried apricots and honey cakes, you know—energy without the animal tissue, if you’re avoiding it. Not quite as hard on the teeth either,” she added as she held out a small square. Atalanta accepted it, sniffed cautiously, then took a bite. “Good, isn’t it?” Gabrielle asked, and took a large bite out of her own.
“Not bad,” the huntress allowed. But she turned aside, her back to the others, before she took another bite. Xena glanced at her back, then looked at Gabrielle, but Gabrielle had already turned away to offer something to Homer. The apprentice bard was pale and visibly in a lot of pain, but keeping it to himself. Odd. How can anyone be—embarrassed to be seen eating? Everyone has to eat—you die if you don’t. All at once she remembered Thisbe. Thisbe’d been older than her and—well, large all her life. Until she’d been trothed to Pyramus. Somehow, she’d managed to control her appetite. She’d grown slender. Then thin. Then—gaunt. Her mother and father had been pleased; Pyramus, if she recalled correctly, delighted. Thisbe had died two days short of the wedding ceremony, so thin her bones showed through her skin.
She wouldn’t eat with others, either. I remember that: she was ashamed . . . She glanced sharply at Atalanta, who had stuffed half the oatcake into her belt. Half an oatcake—that wouldn’t keep a dryad alive. But Atalanta seemed, suddenly, very much alive. She glanced skyward, and her mouth curved with visible satisfaction; she clambered back up the stones next to the waterfall with an ease and grace that made poor Homer both groan and stare in admiration. She gazed eagerly all around, then pointed—dramatically, of course, Xena thought, and cast her own eyes heavenward. “There! Dear goddess, why didn’t I see it before? That way—there! Hurry! They aren’t that far ahead of us!”