Gesturing with her head, she beckoned Lasca and Jade over to her side and instructed, "Strip her out of all her clothes so that I can examine her ... and make sure that you get all of her weapons out of here and safely stowed somewhere out of sight. She's going to be hard enough to cope with without giving her unnecessary advantages."

Jade approached the unconscious warrior with distinct reluctance. She glared at Lasca who seemed to be hanging back letting her older compatriot get into the firing line first. Both young Amazons knew, only too well, just how painful it could be to approach an unconscious Xena.

Jade shot a glance at Lasca, who continued to hang back, "I thought you were an Amazon warrior, " she chided whilst making no attempt at getting any closer to the unconscious woman.

Lasca snorted derisively, "I don't see you rushing in there, oh great warrior."

Jade glared at her. She had to admit that she was far from looking forward to an airborne trip over to the other side of the cabin and she suspected that that was exactly what she was in for if she carried out Sheraya's instructions.

"I thought I gave you two a task to do," came the pointed comment from the healer accompanied by a sizzling glare that both young women privately thought might just be hot enough to fry bacon with.

- Then again, - thought Jade, - Just how bad can being thrown across the room feel? I kind of suspect that enduring a scathing dressing down by Sheraya might just be more painful. -

Swallowing hard, the young woman with the brown/gold eyes, moved slowly up the side of the bed, noticing her partner doing the same on the other side. Deciding that her best course of action might just be to talk to the dark warrior and explain what they were doing, Jade began to murmur softly, "Hi Xena .. you probably don't remember me or Lasca, but we've met, sort of, in the city at home." She cautiously reached out to grasp the woman's wrist intent on unlacing the bracer and removing it.

She felt muscles stiffening under her fingers and released the arm hurriedly as she continued talking softly, "Ummm, Sheraya, our healer, wants us to get you out of your clothes so that she can examine you and dress your wounds. So if you'll bear with us, we'll be as quick as we can and then we can let you rest .. is that a deal?" she asked, reaching for the bracer again.

To her immense relief, the arm muscles had relaxed, and the two young warriors worked with almost indecent haste to get their appointed task completed and themselves away from the dangerous woman laying on the bed. They might admire the fighting abilities of the Warrior princess, but they were not anxious to get an up close and personal demonstration of them.

As soon as they had finished with the patient, Sheraya took over, assigning them other tasks to attend to which they hurriedly moved to perform, although both women couldn't help but hope that the healer might just encounter a defensive action from Xena during her examination ... it would have been a fair trade for the verbal lashings they'd received from the older Amazon. Disappointingly, though, Sheraya seemed to know just how to handle the Warrior Princess without calling down retribution upon herself. Lasca and Jade, grumpily busied themselves around the other patients.

Talking softly, the healer gently examined the volatile warrior, cleaning her latest collection of scrapes and stitching a deep cut that ran from her left shoulder to the cleft of her breasts. She checked the gash in her patients leg, satisfied that none of Patroclese stitches had torn loose, before re-bandaging the area and gently turning the warrior over so that she could inspect the dangerous wound in her back.

Sucking in a deep breath, she bit out a few very choice oaths as she saw that the stitching there had been ripped asunder. Blood leaked from the opening with sluggish persistence and the skin around it was hot and inflamed. Knowing that there was no way to re-sew the injury, she reconciled herself to having to cauterize the wound .. a procedure that was going to be both painful and dangerous for Xena in her present weak condition.

Placing a pad over the damaged area, and binding it tightly, Sheraya, moved away from the unconscious woman and whispered some precise instructions to the two young warriors that she had beckoned over. While the pair were gone, the healer drifted around the various cots checking on the condition of her patients. She made a list in her mind of those that she wanted moved out of the infirmary before she started work on Xena: The less people around at that time the better.

As soon as the cabin had been cleared of all those that it was no longer necessary to keep a careful eye on, including: Autolycus, Iolaus, Mattin and four of the Amazons, Sheraya began her preparation of Xena.

She had assembled a team of strong Amazons whom she ordered to hold the Warrior Princess down. Even in her weakened condition, it took six of them, while Lasca and Jade secured the struggling woman to the bed with strong rope. Xena continued to strain weakly at her bonds, but Sheraya had made certain that she couldn't jerk around while the hot iron was applied to seal the wound.

She ordered the unnecessary Amazons out of the infirmary and turned her attention to the brazier where two short swords were being heated, "Keep her shoulders pinned down just in case," she instructed her two press ganged helpers.

Lasca and Jade looked at the glowing sword, then at each other, before pushing down hard on the injured warrior's shoulders, offering a silent prayer to Artemis that the ropes would hold and that Xena would not hold anything against them when she regained her senses.

Moving with careful determination, the healer advanced upon her patient and applied the heated blade to the upper half of the open wound wringing a screaming cry from Xena that would never have escaped her lips while she was conscious. Her eyes flickered open, unseeing, for a moment and the Amazons caught an unguarded glimpse into a depth of pain that far surpassed that induced by the hot iron. Limpid blue pools of a cerulean hue mirrored the guilt and loathing that layered her soul so deeply that pain was almost a relief for her.

When the orbs snapped shut, without the warrior rousing from the pit of unconsciousness, Jade and Lasca felt ashamed that they had witnessed a reflection of Xena's soul, feeling instinctively that they had trespassed on something intensely private .. a lonely burden that the warrior bore.

Sheraya returned to the brazier for the second blade, carefully lifting it and returning to her patient. With practised precision she sealed the lower half of the wound holding the hot metal to the golden skin as torn flesh seared beneath the heat, and the smell of roasting flesh permeated the cabin.

A second scream, longer and louder than the first echoed hauntingly through the ship, chilling those awake to hear it. Alone in her cot, Gabrielle stirred restlessly, her sleep filled with nightmares of blazing swords that cut through Xena's flesh like a knife through fresh butter. But exhaustion held her deep within it's toils and she remained within Morpheus' grasp.

Having completed the cauterizing of the wound, Sheraya discarded the sword into a bucket of salt water, brought for the purpose, where it hissed and sizzled with it's mate. "Get her to drink some of that mixture I made. Leave her tied for a candlemark, and then remove her restraints. The herbs in that sleeping draught should keep her still long enough to give her a chance to recover some strength."

Using every inch of experience gained from her long years at sea, Nebula harried her inexperienced crew, whilst relying heavily upon the knowledge and abilities of Hercules and Iolaus .. who had recovered enough to help .. to bolster the Amazons in their efforts. Everyone upon the ship knew that their treatment, should they be taken by the Romans, would be far from gentle, and none of them wished to live the life of a slave.

Ephiny stood looking grimly astern at the dozen ships that clawed their way closer to the speeding pirate ship, "Do you have a plan?" she asked Nebula tensely.

"Keep ahead of the Romans," came back the dry reply.

"Besides that," snapped the Regent who wasn't really in the mood for wit. "Can we rely on a sea fog along this shore to hide in?" she questioned speculatively.

"You've been listening to too many of Gabrielle's stories," accused the pirate. "Things like that don't happen in real life, only in those great epics that bards tell."

"So what are you going to do," she saw Nebula begin to reply and held up her hand to forestall her, "and don't tell me 'Keep ahead of the Romans', because they're gaining all the time and, if I estimate it correctly, they're going to be on us within less than four candlemarks, long before darkness can hide us if that's what you're hoping for."

The tall captain took a glance behind her at the oncoming vessels and gave a nod of her head at the accuracy of Ephiny's assessment, "You're right. Four candlemarks is about all the time we have."

The Regent looked about ready to explode and she was aware of a queasy sensation in her stomach as her emotions roiled. "SO my question stands. For the third time, what are you going to do?"

Nebula squinted ahead of her trying to filter out the glare of the sun off of the blue water. A quick glance landward gave her exact knowledge of her location as she picked out familiar landmarks. "Ahead of us are a string of small islands that mark the edge of a large bay dominated by the city of Baieae."

"We're heading for a Roman city?" demanded Ephiny incredulously.

"No of course not," retorted Nebula with a disgusted snort. "We're going to play tag with those Roman ships around that string of islands until it's too dark for them to see us and then we're going to head out for home as fast as 'Dancer' can get us there."

"I see," said the Regent non-committally.

"It will be dangerous, some of the channels between those islands are going to be a tight fit, but that will stand us in better stead than the Romans as we have a much shallower draught than they do." explained the captain steadily.

"I see," repeated Ephiny once again, the nauseous feeling growing as she could see them landing between a rock and a hard place .. quite literally.

"If you can come up with anything better I'll be willing to listen," Nebula told her levelly as she studied the Amazon intently and got no response, "Right then ... I'll just get on with what I have to do then." She turned her back and took her station beside the Amazon at the helm as Ephiny chewed on her lip and wondered for the millionth time how association with Gabrielle seemed to turn bad luck into an art form.