FF The Huns Prologue and Chap 1

The spring sun warmed two travelers who crested a small hill and stopped to peer earnestly in all directions. The smaller of the two, an ash blond haired woman turned to her silent companion and shook her head.

"No sign of them anywhere, Xena." She turned to the golden palomino warhorse that accompanied them and pulled a waterskin from the horn on the saddle. She took a long swallow of cool water and wiped her month with the back of her hand.

Her tall beautifully muscular companion continued to study the terrain that stretched out before them with piercing cobalt blue eyes. Finally she turned and accepted the waterskin offered by her best friend. She wore the attire of a warrior: breast plate, gauntlets and leather with a large sword that hung over her back and a chakrum attached to her right side. She drank deeply and then returned the bag to the saddle horn.

"Guess it’s time to head north again, Gabrielle. We criss-crossed east and west pretty thoroughly."

"Maybe Ares was just joking about the Huns massing on the northern border. It could have been a trick to get you to agree to his terms."

Xena shook her head. "He doesn’t work that way. The god of war loves to keep his promises of death and destruction," bitterness coloring her low melodious voice. If anyone knew how Ares thinks and acts, it’s Xena, the dark souled warrior who followed his path as a war lord for ten long blood soaked years.

Gabrielle searched the cherished face beside her. "When we find the Huns, what will we do? How can we stop them?"

The warrior resumed scanning the horizon. "I don’t know. We’ll just have to find a way. If we tried to gather an army to fight them, we’d be annihilated. They are the best and most fierce warriors in the world. From horseback, they are almost unstoppable."

"You sound as if you admire them."

Xena turned back to her friend, "I do in a way. They are nomads that raid to survive. They conquer territory but move on and don’t really try to hold it. When they take a village, they capture the able bodied men and woman and sell them as slaves. The rest of the villagers, young and old or those who oppose them are executed. They do not torture or maim, just remove. They kill cleanly. All the village stores are sent back to the Hun family clans left behind and the village is burned to the ground."

"I don’t see anything to admire in a people that survive by murder and slavery," Gabrielle retorted angrily. She remembered many times as a little girl growing up in Poteidaia when villagers would warn their children the Huns would get them if they were bad. The Huns were something to be feared and hated. They came like the plague to sweep death and destruction over the land and wipe out all civilized life in their path. Then like the ocean’s tide, they would recede only to reappear again at some future time when life had returned to normal.

"They are truly wonderful warriors and horseman," Xena patiently explained. "I admire their skills and the pragmatic logic they use. Once a village is destroyed, the old and young would die of hunger. The Huns are, in a sense, merciful by killing all that are left. They don’t particularly enjoy killing and are not pain worshippers or inflicters. They just live by their code. I don’t condone their life style but I do understand it."

"How do you…." Before Gabrielle could complete her sentence, Xena was suddenly in motion. She swung onto the back of the warhorse and pointed to the north. A thin column of smoke was rising over the trees in the far distance.

"I’ll meet you there. Gabrielle, if it is the Huns, stay hidden. Your staff would not protect you from their swords. Ya, Argo!" With that call, the warrior was off in a neck breaking gallop. The large warhorse flattened into a full run moving across the open fields and sailing over a fallen tree in their path. Gabrielle watched them turn into a smaller and smaller speck in the distance and then started after them in a dead run.

The ride to the smoke’s origin had turned out to be a long and difficult trip through forests and meadows. At one point, Xena had run into a deep canyon that had required retracing her path. Frustrated and worried, she finally found the road which entered the smoldering village late in the day.

She pulled Argo up on the edge of the town and studied the landscape before her. It was deathly quiet. Her keen ears picked up no sound of wailing or injured people, no sound of animal life and even the birds were still as if afraid to sing. The village lay in smoky ruins with most of the thatched roofed structures only charred ashes. The smell of death and the start of decay hung in the air.

Bodies were scattered across the road and around the remains of the structures. They lay in twisted heaps like discarded rag dolls tossed around the blackened ruins. Xena slowly dismounted and began a search for survivors. She saw elderly men and woman laying motionless and cold, each face permanently etched in horror. Death had come with precision sword strokes and for the most part instantaneously. It was the children which clenched the jaw of the strong warrior and made her stop in dismay. The still little forms were also scattered about, some in the arms of their parents, others lying by themselves. All had been surgically executed. The warrior tightly pressed her eyes shut against the savage butchery as she took deep breaths trying to calm her churning stomach. In an instant, another village passed before her mind’s eyes. This one she saw from horseback with her own sword delivering the telling blows, bodies collapsing and blood spurting like miniature fountains.

A small sob escaped her tightened throat followed by a surge of white hot rage. She pulled down the protective steel curtain from her inner being, recognizing it as an old friend she hadn’t needed in a long time. With the walls firmly in place around her emotions, Xena coldly surveyed the surroundings. There was no sign of the destroyers of the village and its inhabitants. She stepped slowly and carefully around the dead but found no life anywhere. She knew that only the Huns could have devastated a village in such a fashion. She looked carefully at the ground and read the story imprinted there of the mounted warriors sweeping down on the unsuspecting. She saw no defenses and it appeared few were able to put up much of a struggle.

She followed the tracks to the other side of the village and across a small creek. It was clear a large group of warriors headed north and a smaller group of mounted soldiers moving people on foot headed to the west. Xena guessed they had several hours head start. She shook her head as she debated with herself and weighted alternatives. If she started now, she wouldn’t be able to catch up with the Huns and the villagers headed for slavery before dark. She could reach them the next day perhaps but then what? She knew the odds were against her of stopping the Hun guards by herself. She also recognized that the danger that lied to the north was more pressing and needed immediate attention. If the Huns were truly massing, then any day now they would sweep down the central valley and plain. No village in their path would be safe. Nothing could stop them till they reached Athens. It was not clear that the Athenian army would have any success against such ruthless and skilled warriors. The civilized world would be in ruin.

It was a terrible choice and making it enraged the warrior once again. She swung around on her heels and purposefully strided back into the village. The dead needed tending and the trail north called. She had to accept that the villagers were headed to the slavers and there was nothing she could do about it. The warrior remembered the cruel lines she had hissed at Gabrielle when they were in a fight for their lives with the Horde. "There are no good choices in war, only lesser degrees of evil." This seemed like another terrible example.

As she made her way back to Argo, Xena saw movement in the road ahead. She swung onto her horse’s back, reined her around and galloped back up the road. She slid the warhorse to a stop in front of Gabrielle who had just started running down the hill into the village.

She swung off the warhorse, planted herself firmly in front of the young bard and placed both hands on her shoulders. "Gabrielle, there is no need to go further. I was too late." The warrior’s voice sounded harsh and cold. Her face was set in a stone mask, emotions firmly in check.

"What do you mean, can’t I help with the wounded?"

"No. There are no wounded. Traveling with me, you’ve seen horrors that no one should ever have to experience. You don’t need to go down there."

Gabrielle starred up into the cold, hard set face of her friend. "And its fine for you? Are you so unaffected by all that you see? Are you so used to it?"

A bitter look traveled across the warrior’s face as she muttered, "I see this every night in my dreams. What’s one more village among so many?"

Gabrielle’s eyes softened as she looked with pity at her tormented friend. She grasped Xena’s hands and pulled the warrior to her. Suddenly, they were in each other’s arms in a tight hug. Tears streaked down the bard’s face and the warrior’s eyes watered as well. With one swift gesture, the bard had once again shattered the warrior’s defensive walls and protected her humanism.

Xena pulled back from the warm embrace of the bard and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. Her cold bitter eyes soften with love and pain. "All right, Gabrielle. Let’s go down there. The young and old have all been executed. The healthy were marched off to slavery. It clearly looks like the work of the Huns. We have to build a funeral pyre and administer to the dead."

The bard nodded and followed Xena down the hill into the village. The warrior turned and grabbed the young bard’s arm as she got her first look at the devastation. Xena pointed to a pile of wood stacked neatly to one side. "Build a pyre over there. I’ll bring the bodies." Gabrielle lifted pained eyes to the warrior and turned numbly to do as she was bidden. She needed to keep busy right now, to do something. The world had gotten darker and more frightening to the normally optimistic bard. She wondered how humans could do this to humans, to children.

The warrior made trip after to trip to the pyre Gabrielle built, her arms full of the dead. Gabrielle helped placed the bodies on the wooden structure and finally the task was completed. Xena poured oil from a jar she had found and soon the pyre was engulfed in flames. As they watched the orange glow, a deep sadness and a terrible dark premonition of evil days to come entered Gabrielle’s soul. Xena lifted her beautiful clear voice in song as the haunting funeral dirge which had become way too familiar to both of them rang out over the village.

Pulling her eyes from the flames, the warrior gathered Argo’s reins and swung onto the warhorse. She reached down a hand to her friend and without comment Gabrielle swung up behind her. They cantered through the destroyed village and across the creek.

Xena headed the mare north and at a quick lope followed the tracks of the Hun raiding party. There was not much daylight left and the warrior wanted to get as far along the trail as she could. Gabrielle was silent behind her, always a bad sign from the normally talkative bard. The mood between them was somber, filled with sadness and dread. Xena’s worst fears had been realized. She wondered if she would be strong enough and doubts of her own ability to deal with this horror crept into her soul.