Goddess of Battle
Chapter 5
Xena clawed her way back to consciousness. She had no idea how long she had been out.
She could feel the warmth of the morning sun on her back, but the drug would not release
it's hold easily. The last thing she remembered was reaching for her sword and telling
Gabrielle to run. I hope she got away, she thought. Finally after seeming hours her eyes
fluttered open to see the sun high in the sky. She had been out for hours. "Gabrielle?" she
called, hoping the bard would step from behind the nearby boulders. There was no answer.
Standing, Xena shook her head to clear the effects from her mind. A look around the
campsite told her what she feared most had happened. They had been attacked and
Gabrielle was missing. No tracks led away from the camp in any direction, but under closer
inspection, Xena noticed that the tracks had been wiped away, leaving no trace of the
direction they had left. "GABRIELLE!!!!" she screamed, dropping to her knees. Fear and
sorrow overwhelmed her. She, the great and mighty warrior princess, destroyer of
nations, Ares' one time general - had failed to protect the one person who meant most to
her.
For a long time she stayed that way. Her hands dropped from her face, revealing her
tears. Her fingers touched something in the sand. Picking it up she looked at the stone,
not noticing the perfect roundness of it at first. As she drew back her arm to hurl it into
the surf, she suddenly realized it wasn't a stone. A sling pellet? She now took a look at it.
"This isn't even a stone... it's too heavy. Lead. Do you have a mark on you?" she asked
it, examining it in earnest. "Ahh, there you are!" Rubbing the surface of the mark, she
suddenly dropped it, as if it had burned her hand. "Oh God's! Not them... Please Gods not
them."
Xena knew this mark. She had seen it before, long ago, on her return from Chin. Her
journey had taken her through the northern most fringes of Persia, across the plain of Ur -
the home of the most feared and respected assassins of the known world - the Hashishyun.
Her mind raced. It was not like them to leave someone alive and leave a clue, so easily
found. That could mean only one thing: Gabrielle was alive and they wanted her to
follow, for whatever reason their master had decreed. "Revenge? We've never crossed
paths. What then?" Rising she whistled for Argo. Quickly packing her gear, she stopped
to look only once at the site where Gabrielle had lain. "I promise I'll find you. I don't
know how, but I will find you. I swear it!"
A silent voice questioned her, "Just how do you propose to do that? No one even
knows where there fortress is; at least, no one living."
Angrily, she tossed the thought from her mind. Only one thing mattered... finding
Gabrielle.
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