This story plays fast and loose with Ancient History and Linguistics; be warned.

Since the Mycenaean Greeks keep whining like little bitches, I have chosen to ease up on them for the nonce and give the Magyar mythology a credible mangling.

*****

(Right where I left off)

I was the oddity. My antics had only enhanced my allure, especially to the pre-twelve group that stood closest - nineteen pairs of little eyes looking at me expectantly. I swept the crowd with a polite, somewhat shy smile. For the girls from the freeholds, I was most likely a contradiction to everything they'd been taught, or experienced, before now.

The ghastly nightmare slinking around the bright sunshine Aya fanned into radiance by her proximity to my heart was that the male percentage in the Amazon world was plummeting rapidly. Mass executions will do that to a population. We were being efficiently and mercilessly put down and not replaced by the 'normal' means anymore. Every week there were fewer of us around for the children to notice.

Adding to their confusion was that Amazon girls were actively discouraged from forming bonds with any males they did encounter, especially the few still walking around the holds. From what I had gathered from my casual inquiries, the old Amazon male slave population was dwindling to zero fast.

Cultural ruthlessness married to a creeping racial insanity had led to them burning their old lifestyle down before a new one had been raised up. To these little girls, it meant that men were regarded in one of two ways: In their own microcosm, the girls were taught that males were the equivalent of a plow horse they saw wandering about, but they were denied the opportunity to interact with - a lumbering, yet relatively harmless animal.

To girls living an urban lifestyle, there was the constant watchfulness of their family guardians that taught them men were not to be trusted. Men were not some evil that needed to be destroyed. It was more that if they knew about the culture the girls grew up in, the males would crush their elders and steal them away into their chauvinistic malignancy.

Outsider women were viewed the same way because they would rather sleep contentedly in their male-created fantasy of equality than face the reality that life was a constant state of warfare - only things paid for in blood and sweat had value. Outsiders of both genders, by refusing to grasp that truism, were essentially parasites. You didn't kill all leeches. You only dispatched the ones threatening you and yours.

And then there was me. I had to face facts. I had a penis. Even tucked snugly in my cup and shorts, it was the beacon of our differences. That was the starting point of every encounter with a Full-blood Amazon - I wasn't one of them and they had been told to never see my 'kind' in a beneficial emotional context. Amazons were not supposed to have those kinds of relationships with men.

"I've missed you too, '****' '****'," Aya bumped foreheads with me. I was 'a Son of the White Stallion' who 'ran with the herds of Epona'. I was so proud of her. She had woven together a Magyar myth with an Amazon naming convention. Epona, the Celtic Horse Goddess and Aya's matron divinity, was worshiped with the sacrifice of foals - Amazons offered up fillies (female baby horsies) whose spirits ran with the Goddess in the Spirit World.

When the pre-Christian Magyars went to war, they sacrificed a white stallion to entreat their deities to grant them victory. No one was about to slit my throat, or cut my heart out. I was made sacred - a spirit stud in Epona's vast herd of mares. How freakishly accurate.

"I love you for your brains, you know that, don't you?" I whispered to Aya.

"Yes. You are saving up your other love for Mommy," she kinda/sorta teased me. Out of the semi-circle of children, three stood out. More accurately, they were dwarfed by their companions. I took the group's indecision as an offer to advance.

"Hi," I addressed the smallest three members of the audience. "Are you the Fatal Squirts?"

"They are not allowed that name," Sophia interceded. "No Amazon child deserves an acknowledgement before their trial." I half-turned and nodded her way.

"(Cough) '****' '****'," (cough, cough). "Excuse me, please." If she spoke Phoenician, I was boned for being obviously disrespectful of her authority and would have to take whatever punishment Sophia felt I deserved.

Otherwise, I was getting away with binding 'leads to death' to 'blood-death wound' in that ancient and highly extinct tongue: 'fatal - squirts' indeed. Her hand fell on my shoulder.

"I have heard you laugh at death," Sophia remarked. If I was on Zoosk, all you would have to do was type in 'Preference: Amazon Male Who Dares Talk Back' - and there was my smiling mug, all alone, staring back at you.

"Before I confess to anything, do you consider that an asset, or liability," I grinned.

"I withhold judgment," was her reply.

"I don't mean to 'laugh at death'. It is because all the other choices suck and...perhaps I've been called stubborn, bull-headed and 'not having even a passing acquaintance with common sense' a time, or two," I shrugged with my lovely burden curled around my left arm.

"No names - our tradition and my command," Sophia laid down the law. Sigh. I put Aya down. She didn't cause me a hint of trouble because she knew my heart. I unbuckled and handed her my two guns (my Glock-22, and .380). I motioned one of the mini-Amazons forward. She shuffled up to Aya's side and received my two tomahawks.

Not only was no one leaving, the rest of the camp started coming down to see what was about to transpire. In my short stint at Havenstone, I had developed a reputation as an exciting fun-guy/irrepressible troublemaker.

"I feel your decision is founded on misinformation, or your rendering to be unjust," I told Sophia.

"Explain," Sophia requested.

I hadn't disarmed for my sake, or hers. I gave up my weapons to affirm my desire to talk. I placed myself at my sister's mercy - thus expressing my trust in her. Amazons are not savages, just violently inclined.

Later, Pamela would remind me that my behavior was precisely what Isharans were supposed to do - seek peace.

"Aya has taken a position as intern with Executive Services at Havenstone," I explained. "She held my position and served effectively for four days with good work reviews from the head of the department herself," I added.

"She has served in a caste, been assigned duties by members of that caste, performed errands and accomplished all that was asked of her. Doesn't that create an allowance for Aya...as she has been considered for a caste?" I was fishing for an excuse based on my instincts for these people.

"She has never been selected, chosen and been anointed to a caste, so her preliminary experience does not qualify," Sophia said after a few seconds of introspection. "Next?"

"She has charged forth into battle on my behest." The archery range.

"You were not an acknowledged member of the Host when that happened. Next?"

"She's tried to kill me," I tossed out there.

"What?" many exclaimed.

"NO!" Aya gasped.

"When did this occur?" Sophia's eyes twinkled.

"At the archery range. She shot at me twice," I responded.

"She was practicing," was the counter. "Next?"

"Not next," I smiled. "I didn't have permission from anyone to step beyond the shooting line.

In doing so, I accepted all calls to combat. Both Leona and Aya shot at me. Aya shot twice and came close once. Leona only hit me after I gave myself up to protect three Amazon children."

Pause.

"Okay. Aya has served in combat, no matter how one-sided..." Sophia began.

"I was armed for part of the fight," I interrupted hurriedly. Aya's first arrow.

"Accepted. You were a viable combatant before that as witnessed by other Amazons in earlier encounters. She and another Amazon shot at you without any other claiming traditional ownership of you," Sophia nodded. The Leader had given me a 'bye' on my intern status.

"Aya may bear an honorific," Sophia loudly proclaimed her change in course. To Amazons, screwing up was a distant third to not owning up to what you did and not learning from your mistakes. Besides, I could tell Sophia was warming up to me...as a male and an Amazon.

"My war band?" Aya chirped.

"You do not have a war band, Aya Epona...but whatever name you use among yourselves is not a matter I will concern myself with," Sophia stated firmly. "Fifty days, Cáel." That was the end of it. Sophia turned and began walking uphill, conflict successfully resolved.

The Fatal Squirts had emerged with a semi-official status, I had emerged without a new series of wounds and I had wrangled forth a small down payment for all the love and loyalty Aya had showered on me.

"Best Daddy in the World!" Aya shouted. "Mamitu! Mamitu!" Destiny.

Amazons weren't huge believers in luck. They put their faith in training, planning, experience and diligence. For them, victory was a matter of destiny. Let the sloppy, treacherous Greeks invoke 'Nike' - Victory, or 'Tyche' - Luck for tossing them a positive outcome in battle. My side weren't thankful for the win they deserved.

They acknowledged Mamitu had, through foresight, prepared the Host for what had to be done. For Aya, it was destiny that had put me in her path; she and her sisters trained for the hostage scenario multiple times, so she was a logical choice for my training. She had been training with the bow when I was giving her the inner strength and confidence to hit the target.

Training, not mutual good fortune, put her at the range to make that shot. Whatever part luck played, that bolt that had saved my life and paved the way for Aya's rise to leadership had been a part of her training as well. Amazons didn't deny luck, nor did the put any trust in it.

"Hi, so who are the rest of you?" I addressed the Fatal Squirts while rearming.

"I am Mosa Oya," the tomahawk holder identified herself.

"I am..." the third member got out before we were propelled back into that 'never too distant' No-Man's Land. A girl, a stranger in her early teens, came up and shoved Aya hard.

"You are nothing special," the older girl growled at my buddy. My 'daughter' barely avoided sprawling in the dust.

The intensity was palatable. Aya had no chance of beating this girl. Not only did her opponent have every physical advantage, she had three buddies as well - correction: two buddies and a twin sister. Amazons built lifetime bonds around these foursomes. Aya and company backed down, despite her obvious shame. She had just won an honorific as a child - unheard of before this. It was Amazon tactical thinking, not fear, that ruled Aya's mind. I was so proud of her.

"What's your name?" I inquired congenially of the newcomer. She flashed me a look of anger laced with teenage hormones, then turned and stormed away...actually, she only started to storm away. Her behavior had played right into my hands. I was an adult. She wasn't a full-fledged member of the Host, nor was she a child anymore. I had asked her a question and she had been disrespectful to me. Her bad. Still, I doubted anyone expected my leg sweep.

The bully hit the ground hard - no rolling with the blow for her. My foot smashing down on her diaphragm drove the fight right out of her. I wasn't done. The twin rushed in - my thunderbolt left sent her flying back from whence she came. Amazons despise child abuse as cruel and socially cancerous, yet no one else was rushing in to stop me.

Even her other two friends were obeying both basic Amazon battle philosophy and conduct. Two young teens versus me was stupid...and I wasn't alone. I had four Squirts plus two other women close by who saw nothing wrong with a cooperative pummeling. I lifted my foot a centimeter from the girl's chest.

"Let's try this again," I spoke softly. "I am Cáel Ishara. You have disparaged my house by putting your back to me after I, an adult, politely addressed you. In fifteen seconds your sin will pass beyond your ability to address and your actions will be viewed as your family's unwarranted insult. My sisters will seek vengeance against your sisters with the added advantage that your sisters won't know what's going on. Now, what's your name?"

See, I could have gone straight to Step Two - the House on House vengeance. Me kicking her ass was merciful because after five, or six members of her house were jumped, one at a time by three, or four, of mine, those ladies were going to be truly curious why their youngster had been so fucking rude in front of so many fucking Amazons to the HEAD of a fucking First House.

'Honorific' Aya still had no status except that of a child. Dumb Bunny was passed her 12th year test, so she was of her House, thus the insult. Despite my 'fantasy' assumption of the role of grunt, everyone knew that Cáel Cabbage-head was Cáel Ishara, Head of House Ishara. I was the only accepted male Amazon in existence, the only possessor of a 'five o'clock shadow' in camp, I was armed and I was so armed while walking among their children.

She could not have possibly mistaken me for another. Her eyes showed that truism too. Her wrathful 'how dare that male!' morphed into 'oh fuck, my older sisters are going to be tossed down stairwells, jacked up in parking garages and they were going to be caught totally flat-footed when it happens...and it is all my (the girl's) fault'.

In theory, St. Marie could deny my feud (we were at war), or warn the girl's house of my request...but why would she? The crime couldn't have been more obvious and the Amazons were way past making harmful shit up about me.

"Zarana...Zarana of House Inara," she gasped.

I switched foot placement, pivoted, reached down to arm-clasp my left with her left and ended with me pulling her effortlessly to a standing position.

"A pleasure to meet you Zarana Inara. I am Cáel Ishara, but you may call me Cáel if you wish," I gave her my award winning smile. "No one will ever doubt your courage in my presence," I added.

'Lead with the left jab, then catch them with the right hook'. As true in interpersonal relationships as in boxing. I had beaten her handily seconds ago and now I was applauding her bravery. Again, I wasn't a Head of House calling attention to her virtue...but I was.

"Your sister shares your warrior's heart."

"I...I...I don't know what came over me..." she started to give me a respectful head-nod. I hooked a finger under her chin to stop her.

"Are you going to reconsider your approach for dealing with a male Amazon, Zarana of Inara?" I bridged the awkward moment. Bing! I had turned a humiliation into a learning moment.

"Yes," she smiled at me. "Yes Cáel Ish... Cáel."

"I swear by the All-Mighty, if I find this one crawling into your sleeping bag, I'm going to be very disappointed in you," Delilah ambushed me. Wa-ha?

"Oh, come on!" I protested. "She's thirteen."

"Fourteen," the other twin, bleeding lip and all, puffed herself up.

"Not helping..." I looked at the twin.

"Vaski," she supplied. What?

"Vaski? Really? That was Grandmother's name - it is Magyar-Finnish," I wondered.

"We are almost related," she conjured the improbable out of the impossible.

"No you are not, young lady," Delilah serpentined her way to the front of the crowd. "You are not family now and you can't attempt to be for four more years."

"Who would you be?" Zarana challenged Delilah. Man, those two kids were spunky.

"An honored guest," Priya provided. "I hope another lesson in manners will not be necessary."

"I'll do my best," I volunteered. Priya had been addressing the twins; not me. Taking the hit was a bit of comedy to diffuse the moment.

"Some of you need to eat," a camp counselor stated. Another crisis down and the sky wasn't even dark yet.

"Cáel!" and here we went again. Thank you, Ishara, it was Europa, the strange one - meaning the one I understood the most.

(Night and Day)

This place kept getting more and more wonderful. There was one safe road that rolled out of the camp's front gate (there was no wall - the gate was ceremonial) and disappeared off toward the closest state road. Scheduled trips were made to the closest blip on the census data where they bought stuff (irrelevant) and were 'seen' by the locals (the important thing).

If anyone investigated, there was a legitimate summer camp 'out there'. The counselors weren't friendly, but they worked with 'troubled' kids, so keeping the small talk to a minimum was excusable. Sure, they only saw women - usually the same ones each trip during a given summer. The camp held nearly a thousand people, so the all-female thing was dismissed as a quirk.

That was the second layer of deception. We had already learned that the first layer was the idea of a camp for girls in the foster care system. The third layer was all the visible 'props'. This went beyond the typical craft centers, juvenile obstacle courses, and a dozen other distractions. (The only 'real' one was the stables. Amazons loved riding horses and being assigned to tend to their care was a high honor.)

Thirty meters inside the gate was a bridged gulch. After dark, the bridge supports were removed turning a clear shot into the center of camp into a waiting death trap. If there was any doubt, the gulch, so comforting and protective, was a blast zone as well - designation: The Barbecue Pit. I couldn't find it, but I was sure there was an altar somewhere to the matron goddess for this summer camp, the Goddess Paranoia.

The sleeping quarters for everyone? More props. Campers would go in, mill around for ten minutes, then curl up on their bed...the ones that warmed up to 98F/36.7C degrees in the shape of human bodies. Then the campers went down the shafts beneath their bunks and dutifully shuffled along the one meter high underground tunnels to their mesa-based domiciles. Again, once in the cliff-side barracks, they had two chimneys, a tunnel back to the dorm building and a cleverly designed, nearly invisible front exit to choose from.

Pamela took it in stride, Delilah was a bit peeved by the 'excessive' security. Virginia...we'd already dragged her through her dorm tunnel to her cave to sleep it off. For me...the tunnel's dimensions made it a tight fit. Amazons can be pretty strong, but they don't have shoulders as wide as mine, nor are they normally over a meter/eight (six feet for us Yankees).

I would have complained, except I had a sneaking suspicion that Pamela had a trowel to give me so I could 'widen up' a twenty to forty meter stretch of tunnel the moment I opened my mouth. As the last portion of the instructional tour, we were directed to get our grub before it was gone because the sadistic chefs loved to watch the eight year old workhouse orphans fight over who got to lick the pot instead of starving.

Not really. The victuals were actually very good. I had hopes of more bonding time with my Epona ladies, yet no sooner had I cleaned my tin plate and dinnerware, I found someone else who craved my attention - Sophia. She was hot for my touch and by that I meant she wanted to punch and kick me around for a bit, all in the name of fun.

"Since you are my guest, I will let you choose our weapons," Sophia decided.

"I choose hyperbole," I gracefully flowed from sitting with one leg down and the other bent to standing.

"Specify."

"Caber tossing with real Sequoia. I'll wait for the ladies of Girl Scout Troop 666 to go get some - they have to be authentic; no substitutes accepted," I explained.

"That's not hyperbole," Sophia snorted. "Hyperbole would be - 'I want to use the biggest spears ever used by Amazons, or Goddesses'."

"My hyperbole wasn't the caber tossing, it was us 'waiting' for a set of circumstances we both knew wouldn't happen," I countered. Sophia nodded.

"I find that fighting with over-sized phallic symbols, or tongues for that matter, gives you an unacceptable advantage," Sophia stated. She was being a great sport about this.

"I bow to your obvious wisdom," I gave a reverent nod. "Knives, or unarmed combat? And if I lose, I get to go javelina hunting tomorrow. I've been told they are capybaras with an attitude problem." A pause then snickers behind hands raised to their lips.

"Counter-proposal: I select unarmed combat. If you can last five minutes, you may bow hunt our 'rodent problem' tomorrow." More snickers.

"I prefer to entertain our guest," Caprica spoke up. "Unless he wishes to withdraw."

"Huh? What? Caprica, with the size and firmness of your breasts, I'm all for some serious hand-to-hand contact." A slight intake of breath then the laughter began. My sexism wasn't an issue. It was my spirited pugnaciousness they were applauding.

We walked sideways into the rough, uneven-surfaced fighting ring. Caprica held up her hand.

"How much damage to your scrotum causes permanent injury?"

"I'm not sure," I remained wary. "I've had hot wax poured over them, and then my tormentors ripped the congealed mass off, along with all my pubic hair, without undue effect."

"I've had a shod mare kick me in the crotch - thus learning why you never stand directly behind any equine - and then had a successful oral encounter thirty minutes later. It was exceedingly painful, but I pulled through. We can't really count the butterfly knife to the penis...no blood/no foul."

"How much did that 'wax episode' hurt? Did you cry out?" Rachel's sister inquired.

"Not loudly. See, unlike the rest of you, I'm a man and men don't cry. We leave all those hysterics to the feminine gender," I grinned. The campers weren't pissed in the least.

"They gagged you first?" Delilah snorted.

"And how," I confessed. "In my defense, I didn't start begging for mercy until I saw the flames."

"How many opponents did it take to tie you down?" Sophia asked mischievously.

"One. It was an epic encounter. She said 'strip down, lay on the bed, let me tie your wrists to the bed posts, then I'll give you a big surprise'. Normally, I love surprise and I must confess, seeing her roommate, the one I had been cheating with, come into the room in a black basque, black panties and a riding crop was surprising."

"She beat you like a disruptive slave?" Priya gasped.

"Yep. They also removed all my body hair below the neck, dyed my hair bright pink and did a few things I find erotically confusing to this day," I elaborated. "Then it was two days of continuous sex and a late Sunday night stopover at the campus infirmary."

I didn't even look at the faces of the Amazons I gave my weapons to. We were Amazons. If I needed them, they would hand them over. Along with my growing confidence in them was their growing willingness to ignore my gender. My shirt came off quickly. When Caprica began removing her boots, I hurriedly did the same.

My boot had barely hit the hand of the lady I had tossed it to when Caprica came for me. All the relevant factors were the same. Was she better than me? Yes. I rated her as about the same level as Madi, but not as good as Elsa. For 45 seconds, it was a fantastic bout for both of us, then I fucked up. I knelt down for a sweeping kick at her ankle. I telegraphed it.

Caprica went high; the bridge of her right foot connecting with a solid kick to my jaw line. With that, so many things began going off in my mind, my fight plan fell to pieces. I managed to keep rolling over after that blow to end up on my back. My arms spasmed. My legs shot up of their own accord, curling back to protect my abdomen despite my desperate desire to stand up.

My move caught Caprica by surprise as well. Our kneecaps collided painfully. She bounced off and staggered away. I forced myself to my feet like some 70 year old arthritis sufferer. A hundred neuro pathways conveyed contradictory orders. Any kind of cohesive defense was hopeless. Caprica's piston kick caught me in the left ribcage. The ground felt like concrete when I crashed down on it.

My 'me' mental patchwork had jumped into a body-wide skirmish with either patterns 'B', or 'C'. The result was muscles twitching a few millimeters one way then another. It wasn't a do this, or that. The message was to do two different things at the same time. Muscles aren't into task management, mediating, compromise and division of labor. They can't work that way.

There was no follow-up attack.

"Stay back," I heard Pamela shout. Later I was told that Caprica was getting ready to kneel by my side to assist me. I could have lashed out the moment I saw her and that would have been all kinds of bad. "Aya..." Pamela summoned the aid I needed.

"Cáel?" Aya called to me softly. Her voice wasn't a miracle cure, it was a reminder of what was truly important to me. Humans prioritize stimuli and Aya was close to the top of my list. My 'fight' impulses receded and the 'worried about Aya' instincts took control. My epileptic-like seizures ceased as I propped myself up on my elbows.

Caprica was still a problem. We hadn't concluded our fight.

"What happened to you?" the Camp Leader demanded to know.

"Ah...It is complicated," I struggled.

"One second you were fighting well - the next? Are you diseased?"

"See this?" I pointed to the tiny scab on my forehead. "Someone shot an electric charge into my brain. It confuses me at times."

"You could lash out at my campers," she deduced from the absence of information.

"That's rubbish..." Delilah rumbled.

"This is none of your concern," Caprica menaced right back.

"Caprica, you are worried...why? Because he lost his wits when he was attacked - twice - in the garage? Or was it the way he threatened Loraine when she jumped on him?" Rachel came to my defense. "Sophia and Aya were never in anymore danger than you were."

"He is crazy," Caprica insisted. A few people chuckled.

"Oh, I agree," Rachel nodded. "He is very, very, very crazy. No one who knows him for more than a day can truthfully deny that. He's mad, cracked, insane - and he laughs at death. He laughs at life. He mocks condescension and helps alleviate ignorance through comedy.

He never surrenders to despair, or hardship. Cáel does that and more because his mind has always been the child who took joy from playing in the mud and sought solace alone among the craggy peaks. Even if he was a woman born in a freehold, he would not be one of us. I take great comfort in his quirks and oddities.

Too often, I am playing mental catch up. That encourages me to think faster and outside our normal means of resolving a conflict," Rachel explained her viewpoint.

"I disagree that his merits outweigh the danger he represents," Caprica pronounced her judgment.

"Then we have a problem," Rachel began putting her weapons aside.

"If you insist," Caprica smiled like she was some cunning fox. Delilah and Mona joined with Rachel as did Loraine, several of her friends and the young twins and their two compatriots. Sophia edged around the circle to hold Aya and her Squirts back. They weren't old enough for this sort of thing. As I crab-walked toward Rachel who helped me stand, two dozen camp counselors rallied to Caprica's side.

"Campers are forbidden to engage in sparring unless supervised. No permission has been given," she crushed the odds. It was within her rights to reminds us of regulations. Our only potential ally in this was Rachel's sister, whose name turned out be Genève, and she didn't dare go against Caprica on that. Instead, Genève joined Rachel, Mona, Delilah and I in a personal defiance.

Our five to Caprica's fifteen was looking awful bleak, unless I considered who WASN'T at my side. Pamela had remained quietly seated throughout this debacle.

"Psssht," Pamela motioned to Rachel. Rachel side-stepped and took what Pamela offered. It was a small, wooden match.

Rachel was struggling to piece things together. Caprica's crowd began advancing.

"Give up, you've lost," Rachel snorted in obvious triumph. That didn't slow the enemy down in the least. Rachel brandished the single match. Shouldn't there been a box of them? They didn't slow down. Rachel wasn't worried.

"Thirty seconds after the first blow is landed, the fuel depot will explode," Rachel grinned. "Give up while you still can."

"What? You wouldn't dare? That is lunacy!" Caprica and her team stopped advancing and went to defensive stances. Then it dawned on Caprica. Where was the ninja? Where was that box of matches?

"The depot is well guarded," Caprica sounded less than absolutely confident.

"Cappy," Delilah mocked the leader, "she's a ninja. Breaking into guarded places is what they do."

"Call her off," Caprica snapped at Rachel.

"Of course," Rachel responded. "Quit the field and I'll ask her to come back."

"I am telling you to recall her right now," Caprica growled.

"Of course," Rachel grinned. Success. The fight was over. Rachel didn't do anything for a minute.

"I said..." Caprica remained pissed.

"Hey," Miyako wiggled up between Delilah and Mona. "Why are we all standing in the sparring area? I had to go to the latrine. What did I miss?" Rachel handed the match back to Pamela. Pamela pulled out the matchbox and put the point of contention back inside.

"You bluffed?" Caprica gasped at Rachel.

"Yes, though I prefer to think of it as creating an illusion based on my foe's ignorance of the forces in play and an active imagination," Rachel turned the screw.

"Miyako, did you give Pamela that box of matches?" Caprica glared at the ninja.

"Matches? Matches are 'Old School'. Ninja's use encapsulated chemical reagents to generate flames," Miyako enlightened us all. "They even work underwater." Caprica looked down and coughed. When she looked back up, she was shaking her head and grinning.

"I concede," she sighed. "Students," she called out.

"Let this be a lesson to you: don't assume you know all your opponents capabilities and if you are ever in my position do NOT issue orders, as it voids any outcome of a match." That had been Rachel's victory. I had rendered myself hors de combat, ending our match. Rachel's fight was a fresh encounter. Once we were all back in the sparring ring, we were equals. Superiors couldn't pull rank to avoid an outcome.

The moment Rachel tricked Caprica into reasserting her authority, the second martial bout was over - concluded, and concluded by Caprica herself. The question of my sanity was balanced by my 'side' winning. This was not 'might makes right'. This was 'Rachel is a clever bitch and in her opinion, I wasn't a threat'. This was 'listen to the smart Amazon'. Caprica chose to listen.

"He should always be under constant observation," Caprica compromised. My heart soared. No one on my side said a damn thing. They were administering another lesson.

"Cáel, you must constantly be in contact with a 'watcher'," Caprica corrected her command. I was an Amazon, not a child, or helpless burden.

"I guess this means I'm not going to get my own 'Boys Restroom'," I joked. There were more yawns than chuckles this time around. Time for all the campers, counselors and guests to get some shut-eye.

That meant forgoing the comfy-looking barracks and crawling through my rebirthing ceremony again so I could lie down in our real, no-frills dormitory. I was crashed down in a disturbed state of mind. Even with my 'Aya togetherness', I was still ramped up - uncomfortable inside my skin.

When it came to comfort levels, Miyako was my polar opposite. She was enamored with the place. By the time we went to bed, my little stealth-acrobat had already hinted to me, to Pamela and to Priya 'how wonderful it would be to be invited back...with a few baby ninjas in tow'. She was deadly serious too.

As she snuggled in with me, she sighed and gave happy murmurs as she recounted the shrubs, boulders and pines she had hidden behind just traipsing around 'town' unseen. Sex was not in the offing, since I was already on my back with my bear cub snoozing on my chest. As with the past five days, real sleep didn't come.

Getting both audio and video to shut down at the same time had proven impossible. I would 'think' things. A few of the 'playbacks' - I wouldn't call them memories - showed me numerous activities I had once partaken of. Others...well, I could play piano, eight-string guitar, pan flute (Go, Zamfir!) and the bagpipes.

I didn't actually have any of those and had only touched a piano while taking two lessons that both ended up with us having sex on the floor. I'd also killed a man with said flute by ramming it into his throat. I had no idea where, or why he'd met that fate. The guy's blood kept pumping out one of the shafts for almost a minute...

Would the nightmares of a drug-induced sleep be that much worse than this waking tug of war with - Pamela called it an edimmu; an ancient spirit of the vengeful dead?

"Cáel...Daddy ... Fehér mén (Magyar for White Stallion), what is wrong?" Aya propped herself up with her elbows on my pectorals, sleepy and sincere.

"What do you think is wrong?" I asked. I put faith in her instincts where I was concerned.

"Your heartbeat is strong and powerful when it should be slow and steady. Your breath is deep when it should be shallow." She paused as she correlated the facts, washed them in her limited experience and found the answer. "You're constantly ready for battle at a second's notice."

Amazons are exceptionally trained fighters. Outside of being trained to kill, they were also taught to take care of themselves. The Host's stratagem for marching would have made the Zulu Nation proud - run with a full kit over rough terrain for twelve hours and deploy for a fight at the end of that jaunt. 'Run' didn't mean run like a marathon.

It meant jogging and walking with short rest breaks to hydrate. That still equated with the average Amazon being expected to cover at least 80 kilometers a day, continuously for three, or four, days.

SD? That same arch-crushing pace each and every day until they got where they needed to go. They wouldn't move any faster. It was kind of useless for a tiny fraction of the Host to cover a significant distance ahead of the rest. What the Security Detail needed was the ability to swarm around the Host, on the march and at rest, scouting, counter-scouting, raiding and distracting their foe. And they did this while taking into account a horse-culture that reached back three thousand years, but also included modern three-dimensional warfare.

When it came to the arts of killing and seizing victory, the Host was always thoroughly up with the times. The tactics that led Alexander of Macedon to victory at Gaugamela had been exhibited by the Host during the battles before the Second Betrayal, four hundred years earlier. They had learned it from the Scythians of the Pontic steppe generations before.

Fix the center with part of your force (Amazons used their infantry) and roll over a chosen flank with your cavalry. Hannibal did it double-envelopment style a hundred years after Alexander, earning him martial immortality at Cannae. The hit and run the Mongols perfected was old hat for the Amazons way before Genghis Khan and his decedents created the largest land empire of all time.

The Amazons didn't invent any of those techniques. They were not master innovators. Their gift was to see something new and go 'we can do that and do it better', then making it so. The Host had no tanks, jet fighters or warships larger than multi-role frigates. If a serious modern army attacked the Host, they would disperse. They didn't possess a war industry. Slugging it out was anathema.

'You can rebuild a home. You cannot bring back the dead' was an Amazon axiom. Another was acknowledged to be of foreign origin: 'living enemies raise armies; dead ones fill graves'. The Host has light AFV's, helicopters of all stripes and transport aircraft as well as sea-craft capable of moving forces all over the globe.

Operating a multi-threat attack system and shooting a bow were all the same to them. Having trained and equipped themselves to a razor's edge didn't absolve them from trying to do it better next time. Amazons would die in battle; that was a given. Their task was to make every drop of Amazon blood spilt worth the cost.

I didn't use those words while I poured out my turbulent mental meanderings to Aya.

"Cáel, destiny cuts both ways," my little imp bathed me in her insightful purity. "If we listen, it prepares us for what we must do. Destiny also places us in situations where we know what should be done. We do not hide behind such concepts as Fate, Dadda.

We Amazons bow with respect to Destiny because she gives us the freedom of choice. We know what we must do but the voice, step and blow are ours to make. I would gladly be with you counting penguins in Terra del Fuego, no matter what Destiny wished for us. You are not a coward. Cáel, you save your fear for the lives of others. You get angry. You also forgive.

Best of all, you boldly show others your heart and dare them to do the same. I recall the first time I witnessed other Amazons dealing with Aunt Katrina. She shown with radiance of purpose and the confidence of the Firsts. The others held her in reverence, as if she wasn't one of them, but something more.

Before that, I had only seen her with my Mother. Those two would talk late into the night at my home. I heard Katrina worry and second-guess herself and I saw my Mother help her work through the hardest things that troubled my aunt. I asked Loraine about it. She told me Katrina had to act so self-assured and doubt-free so that the Amazons around her would grow braver and have the strength necessary to do the difficult tasks Katrina set before them.

You are the same way, but in a different direction," Aya teased me. "You show compassion and forgiveness to a people who need that lesson badly, Cáel." I gave her a big ole bear hug while she gave back muffled giggles. "On the road back home after the archery range that day, it came to me. No Amazon would have given themselves up to be butchered like you did."

"Mommy said it was because you were a crazy, outsider male. As the last of those words fell upon my ears, it occurred to me: 'why wouldn't we do what you did?' Why did that make you less of an Amazon to care more about us than we cared for ourselves? Wouldn't that make you better than us? I took my questions to Europa.

She told me to keep such thoughts to myself because you were already in so much trouble. Making the elders think you were infecting me with your 'weakness' wouldn't help either of us."

"What do you think now?" I sighed happily.

"I think if I'm going to grow up to be a member of the Host, I'm going to be an Amazon just like you."

"I don't know how I'm going to take the facial hair," I mumbled after a few seconds. "The chest hair...let's not go there." My guffaws and Aya's snickers echoed.

"That was a nice bonding moment for you two," Charlotte rumbled softly. She stood watch near the front exit to our cave.

"Now go to sleep, before I shoot the ceiling and drop some big rocks on your heads."

Aya figured out how to sleep with my altered biorhythms. Perhaps my 'fourth' cerebral pattern connected my peace of mind, warm memories and sense of safety to be an indicator to let me submerge into my closest facsimile to sleep since I passed out at the end of the Tadêfi/Sikia three-way.

The steady dim luminescence of the cavern was being equaled by the pre-sunrise haze ricocheting through the front cut-back entrance. I had really fallen into a light asleep. I was also now really looking at a geared-up 'Rachel's sister'. She was frozen in mid-reach for Aya and me, her eyes casting around my surroundings.

Oh, I had my Glock in my hand, pointed at her. Everyone had a weapon out and pointed at the Amazon except Charlotte, who seemed surprised by the crisis, and Aya, who was just rousing from her slumber.

"Good morning, Genève," Aya yawned. "Is it reveille already?"

"Yes," Genève (aka Rachel's younger sister) answered carefully.

"Can anyone tell me why I'm pointing my pistol at this woman, where the hell I am, and when this howling tornado is going to pass by?" Virginia groaned. That was the siren whisper of a cranium-cracking hangover.

My best guess was a cascading set of reflexes. Once one of our snoozing group's peripheral awareness picked up on Genève, the guns had come out, leading the rest to do the same.

"We rock," Pamela chortled. "Even the babe three-quarters toward some violent vomiting drew down and didn't engage."

On cue, Virginia gulped then held her breath. Her eyes started to bug out. Delilah tossed our tin bucket to Priya, who was closest to our suffering FBI gal. She steadied the bucket and helped pull back Virginia's hair as the dry heaves began. Poor Virginia had guzzled her booze before eating last night.

"Let's gopher breakfast," Delilah smirked. "Know what I mean?"

"Know what I mean?" Pamela winked.

"Nudge, nudge," I nudged a confused Miyako.

"Wink, wink," Delilah snorted.

"Follow me?" I giggled. Nothing like a Monty kick-start to make the morning worthwhile.

"Say no more," Pamela finished it off.

"The next one to speak above a whisper," Virginia rasped, "I'm going to put a bullet in." She punctuated that threat by waving her Glock about blindly while her face returned to the pail.

Pamela, Delilah (by silent consensus, she'd been sentenced to probationary renegade status) and I behaved, mainly because we liked to see the apprehension in those around us waiting for our abrupt lapse into irrational antics. The whole camp ate as one, which forced more than half of the 500 campers and 300 counselors to eat outside. That explained the dining hall's open setup.

Everyone was able to see everyone else. For Amazons, personal recognition was important. It had been a cornerstone of their society since the European Diaspora in the 8th century CE. No maps existed with the location of the freeholds, so Amazons would wander around the general area until a patrolling Amazon found them. It usually took less than one week.

The patrol would see at least one Amazon they recognized. With them would be younger, unknown Amazons. Five years down the road, it would be the younger ones recognizing each other...and on and on. It was not lost on me that I was made part of a social convention never before shared with a man, and it was done seamlessly.

It wasn't all love and kisses. I had my detractors, but so did Loraine. Europa had racked up even more, but she seemed to revel in the negative attention. Aya's situation was more confusing. She was in the pre-twelve crowd, yet had picked up four unofficial guardians. Zarana, Vaski and the rest of the quartet had thrown up a 'these tiny bitches are with us' vibe.

Being the smallest in their age group, they were protected by fourteen year olds. No pre-teen could match that. The counselors? They didn't care. Social bonding was the other half of the camp experience. You would make friends and enemies. It was natural. Promoting rivalries enhanced their competitive drives. This was not a 'now hug and make up' philosophy.

If you lost, the Amazon credo was 'try harder next time'. It also was 'eat fast because in fifteen minutes we are leaving, finished or not'. Virginia was shanghaied into working with Loraine's group. Her task was to do Q&A for the girls soon to be exposed to the larger world ... while the troop went through their regular routine. Our Fed was going to be aching by the time this day turned to night.

Delilah was given a choice - a post-twelve group, or hand to hand instruction. At the mention of the second option, she sprang up, grasp arms with the Amazon making the offer and gave her a shit-eating grin.

"You line them up and I'll knock them down," she chuckled.

Caprica wanted to give Pamela and Miyako the same choices as Delilah. Pamela 'suggested' that she'd like to 'go exploring' - just she and Miyako. The implication was that no matter what Caprica said, those two were going to do what they were going to do, aka the Lone Phaser and Photonto. They were stripping away my bodyguards and no one raised a stink about it.

(The Hunt)

For me, Rachel, Mona and Priya, it was javelina hunting time. Let's see. I had no outdoor hunting skills, unless you counted being 'twelve "Sam Adams" sheets to the wind, hammered and stalking a moose with a blunt, household tool' as experience. My first lesson was recognizing what javelina hoof prints looked like. Javelina basics came next.

They roamed in packs/herds depending on what level of aggression they were feeling that day. Whichever Amazon said they were 'small', must have often confused rhinos with Shetland ponies too. Class number three was making sure I could shoot a bow. Unless personally in danger, or saving another Amazon's life, unsilenced weapons fire was not allowed.

No one was sure how effective a tomahawk would be, so bows it was. Well, I could shoot a bow. Could I hit a javelina on the run? Let's say I was glad I was taking some power bars, jerky and fruit for lunch, and just leave it at that. Class four was horsemanship. I had ridden a horse a time or two...most likely two.

If you can make love on a beach, you can screw around in hay, unless you, or your partner, are allergic. I was shown how to approach my mare properly, make myself familiar to her, gently groom her and finally how to affix the blanket, tack and Asian saddle properly. When I finished my first attempt, my instructor punched me playfully.

"And you said you didn't know horses," she grinned. Even my mare was shooting me a 'you rock, buddy'. Since a two hour time slot had taken thirty-two minutes, we got an early start. Rachel and Mona tried, and failed, to hide their worry for me. As part of the Freddy Kruger bonus plan, being an unnatural-born horseman saved me a truckload of thigh pain.

When we headed out, it was a pleasant 69F/20.5C. The resident climatologist predicted a high of 95F/35C and so little humidity that we were guaranteed desiccation if we stood still long enough. Dot Ishara must have put in a good word for me with Inara the Huntress. Javelinas were rare this far north (north of what, Priya wouldn't say), so we were fortunate to find an extended family unit of ten within three hours of searching.

It was definitely an unfortunate day to be a collared peccary (that's gringo for javelina). Our hunting party caught them crossing a broad shallow wash with little cover; the closest being a clump of disruptive Gamble Oaks (a big bush, not a tree). The previously established plan was to dismount quietly when we drew close, Mona would then hold the horses and the rest of our party would stalk them into the scrub.

Our targets couldn't stand still and hide every time they felt a predator was close by. They had to eat and gain as much water from the desert flora as they could. If they were spooked, the peccaries would freeze. Their ears would search about for any suspicious noises. If they heard nothing for a minute or two, the herd returned to rooting and eating.

When they stopped, we stopped, or so the instructions went. I saw the six adults and four javelina-ettes, considered the suggested speed of my prey, the distance they had to cross to make the impenetrable brush, and the speed my mare could achieve in that time, then leaned forward on my mount while squeezing my knees.

I did this for no reason I initially understood, but my mare, Peppermint, got the message loud and clear. She was of the traditional Amazon breed, similar to the Turkish Akhal-Teke, built for long travels over the steppe and semi-arid plateaus of Central Asia. My mount had raced across this landscape for seven years now, so she knew what shrubbery she could push through and which she had to dodge around.

Of greater importance at the moment, she also knew the orders I was transmitting by body language alone far better than I did. She didn't leap forward and give my designated dinner fare a warning. Instead she picked up her pace incrementally, fixing our destination and plotting her best course. The reins found themselves wrapped around my saddle horn with plenty of leeway.

My bow was in my hand with an arrow notched before I could consciously replace intention with action. My archery tool of convenience was a heavy draw weight - sixty pounds - composite, recurve bow. It was old, lovingly maintained and probably dated back to the 1950's. I am a pretty big guy. The Amazon who had this bow crafted had to be damn scary... or even scarier.

It was beautiful in its simplicity - absent of any ornamentation. I shifted my body to the left, tapped Peppermint and she picked up her pace. The javelinas squealed when they realized their danger. The race was on and they were much too far from any sanctuary. I loosed my first arrow, but missed. The mare picked up the pace, homing in on the large male peccary I had selected. I began to panic. What the hell was I doing?

I could barely take a horse past a canter, hit anything accurately with a bow beyond twenty meters, and never attempted the two together. Yet here I was role-playing the exploits of my Magyar ancestors. Peppermint began losing direction. My thoughts were chaos. A sane man would have slowed his mount and let the others catch up. Our original plan could still work.

We could surround the thicket and flush them out. 'There is always a current flowing through the chaos', filtered through my confusion 'if you know what to look for'. I am an idiot. I am a madman. I let go. It all worked. I didn't feel my mount beneath me, I felt her hoofs pushing through the thin layer of sand to the rock beneath. One - two - three - four legs in motion. I didn't breath - we breathed.

There was virtually no wind. The javelina was about to break to the right, racing for my off-side. I knew and so did my mare. The second arrow wasn't lethal, but it would be fatal. My third arrow went from quiver to hand flawlessly. Equally flawless was Peppermint pulling aside the collared peccary. We both sensed the animal's preparation to dodge left.

I was tracking that fraction of a centimeter ahead when I loosed my bolt. He was dead before his snout plowed into the dirt two meters from safety. Peppermint's abrupt halt nearly tossed me off. She wasn't charging into the oaks no matter how hungry I was for pseudo-pig meat. As I turned in my saddle, searching for the next javelina, I had a fourth arrow notched.

Priya was pumping her bow and whooping some sort of huntress's paean. Several meters back and to my left was a smaller, very dead peccary with an arrow's shaft barely visible behind one ear.

"How old were you when your people first taught you to ride?" she rode up and clapped me on the shoulder.

"When we were briefed on you, they made it sound as if the Magyar had been 'civilized'." If there was any doubt, 'civilized' was a bad thing in the Amazon dictionary.

"It was all Peppermint," I evaded. "I was just along for the ride." Peppermint shook her head - flies.

"I will endeavor to take her hunting more often," Priya laughed. "Let's butcher our kills. We will both be hailed in the camp tonight. White Stallion indeed." She was trotting off to get her 'guest of honor' for tonight's festivities. That left Rachel and Mona to approach me alone.

"What was that all about?" Rachel whispered to me.

"I let go," I met her gaze. "I let go and everything worked out."

"Are you scared?" Mona asked. 'Fear' wasn't a dirty word to them. Cowardice was what mattered, not the fear behind it. Quite frankly, they found my fearlessness rather unsettling, along with sensual. No words came for a minute.

"That pig isn't going to skin itself," Mona noted.

"It is a peccary, not a pig. I've dissected a frog and a rat," I volunteered. "How hard can this be?" Rachel gave a depressive sigh. Mona laughed.

"How fresh were those kills?"

"The frog had been pickled in formaldehyde and the rat had been freeze-dried, so eating them wasn't really on my mind," I grinned. We dismounted. Rachel led our horses away to a safe distance. Horses aren't big fans of the smell of blood. Ours weren't going to run off, but being considerate of them was the proper thing to do.

"Wait!" Rachel cried out. Priya had been kneeling at her kill, she crouched and spun around. Mona did a quick head-snap to Rachel, then began scanning for threats. Rachel was finishing laying our bridles over some oak twigs as an indicator for the horses to stay put.

"This is your first kill," Rachel explained.

"Seriously?" Priya responded incredulously. Mona shook her head and chuckled.

"Do I get some kind of reward?" I asked the group.

"Yes," Rachel was smiling as she hurried my way.

"Is it an orgy?" I brightened up noticeably. 'Please, Dot Ishara. I haven't been irreverent for twenty-four hours now. Cut me some slack. I'm dying over here.'

"No," Rachel scolded me in the same way you scold a five year old who has attempted to mop the floor after spilling something. A negative layered in love and affection.

"Damn it!" I groused.

"Poor Cáel," Mona gave me some false sympathy. "How long has it been?" Priya rejoined us.

"How long has what been?" she inquired.

"Sex," I grumbled.

"I last had sex yesterday morning with Miyako in that miserable excuse for a bathroom on board our plane."

"Ah...our sister suffers," Mona smirked. "How can you still stand in your deprived state?"

"Is that an invitation to do it laying down?" I hoped beyond hope.

"No Cáel," Rachel patted my head. "Forty-nine more days." I fell on my back, thankful that the goggles and my eyelids dampened the light of the deadly Orb.

"Forty-nine more days?" I wept. "I'm not going to make it."

"Huh...I thought the forty-nine days was for us?" Priya grappled with the injustice.

"It is," Rachel snickered. "But, while he craves the sensual touch of our bodies, he's around guardians all day long and Aya crawls onto his chest and sleeps there all night. He's got five more days here with no hope of release."

"What about the outsider women?" Priya was warming up to my torment.

"Why do you think I asked Caprica to separate them from him and wear them out with camp duties," Rachel unveiled her Mistressful plan.

"Mother-fucker," I sat back up. "Rachel, I thought you liked me."

"I do," she regarded me warmly.

"I would like to enjoy you all to myself. As I said, I believe we have a First Kill Initiation Rite to perform."

I highly recommend participating in this rite of passage. I imagined the psychological effect on the minds of thirteen or fourteen year old girls was stunning. First, they had me strip naked. So far, so good.

We invoked a prayer to Inara in the Amazon tongue, thanking her for teaching our ancestors our hunting skills. Then Rachel, as the senior huntress, cut out the big pig's heart. But it gets better. I knelt with Mona standing on my left, Rachel before me and Priya to my right.

[OKH] "Welcome Sister," Rachel smiled down at me. "Receive your first blessing of blood."

I didn't know what to do.

[OKH] "Tilt your head up and open your mouth...wide," Mona said in a hushed voice. I trusted these women with my life. I also trusted them to freak me out whenever they could, which showed I was learning from my multitude of mistakes.

With both hands, Rachel extend forth the already dripping peccary heart over my upturned mouth and squeezed. Blood gushed forth. Half of it went down my throat. That left plenty of sanguinary aqua vitae to splash everything from my forehead, down my chest and onto my Johnson...hard as always. I absolutely needed serious psychiatric counseling.

Not vomiting from the taste of raw blood in my mouth - a minor victory. Not choking on said blood and spitting it back up because it was flowing straight down my throat - barely notable. Having Mona take my shirt and clean off my face so I could at least open my eyes...that had its upside. All the chicks around me looked terribly aroused.

"You stay," Rachel nodded my way. "The rest of us are going to search the shrubs for the rest of the javelina - no exceptions," she commanded, somewhat hoarse with sexual need. "Clean off your body with sand. Call us back once you are dressed."

"My shirt?" I asked as I held up the ensanguined shirt.

For some reason, I felt the desert camouflage pattern was ruined.

"He can go shirtless," Priya suggested quickly. Mona and Rachel nodded. 'Showered in pig's blood'...I didn't recall seeing that on a Cosmo sex quiz. I shuddered to think whose sexual survey would...oh, right, it was on the Satan's Sluts' To-do List.

Man, she was one freaky weirdo - Library Science major; you know the type. Considering my vast sexual experience, labeling someone 'freaky' and a 'weirdo' was saying something. Drying off with sand...when I got to my cock it dawned on me I had three women nearby and I hadn't tricked one of them to do that for me. I was slipping.

The group was rather quiet after they came back and the butchering began. The meat went into our ponchos. That was why we brought them!! Duh. I had yet to see a single cloud with even the delusion it would become a raindrop one day. We had gathered the bundle when I made this 'cha-chick' noise...Peppermint shook her reins free and walked over to me.

I was still working on 'what did I just say to a horse?' as I took my canteen out and kept letting her lick water out of my palm. Then I gave her the three peaches I had brought along as part of my lunch. Priya was visibly impressed. Mona and Rachel's silent exchange was getting downright gloomy.

Ya know, when an avalanche begins and you have a snowboard, you should still seek some kind of shelter. Avalanches have buried thousands of morons who thought they could outrun one and were shown how painfully wrong they were. Having been trained to snowboard - I went to school in New Hampshire, if you recall - I knew better.

That being said, I would jump on my snowboard and still try to outrun Mother Nature, that cranky primordial witch. I am that kind of mentally deficient individual. I was shooting the chaotic rapids of the turbulence that replaced rational thought in my noggin. I swung into the saddle like a man taught to ride before I could run. More Priya happiness. More dour looks from the SD.

If my 'me' me resented kayaking blindfolded in this recollected grey-matter white-water, it failed to file a protest. We returned to the road about a mile from camp, vigilant, but in high spirits. My ballistic vest was starting to chafe as Rachel pulled close to me.

"Would you use the damn reins," she hissed. Oh...those things.

Peppermint and I had reached an understanding. A soft cough, or knee action, and she'd telepathically knew where and how fast I wanted her to go. In hindsight, I could truly appreciate the anxiety I was heaping on my gun buddies. I behaved after that. It didn't help. The second we made it to the stables, Priya began blabbing away.

The scope of her titanic exaggerations made me out to be...supernatural. The essence of her retelling had me smiting an entelodont (aka the very extinct Hell Pig) with a lightning bolt from the cloudless sky, pre-cooking the beast. I then caused rich, buttery Tasso to rain down like Manna from above. Did that make me the Cajun Santa Claus? I wanted to find a hole to hide in.

I could so nail every single (over 17 year old) babe in this place and come back for seconds. But Noooo. Those sadistic monster were Muspelheim-bent on squashing my libido until I exploded. Death by sexual denial...I wondered how Virginia would put that in her report. Since I was covered in dried blood and sand, Caprica decided I had to take a shower.

Funny, I thought we were rationing water (it had to be toted up from the springs). Funny, I could have sworn one of those tunnels had showers in it. Funny, I recalled a joking conversation last night about me using the communal showers while behaving. Funny, I found myself in the flimsiest cloth contraption every designed by capricious three year olds, showering outdoors.

I had visions of M*A*S*H - the movie - except the shower curtain coming down was redundant. My 'screening' was made of cheese cloth that immediately began to disintegrate when it made contact with water...you know, like a shower. On the upside, they were helpful. By that I mean, Amazons were tripping over themselves to offer me things I hadn't even dreamed of asking for...or knew even existed.

Did you know there is a special stick you use for killing scorpions? It was completely different from the beetle spearing stick. I was supposed to eat the beetles. I ask that they point me to Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach - she was married to a Beetle). I could also eat the scorpions as long as I avoided the tip of the tail. Pamela had already cautioned me that some of their venom could be hallucinogenic.

I reminded her I didn't need 'bug juice' to make me delusional. Instead of the Scorpions, I asked if I could have a go at Halestorm, since their lead singer was a young, hot American lass named Lzzy Hale from a place called Red Lion (how cool is that?), not some aging male Teutonic metal-head from Hannover.

They assured me they had no idea what I was talking about. 'Trust, but verify'? Who in the fuck could I trust out here to verify anything? I was learning something new all the time...the symmetry of the Camp Amazons being helpful and the electron bomb in my head giving me helpful, unsolicited combat maneuvers wasn't lost on me.

For all my fellow, sex-hungry males, don't let you giving a bad first impression, or a girl thinking little of you, make you give up the hunt. Once she has low expectations, it is far easier to impress her. Don't run straight for the Stanley Cup. She's put you in a Pee-Wee House League so aim for the 'Juvenile' (that's the 18 to 20 year olds) Roster.

That way, if you slip up later, you have left yourself room for improvement. Do that and she is enchanted with what she might have started off considering an 'average' performance. Girls like it when you 'work for it' in the same ways guys get off on their lady dressing up so that they have the best looking babe when the two of you enter the club, or party.

Caprica had assessed me to be a 'Ginormous pain in her ass' before I ever set foot in the desert. Her attitude had infected her command. That meant, every little step I made toward their healthy enjoyment of me treading in their environs was magnified by their original notion that I was a lowdown, bossy, vile step-above a satyr. I had some good fortune too.

Sophia had been a big help, treating my gymnastics and comedy routine as amusing distractions instead of disrespectful behavior. The post-campfire song combat episode was a combination of Rachel and Pamela winning without throwing a blow. That helped me by the 'rule of four' - Amazons and their careful choice of companions.

My worth was elevated by having clever cohorts in the same way the Fatal Squirts basked in Aya's company. To a horse-culture like the Amazons, my treating my mount as an equal in the hunt, seeing to her needs before my own and Peppermint's clear acceptance of my behavior was critically revealing.

The Amazons held to the truism that a good measure of a person's basic human empathy was exhibited by how they treated their domesticated animals. Peppermint had been chosen for me because of her gentle disposition. That didn't explain how she melded with me when we chased down that javelina, how she came when I gave a gentle summons, and how we travelled as one.

A rider's posture was as important as the horse's gait. When the two meshed, you could cover many more kilometers between rest stops. Contrary to some modern feminists' way of thinking, being compared to an animal wasn't demeaning to these ladies. The Host religion had always been only a few grades advanced beyond shamanism/totemism. Horses?

The initial Amazon flight had been over the Caucasus and onto the Pontic Steppe. There their chariots were outmatched by the local Cimmerian peoples. It was the Scythians that came to their aid. The Scythians were constantly warring with the Cimmerians and their noblewomen rode into battle beside their men.

The Scythian noblewomen 'adopted' the Amazons and the Amazons adopted the Scythian horse-born lifestyle. Internecine warfare wasn't what the miniature Host wanted. With the Scythians pushing west, the Cimmerians were displacing to the south to pillage the old Amazon homeland, eradicating their roots from history as well as destroying their erstwhile Hittite allies.

The Amazons, with their new steeds and battle tactics, vacated the new Scythian lands, migrated to the Western Pannonian Plain and ended up with the Second Betrayal. Important to my tale was the growth of an unsophisticated horse-spirit worship into the veneration of the Celtic Horse-Goddess Epona and making it a pivotal part of Amazon spiritualism.

Only in Africa did the bond waver. Asiatic horses sickened and died in the alien ecosystem, leaving those houses to revive the original Amazon 'Runner' style of combat. Lesson: horses and hunting...bravery, solidarity and sisterhood. They were finding excuses to set aside their old gender ideology, keep me in close proximity and not feeling on edge.

I still wasn't one of the girls. For some reason, I continuously found myself shirtless - vest-less too if they could make up an excuse. Whiskers were a new sensation they had to sample. Poor Miyako, Virginia and Delilah were inundated with requests to explain the how's, why's and wherefores of my sexual potency. Miyako took to 'hiding in plain sight' the pestering got so unremitting.

Virginia loudly proclaimed 'we had never had sex', only to become viewed as non-credible and selfish for her unwillingness to share. Delilah had already figured out she was in 'virgin' territory. Not 'virgin' as unsexed. No...'virgin', as in "Harlequin what?", "You mean 'Fifty Shades of Grey' isn't about color-coding?"

Who was Lady Chatterley, was being a 'Lady' a power position and in what condition did she keep her lover? Delilah was a perverted nāgī in the Garden of Eden. Besides the plethora of porn imbedded in her memory, she also felt a feminine obligation to educate the erotically illiterate.

Night two - how to make a man give acceptable cunnilingus and why they should never settle for less.

Night three - fellatio with an advance course on what hoops to make your designated playmate jump through before rewarding him with some deep-throat action. Delilah was virtually the female 'me'; helpful and educational while being petty and selfish (except I was never petty.)

Night four's agenda was training your male in proper breast play, identifying your pleasure points and ensuring he memorizes every last one of them.

Night five - kissing? Man, was that ass-backward.

I didn't worry overmuch. Aya and her Squirt squad hung out with Pamela and me. We scaled a chimney path to the mesa top - the Squirts and my first time. Pamela and my Miyako Monkey had made the journey earlier in the day. We watched our mesa's shadow reach out across the broad valley until it cloaked the closest mesa to the west. We might not have been overlooking the Painted Desert, but this was our own private portion of paradise.

There was a bit of a traffic jam on the way down. The Amazons posted snipers along the top of the mesa at all times. Three watched over the camp while the other two took shelter in blinds that allowed them to watch the other approaches to our haven. Goddess Paranoia was alive and kicking.

Rachel proved true to her word. I was unable to wrangle a single moment of 'alone time' with Miyako, or Delilah. I was sure that Delilah would have jumped at the chance as this testosterone/estrogen cocktail was an incredible turn on for her. Pamela hinted that Miyako was biding her time.

(Midnight in the Grotto of Good and Evil)

We were in one of the underground pools at the bottom of the mesa. Our tour guide had informed us there were nine known caves and the complex had never been fully explored due to the remaining waterways being totally submerged. It was well past midnight, all my little friends had crashed out and I had wisely ditched my security after Miyako silently woke me up with her hand over my mouth.

She pulled my hand to her lips and sucked deeply on two of my digits. I took this to be an indicator to me she was in dire need of loving. The grotto was my idea. I was inspired by my desire to see her naked and I couldn't risk a light source any place but underground. The tool shed and garage lacked a certain appeal. The fuel depot and septic tank were also ruled out.

[Nipponese] "Is the chaos in your mind still raging, Cáel?" Miyako asked with enough worry to doubly enhance her cuteness.

[Nipponese] "Which of the twenty-seven unexplained languages rolling around in my head do you want me to answer you in?" my toothy grin barely visible in the darkness.

Around half way through my sexual enlightenment in college, I had a revelation. The two guys I had gone road-tripping with took me to a bar in Portsmouth. I caught a woman looking us over. I already had my one-night stand lined up and she was looking most agreeable to my nefarious skullduggery (i.e. she had come with some other guy who preferred beer and darts with his buddies over keeping his attention on what mattered).

And then my awakening.

"Nah, she's too fat," he remarked. For one thing, my friend who said that could have stood to lose ten to fifteen kilograms himself. Next, we were dressed like middle class college kids - jeans, shirts that were most likely clean when we picked them out of the laundry basket, light jackets and the shoe thing.

This girl was dressed up for a good night out. Nice makeup, her clothing choices were - eh - not stunning, but this wasn't a stunning nightclub/bar. She looked fun, she smiled and yes, she was overweight. It dawned on me that not only did I not care - I never cared. I was a sexual omnivore and that meant any lady interested in sex with me was fine in my book.

So, I turned the tables on him.

"If you can score her number, I'll give you my watch," I dared him. The wristwatch was really nice ... one of those $500 handmade German ones. One of my Exs' great-granddad had swiped it off some Nazi pilot in World War II...and the same girl gave it to me twice. See, by accident, as I was exiting the (thankfully) first floor window of the Natural Sciences building, she threw a pitcher at me.

It had been sitting in an ornamental display case close by. I caught it, nodded to the flabbergasted female professor-type gawking at the semi-naked me, handed her the projectile, then fled like the responsibility-dodging coward that I was. It turned out that that bit of crockery was from the mid-1600's; the woman I'd surprised was the item's owner.

That older lady wasn't a teacher. She was a major benefactor in charge of one of the school's larger endowments. Had it shattered, the Ex most likely would have been expelled. Instead...after watching me round the Chancellor's residence, the mature chick turned to the totally naked chick leaning out the window, still screaming at me.

"Is he on the track team?" she inquired as she handed the artifact back. They talked, agreed I was a miserable human being, a cad and had firmly developed buttocks. Well, I guess that makes me a pig with nice hams. The next day, I showed up to return the watch - it was just an excuse for one more round of sex.

She explained the whole incident to me, took back the watch and sent me on my way. I hurried back to my dorm room, changed the sheets and picked up a bit. An hour later she was quietly knocking at my door. Rather epic make-up sex followed, she gave me the watch as a keepsake and I swore off intercourse in classrooms for two whole months. I'm a tower of resolute willpower, I know.

Back at the bar, my buddy snorted, made some comment about her being obviously desperate and promised me he'd nail in her in one of the back rooms. They talked a little, he got 'friendly', then said something that really hurt the girl's feelings. She looked our way, steadied herself with a shot of bourbon and came over to me and my other bud.

"Did you tell that guy you would give him fifty bucks if I put a lipstick ring on his cock?" she confronted us.

"No, I told him you were too good for him and if he could get your phone number, I would give him this watch," I showed her the watch. The girl's face flashed back to 'cautiously curious'.

"Is it a nice watch?" she asked.

"It is a family heirloom. My great-grandpa brought it back from World War II after taking it off some high ranking kraut officer," I embellished. "I knew he didn't have a chance with you."

"Thanks," she grinned. "I agree. Let me get my sister and we can get a bite to eat." Sex.

Two guesses of who her sister was. If you guessed the girl I had been cultivating since I got there, you would be right. I am too damn lucky. Lads, the next time you blow a sure thing - blame me for sucking all the good karma away from you...and nine of your friends. I got a three-way. The guy I made the challenge to got his revenge. He bailed and I had to hitchhike back to school. You know, female truckers...oh, back to Miyako.

After stashing our clothing and weapons (all of mine anyway), I took a small fluorescent lantern and slipped into the water. Cold, but doable. Miyako joined me and then, by moonlight, we swam to the point where the guide had said we'd find a passage to a secluded grotto. Down we went. My motivation wasn't sex.

That was coming no matter what. Seeing my Nipponese sweetie completely nude directed my course of action. Security protocols meant no lights after 11 p.m. My solution was to cut on a light that couldn't be seen from outside - the grotto. We felt our way along the rather wide submerged passage emerging well before air became an issue. I raised the lantern and cut it on.

Our tour guru had forgotten to mention that the algae patches along the sides and bottom as well as the quartz veins on the roof and walls reflected the light over what must have been an eight by ten meter cavern. Gorgeous. We glided to a shelf that met our needs, climbed up and shared a high school 'nervous virgin' moment. She broke the spell by pulling herself out of the water and, standing on her tippy-toes, touched one of the roof veins.

I drank in every inch of my little ninja babe's lithe, finely tuned body. Once she got over the newness of my voyeurism, she became playful, giving me a variety of silhouettes and poses. I stripped and returned the favor, which earned me a giggling fit. As I took a minute to sit down and stare into the tranquility of the still surface, she snuck up on me.

She said it all with her eyes. I tried to speak, but she put a forefinger to my lips. 'Hold me forever,' her eyes relayed her intentions. 'Love me for all eternity and think of no one else but me.' My elbows were locked, supporting my upper torso as she hovered over my lap. She was a lone feather falling upon the unyielding stone.

With one hand behind her, she guided my cock into the wet, luxurious vice that was her cunt. We took it in increments. A sigh more at home in whispered Nirvana than on mortal tongues escaped her lips as she nestled all the way down. We didn't fuck. We rocked back and forth in a timid motion.

As Miyako became accustomed to me once more, she would lean farther back with each pulse until an in and out rhythm was achieved. I took the occasion of her victory to pluck her left nipple into my mouth. Experience had taught me that was her more sensitive one. For several seconds, she fought it before knowledge caught up with instinct, then she loosed her passion.

After her vibrations subsided, she rested her body tightly against mine. I still impaled her and she was returning a fraction of that warmth.

[Nipponese] "Do you ever think you will find true love?" she whispered into my ear. I was drawing my finger through her damp hair as it trailed down her back.

[Nipponese] "As in love one over all others...no," I confided. "Even if I did, I could never admit it."

[Mandarin] "Why not?"

[French] "My life is a mad race through the forest and I don't know if I am a hound or the stag. I don't dare slow down until I know, and that is no way to repay such devotion."

[English] "When do you think the race will end for you?" she moaned softly.

[Nipponese] "I would really like to hold a child of mine. I don't regret my life's path up until now, yet I leave so very little of me behind if it ends soon," I muttered and then chuckled. "It used to be at the first sign of a pregnancy test, I would panic. The World turns very rapidly."

A minute passed as she went from warm to heatedly sensuous.

[Nipponese] "Less talk - more babies," she sacrificed her emotions for my well-being with her oh so naught Baby Metal band voice and questing fingers. How could I say 'no' to that?

[English] "I don't think it works that way," I teased.

[Nipponese] "Let's find out."

Sometime later, I was lying on my back, Miyako's body extended over mine so that not one precious inch of her touched the cool slick rock surface. Considering our position and location, it took me a bit longer to notice the intruder. I thought she was all kinds of strange. Twin memories and perception joined forces for once.

The woman moved through the water, yet she was only hip deep in a place I knew the bottom was three meters below. As she entered our isolated love nest, I noticed she had sent forth not a single ripple in the water. Memory filled in the rest. Her eyes, when her gaze met my own, had that void that comes from a tortured life punctuated by horrors you witness as well as ones you are forced to perform.

That was from "me". The electron swarm inside my mind provided another crucial piece of the puzzle. Utukku - phantoms...dead denied entrance to the Nether Realms, trapped between, until some sin had been lifted. The spirit gave me a look of shock, then turned and fled.

[Nipponese] "We are in danger," I hissed to Miyako before cutting off the lantern.

I dove in, angling for the tunnel we'd entered by. I was close enough not to jab my fingers into the stone surface as I clawed my way through. I didn't burst noisily to the surface on the other side. My approach was that of an alligator - slowly letting my head crest the surface so I could look around. No one was in evidence. Miyako was soundless at my side as we scramble to the hiding place of our gear.

Miyako held my hand back until she was sure our belongings hadn't been booby-trapped. I had to make quick judgment call: how time critical was this? I went the 'clothes and weapons' route.

"What is going on?" Miyako spoke quietly.

"Back there, I saw a feminine Asian ghost and the last time I witnessed such a pained, hopeless look, I was confronting the Seven Pillars," I told her. "Their slave had that same doomed stare."

"There are only two things here of value," Miyako made her assessment. "You and the children. You are far more accessible in New York City, so it must be the children." We pressed ourselves tightly to the cave sides when we heard the sound of footsteps coming our way. It was Charlotte, my minder for evening, with her bow notched and ready.

Firearms were kept to a minimum after hours, so bows were the order of the day - except for the snipers on the mesa top. My movements must have alerted her. I sat down and continued dressing.

"Charlotte, the Seven Pillars know we are here - they know the camp is here," I told her.

"How imminent is the threat?" Charlotte knelt beside me. I didn't know.

"They must be close, to be making a reconnaissance of the caves," Miyako said with tactical certainty.

"It was drawn to you, Charlotte - you were out of place, so this thing looked further. Otherwise these caves are irrelevant," she added. Miyako had the mindset of a seasoned professional spy.

"The cavern and spring have a night guardian," Charlotte countered. "I saw her when I was following you two here."

I had on my light bulletproof vest (no shirt), shorts (no underwear) and shoes (no sox).

"Let's go check on her to see if she's seen anything," I suggested/ordered.

What I had assumed was some sort of bedroll brought by Miyako turned out to be a Ninja Survival pack. This allowed me to weapon up while she dressed up. The amount of time we were taking still ate at my nerves. Charlotte stopped me from heading out first, only to be stopped by Miyako. The ninja slipped out like a cool desert breeze.

(Friend, Enemies and those In Between)

Thirty seconds later, a plastic BB bounced off my right shoulder. This time, I was leading Charlotte out. No one spoke. We couldn't see Miyako anyway, now dressed in her black pajamas and her face being reduced to just one slit for her eyes. We found the Amazon dead at her post. She was in a cunningly crafted blind not easily spotted from any direction.

A quick sweep for 'gifts' left behind revealed nothing, but the corpse yielded plenty. She was shot multiple times with two separate flash and sound suppressed submachine guns. The woman had been alive when we came down and if there had been a firefight, Charlotte would have heard the shots, if not seen them; thus the suppression. The bullet holes suggested a small caliber weapon.

Miyako stepped up, held up three fingers. Every piece of the Amazon's gear was still on her. The attackers had shot up her phone box. Wireless communications were deemed too risky so all the outposts had buried land lines. At this point, a few seconds of extra effort stood between the Seven Pillars and success; that and the Goddess Paranoia.

Had the assailants yanked up the box and cut the phone line, it would have been rendered useless. Instead, they shot up the device and moved on so that when Charlotte pulled out the cache of concealed goodies, including the spare phone box, we were back in business. As Charlotte got to work switching out the busted for the back-up, I studied our situation.

Advanced teams taking out the perimeter guards, and most likely the snipers, didn't make much sense. The camp had 300 highly motivated Amazons. Cutting them off temporarily from their armory and vehicles didn't make any sense, since all Amazons were armed anyway. That left timing. But timing meant nothing if I didn't have the goal of their attack.

It came as a double-whammy. The Chinese place a high premium on family and the Seven Pillars had mastered a sadistic art form of turning young foreign women into their concubine/assassins. The Condotteiri would have slaughtered the entire camp. The Seven Pillars would want to kidnap the children, both as current bargaining chips and as future tools.

500 girls...400 could be kidnappable. The oldest would go down fighting with their sisters. How did you get 400 kids out of here? Helicopters? That would be a fuck load of helicopters taking out their team and the children. Besides, helicopters alone couldn't dig them out of their cave and cliff-face strongpoints.

Desert - no waterways. That left the road. You couldn't use ATVs - not enough carrying capacity. The smart move would be to have tractor-trailers parked alongside the hard top state road. They would use smaller, more rugged trucks to ferry their captives out to the semis. That suggested some sort of 'cover/support' vehicles.

2 1/2 ton trucks with weaponized Hummers providing fire support a la 'Blackhawk Down' and that meant the bridge and the BBQ pit. That objective would solve both of the Seven Pillars problems - moving the main assault group into close contact with the Amazons so the Amazons couldn't organize a defense, and removing their hostages in a prompt manner so they all could be gone before anyone else could react.

The Seven Pillars had to have secured the bridge and were mostly likely replacing the missing piers. It was the choke point of their battle plan. Worse for them, it wasn't part of a barricade where they could attrition the Amazon numbers with vehicle mounted heavy weapons. The ditch ran north-south, bow shaped with the arch to the west and was over a kilometer from the camp.

The flanks were purposefully strewn with huge boulders that limited traffic to horse and motorcycles - no four-wheelers. They had to have control of the bridge, so that's where I went.

"Charlotte, I'm going to the bridge," I whispered before slipping out of the blind. I didn't order Miyako to follow me and I was sure Charlotte wanted strangle me for departing from her protective custody.

There are four kinds of fights, be they between armies, or individuals. Set-piece (sparring), assaults, ambushes and meeting engagements. I was about to be in the latter one. Meeting engagements happen when opposing forces are set on goals that unknowingly intersect one another. One of the most famous battles in US history - Gettysburg - was a meeting engagement.

I was using the bone-dry culvert because we feared the Seven Pillars had replaced our snipers. Miyako was...somewhere else. The enemy commandos used the same conduit to avoid having the remaining Amazon pickets spot them and raising the alarm. I had little doubt that the three men speedily moving south were heading for the grotto and its three inhabitants (Charlotte, Miyako and me).

Not knowing that I could both see ghosts and guessed who its demonic masters were, they assumed we were still in the caverns. Me not knowing how this whole ghost-scout thing worked, I assumed that I had a chance of surprising them at the bridge if I moved fast enough. In a final prick of irony, they misinterpreted the role their snipers played in our engagement.

They believed that their snipers would alert them if anyone moved on the bridge, ignoring the fact that the snipers didn't have a complete view of the gulch. I was only using the big ditch because I was afraid they had taken out the Amazon snipers and now had the high ground, which turned out to be true. Thank you, Goddess Paranoia.

My first tomahawk was in my left hand and my Glock-22 was in my right. My fear of snipers and the bend in the gully saved my life. We literally ran into each other, me and the first 7P soldier. His long barreled Type-05 was pointing past my left, his torso slammed into my pistol, ramming his front armored plate against it as it discharged.

The proximity muffled the sound of the gunshot. The bullet failed to punch through his impressive body armor, but the resulting force knocked him down and out. Unfortunately, our shared momentum knocked my gun out of my grasp. My right hand went for tomahawk two. The flattened man's team mates swung their submachine guns my way.

Halfway through his shift, a black dart flew out of the western darkness, past the first one, then snapped back. The action caused the hardy thread to wrap around the barrel of his weapon. I couldn't see her, but I knew it was Miyako with her flying wedge with the thread attached. The middle guy was startled and not moving as his training dictated.

That allowed me to use him as a shield against the third guy. Right as 7P #2 decided to release his weapon, I kicked him hard into the confused man behind him. Neither man went down, but I still got what I wanted.

Guy number three's main weapon was trapped to his right as I rushed his left. Vainly he tried to get an arm up to defend himself. My right tomahawk shattered his forearm at the elbow joint. Only the body armor on the inside of the blow stopped the appendage from falling off. My rational mind was catching up with my instincts.

These men had on head-to-toe ballistic body suits with knee guards and solid ballistic inserts for the front and back of the torso. They had on some sort of dull, dark-grey respirator mask which was why the armless guy wasn't screaming his head off. They also had matte black circular ear protections and a type of high tech visor on the ears and eyes respectively.

The sole survivor was falling back, drawing his silenced pistol while trying to put some distance between us and find Miyako at the same time. Dummy, tomahawks are designed for throwing. A bit of Amazons indignation was behind that toss. His visor was cut in two as my anger drove the blade 6 cm/2+ inches into his skull.

I heard a sharp crack of a rock being shattered. Miyako's graceful flip landed her at my side. I ran to the last victim, put my foot on his chest and put my right hand on the tomahawk's shaft. The guy reached up and grabbed the thigh of the foot on his chest with both hands. Shit, the fucker wasn't dead!

My left axe came down, struck his right temple and his skull came apart like a nitrogen frozen cantaloupe. I was sure I'd be downing a case, or ten, of something potently alcoholic to bury that visual for the rest of my life.

"They have definitely taken out our snipers," Miyako murmured.

"You didn't have to do that. He was already dead. It was a nerve spasm." Nerve spasm? He GRABBED ME...okay, in the instant replay it was more of his arms flying up than an actual grab. The cracking rock was a near-miss of my tender, sensitive ninja athlete. The fuckers must pay.

I wasn't expecting mercy to be the rule of the day, but still, Miyako was a ninja, not an Amazon. She was a bystander in our feud. In hindsight - that was a totally irrational line of thought. My closest ally pulled another of her wedges from somewhere and stabbed my first opponent in the throat three times. I hadn't killed him, so she did. I reassessed our situation. Our opponents knew we were up and about.

The final southern stretch to the bridge was eight to ten meters of open ground and the width grew to almost eight meters. I returned my axes and unslung my shotgun...I had loaded it with slugs instead of shot. I am a 'one shot/letting you know I'm pissed with you' kind of guy. By sticking to the eastern side of this gully, gulch, micro-canyon, we remained immune to the sniper fire from the top of the mesa.

As the bad guys were coming to the conclusion that their three-man troop was being born away on black wings for a long-overdue, one-way trip to Diyu (Chinese Hell), they realized we still needed to be dealt with. Either the dying gasps alerted them, or they found a lack of radio contact disturbing, I'll never know. Miyako and me, we sprang upon them unprepared, but not surprised.

As I had feared, they were shoring up the bridge with semi-portable hydraulic jacks. That segment of their plan had barely reached its conclusion so the seven battle-clad types didn't have their weapons up and ready to fire. There was an eighth guy who was looking right at us and two tortured ghosts flanked him. One was the female spirit I'd seen in the caves.

That guy had on less physical protection than the others for reasons I couldn't fathom. It was a combination of oriental lacquered wood, metal, ballistic cloth and silk sleeves and pants. It appeared to allowed greater freedom of movement, but left his hands and head uncovered.

His bald Han head was covered with tattoos that screeched 'Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!' at me for no rational reason.

"Rènwù wánchéng. Qù," the man snapped. The ghost I hadn't seen before took off to the southwest. In that freeze frame instant, I could make out semi-translucent erosions in the ghosts' bodies. They were frayed around the edges. The best parallel I could draw was the way a sheet of fine paper starts to curl around the edges in that first second it catches fire.

Every second in that perverse continuation was a further mutilation of their essence. At the same time, the other seven guys went combat-unfriendly. Shooting the fanatic sorcerer glaring at me served my sense for the dramatic. I put a solid slug into the guy behind him...because he had his back to me and couldn't see it coming ... just like the SD ladies at the range taught me.

Naomi wouldn't clap me on the back for the hit. But she would have been disappointed had I shot someone else, or missed. Doing my duty was the minimal expectation. The 12 gauge projectile caught the man between the C2 and C3 vertebra. It didn't matter if the slug penetrated his fancy suit of body armor - the impact snapped his spine and severed his spinal column.

One down, seven to go. They were about to get their turn, but not before I put lead in one more. This one saw it coming. He was also kneeling and aiming my way. It hit him just below the knee-guard, snapping his tibia. I threw my back into a groove in the gully wall. It was more Aya-sized then muscle-bound me-sized. It had the benefit of being the best of a bad lot of choices.

Dry rock walls splintered, projecting fragments all around. A few stung, but I had bigger problems. Bad things often come in threes and tonight was no exception. First on the list didn't even involve me. A fist-shaped divot exploded from the wall of the gulch across from me - that sniper was shooting at Miyako who had moved to the east side of the gulley.

My secondary concern was the team of killers walking their fire into my hiding place. Two or three were shooting at me so the others could edge around for a clear shot. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop them. The tertiary issue was the chthonic ramblings of the Han warlock.

Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe my shelter really was decaying at an accelerated rate. The rubble at my feet was inviting me to slip and fall into the open. Of course, that line of thinking was superstitious nonsense. Next time I was nearly killed I'd ask my goddess, Dot Ishara, about it.

A dozen firecrackers went off, the ditch flooded with a blinding light and I ran for it. I even picked up a bullet along the way. Sweet Mother Ishara! It was a searing burn along the back of my right thigh. I could hear all the pain receptors on my left side rejoicing that for once, it wasn't them squealing in pain.

The far/west side of the ditch had a better niche to hide in with the disadvantage being it would leave me open to sniper fire from the mesa. I'd asked Rachel what her best shot had been. She was my detail's sniper as well as its leader. 1.8 kilometers...then she'd promised me that any shot over 500 meters was pretty much a crap shoot.

Oh, I knew she was lying to me, but it was sweet of her to try. Now I was hoping an elite Seven Pillar sniper would be daunted by a one kilometer-distant target. I was feeling lucky. Actually I was feeling like I had no choice, but being so screwed I had to trust in luck would elicit more sympathy in the retelling. What I did know was that I had to get under the bridge and waiting for those guys to run out of bullets wasn't the solution.

I knelt down as low as I could go, leaned out and started firing. The Chinese gentlemen were nice enough to keep firing at my old hidey-hole, their muzzle flashes clearly visible in the wispy ninja smoke. It was more than I expected from a handful of tiny flash pellets. It was the flash that had saved me. The smoke was a bonus.

I fired at the target closest to the west wall. He'd have the best shot at Miyako when she showed herself. Quick-firing meant I had to aim for the center mass - their best protected region. I compensated by using the 'automatic' in my automatic shotgun. I switched to 'select fire'. Three slugs hammered him back.

An advantage of moving to my new cover was I cut down the range between us to three meters. Was he alive? Most likely, but he was feeling like an exceptionally malicious Red Cap had performed a River Dance on his chest. The one next to that guy shifted toward my firing spot. He had a half second on me. I'd give him this much, he knew his shit.

His 'shit' meant he had expended his mag and was putting in a fresh one without missing a beat. Wiesława couldn't have been smoother, chambering that first round flawlessly. Several successive hits from his rounds walloped me back into the crevice even as I pulled the trigger. My ballistic vest had saved me, though I had a whole new set of bruises to explain to Rachel.

I'd been aiming for the fuckers face mask, so odds were good that if my first shot missed, so had the other two. My magazine had two shots left. I went back to single shot and propelled myself out far enough to invite more punishment. I was having an awesome firefight, compared to the Seven Pillars hit-man I'd tried to kill.

If you put three 12 gauge slugs into a person's jaw and throat at close range, their head really does pop off - shades of the shootout at the Medical Examiner's office. Of more immediate concern was Evil Han Wizard guy looking right at me. Before I could squeeze of a shot some sixth sense told me I was too late.

The closest armored companion to his left had sprouted an arrow in the gap between his underarm and chest plate. All three of us were shocked. Not only were they both surprised to be dead, but the one arrow that had done them both in had come from the west - away from camp. As the two Chinese death-dealers harvested their own cursed reward, I saw the ruin of the sorcerer's left ear.

That was correct - someone shot Mr. Evil Tattoo-head through this skull and punched into the second man's chest from the side, piercing his heart. Yikes! Wilhelmina Tell? Then I got a clear look at the long, obsidian shaft that seemed to suck in the light and at the fletching made with oily black feathers donated from a bird that had never truly lived.

It wasn't like there weren't dozens of people around willing to kill me. What was one more? I had a bridge to sabotage and that Chinese warlock had already sent the message, via the enslaved ghost, that the bridge was secured for their cause. There were two more men to kill, so off I went. There was another reminder I wasn't alone.

One of the two remaining bad guys was being reacquainted with the gulch being three meters high. He was kicking out his life, hanging from the bridge while his companion was shooting into said pathway from below. I had unfinished business to take care of. The man I'd crippled was gamely bringing his QCW/Type-05 to bear on me, so I put a round into his face.

Mr. River Dance earned my final round into his respirator as he tried to sit up. Whoops; left my Glock behind and I doubted my .380 could cut the mustard against their body armor. Axes it was, proving I was an amateur. To prove they were professionals, the hanging man flipped out a blade, cut his noose and landed facing me. His remaining companion turned to face me as well.

My favorite ninja wasn't done yet. As the second man turned, Miyako stepped from behind one of the false pylons and kicked the gun out of his hands. The ex-hanging man had the choice of reaching for his dropped Type-05, thus letting me chop him in the back as he bent over or...draw a sword?

I was a tad curious why he didn't draw his silenced pistol until I saw it lying next to his submachine toy. Go Miyako! He'd dropped his big gun when she snared him and she'd somehow knocked the pistol out of his hand when he went for that next - most likely to shoot her as she was securing his necktie to the bridge. The sword it was then.

'Jian'; I yanked that memory from somewhere along with a blitzkrieg quick montage of its proper use.

'Phfft - phfft - phfft - Yeow!' came from under the bridge, followed by a high-pitched whistling noise. That would be Miyako disabling a hydraulic jack with a silenced pistol, then having the other bad guy knock it from her grasp. New villain plan: - team up. It was a good plan. They had Miyako on one side and me on the other.

By using internal lines of maneuver, they could double-team one us, then turn to fend off the other. All they had to do was keep us from destroying the other hydraulic jacks. Miyako didn't have a gun and I had two tomahawks. Help for them was on the way. Counterplan - Miyako disappeared. New villain plan: - rush me.

It was two 1.2m/4ft double edged blades versus two tomahawks. Unlike earlier skirmishes against less skilled foes, these two had perfected their teamwork. They were fighting me, keeping an eye out for Miyako (vis-a-vis the snipers) and they utilized their individually superior fighting skills to preclude anything but a desperation defense on my part.

Their added bonus was that I would soon be a target for said sniper(s). Alien memories came crashing in. I didn't fold up. This wasn't at all similar to my fight with Caprica. There was no neurological turf war. My survival warranted a temporary cease-fire between the foreign and homegrown thought patterns. I didn't chop them up into sushi. Hell, I didn't even hit them.

I was getting in some swings though and that mattered. What mattered more was a sudden urgency in their attacks. Then, over the humming of steel on steel, I heard footsteps coming on fast and the tell-tale sound of high caliber rounds chewing up the real estate. By the Holy Seven Martial Goddesses of the Host, no matter how many times I would later rewind that memory, I didn't know how she did it.

My savior knew precisely where the leftmost combatant was. He expertly spun to face her, ready to parry and counterstrike. Her blade was...a...the bastard offspring of a Claymore and Dao - the other Chinese white meat - I meant the other traditional steel sword design of China. At first glance I thought that heavy SOB would be impossible to wield effectively in a sword fight.

The blade alone was long (1.5m/5ft), with too much weight in the top third. I was willing to bet the Seven Pillars special operations soldier was thinking the same way, until her two-handed downward hack powered through his overhead parry as if his steel Jian blade was nothing more than a marshmallow stick. The blow sliced off his ear, severed his collarbone and drove the front and back hard plates down below his crotch as she plowed through his ribcage.

She finished off that display by fluidly following through with the strike so that her blade pulled effortlessly free of his corpse. The last guy didn't lose his professional resolve. He tried to put himself between both of us and the bridge. He successfully deflected the stranger's next blow by switching to a two-handed grip as well. That opened him up to me and I promptly chopped down into his left shoulder joint which ripped open his arm with a gush of blood.

He didn't have the strength left to fend off her next strike. She took his right arm clean off. I put my left handed axe to use and slashed open his throat.

"Bridge," I indicated as I ran to its relative safety. "We need to knock out these devices." The jacks. I was a little worried she wouldn't understand the technology.

"There is a large convoy coming this way," she grumbled after she joined me. "There are also four small helicopters hovering out there, waiting for the signal to attack." So much for needing the History of Modern Warfare update. "These," she looked around to the job at hand, "I don't know."

"I've got it," Miyako appeared.

"Smash these two tablets together and you'll get a rather destructive acidic reaction," she handed out blue and yellow marbles to me and...well, our newfound non-enemy wasn't interested. The ninja and I got to work. She was faster. In my defense, she'd trained for this and I had a sinking feeling whatever acid this combo made was equally hazardous to my flesh.

"You are bleeding," the warrior woman snuck up on me.

"Got shot. Hazards of the profession," I joked dryly. The hydraulics sounded off a final, fatal objection. The bridge beams began to creak as the upward pressure ceased.

"What exactly are you?" she persisted. She almost shook my shoulder to get my attention.

"Currently I am a highly indignant 'attempted murder' victim," I murmured. That was stupid of me. I already knew she had a temper problem. [OKH] "I cannot adequately explain my status to you 'mukīl rēš damiqti' (guardian angel), in the time allotted before battle is rejoined."

[OKH] "There is no way you are 'Hatti LÚ' (a man of the Hatti), so how do you speak this tongue?"

She punctuated her bullish attitude by putting her shoulder into one of the disabled jacks and knocking it over. Miyako bounced a pebble off of my shoulder to get my attention. I followed her gaze to the mesa. A tripwire flare had gone up. A quick guesstimation put it halfway up the mesa's rock pile; three-quarters of the way to the first buildings.

From a command decision standpoint, this had all the hallmarks of the quandary facing Admiral Nagumo at the Battle of Midway. Things were not working out as planned for the IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy), yet the prospect of completing the mission - the destruction of the US carrier fleet was possible.

For the Seven Pillars leader, the situation was similar; his assault teams had penetrated the Amazon defenses and were on the verge of separating the Amazons from their heavy weapons. Or so he thought. Thanks to Charlotte, the Amazons had been able to assemble a partial response.

It wasn't perfect, but it put forth a far stronger defense than their attackers had originally envisioned. Caprica and her patron goddess Paranoia had planned for this near-disaster. The flare wasn't set off by the Seven Pillars infiltrators. Caprica had it set off to both signal the rest of the defenders to their rally points and put the leader of the main, road-bound attack force on the horns of a dilemma.

If he pressed the attack, a vicious firefight was in the offing. If he pulled back, he could pull his snipers off the top of the mesa, but his assault team's infiltrators were fucked. They were outnumbered and there was no place to run and hide before the Sun came up. In the end, all the glory and infamy fell on Miyako's and my shoulders. Charlotte had convinced Caprica that I WOULD take the bridge.

The Seven Pillars' leader was convinced that his soulless mystic and ten elite troopers could dispose of me, Miyako and Charlotte. Had it not been for the unexpected party crasher, he would most likely have been right. His final deciding factor may very well have been 'hell, I'm already this close to victory'.

For Caprica, her 'Tar Baby' approach was based on her blast zones being alive and kicking. Being buried under a centimeter, or two of loose gravel and equipped with 'pop up' sprinkler heads, the ghosts hadn't picked up on them during their recon. That left me, my new buddy and Miyako kicking out struts under the bridge in the middle of the BBQ pit with the added incentive that no other Amazons could see, or communicate with us.

If we were still there when the enemy arrived, we'd be cooked along with everyone else. That left us in a frantic hurry to knock out the last jacks as we heard the sound of that sizable convoy coming our way. Simply hiding farther down the gulch wasn't going to work. The whole place was about to be roasting our chestnuts at around 300C/575F, spiced up with its napalm-like reputation.

The last jack went down under our combined effort. I was making up my mind about which abysmal exit strategy to embrace when the ghost distracted me. She'd never gone away. Since I was the only one who could see her, it hadn't been a problem. Now she knelt beside the unloving example of why you only have your ear pierced by a professional - ear piercer - and was clawing at his remains futilely.

At first, I thought it was some sort of revenge, a 'beating on her tormentor' kind of thing. It wasn't. She was trying to grab some material object in her otherworldly hands. Love more than hate. I ran out, grabbed up his body and dodged back under the bridge. I guessed the snipers were busy elsewhere at that moment.

The ghost came along, indicating there was something close to his chest she wanted. I yanked up three chains from under his torso ballistic vest. There were three tiny glass reliquaries attacked to the ends. The ghost looked at me with pleading eyes.

"Those are talismans of Gong tau," Miyako whispered; Chinese black magic.

"Those are finger bones," the friendless one added. Smashing them seemed like the sane thing to do. Pamela wouldn't have liked that excuse. I held up each trinket before the ghost. The first one - nothing. The second one - pleading. The third one - nothing. I had to be sure. I smashed the second one. The ghost's shape rippled then began to fade.

She willed herself to continue for a few more seconds of torment. She said something in a language I didn't understand (it turned out to be Vietnamese) then repeated it in Mandarin. 'Thank you'. There was a twinkle in her eyes. She had one last, mad act of defiance to hurl at the people who had defiled her body and lacerated her soul.

We would never know for sure what she did. I had a sneaking suspicion she flew back to the Gong Tau practitioner with the convoy and humbly told him everything was 'A-Okay' at the bridge. He relayed that message to the Unit Commander. The Commander took it as gospel because their enslave spirits didn't have a choice, but to tell them the truth...right?

All we knew for sure was fifteen seconds after she left, the whole line of light armored vehicles and trucks accelerated. I wrasseled up a Type-05, a spare clip and three grenades.

"We need to get out of here," the stranger stated. "Follow me." The white horse hair plum on her helmet whipped around and she began running to an easier path to the exit the ditch - to the west. The 'tons of enemies coming at us in a big way' west. She climbed up to the lip and peeked over.

"What are we doing?" I grumbled at her as I admired her kilted posterior from below.

"If I have this correct, the ditch is about to become an impassible barrier after a few vehicles go crashing in. We will need to circle around and kill the people in the last one so the rest can't escape." The two of us? Miyako had vanished again.

"I love this plan," I groused. "Me, you and a Miyako Monkey holding off how many hundreds of guys."

"If you are scared, feel free to run away," the stranger sneered. "I wasn't planning on you being useful anyway." I made a quick assessment of my resources.

Glock-22 - check; I'd dropped it. USAS-12 - check; I'd dropped that too. My .380 versus their body armor - check; useless. A nifty Chinese Personal Defense Weapon/SMG I had no experience with, three grenades ...it took me a second to access my Mandarin library - 308-1 (that was of no help), one big knife, one small knife and four tomahawks.

"Try to keep up, Gimli," I scoffed. "I bet I'll kill more than you. Loser buys the winner a night's worth of koumiss." Chicks dig Legolas - nuff said.

"What is that? It sounds vile," she snorted. The vehicles were getting close. Jumping up and trying to run past them at this point was a great way to feed the vultures.

We had to wait until the pile-up began and confusion reigned.

"Chilled fermented mare's milk. You'll love it," I joked.

"It doesn't sound vile. It sounds wretched," she corrected herself. Two of the small helicopters flew over us, racing to aid their comrades already inside our perimeter.

In their wake, came some hybridized Hummer/Jeeps, including the guy at the swivel mount of what could have been an automatic grenade launcher. He was traveling so fast he almost made it...ALMOST. The bridge had a built-in dip and as the force and weight of his vehicle hit that dip, the entire eastern end of the bridge gave way.

Even then, the bottom of his front bumper hit the lip of the far abutments. So close. That momentum kept on trying. The vehicle's rear end rose up and for a second, I thought they were going to flip all the way over. It didn't. The problem was that like Special Forces world-wide, they had clearly trained for this mission.

Seven Pillars commandoes had worked out every detail of their plan, which included racing through the night, bumper to bumper, so they could reach their destination and deploy before the enemy could pin them to their transports. Only the Unit Commander could execute the plan, or call it off. It was an 'either/or' decision. Once he unleashed his hounds, all bets were off.

Thus everything hinged on the lead scout spotting danger in time to communicate the threat for the whole unit to react. Such a formation ensured rapid deployment, yet it really impeded your ability to slam on the brakes if needed. Like right at that moment when they needed to avoid the disaster overtaking the ride directly in front of them. It was the downside of this assault's calculated risk.

The second hybrid-weapons platform nearly knocked the first one over. The driver, with lightning reflexes, had instinctively hit the brakes instead of the gas. Faster would have slammed him into the undercarriage of the first ride. Braking...not much better. The third driver apparently had a different driving philosophy.

He yanked his wheel to the right and gunned it. Had he not clipped the bumper of the second roadster...but he did ... resulting in him flying over our heads and into the rock wall across the gulch. The fourth landed on top of the second, only to have the first finally come down and land on him. Momentarily, that was a good spot for vehicle one as it now was level with the lip of the ditch.

But wait, there was more. First off, Friendless and I took off, running past the doomed convoy as fast as we could. A few of the armed guards in the follow-up 2 1/2 ton truck glanced our way, but they had more pressing concerns - like bracing for impact. Had they possessed a spare moment, they might have been concerned about what we were running from.

The driver of the first truck could see the unfolding fate of the fighting vehicles ahead. He swerved to the left, aiming to skirt the edge of the gully, but he had too much forward momentum. The truck flipped the lip, landing upside down. The pain of this uncoiling serpent wasn't over. The first truck had a clear view of the fate of the members before it.

The trucks behind the first didn't. Even as communication warnings flared, physics was playing hell with the Seven Pillars' column. The trucks were bigger, so they needed a longer distance to stop, and the craftily designed Amazon roadway didn't aid that. The final approach to the camp was an 'L' that went from southwest-north to due east at the half-kilometer mark.

That slowed down would be attackers enough so the watching Amazons could figure out what to do with you, yet left you enough space to accelerate to an unsafe speed. This left the trucks piling up around the collapsed bridge. The instant the first truck stopped short of disaster, the sadistic sister observing the fiasco hit the first switch and out came the sticky accelerant.

Their respirators must have given the troopers a few more seconds of not knowing what else was going wrong. With their enlightenment came the running. No one screamed because they couldn't (their facemasks). Half the Amazon naphtha remained a clingy liquid while the other half turned to vapor. Instant Incendiary Inferno! The initial earthshaking explosive force was followed by multiple secondary and tertiary detonations.

My erstwhile ally and I picked ourselves off the ground and resumed our footrace to the last in the line-up. She stopped, drew back her bow and took aim. I didn't. I had a PLAN that required me to get just a bit closer. The second to last vehicle, like the last, had a man standing up at a swing mount. He pointed his vehicle-mounted grenade-launcher my way just in time to take a black-fletched through the sinuses.

The gunner in the last car barely had time to register he was under attack when she killed him as well. When the trucks began slamming on their brakes, the fighting vehicles did too. Braking distance - a slight gap opened up between the last truck and the last two guardians. The rides were four-doors with a rigid top and a fold-down trunk.

The Seven Pillars commandoes flowed into action even as the last of the dust was being kicked up. Ranged death was coming from their right, so the left rear passengers in each vehicle dismounted. The right side rear guy, pulled down their dead gunner and prepared to take his place. Me? My plan required me to get a tiny bit closer! I bolted for the nearer of the two targets.

I swung the gun aside, pulled out one of my brand new grenades and pulled the pin. Was that four seconds, or six? Come on Hollywood, get your fiction straight! My right foot was on the bumper, the left went on the hood, right on the roof and down went the grenade. If this bitch was a smoke grenade, I was so boned.

At the moment, the dead gunner had just been dragged down into the cabin. Before he could be replaced, the grenade bounced down among them. One toy down, two to go. I kept running on top of the vehicle. By the way, the trucks 'behind me' had Special Forces fighters in them. Woot! The shear insanity of my action bought me precious steps.

Off the back of the first hybrid killer and onto the hood of the second. The rear-left passenger would have been shooting me dead except he'd sprouted a throwing dart in his visor and was pitching forward off the slightly elevated road and rolling down the slope. I pulled the grenade's pin too soon - whoops!

The poor bastard wasn't even dead. He had a steel wedge shoved into his ocular groove though. The pain had to be intense. My Miyako was out there, somewhere, still watching over me. I went from the hood to the roof of the last hummer. As I ran across the top, down went grenade number two and...the 308-1 grenade is NOT made in China. The Seven Pillars stole the design from the US Navy SEALs.

In fact, the 308-1 is referred to as the 308-1 NAPALM grenade (my emphasis is on the 'N+' part) in the US inventory. 'Arinniti's burning heart, what a horrible way to die' was replace by 'they were going to use these on my Amazons, the fuck-wads'. As I dove headlong off the end of the second vehicle, another 'little' problem arose. If you recall, the first victim's weapon mount was an auto-grenade launcher. The after-battle evaluation indicated the Seven Pillar's team brought way too much spare ammo to be remotely safe.

The resulting explosion gave me a heck of a tail wind mid-flight. The fireball chasing after me made any calculations of distance irrelevant to my immediate survival. Suffice it to say, I did land, rolled with the impact and wasn't crippled. The second ride/the rearmost one? The blast shoved it down the road after me and twisted it sidewise - then it blew up.

They had a 'Hua Qing' Mini-gun onboard (why does Delilah knows so much about Chinese weaponry? I'm not sure) plus a great deal of machinegun ammo. Until that point, Gimli had a chance of humiliating me in the body count race. The explosions rained shrapnel everywhere and propelled a flaming engine block into the truck in front of it.

Twelve more guys plus the driver and the guy riding shotgun. Four plus three and a half for two fighting vehicles - I was sharing the blinded guy with Miyako. I was looking even better if she let me include the ones I killed pre-wager. I was also cultivating a full-body bruise. I was morbidly curious if the soles of my boots had melted, because I was feeling a bit singed.

Cover? I had some. It was most likely pointless. There was a shit-ton of dead bodies and ruined equipment between me and any combat effective enemy. I saw a beam of light come up from the camp. Turned out it wasn't a beam of light; it was the fiery tail of a woman-portable surface-to-air missile. The exploding helicopter clarified the confusion for me.

Moments later, a second streaking flame sought out another helicopter - this one clearly veering away - too late. More fiery death. From the former middle of the column, three of the hybrid fighting rides pulled off the road and headed south. Escape wasn't that easy. From somewhere close to the bead workshop, a thin tip of flame (it was coming at me) reached out and punched the lead vehicle.

I was moving up in the world. I could now honestly claim to have seen what carnage a 90mm rocket could do, courtesy of an expertly aimed M79-Osa. The explosion nearly ripped it in two and tossed both halves my way. The remaining two split up and made a run for it. As I watched them speed away, Miyako came up and lay on her stomach beside me.

"Many of their warriors yet live. They will be making their way on foot to some sort of gathering point, if their masters allow it," she told me.

"Seen our 'friend'?" I asked. She shook her head. "I think I've put Rachel through enough for one night," I added with a sigh. Miyako pulled down her mask long enough for me to see her smile.

I had done right by my people and my friends. Calamity had called me to battle, yet in the end, I was Rachel's burden to bear. Her first job was to safeguard me and I wasn't letting her do that job by running around out in the dark, hunting down trained killers. Maybe Miyako was warming up to the idea that our child and I would meet face to face one day.

Since most of the enemy soldiers were slipping away to the south, we circled around to the north. Of my temporary ally, there was no sign. As the eastern sky began to lighten, I shattered the last two reliquaries. I hadn't done it earlier out of fear that freeing the ghosts would alert our enemies to the extent of our knowledge. Now a desire for them to be free meant more.

(Aftermath and Alliances)

Sunrise bore a dual bane for the Seven Pillars troopers. Their armor, while impressive, was both very stifling and black. Many dumped it and went around in their underwear and t-shirts. Having left the stables alone, they were now being hunted down by Amazons on horseback and guided by four small UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).

It wasn't vengeance. That would come later. The more men they killed now, the less intelligence their enemies could wring from the survivors. The priority was evacuation and the conundrum was: 'if the Seven Pillars knew about the camp, what did they know about possible Amazon exit strategy?' Enter Special Agent of the FBI Virginia Maddox. It was a long shot. And that Caprica allowed it, showed the depths of her concern.

Javiera Castello ran a multi-agency task force centered on the criminal presence of heavily armed mercenaries gunning it out with civilians and police in Chicago. That opened some doors for her, though her precise authority was limited. It was a 'friend of a friend of a friend' deal ... what she needed was elements of the US Air Force and the US Air National Guard.

I don't know whose cocks she sucked, pussies she licked, asses she kissed, or who she promised her 'first born' to, but she arranged for air transport of 300 Amazons - destination: anywhere between Panama and Alaska, Canada included. We could all see the decision eating at Caprica's heart. Both St. Marie and Katrina left the final call with her. She was the leader on the spot.

200 of the youngest and 80 Amazon warriors would take the offer of aid. In four hours, local, state and federal authorities would be crawling all over this place, so the majority of us had to be gone. Sophia and a handful of others, including the worst wounded, along with Virginia would stay behind to face the music.

The rest of them would break for the northeast and the Kaibab Indian Reservation. There was no agreement between the Amazon and Kaibab people. They had been quiet neighbors for a hundred years. Before then, the Southern Paiutes suffered considerably from the slave raids of the Navaho and Ute.

One winter, shortly after the establishment of an Amazon freehold in the region, slavers grabbed an Amazon girl by mistake. The freehold tracked the Navaho through Kaibab lands. Seeing that the Amazons were going to get back their 'tribe' member and missing several of their own people recently, the Kaibab offered to help.

Neither side talks about the vengeance the Amazons subjected the Navaho to. It took the Navaho eight years to return to the Kaibab lands. This time, the tribal leaders asked the Amazons for help and help they got. The Navaho didn't get their raiding party back. When they went looking, they found the corpses hung from trees by their own intestines and their testicles and phalluses stuffed into their mouths. Some really sick bitches.

The Navaho never came to the Kaibab lands after that. From that day forward, the two groups had developed an understanding. If some outsider group threatened the Kaibab, the Amazons, acting in their own self-interest, would help out. Beyond that, it was live and let live...until this day. The Amazons were in desperate need and only the hundred or so Kaibab could help.

Why? Another aspect, rarely discussed, went much more to the creeping fear among all the camp guardians. If the Seven Pillars' ghosts found the children once, they could do so again. In the Kaibab lands were a series of old, old religious sites, sacred to the spirits of the land and the Kaibab ancestors. Caprica was going to the aboriginal inhabitants for mystic protection.

Two ATVs head sped ahead to open negotiations. For the rest, it was rounding up what we could carry and destroying what we couldn't. The fifteen, sixteen and seventeen year olds took over security. The thirteen and fourteen year olds prepared to be pack mules for the camp's goods. The ten, eleven and twelve year olds corralled the youngest for their transport to the assigned airfields.

Me? I was being sent back to the remote airfield and heading home. A quick meeting of minds allowed me to take Aya and her Squirts with me. Asking any of my Security Detail to remain behind? They all wanted to, but their duty was to stick by my side. Europa and Loraine hugged Aya and me before returning to their duties.

Virginia stayed because the camp had become a crime scene. She would catch up with me when Javiera could replace her as lead investigator. Delilah and Miyako were leaving with me. I had one last thing to take care of before leaving. I went back to the site of the convoy slaughter. A few dozen meters to the south I found what I was looking for and more.

I found two dead men with a black shafted arrow in each. This time I had my entourage (minus Virginia) with me.

"Target," Tiger Lily spoke softly. She'd brought her FN-P90 up and aimed at the stranger. In the morning light, she cast a far more frightening figure.

"Rachel, I would like to talk to her," I 'suggested' to my chief bodyguard.

"Sure," Pamela joked. "She's all pom-poms, pastels and Puppy-love."

"Information, please," Rachel inquired of me while watching the tall woman draw close. She had taken off her archaic, white hair crested helm. Her braid undone; her loose black mane was already plastered with sweat.

"She is the Friendless - Queen Shammuramat of Assyria, traitor to the Host, murderer of her twin sister and under a sentences of death."

"Oh...and here I thought we had survived this battle," Charlotte mused dryly.

"Come on, Charlotte," Pamela snorted. "She's an old chick. How tough can she be?"

Had anyone a hostile look to spare, they would have tossed it Pamela's way.

"We have unfinished business, you and I," Shammy glared.

Her arms and armor were equally archaic seeming yet...I felt the design had incorporated techniques and materials not available when the original was crafted.

The attentiveness of the ladies around me cruelly amused her.

"Let's return to my camp. We can drink water and eat some breakfast," I evaded.

"No," she snapped. "I want to know who you are and I want to know now."

"Neither my hostess nor I are bound to your timetable," I grinned.

"For that matter, I know you don't have a timetable." I balanced that thought with, "Meet with the Amazon whose prestige you helped save. This was a gathering place for the young of the Host and you are not here by accident, I'd wager."

"I am not of the Host," she growled.

"You are telling this to a guy, you know?" I countered. "Take an extra hour out of your life. Eat and drink with me and I will answer what I can."

"Fine," she grumbled. "It is already hot and the Sun hasn't even begun to cook me." As we headed across the bloody, stinking burned out ruin of a landscape, I caught Shammy looking around in a haunted fashion.

Tiger Lily went ahead to give the bare basics to Caprica. This was more than a matter between the Friendless and me. After the water and a dry breakfast, the introductions went around, me last of all. The stage was set, the players were in their spots, and it was up to me to screw this up.

"I am Cáel, Head of House Ishara, and I come with a pledge of peace," I said as I approached with empty hands.

"I do not want your peace ..." she punctuated with disdainful laughter, "Ishara? Groveling is your specialty, not mine. Bow before me and I will press my sandal upon your neck," Shammuramat scoffed. That meant make me her slave. Nope. I'd been dodging that fate for way too long (was it two months already?)

"Stick your foot in my direction, it better be because you want a foot massage, Princess. Falling down has never been my problem. Staying down when I should give up on the other hand...it simply isn't me."

"If it makes you feel better, I will kill you standing up," her inner wolfishness came forth.

"I would rather you kill me on my death bed...say in 70 more years," I grinned.

My bravado made Shammy smirk.

"You aren't the gloomy Isharans I have dealt with before. Your tongue is rather glib," she casually noted.

"Why, thank you," I kept things positive.

"It wasn't a compliment. I find your pedantic nature annoying," her non-violent mood was dissipating.

"Before passing your final verdict on my tongue, give me ten minutes in private to convince you of its multitude of other uses," my fearlessness riposted.

"Boys with pink lips do not interest me," her eyes narrowed.

"Me neither. See? We are already finding common ground in less than five minutes. Give me another century and I'll have 'letting him die slowly' off your list of possible ways for me to go," I proved I wasn't going away.

Shammy allowed, then crushed, a tiny smile.

"Last chance, Isharan - Ishara. I only came here to present my challenge to the current High Priestess. I have a pathetic, contemptible bit of filth to deal with," Shammy declared. She was referring to her death sentence.

Normally, the High Priestess was the final source of reprieve, but I got the feeling Shammuramat was committed to spilling a sea of Amazon blood to force her way to a pardon.

"There is no High Priestess. She took herself to the cliffs eight days ago."

"That was exceptionally insipid. What made her do that? I smell the copper taste of blood and burning stench of flesh on the wind. There is a war coming," she glowered.

"Too bad you are going to miss it," I sighed.

"Unlike you, I do not desire to talk my enemies to death," was her chosen insult.

"Due to your limited vocabulary, consistently bad attitude and onerously boring desire to have a one-track conversation, we should all count that as mercy."

"The only mercy any of you will see from me is knowing you have died a warrior's death," she threatened. As a man with a long history with angry women and a more recent bout with casual killers, I counted her continuing to talk, not kill, as a victory. Women lie all the time, very often to themselves.

"I can balance your gift of mercy with a gift of mercy of my own," I began chiseling away at her desire to return to the red, red haze of battle.

"I do not need your mercy, Ishara," Shammy answered.

"I am not talking to you, Shammuramat. I am talking to Anat." If looks could kill...

"I care nothing for Anat. They turned their back on me long ago," she spat. Having died in shame, she had no clue that all her descendants had long passed into extinction. She, like yours truly, was the last 'survivor' of our line.

"Your reckless self-loathing is appalling, Shammy," I grinned. She was PISSED-OFF!

"I am Shammuramat, Warrior-Queen of Assyria, Mother of Kings, She who slays all who oppose her. I do not need..."

"You are..." backhand. Oh, I saw it coming and was able to bend with the blow. It still hurt like a mother-fucker.

"They need you, Shammy..." earned me an open-palm slap that attempted to snap my cervical spine.

"That's two, Bitch," Pamela sounded bored. "Wind up for another, the gratitude ends and the slaying resumes."

"For someone who has clearly never found the courage to take that long overdue trip to the cliffs, you have developed a sudden distaste for living," she said to Pamela.

"Think so, Shammuramat? I have gone to the cliffs and come back from the dead ahead of you ... and certainly with more insight and wisdom.

Before you give us another teaspoon of your arrogant disdain, take a good look at the man who stands before you - a REALLY good look."

Pamela was constantly educating me in Amazon lore - 'know your enemy' being a recurring mantra. In that case, I couldn't blame her for withholding a certain someone's history. No, not Shammy's. No, she meant to tell me, yet withheld that crucial tidbit because of my still fragile mental state and the impact she feared it would have. It turned out she was right to do so.

All three of us were bushwhacked by circumstance. Despite her general tendency to take no one's council, Shammy gave me a second, far more intense scan. She'd already felt something she couldn't identify when she was around me. Her Amazon 'stillness' and single-minded devotion to her mission had repressed her desire to dwell on those instincts.

I've been told that gay men go through the same emotional yo-yo crap that we straight dudes do. I was starting to think those people had been lying to me.

[Akkadian] "****'?" 'White Hair' Shammy whispered to me a nonsensical yet passionate sobriquet in a tongue she had no reason to think I knew.

Her face lost its rock-hard contempt for all life and became one of shocked recognition, love and sorrow. I was her 'White hair' and by that, I knew she was referring to the white horse hair crests every man in my (?) hand-picked fraternity wore on our helmets.

[Akkadian] "****?" 'Black Cloud'.

If there was any doubt, it was the hair of white stallions, sacred to the Aryan people whose warlike mien I, the humble son of a potter from Umma, had adopted. For what seemed like an eternity, I lost the ability to discern the present from the past.

[WARNING: What follows is a diversion from the central storyline, but it is crucial to understanding why certain members of the supporting cast are behaving the way they are.]

(808 BCE near Halab in what is today's Northern Syria)

For me, Cael Nyilas, it was a return to last night's horrifying scene that engulfed me. The screams of dying horses and moribund men crying the pantheon of life's final regrets. Blood, piss, voided bowels and the stench of comingled sweat and leather filled my nostrils. The true cacophony of battle was all about. The battle shock faded into an innocuous background distraction.

In my heart of hearts, I felt at ease, even content. We were cut off and surrounded yet hardly hopeless. Men - my brothers-in-arms and the younger noble sons of Assur and Nineveh combined to put a press of shields, armor and flesh encircling us. Those 'pampered' aristocrats stank with fear and well they should. Death was still possible before their relief arrived.

I hurt...Shara (my deity?), I was wounded, but it meant nothing. I laughed; a primitive version of 'atheists and foxholes' passing through my mind. This body had lived through much worse. The closest man, her deceased husband's cousin, and I lifted the shattered wooden chariot off the person our circle was centered on. My arm was extended to her.

She was glorious, fierce and half-drunk with battle lust. I could feel her talon-like fingers through the leather and 'parzillu' scales guarding my bicep. She half jumped and was half pulled to her feet. Her kinsman presented her 'misplaced' sword, hilt first. In her eyes, I saw the burning intensity of the Shamash (Sun God...consort of Aya?) at the height of the Burning Season.

Her martial mirth exceeded any other noise as it passed her lips.

"You took your time getting here," Shammuramat taunted me - not a true reproach. "I was so bored, I decide to take a nap in the shade of my conveniently overturned chariot." She defied all fortunes that conspired toward her demise; her own breed of madness.

"You looked so peaceful in your sleep, I didn't want to wake you," I bantered back. Her 'kinsman' scowled at my familiarity with his monarch. My champions - more like brothers to me than any kin born of my blood - had carved a gory swath to her stranded bodyguard. Mounted on Median steeds, we had pressed back the entourages of two Aramean kings bent on her violent passing.

A barricade of overturned, or unattended chariots gave us space to dismount and perform our very visible rescue mission. All the pieces were right where she wanted them; everything unfolding according to her plan. Focus the enemy in the center with her person and the banner of Assur while the rest of her chariots and all of her cavalry swept through an unguarded wadi and fell upon them from behind.

Brilliant. Somewhat less brilliant when faced with the desperate energy of our enemies, but her victory was already a certainty. The allied Western Kings were sure my command was attempting to snatch the Queen back to the safety of her infantry. Those hardy, foot-bound souls were still holding their own against the greater mass of the enemy footmen.

The children of rebellious nobles bent every bit of their remaining energy, squandered their last reserves to ensure Shammuramat didn't escape. If the positons were reversed, they would have eagerly abandoned their troops and sought safety to the rear. The idea of Shammuramat being overwrought with terror was absurd.

Our opponents' bellows for our blood turned into wails of despair. The charging, plumaged steeds of Assyria had appeared behind them. Our enemies had nothing left to slow the new arrivals down, much less stop them. For those who dared defy Shammuramat, Queen of all the Akkadians, the slaughter was just beginning.

"Come 'Alal' (that was me...); I promised 'Atarshumki' I would kick his head over his own city walls before sunset and I always keep my promises," she shoved one of my horse-holders aside and took one of my steeds. 'Alal' was not the name my father gave me. It meant destroyer and it was blasphemy to lay claim to it.

"Killing kings will cost you extra," was my impious response.

Assyrians nobility barely tolerated mercenaries most of the time. My men and I didn't care. I hadn't taken up the killing business to make friends and my troops felt the same way. What mattered to us was that their coin was good and delivered on time. That was a good thing because whores and merchants were loath to advance 'our kind' anything on credit.

"I'll meet you half way," she grinned manically at me while my fighters and I raced for our mounts. (Saving the junior nobility wasn't what she were paying us for.) "I'll let you take any prince you capture as a hostage." I nodded. My men cheered hungrily, despite the choking dust. As long as I didn't get too greedy, the Kings would pay for their sons. Now we had to capture the bastards.

"Tūbātu," I reminded them. 'Goodwill'. It was a polite way of saying 'stop your chariot, rest your arms and your mother won't have to come begging for your corpse'. It was best to let opposing nobility keep their dignity in our business. Today's enemy might be tomorrow's paymaster.

I blinked and things changed.

Planting followed harvest and harvest followed planting. It had long ago become a blur. Shammuramat had grown older. Her first son became king when he was of age. I had long exceeded my welcome and my desire to stay. I was fixed to this small patch of the greater world by a rare emotion - empathy.

It had come out of nowhere. We were campaigning against the Scythians raiding over the Zagros Mountains and followed them into Urartu. Night had fallen and I walked the camp as was my habit; being killed a few times in your sleep will make you err on the side of caution. Shammuramat was gazing out over the river Arkas.

"I though all the scouts have returned," I asked as I stepped to her side. A cool, early autumn breeze blew down the valley, tossing a few loose locks of her greying hair. She always had one patch shorn short which made her left-side braids prone to unwind.

"They have. We head back for Nineveh with the dawn," she murmured, her mind elsewhere.

"Do you ever dream of home?" she asked me out of the blue.

"No. I don't dream anymore. I rarely sleep and if I did, I would hope to dream of something less boring," I snorted in amusement. She had never talked about her home...to anyone as far as I knew.

"You will be going to Lydia when winter comes," she stated tensely.

"King Gyges needs someone with experience beating Cimmerians," I answered. The true reason was that I was no longer welcome on the Assyrian payroll because I insisted on recruiting only non-Assyrians into the ranks of my ferociously effective little band of one hundred; never more and rarely less.

"Shemtsu is a fool," she grumbled.

"That is unfair," I countered. My willingness to argue with her was one of my charms in her eyes. "He is an excellent Treasurer and he makes sure your vassals pay their tribute on time and in its full amount."

The silence was hurtful to me because Shammuramat was never one to obfuscate her thoughts, especially around me. It was one of her charms, to my way of thinking.

"Salmu Eretu, the northern night sky has no answers for what ails you. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to start out cold before it bakes us." I called her 'Black Cloud' in Akkadian.

I had first used that name twenty years ago to insult her, highlighting her tempestuous nature. In the Assyrian court, having just received recognition for my quick thinking, Shammuramat had belittled my accomplishment - throwing my body between her, her unborn child (the man who was now not-so-gently ushering me to the border) and a Kassite noble and his retainer bent on killing them both.

Had my deed not been witnessed by half a dozen reliable sources, I wouldn't even have received that tawdry token.

[OKH] "He sought glory without risk," she spat out her insult in a tongue alien to this court. Unfortunately for us both, I had worked for a Babylonian family for a few generations and they had been kind enough to turn me from an illiterate commoner to a man of some education.

Ironically, they even taught me my native cuneiform long after my birthplace was barely a memory.

[OKH] "Well aren't you a black cloud on an otherwise waste of a day," I replied somewhat bitterly. Her eyes widened, then narrowed and then I heard her laugh for the first time.

[OKH] "Should I tell them what you said?" she mocked me and my predicament.

"But of course," I grunted in Akkadian. I'd screwed up. My inner thoughts were 'please not decapitation, please not decapitation' because getting my head on straight after that was a real bitch.

"You've been nothing but a black cloud bent on turning the choking dust at my feet into a grasping, muddy morass. Why stop now?" I announced loudly. If you are going to die, die well. Having died too many times to count, remembering my last words were all I had left to look forward to.

The guards, familiar with the Queen's temper and stunned into inaction by me clearly embracing a long, messy death, stood around uselessly. Had I been allowed a weapon in the royal presence, I might have thought which one to kill first.

"I gift you, a lowborn man of the South (Sumerian), with honors and you respond by insulting my wife?" King, Shamshi Adad V growled as he rose from his throne.

"Husband," she stood to join him. I thought it was a pity she rarely smiled. "You asked that I too give a gift to my savior and the savior of our son (all unborn babies were sons back then until roughly half had the audacity to gender switch while exiting the womb). I have chosen." I was expecting my life for the moment and a day's head start to the border.

"It is your choice to make," the King allowed.

"From this day, until my passing, this man may always speak his mind in our lands," she demanded. She had a habit of fatally correcting anyone who saw her as less than co-ruler. The hesitation was deafening.

"As you will," Shamshi Adad V acquiesced to yet another of his wife's odd 'requests'. From that day forth we had been fast friends. She never asked about my immortality, where I was from, or how I ended up with my elite band of professional killers. I returned the favor. It was an unspoken understanding that in a few years, or decades, she would die and I would leave, not necessarily in that order. We had shared more years than I had given to any one person in quite some time.

"There is nothing left for me but ash," she declared with morbid certainty.

"Should any of us expect any better?" I did my best to offer words of comfort she would accept.

"Oh no," her noise was too bitter to be a laugh. "I had my own 'Life beyond Death' and it was stolen from me, along with my birthright."

"We are chasing the thieves?" I asked.

"Yes and no," her face grew grim once more. "These were not the ones I was looking for. They share some bonds with some of the Scythian tribes who live on the far side of the Sea of Death (the Black Sea). These raiders weren't from those tribes."

"Why are you turning back?" I questioned. "You know your Assyrians are loyal. They will follow wherever you lead. Your son won't begrudge you these few hundred. I'll come too."

"Why?" she turned and looked into my eyes. She still had that blazing fire in her eyes. She was teasing me. If she asked, I too would follow and my men would follow me.

"The Scythians have been raiding the Lands of the Two Rivers from...well, before I graduated from 'spear for hire' to a 'seeker of a mastery of war'. The rich plunder of their camps will provide plenty of incentive for my men plus we can sell the horses when we come back," I stated.

"I do not have the years left to spend on such a campaign," she sighed. I had never heard a hint of defeat in her speech before. It was unsettling and rather tragic.

"I have squandered my years in marriage, being Queen and raising my boys. I tried to make Assyria my new family and I am revealed to be a fool. You had it right. We will always be outlanders. No matter how brave, loyal, just and smart, we would never be allowed in their sanctimonious circle," she said. "You. I should have ridden off with you after my first born was acknowledged (the present King Adad-nirari III)."

"We could have gathered up some more fighters, ridden over shattered Phrygia, to the narrows (Bosporus) and into the lands of the Thracians. There is a legend of a great river that pours out from the western shore of the Death Sea. What I seek is up that river."

"How many would we face?" I grew equally serious.

"One," she coughed. "Me." My confusion was obvious. "I am not asking you to fight me, Alal. I want you to come back for me."

"I can't. That is not how it works," I stated.

"How does it work then?" she looked into my eyes. The fire was there, but banked and waning. I didn't say anything. "I have never seen, or heard of you entering a temple."

"Your men go. You do not stop them, but you have given up any pretense of worship," she pressed. "Do you not believe that anything exists beyond your senses?"

"I believe," I sighed. "I believe people are fools for giving offering, pledging their fidelity, pleading for mercy, or extending thanks to any deity. Those Shar-an (gnats) do as they will, unless it is to punish us for treating them like the spoiled children they are."

Shammuramat regained her long-stilled laughter.

"I have always felt a kinship with you through our mutual bitterness."

"Bitterness comes with familiarity," I snorted in amusement. Lovers had passion. We shared a simmering anger that came from being irredeemably wronged.

"I was born Baraqu, the first son of a potter in some city that no longer matters. I was a failure as a potter and an embarrassment to my house and my clan," I began a story I hadn't told another soul in...I couldn't recall. "In those days, the Priest-Kings declared wars and demanded each clan of the city give forth a certain number of males to fight. My family volunteered me and two rowdy cousins.

Outside the gates, my clan elder gave each of us a cowhide shield and a spear with a small spindle of copper at the tip so we wouldn't think it was a staff. We marched...I forget which city we were fighting that time. Three days later we found the enemy behind a deep irrigation ditch that had dried out for the season. Our orders were simple - 'There they are. Attack!'

My elder was at the back of our mob, making sure none of us ran away. My older cousin made it across the ditch first, but was speared twice; once in the right kidney - I can still remember my first sight of blood - and once, piercing the shield and lodging in his ribcage. My second cousin and I were pushed from behind into the fighting. I stabbed at one shield, doing no harm.

Then my surviving cousin's morale broke and he tried to claw his way back into our ranks. He was stabbed in the back, his dying body tangling with mine and bearing us both to the ground. I saw this howling mad face over me. He was a commoner, like me, driven to violence by the terror of battle. His shoddily crafted spear plunged first into my right lung. The second stab found my heart. I died.

From there, my spirit fell down toward the wretched dank caverns where all pitiful lowborn dregs are doomed to end up without hope of parole. Instead of endless misery, the Goddess Sarrat Irkalli appeared before me, barring my descent. With icy claws, she trisected my soul. I cannot begin to describe that agony. She snatched up my tattered bits and dragged me back into the world.

Sarrat Irkalli, Goddess of the Netherworld, whispered a word that penetrated my brain through the left ear of my cooling corpse. It was an utterance so catastrophic to the fabric of the Veil I dare not repeat it even now.

{Baraqu,} she blew a dark wind upon the first bit of my essence and it flew away.

{Cael,} she whispered to the second portion and off it went in another direction. {You are Baraqu no more.} The second name was meaningless to me at the time but my name...do you know that if you have your true name, your spirit can not find its way to your reward, no matter how foul, or pleasing? To the third part of my soul, {I name you Alal - he who stands witness to the end of all he desires; their destroyer. Powerful yet powerless.}

With that, she left me. My body was stiff from being dead so long. The next few hours were extremely painful. The Sun had set and the Moon was not in evidence. Jackals barked and hyenas laughed as they fought and feasted on the dead. I pushed the body of my cousin off me then crawled down into the ditch to hide. Hardly the reaction of a hero."

"Not the actions of the man I know," Shammuramat smirked. "So, your name is Baraqu."

"Was and I never much liked the name," I countered. "The priests gave it to me because right before my naming ceremony, a bolt of lightning from a spring storm struck the temple of Shara. So they named me Baraqu, which means 'struck by lightning'."

"That sound likes a good name," the Queen Dowager regarded me.

"That is the noble meaning. The common meaning is less eloquent - it means 'idiot'."

Another deep laugh from my treasured compatriot. So few had ever mattered so much to me.

"Struck by lightning - stricken dumb," she guffawed. "Still not the 'you' I know."

"What does the other name mean?"

"I have no idea. In all my travels I have never found a people familiar with it," I shrugged. She looked out over the low waves lapping against the stony shore.

"No explanation?" she grudgingly inquired. She had wanted me to continue.

"No. I have never again come face to face with Sarrat Irkalli, been visited by a messenger - divine, or demonic - received an omen, or any otherworldly presence of any kind," I shrugged. I was long past any resentment. "After the battle I made my way back home - we'd lost - and resumed my life for a few years. My father took the excuse of me 'letting' my kinsmen die to place my younger brother over me.

I didn't care. I always hated being a potter, so I ended up being a piddling nuisance all the time and a drunken brawler whenever I had wrangled some beer. I was always the first choice of my clan to send into battle. Despite my lack of training, I began surviving more battles than I died in. At some point, the priests began getting suspicious that I was still hanging around my great-grandnephew's house, so my house Elder suggested I leave the city.

I was given a nice copper-headed mace that I had taken in a recent skirmish. Tradition dictated I offer it to the Elder, so he could give it back to me as a sign of my value to the clan. He had taken it for his own. Now he was giving it back out of fear that it held some part of my taint. I had no idea how to live on my own. Two days out, I was robbed and murdered for the first, but not last, time. That inaugural event, I got really angry and hunted those two farmers down.

I got my mace back. I also relieved them of an onager, three slaves and a few ingots of silver. I guessed they had been rather successful robbers until they met me."

"How many did you kill?" she grinned.

"Eighteen. It took me a better part of a day with all the hacking and maiming," I grinned back.

"It is difficult to see you as an incompetent fighter," she was truly amused by my distraction.

"I started out as a rather slow learner. I died a few more times. I was hung from a city wall, decapitated (my first time), drowned and even thrown off a cliff. Eventually, I began figuring out some of the things I was doing wrong - namely traveling by myself in a hostile world.

I started picking up some skills, learned the bow, and 'liberated' a double-cured leather hauberk. At a critical juncture, when I was seriously considering life of a roadside thief, I witnessed a scuffle in a small town on the Iranian plateau. One was a large, armed man who was definitely too drunk to provide any worthy service. The other was an older man with nice robes who was berating the drunk, bigger man.

The big guy threatened the rich one. The rich one, casting around in anger, saw me and called me over. He said a few words in some language I didn't know, then spoke in Sumerian.

[Do you want to start a new career?] he growled. I nodded. [Beat this oaf up and get back the money he stole from me.]

It seemed like a genuine offer so I beat the drunk man into unconsciousness, searched him and returned the rich man's purse. He studied me, took out half the contents of the purse and handed the purse back.

[You are hired.]

[Who else do you want me to beat up?] I asked cautiously. The drunk man and the rich man were clearly as foreign as me. Beating up townies could get ugly real quick. The guy laughed.

[I want a bodyguard. My name is Umashau, member of the Sadīdu tribe of Babylon and I trade copper goods for fine stones with the local savages.]

[I am your man] I agreed. He chuckled.

[Don't you want to know how much you will get paid?] he snorted.

[Honestly I just want to get out of this town. I didn't have anything to trade for enough food to get me down the trail, so I was hanging around looking for an opportunity. I guess you are it.]

I took him up on his offer, guarded him and his property, laid down my life a time or two and one day stood over his grave with tears in my eyes. I left funerary offerings at his family shrine for nine generations. He was a good man and treated me well. He taught me to appreciate learning. Over time, various of his descendants gifted me with writing and awoke a talent for languages.

The last time I showed up, the priests of Marduk came looking for me, so I turned my back on Babylon for the next few hundred seasons."

"Did it occur to you that the priests of Marduk may have been delivering a message for you from their Gods?" she mocked my early history.

"Yes...when I came back from the Two Kingdoms (Egypt), I had a more thorough education about the Veil and the afterlife. By that time, Babylon was going through a rough stretch. The people living in Umashau's townhouse were no longer his kin and didn't know what had happened to them. The rest of my story is rather boring.

Less dying, more learning and taking a smarter approach to living - looking farther forward than the next season. That led me here."

"Did you ever fight in the land of the Arzawa?" she questioned. "The city of Wilusa?" (Troy)

"Yes. There was good pay in killing Mysians, Paeonians and Ahhiyawa.

Wilusa's normal host of enemies honored their hostages, paid ransom in bronze goods and silver ingots and didn't make a habit of mutilating the bodies of their dead opponents."

"I could see how that would inconvenience you," she shook her head. "Amazons?"

"No. I heard oft-conflicting rumors after the fact.

I never wasted much time with people who ceased to be possible enemies, or employers. Your people?" I began to put things together. Wilusa had been burned to the ground, risen again and returned to being just another rocky, grass-covered mound. Listening to the stories of sailors, merchants and poets had become a favored pastime, especially when they got their history wrong, or pointed the way to money-making enterprises.

Riches had never been the end product of my endeavors. Wealth fueled my efforts to acquire the very best for my mercenary company and to fund my continuing desire to educate myself. The more impressive the equipment, the rarer the lore, the higher the prices I could get for our services...and the former was somewhat of a ruse. In the basest terms, I was an extortionist.

I was an extortionist with a plan though. Cities fell and were sacked. My troop would race to the richest parts of town and convince the wealthy to surrender up a modest portion of their goods in return for protection from looters. Roughly half always went to the highest ranking potentate I could rely on to honor the bribe. The rest I invested back in those businesses.

In turn, every harvest season, when taxes were collected, I collected my own tithe. I bought things in a very understated manner. 'Rich merchants' were either part of the establishment (not my goal), or ducks to get plucked. I invested in caravans and bought stakes in ships that explored the waterways at the edge of our understanding.

I used those enterprises to greedily gather knowledgeable writings from every extent of the civilized and semi-civilized world. I hid my libraries in remote locations, turning my knowledge of ancient bandit hideouts to good use. Many of my men knew about my sideline. Quite naturally, they thought me somewhat eccentric.

"They are not my people. They are the ones who denied me my proper place in the world and robbed me of my future. Before I die...it is too late," her powerful frame bent under the weight of her encompassing doom. "Have either of us asked anything from the other?"

"No."

"I am asking now. Alal, come back for me. Find a way and bring me back so I can resolve this unfinished matter. Promise me," she looked back over the lake.

"That is not something within my power," I reminded Shammuramat.

"You will find a way."

"I will continue to decipher how the divinities, demons and spirits accomplish it - one day." Sleep called to her while I had found something else to roam my thoughts while slumber eluded me. "I cannot promise you..."

"If you cannot promise to come back for me," her words hung there for several minutes. "Avenge me."

'Avenge me' plus researching the keys to reading the Veil and finding the spots where a mortal could slip through to the God-like realms and the Land of the Endless Black Sands could take forever.

"Why?" That wasn't 'why should I?' or 'why is your call for vengeance just?' I would because I had long held the belief anyone I called 'companion's was one with me against all existence.

I had long ago added Shammuramat to that small list. Harm one and we all bled. We paid blood for blood, either twofold, fivefold, even tenfold if they really pissed us off.

"I had a twin sister, but she was not my twin, or my sister. Everything I won through feat of arms and martial cunning, she accomplished with soft words and clever ploys," the exiled Amazon began.

"Artimpasa, of my blood and the house of Anat, challenged me for the leadership of our tribe when our Great-aunt died. Despite my obvious favor with the Goddess, my so-called wise and courageous elders chose my twin over me. I immediately called my sister out to let combat decide who was truly the selection of our ancestors.

Like the coward she was, my sister declined. Before the next rising Sun turned the grey fields to gold, I came for her, cut down her guardian and dueled her. For all her weakness of character, she was nearly my match in skill. I was gravely wounded before I ground down her defenses. I forced her to her knees, gutted that bitch while she still breathed and read my fate in her entrails."

"I promise you," I pledged to set my sails into the unknown - the uncharted - the destination sane men avoided out of the fear of madness and practical ones simply out of fear. We never spoke of it again - not one word. She was sullen and withdrawn on the way back and I knew it was my time to depart soon after our return to Nineveh.

'Come back for me'.

It was a year later. Black Cloud knew all along that her days were numbered and the sickness inside her would never relinquish its stranglehold over her. Cancer maybe? It didn't matter. No apothecary knew any cure and she would take nothing for the pain, choosing to die with a clear-mind, even as her physical form wavered and perished around her.

I had been barred from her funeral by her son, the King. My people, the Sumerians, were derogatorily called 'clay-eaters' - a man from the mouth of the Twin Rivers. I would never be the equal of a true Akkadian. That my people had been irrigating with canals, building walls and trading with the cities of the far off Indus while Akkadians were wandering goat-herders meant nothing.

No one who mattered remembered. Had any man not of Shammuramat's blood called me that to my face, I would have cut them down. They knew it; she knew it. To stop the bloodletting, she had sent me to Tyre to take care of matters best left to merchants and other professional liars. True until the very end, Shammuramat was like me, an outsider.

She never again spoke of her people, but I saw that void haunting her eyes that came from having no place to call home - akin to me. Umma was nothing more than a dusty mound the last time I went back. I had found onagers grazing in the inner sanctum of the temple of Shara, once so forbidden and frightening. The herd wasn't afraid to graze on the hallowed grounds. I still believed in gods and goddesses. I just hated them for their false favors, their insatiable hunger and their conviction that they were better than humanity.

The night of that fiasco of an award ceremony, she had me dine with her court. A place of honor was set aside for me, only one step down from her exalted majesty. I lied to those nobles and aristocrats about of my home and upbringing in order to expunge some of my commoner stench from their refined nostrils. I revealed nothing of the 'magic' that allowed me to take a spear piercing my chest and exiting my spine and not only living, but quickly dispatching the offending lancer as well.

Without mentioning that 'little' detail, I regaled my hosts with the blow by blow encounter with the Kassite nobleman, exaggerating his bravery in the attack and then the bowel-loosening terror that he exhibited when he realized who he faced...the Queen, not humble old me. Even then, she laughed at that conjured memory: me downplaying the saving her two lives.

She had been laughing while she decapitated the noble's charioteer and I was shoving a dagger into the eye of the princeling who had so offended us both. The result of that 'sacrifice' on my part was now sitting on Shammuramat's throne: her eldest son. He had officially forbidden my attendance at the vigil and the funerary rights, although I was too far away to care.

'Come back for me,' she had made me promise. It was hopeless. Every woman I loved died. Every man who guarded my back, broke bread with me and shared my wine would end up just as dead. The joke was on the Assyrian court because the final act of contempt was mine. I hadn't been a simple sell-sword for some time - centuries.

I had finally figured out that as powerful as any weapon in my hand was, wealth in all its shapes was better. I had bribed a slave to secret my helmet in her tomb while darkness gripped the land. I had also paid off a wine merchant and a few 'red-lips' to entertain the tomb guardians so the slave could complete that mission.

They had buried her and placed heavy stones upon her grave. Part of it was honoring her. Part of it was fear as well. Even coughing blood on her death bed, she scared the crap out of some of the most ruthless people I had ever fought for and against. I didn't blame them.

'Come back for me'.

There was no coming back from death for anyone, but me. My only fears were mutilation and burning. Those took time to recover from. Fear of angering some selfish entity by violating a tomb barely registered. My shield-bearer handed me my new helmet. The trip to Tyre had not been a total waste. This land smelled like her. The winds whispered to me the sound of her bow and the cleaving of her blade.

West? East? South...I hadn't been to Egypt in a while...not since I realized that all gods lied. Even with an arcane tradition older than me, no magic their pantheon would teach had brought one Egyptian back from the dead. In the Nile's favor - it wasn't here. I decided on West. That held the best chance of me being able to drown my grief in a lake of blood.

Besides, there were rumors from beyond the Cimmerian straits...rumors of long-hair warriors with shrill war cries reminiscent of the Temples of Ba'al and the screams of virgins as they were sacrificed by being tossed into pits of flame; not a noise you soon forget. I might find her kin there and let them know she had passed into oblivion...as I took their lives and inflicted the vengeance time had denied her. Amazons.

'Avenge me'.

[Back to our regularly scheduled epic]

"Cáel? Is that you, Alal?" Shammuramat gazed down at me. "You never came back and I can tell you never avenged me either." That was more a stock assessment than a condemnation.

"No, he is not Alal," Pamela intervened. "Nor is he Baraqu. He is Cáel, Alal's grandson."

"That is impossible. He...you said you could never have children," Shammy regarded me while voicing her doubts to Pamela.

"No. Wait!" I had collapsed. The absence of pain suggested I had been grabbed before I hit the dirt. Many hands helped me up so I could balance on shaky feet. "Wait...Pamela, how do you know who Baraqu is?" Pamela's jaw clenched tight. 'You cannot cross over to the Endless Black Sand unless you have your true name' and Cáel O'Shea must have found a way to get half of his name back.

Bread crumbs.

"Pamela, you somehow found who/what/whatever was Baraqu's soul fragment and gave it back to Cáel/Alal/Granddad...so he could pass on."

"But he cannot truly die while a portion of his soul remains in the Sunlit Realm," Pamela's look of pain sent my way was worse than heartbreaking.

She knew. My mentor and friend could end the existence of the greatest enemy the Host had ever known and by doing so, complete the task destiny had placed before her. She knew where the third piece was. Now I did too. The purpose of Carrig's device had been more than a memory dump.

It was a catalyst to wake up the slumbering shard that was part of the patch-quilt of my soul.

"Shit! Didn't JK Rowling do something exactly like this to that freakazoid, Voldemort?" I groused. Pamela stepped up and hugged me tight. She was crying.

"I'm always going to have eyes on you now that you know," she whispered into my ear.

See, Pamela would be denied entry into the Hall of her Cotyttia ancestors while any part of Cáel/Alal/Baraqu still 'lived' and that final piece of the puzzle was inside me.

"If it is you, or me, Pamela, it will be me first," I mumbled back. I would pay the price to keep Pamela out of hell and that was what she was afraid of. Shammy shook us apart.

"Why don't you try and explain this to me?" the former queen commanded.

"Alal found a way to bring you back," I smiled at her. "He kept both promises. For a thousand years he has bent a great deal of his time and resources on destroying the Amazons - us, thus avenging you.

"As for 'coming back for you'; Granddad's - your Alal's - research uncovered that Sarrat Irkalli's first gift, that word, among other things, made him incapable of ever finding the missing pieces of his soul.

"He and anyone under his direction was purposely blinded to their hiding places and if he drew close they would move away. So he devised a way to recover them. The first part of his plan was conceived before you died.

"He knew the value of funerary goods and how they were carried over into the afterlife."

Shammuramat patted her helmet - my helmet, or more accurately, Alal's helm with its crest of white stallion hair. The first of many tears worked its way down her cheek.

"What he gave you was more than an article of armor, it was the very symbol of his 'legend'; an integral part of the impression he made on the Weave of Destiny, courtesy of Sarrat Irkalli.

"He knew that piercing the Veil was pointless if he couldn't find you, so he made sure he could when the time came. The second part of his plan was..."

"To get himself 'gakked'?" Delilah volunteered.

"That is nuts, even for your family, Cáel," Virginia added.

"Hush before I cut off your wagging, mongrel tongues," Shammy snapped. I lowered my head.

"They are my guests, 'Black Cloud'," I sighed. "Respect me, or leave."

"You don't tell me what to do," she turned her confusion-stoked furor on me.

"You are right. I don't tell you what to do. In fact, I'm finished telling you anything," I glared back.

"Have a nice walk out of the desert," I said as I turned to leave. No one should be surprised that she grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back around.

"We aren't done," she snarled. "What happened to 'White Hair'? What were his plans?"

"To all who value my dignity, or have affection for me," I spoke loudly, "shoot me before this Anathema harlot tortures even a single word from my lips."

A dozen weapons pointed my way. It was good to be loved. It was better to be loved and obeyed.

"Check and mate, Beast," Caprica stated calmly.

"He is a Head of House and you would give him an ignoble death, murdered by his own people?" Shammy countered.

"I'm not going to shoot him," Caprica gave a brittle smile. "I can't promise you what the rest will decide on as being appropriate."

"It only takes one of us," Rachel pointed out. "I love him. Make of that what you will."

"You don't want to die," the former Queen pinned me with her gaze.

"You are absolutely correct. I am fresh out of any desire to die before screwing five hundred women. I don't have the guts, nor is my despair so deep as to embrace this unwelcome suicide. I've done that the prerequisite number of times this year, and it is only July. I've met my quota, so I really, truly want to live," I explained.

"Still, my duty is clear. If you are not with us, you are against us, Shammuramat. If you choose to act as if the only thing that matters in life is yourself...my oaths to the Host don't leave me much wiggle room."

"This isn't over," she seethed, even as she took a step back.

She wasn't leaving, only claiming this conflict was over. Nope. Not going to happen. Not by a long shot.

"Come. Sit with me, Sister," I addressed her. I handed my holstered Glock to Priya. I was mindful that the camp was preparing for evacuation and wary of further attacks.

"I will not," Shammy cut a dramatic figure, pivoting away with her posterior-length damp hair whipping behind her. My surrendering of weapons implied I wanted to negotiate. She was rejecting that offer.

"As a very wise woman once said, 'destiny cuts both ways.

If we listen, it prepares us for what we must do. Destiny also places us in situations where we know what should be done. We do not hide behind such concepts as Fate. We Amazons bow with respect to Destiny because she gives us the freedom of choice. We know what we must do, but the voice, step and blow are ours to make.'

"Alal manipulated Destiny to bring you back. Mission accomplished. He sacrificed his immortality because of his promise to you," I grinned. "Welcome back and have a nice second life. Before sending Granddad away forever, I'll ask him if it was worth it."

"An empty jab," she mocked me. "You won't give up your life to kill him."

"I don't have to," I chortled. "I now know there is a way to rip a person's soul from their body. Removing that rancid piece of filth belonging to Grandpa 'Cáel' from the real me will be a pleasure. Even my ability to do it is thanks to you saving my life multiple times this morning. How rich is that? At least you are consistent in your ingratitude."

It was a combination lie/gross exaggeration. I didn't know what Gong Tau did and I was a long way from making one of their spell casters cough up the knowledge, but she didn't know that. I had gotten her to reengage in conversation, plus imperiled my life at the same time. "You know nothing!" she screamed.

"I know a self-deceiving, malicious cunt when I see and hear one," I calculated the distance between her and my upcoming battery.

"Your sister wasn't weak, she was smart." Shammuramat had passed the ability to articulate clearly; her scream was more animal than human.

"The Host couldn't afford your manly way of thinking. They couldn't afford the infighting. And they certainly couldn't afford a leader that put her own desires over the welfare of her House. Basically, they couldn't afford you. Your sister loved you so much that she couldn't bring herself to kill you," I became more and more gripped by that ancestral rage.

"I know this because I know there was no way you could beat her guardian, a champion of Anat, and then your twin. No way. See, I am only beginning to understand Amazons, but I know women rather well. I know love and hate ... and you aren't even a difficult read."

A bloody, red storm was about to break.

"You don't want justice. You want validation to cancel out the look in your sister's eyes as you executed her. I know you didn't hang around for the judgment of your sisterhood. No, you gave your sister an ignoble end by causing her to decide between her sister and her House...and she chose you. She let you live at the cost of her own life - she loved you that much.

It seems loving you is hard on a person's afterlife," I continued. We were a breath away from carnage. I've seen women vicious, selfish, conceited, deceitful and vengeful. I'd also seen their hearts break. It was never a welcome sight to my eyes. Something inside her cracked, then crumbled. This wasn't my 'lover' lore. It was from one of the 'I'm lonely and it's your fault' lessons.

Women wanted their conflicts to be emotionally satisfying. Men wanted to make themselves look better, smarter, stronger and more successful. Women lied to be 'right'. I crudely called it the Cleopatra syndrome. 'De-Nile' any fact that pointed out your wrongdoing until you could deny the 'fact' was a fact at all. It then became a rumor before it finally became a fabrication of your enemies.

The end product is the woman believing her own tale, I shit you not. Men are caught up by their lies. Women are held hostage by theirs. That is one of the huge gulfs between the sexes; men fight using facts, or fight their way out of their own lies. The ladies fight for the truth - their own, imaginary truth.

They rarely give up that truth, though they will publically deny it for the sake of resolving the argument. Guys, don't think for a second she believes she's wrong. The woman will get around to punishing you later. Scarce were the reactions I was getting from Shammuramat so the abrupt abandonment of her lies caught me off-guard, until I considered her abysmal history.

Her timeless wanderings in the Endless Black Sands, every step on the residual debris of all those souls sentenced, as she was, to that desolate landscape devoid of meaningful positive sensory input. The only stimulation you were given were the visions of the wreckage of the life you left behind.

Despair had shattered those 'lesser beings' and their spirits crumbled into the fine dust that others trod upon. That lonely existence had stripped away so much of her until only hate and hope remained. She held on to hope that an ageless friend would succeed ... because he always saw a task through to the end.

The timeless torture had eroded that, yet it was her only way to assuage her anger. In the same way, her hate had dwindled until only two aspects remained - the memories she clung to concerning her motivations and the memories that led up to that crime...and they didn't mesh. The lies she had built up to secure her rage had gone from an unassailable mountain fortress to a glass house and my barb had been the final blow in a long series of deconstructions aimed her way.

Litmus test time. I handed over my tomahawk harness to Priya as well.

"Salmu Eretu Anat, sit with me and talk about what we must do," I reoffered. That was both a gift (Alal's name for her, not her forbidden Amazon one) and an obligation (her acceptance of the name 'Anat'). I was Wakko Ishara.

My House didn't grovel before our enemies and beg for a cessation of hostilities. No, Ishara created the advantageous peace, leading with honesty and truthfulness until the rival negotiators broke faith. Unlike other diplomats world-wide, Isharans headed off conflicts, peacefully resolved skirmishes (fights that happened without a pledge of warfare), conveyed the High Priestess' overtures of a cease-fire, but never offered submission.

I could not bow before Black Cloud - I didn't have the authority. I couldn't pardon her - the only person who could do that didn't exist at the moment. Picking up Ishara's ancient mandate, I could seek an advantageous peace. Based on a hodgepodge of archaic policy and my audacity, I would turn an enemy into an ally.

Hypothetically, the Council could defer any agreement formed today, on the spot, until a High Priestess was elevated. What I proposed wasn't a pipedream. Black Cloud was the last of a First House. She also had an upcoming war in which to prove herself a valuable member of the Host - repaying her sisters for her sins by slaying our enemies AND by agreeing to live and die by the High Priestess's judgment when the war was concluded.

In essence, I was giving Shammuramat nothing while getting her to promise her skills, flesh, life and possibly death in battle in the cause of the Host. The fierce warrior-Queen chose Delilah, of all people, to hold her weapons while we sat down and talked. I laid out my offer. She demanded two amendments.

One: Alal would not die at the hands of the Host until Shammuramat's case was delivered before the Council and High Priestess.

Two: I would, in a timely fashion, tell her the history of 'White Hair' since her passing.

Number two I agreed to as that was my right. I temporarily agreed to number one with the clear mutual understanding that I would have to confer with Krasimira and St. Marie for their approval, or rejection. Her safety and that of Alal were not in my power to guarantee. Immediately Caprica, Priya and Pamela offered up their willingness to testify concerning 'Black Cloud's' critical part in the battle to save the Amazon young, her bravery and the number of enemies slain at her hand.

St. Marie had ultimate authority. Once the Regency Council was selected, they would hold that burden. The High Priestess would inherit it eventually. Ultimate authority was real and perversely that made it more of a consensus matter. With all the blame falling on one individual, others were free to give advice without guilt.

That was Hayden's act of cowardice. Her decision on the New Directive was the only one that mattered, yet she deferred to the Council's sensibilities when brutality wielding autocracy was required. Hayden did not create the list of traitors out of any misplaced assignment of blame. She took the hit for her wrong decisions and paid for that with her life.

That part done, she did what needed to be done to push the Host forward to the place they needed to be. The traitors died because they were traitors to the goals of the Amazons - an example of pride over survival. She judged who could accept that and who couldn't. Dying while those leaders lived was selfishness on her part and a waste of her death. She had remedied that detail.

My reasons for throwing Krasimira into the mix with St. Marie was twofold. St. Marie had a war to orchestrate and it was evident our opponents had planned ahead more effectively. The Keeper of Records could fabricate the legal three-legged stool that would allow St. Marie to add Shammuramat to her arsenal while not removing an ancient High Priestess's death sentence.

The final point of contention was viewed as both a must by Black Cloud and an issue she was prepared for a long and acerbic argument over.

"I may not be accepted as Head of House Anat, but I will have a command of Amazons to lead into battle," Shammy girded her loins.

"How many do you want?" I inquired coolly.

"One hundred," she suggested as our starting point. She would have been happy with fifty.

"Done," I stunned her by doing our forearm clasp. "You may want to aim for one hundred and twenty-five."

"I want Amazons," she insisted.

"I pledge to you that every candidate will have at the very least two years' experience in Amazon ways and battle training. They will be house-less, so their primary loyalty will be to you."

"I said I wanted Amazons," Black Cloud was getting feisty.

"I would never suggest any woman I would not personally accept into House Ishara," I honestly replied. "You will find that they are Amazon where it counts - in their bravery and willingness to kill." That last bit brought a curl to her lips.

"If I do not approve of the woman, I will take her life," BC upped the ante.

"I'll make sure to put that on the Job Posting Notice," I joked. "It will probably cut down the number of volunteers from a thousand to five hundred, but that's on you." We clasped arms again, sealing our agreement. Me delivering...well, I'd figure out what to say to make St. Marie agree...hopefully.

"Enough time has passed for talk. I believe we have to an evacuation to execute," Shammy stood up and motioned for Delilah to return her weapons. "Caprica Mielikki, where can I do the most good?" Caprica was aghast. She wasn't appalled; she was awestruck. The entirety of my House's purpose rolled over her like a tsunami.

She'd been calculating how many more camp counselors she was going to lose killing Shammy. Now Shammy was offering her services and obedience and it had all occurred in a matter of minutes. She thought 'Turning weakness into strength' and 'Love more than Hate' had been amusing bywords I had put forth in my naiveté.

I had turned them into Isharan axioms right before her eyes. Caprica knew - knew - that if I wasn't there, there would have been more bloodshed. No Amazon...I could see the wheels turning inside that veteran's brain...no OTHER Amazon would have talked Shammuramat into a truce, much less a shaky alliance.

The Chief's command had grown stronger with clever application of words alone.

"Stay with me," Caprica ordered. "I'm placing you in command of two combat teams. If another attack comes, you will be my reaction force." With that, those two left as an organic 'one'. The pow-wow was over. The rest of the Amazons, save Priya, separated to complete our evacuation preparations.