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The River

Part Twenty-Four: Ghosts and Remembrances

Methos was lost in his own dark thoughts on the ride to Joe�s, silent except for the occasional sigh. The traffic was still rather heavy on this winter evening and the silence wore on Joe�s nerves, but he didn�t try to break it. He was grateful when they reached the club, parked behind it in the alley, and got out of the Jeep. Methos followed him in, still not saying a word.

Methos sat at the bar and finally spoke. �Do you have any more of that hundred-proof bourbon?�

Joe brought over a glass and a full bottle of Wild Turkey and poured Methos a drink. He turned to return the bottle to its place behind the bar, but Methos stopped him by saying, �Leave it.�

It was soon apparent to Joe that Methos intended to drown his sorrows in bourbon. He kept emptying and refilling the glass, until he�d consumed three drinks in quick succession. This silent drinking worried Joe, and painfully reminded him of Mac�s behavior.

�If you intend to get really drunk you might consider moving to a table, the barstools get tricky to balance on after a while.�

�Good idea.�

Methos picked up the bottle in one hand and his glass in the other and moved to a dimly lit table. He sat down, wrapping his coat around his body as if to fight off a chill. It was the same table where Mac had been sitting on the night Ash first came in.

It was a fairly busy night and Joe didn�t have time to worry about Methos for the next few hours, though he noticed that his bourbon consumption had slowed somewhat. Still, by the time the customers thinned out and he could check on him, Methos was showing definite signs of the half-bottle he�d finished.

Joe came over and sat down at the table, and Methos drunkenly confronted him.

�You said this was one hundred proof, you lied! It says right there on the label one hundred and one proof.�

�Well I don�t think the one will make much difference.�

Methos� mood changed with the rapidity of the intoxicated and he laughed, then just as quickly became morose. In trying not to think of his present worries Methos strayed into past pain and muttered, �So many ghosts, so many.�

�What are you talking about?�

�Ghosts from the past.� Methos� eyes held a haunted look, in keeping with the subject under discussion.

�At your age I�d imagine you�d have more than a few of those.�

Joe had trouble imagining how Ash bore her two thousand years, how much more pain could come with more than double that span of years? How incredibly tough Methos must be to still be sane and alive, and to bear it all with what was usually nonchalance, but that attitude was not in evidence at this moment.

�Some ghosts are harder to forget than others. No wonder Ash always leaves me.�

Noting the non-sequitur, Joe moved the bottle of Wild Turkey out of Methos� reach, saying, �I think you�ve had enough, you�re not making sense.�

�You don�t understand, you don�t know the story.�

�Then tell me.�

Methos put his hands over his eyes and sighed. �Give me back the bottle first.�

Joe moved it back, and Methos picked it up and poured his glass half-full.

�I met him in early March and lost him late in May. Not quite three months, but that time has never left me in two thousand years.� Methos shook his head, sighed again, and drank the contents of the glass. Once he�d fallen into remembrance it was strangely easy to tell the tale, his pain deadened by alcohol. The memory was etched so deeply that even in his intoxicated state he could tell it with reasonable clarity.

�I was dragged to Rome by a half-mad emperor whose grip on power was slipping. There I met a gladiatrix and one of the most beautiful young men I have ever seen. They were slaves and entertainment, used to enact erotic myths for Nero and his selected guests. Ash and Aren. I fell in love with Aren, deeply, insanely in love. Fool that I was I wanted Aren all to myself. I found out how deeply attached he was to Ash when I tried to separate them. I thought Aren was only afraid of being alone; I had no grasp of the truth, that he lived in fear of Ash�s death, that every time she had to fight in the arena he would come close to panic. He felt that he couldn�t live without her, and I never understood that until it was too late.�

�I wasn�t there when it happened; all I know is that Aren threatened Nero in some way. I was sent for to witness the result of my meddling, and I was taken to a private chamber. I could feel the tension in the air but I didn�t know the cause. Nero had demanded Aren�s death, and he set the scene.�

�It was a scene hideously reminiscent of the first time I ever saw them. Aren was nude, lying on a couch. He appeared drugged, his eyes were glazed, his eyelids heavy, they kept closing and he would struggle to open them again. His body was restless, he would relax, then jolt awake, he was fighting whatever drug he�d been given and seemed frightened. Ash was standing beside the couch, covered only by her long, loose hair. She sat on the side of the couch and took his face in her hands, making him focus on her. She spoke to him so softly I couldn�t hear, but he appeared to calm down and even smiled at her.�

�Then she kissed him, caressed him, stroked him, until he seemed to forget where he was, lost between the drug and the sensation. Aren became aroused, and Ash got on top of him and made love to him. It looked as if he had forgotten everything except her and the way she was making him feel. He began to thrust up, hard, his hands gripping Ash�s thighs, his fingers leaving scratches and bruises on the pale skin. He moaned and arched up, coming, surging to a sitting position. Ash put her left arm around him, holding him tight, and in her right hand there was the bright flash of the blade as she slit his throat.�

Methos took a deep hitching breath and closed his eyes. It was like watching a film; the pictures played themselves out on the inside of his closed eyelids, but movies didn�t hurt like this. The anesthetic effect of the bourbon seemed to have suddenly disappeared, and it was as if he had to say it as fast as possible, to get it out quickly, maybe it would hurt less, maybe he wouldn�t feel it all again.

�The blood gushed out of the slash in Aren�s carotid artery, and Ash was looking in Aren�s eyes, saying �forgive me� over and over. She held him in her arms and begged for his forgiveness until he went limp in death, then she threw her head back and she screamed.�

Methos stopped speaking, swallowed hard, and took another very deep, ragged breath. �I have never heard such a sound produced by a human throat, before or since. She screamed until there was only the sound of air rushing over her ripped vocal chords, until I wondered if she would ever be able to make a sound again. She wouldn�t let go of Aren�s body. Finally guards arrived with a gladiator bearing a brazier holding a red-hot iron bar. The gladiator pulled it from the coals and pressed it against her arm, above the elbow. He held it there until the stench of burnt flesh fought with the copper reek of blood in the air. Ash gave one last, silent scream and blacked out from the pain.�

Methos filled his glass again, almost to the top, and then drank it all down fast, hoping the numbness would return as quickly.

�Even unconscious they had to pry Aren out of her arms; she still wouldn�t let him go. They carried them both out, Aren dead, his face so white, and Ash, covered in his blood. I was in shock, I had no idea why this had happened, all I could do was look at Nero and ask. �Why?� His answer was a cryptic, �No one threatens me.� I asked Nero if Ash were to be killed and he said �They are taking her back to the ludes gladatorium, where she belongs. She will live, at least until the next spectacle at the Circus Maximus.�

�I couldn�t see her, there was no way for me to get to her, I was forbidden to leave the Golden House. I couldn�t even ask about her, I was under suspicion, and Nero was more paranoid than ever. I did find out that Nero had given Ash the choice�� Methos broke off, his face twisted in an expression of pain. He was unable to go on for a moment, but then continued, ��if you could call such a calculated torment a choice. She could kill Aren, or see him crucified. She killed him quickly, as painlessly as possible, rather than watch him suffer untold agony for hours, maybe days. I finally heard that she would be fighting in the Games.�

�I remember that day at the Circus Maximus, trapped in the Imperial box with Nero and the court favorites. I�d expected Ash to stumble onto the sand of the arena a broken thing, as I had last seen her. I underestimated her. She walked out, a falcata in each hand, and with a large group of gladiators strode across the sand to stand before Nero and offer the traditional, �Those who are about to die salute you.�

�It was a mass bout, the gladiators paired off, each pair fighting to the death, barring the precarious mercy of the mob. Ash�s opponent was a retiarius, a young man with a net fastened to his wrist and a trident, and even less armor than the little she wore. It was a bad match-up, the retiarius fights from a distance, and the dimachaerus fights close in. Ash was at a disadvantage, trying to stay out of reach of the trident, trying to avoid the tangles of the net. It was difficult for her to get in close enough to land a blow, the crowd was getting bored with their dancing around each other and began shouting for them to get on with it.�

�The retiarius threw the net and Ash ducked it, then dropped her right sword to the sand and caught the net, twisting it around her arm. She tugged on the tethered net to knock him off balance as he threw his trident, and it missed her. She still had the net in her grasp, he was desperately trying to remove the attached line from his wrist when Ash pulled him to his knees by jerking on it hard, then she moved in and struck him with the flat of her left sword on the side of the head. He began to bleed. He reached up, begging for mercy, but the crowd roared for his death, and Nero agreed with them. Ash saw the clenched fist, let go of the net, and bent to pick up her other sword. She twisted swiftly, unexpectedly, and brought the falcata up in an arc that slashed through the retiarius� neck so fast he hardly had time to realize he was dying. She stood before the Imperial box, and as she saluted Nero with the bloody blade I saw a secutor behind her raise his gladius.�

�I tried to warn Ash, but before she could turn around she was hit from behind by the secutor. The gladius went in her back and out the right side of her chest, puncturing the lung, a fatal blow but not a quick death. She fell to her knees, stayed that way for a moment, then fell over on her side, lying on the sand. It seemed to me that the mob fell silent, or maybe I just couldn�t hear them anymore. All I could do was watch her drown in her own blood, dying and so alone. She rolled onto her back and just looked up at the sky, while the sand beneath her stained deep red. I watched her take a last halting breath and die. Then the sound came back, the mob was roaring like a storm-driven surf, roaring for the death of the secutor. A blonde giant from Germania had gone after him, hacked his right arm off at the shoulder, and it was his time to die, jetting great gushes of arterial blood. Then the blonde bent and lifted Ash from the sand and carried her body out of the arena.�

Methos poured another drink, the alcohol wasn�t working fast enough, maybe more would have the desired painkilling effect. He gulped this one as quickly as the last, put down the glass, then crossed his arms on his chest and clutched his upper arms as if he were cold or hugging himself for comfort.

�I was frantic to get to her before she revived. At least I had some time, she had bled to death, and it takes a long time to regenerate that much blood. I pretended to be nauseous, it wasn�t hard, I was more than half-sick from the disgusting spectacle. I was allowed to leave. Nero had had his sadistic pleasure watching me suffer, and watching Ash die.

I went underground, where the prisoners, animals, and gladiators were kept. Somehow I found her in the maze of tunnels under the stands. The blonde giant was still with her. He had laid her down on a bench and was crying over her. Another gladiator had picked up Ash�s swords from the sand and laid them at her feet. He spoke to me in halting Latin, telling me how she had helped him, how she had saved his life by teaching him, how the secutor had no reason to kill her, he was not her opponent and the fight was over.�

�I heard a voice say, �It was Nero, he wanted her dead. He would not have it said that he executed her, he feared the displeasure of the mob.� The voice was deep and resonant, and belonged to a gray-haired man who was obviously once a gladiator himself, his body still bore the traces of muscle, though it had been a long time since he�d fought in the arena. His name was Praxus, and he was Ash�s lanista. He leaned over, touched her face, and said �Poor child, you never had a chance, not today. There was no way you could leave the arena alive, it was Nero�s order.� I couldn�t let this distract me, all I could think of was, �I need to get her out of here, out of Rome.� I offered to arrange for her burial.�

�He looked up at me and told me that Nero had ordered her body be thrown to the beasts. The gladiators who were gathered around objected to that, saying that she had been brave and had fulfilled her oath and deserved a proper funeral. I saw my chance and offered to take her away to a place where she could be buried in secret. Praxus said it would have to be in secret, Nero wanted no reminders of her death to incite the mob.�

I said, �I should have tried to buy her out of the arena,� and he answered, �You could never have afforded her. She couldn�t afford herself; Nero set her price too high. In his own warped way he was fond of her, but then Nero had his own mother murdered.�

�He stood and gave orders to one of the gladiators, who returned with a large dark cloak. I wrapped Ash in it and carried her to Praxus� apartment in the ludes. He arranged to get us out of Rome, and we were on a ship within the hour. He gave me a sack full of coins, he said that it was Ash�s money and to use it for her burial. He also gave me her falcatas, he wanted them buried with her. I carried her on board and down to a private cabin, and we sailed immediately. Ash came back when we were at sea, shocked and confused at being alive.�

�The irony of it all is that I realized too late that it was both of them I loved, Ash and Aren. I should never have tried to separate them. I was so stupid, and it was all for nothing. If only I�d had some patience. Nero fell out of power only ten days after we fled Rome, forced to commit suicide by his own guards.�

Methos lowered his head to the table, and Joe could barely hear him crying softly.

In the time it had taken Methos to tell this tale the bar had cleared out, and Ren�, the new bartender, had cleaned up for closing. Joe got up to let him out, locked the front door behind him, then went to his office for his coat. He walked back to Methos and rested a hand on his shoulder, saying, �Let me take you home.�

Methos sat up and mumbled an assent, then stood unsteadily. The last few drinks had hit him all at once, and he had to hold on to the back of the chair until he found his balance. He followed Joe, trying to walk in a straight line but his body would not cooperate, or maybe it was one of the gods playing with the planet�s gravity that was causing him to stagger so badly. He�d intended to get drunk and he�d succeeded, he was stumbling into tables, bouncing off the walls of the hallway, but he made it to the Jeep and managed to get in, close the door, and fasten his seatbelt.

Joe started the Jeep and pulled out of the alley. He tugged his cell phone out of his coat pocket and called the barge, to let Ash know he was bringing Methos home. The streets were emptier now, but his passenger was just as silent as before. Joe looked over and realized that Methos had passed out. He was slumped against the door, his body held upright only by the seatbelt, the side of his face resting on the cold glass of the window.

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