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Kronos caught up with him when he was sitting on the banks of the river Sequana, near the Roman fort of Lutetia. Methos dipped up a cup of water and offered it to him. "Do you remember when there was no city here at all?" he asked.
"No," Kronos said, and drank. "Ride with me, brother. I'm hunting."
Methos stood and looked over the water. "I remember."
"We are old men. We remember many things. Come, come with me." Kronos embraced Methos' shoulders.
"I do not wish to hunt."
Kronos stared at him--then threw his head back and laughed. Methos stroked Kronos' face and walked down the river to catch his horse.
"You are quiet, brother," Kronos said as they lay together in the roots of a tree.
The wind stirred Kronos' hair; the moonlight illuminated the soft green of his eye as he looked at Methos. Methos brushed his thumb over the ridges of the scar across Kronos' eye and Kronos caught his hand and kissed the palm. "I am thinking of many things," Methos said.
"Think only of me." Kronos kissed his lips. "It has been a long time."
Methos didn't answer.
In the morning they rode east, following the trail of Kronos' quarry. They were silent for hours: Methos with his thoughts, Kronos with his hunt.
In the midday they passed a low wall tangled with grape vines. "The Romans are everywhere," Kronos said.
Methos stopped to pluck two bunches of grapes. "They are strong. Their empire is growing."
"But we are stronger, eh, brother?" Kronos' grin gleamed like a wolf's.
"I've been south," Methos said. "I've seen their cities, and they are great indeed. We couldn't take them." The grapes were sun-warmed and sweetly ripe. He tossed one to Kronos.
Kronos caught it in his mouth. It popped like an eye between his teeth. "With your mind, we could conquer anything!"
Methos shook his head. Kronos reached over and grabbed one bunch from his hands. "Is this what you do when you stray away from me? Ride south and admire the soft Roman cities?"
"I do a great many things." Methos tossed a grape into the air and caught it in his mouth.
They entered a stand of trees. Kronos tossed another grape to him; it bounced off his nose and fell to the ground. "Do you go exploring? Have you found the end of the world?"
"The world is round as these grapes. It has no end. It does, however, have division. To the north, there is a sea carpeted in ice."
"I have seen it."
"To the west is the sea with no end."
"Not a week's ride from here!"
"To the south, beyond the waterless desert, is a strange and wonderful land. The desert river, the Nilus, leads down through the sands to reach fertile lands again. There, the people are black as burnt wood, the lions and wolves grow spotted as butterflies, and the horses are striped like the caterpillar."
Kronos laughed. "Lies! You're an old storyteller, Methos."
"It's true. I saw it with my eyes. The world is full of marvelous things, my beloved student."
"What lies to the east? People red and burned from the rising sun?"
"Mountains. A great many mountains, upon which it is very easy to die," he sighed. "There is a southern route that avoids them, but the Romans control it. I went only as far as Samartia before turning back."
"Pity."
"A merchant told me that the people of the east have the bodies of birds, but I don't believe that. In all my travels, the people I have found are only human." Methos tossed Kronos another grape. "I traveled through lands where we once rode and they remember us still. Mothers threaten their children with our specter. We are legends."
"We shall be reality again one day," Kronos said.
"The Romans protect them now."
Kronos spat seeds on the ground.
"You cannot ignore the realities," Methos insisted. "Listen to me, my student. Four men cannot ride against an army."
"Leave off, brother. My quarry is close to hand." Kronos touched a broken twig and dismounted, handing the reins to Methos. He walked into the trees and plucked a shred of cloth from a low bush. "Yes, very close," he said, sniffing the cloth and smiling.
Kronos mounted again and kicked his horse into a canter. Methos followed, searching the trees.
They broke from the trees into an open field. At the other side, they saw a figure struggling up a hill toward an enormous oak. He climbed it as they galloped across the field.
Methos felt the tickle of Presence as they neared the tree. Kronos pulled up short, grinning up into the oak. Methos could see only the man's hand, trembling on the bark. "Come down and fight me!" Kronos called in Latin. "Or I'll come up."
"Barbarian witch, leave me die in peace! Let my soul rest!" The man was terrified.
"Fight me! And perhaps this time I'll let you die."
The man dropped down from the tree. His clothes were tattered and soaked in blood, but once they had been the uniform of a Roman soldier. He lacked shield or helmet. He raised his short sword desperately.
Kronos jabbed at him and he knocked Kronos' sword aside. "Why do you plague me? What have I done? What do you want of me?" the soldier cried.
"I want nothing," Kronos said, and smashed the soldier's sword to the ground. He drove his sword through the man's heart.
The soldier was dead by the time Kronos pulled his blade free. He wiped it on the man's thigh and turned back to the field. "Did you see those rabbits scatter? Let us catch one for supper, Methos."
Methos piled tinder onto a bit of flat wood and applied the bow drill to create a spark. He blew on the spark gently, coaxing it into a flame.
Kronos scowled over the rabbit hole. "This is foolish. We have meat," he growled, jerking his chin at the dead soldier.
"He is tough and thin. We'd have to cut into the leg."
"If we cut into the leg, he won't be able to run. What about stomach?"
"Hmm." Methos fed twigs into the fire. "He was very thin. It would be hard to separate the meat from the guts. Shoulder is good as well, but not from a swordsman."
"We could take--ahh--" Kronos fell silent. He hovered, holding his breath--then lightning movement and the rabbit struggled in his hands. He wrung its neck, smiling at Methos. "I suppose the lesson is patience?"
"I haven't ever had to teach you that." Methos cracked a larger stick over his knee and coaxed it into the fire. He then began to strip the bark from a green twig to use as a spit as Kronos knelt to clean the rabbit.
They both felt the Presence as the soldier awoke. Methos saw him struggle to his feet and take his sword up again. He swayed, looking down upon them.
He met Methos' eyes and stumbled down the hill. Kronos sat behind Methos, laughing softly to himself. The soldier raised his sword, shaking still with the pain of death.
Methos slid a stick from the fire. He waved the small flame slowly before his face. "Run," he suggested.
The soldier turned and ran.
Kronos pressed his forehead against Methos' back and howled with laughter. Methos stroked Kronos' thigh, tending his fire.
Methos checked the angle of the morning sun. "He's turned west to Lutetia," he said. "There is a garrison there; if he reaches the fort, he'll be safe."
"This one is excellent quarry! He is clever as well as persistent," Kronos cried.
"The fort is still two days away. You have time enough to catch him. How long have you been chasing him?"
"Eight days. I have caught him six times and still he runs, as if he might escape!"
"His spirit is weakened but unbroken," Methos said. "The Romans are strong."
Kronos sniffed at the wind. "Strong or weak, I will have his head before nightfall." He nudged his horse and walked on.
The soldier didn't take a direct route, but cut south. Methos' skin began to tingle as they followed him. "Do you feel that?" he asked Kronos.
"I feel nothing." Kronos was intent on the hunt.
"Some spirit resides here," Methos said. He could feel it in the trees and the earth and the movements of his horse. "Let your prey go, Kronos. No good can come of this."
"Nonsense! I am nearly upon him."
"Kronos..." The feeling passed. Methos looked into the trees.
Abruptly the soldier burst from cover and ran across the grass before them. Kronos leapt from his horse and gave joyous chase. Methos dismounted, taking the reins of both horses.
In the open grass, Kronos cut the soldier's feet out from under him. The soldier held his sword over his head, warding as best he could.
There was something curious about the ground beneath them. Methos cocked his head, looking at it from different angles. Something about the grass... it was flattened in a circle. It tugged at his memory.
Kronos kicked the soldier to the ground nearly at his feet. He raised his sword--and Methos came to a bone-chilling realization. "Kronos! No!" he cried. "Kronos, this is holy ground!"
Kronos swung--and cut clean. He looked up, teeth bared in glee. "Methos? Did you speak?"
The mist of the Quickening rose and flattened about the perimeter of the grass circle, not seeking an Immortal but seeking the ground itself. Kronos frowned and the horses screamed and bolted, knocking Methos over, as the electricity of the Quickening crackled over the earth.
The earth pulsed beneath him, a low sound that rumbled through his bones. The ground split open like the mouth of a giant and swallowed him whole.
He resurrected in a stone cave, entirely alone.
He was trapped. Slim rays of light shone through the cracks in the earth above him, illuminating the stone of the walls and floors. It was a buried temple--perhaps as old as he himself was. In the center was a spring.
He wandered the halls, first looking for a way out, and then simply looking. It was a temple to no religion he knew. Its architecture was nothing he recognized.
There was so much he still didn't know--so many mysteries, so many secrets that couldn't be discovered at the point of a knife. He knelt and touched the stones.
Kronos didn't understand. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that he and Kronos were not one man made over twice, but the differences were becoming clearer. Kronos was a hunter--and nothing else. Methos wanted more.
He would learn, and then he would kill.
He had been dead for many hours and was still exhausted. The light was shifting, becoming greener as it shone through the grass above. He would lose it before long. He stood and looked for the spring in the center; it was warm and smelled like fresh water. He would sleep there and search in the morning.
Methos awoke thirsty and disoriented. The darkness was soft around him, as if the stone were lit from within. As he turned, though, he saw that it was the rock around the spring that glowed. Still, the water was fresh and he was very thirsty.
He drank from the spring and ten thousand ghosts revisited him.
They were him--he was them, and their deaths were his, a thousand deaths by the sword or axe or knife or his hands or the cruel hooves of his horse. These ghosts were his creation.
Their deaths were his and their lives were his and he lived ten thousand lives in a moment--he was born, he learned, he grew, he loved, he married or he didn't marry--sometimes his life was cut off by his own hands before he had time to taste it. Sometimes he was an ancient, frail with years and life. Sometimes he was an infant without language. Every time, he was the killer.
Sometimes it was quick, sometimes slow. Sometimes he was torn apart. Sometimes he lingered on the hot sand or froze in the snow.
Sometimes he stitched a tent or chipped a knife or kissed his child in the morning. He lived. He lived every life from beginning to end.
When he opened his eyes, he was weeping with fear. He looked up and he stood over himself. He held his own shirt in his hands.
"You always knew," he said.
"They're nothing," he said.
"They were people, the same as you," he said.
"Not the same--I am strong, they were weak. They were prey," he said.
"You are not strong now," he said, and he struck himself across the face. He had lost all his strength--he was weak, he was powerless, he was helpless--and he fell back into the spring, and he pushed his head under the water, and he drowned.
He was dead--his body was cold, his lungs were heavy with water--but he looked up and he saw himself, holding himself under the water, and he spoke and his words were clear as if the water were air: "I am Death."
He pressed a knife into his throat, past the skin, past the arteries, into the bone that held head to body, and the water turned red with his blood as he died the true death.
He awoke on the stone with his lungs full of water. He retched up water, coughing his throat ragged.
And he was there, standing over himself, and he drove the knife into his heart, and he was dead. He painted his face with the blood. "I am the darkness and the light."
"I am alive," he said.
"You were never alive," he said.
"But I am alive," he insisted.
"If you were alive, your heart would beat." He laid open his chest and pulled the heart free, pierced by the blade. "It sits as cold as a toad."
"It beats," he said.
"Will you let it?"
"Let it beat," he said, and his heart pulsed in his hand, his heart pulsed with pain and heat and life.
"Pull the knife free," he said.
"There is no knife," he said.
"It pains me!" he cried, but he was alone; he lay beside the spring alone. He clutched his hands to his chest and it was whole.
But the knife--the knife was in his hand, unmarked with blood, but surely there was a knife in his heart, for he felt pain of a kind he had never felt before.
He dropped the knife on the cold stone. He curled on his side and wept into his hands.
He wandered aimlessly through the buried temple until he saw light above him, and then he crawled his way out of the earth like a worm in the rain.
A shiver ran over his flesh every time he saw his own hands--because he knew them, he knew those cruel instruments--but they were his own. He was a warrior, was he not? He was a warrior and he should be able to face himself...
He collapsed on his hands and knees in the sun. Beneath this earth lay the corpses of those he had killed. Beneath all the ground he had ever walked--beneath all of it were the souls, reaching up.
Run, he had to run, he had to leave this killing ground... he had to find a place where he had never been. He had to find a place that was fresh and new so he could wash his spirit clean.
Great furrows ran across the earth in the shape of a cross; the center lay inside the circle of grass, over the hidden temple. Kronos was nowhere to be seen.
Methos stumbled to his feet. He looked for the horses' hoofprints, hoping perhaps to catch one--hoping to leave at a gallop rather than a crawl. As he walked across the ruptured ground, he felt Presence tingle at his spine, but there was nobody... there was nobody above ground.
He looked down.
In a moment, the Presence died out again. Kronos died again. "I am sorry, brother," Methos whispered, "but I will not kill with you again."
He ran.
Where the field met the trees, he heard the sound of a horse. When he stepped beyond the bushes, he saw it. The ruptured ground ended in the trees; there, where it was shallowest, his horse was buried. Only one hoof and her head were exposed.
She rolled her eyes as he approached. She could do nothing else. He knelt and kissed her forehead. "We are unnatural creatures, and I am so terribly sorry," he whispered, and he slipped his knife along the ground and cut her throat.
No mount. He would walk with his feet upon the murder grounds. He would walk until he found some kind of peace once again.
THE END.
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