Lila debarked the next morning aboard a large, foreboding, multi-oared man-o'-war. She carried the belt in a snug leather pack strapped to her waist. Its weight was awkward but not terribly burdensome, and she didn't need to wear the pack all the time, though she certainly wasn't going to leave the treasure unattended as she made her way amidships or slept in the hammock which the vessel's captain had kindly allotted to her.

Lila was now on board a military transport. The men who plied the oars would soon be wielding weapons. These were soldiers called up to duty and proceeding to their destination under the strict terms of a massive mobilization. They had little in common with the likes of Cesspoulos and Lugnuts and posed no threat to Lila's safety. To the contrary, they were the finest security guard Lila could have wanted. These disciplined troops, courteous to a fault and solicitous of Lila's well-being from the instant she'd alighted on the craft, would, many of them, in a matter of days, be committing them most horrid atrocities: raping, pillaging, murdering unarmed civilians, slaughtering children in front of stricken parents' eyes with a thoroughness, precision and degree of detachment even more heinous than the sadism and psychotic gratification of the most venal warlord. And Lila would hate them for it.

For now, though, the warship pulled free of its slips and made its way, under light sail, to the sea roads that would convey its human cargo eastward through the Mycenean straits, past the outer isles of Argos, and into the northern Aegean. It would then be a straight shot, under oars, a hundred and sixty rowers strong, aided by Zephyrus' mild breeze from the south, to the west coast of Lemnos, there to reconnoiter with additional vessels of the Attic fleet. So broad-reaching was the grip of the House of Atreus upon the kingdoms and principalities of Hellas that by the time the invasion force would have landed, with all its fury and might, on the beaches of Dardania where the Scamander and the Xanthus, roaring down from the Phrygian highlands, went cascading into the sea, fully a thousand ships, bearing a hundred times as many men, would have arrived on Ilium's shores to reclaim one woman for one king: a sweet, African maid, who hadn't the least desire to be a queen, and a Spartan king who wanted his queen only for what was skin-deep about her.

The journey that had taken Lila fully three days to complete via commercial freighters and ferries would now, on the return trip, take only half as long. The craft sped over the watery main as eight score men hove and hauled, in alternating shifts of three candlemarks, day and night, to cause the vessel nearly to fly across the waves. And the tall, square-rigged sail added another factor of speed, the billows at its battens driving the ship forward with a power equal to the sum of the oars.

"Wheee!" Lila shrieked as she leaned like a bowsprit into the wind from her perch on the poop deck, her hair flying around her face in every direction as she struggled to bunch it up and pin it back. "I'm a typhoon!" Lila waved her arm at the high, thin clouds much as Xena, perched on a cliff overlooking the wave-shattering bay at high tide, had once waved her defiant sword, shouting, "Hyahhh!" at mighty Poseidon who'd risen up from the sea foam, in all his towering immensity, trident in hand, to behold, with indignant fury, a mere mortal -- and a maid! -- who'd sought to menace him.

Lila soon had enough of the buffeting blasts and decided to go below decks. She staked out a spot for herself near the galley between a couple of large barrels of lamp oil. She boosted herself onto the round, wooden barrel tops and covered herself with hides spanked from lambs wool. From that semi-secure perch, Lila passed the first few candlemarks of the voyage, watching the kitchen crew prepare a meal for the rowers and hoping, heedless of her safety, that she'd arrive at Ilium's besieged walls before the full moon.

The ship's captain had been made aware that Lila was on a mission. The fact that Queen Admete had charged him with Lila's safety until Lila should be securely delivered to Diomedes' tent on the beaches of Ilium had clearly borne witness to the importance of her journey. What that mission might be -- a young woman, obviously wet behind the ears, making her way alone, in a war zone, undefended and, until now, with no armed escort -- was anyone's guess. The captain reasoned that the young woman’s mission most likely had to do with orders of some kind being relayed from the Queen to Diomedes, her citizen-general. Why the Queen should have chosen such a bizarre was of communicating her orders was also anyone’s guess. Royalty behaved in strange ways. Kings and queens were odd. They weren’t like normal people

The long day passed. It was well after dark when the ship made landfall on the coast of Lemnos, then swooped around the westernmost point of the island and weighed anchor in the calm, wind-shielded harbor of Antissa where numerous fishing vessels had crowded into a hastily constructed marina cribbed with rock shoals to make a place, in the sound, for the increasing traffic of stopover warships.

"You may stay aboard the ship if you like, Ms," the boson told Lila after she'd wandered onto the main deck to survey the night lights of the harbor. "There's a hammock you can sleep in and you won't be disturbed. But if your druthers is to go ashore, like most of the Johnnies here, you can join' em in sackin' out on the ground under the stars. There's lots that prefer to kip out in the open where the dozin's a mite easier than what you're apt to get in those hard and narrow hammocks."

"I think I'd like that if it's not an imposition," Lila said.

"None at all. We'll be makin' room for you in the skiff, then," the boson replied, waving to the skipper to wait for one more passenger before lowering away. "Take a blanket and some provisions for if you you’re gettin’ hungry in the night. Also some paper for relievin' yourself if need be. Word's made the rounds not to be troublin' you with no pryin’ questions as to the nature of your business. Queen Admete says you're terra incognita for the purpose of gettin' you safe and sound over to Diomedes. Bein' as how you're a Macedonian, you're under his command once you’ve arrived in any case. From there on out, it's his to do as he pleases with you."

On her way to shore aboard the warship's little dory, Lila struck up a conversation with some of the soldiers who turned out to be young men from good homes, very much like Perdicas, Andros and Alexis' two brothers. They knew for a fact that the Trojans must be very wicked because they were harboring a stolen queen, but that's about all they knew. The fighting, they'd heard, wouldn't last long upon their arrival. It would simply be a matter of tearing down Ilium’s walls, locating the captive queen, restoring her to her king, punishing the Trojans for their malfeasance and then getting back on board the ship and heading home. There might be some bloodshed if the wily Trojans resisted, but any such bloodshed was to be tallied exclusively to the Trojan account since the Trojans had started the war and would be thus getting what they deserved. Had the young men left sweethearts to whom they were anxious to return? Oh, yes, some of them said, and one of the sturdy yeomen shyly took a sketch of his betrothed out of his pouch to show Lila who strained to see it in the darkness.

"She's very pretty," Lila smiled. "I'm sure she misses you terribly."

"Then she's a right silly thing," a voice came from the thwart behind their seat as the dory tacked and rocked toward the pier. "While Lycurgos is away, her and all the cute colleens in Tiryns will have gone out to play. Out of sight, out of mind is for the boys who go off to battle and the girls who linger at home."

"Don’t you be worryin’ your head none, lad," another voice counseled. "There be ladies that prove true, and we've plenty to bother our heads about, holdin’ ranks and closin' files when the enemy come out to play."

"And when they do, ‘twere good you got a thick skull can bounce their staves and clubs off it," another voice chided.

"Better to have a thick skull than thin armor when them poisoned arrows come rainin’ down ‘pon you," came the reply. "A saffron bow with lace fringe won't give you no protection from the hurler's spear or the archer's dart, as my good mother always said. And my old man was a grenadier in old King Eurystheus’ service ‘til the day they brung him home from Thermopylae stretched out on a hard oaken slab and all his ribs broke open with an axe."

"'Twere best for girls no less than men to be wearin’ metal and mail in these warfarin’ days," came another opinion from the stern. "When every man's a moat, a wise wench'll raise her drawbridge and keep it chained tight to the buttress. Ain’t that so, Ms.?"

"Sounds like good advice to me," Lila chuckled. "But I hope that Lycurgos... is that your name...? I hope you’ll return to your sweetheart very soon. And the same for the rest of you men, those who have wives and loved ones who wait for you at home."

"And what about yourself, Ms.?" someone called out. "No doubt there be some lucky young gossoon who's bitin' his nails and waitin' anxious in your village for your own pretty face and more modest parts to be haulin' the halyards for home."

"Well, actually... there is, yes," Lila replied, permitting discretion to play the more conventional, if not necessarily the better part of valor.

The group made camp in a wooded clearing up the hill from the docks. The night was a trifle raw, so they gathered some fallen branches for a fire. Though the port was busy with the war's come and go, there was none of the blare and tumult or the teeming push and pull that Lila experienced at the wharves on Tenedos. The crew had unrolled their blankets and were settling down for the night amid grunts and grumbles when Lila detected a foul odor invading the clearing. At first, she paid scant attention to it, but the smell grew more sour and acrid until Lila began to wonder if she might be the only one who was bothered by it and, indeed, if this unpleasant stench were merely the product of her overwrought imagination. If the pungent, rotting smell were coming from the brush outside the perimeter of the clearing, it must be emanating from the torn flesh of a decomposing animal or else from a bog whose marshy runnels were giving out a stagnant, misty vapor.

A turn of the sandglass later, there came a rustling in the brush followed by the parting of the surrounding screen of leafy fronds. The tumid smell became intense. Then, suddenly, to the flare of a jangling lantern, a human figure, which appeared to be the source of the offensive odor, emerged from the undergrowth .

"Philoctetes," one of the company uttered. "I reckoned from the putrid smell it was you. Ain't they got you patched up yet?"

"You stink as bad as the day they brung you here," another voice spoke up. "Can't they do nothin' for you what with all them new-fangled wonder-herbs what's lately been peddled in the fortune tellin' shops of every which town and seaport?"

"I'll bet the snake that bit him stinks worse than him," another crew member opined. "Ain't that the bleedin' truth, Phil?"

"I hear there's one among you who's been sent to Diomedes on a mission," a badly weathered specter came wandering into the clearing as faces puckered and noses twitched. He looked to be a soldier of Hellas, judging by his helmet and cuirass, though the cloth and linen portions of his uniform were now threadbare and his toes had begun to protrude through his badly frayed footwear. He spoke with a familiar Mycenean accent and was apparently known to these men. Yet he was clearly a wreck, a shade of what he'd presumably been in days gone by.

"Indeed, there is," one of the soldiers replied.

"Then I must see him," the spectral figure announced. "I must give him something of the greatest importance to place in Diomedes' hands."

"And what might that be, Phil, an invitation to your weddin', you and the snake?" the men sought to humor him.

"I wed with a snake allright, if, by snake, you mean one of these flowery beauties on Lemnos," the ragged figure replied, "the bride that bites you silent in the night."

"Now, now, Phil," the men cadged him, "there be no percentage in badmouthin' the ladies. Snakes come in all sizes, and there's them that salts the lard just as easy as them that lays the eggs. Besides, we've a right nice lady among us this night and if there be any flowers among the weeds, the sweetest of 'em were surely her."

"And it's her that's bound for Diomedes tent whilst the rest of us were good for naught but forage in the field," someone cried.

"Numbskull!" one of the men shouted. "Our charge is to protect the lass, not to expose her to danger by and by."

The ragamuffin called Philoctetes came forward into the circle of light and sought to approach Lila even as some of the men closed ranks around her to ward off anything that might compromise her dignity.

"Are these louts speakin' true, lass?" Philoctetes looked at Lila with a hint of deranged passion in his eye. "Be it yourself, of all this worthy company, that's bound, under the Queen's oath, to seek out Diomedes upon the bloody plains of Troy?"

"Yes," Lila said, not knowing what else to say.

"Then it’s none but yourself that must bear the bow," Philoctetes said.

"I'm sorry, what bow?" Lila frowned. "I'm not a partisan if that's what you mean. I bear no commission to Diomedes. I'm only to consult with him on a personal matter."

"It don't make no difference," Philoctetes gasped, in obvious pain while the odor grew more intolerable with each passing turn of the sandglass. "You'll be seein' him, that's all that matters. You can bring him the bow. When he sees it, he'll be more than willin' to grant you whatsoever boon you may be askin’ of him. Aye, and he'll quaff a wee willie waught in your honor besides. 'Greeks, wha hae wi' 'Troclus bled, Greeks wham Helen's aften fled...' Here, lass..."

Philoctetes reached over his shoulder and unslung a giant bow which he lay ceremoniously at Lila's feet.

"Would someone kindly explain to me what this is all about," Lila turned to her companions with a look of mild astonishment.

"This nibbled chunk of a man that you’re seein’ before you, Ms.," one of the crew held forth, "is none other than the wretched Philoctetes. And this baggage," the fellow indicated the bow, "once belonged to Hercules."

"This bow? Belonged to Herc, you say? Really?" Lila brightened slightly.

"Why? D’ye know him, Ms.?" Philoctetes said.

"I’ll say," Lila replied. "And I admire him too."

"Well, Phil here done Hercules a good service once," the fellow from the crew continued. "It was high up on the windy peak of Mount Athos, weren’t it, Phil? The madness of Hera was on Hercules at the time. The poor blighter had just strangulated his wife and then he done his three pups in and two more of his brother's for good measure. So there were six bodies laid out in a row atop a monstrous funeral pyre, ready to get their send off to Hades' realm and then to the Elysian Fields, no doubt.

"But Hercules, weepin' and moanin' at the awful thing he'd done, couldn't bring himself to light the blaze. No man -- or woman neither -- would dare approach him lest they, too, end up havin’ their throats slit and their carcasses tossed on the pyre. It was only Phil who was brave enough to go venturin' up them rocky slopes to give aid and comfort to Hercules. It was Phil here who done lit up the pyre when Hercules was too bestruck with grief to do no more than slobber in the wind. Ain't that so, Phil?"

"Aye," Philoctetes said, "Hercules was mightily grieved, I can tell you that."

"So Hercules, as a way of expressin’ his gratefulness, done give Phil his most treasured bow on account of how Phil were comin' near to him and strikin' the torch that finished the job," the fellow from the crew said. "And that's how Phil come to possess Hercules' bow."

"Which must now find its way to Diomedes to do its final work on the battlefield of Ilium," Philoctetes said.

"Why? What's so special about Hercules' bow?" Lila said.

"You got me there, Ms.," Philoctetes shook his head. "It ain't an easy thing to string a bow such as this, and then you've got to pull hard as a giant on the action. When you do, you can make an arrow fly terrible far, but that's all I know about this here bow, ‘cept as how some word of prophesy were sayin’ as how Diomedes were in need of it, and the gods know I’ve got no further use for it. I can catch my day's rations of rabbit and squirrel with a fling of me trusty dirk as quick as I can loose with a bolt from out that sturdy bow."

"And what about that awful smell?" Lila said. "Can nothing be done about it?"

"Would that it could," Philoctetes looked around at the men in the circle. "You see, Ms., I was on the way to Ilium with the first of the King’s fleet from the harbor back at Aulis. That were ten long sunmarks ago. The ship put in here at Lemnos, just as you men have done and you as well, Ms. The girls on this island are most beauteous by far in all these pretty isles. And it were known for a truth that the lasses that inhabit this island are snakes in lovely human form. If you were to come sneakin’ up on 'em whilst they be moltin' and were to bruit away with their skins, why, they'll live with you and be your lovin' wife and keep a tidy house and bear you no end of lovely children, and forever after, you won't be wantin' to lay a rovin' eye 'pon another mortal girl is how perfect in love and every domestic virtue are these beauteous snake-girls of Lemnos.

"But if you take their molted skins away, you've got to hide ‘em real good, for if ever they should find 'em and remember and slip 'em on again, then back they go to bein' snakes, and when you’ve come walkin' in the door from huntin' game in the bush, they'll leap ‘pon you uncoiled and sink their fangs deep in your private parts, and then they'll go slitherin' out the door to thrash away as snakes in the brush and never will you see 'em anymore."

"Is that what happened to you?" Lila said.

"Aye," Philoctetes said and a wave of sadness swept over him. "I done hide the skin in the eaves of the thatch 'til one fine day, my lovely lass were stowin' jars of beans high overhead ‘pon the topmost shelves and there she happened upon it. And then she remembered. And that smell you're smellin' were from the bite she give me in my Johnny-tails when she gone sidewindin' out the door."

"It's the smell of his rottin' member," one of the ship's crew said. "There ain't no worse of a smell in all the known world."

"And there's no cure for it?" Lila said.

"None as I've heard tell," Philoctetes shook his head. "But when a man and a snake have mated on the island of Lemnos, so the sibyls say, she'll come for you at the end of your days and change you into her likeness, and off you'll go as snakes together, slitherin’ down to Charon's boat for the final passage o'er."

"Give me the bow," Lila said, her heart moved to pity. "I'll make sure that Diomedes gets it."

"I'm beholden you, Ms.," Philoctetes said. "It's Hercules wish that Diomedes should be gettin' the bow for to use as he might see fit."

To spare the company the further discomfort of the oppressive smell which emanated from his loins, Philoctetes bade farewell and faded back to the darkness of the woods.

"Now you’ve got two precious objects to convey unto Diomedes, Ms.," one of the crew smiled as he laid the bow down beside her.

"I do?" Lila's eyes widened with a start. Did this soldier of Hellas -- and if he, then, perhaps, the others -- know that Lila was carrying the great jeweled treasure of the Amazons in a pack at her waist?

"Why, to be sure," the fellow smiled. "One were the bow, and the other were your own most precious self."

The next morning, after taking on a hefty load of supplies and a large stockpile of weapons, the warship rowed out of port and, in less than a candlemark, was once again hauling on the high seas on a bee line north/northeast to the shores of Ilium, passing through the straits of Tenedos shortly after midday.

Lila volunteered to take a turn at the oars, mostly to have something to do, but the boson politely declined the offer, explaining that the shifts were full up and that for her to grab an oar would mean that one of the men, for no good reason, would be compelled to remain idle. "And idle hands are the demon’s workshop..." There was nothing for it, then, but to while away the candlemarks contemplating the dull, endless rolling of the sea or else to poke around below decks, watching the galley crew prepare the next meal or trying, without much luck, to catch a nap when the sea swell seemed calm. All the time, Lila concealed the jeweled belt within the folds of her tunic and kept a close eye on the bow which she handled with affection, though it was so massive that she could hardly lift it. If the bow had truly belonged to Hercules, Lila felt sure, it could only be used for good.

When the ship at last came within sight of land and Ilium's giant walls appeared as tiny, gray bumps on the horizon, Lila's heart began to pound in anxious anticipation. It was one thing to set off on an impossible journey in the hope of retrieving an item of inestimable worth that even Xena and Gabrielle had not been able to obtain. In a sense, Lila had gone on her quest partly because the pain she'd felt at her enforced separation from Penthesileia could only be borne by attempting something outré and partly as a self-imposed penance to assuage her sense of guilt over what she'd taken to be her selfish desire that Penthesileia turn away from her intended course of action for the purpose of exploring the possibility of making a life with Lila -- an outcome which Lila had badly wanted regardless of what Penthesileia might or might not have wanted. But to Lila's amazement, her quest had been successful. Penthesileia would surely be shocked by Lila's audacity, but would she be pleased? Would she see in Lila's determined gesture a sign of selfless and therefore redemptive love, or would Lila only succeed in imposing upon Penthesileia an even greater burden of selfishness at the very instant when Penthesileia would be speeding away from Lila on a collision course with a sacrificial destiny from which there would be no turning back.

Now, at the eleventh candlemark, even as the sandy plain of the Scamander and the massive walls of the besieged city came into view while the ship slipped into the lane of its approach to the makeshift docks along the beach, Lila's guts began to churn with the ache of self-doubt. Did I do the right thing for the right reason? Or will the very improbability of a peasant girl, who knows little about the world of men and less about the causal complexities of the wars they fight, having gone to see Queen Admete on her own initiative and having mastered her royal presence without any authority to command, only make matters worse? But it was too late for Lila to undo what she’d done. She'd set the wheel in motion. Now she'd have to roll and spin with it.

The ship's captain appointed an escort to convey Lila and the bow to Diomedes' tent. Lila was much relieved to have an escort in view of the horrid assault that had taken place, days before, on these sandy dunes. Once again, Lila felt herself running for her life, a step or two behind Ephiny, the small outrigger with its half dozen oars and tiny sail their only hope of flight as Velasca had turned and staved off their attackers so that Lila and the others might escape. Debarked from the ship and standing on the rocky shore, waiting for the chariot that would take her through the Argive lines to Diomedes' tent, Lila whispered to the gritty stones that lined the beach below the rising dunes, "I won't forget you, Velasca, nor the sacrifice you made on this spot that's forever consecrated with your blood."

The chariot pulled up, driven by a rider in plume and mail who skillfully reined a pair of tacked and blindered horses. Lila handed the bow to the charioteer and climbed aboard. One of the soldiers who'd made the trip from Tiryns climbed in beside her and, with Lila snugly ensconced in the middle, the three of them rode through the milling crowds of E-5's, Spec 4's and the many non-coms that made up the bulk of the assembled soldiery.

Several turns of the sandglass later, as the chariot crested a small knoll that overlooked the gently lapping surf and the serpentine lines of the soldiers' encampments which now stretched along the coast as far as Lila's eyes could see, Diomedes’ tent came into view with its broad pavilion, flapping pennants and flying standards. Lila took a deep breath and sought inwardly to settle herself down. You may be an ordinary farm girl from an insignificant village, she told herself, but you're also the beloved of the Queen of all the Amazons and a worthy companion to the former Destroyer -- who may yet become a Redeemer -- of Nations. To conquer yourself -- your paralyzing fear, gnawing doubt and deep sense of inadequacy and unworthiness -- is to know the way. The way to light and life and love and truth. Lila, Lila, Sarsaparilla, I know you can do it; I know you've got the stuff that brave souls are made of.

"Allright, Ms., we've discharged our duty to you per Queen Admete’s orders," the soldier said to Lila as he helped her dismount. "At this point, you're on your own."

"Thank you for your kindness," Lila said, courteously. "And please... when you return home, remember me fondly to your Queen."

Then Lila turned, quite alone, bow in hand, to face the fly of Diomedes’ tent, not knowing what he looked like or what on earth to expect when she encountered him.

Several turns of the sandglass went by, and Lila began to wonder if she ought to approach the entrance to the tent and poke her head inside. Strange that no guards appeared to be posted. Perhaps no one was present. In that case, she'd have to endure an indeterminate, nerve-wracking wait. As Lila beheld the large tent and its wide entrance and then, off in the distance, the barely discernible, grayish-purple walls of the gated city of Priam, she noticed the deepening twilight. It was getting on toward dusk. Lila had been traveling, at a breakneck pace, since early the previous morning: two days, via man-o'-war from Tiryns to Troy when it had taken Gabrielle and Xena, aboard Argo, fully a week to make the trip to Tiryns from home. Oh, my..., it suddenly occurred to Lila, Gab and Xena won't know that I'm coming back. They must think I'm safe at home by now. I've been thinking only of my love, but will Gab and Xena be upset with me for coming back?

As Lila mulled these thoughts over, she happened to glance toward the horizon where a round yellow ball, like the one the enaretes kores used in their thesmophoria skit, was just now coming up over the far hills. Omigods! Lila froze where she stood. Could that be the full moon? Has all Hades broken loose while I’ve been away? Has my darling paid the ultimate price, and I've arrived too late? Hippolyte's belt is nearly within my loved one's grasp, but is her beautiful hand now lying lifeless in the rubble, her heart never to know how close her hand had come to holding the gift and the curse that took her own beloved's life?

In that instant of incipient panic, Lila broke through at last to the brightly lit plane of a higher, finer, more ineffable love and so understood -- and truly affirmed and, in so doing, attained an inkling of Lao Ma's courage, wisdom and serenity, even at the point of her horrid, torturous death -- that she could willingly stand aside and, with a happy heart, let Hippolyte be the love of Penthesileia's life while her own love's part would be to restore to Penthesileia the token of that indestructible love and that this lesser part would truly be the greater. Even if Lila had come too late, it would be allright.

But Lila noticed that the moon didn't look quite spherical and that, behind her, amid flaming, cloud-borne ribbons of cerise and scarlet, the orange ball of the sun was still hovering a little ways above the flat line of the ocean, and, when Lila looked back to the moon, she noted that its color was still a tad pale against a backdrop of blue sky not yet deepened to indigo. Selene was still waxing in her orb, though just barely. She would be full tomorrow, not tonight.

"Another stargazer, I see," Lila heard a voice which suddenly recalled her to herself as she turned away from the heavens to behold a tall, good-looking man standing in front of her, dressed in a soldier's uniform that sported any number of bars and chevrons. The soldier, doubtless an officer, had dark hair and a high forehead, well formed cheeks and jaw and a naturally erect bearing. Most striking were his eyes: dark, lively, penetrating.

"What...? Oh. Sorry, I was just looking up at the moon. She appears largest when she's poking up over the horizon, doesn't she?" Lila tried to focus her attention.

"And if you look closely, you can see that Aphrodite is the evening star in these waning days of an unusually mild autumn," the officer spoke graciously.

"Why, yes," Lila said, gazing back toward the moon. "She's brighter in the evening nowadays, isn’t she?"

"I have a spyglass in the tent," the obliging officer said. "I often venture out in the evening to have a peek at the constellations."

"Do you know them well, the stellar patterns?" Lila said, warming to this attractive gentleman.

"I'm afraid not," he chuckled warmly. "The Dippers and the Bears are about it. And Orion's belt."

"Belt," Lila’s voice, for an instant, lost its spring. "Yes, well... My knowledge of astronomy is even more rudimentary than yours, then. Those little white points of light look to me to be little more than a jumble of sugar crumbs on a seamless, navy blue tablecloth."

"But your knowledge of earthly matters is not so slender, I see," the officer gave Lila a mildly coaxing look.

"Earthly matters, did you say?" Lila said. "I'm afraid that any such knowledge is also fairly circumscribed."

"And yet you hold the fate of nations in your hand," the officer smiled.

"I do?" Lila said.

The officer, still smiling, glanced at the bow. Inadvertently, Lila followed his gaze.

"That bow belonged to Hercules," the officer said.

"So I’ve been told," Lila replied.

"And Hercules gave the bow to Philoctetes in a gesture of gratitude for a very important service that Philoctetes performed for him," the officer continued.

"Apparently so," Lila said.

"Am I to understand that Philoctetes entrusted you with the bow?" the officer raised an sceptical eyebrow.

"As a matter of fact, he did. Last night on the island of Lemnos," Lila said. "I can assure you that I didn't steal it, nor did I accidentally stumble upon it. It was given to me by the man himself."

"Then you are, indeed, a bearer of excellent tidings," the officer smiled and extended his hand. "May I see it?"

"I've been instructed to deliver the bow to Diomedes," Lila hesitated. "I'm told that this is his tent."

"Indeed it is," the officer smiled.

"If you wouldn't mind, then," Lila said, looking politely at the officer, "I'd prefer to deliver it in person. I have some business to discuss with Diomedes on another matter as well."

"Then luck and circumstance have combined most adventitiously on your behalf this evening," the officer smiled. "I'm the very man you seek."

"You're Diomedes?" Lila's eyes widened.

"For better or worse," Diomedes made a little bow of introduction.

"My goodness," Lila said.

"And, as you've pointed out, this happens to be my tent," Diomedes said.

"Why, yes, I suppose it is," Lila nodded.

"I rarely have the good fortune of coming out of it to behold such a splendid apparition," Diomedes smiled more broadly. "And you would be..."

"Lila," Lila responded. "I believe you’re acquainted with my sister, Gabrielle."

"You're Gabrielle's sister?" Diomedes raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, and I bring you a message from Queen Admete," Lila said.

"A message to me from Admete?" Diomedes raised his eyebrow still higher.

"Who requests that you afford me safe passage across the plain to the gates of Ilium," Lila said. "I'm bringing Hippolyte's belt to Penthesileia."

Diomedes was not often nonplussed; but, in the instant, he stood in front of this pretty young woman, who, in her buff and buckskin tunic, short brown skirt and sandals, stuck out like the sorest of thumbs at this heavily armed and guarded troop installation in the midst of a major military offensive, and the expression on his face was almost dopey with an equal measure of whimsy and amazement.

"Let me get this straight," Diomedes said. "You’re telling me that in addition to arriving here with Hercules bow -- a feat that not even the members of Agammemnon's general staff have been able to accomplish -- you've also been to Tiryns to see Admete and she's given you Hippolyte's belt, a prize possession that she’s refused to hand over to anyone, even to Xena and your sister?"

"That's right," Lila said.

"Would you mind showing it to me?" Diomedes said.

Lila lifted the lower hem of her tunic to reveal the black leather pack strapped firmly to her hips. She undid the buckle, raised the flap and invited Diomedes to remove the contents. With his eyes on Lila's eyes, Diomedes reached inside the pack, took hold of the belt and out it came as he drew back his arm.

Diomedes marveled at the jeweled treasure with wonder. "How on earth did you come by this?"

"I was with the Amazons on the beach when we were attacked by your men," Lila said, her voice calm, her manner self-possessed. "One of our number, Velasca, gave her life so that the rest of us might escape."

"Yes, I know," Diomedes, holding the belt, said with a mild tone of self-recrimination.

"When the others left Tenedos to return home, I declined to go with them," Lila said. "Instead, I boarded a cruise liner and then a freighter and made my way to Tiryns where Queen Admete was so kind as to admit me to her presence. I confess that I expected her to be vain and self-centered. I discovered that she's intelligent and compassionate. I told her that I wanted to return the belt to Penthesileia and that Penthesileia and I had formed a certain... intimate bond. Queen Admete assented and, knowing that time was of the essence, she gave me the belt and put me on the warship that just weighed in over there at the dock.

"Last night, the ship put in at the harbor in Lemnos. The men invited me to go ashore. There we encountered Philoctetes who gave out a terrible smell. Apparently he’d married and settled down with one of the snake-women who dwell on that island. When she discovered her molted skin in the eaves of the cottage and put it on, she remembered who she was and turned back into a snake, bit the gentleman in an unfortunate lacuna of his body and so inflicted the wound which emits the offensive odor. For that reason, or for some other which he may have chosen not to disclose, he's been unable to venture off the island. He thus entrusted me with the bow when he learned that Herc... that Hercules is a friend of mine. He insisted I give the bow to you. I know no more about it. I felt sorry for the gentleman. He seemed so bereft and forlorn.

"Your Queen has asked you to assist me in completing my mission and I thank her immensely for her generosity. Also, being Macedonian and a civilian, I'm told that for as long as I remain within this theater of military operations, I'm under your authority and likewise your protection in your capacity as the Commander of the Army of Northern Hellas."

"My dear," Diomedes handed the belt back to Lila, "Xena and your sister and now you are making my life extremely difficult."

"I'm truly sorry," Lila said. "I'm sure that's not their intention. I know it isn't mine."

Diomedes stood in front of Lila who lowered her eyes. He towered over her, being tall, even for a soldier, and Lila being below the average height for women in these Aegean isles. Diomedes thought for a turn of the sandglass and then, with the beginnings of a smile, he said, "Yet things happen for a reason, don't they?"

Lila looked up. "Beg pardon?"

"It's a reflection, but I suppose it's a question too," Diomedes said. "I came to Ilium to fight a war, bound, as I was, by the Oath of Tyndarius by which each of Helen's suitors should, if called upon, aid the victorious suitor in his quest for her return, should it come to that which, unfortunately, it has. Yet I find myself being hedged about on every front. Not so much militarily as morally. At first, I dismissed these challenges, especially the ones that came from Xena. I said to Xena, 'Don't project your troubled conscience onto me. Don't assume that my agenda dovetails with yours.' I had done a shameful thing that involved rustling horses and murdering a king as he lay asleep. Xena's king coincidentally, not that Xena has ever been aggrieved by the fate that may befall a king. But even if my conscience was, in fact, troubling me, despite the excuse that I was, after all, following the orders of my superior as I have every right and obligation to do, still, given the twists and turns of her own calico career, Xena was hardly the one to be throwing a bad conscience up to me.

"Yet they do say that no good deed goes unpunished. I allowed my bad conscience to prompt me into granting Xena's request that a means be devised to get the Amazons -- and, apparently, yourself -- out of Troy and over the strait to Tenedos. I wasn't obliged to do anything of the kind. These intramural Amazon quibbles over who's going to be queen mean nothing to me. Once you and your companions had entered the gates of Ilium and had become King Priam's guests, you became, at that instant, traitors to Hellas who were consorting with the enemy. You could be executed for a spy. So could your sister. Xena's case is more complex. Xena's Thracian, and her king was allied with King Priam, but Xena's a Greek Thracian and therefore a subject of Hellas and falls under my jurisdiction as well."

"With due respect, Commander," Lila looked Diomedes in the eye. Even when he was angry and believed himself to be in the right, fellow feeling and mercy were never far from Diomedes’ heart. "I come from a small farming village. Most of our young men, including a former sweetheart, have been conscripted into King Agammemnon's service and have come here to fight this war at the peril of life and limb. Their absence has imposed a hardship on their families and on their villages as well, especially during the late summer moonmarks when the harvest is in full swing. The women in our villages have had to do double duty in the fields. The older men have borne the brunt of the heaviest part of the work, often lugging and lifting more than is wise, at their age, for their backs and their hearts.

"Largely as a result of the absence of our young men and the protection which their presence affords, local warlords have had a freer hand than they otherwise might have had to conduct their extortion and racketeering activities which take an enormous toll on our psychological well-being and severely tax our material resources. Not quite a fortnight ago, a close friend and I were abducted at knifepoint and taken hostage by Latrinus and his gang. We were beaten, abused and terrorized. I was nearly raped and my friend would likely have been killed if Xena and my sister had failed to arrive in time to prevent it. This would not have happened if the young men from our villages had been at home and not hundreds of leagues away fighting a war in which they and their families have very little stake. I consider, sir, that I personally have paid a significant price for the conduct of this war, and I'm not the only one, nor is the price that I've paid the highest or most grievous by any means."

Diomedes nodded. Lila's comment struck a chord of truth. It was an irony that had been brought home to Diomedes with particular force as a result of his three confrontations with Xena since the day that she and Gabrielle had arrived in Ilium to help even the odds. Though Diomedes had his doubts about the justice of the war and though, personally, he had strong reservations about the dynastic ambitions of the House of Atreus, and though he harbored no ill will toward the House of Priam and the people of Ilium, he nonetheless believed that warfare, if conducted according to fair and equitable rules, could be a noble undertaking and that soldiering could be an honorable profession, a means of protecting the weak and holding the strong in check. Yet here was Lila reminding him that war had other sorts of combatants: those who bore war's burdens in silence because they had no voice to be heard. And now the message was being beamed at him from a much purer source than had that same message come from Xena or, by now, from Gabrielle. Lila had no blood on her hands for her soul to redeem. She spoke a truth unclouded by any need for repentance and atonement.

"And yet, though you know it not," Diomedes said, "you yourself have become the agent of war's bitterest gall and sharpest sting. Against our will, it seems, the Fates use even the best of us to accomplish their overriding purpose."

"In what sense?" Lila frowned.

"You're unaware of the prophesy concerning the bow that you're holding in your hand?" Diomedes said.

"I know only the substance that I've related to you," Lila said. "This bow means nothing to me other than having triggered some fond associations of Herc whom, I've lately become aware, has had a chequered past of his own."

"The Oracle at Delphi prophesied that until Hercules bow should be brought to the shores of Ilium by one who's 'of pure issue of blood,' our forces, no matter how superior to those of the enemy, could not hope to prevail," Diomedes said. "The bow has been with Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos all these many sunmarks. We couldn't send for it. It had to be brought. Not by a participant but by a spectator of the war, yet one who has everything to lose on account of the war. The belt that you carry tells me you have a great deal to lose at the completion of this war, Lila."

"I do," Lila said without flinching. "I will lose someone whom I love and with whom I wish to make a life."

"Then I'm truly sorry," Diomedes said, softly.

"I would never have laid a hand on this bow had I known of the existence of such a prophesy," Lila said.

"No, I'm sure you wouldn't have," Diomedes said.

Lila looked at the dazzling object that she held in her hands and then at Diomedes. "It's an ugly thing, this belt, isn't it?"

Diomedes regarded Lila with a look of surprise.

"Garish, gleaming, ostentatious," Lila said, "a hideous bauble valued at who knows how many thousands of dinars. With this worthless trinket, the greatest of fools, because he's an immortal fool, sought to coerce what can only be freely given."

"What are you hoping that Penthesileia will do with it?" Diomedes said.

"Destroy it," Lila said through hard, barred teeth.

"You'll arrive safely within Ilium’s gates. I’ll see to it," Diomedes said. "I'll send you in my personal chariot driven by my own batman. I'll chance no replay of the misfortune that befell you and the others when you'd been promised safe passage home. But first some refreshment. I'd be honored if you'd dine with me this evening. Then we'll have you back to where you started before the night is over."

"That's a kind invitation," Lila said. "I'd be delighted to accept."

Lila sat down to a fine bivouac dinner with Diomedes after which the Commander summoned his aide and had the fellow prepare the chariot. Then Lila and Diomedes shook hands and bade one another farewell.

"If you do conquer with the pride of the victors," Lila said as they parted, "remember that the length of pride is honor and its width, nobility. Let the wanton slaughter of the innocent be beneath you."

Diomedes warmly wished Lila a successful conclusion to her journey and watched her ride down the little drumlin onto the plain in the car that bore his personal insignia.

"Unusual young woman," Diomedes thought to himself. "Not surprising, though, given the company she keeps and the woman she loves." Then Diomedes re-entered his tent. Hercules bow had at last arrived on the shores of Ilium. There was much careful planning that remained to be done before the final Argive onslaught of Ilium might occur and, with it, the total victory that would be theirs following Ilium's long-awaited defeat.

"Ho!" came the cry from within Ilium's thick, heavily guarded walls. "Open the Scaean Gate! Diomedes' chariot comes bearing a fluttering ensign of peace! Perhaps the Commander wants to discuss a negotiated settlement!"

Excitement buzzed about the mall and courtyard and out in the staging area immediately behind the giant gate that now creaked open on its immense hinges and busses to admit a lone Argive chariot with its two scant occupants: the driver and, presumably, one of Diomedes' adjutants.

Deiphobus, the skirts of his long robe dragging, went running down to the turnabout at ground level where incoming chariots made their wide sweeping circles as they drew to a halt and discharged their passengers. What news might be blowing in the wind of this horse and rider sent by one of Agammemnon’s high-ranking field officers?

"An envoy!" Deiphobus cried. "A chargé sent by Diomedes himself! Make room! Let them be heard!"

Up the broad marble stairs, in the guest quarters, out on the belvedere which looked over the staging area and the huge, swinging gate, Xena and Gabrielle overheard the interruption and went scooting out to the balcony to look down at the growing hubbub as a crowd began to collect and mill around on the turf.

But the look of keen anticipation on Deiphobus' face soon turned to one of confusion and chagrin as the passenger alighted from the horse-drawn car and the charioteer shouted at the porters who manned the entrance, "Errand's done! The girl's been returned safe and sound! Open the gate in the name of Diomedes and the noble House of Atreus!"

As the charioteer galloped free of Ilium's walls and lit out across the sandy plain for the Argive encampment on the beach, Deiphobus scowled and said, in a voice that carried, "Why, it isn't an envoy at all. It's Lila."

"Lila?!" Gabrielle and Xena exchanged alarmed glances. Impossible. Lila's long gone. She's back home where she belongs, snug on her little cot in the loft that looks out on the yard and the byre where Gida's nuzzling her kids.

Yet some dreaded sixth sense took hold of Gabrielle and Xena simultaneously and sent them flying down the stairs, through the garth and out to the staging area enclosed by the gate that had now swung shut. Sure enough, though Xena and Gabrielle were temporarily stunned into silence before Gabrielle could rally and shout across the length of the courtyard, "it couldn't be but it is... Lee!!"

"Greeks wha hae...", a trope on Robert Burn's
"Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn"