Life as a New Hire Ch. 45

"Hello, Eruthros," I regarded the red-haired Mycenaean warrior. "I think I recognize those coffle chains."

Yeah, standing between two of 'said' SD Amazons was a relentless foe whose life had intersected mine now four times and we had somehow avoided killing each other. He was nearly-naked, in a chain getup that connected with a neck collar, wrist cuffs, ankle cuffs and a waist chain. His boxers were clearly not his own. I imagine all of that came with an anal and oral checkups, which ended up covering the same territory.

"Why is he here ... like this?" I looked to Elsa.

"He showed up at the front desk, identified himself, requested a parley and asked to speak to you. We took him down and made absolutely sure he was completely unarmed," she answered.

"He insists he talk to you before we kill him," Elsa spoke with the certainty of the grave. "Only Katrina's curiosity has staid our hand."

Eruthros was about to say something. I held up my hand to forestall him.

"What I meant to convey was 'why has he been treated this way?' Unchain him and give him back his clothes and weapons," I commanded. Why? Because I could, damn it!

"That is not your order to give," Elsa shook her head slightly.

"Au contre," I stared at her. "He is a representative of a faction we are at war with, has clearly come here to parley and since I am the Chief Diplomat of the Host, the only recommendation to the Council that matters concerning his treatment is mine to give, not yours."

"He is a foresworn enemy of our People," Katrina studied me. "His death is guaranteed. This is my judgement in my capacity as 'First Bearer of the Sun Spear through the Halls of Night and Death." She was playing with me.

"You overstep your authority," I challenged her ... because she wanted me to.

"He is neither an Amazon, a traitor to the Host, nor an enemy we need to ferret out -- he is standing right in front of us. He has come here in good faith, thus dealing with him is my job, not yours. You may question him if you wish, but his fate and comfort is mine to decide."

"No." Katrina.

"Nice to know -- don't care -- Elsa, I am ordering you to release him because otherwise sharing a meal with him will be rather problematic."

"Cáel Nyilas Wakko-Ishara, this will not happen."

"Cool beans." I looked to one of the other SD ladies. I recalled her name being Nairi. "Nairi, unchain him." Her eyes narrowed then she shot a quick look to the side of Elsa's head. Elsa's eyes were locked on me.

"Shall I rephrase -- Nairi, will you obey the lawful order of a member of Council and official of the Amazon Host, or are you going to hand me a lock of your hair before you ... well, you've been forbidden to take yourself to the cliffs so I imagine said action would make you a Runner. Care to try out for Saku's unit? I hear she's only taking the baddest of the bad."

That wasn't going to happen. Neither Elsa nor Katrina would let it go that far.

"Better face such an end than betray my people by unleashing this monster," she ground out. I was so proud of her -- that selfless fanaticism.

"Oh, thank Ishara," I nearly buckled over. "Nairi, I don't want you to suffer that 'end' either, but I'm glad you've acknowledged my authority to place that dilemma before you."

"You tricked me," she seemed confused ... then angry.

"Well, I sure as Hell can't beat you up, so yeah, I tricked you and everyone in this room who isn't Katrina. Sorry Elsa."

"108 hours, Bitch," was Elsa's response.

That was right. Monday at 5:00 pm I 'graduated' -- ending my internship thus allowing me to date freely within Havenstone. I was still going to forgo any such liaisons except with Buffy ... and, if I could sneak it in, with Rhada and Oneida. Tuesday morning I would trundle myself off to wherever Felix was training. The next Friday, the Great Hunt began. Had so much time really passed?

"We seem to be at an impasse," Katrina smirked.

"Hey, is this new chick Epona House Guard?" I was putting things together. How do you depict a nearly-naked, TSA-nightmare victim, shackled Enemy of the People to be even tougher than he already was? Insist that the normal bad-asses at the SD 'might' not be enough for the task -- of killing Eruthros.

"Reanna of Epona," Katrina made the introductions, "meet the most obtuse male you most likely will ever be confronted with."

"So, is no one going to free Eruthros, or am I going to have to summon my legion of hunch-backed henchwomen? Or Pamela? Pamela can probably pick those locks in no time."

"This is not a joking matter," Elsa refocused on the issue at hand.

"Good enough," I nodded. I stepped up, grabbed Eruthros's waist chain and twisted him around. "Don't move." Then I pulled out my gun and aimed it at the closest wrist cuff. I had to move him to make sure no one else was in line with my bullet's projected path. That they could have protested.

"I will kill him before you pull the trigger," Elsa reminded me.

"Good point -- all of you who aren't with House Epona, or my guest, leave. You are no longer welcome, or all that helpful."

"Cáel, before this goes any further," Katrina intervened. "Why don't you tell us why you want to free him."

"The Host are not barbarians. We are neither noble, by any other standard than our own, nor do we forego inflicting cruelty on our enemies, we welcome it. What we are NOT is 'false-faced rapist who invite others to share our cups -- or a request to parley -- so we can enslave, or slaughter them'. We are not those people and I would rather die honoring my ancestor (the first Ishara) than let us behave so. We should know better."

"He is ONE of those men who did that to us," Nairi seethed.

"Precisely," I agreed. "Knowing that, he placed his life into our hands. For us, it is ancient history seared into our souls. For Eruthros it played out a few months ago. The fact we became WORSE than him stands before you now -- in me."

"No," Elsa denied me.

"There are too many playmates of three young boys to count whose descendants are no longer around to argue with you. You slaughtered them -- your own sons -- in one night," I hardened. "Now tell me the butchery of your own bloodlines -- your own flesh and blood -- wasn't an even greater atrocity."

I could see the defense of their actions written all over their faces -- the SD and Reanna. The 'sons' were males and still, in too many of their eyes, unworthy.

"You didn't butcher young boys that night. You murdered every daughter those men would ever have. How lonely we have become because those daughters never had daughters of their own ... because we lost our souls?"

Oh, that hadn't occurred to them, though it was painfully obvious to me.

"That's right. That night we killed half the Amazons who would have lived in the past 2,500 years. Today -- that stops. It stops here, with you and me with this ancient foe. Now, free him because I say so, because I am right and all of you know it. Stop pretending you even have a choice."

"Ishara," Elsa murmured at me. She wasn't talking to me. She was honoring my ancestor and my goddess -- the Peacemakers. Elsa stepped to up to Eruthros, brandished a key and began undoing his manacles. "Get his belongings," she directed to a random Security Detail member. Off she went.

"That was a bit tight," Eruthros finally spoke as he rubbed his wrists. I didn't think he was talking about the chains.

"Give me a sec," I grinned at him. "Katrina, could you please arrange for me and our guest to have something to eat and drink delivered to this office while we discuss the reason for his visit?" Now I was being very polite. Katrina deserved that and more.

Katrina picked up her phone and forwarded the request. Tea and crab cakes was the meal of convenience.

"Eruthros, before we get down to the nitty-gritty of our family relations, reminiscing over friends we miss and honoring fallen foes, why don't you tell me why you are here?"

"We would like to bury Ajax," he bowed his head -- a warrior beseeching an enemy-prince.

"Okay," I told 'Red'. He appeared to be retaining some doubts. "I've been doing various people a shitload of favors. They owe me. Getting one dead guy out of a morgue won't be a problem."

"Really?" he seemed shocked.

This was a desperation mission spurned on by oaths of loyalty from a liegeman to his king, not something most modern people would understand. If nothing else, they would ask something for the service. 3,000 years ago, that wasn't how it worked. Even in death, Ajax belonged to his people. To deny that was a malignant insult.

Leave no man behind ...? Was that the Rangers, or the Marines? I'd have to ask Chaz. Would those modern elites understand Eruthros' plea? Or had the Massacre of the Amazons at the Seven Skulls removed them from such dignified company? They weren't here -- I was.

"Cáel, this is not an activity I can expend Havenstone assets on. Unlike that other matter, retrieving Ajax's body for burial is not Amazon business," Katrina announced. She had to keep up the pretense of her disapproval. That other matter ... I needed to deal with that too.

"That's fine. I don't need Executive Services for this mission. I've got it covered."

"Exactly what resources do you imagine you have?" Elsa cocked an eyebrow. Normally she was smarter than this. Or maybe she was teasing me too.

"I figure four ninja to do the task and three Black Hand to provide support. We might not even need to smuggle the body out of Europe," I enlightened the room. "I've been standing up for the 9 Clans side since Day One. As I said, they owe me."

Elsa bowed to my creative criminality.

"And his armor and weapons," Eruthros added.

"And his armor and weapons," I repeated.

"Retrieving the body is one thing," Katrina schooled me. "Virtually no one breaks into a morgue, even a Federal Police one. They would store his personal belongings in a far more secure location. Finding his personal weaponry will be even more difficult."

"If we cannot find them, I will give you my two axes which I bore when I witnessed his passing," I offered Eruthros.

"Thank you," he clasped my hand. Tears began edging down his cheeks. Those old Greeks, and just about everyone else in those days, openly cried, exchanged crude jokes and laughed no matter how bizarre the situation. Showing emotion was what men did. They relished life because theirs could be so brutish and short.

"Where are you going to bury him?" I inquired. I was feeling a bit sniffley myself. Charlotte had paid the price so I could be here, talking to him, today.

"Salamis, among his kinsfolk," Eruthros responded.

"I would like to attend if I may."

"You would be welcome," he brightened up.

In a way, I could be seen as honoring a man I came to personally fear and despise. Ajax was a pig -- a beast. Not of all his men had been and I was doing this for them. Honoring the dead meant so much more to those who survived. Having buried my Father, I knew that to be true.

"What's next for you and yours?" I changed the subject.

"We aren't sure. The Condottieri have abandoned the few of us who remain. I imagine one day Teucer will come to you to settle accounts. For the rest of us ..."

"Want a job?"

"We would never work for the Amazons," he shook his head.

"Not the person I am thinking about at all. How would you like to go work for the Great Khan? He is going to need the hardest stone-cold killers with testicles in the Northern Hemisphere."

"Why would he accept us?"

"He is my spiritual-brother," I informed him. "If I tell him you and the others can shift the outcome of any fight, he will take you in."

"We are neither mercenaries nor willing to work for you," Eruthros looked down.

"I will pay in the currency that matters," I put my hand on his shoulder. "I will relate to you and yours the last moments in the life of Ajax the Unconquered."

"When?"

"At the funeral, but I will have an extra request for you."

"What is it?"

"I will not live forever. I wish you to forgive the family of his assassin. When you bury Ajax, you will bury that anger. Let one more death settle the matter."

"That ... that I think I can convince the others to do. You would not ask for your own life?"

"I deserve much of the hate showered down on my life. I wish my children -- all our children -- to grow up in a better world."

"Who is Ishara?"

"She is the Goddess of many things. Most importantly to me, Dot-Ishara is the Goddess of Oaths. She binds our promises in blood and punishes the false-hearted and the oath-breakers. Serving her is always painful, but far too often worthwhile."

"Children," Eruthros mused. "I had not considered such a thing. Vengeance has consumed our thoughts."

"The truly great warriors go home," I adlibbed, "raise children and lie to them about their experiences while passing on those heart-rending lessons that carried them so far."

"Endless war makes no sense to me. Conflict always has a way of finding us, be we unready, prepared, fresh, or tired. Best we prepare the next generation who will have to face those challenges -- make something good out of all the death and pain."

"Give you a few more years and you will be an Epic warrior, Cáel Nyilas Wakko Ishara," he put his hand on my shoulder to mirror mine.

"Hey now," I faux-protested. "What did I ever do to deserve that?"

"When the Great Achilles died, there was no one worthy of picking up his sword. We Greeks -- we Mycenaeans -- were swept away. What became of our sons and daughters? Where are the songs sung in their honor? Did we expend our very best for an insignificant town on a hill? Did we?"

"Not all the Mycenaeans are dead, Eruthros," I pointed out.

"The Amazons ... when I knew them, they were like you; fearlessly happy and brave. They would be proud ... I guess you being a man, I can't say they would be proud of you, but I would like to think they would sing paeans around your funeral pyre."

Not a single Amazon in the room commented on his memories. He knew their ancestors and they didn't. He also had had a hand in stilling that joy and freely-embraced fierceness. Whatever they had once been so long ago, the Greeks had stolen all the good away and left the hate, pain and sense of betrayal that had carried my Amazons through the millennia.

"I have a daughter. Her name is Aya and her playful laughter can still steal the crushing weight of storm-waves as tall as a city wall, her tiny strength overcomes the winds of a hurricane through her relentless determination, and her compassionate smile picks you up when pain and exhaustion would otherwise unman you. She is absolutely wonderful and I would like you to meet her someday -- when all of this (the bloodletting) is behind us."

"I would like that," he grinned.

"Did he just promise to show your niece to this monster?" Reanna didn't whisper softly enough for me not to here -- most likely on purpose.

"He is her 'Atta', so he is well within his rights to make that request of Caitlyn."

"But you are the House Head," Reanna protested.

"I trust Cáel with Aya's life. Absolutely. I have before and I would do so again," Katrina's eyes played over my countenance. Yeah, she had let Aya be kidnapped along with me, thus putting her in the hands of the Seven Pillars. Her trust had cost Aya two digits from her ring finger -- a mark she would bear her entire life. "Making the request to Caitlyn is a mere formality. She shares my faith in him."

I had to think about that ... and other things.

"No," Katrina shook her head in the negative. "You may not sleep with Reanna. Buffy would find out and beat the crap out of her. I need them both."

"Did you just pull a 'Pamela' on me?" I scowled. Reanna was still getting over the 'I would never sleep with him' and the 'why won't you let me sleep with him?'

"You are aroused and Reanna has been sucking up your man-candy anima since you walked into the room -- no psychic powers required," she corrected me.

"Does this happen to you often?" Eruthros regarded me with renewed respect.

"Yes," Elsa answered for me.

"What she said," I smirked.

The rest was simple and more than a bit archaic and manly. Eruthros' panoply was returned, he dressed and then we ate, sitting on the floor of Katrina's office while the normal ES business was carried on around us. We both set our weapons aside as we shared our meal. He told me a dozen things a hundred historians devoted to the Bronze-Age Greeks would have personally torn the right testicles off their closest colleague for.

He was literate, knew some Old Kingdom Hittite, Minoan and Scythian and enough Egyptian to recognize it when I spoke a few words. Having lived inside a citadel (and not out in the fields with the peons), he knew how those old alliances, bonds, ties of kinship and other loyalties really worked.

I repaid those insights by educating him on modern dating practices and why you wanted women who were lethally competent as well as hot-looking and hellcats beneath sheets. After all, he and his tiny band of friends had their own martial societal traditions to pass down. By the time he departed, I had planted the seeds of a future beyond Ajax in his mind.

I hoped he would share my thoughts, hopes and dreams for the Mycenaeans with his ten surviving brethren. Five were in prison and not likely to ever get out ... without outside help? The Khanate perhaps? The others: Red and one other had made their escape from Romania. Teucer and three others had been wounded before the final encounter at the Seven Skulls.

An hour later, I walked him out of the building. He took a taxi to somewhere that wasn't here. As his car faded into the noontime mass of New York traffic, Wiesława finally spoke.

"What is Buffy going to do when she finds out what foolish risks you took today and plan to do in the near future?"

"Pat me on the back and tell me to keep up the good work?" I tried to sound up beat. Lucky for me, I had a few fortune cookies in my pocket because that pigeon must have been a half-kilometer up when he decided to do his best imitation of a Peregrine Falcon. It probably didn't penetrate his little bird-brain that he had nothing approaching the aerodynamic qualities that would allow him to pull up in time.

[ISHARA]

"Man, that is going to leave a mark," I mumbled. A nice comfy lap-pillow eased the pain in my noggin. "Did you have to sacrifice that winged-rat?"

"Don't give me that," my Goddess scolded me. "I wasn't the one who sat calmly in a room with one of the perpetrators of the most grievous crimes ever committed against my people, comforting him in his time of suffering."

"Unleash a damn Alû on him," I suggested. Those were vengeance demons of the Near East during Ishara's time.

"Those are Sumerian."

"I seem to recall you working with a Sumerian goddess recently," I countered.

"Are you angry about Tadêfi?"

"Why do you even ask?" I groaned. My head was really going to hurt when I woke up. "I am (angry), you are cruel and it is your nature to use us mortals for your own purposes. I imagine whatever good you do for mankind is accidental."

"No," she brushed her fingernails along my forehead. "If we could leave you to your devices, we divinities would. Life is not that simple. There are forces at work that would destroy the Weave and collapse all reality. By nurturing the good, we secure your future and our own."

"Illuyankamunus ... demons ... black necromancers?"

"Yes. As I have told you before ..."

"There is no 'one' destiny. I imagine, ignorant of the outcome, you worry that humanity might not work it out quite right," I sighed.

"Please, do not despair," she took a handful of hair and dragged it over my upturned hand, caressing my fingertips -- which felt really, really good. "I appreciate all you have done for me on your own initiative. I am not so jaded that I am inured to human suffering, yours especially."