The long wooden hall was silent as Gaul and Roman looked at each other. Verchinex sat on a carved oak wood throne with no arms and a low back. The walls of the hall were hung with the skins of bear and wolf. A fire pit blazed in the centre of the floor, for all that it was mid-summer. Warriors lined the walls in leather armour, spears held in readiness to their chieftains command. One or two had faces painted blue with woad, yet others had used a solution of lime to stiffen long hair into frightening aspects.
- Savages! - Tirem spat with mental contempt for the Gaulish warriors.
The Gaul held his hand out for the message scroll that the soldier bore. It carried the Imperial seal of Rome. With a wry grin he ran a jagged fingernail along the seam of the seal and broke it with a stiff 'crack!'. The message was written in Latin and was meaningless to him, but he had a man in his tribe who could read it for him. Turning his disconcertingly light eyes back to the messenger, he told him, "Malvin will take you for some refreshment while I decide upon my answer to this," he held the scroll out contemptuously.
The Roman dipped his head in acknowledgement, hiding a wry smile at guessing that the Gaulish leader could not read Latin, and followed the tall Gaulish warrior from the council chamber of Verchinex. The bronze skinned, black haired Gaulish chieftain waited until the Roman had left the room, before motioning over one of his other guards and instructing, "Lachlan, fetch Folko to me. I have a task for him," he watched as the warrior turned to saunter from the hall, "And hurry, I would see him before the sun sets!" he roared, knowing full well that the sun had barely passed it's midday height.
Lachlan, however, speeded his step to a run and disappeared with commendable swiftness, knowing that his chief's temper became uncertain, at best, when mention of the Roman, Caesar, was made. Verchinex fought off a small smile that threatened as he mumbled, "Puppy," to himself.
"You should not tease your brother so," admonished a beautiful, fair haired woman, who wound her arms around his swarthy neck and gave his bearded cheek a gentle kiss. She had come in through the door of the anti-chamber in time to see the young man depart.
"Should I not," grumbled Verchinex as he pulled the woman from behind him to sit on his lap. He gazed with loving fondness into her blue eyes before kissing her thoroughly. Since he had been back from Rome, he could not stand to be away from her too long, - My Mendala, my wife! - he thought to himself, lovingly possessive.
"No you shouldn't, Verchinex, he is no different from any of your other warriors," she told him, "He idolizes you, my love" she told him with a soft smile, "as I do, and most of the Gaulish people for that matter."
"Hrrmpphh!" choked her husband, uncomfortable with that particular thought, "Lachlan, needs to be reminded that I'm his chief as well as his brother. He's too ready to let things slip because he thinks that I will protect him."
Mendala looked at him with that gentle smile he adored, "Just try not to be too hard on him," she told him, "for my sake, if not his. He did much to help me while you were gone from here, my love."
That brought a scowl to Verchinex's dark features as he waved the scroll at his wife. She stood up, took it from him and looked at the freshly broken seal, "From Caesar?" she asked, her fair brow creasing as she recognised the imprint in the wax.
"Aye," grumbled her husband, "I've sent Lachlan after Folko so I can find out what the serpent wants. Truthfully, Mendala, I'd rather deal with a viper, but with the build up of Legions along the borders I cannot ignore the chance of a peaceful settlement if possible."
"Can you trust Caesar?" she asked him carefully.
Verchinex considered carefully before answering. Putting aside his personal animosity for the man and trying to look at it dispassionately, he answered, "Of himself ... no. I wouldn't trust the man's word that the sky was blue." He held up his hand commanding her silence as he continued, "But if he has a proposal in the name of Rome ..." he glared at the Imperial seal on the scroll, "then I think he would honour such an agreement."
Mendala bit her lower lip as she fingered the scroll in her hands, "What is he proposing?" she asked. v "Can't say love," he grinned at her wolfishly, "until my sluggard brother gets back with Folko."
She scowled at him, a retort forming on her lips as the hall doors opened to admit the red faced Lachlan and the stout merchant Folko, who was gasping for breath due to the speed urged on him by his chief's brother, "About time you two got here," growled their unimpressed leader.
"I came as soon as Lachlan found me," Folko told him placatingly, puffing somewhat, "What do you have that needs my attention so?" he asked.
Mendala handed him the scroll and the merchant opened it, running his eyes over the Latin script as he allowed his breathing to return to normal. Knowing his chief, he raised an eyebrow at him and asked, "Do you want the full thing or the edited version?"
"Just tell me what it says, Folko, for Grannos's sake," returned Verchinex inciting the name of the sun god.
The merchant carefully read through the Latin hyperbole and began, "Ah, basically Caesar is inviting you to a meeting to discuss the situation in Gaul. He says he'd rather find a peaceful solution, than have to muster the Legions and impose a forceful one."
"Ha!" barked Lachlan snapping his fingers in derision, "That for the Roman," he declared. v "Quiet, Lachlan," ordered his brother impatiently as his brain absorbed the information in the missive. "Does he suggest a meeting place?" he asked thoughtfully.
"Aye, he does that, Verchinex, and a canny spot it is too. He suggests that as neither party is going to be very trusting of the other, that the meeting should take place on the border area close to the town of Vershin. He also say that he will draw back all Roman troops for a league around, if you will do the same with our Gauls, and that he'll bring an escort of just one maniple .. he says one hundred and eighty men .. just for protection against brigands." Folko told him handing the scroll back to his chief, "If he intends a trap he's making it very difficult for himself. The area around Vershin is very open and we'd see any treachery long before it could harm us."
"True," agreed the Gaulish chieftain, stroking his beard thoughtfully, "I wonder what Caesar thinks he can offer me at this meeting that will be to our mutual benefit. I trust the man not, but it would be unwise to spurn this chance in case we may bring peace to our people. For too long we have had to go hungry through the winter months because we were not able to gather the harvests."
"Should you not speak of this with Hyman, Calvert, Lyulph and some of the other chieftains," suggested Mendala. "They have a right to know of this message from Caesar."
"Aye lass, you're right," agreed her husband. "The messenger can cool his heels for a few days while I confer with the others, but I think they will follow my lead and something is telling me I should treat with Caesar, if only at arms length."
Xena shuffled around yet another new cell. This one had three stone walls and a panel of thick metal bars that ran from stone floor to stone ceiling. A pile of clean straw at the back of the cell was the only relief from the cold rock. Beyond the bars was another guard room. A large one that was big enough to house the entire maniple. There were no other cells in this area of the garrison. This one had been constructed especially to house dangerous or valuable prisoners, - Guess that qualifies me on both counts, - she brooded sourly.
She had pretty much recovered from the injuries she had taken during the pit fights on her way here to Lugdunum. The last contest had been in Valence, one that she'd easily won, without taking much in the way of a hit in return. Which was just as well, because Blasius saw to it that she was never fully free of a bruise or two. She almost grinned as she remembered the black eye she had given him in the scramble at Orange. Still he had returned it with interest, and even Flaccus ignored his more obvious brutality since she'd managed to cut his beloved Caesar with that knife.
She could almost hear her mother scolding her as a child, when she returned home from some childish jaunt to find that some boy's mother had complained to Cyrene about the bruises her child had come home with, "Xena!" came the angry reproof as she had set foot inside the tavern, "By the God's child! When are you going to learn to control your temper!"
So many times she'd earned a spanking, been sent to her room without supper and forbidden to leave the inn until her mother gave her leave. Then the same thing would happen all over again as the bigger boys tried to push her around and found out that they couldn't handle Tor's little sister.
Eventually she got big enough and fast enough to avoid her mother's scoldings and punishments. When she knew she was going to be in trouble, she'd steal into the inn and raid the larder for supplies and then hide out in the woods, in a very hard to find cave, until her family's anxiety overrode the reason for her taking off in the first place.
She hid a wry grin for the one time it hadn't worked.
She'd been about nine or ten, and her mother had got wise to her tricks. She had been so very careful when she scouted out the tavern to find out where everyone was. Toris was hunting through the barn promising dire retribution against her for blacking his friend Tomases' eye .. on top of splitting his lip and cracking one of his ribs .. while Lyceus had sat waiting in their room for her to return.
She'd dropped in the window, given him a quick hug and told him, "Don't worry, Ly. I'm just going away for a few days until Mother cools off a bit."
"Watcha hit him for?" asked her younger brother as he helped her roll up a blanket and collect a fishing line.
"Doesn't matter," Xena told him, preferring not to tell her younger brother about the awful things she'd heard Tomases saying about their mother. She'd made certain that he'd be too scared to repeat them. Her mother had enough trouble trying to raise her family and run the inn without kids spreading gossip that she was of easy virtue. She winced a bit at the thought. Those hadn't been the words he'd used. She just wished she'd been able to find out who had started the lies.
"Where's Mother?" she asked, knowing that she needed to gather some food from the larder. She wouldn't be able to live on just the fish she'd be able to catch. Besides she wanted to lie low until the hunt died down.
"I think she went over to apologise to Tomases' parents. You really did mess him up some, Xena," Lyceus told here in a quiet voice.
"Good," she growled her very blue eyes becoming as cold as ice chips, "he deserved it." She looked fondly at her little brother and smiled as she ruffled his hair, "Stay close to Mother, Ly, she's gonna need you."
"But I wanna come with you," her brother told her in no uncertain terms.
"You can't Lyceus. Mother will worry enough anyway, I need you to tell her that I won't be gone long. Just until things cool down. Tell her not to worry." she said seriously.
She waited until Lyceus had nodded his head, shaking his curly brown hair as he did so, before slipping out of the room and downstairs clutching her blanket and a pouch to stuff some supplies into. She had gone silently, making no noise just in case her mother was lurking, but she'd seen no one and had tiptoed into the kitchen and the larder certain that she was safe.
It was as she began to gather some bread and cheese that she'd felt her mother's presence and had turned to bolt for the door. But Cyrene had swung the door shut behind her and stood with her arms crossed and foot tapping, waiting to hear her daughter's explanation for her latest piece of bad behaviour.
Xena had just looked at her mother, stubbornness written all over her very expressive features. There was no possible way that she was going to tell her what Tomases had said, and she hated having to give excuses to her mother at anytime. So she had stood there defiantly and waited for the punishment she knew would be forthcoming.
"Xena!" her mother had yelled, "By the God's child, when are you going to learn to control your temper."
Getting no answer and no explanation had infuriated Cyrene. Her strange, willful, rebellious, difficult, daughter, so often tried her patience. She had taken a firm hold of Xena's ear and hauled her down to the root cellar and paddled her behind, before locking her in so that she couldn't just run off.
She had spent three days down in that cellar brooding and miserable while Tomases’ parents demanded far harsher retribution on Cyrene's wild child. The inn keeper had stuck up for Xena like a she bear for her cub, but things hadn't been settled until Toris had heard exactly what Tomases had been saying and had reluctantly told his Mother, ashamed of his friendship with the other boy and the punishment it had caused for his younger sister.
Cyrene had felt bitterly aggrieved, not for herself, but for her daughter whose loyalty and love had been so poorly repaid. She had descended to the cellar with a heavy heart to find her wildly unpredictable child sitting huddled in a corner brooding quietly. Sitting herself on the bottom step, she'd held her arms out to Xena, who had come to her like some half broken filly, ready to shy away at the first wrong move, but she had, eventually, revelled in her mother's protective arms, fiercely refusing to allow the tears she could feel welling up within her, to fall.
- That was, - she thought to herself, wryly, - almost the last time I allowed that kind of contact with Mother as a child. - she allowed herself a self deprecating laugh over the loss, "Oh, Mother," she muttered softly, "If only you could rescue me from my imprisonment now." She shook her head refusing to acknowledge the tears that pricked at her eyes.
She heard a sound behind her and found Blasius moving close to the bars. She watched him as he approached, noticing the chain he carried in his left hand and the baton held in the other. Another ten men armed with batons stood ready behind him. Muscles tensed. She knew it wasn't beyond him to administer a little harsh discipline and claim she had failed to obey an order. None of the soldiers would dispute his word, they were too afraid of him for that.
A quickly flicked glance told her that Flaccus was watching. It gave her a little reassurance. For all that the senior Centurion had relaxed his edicts against her being too harshly treated since Orange, he was unlikely to allow Blasius to flagrantly abuse her ... without Caesar's specific orders to do so of course! - Well, - she thought, - you've given him reason to do so. -
"C'mon you animal," growled the optio as the cell door swung open, "You're wanted."
She should have guessed. - Another fight. How many opponents this time. Four?, Five? - After her last easy victory, Caesar might well be looking to increase the opposition against her and give himself better odds for his wager.
The brief thought of making them come and get her flicked across her mind and was discarded. She'd made a promise to Gabrielle and she'd try to keep it as best she was able to do so. Her face an impassive mask, she shuffled across the cell floor to the door, where she was met by Blasius.
He stepped aside to let her past him, and she instinctively knew what he was going to do. She relaxed the muscles in her legs and allowed the blow he aimed behind her knees to be absorbed, "When you're called, slave," he growled close to her ear, "you come running."
He roughly locked the chain to the collar around her neck and gave it a hard tug, hoping to provoke some show of resistance, some defiance that he could legitimately use as an excuse to administer a beating. Xena resumed her impassive stance and waited for the inevitable shove that she knew would come.
The ten men formed tight around her and a larger contingent of twenty formed up around them. She suppressed a smile that tugged at the corners of her lips. The awe and fear she inspired in her gaolers was something to behold. No matter that they had her chained and could beat her on a whim, they were still terrified that she would slip through their grasp and lay them open to Caesar's not so tender mercies.
Walking at any pace caused her quite a bit of pain as the cuffs on the leg irons bit savagely at her flesh. Patroclese fought a never ending battle with the cuts and sores that her chains rubbed around her wrists and ankles. She wore permanent dressings that protected her skin somewhat, but not on the forced marches that Blasius insisted upon whenever he commanded her guard.
Taking notice of her surroundings was second nature to the Warrior Princess. Her mind automatically mapped the route, from her cell, in her mind. It wasn't unusual for her to be taken up from the lower dungeon levels to the main quarters of a building to get to the fighting pit, but this time, they were taking her to a far higher part of the building.
Stairs were a big problem. She had a relatively small amount of slack allowed on the leg irons, and stairways took a lot of concentration and more pain as the cuffs chaffed up and down over raw bound skin, and higher, unprotected areas. When she stumbled and slipped to her knees on about the fourth flight they'd negotiated, Blasius had jerked her upright with the chain to her collar, causing her to choke on the sudden constriction.
"What's the matter, scum?" he snarled at her, "The so called Destroyer of Nations, doesn't look so tough to me."
She looked at him. Just looked. It was one of those that touched the frozen wastes, that evoked the burning fires of Tartarus, that promised death. Just a look.
Blasius swallowed and took a step back, almost falling down the stairs, held up only by the press of men behind him. He heard a snigger and rage suffused his face. He hated to be made to look a fool. He hated anyone to see just how terrified he was of this woman. He swung the baton at her and stared with disbelief at the hand that had caught it. He tried to wrest it free from her grasp and saw the wild feral lights dance in her eyes, as she maintained her hold, pulling the weapon towards herself.
Blasius exerted all his strength to tug the baton from her grip, and heard her say grimly, "You want it?" before he had time to register her intent, she let it go saying, "You got it!"
The under officer found himself catapulted backwards by his own momentum. His hands released both the baton and the chain he held as he tried to grasp something .. anything .. to stop his wild fall. The soldiers on the crowded stairway threw themselves out of the way of his flying bulk, although a few unlucky souls got carried along by him.
The rest of the guard pressed around Xena, one man grabbing up the chain, others presenting their batons in readiness to beat her into submission. The Warrior Princess ignored them, standing calmly, not threatening any of the others. She watched stone faced as Blasius hit the floor below with a solid crash. He lay unmoving as the three men around him got carefully to their feet. There was an unnatural twist to the optio's neck that heralded his certain death.
One of the soldiers, a decurion, the one with the chain in his hand, one that Xena was sure had been the object of much of Blasius's bullying, stared down at the officer and said to his comrades, "He slipped and fell. It was no one's fault but his own." He gave Xena a sharp nod of gratitude as the muttered agreement came from all the men of the guard. None of them had liked the optio.
"Aquila," instructed the decurion who seemed to have taken charge, - Junius, - she remembered his name as being, "Go and tell the Centurion that the optio slipped and fell down a flight of steps and appears to be dead from a broken neck ... we are sure he's dead?" he shot a question to the men at the foot of the stairs, and got a nod from one of the three standing with the junior officers body. "Tell Flaccus that we're taking the slave up to the General."
Well, at least that told Xena her current destination, but it didn't explain what Caesar might want with her. She turned back to negotiate the difficult steps and found Junius looking at her, "Blasius was a pig," he told her quietly, "and sooner or later he was going to end up dead, but don't get the idea that you can pick us off one by one, because the rest of us stick together, and we're the Emperor's picked men. We'll treat you fair as long as you behave fair."
Xena gave him a quick nod. The Legionaries were happy enough to be out from under the control of a bullying officer, but that's about all the slack she could expect from them. They wouldn't go looking to beat her just for the sake of it. She suspected they had a respect for her even, but it wouldn't stop them from doing their job, "Fair enough," she told the Roman.
Junius set an easier pace, giving the Warrior Princess the time she needed to negotiate the difficult levels. The guard, however remained tight around her. No one was going to get close enough to her to break her loose, and she wasn't going to get the room to escape them.
Two guards stood to rigid attention outside of a door that had to be Caesar's. Junius knocked on the ornately carved and gilded wood and was bidden, "Enter," by a voice that Xena's being throbbed to with the familiar pulse of rage that ran rampant through her blood. She forced the emotion down. She was going to need all her wits about her for another confrontation with her enemy. She needed to be focused and anger clouded her ability to do that.
Junius went inside the apartment, leaving Xena and her guard outside to await further instructions. The soldier's report took a few minutes as he explained the modified version of what had happened to the optio. Even the Warrior Princess's acute hearing couldn't hear what was said beyond the door, but if Caesar wasn't bellowing, it was likely that he accepted the decurion's story.
When the door opened once more, the ten original guards were signalled to march her into Caesar's presence. With barely a movement of her eyes, she registered the lavish furnishings, the large window, screened by a heavy ornamental grill, the four guards (two by the window and two by the door), Junius, Patroclese and of course, seated behind a wide marble desk, Caesar himself, a livid red scar forming along the line of his cheekbone, the stiches having been removed.
"Hello Xena," he greeted as if she were a close friend paying a social visit. She returned his greeting with a look of freezing malice. Unfazed he motioned her to a chair in front of him, on the opposite side of the desk.
When she didn't move, Junius prodded her lightly. It was an improvement on her normal treatment and she saw no profit in baulking. Besides, she was intrigued as to just what game Caesar was playing with her now. She walked slowly to the indicated chair, her chains dragging across the floor with a metallic rattle. Sitting down, she kept eye contact with him and waited for him to speak.
Junius remained standing behind her, his hand wrapped around the chain that was leash to her collar, - Just like a dog, - she thought bitterly. The other members of the guard fanned out to the edges of the room.
"I hear that Patroclese has been teaching you how to play chess," he smiled, watching her with a contented possessiveness, "I thought I'd like to judge your progress myself." He snapped his fingers and a servant appeared from a connected chamber with a richly decorated set of ivory and ebony, both inlaid with gold and gems.
Her eyes remained locked to his. - Do I really want to play games with this man? - She thought about chess. "A battle board", Patroclese had called it. Perhaps Caesar sought to best her here having lost to her strategy on the field of battle. Her eyes glinted at the thought. She had little doubt that Caesar had been playing the game for many years longer than she had, and no doubt counted himself a master at it. He would expect to beat her.
She nodded her head in acceptance of the challenge, and almost smiled when she thought about what Gabrielle would have said, "You're impossible," the bard's words came clearly, "Show you a challenge and you just can't resist it." Well she'd be damned if she let Caesar think she was afraid to face him on any field of battle. She'd give him a game to think about.
