They skirted the edge of the lake, Xena leading, a nervous Botricas next, his attention divided between the leather-clad warrior and Gabrielle, who was right on his heels, her staff digging angrily into the narrow track as she walked.
In her absence, the fire had caught properly. The younger woman snatched up a blanket and a small clay jug of hair-herbs and stalked off to find a reasonably clean corner of lake. When she returned, Xena and the old armsman were sitting on opposite sides of the firepit; the warrior smiled at her and fished a packet from the coals.
“Nice job on the fire.” Xena sniffed, refolded the packet, and shoved it back into the fire with a booted foot. Gabrielle drew the blanket around her more closely; the sun was nearly down, the air now relatively cool against damp skin and wet hair. Xena tugged at the cloth and drew herself down next to the fire, then tucked the thick fabric closely around her. The warrior drank from a small leather bottle. “Want some of this, Gabrielle?”
“Not if it’s your usual stuff,” Gabrielle said. “A nice warm cider, now . . .”
“Over there.” Xena pointed to a dark ewer positioned close to the flames.
“Great. Ahhhh—how’s the food?”
“Getting there. The bread’ll be better warm, if you can wait.”
Gabrielle nodded. “I can wait. Let’s talk.” Her narrowed gaze fixed to Botricas, who flinched. “No, excuse me. You talk. Because, frankly, none of this makes sense. King Menelaus sends these creeps all the way from Sparta to find guys like Joxer? And then, to stop me from—what? Keeping him from leaving us? From finding out where he’s going? From going with him?”
“Joxer was one of several they picked,” Xena said. “But he wasn’t typical. Mostly, Denos seemed to want boys, and they all were more of the same type: a little like your friend Orion . . .”
“Homer,” Gabrielle corrected her absently. She considered this, shook her head, and began rubbing her hair to dry it. “Wait. Now it makes less sense than before! Homer isn’t a warrior, he’s a bard! Xena, I sincerely doubt he’s ever hit anyone in anger in all his life!”
“Most of the boys chosen didn’t look as if they had, either,” Xena said. She fished warmed bread from the firepit, unwrapped it, and tore it, handing half to Gabrielle. “Keep that inside the blanket and pull off bites to chew; it’ll warm you twice, that way. There’s a pail of stew, too, but I’ll have to fetch it and put it on the fire. You watch him.” Her eyes locked on Botricas’s. “And you don’t get any. We didn’t expect guests for dinner and I watched you, Denos, and Klomes eat at that inn—and not pay for what you ate.” The old soldier looked resentful, as if he wanted to say something but decided not to. Gabrielle eyed him as she ate bread. Botricas wouldn’t meet her eyes; nor did he look up when Xena returned with a small, lidded metal pail. She shoved this into the fire, fished the ewer of cider out with a bent stick, and poured some into Gabrielle’s mug, then settled down cross-legged as the younger woman drank deeply.
“Great. I think I’ll live now. How long until the stew’s hot?”
“Finish your bread, Gabrielle. The stew was hot when I left the inn, but that was a while ago. And I got another loaf to go with it.”
“Good.” Gabrielle shoved wet hair off her forehead. “Somehow, I seem to have worked up an appetite.” She chewed, swallowed, and tore off another bite. “So, what exactly were these guys doing back in that village—and where did Joxer go, anyway? Not that I care, of course . . .”
“Of course,” Xena replied evenly. “I’ve been thinking myself lately, he keeps tagging along with us and neither of us has strangled him yet—but there’s gonna come a time.”
“Right. Me, too.” The women eyed each other, sidelong. Sure, Xena thought, and sighed quietly. If she’d really wanted to get rid of Joxer, there’d been opportunities—and she had ways that would make certain he’d stay gone for good. If all else failed, she could have run him through, that first chance meeting, or later, when his foolish desire to become Callisto’s warrior had nearly gotten Gabrielle killed.
The old Xena would have gutted him without a second thought, she knew. She leaned forward to shove wood into the fire and glanced at her companion. Gabrielle was still on the same bite of bread, her eyes now fixed on the deepening gloom across the clearing. Wondering if it’s somehow her fault Joxer’s gone, Xena decided. Maybe feeling as she did—partly glad for the quiet without him, his tinny armor, loud voice, and constant, clattering accidents as he tripped over his own feet, stones or logs . . . Xena tested the side of the bucket of stew with the backs of her fingers, shoved it deeper into the fire, and leaned back.
“I wonder where he is, right now,” Gabrielle stated quietly, her own thought clearly on the same path as Xena’s.
“Gabrielle, you know you can’t be responsible for Joxer,” Xena began.
“I know. It’s just that—he’s been giving me so much mouth lately,” Gabrielle said with a heavy sigh. “I mean—did you know he’s composed four new verses to his ‘Joxer the Mighty’ song? Xena, if I hear that, ‘Gabby as his sidekick, fighting with her little stick’ one more time!”
“Yeah, I know. Me, too,” Xena said. She shrugged and slewed around to meet Gabrielle’s eyes. “I happen to remember a verse we both heard recently, do you? Not one Joxer sang?”
Gabrielle sighed again, shook her head. “You’re as bad as he is, I swear, Xena! Or as bad as I am, trying to figure out what makes a guy like that be the way he is—I remember when his nasty brother Jett started in with that, ‘Joxer the tidy, never goes out-sidey’ stuff. Picking on him for—”
“For not being like his parents or his brothers,” Xena put in as Gabrielle hesitated. “Not a heartless killer, not an assassin, not a—well, whatever their other brother turned out to be.”
Gabrielle shuddered. “No one I’d want to know, from the sounds of things. Except?” She considered this a moment, then laughed. “Wouldn’t it be funny if he turned out to be, oh, like some kind of politician?”
“Could be bad,” Xena agreed. “Menelaus is a politician, after all.”
Silence for some moments, except for an occasional cautious creak of metal when Botricas shifted his weight and the crackle of flames. Xena tested the stew, shoved the bucket still deeper into the fire, and lowered herself to the ground, shoulders braced against a chunk of log. “All right,” she said finally. “About that village. I headed straight for the inn, ’cause I figured if Mannius and his blind buddy were anywhere about, that was the place I’d hear about it. So, I figured, buy a couple mugs of ale, find a dark corner, blend in—what?” she demanded in an aggrieved voice as Gabrielle spluttered with laughter, but her companion merely shook her head and waved her on. “But I got inside and the dark corner was already taken—by Denos, Klomes, and our stableboy here.” Her eyes rested briefly on Botricas. “Denos had two village boys across the table from him, both of them wide-eyed like they’d just found the Golden Fleece, and he was talking fast but low—I couldn’t make out a word, and his mouth wasn’t moving enough for me to figure that way, either. Eventually he got up, handed each of them a new copper coin, and sent them out, with Klomes right behind them; even if I’d wanted to catch up and quietly ask them what was up, there wasn’t any way I could have done it without drawing everyone’s attention. So, I stayed put. Another boy came in—someone called Beronias, I think. Local weaver’s son. He was the one reminded me of your Homer.”
“How so?” Gabrielle asked as the warrior paused.
“Well . . . the eyes, mostly, I think. You know: seeing everyone as a friend, all the world as good. Or at least worth trusting, just in case good might come of that trust. Anyway, Denos barely spent any time with him, the boy gave him a salute and left. I would have gone out and flattened Klomes then and there, except Joxer came in next.” She considered this gloomily, finally shrugged. “If I’d moved, he could have seen me. I didn’t think it was such a good idea.”
“No, probably not,” Gabrielle said after some thought. “But I still don’t understand, why Joxer—?”
“Gabrielle, if I knew that—!” Xena slumped down and rubbed her shoulders on the log behind her. “All right. All I can tell you is the impression I got, watching Denos and Joxer.” She looked up. “Gabrielle, remember that story you told me, about the quest for the oil lamp of—I forget her name?”
“Ahhhh—Psyche?” Xena nodded. Gabrielle frowned at her hands. “Okay. Psyche was kidnapped by Cupid, who supposedly had an incredible case of the hots for her. And he swore he was gonna marry her, but he couldn’t allow her to see him. Now, personally, I can see it: If his mom—if Aphrodite found out her fair-haired boy was goofy for a mortal, especially one as pretty and femmy as Psyche . . .”
“Gabrielle,” Xena growled warningly.
Gabrielle cast up her eyes. “Ah—okay, skipping ahead, Psyche got curious and late at night lit an oil lamp to go see what kind of monster this was—some monster; he was sleeping by himself, you know?”
“Gabrielle!”
“So-ree! Anyway, she finds where he’s sleeping and it’s a gorgeous blond boy with muscles to die for and wings, and the wings catch her by surprise, this has gotta be a god, and all she can think is, it isn’t old gray and grizzled Zeus. And then she gets a good look at him and starts shaking, and some of the hot oil splashes on him. So, he’s peeved because he’s got splotches on his perfect shoulder muscles, and then Aphrodite gets involved because her boy has been marked by a mere mortal—one who might be considered prettier than she is, mind you, and—”
“Enough,” Xena said hastily. Poor Cupid, yeah, right. Every low trick he and his self-centered mother—and his spoiled baby son—had played on her over the years, she didn’t feel one bit sorry for him. Even if Gabrielle’s tale wasn’t just another story designed to make people feel comfortable with their all-too-human gods. “About the lamp, tell me that part again.”
“Ahhhh, okay.” Gabrielle finished her bread and thought a moment, head tipped to one side. “The lamp. There really was a Psyche, you know. And probably some kind of truth to that Cupid story. Because, long enough later that she was married to the king of Rhodes, and a grandmother, there was some problem with the royal line, no sons or something. She and the old king consulted the priestess, and the priestess said they needed to retrieve the oil lamp from its confinement by Cupid, that it was important, and had to be with Psyche and her family. But the priestess couldn’t tell them exactly where to find it—”
“—what a surprise,” Xena murmured sarcastically.
“You know how these things go,” Gabrielle said with a faint smile. “Anyway, the king announced a quest, and word went around for any available heroes to come hunt for the lamp . . . Hey!” She sat up straight. “Some kind of a holy quest? You think so? But that doesn’t make sense! I mean, what would Menelaus want . . . ?” She subsided, still mumbling to herself. Xena shrugged, ate the last of her bread, and turned to give Botricas a cool, measuring look.
“Maybe you’d like to tell us?” the warrior inquired softly. The old fighter licked his lips.
“Look, Xena, all I know’s what Denos told me, and that isn’t much; I mean, look at me. I’m a soldier-servant, I take care of the horses for the officers, wash their linen, polish their boots, and I go where they say and do what they tell me.” Silence. She continued to eye him. “Xena, you know me! What for would a man like Denos talk to me about his plans? Or the king’s plans?”
“I also know men like Denos ignore men like you unless you’re needed. You could have overheard—”
He gestured frantically. “Nothing! I swear it, Xena!” She waited. “All right.” His arms fell to his sides. “I knew Denos was up to something; why else would three of us be this far north? There’s nothing much here, the king wouldn’t want anything he could trade for here, and he wouldn’t want Thessalonika.”
“Oh?”
“Anyone in the Spartan army knows that much,” he replied. “The whole country’s peasants and herders; men like Denos trade bad jokes about the locals here. Look, I only know Denos was up to something the king came up with on account of not being all the way asleep a few nights ago. Denos was talking to Klomes about Thessalonikan heroes, and they were both laughing, and then Denos said something about, all the same, they’d better deliver someone who could find the king’s sacred treasure.”
“Sacred treasure?” Gabrielle looked up; she was dishing fragrant stew into two bowls.
“That’s what Denos said. Way he said it, it didn’t sound like he meant—” Botricas paused and scowled at his fingers. “Sounded like he was being sarcastic, you know, like whatever this treasure was, it didn’t come out of the king’s storehouses. Or maybe, like the king thought it was valuable, but Denos couldn’t see it? That’s all I know, I swear it.”
Xena offered him a faint, lips-only smile. “That isn’t very much—is it, Botricas?”
“I swear by—by Ares himself!”
“Swear by your mother—if you had one,” she replied evenly. “I might even believe you, then.”
“By anything you want!” he yelled. “Denos needed someone to take care of the horses, do the dirty work; that’s the only reason I got out of the king’s stables at all!” He eyed her resentfully. “Since Troy, I spend mosta my time forking stuff into horses and forking up what they leave. Thanks to you and people like you, and Menelaus losing the war, and—” He sucked in his breath as Xena’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Silence. He finally broke it when she made no move or sound. “Here I thought this’d be a good change. And what’d I get? Denos kicks me around, Klomes kicks me around—she kicks me around!” He glared at Gabrielle, who scowled at him over the rim of her bowl. “And now you’re ready to— You think I’da ever left Sparta if I’d known I would run into you again?”
Xena smiled; this time her eyes were amused. “Nice to see you haven’t forgotten me, Botricas. So, you’re sure that’s all you overheard? No names, nothing like that?” Silence; the older man stared at his feet.
She retrieved his javelin, still in its leather hood, but still said nothing. The silence stretched. She tossed it up, caught and reversed it, and held out the haft to him. “All right. I believe you. You can go. But if I were you, I wouldn’t even think about going back to Sparta. Since Denos will get there before you do, and—” She caught her breath sharply as the leather hood rippled, then leaped to her feet, snatching the weapon free and flinging it behind her so she could shake the hood two-handed.
Gabrielle froze; something small and tawny-colored was finally shaken loose. Xena dropped the hood and seized the little object before it could hit the ground.
Gabrielle had a brief, slightly confused image of a long stem and a fist-sized wad of straw or rough fur that seemed to be swaying in a light breeze—if there had been any breeze. Xena’s face twisted in disgust; she dropped the object and stamped on it. A flattened round lay squashed in the mud. But when Gabrielle would have moved closer for a look, Xena held out a warning hand, slammed her foot onto it, shoving it deeper into the mud, and began scraping muck over it with the side of her boot, squelching it down as hard and deeply as she could. She finally stood still, glaring at the flattened patch of mud as if defying it to move. It didn’t. “Not good enough,” the warrior muttered under her breath, and found a large, flat-bottomed stone to drop atop the ruined object.
Gabrielle looked from her friend to the old fighter, who was curled in on himself like a bug and whimpering nonstop. “What was that?” she asked finally.
“Stop that noise,” Xena snapped; Botricas ignored her or was beyond hearing. She rolled her eyes. “That, Gabrielle, was a rhodforch—they’re created by a certain kind of priest, it lets them hear things at a distance . . .”
“It—you mean someone could have been listening to us, just now?” Gabrielle shoved to her feet, staff in hand, and turned to eye the woods around them.
“Distance,” Xena reminded her. “Maybe even all the way from Sparta, if the priest is good enough.” Silence, except for the panting Botricas, who was now mumbling to himself. “Or bad enough,” she added ominously.
“I—see.” Gabrielle nodded. “I think.” She glanced down at the squirming Spartan. “But it sounds like you know who that priest is.”
“Menelaus only had one priest in his household after Helen left him, only one who’d stay with him.” Xena gazed down at the rock with loathing, then stepped past it to nudge Botricas ungently with her foot. “How about it, old man? You want to explain to me how a rhodforch just happened to be in your possession, and how you were the only one who didn’t run?” Another nudge, harder. “Botricas, the rhodforch is destroyed, whatever Menelaus and his pet priest heard before, they aren’t gonna hear anything else you tell me. Talk to me!” She waited. The elderly fighter slowly uncurled and gazed up at her, blinking rapidly; his mouth moved but no sound came. “It’s Avicus, isn’t it?” she asked finally. Botricas nodded. “Did he give you that rhodforch to carry, instructions on what to do with it?”
He was already shaking his head frantically, and now he scrambled to his knees, shoving himself as far away from the firepit and that flat-bottomed stone as he could. Xena let him go a few paces, then came around to cut him off. “I didn’t—I didn’t—!”
“Didn’t what?” But he had scrabbled his way around to stare at the rock covering the unpleasant little implement. Xena sighed faintly and squatted next to him. He flinched as her hand gripped his shoulder. “Hey, take it easy, okay? I know you couldn’t have been aware you were carrying something like that. You’d have been dead from fright halfway out of Sparta if you’d known about it.” He turned to give her a wide-eyed look; she nodded. “Anyone would. Just tell me one thing: Does King Menelaus still keep an oracle’s temple, and is the priest in charge called Avicus?” She waited. He swallowed, finally nodded.
“He’ll kill me now,” Botricas whispered, and his voice trembled. “I—I’ve only seen him once or twice, at a great distance, enough to know by his robes and staff. Men like me don’t ever earn temple duty. But we know what he’s like.” He swallowed hard. “Denos, he headed the inner guard detachment, last two moon-seasons, at the temple. It’s a special assignment, you get extra privileges, more dinars, things like that. Fancy mess where they provide girls, feed you decent food. So—I sort of wondered, when he and Klomos came for me, why Denos wasn’t still at the temple, if maybe he’d done something wrong and been given this job as punishment.”
“All right.” Xena patted his shoulder and got back to her feet. “I get the picture—enough of it anyway. But Avicus won’t kill you, Botricas; that’s not his style.” It was, but Botricas didn’t need to hear that, just now. Poor old stableboy, in over his head and not his fault, for once, she thought sourly.
Botricas slowly uncurled. “It’s not?”
“If anything, Avicus will be angry with Denos for picking the wrong horse tender or for letting you get caught.”
“Oh.” He edged back away from her, got cautiously to his feet. “I—did you really mean I could go?”
“I meant it.” She retrieved the now-empty bag, shoved it over the metal end of his javelin, and handed it to him. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t go back to Sparta. I’d go back toward that village and keep walking toward the setting sun. About five days steady travel, you’ll be in Ithaca.”
“Ithaca? But, that’s—King Odysseus’s land, isn’t it?”
“The same. There’s a guardsman in charge of King Odysseus’s palace, on the island Ithaca, man named Lemnos. He’s a friend. Tell him I sent you.” Botricas clutched his javelin, incoherent with relief. Xena hauled two coppers from her belt, shoved the coins into his hand, and closed his fingers over them. “Here, you’ll need food between now and then—go on, go!” The old armsman shoved the coins into his own belt, clutched the javelin hard, and stumbled as fast as he could, off into the darkness.
Xena waited in silence until she was certain he’d gone for good, even though she knew the old fool would never dare to double back to eavesdrop on them. She shoved a skinny log into the fire and settled down next to Gabrielle. “Warm enough?” she asked.
Gabrielle nodded and held out the other bowl of stew; her own was nearly empty. She mopped up the last of the broth with a chunk of bread, ate it thoughtfully. “I’m warm, I’m fed—and I am very confused.”
“All right,” Xena said mildly. “You fought, I’ll talk. Can I eat first?” Gabrielle grinned suddenly; the warrior grabbed hold of an end of blanket and vigorously rubbed wet red-blond bangs to dry them, then caught up her stew and bread.
Gabrielle rinsed out her bowl and began combing the tangled ends of her hair. Xena ate steadily, finally set the bowl aside, and leaned back on her elbows, feet propped up on the stones surrounding the fire. Gabrielle fished her comb out of her pack. “I hope one of us can make sense of this,” she said finally. “All I know is, Joxer’s gone on what he says is a hero’s quest, that three men jumped me when I tried to follow him, and that Botricas was carrying a forky-looking thing that scared him half to death, and that you killed. And that you let him go.”
Xena recrossed her feet. “It’s a rhodforch, and I didn’t actually kill it. It’s not alive, Gabrielle, not the way you or I understand alive; it’s a priest thing. Some of them, especially priests who serve Apollo, can either create a rhodforch or petition Apollo to create one for them, I don’t know how it’s done. Mostly I’ve heard of them in connection with the high priest who tends the Oracle at Delphi. Each of the hairs in that wad is able to move, to sense sound, and the more of them there are—the denser the hair, the greater distance it can work at. Also, something to do with the length of the stem—I don’t know. Anyway, the priest stays safe in his temple and eavesdrops on people. A device as dense as that one: It could be a very, very long distance.”
Gabrielle stared at her; a corner of her mouth quirked. “You’re making this up, right? A—a magic furball that could listen to us all the way from Sparta?”
Xena raised an eyebrow. “What, you can believe in Psyche, but not that thing?” She jerked her thumb toward the rock and the object buried under it.
“Well, all right. But it doesn’t sound particularly evil,” Gabrielle said. “You acted as if it was.”
“It’s neutral. Supposedly it can be used for good or for bad. But think about it, Gabrielle. Do you really want someone listening in on what you’re saying?”
“Ahhh—don’t think so.”
“Exactly. Besides . . .” Xena sat up to drink a little ale from the leather bottle, then settled back flat, so she could stare up at the deep-blue evening sky and the few emerging stars. “Yeah. My brothers used to give me nightmares, when I was little, telling me stories about the gods standing next to your bed, listening to everything you said—hearing all your thoughts, and you wouldn’t know because they weren’t visible.”
“Thanks,” Gabrielle said lightly. “I have a nightmare like that tonight, and I’m waking you up.”
Xena smiled. “Feel free, Gabrielle.” The smile faded. “But it stands to reason if the king of Sparta’s involved with something like that, it’s not for any good reason. And you saw how terrified Botricas was when he saw that thing. It wasn’t the king he was afraid of, either. It was Avicus.” She stared into the flames for some moments, finally roused herself and gathered the pots and utensils together, to one side of the fire, and began shoving wood into the side nearest their blankets.
“Okay,” Gabrielle gave up on her hair and shoved the comb back into her pack. “King Menelaus I know about—kind of. Married Helen, mostly because everyone else wanted her because she was beautiful and rich, right?”
“He was old enough to be her father,” Xena said, but Gabrielle shook her head.
“Not old enough to be her father, if the stories I’ve heard are true. You know, I’ve always wondered how Leda—I mean, how would you try to explain to anyone that you’d slept with a swan? Except it was really Zeus?”
“Probably Leda didn’t even bother. Why would she? And just because the story’s well known doesn’t make it true. Some jealous rival of Helen’s might have made it up to explain why she was so beautiful, don’t you think?”
“Possible,” Gabrielle allowed. “So Menelaus was a lot older than Helen.”
“And like a lot of the men his age, he never bothered to get to know her beforehand. He just got her father’s permission, married her, and carried her off to Sparta.”
Gabrielle’s brow furrowed. “You never did say how you got to know her?”
Xena shrugged, shoved the last piece of wood into the fire, and began pulling off her boots. “I didn’t. I was in Sparta a few years ago; that’s when I first met Menelaus. I saw her, at a distance. I didn’t get close to her, never spoke to her until Troy. Don’t remember much about it, really.”
Doesn’t want to talk about it, she means, Gabrielle decided, and stayed quiet.
After a moment, the warrior shrugged again, and went on, “Even from a distance, though, you could see the way Menelaus looked at her, the way he looked at any man who talked to her, smiled at her—even the men who smiled just because she was so beautiful. They couldn’t help themselves. He didn’t even want to share any part of her: Not a kind word, not her beauty, not a passing smile. Certainly not her intelligence—he didn’t know that existed because he never even got that far. I thought even then that if he could’ve kept her in a treasure chest, he’d have done it. If there’d been a way, she’d never have left the women’s rooms in his palace.
“I heard at the time that he wanted her to wear a veil, even just around the servants, in her own private apartments. She refused, just as she refused to stay in her rooms. But each time she went outside, he discovered how she’d left, and he closed that way to her.”
“No wonder she ran off with Paris,” Gabrielle said softly. “Except—Paris wasn’t that much better, was he?”
“He gave her freedom within Troy, but he was still obsessed with her beauty. Even after ten years with her, he couldn’t see anything else. He didn’t bother to look.”
Silence. Gabrielle settled on the far side of the blanket. Xena gazed all around them cautiously, listening and looking. All she could hear was a distant owl and Xena’s golden mare, Argo, shifting from one foot to another a short distance away. She stretched and yawned, then lay down next to her companion, tugging the blanket across her shoulder.
Gabrielle sighed faintly. “I wonder where Helen is now.”
Xena settled the blanket under her and turned her back to the fire. “I don’t. Way I figure it, the less I know, the better.”
The girl came up on one elbow. “Why?”
“Because if that rhodforch I destroyed had powers beyond just understanding speech, if it could read thoughts, it still couldn’t learn from me where Helen is. Menelaus can still find out somehow, of course. But not from me.”
Gabrielle turned to study her friend’s face. “But—those things can’t do that, can they?”
“I don’t know, Gabrielle. Only a priest or a god would know that. But the less I know, the less likely Menelaus will ever learn anything from me. I’d like to keep it that way.”
The younger woman rolled away and started to settle down, then eased over onto her back again. “Wait a minute. You think all this—with Denos and Joxer and everything else—you think it’s about Helen?”
Xena sighed faintly. “Gabrielle, I don’t know. And that’s why we’re going to have to find Joxer—and soon. I know Denos. He really would literally die before he told me anything, and he wouldn’t trust any of his companions with any information he didn’t want shared.”
“Joxer, on the other hand,” Gabrielle said grimly, “we can persuade.” Xena yawned neatly, rubbed her shoulders against the blanket and resettled, one hand under her chin. Gabrielle shifted one way, back the other. “But, Xena, if Menelaus is really looking for Helen, why would he want Joxer, of all people, to—?”
Xena reached over to lightly tug her companion’s hair. “Gabrielle? Go to sleep.”
The warrior seemed to doze off between one breath and the next. Gabrielle levered up onto one elbow to gaze down at her relaxed face, smiled faintly and shook her head, then rolled over and resolutely closed her own eyes.
Xena lay still, half-open eyes fixed on the fire, her thoughts busy. What was Menelaus up to? She finally shrugged that aside and closed her eyes once more. She’d find out—and soon.
A short distance from the lake, the trail Joxer had followed joined into the rutted, ill-kept road out of the village where he’d been chosen by Denos. Nearly an hour’s steady walking brought him to where another road joined in and the jointway turned south. For some distance, the surface was smooth and level, except where a caravan of market carts had recently worn two deep ruts in the mud. Now dried and rock-hard, they made for hazardous walking.
But just short of a league south, the road forked; the cart tracks went left and downhill, toward the sea. So did any semblance of a tamed path.
Joxer sighed in disgust as he looked up the way he must go. “Right fork, sure, my luck,” he mumbled. He’d already turned both ankles in the cart ruts and they ached.
The road ahead would have killed a cart within twenty turns of the wheels: Heavy rains had eroded what little dirt there had ever been, and sharp-edged rocks were everywhere.
He sighed again, but there was no help for it: Nightfall here would be extremely uncomfortable. There was no wood anywhere nearby and no place large and flat enough for a fire and a blanket, and the wind was already cool. Besides, the captain who’d chosen him for this quest had said he must reach Sparta in three days. The only way to be certain of that was to cross this ridge and reach the main south road before midday tomorrow.
“I should’ve brought a map,” Joxer mumbled, then swore as his already sore toes slammed into another stone. He steadied himself, paid attention to the surface of the so-called road for some moments. “Not that I’m so good at reading a map, but I could have . . . could have . . .” He tripped again, flailed and caught his balance, shut his mouth resolutely and made the top of the ridge without further incident.
It was definitely cold out here. He could see the sea—deep blue water dotted with white—and feel the steady, harsh wind blowing straight up from the water. There was a nasty drop to his left; he swallowed, eased away from it, and only then turned to look downslope to see where the road went.
It dropped even more steeply than it had gone up, in a series of uneven, demented-looking steps. But after perhaps forty long paces, it bent to the right and vanished into tall brush. Joxer scrubbed suddenly damp hands down his britches and began slowly easing his way from stone to stone. He only fell twice, but the second time took the wind out of him. He lay still for some moments, narrowed eyes fixed on the darkening sky, rubbing a throbbing elbow. “This is all your fault, Gabrielle!” he shouted angrily. No answer except the wind, of course. He finally sighed, eased into a splay-legged sitting position, and considered the view all around him.
No one in sight. He tittered nervously and slowly eased his way down to the brush on his backside. Darkness found him squeezed into a hollow between two bushes, huddled under his blankets and wondering whatever had possessed him to listen to the Spartan king’s man in the first place. His attempts at fire hadn’t taken, the little bread he had with him was hard and green along one crust, the water in his bottle old and leather-flavored. “F-f-f-ortune and guh-glory, hah!” he stuttered, and rolled into a ball. It was going to be a very long night.