Dear Readers: Back to B.C. we go, to see Cloe and Rider a long time ago, when he wasn't married to someone else.... yet o_o
The ancient times may feature twists and turns for #Cloder too, though... let's find out what fate has in store...
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Scene 4: No End on Earth
2020 B.C.
“You’ve changed.”
She blinked. “I’ve changed?”
Chrysaor nodded. “Since you’ve been among us.”
Cloe was not sure what to make of this. “How so?”
He shrugged. “You seem less high and mighty. More… human.”
She scowled. Her mission here was to change others, not herself.
“You’ve stopped looking down at us, somewhat,” he continued. “You clearly came from wealth, that house upon the hill, with great contempt for how we live. But now you’re nearly one of us.”
She paused, pensive a moment. “It’s only been a few days…”
“Feels like much longer, eh?” Chrysaor reckoned. “The way you are with Rider. Like you’ve belonged beside him all your life.”
Blood was rushing to her cheeks, further betraying her humanity. “I’m just… myself. With anyone. How else would I be, with him?”
“Usually, a pair like you two wouldn’t waste so much time talking, or else silently staring at each other,” he asserted. “Would’ve fucked by now, for sure. And then been done with it, and both move on.”
“Move on to what?”
“To whatever. Whomever. That’s just animal nature, unless and until overpowered by the human heart.”
Cloe processed this, acutely conscious of her own pounding pulse.
“And who knows—” Chrysaor whispered, leaning in a little closer with a twinkle in his impish eyes, “—if your heart weren’t binding you to Rider… mayhap you could move on to me.”
“All right,” the bandit leader’s voice broke in from behind them. “Enough rest for today. Better reach the next town before dusk.”
Cloe looked up from her crust of bread to watch as Rider rose to ready the horses. He’d been far enough away that he could not have heard her quiet conversation with Chrysaor. And yet somehow his interruption seemed intended directly toward the green-eyed friend.
Since breaking camp, the band of bandits had set off across a broad, barren expanse of land, hoping to find another town or city soon enough to replenish their stores and get on with their lives. Such was life’s rhythm, led by Rider. Travel was on foot, as the horses were too few to seat the lot of them; the steeds trotted beside them, bearing the burden of bedrolls and folded tents. The company stopped to rest and to break bread along the way, from time to time. But not for long.
And as they walked, Cloe and Rider did indeed talk… at great length, just as Chrysaor had observed. They spoke of everything and nothing. She came to learn a thing or two about the man—though more so from the moments spent in silence than from anything he said. His eyes, she felt, always spoke far more loudly than his words.
“Look!” one of the men at the forefront of the group exclaimed as they crested a rocky hill, a sprawling view of land and sea spread far below. “A city! Quite a prosperous city, it appears.”
“Much to plunder,” another companion rejoiced.
“Not by day,” Rider cautioned. “This place is powerfully fortified. We’ll have to pillage in the dead of night, in order to emerge alive.”
The city was certainly larger and more strongly built than most others that this company had encountered. Humble settlements of huts dotted the coastline in the shadow of colossal seaside cliffs, but further inland, the city’s central structures stood sturdy and proud.
“Set up camp at the base of this hill,” Rider bade his followers. “I and some men will enter peaceably for now, to scope out the city. To see where its riches are greatest and its defenses weakest. We’ll meet at sundown at the summit of this hill, to plan our moonlight raid.”
“Only men, for your entry by day?” Cloe chimed in as the band obediently began to unpack. “Wouldn’t that raise some suspicion?”
He looked at her levelly. “Not if we go unarmed.”
“You’re threatening even without your weapons, though,” she stated. “More so than you know. There’s a visible hunger for plunder in your eyes that can’t be hidden—all of you who live and breathe as thieves. If the town were to perceive it…”
He cocked his head. “And your eyes hold no hunger, I suppose?”
Her brown gaze deepened. “Not for what shouldn’t be mine.”
“She is right,” Dictys calmly interposed. “Her presence would lend toward an innocent appearance. No man with pride ever lets himself fear a woman, after all—and with great wealth and power comes great pride. The rich men of this city will not see her as a threat.”
Rider paused, considering Cloe closely for a moment. “So now you want to aid our thieving cause? Sooner than slip off to inform the city of our shady plans, so that they can have us killed?”
The notion of his death—caused by her betrayal, no less—struck her more deeply than it should have. She bit her lip against the pang.
He wrongly read her bitten lip as hesitance. “Somehow I doubt it.”
“Doubt all you want,” she answered without hesitation. “I guess you'll have to take your chances.”
A longer pause, this time. “Come, then,” he eventually acceded, extending a hand toward her. “I’ll just keep a close eye on you.”
“As you always do,” Chrysaor mumbled from somewhere nearby.
Rider culled a handful of men, and several other women for good measure, to accompany him into town. Chrysaor was not among the comrades he selected. To Cloe’s chagrin, the batty blonde was. Mostly because she clung to Rider like a barnacle as soon as she learned that women were invited on this venture. Leaving their weaponry behind, the small group descended toward town, met with an open welcome.
“Good thing you chose to bring women along,” the clingy blonde purred at her former lover as the group wove through the streets. “No doubt I’m the reason we’re so well-received, don’t you think?”
He had no comment. Even if her exposed limbs and overflowing breasts were to thank for the welcome, that was of no matter to Rider.
He ordered the group to disband, to survey the city separately and reconvene at dusk atop the hill as planned. He dispatched the half-naked girl with another man. She whined in protest, of course.
“I’ve got to keep an eye on this one,” he told her, nodding toward Cloe, whose hand he still clasped. “Can’t trust her the way I trust you.”
The words were not entirely untrue, and they were flattering enough to shut her up and make her do as told without complaint.
“She’s… quite fond of you,” Cloe remarked as she and Rider headed in their own direction. “To say the very least.”
He released a soft laugh. “Do you blame her?”
“No one is to blame for whom they love.”
“Oh, that’s not love,” he snorted, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the woman spurned. “That’s attachment. Addiction.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Love is more.”
“How would you know?”
He swallowed. “Let’s do what we came for, shall we?” he uneasily proposed. “Look for large houses and lazy guards.”
“Well, there’s the palace,” she teasingly observed, gesturing toward the royal domicile visible in the near distance.
He rolled his eyes. “So you are trying to get me killed…”
“What, you don’t think you’re capable of that? A regal robbery?”
“Don’t try to goad me into it. You’ll fail.”
“And you’re sure to fail if you don’t even try…”
“At least I’ll stay alive.”
They continued in this manner awhile, attempting to study the scene at the same time. Cloe, for her part, focused her scrutiny more on the citizens than on the city itself. This was a rare opportunity for exposure to a wider swath of humankind, beyond the one band of wandering thieves with whom she’d spent her time on earth till now.
In all the chatter that she overheard, she got wind of a disturbing development in this kingdom. The townsfolk were all whispering of an imminent sacrifice: the king had ordered a virginal maiden chained to a cliff, at the mercy of a savage pirate set to come ashore tonight. Apparently, based on what Cloe could gather from hearsay, the unfortunate soul was a stand-in for the lovely princess Andromeda.
Appalled, she brought the situation to Rider’s attention.
“I, too, have overheard,” he muttered. “A dreadful and disgusting thing. Makes me actually want to rob this king.”
“Maybe you should,” Cloe grumbled, blood boiling in horror, ashamed of having spun this monarch’s thread.
“Please—don’t get too fired up about it, lest you draw eyes,” he advised. “You’re here to ease suspicion, aren’t you? Not to raise it.”
These words, contrary to intent, enraged her further. “How could you speak like that? When this poor, innocent girl…”
They rounded a corner; Cloe’s gaze was drawn suddenly upward, toward a tall coastal crag that now came into view. And at what she beheld, all the boiling blood froze in her veins.
This couldn’t be her sister. Couldn’t be. Lachesis had chosen to stay in the Cave, for fear of the earth. This had to be some human girl, who happened to resemble her… Yet even from this distance, cliff set high above the streets, Cloe had no doubt as to whom this maiden was.
“Don’t look,” Rider gently urged her. “That only makes it worse.”
“We have to save her,” Cloe breathed, transfixed.
“Are you mad?” he whispered. “Turn this entire city, and its king, against us? In an attempt that’s sure to fail?”
She had stopped in her tracks, staring up at the crag. “But we…”
“No one here gives a damn about the girl. And neither do I,” Rider claimed. “It isn’t my charge to protect her; she isn’t mine to save.”
Cloe fumed, turning a burning gaze upon him. “Who is, then?”
In his silence, she suffered a deep, devastating defeat. Realizing just how little she had changed him. Maybe not at all.
“I should’ve known,” she snarled in bitter surrender. “You live only to save and to serve your own ass.”
She met his bay-blue gaze, for what would have to be the final time. His thread was dark beyond repair. She could not let herself grow any more attached, addicted… “I will not stand by such an ass as you.”
“Cloe…” he called, gripping her wrist as she turned on her heel.
“What—want to stop me? Tie me up again?”
His gaze silently promised that he’d never again do such a thing.
She couldn’t let that promise matter. Broke free of his grasp. But before she left, the words rose to her lips. Laid her human heart bare in a moment of bold, tragic passion. “I was yours without the ropes; I would’ve followed you across the world, to be yours at its end.”
The blue bay of his eyes became an ocean. Fervent, fathomless.
“But there’s no end for you on earth,” she ruefully realized aloud. “You’re blazing a path straight to hell.”
He let her go. He had to. Kept his silent promise, to her and to himself, to never hold anyone captive again.
Rider had seen enough of the city. He returned to the camp at the foot of the hill, though sundown was awhile away.
A pair of green eyes greeted him, below raised brows. “Where—”
“She’s gone,” Rider declared. The gravity of his tone discouraged any further questioning. Chrysaor retreated in silence.
But Dictys, for his part, was not about to drop the subject.
He approached Rider in private, to speak from a fatherly place. “She isn’t really gone, you know. She’s left a mark on you.”
Rider didn’t look up at his mentor. “She has left me with nothing.”
“In hell’s name, must you deny everything? Doubt every damned truth in your life?” Dictys reproved. “Doubt is blindness, boy.”
Boy. Rider winced at the word. Dictys had used to call him boy, back long ago. Back in the bright days of his youth, and in the dark days that had followed, once the boy had learned one dark and damning truth… Rider had thought he’d grown into a man, since then. But in so many ways, too many ways, maybe he hadn’t changed at all.
“Don’t let it blind you to the mark she’s left. Don’t you dare make nothing of it,” Dictys persisted. “Make something of yourself, for once.”
Rider seethed, seared by the unprecedented censure from his mentor. “I am no boy. And I do not take orders from you, Dictys.”
Dictys sniggered gruffly as he turned to leave. “Nor from anyone.”
Those words struck a chord in Rider. Reminding him, too well, of words recently spoken by the captive he’d released...
Or rather, lost. She hadn’t left because he’d set her free; she had chosen to free herself, from him.
He told his company to decamp. They would depart this realm by nightfall, as soon as the others returned. He claimed to have found the city’s defenses too strong; an attempt to sack this place would risk the loss of many lives. It didn’t matter what the others would report about the town—Rider’s word on this, as on all things, was the last.
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...Any thoughts? As always, I would love to hear!
I hope you'll check out the media image, too - I especially like this one :)
Next scene, we'll follow Atria in Ancient Mesopotamia, as she embarks into the wild to find the legendary Gilgamesh... And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)