A debt of thanks to Bardstormy for the edit! Now on with the show...
The Mind of Love
Chapter 4- Part I "The Messenger"
by FreeBard
nlima@juno.com
‘Another night,’ thought Gabrielle. ‘Another sleepless night.’ The day had been hard. They had made camp miles outside of this nameless, ruined village. Only now the horrid smell of burnt homes and dead bodies did not sting quite so badly in the bard’s nose. ‘All the dead…’ Those casualties with the strength had fled and all those without the strength to run had passed unceremoniously into the next life. They had roughly buried the dead, moving on as soon as possible at Xena’s insistence.
It wasn’t any easier trying to dose off, having slipped into the bedroll with only four or five monosyllabic words shared between herself and Xena.
‘Did I step over my bounds?’ she questioned as she shifted a little. She was on her side, facing toward the fire and away from the Warrior Princess. ‘No, No, I didn’t. She at least should tell me. I’m tempted to say she owes me- but… Maybe, just maybe if she didn’t feel so *obligated*…Do you ever stop talking to yourself?’ she grinned in spite of herself. Silence surrounded her and she was beginning to get cold. Gabrielle would be relieved if not to see Xena’s face, she told herself, then to warm her backside with the fire. She rolled over.
The blankets greeted her with a crumpled emptiness. She stretched her hand and laid it on the thick grey material and sighed. ‘It’s cool to the touch, she’s been gone a while…’ Strangely, she wasn’t upset that Xena had slipped away unnoticed but instead was filled with a desire to comfort her.
She was contemplating getting up to find the dark soul when she heard something faintly whoosh in the clearing beyond the fire. She whirled around and started getting up in one fluid motion. Well, fluid for one who hadn’t slept in a while. She began feeling around for her staff as she desperately blinked away at the blindness that greeted her. Her eyes adjusted and she saw a large, dark figure sitting on a log across the fire from herself. Argo snorted a little from her vantage point as she calmed from the initial shock.
"Wonder where she is…" the voice began, "funny how she goes off like that, not telling anybody."
"Ares," Gabrielle said, trying to sound as level-headed as she should have been. Her voice cracking slightly did not help to produce the desired effect.
"Yes, my dear girl…just commenting on how Xena’s never around when one needs her."
"That’s not true, she has always been there."
Gabrielle saw Ares grin as he leaned in toward the fire, "Right,
Gabrielle." She just clamped down on her emotions and braced herself for whatever he had in mind. "So, Gabrielle, has Xena told you where you two are headed and why?" he said with a perfectly annoying blend of nonchalance and menace.
"Why does it matter to you, Ares?" She didn’t like where he was taking her.
He snickered a little, "Tch, tch, tch, Gabby…something you feel you must hide, something you feel ashamed about perhaps?"
"Get to the point."
He continued casually, "the answer to my first question, which
you have been so reluctant to answer thus far is naturally," he paused, raising a dark eyebrow and lowered his jaw for a moment (which he often did) for dramatic effect. Gabrielle, as a bard, recognized the tactic and readied for the barb that was coming. "No." Another pause. " Of course she hasn’t been telling you much these days has she?"
She was shaken by his accusation, despite the fact that she had seen it coming. She scolded herself for showing weakness at this crucial instant. ‘Hm, Xena would be ashamed,’ she thought in a brief passing moment. ‘She did mention something about another city, but it was pretty vague,’ she admitted.
"It doesn’t matter Gabrielle, because I’m letting you know what’s going on."
"Am I supposed to be flattered?"
"No, but you should pay attention. You are heading for
Polyrubius, not that the name should mean anything to you but-" He rose from his seat and started crossing around the fire to where she stood."what is happening there should be of interest. My army that swept through this village a day or two ago and have continued into the next valley-"
"You did this?" she asked, almost breathless in grief.
"Yeah. Its a God of War thing." Gabrielle shook her head slowly
and sniffed a little bit, holding back some tears. He continued brusquely, "Anyway, my army is waiting just outside of Polyrubius, and they are waiting for this." He pulled out a scroll, wrapped and sealed with and intricate mark that was obscured in the failing firelight.
"And you want me to deliver it," she stated rather than asked.
"Yes, you do owe me a favor, after all." She inhaled sharply at the reminder. "And luckily for you, I picked this task which is so suited to your, ah, disposition."
"You think this is a bard thing?"
"Better than me asking you to kill someone, right?"
"Is it? What is on this scroll, the orders to attack, no doubt," she looked at the scroll and weighed it in her hand, as if to plumb the depths of its contents.
"Now, now Gabrielle, I guess you won’t know until you get there. They could be orders to retreat, to disband. You could be the courier of the greatest peacemaking effort of your day. Its a risk . But think of the possibility of saving all those lives." She looked at him skeptically. He continued, lowering his tone ominously, "It doesn’t matter, though, because you’ve got to deliver it with the seal unbroken. And don’t take too long, if the Captain doesn’t have this in his hands in three dawns’ time, he attacks. And I wouldn’t be in such a rush to tell Xena about all of this."
"You want me to keep something from her?"
"It seems to be a good policy for her."
Gabrielle said nothing, but hundreds of curses for him rolled around her head.
"Think about it Gabrielle, you tell her and it is suddenly her business. Then, my involvement and your motives in Chin will have to spill." She smiled inwardly to know that he wasn’t aware that Xena already knew. ‘Good to know us mortals can still hold some cards with the gods.’ "Besides, you are to be allowed into the camp, alone, to deliver the message. That much has been made clear to the Captain, but, should two people arrive, one of them with the distinct air of a true warrior, there will be bloodshed. Wouldn’t want that sort of thing on your hands, would you? At least not any more…Anyway, she finds out, she’ll come along. I know we all hold a great deal of faith in Xena’s fighting skill, but these are my best soldiers and there are a lot of them. Now, you wouldn’t want to risk her would you, Gabrielle?"
She stood there, detesting his smug attitude and above of his sense of finality about the issue. It was as if this plot had already been played out and she could only watch as her role was performed by a body which looked and moved like herself, but lacked the control of her mind.
"No," she said finally, "I wouldn’t want to risk her."
"Well then, dawn number one is fast approaching…and remember, you’ve only got three."
"I’ll remember," she said firmly and then added in an undertone, "I’ll remember…three days to deliver a death sentence."
"Well, I guess that is one possibility and I guess you’re going to find out firsthand." He then laughed and disappeared in a flash of light and nothingness beyond. The noise split the prevailing silence of the forest, and struck at Gabrielle’s prevailing sense of hopelessness.
The sound in the clear night causes Xena to look up sharply from her sword, which she had been sharpening. She paused briefly, her glinting blue eyes seeming to track the noise through the trees. It was regular but…She placed it as the sound of laughter drifting in from the camp, but it was not the light giggles of her bard, but something much more ominous. Though Xena admittedly had not heard the honest laughter of Gabrielle in days, maybe weeks, and she missed it more than she realized until that moment.
None of these thoughts registered with her, though, as she rose swiftly, instead she listening to her warrior’s ears. She sharpening stone slipped from her hands as she readied her sword and ran down to the short path back to Gabrielle.
Xena burst through the line of trees to find Gabrielle standing but leaning against her staff. No immediate danger. The fingers of her left hand were wrapped around something…ah, a scroll. All of this Xena’s mind recorded I’m one sweep of the scene with her ice-blue eyes. Whoever had been there had left, and Gabrielle seemed to be staring at nothingness, and seemed resigned.
"Gabrielle," Xena questioned, a touch of urgency still in her voice.
Gabrielle whirled around, shocked and then Xena watched as a wave of relief seemed to wash over her.
"Gabrielle," she continued to her friend, "I heard voices, laughter." She lowered her eyebrows slightly, adding, "and not the kind I like." Gabrielle crossed to her after sliding her staff to the ground next to the bedrolls.
‘Think fast, bard,’ she thought grimly to herself. "Actually, that was me…I couldn’t sleep," she winced inwardly to casually make that admission and watch as Xena minutely responded. The brief flicker of concern and love, the type that tended to consume and yet fill, flash across her face in spite of her efforts to maintain the warrior persona. Gabrielle was surprised to have been able to see the tiny break in Xena’s complete emotional shielding when she was in this mode. ‘Gods, Gabrielle, why wouldn’t you…You’ve spent day and night with this woman for two years, watching her every movement and emotion…er…*trying* to watch her every movement and emotion,’ her brain amended with a little laugh. This internal dialogue was outwardly covered with Gabrielle’s bardly lips telling the most transparent of lies. "And, I decided to work on a story…this scroll in fact," she waved vaguely and quickly to the scroll in her left hand. She continued to talk while edging the same scroll, still encircled by her fingers, behind her back. The subtle motion was not undetected by the watchful warrior, who noted the usual shape of the scroll and more importantly, a seal, though it was obscured by the waning firelight. "…And I’ve been having trouble with some of the dialogue, so I thought of a technique someone at the Academy had mentioned to me, about acting out parts of your story- in order to create a more real sounding dialogue and a true sensory experience which can then be described in greater and more vivid detail. So I was talking…and laughing," she added, remembering Ares’ departure, "to myself."
"Uh-huh," Xena said in response. ‘And just what story were you working on? Can I see it? And most interestingly, why would that scroll you’re holding now be sealed?’ all of these questions passed easily into Xena’s mind. All of these simple questions could have blown apart Gabrielle’s explanation quickly and thoroughly. All of these simple questions could have made that face, that was quivering slightly trying to cling to the light air that her story had cast, collapse into defeat, and into tears. Xena paused a moment longer and then knew to back down from the look of despair that crossed the pair of green eyes into which she gazed.
"OK, Gabrielle, go right ahead and finish your story," she said, without taunting or challenging. She saw it as one of the few responses that were safe for them both. Gabrielle declined as expected, claiming that she was tired. ‘That’s certainly seems true, my friend,’ Xena commented with a mental sigh. As Gabrielle crossed to her scrolls’ case in Argo’s saddlebag, ‘All the way on the other side of camp,’ Xena further noted, though her point was already proven, she caught a glimpse of the strange scroll in the moonlight of the quiet clearing. One look at the seal brought the fire to her eyes and confirmed her suspicions she had held since the first peal of laughter.