After keeping their unnatural abilities secret for centuries, the three sirens find themselves suddenly caught up in the climactic showdown between two ancient superpowers: Rome and Carthage.
Their pendants inactive, their magic gone, Adagio, Aria, and Sonata find themselves plonked undignified into a world of human beings who, despite their adulation for magic, fear it above all else. Yet despite their separation from their once world-dominating power, they retain the natural strengths of their species along with a mysterious longevity, and quickly learn that any hint of their extraordinary abilities can quickly land them in the deepest trouble. Wishing to be left alone by these oat-brained primitives, the three agreed centuries ago that they should never remain in one place, and that they should keep their abilities a strict secret. Well, most of the time.
After centuries of keeping their talents a secret from the world, the two great superpowers of their time are on the road to war, and the three sirens at risk of being caught between two of the ancient world's mightiest war machines.
As Adagio looked down into the filthy, muddy waters of the Allia, she considered what a pitiful, wretched little tributary it was compared to the mighty Tiber. And yet what the destiny of such a small thing could have on those who relied on the mighty and grand. For after all that they’d suffered, all that they’d lost since this stupid, insignificant fight over land first began, she and the others couldn’t descend any further into the bowels of desperation.
She looked over at Aria and Sonata. It struck her faintly how differently they were taking their losses than her. Aria with impotent and directionless rage, incapable of even expressing it through action, and reduced to a sort of horrified contemplation. Sonata, her expression drained to emptiness as she knelt at the river’s edge, stared into the muddy waters as though seriously contemplating drowning herself in it. In some small part of Adagio’s predator’s heart, she knew that Sonata had lost the most.
A plopping sound beneath her drew her attention back to the stream, and she suddenly realised that she could taste blood. She wiped the trail from her lip and chin, and looked south to where she knew the walls of Rome stood, tall and unassailable. But she would assail them. She would breach those grand defences, walk sedately to the Senate building, to the centre of Roman power, and with nothing but the force of her voice, would bring her enemies low, bring certain annihilation down upon those who had wronged not only her, but Aria and Sonata as well. Those humans who had dared to injure them with their petty conflicts and ridiculous wars, to inflict their narrow prejudices upon them.
In time the meaning and significance of this chain link in the endless proliferation of human misery would be lost, cast aside by the significance of the next war, and then the next war, and then the next. But they would survive. They three would outlive the war, outlast even these pretentious little civilisations aspiring to their spot in the dusty annals of history by casting aside lives like theirs.
Very well then. If the lives of ordinary people was a just expense to pay for glory and renown, then perhaps it was time that they three took that cause up again.
Small village north-east of Carthago Nova. Carthaginian Province in Iberia. Spring 218BCE
As Adagio looked down into the filthy, muddy water in the jug she’d been given, she considered exactly what to say to the child looking at her hopefully. She raised one perfect eyebrow, and opened her mouth slowly, as though still thinking through what she was going to say.
“You expect a hay-shekel for this?” she demanded, tipping the water onto the straw-covered ground. “You can either go back and get a proper jug full, or I’ll get some other rat to do it.”
The boy took the jug back, his face carefully smooth but his eyes flickering with irritation. Without a word he ran back off down the road.
“And if I catch you spitting in it again, I’ll put you in my pot like other witches do!”
Smirking, she stood back up and turned into her home. A sound of annoyance preceded her back into the wooden hovel.
“Could you not do that?” Aria snapped from her place by the fire. “Even if you like the attention, I’d rather not be made some priestess.”
“Or have people threaten to bury us up to our necks and have us trampled,” Sonata put in cheerfully. “Remember that guy?”
“Yes, Sonata, we remember that guy,” Aria sighed. “It was only a month ago.”
Sonata blinked. “Oh yeah.” She grinned. “Man, he was angry.”
“Yeah, and no wonder,” Aria snorted, pointedly looking at Adagio. “Someone pushed his wife into a ditch.”
“She told me to jump in a hole,” Adagio responded placidly, picking up her needlework. “I thought it only fair that as the older woman she get to go first.”
“Uh huh,” Aria said meaningfully. “Whatever. Just try not to piss off any more village leaders, okay? You’re lucky she didn’t die from that fall or we’d all be chewing horseshoes right now.”
“I like this village,” Sonata intoned dreamily. “It’s by the sea.”
Aria harrumphed. “It’s not like our sea.”
“It does taste a little different,” Sonata agreed. “I didn’t think I could throw up so much.”
Aria gave Adagio a gimlet look. “A world without magic, and we don’t age. How does that make sense?”
Adagio shrugged. “I like it. Plenty of conflict here. Gives us room to hunt properly.”
“Speaking of food,” Aria uttered ruminatively. “How much fish do we have left?”
Sonata let out a small noise and, too late, looked away, apparently fascinated with something in the mud-lined stick wall. Aria’s head snapped around, her purple eyes drilling into her.
“I swear to Tanit, if you’ve eaten all the meat—“
“I haven’t!” Sonata cried empathically. “Well, not all of it.”
Aria snarled and stomped out of the doorway. Within seconds she was back inside, her brow dark.
“I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t eat everything else.”
“You know we need some of that to sell, right?” Adagio asked acidly, glaring at Sonata too. “If you were hungry, you should have gone hunting.”
“But I was hungry right then,” Sonata whined.
“Fine,” Aria said in clipped tones. She threw up her hands. “Fine, I’m done. You can get more of the fish by yourself.”
“What!?” Sonata exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “No!”
“It’s only fair,” Adagio intoned, grinning wickedly.
“But you guys know I like to chase the bears!” Sonata shouted, anger driving her distress into the beginnings of a tantrum.
“You should have thought about that before you stuffed your fat face,” Aria snapped, throwing her a conical wooden trap. “Happy fishing. I’m going to find that wolf pack.”
“Seriously?” Adagio asked, her eyebrows arching.
Aria raised a warning finger and pointed it at Adagio. “That alpha wolf has it coming,” she said firmly. “I don’t care if he’s just some dumb animal, you don’t kill-steal.”
Taking up a crude spear, she headed out of the hovel.
“Do I really have to go alone?” Sonata asked quietly.
“Just this once,” Adagio said unsympathetically. “Look on the bright side. As far south as we are, maybe you’ll catch a dolphin.”
Sonata’s eyes sparkled with sudden excitement. “Oooh, do you think so? What do they taste like?”
Adagio shrugged. “I guess you’ll be the first to find out.”
Squealing with delight, Sonata sprinted out of the door, forgetting the wooden trap. Adagio’s mouth thinned slightly as her eyes lingered on the device itself. The spears, the nets, the traps. They needed none of them.
In Equestria, before their banishment, Adagio’s race were voracious predators, content to hunt the oceans and coastal areas. They were loathe to go to the surface, even though they were perfectly capable of doing so. Most disliked the awkwardness of mobility, but Adagio, Aria, and Sonata had had a magical solution to that problem their fellows hadn’t. Additionally, the vast majority of them didn’t devour sentient creatures; a byproduct of their biology. Even though Adagio’s people were not a generally social species, it didn’t do to kill one’s fellows if instead working together meant killing and eating bigger things, and it certainly didn’t do to accidentally murder one’s own children. Her people’s maternal instincts were amongst the strongest known among sentients in Equestria, and many larger, generally stronger predators had regretted targeting a child of her race whilst its mother was within reach.
But with this one minor genetic quirk aside, they were swift and tactical killers, employing a wide range of methods of foolproof slaughter. It was just as well that they remained underwater. Insufferably docile as they were, ponies were a formidable race, as Starswirl the Bearded had proven.
It was all wasted here, though, in the human world. As Aria had (wisely) caught quickly onto, this was not a magical world despite the innumerable beliefs and stories propagated by its inhabitants. The three of them knew what real magic was, and there was nothing of it here, or they would have devoured it by now and regained their quondam power. In fact despite their apparent adulation of magic, humans exhibited a paradoxically strong fear of anyone who actually did possess it, or appeared to possess it.
“Not that they’re wrong to,” Adagio muttered as a small smile curved her mouth, thinking of Aria’s example of the chieftain’s wife. But the fact also remained that Aria worried too much about it. Being all uptight and strung up would probably make the issue worse, at least in Adagio’s opinion, and besides, wasn’t everything good in moderation?
In the years since being banished, Adagio had picked up several essential skills. One of which was the trained ability to make such rationalisations. It helped after being on the cusp of ultimate power, only to be dropped into a world where her once world-dominating powers were reduced to the basic physical capabilities of her species. The second skill, which she was half angry, half reluctant to admit she actually liked doing, was sewing. Which after several centuries in the human world, she was frankly quite good at. As she sat by the entrance in the warm autumn air, she finished work on the animal skin hat she’d been tackling, and laid it to one side.
“Here you go, ma’am,” the boy said as he set the jug of water down. “It’s clear, look.”
“So it is,” Adagio mused.
Reaching a finger down, she slowly stirred the water, narrowing her eyes. Holding her facial muscles under strict control, she started murmuring something under her breath. Just enough. Just enough to suggest something.
The boy’s eyes flashed between the jug and her, his face paling as he took a few steps back. Then Adagio abruptly stopped murmuring, and the atmosphere broke.
“Good boy,” she whispered. “You didn’t spit in it.”
With a dextrous movement of her arm, she whipped the hat up and onto the boy’s head.
“There you are,” she said, “as promised.”
“You promised bronze!” the boy complained, whipping the hat off his head.
“That’s worth more than a bronze hay-shekel,” Adagio pointed out. “Don’t be ungrateful. I’m paying you more than I promised despite your mistake.”
“There was nothing wrong with that water,” the boy chuntered, scowling. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Wear it,” Adagio explained flatly. “It’ll be winter eventually.”
“It’s spring,” the boy growled under his breath. Without further preamble, he turned and ran into the village’s sparse arrangement of wooden structures surrounding the central market.
“So ungrateful,” Adagio sighed.
As soon as she entered the nearby forest, Adagio set the spear she was carrying down. Like Aria’s, it was for token effect, but had gotten them good relations with Salicar, the local blacksmith. For a moment, she considered what the best course of action was going to be. With the onset of autumn, most of the regular game was starting to thin out, and a lot of the predators were beginning to branch outwards, seeking more food. Adagio didn’t have that luxury, but what she did have were three advantages; natural aspects of her race that for whatever reason remained with her.
Made for underwater use, her sense of smell was less effective in the air, but still keener than that of a human. Her hearing on the other hand was extremely acute when focused. A particular derivation in her race’s diversification had rendered them the ability to actively sharpen their hearing through concentration. The third thing she retained was an unnatural strength for her size, which even in human form remained. It wasn’t absurd, boulder-crushing strength or anything quite so hyperbolic, but she had once left a noticeable dent and crack in a limestone block when travelling through Egypt. It was either the block, or some guy’s face, and on tap she’d considered the block would be easier to clean up.
Adagio walked sedately in between the trees, casually but expertly avoiding making overt noise where she trod. It was always so jarring to step on a twig when she was enhancing her hearing. She tried not to rely on her sight too much. Another vestige of her true nature, her vision edged ever so slightly into the infra-red, the better to see in deep waters, but out of the absolute darkness of the deep ocean and in even the dimmest of sunlight it was almost completely useless. Reliance on sight however was a habit that came with being human.
The mixtures of greens, oranges, reds, and yellows blurred and compacted, deadening her depth perception and making it difficult to perceive descents, ledges, or tree roots running beneath the fallen leaves. She stepped carefully, slowly relying on her tactile senses to judge her tread, her touch on the sides of trees, the movement of the air in case the faintest whiff of prey—
She stopped, all of her muscles tight as her ear twitched.
She remained perfectly still for exactly twelve seconds, her eyes still and unfocused as she drew in long, slow breaths, and slid her tongue slowly out into the light breeze filtering through the trees. Her eyes narrowed.
The smallest flurry of disturbed leaves. A desperate squeaking.
“A rat,” Adagio concluded flatly, holding the squealing thing in her claw-like hand. Her lip curled as she looked into its tiny black eyes, feeling its limbs struggle beneath her iron fingers. She sighed.
As she made her way deeper into the forest, the wrap over her feet helping to deaden the sounds of her steps, she was disappointed to find that her tasting the air had given her a more-or-less accurate view of her surroundings. Small creatures practically everywhere, hidden and wary of her. She could detect no larger beast in the vicinity.
She scowled, thinking she’d have to go further north and get a scent in the other direction. Perhaps that was the problem. It was risky though. As they lived on the south side of the village, going north through the trees would put her within sight of the village market. She certainly couldn’t be seen in hunting mode by her neighbours. That would be the outside of enough for many of them.
On the other hand, she really had no choice. So long as she was simply scouting out her prey, there could be no chance of detection. As long as no one saw her relatively inhuman reflexes as she brought down her kills, there should be no suspicion.
“Don’t do it.”
Adagio had to work not to make a sound of alarm, although even if she had made one, her canopy-high leap would probably have distracted from it.
“Found your wolf, then,” she snarled between her teeth as she tried to force her breathing back to normal.
Aria grinned, showing more teeth than was perhaps natural. Although in total it certainly was more teeth than was natural, considering she had gained an extra set of them. She sat perched on a nearby half-buried boulder, the pelt of a fairly large slate-coloured wolf draped over her like a grisly cloak. With her spear in one hand and her eyes full of supernatural fire, she looked uncannily like some kind of forest spirit. And not one of the friendly, lead-you-out-of-the-forest-and-offer-protection-to-your-crops kind of spirits, either. The darkening blood smothered across her face and hands, and speckled across her naked body made the idea an overly optimistic fantasy of the desperate and cornered.
“And there you were having a go at me for blowing our cover,” Adagio said mildly.
“It’s not my fault,” Aria snorted, jumping off the rock. “He tore up my clothes with all that struggling.” She gave Adagio a twisted smile. “So I took his instead. It was only fair.”
“I suppose you’re expecting me to sew that into something wearable,” Adagio inquired in a tone of false courtesy.
“Unless you want me to walk around naked,” Aria said, shrugging.
“That’ll be quite the thing to see in winter,” Adagio sneered, pinching one of Aria’s nipples.
Aria compressed her lips and turned pinker than her natural skin tone usually permitted, but said nothing to it. Instead she changed the subject.
“So what did you catch?” she asked, her eyes narrowing on Adagio’s mouth.
“Nothing much,” Adagio answered blithely, removing with a thumb whatever evidence from her lips that Aria was focusing on. “Small rabbit. Game is harder to find.”
“True,” Aria concurred, looking around. “All I can smell here are rats. There must be plenty around if I’m smelling right.”
“Must be,” Adagio agreed.
“Although,” Aria continued, “the pack was further north than they usually are. Maybe there’s still something that way.”
The legendary mountains of the land they occupied, the Pyrenees, were a far distance to the north, but the mountains near to Qart Hadasht – the principal Carthaginian city from whence most of the villagers spread out from – were nothing to sneeze at. The extant forests of their hunting ground hugged close to the subtle rise of the mountain range, giving anyone there an elevated view of the coastline, and indeed the village that settled it.
“We need to catch something,” Aria grumbled after walking for half an hour. “The sea always has fish, and even Sonata can catch them. If she comes back with more food than us, she’s going to be insufferable.”
Adagio felt only half the pain of the thought that Aria did, but it was enough to turn her stomach juices into sour milk.
“Didn’t you keep any of the wolf meat?” she asked.
“No,” Aria scoffed. “Unless you want to sell the bone marrow.”
“Well I’m glad you’re fed,” Adagio said icily. “What about the rest of us?”
“Relax,” Aria sighed dismissively. “We’ll catch something. If we can get a daddy bear, that’ll keep the villagers happy, us fed, and Sonata mad as hell.” She snickered. “Dibs on the liver.”
“No dibs,” Adagio said firmly.
“You’re right,” Aria conceded cheerfully. “It tastes much better to simply take it from you during the frenzy.”
Adagio rolled her eyes, but made no verbal response. As she did, she noticed through the trees on the distant northerly edge of the village. Owing to the placement of high ground around the southernmost point of the settlement, the proper entrance stood to the northwest, where a road to the south bent a semi-circular path through the mountains to the west. On this road, at great speed, were a dozen-or-so horsemen, all wearing bright bronze armour and bearing sheathed spatha.
“Ooh,” Aria intoned grimly, leaning close to Adagio so that she could see in the same direction. “Think we’re going to need to find a new village? Those guys look kind of pillage-y.”
“I don’t think so,” Adagio muttered, narrowing her eyes. “Isn’t that the mark of Tanit?” she asked, pointing at the lead horseman’s shield.
“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Aria said, sounding relieved. “Now that I think about it, Salicar told me about the army at Qart Hadasht being moved to some place up the coast.”
“There aren’t any Carthaginian lands up that way,” Adagio said thoughtfully.
“No,” Aria agreed. “They have a few allies, but Sal said there’s been trouble with the Greeks at Saguntum up there.”
Adagio scowled at that. She, Aria, and Sonata had lived in the area since the Iberians had been dominant, before the establishment of Qart Hadasht, and if there was one thing they’d been perpetually made aware of since the Carthaginians arrived, it was their hatred for the Romans. And Saguntum was a known Roman ally in the north.
“Let’s just finish up here and get back,” Adagio said, her eyes lingering on the men. “It wouldn’t do for them to find Sonata alone. Who knows what idiocy might come spilling out of her mouth.”
Aria chuckled a little more. “I don’t know, that sounds like it could be—“
Both of them stiffened, their head simultaneously shifting to look in the same direction. Through the knots of trees, in the still of the autumn colours, was a patch of brown that moved. A glint of deep brown eyes, and a large black snout, a mass of shaggy brown bulk turned in their direction.
The bear huffed, letting out a low growl as though considering whether it was worth the effort trying to chase down two mostly hairless monkeys. After tilting its head one way and then the other, it seemed to decide that it was, and lumbered its way towards them.
Both Adagio and Aria gave each other matching looks.
Small village north east of Carthago Nova, Carthaginian Province in Iberia. Spring 218BCE
It became evident in their prior dealings with humans that the biggest give-away to their inhuman method of hunting was that they tended to emerge from their hunting grounds as gore-splattered as their prey. Most human hunters preferred to kill their prey from a distance, which whilst no doubt safer, didn’t fulfil Adagio’s bloodlust.
Her people were efficient hunters, and not particularly cruel ones, but had a tendency to revel in their successful hunts to somewhat dramatic ends. Indeed the bear had died quite quickly once Adagio had dodged its initial pounce and snapped its brawny neck. (With a little help from Aria. Even with their unnatural strength, a bear’s musculature was nothing to sneer at, and it was best to tackle them two or three on one.)
Fortunately, the high-ground that bordered the southern end of the settlement, and where their home stood, featured a tributary of a larger river that fed into the nearby ocean, meaning that they could wash themselves before re-entering the village. Aria, lacking proper garments and being smeared in enough of the former alpha’s guts to blend in with a battlefield scene, was permitted to go first, whilst Adagio hauled the dismembered pieces of the bear’s hefty body back to their home.
Sonata was not yet back, and so Adagio prepared the meat alone as she dug her hands into the hot, stinking interior of the beast’s chest, pulling apart its bulbous organs and thick-walled heart. Flicking a glance over her shoulder, she tore a section of the strong muscle off and devoured it, allowing a flicker of her voraciousness to escape as she savoured the warmth and texture.
There were several preservation methods open to them, but first the meat had to be dried. None of them were particularly elegant about this, since limbs and other body parts hanging from their ceiling didn’t bother any of them. Sonata’s favourite preservative was to use honey, but honey was expensive. Adagio herself preferred salt, which was abundant with trade from Africa. It was whilst she was preparing the jars that she heard the sound of hooves approaching.
Adagio felt a twinge of trepidation. With their powers so diminished, the three of them had learned it was never good to draw attention to themselves, and especially not the attention fo anybody capable of doing them bodily harm. Exiting the hut, she hoped that the riders – whoever they were – would not come this far.
Of course, they did. A smaller detachment of them, only five men, all wearing the bronze armour she’d seen before, only the lead rider wore a plumed helmet of white horse hair. This man lowered himself from his steed as the riders came to an abrupt halt before the siren’s hut, and with confident ease, stepped towards her. As he came to the relative border of her home, he removed his helmet.
Adagio looked the man up and down. He was an impressive specimen by human standards, with tight, bulging muscles, a thick but cleanly trimmed beard following his strong jaw, and hard eyes like bits of volcanic rock. He was significantly taller than her, and twice as wide, but despite his hard features, his expression was more curious than harsh.
He gave her a similar up-and-down look, and then turned his attention to the hut.
“Greetings,” he said, his voice exactly as gravely as Adagio had been imagining. “Might I see inside your home?”
“For what reason?” Adagio asked, frowning.
The man didn’t reply, but after staring at her for a moment or two, he walked around her, and towards the entrance.
“You can’t jus—“
She stopped as two of the other riders urged their horses to either side of her, their hands conspicuously on the handles of their swords. Biting her lip, and consoling herself with dark thoughts of ripping all five of them apart, she followed at the horsemen’s urging towards the hut.
Inside, the man surveyed everything, his eyes raking the small building from top to bottom. Brushing some of the hanging meat aside, he looked into some of the crude crates full of preservatives, behind the pelts covering the walls, and kicked at bits of the floor, as though looking for a concealed area. Once he was done, he turned to Adagio.
“You live with two others here?”
“Yes,” she said, trying to keep her voice from darkening.
“Where are they?”
What business was that of his?
“One of them is fishing,” she said. “The other is bathing.”
The man looked around at the hanging meat. “And they are women of your age?”
“Yes.”
“And you are this village’s butchers?” he asked, his voice starting to gain a subtle inflection. “Is this bear?”
Adagio thought she saw what was going on, but it was nothing she couldn’t talk her way out of.
“Yes, it is,” she said, forcing some cheerfulness. “If you want some I’d get it now. The price of meat goes up over summer as game begins to migrate.”
The man ignored this. “Three teenage girls hunt bears?”
“Among other things,” Adagio said, risking a small laugh. “Our, um, parents trained us for it. Since we were able to walk.”
“And where are your parents?” the man asked. “I don’t recognise your accent.”
“No,” Adagio went on, feeling a chill run down her spine. Stupid, she knew not to tell such obvious lies. No helping it now though. “We come from the western tribes. It is our custom to hunt, and we do it well.”
The man nodded slowly. “We have rumours that the three of you are magickers of one sort or another. That you use unnatural powers to hunt, and that several villagers have seen you undergoing certain rituals.”
“I don’t know what they can mean,” Adagio said truthfully. She hadn’t been aware that any villagers had seen them doing any of their inhuman stunts. But if all the man had were rumours, she didn’t see what he could do about it. “Stories get passed around,” she said, trying to sound amused. “You know how it is when you move to a new place.”
The man grunted, looking around again. “I can see no evidence of any such witchcraft,” he muttered. Did Adagio sense disappointment in his voice? She had to fight not to smirk as she imagined what horrific tortures and execution methods she was depriving him from inflicting upon her.
“Witchcraft!” Adagio cried, trying the laugh again. “I didn’t know the stories were that wild.”
“Apparently quite wild,” the man sighed.
“Girl,” one of the horsemen said suddenly. Adagio looked up to see him pointing. “Is that one of your companions?”
Adagio looked in the direction of his gesturing finger, and felt her heart crash down passed her diaphragm like a boulder down a gorge.
Whistling a little tune, seemingly without a care in the world, Sonata made her leisurely way up the incline from the direction of the coast. Hauling a sizeable dolphin over one shoulder by its tail. As she came level with the house, she waved with her other hand.
“Hey look!” she exclaimed joyfully. “I did catch one. I didn’t know they were this big!”
Adagio simply stared, her lungs forgetting to expand. The dolphin was all over cuts and abrasions, as though it’d been silenced with a well-placed slash to the neck, only to be dragged from the ocean and across half a mile of land. Adagio chanced a glance at the men, and was unhappy to find them all looking dumbfounded.
“Oh, hey,” Sonata began, smiling around at the horsemen. “Who’re you guys?”
“Girl,” the leader breathed. He cleared his throat. “What is that?”
“A dolphin!” Sonata explained, giggling. “Look how big it is!”
“How did you come by it?”
“I—“ Sonata stopped as she caught Adagio’s expression. “Uh, I mean, I found it. On the beach. Already dead. Totally not in the water.”
Adagio mentally facepalmed.
“Indeed,” the leader said slowly. “May I?” he asked, holding out a brawny hand.
Sonata unslung the tail from over her shoulder, and held it out. The man took it, and gave it a heave. He scowled, looking at Sonata’s thin arms and lithe body.
“You dragged this from the beach?” he added. “By yourself.”
Sonata glanced at Adagio again, seeking help, but Adagio had none to give. There wasn’t really any way of lying here that she could think of.
“Y-Yes,” Sonata said uncertainly. “With lots of breaks, though,” she added quickly. “It’s heavy.”
The leader raised one thick eyebrow. “You don’t like that tired,” he commented, obviously taking note of Sonata’s lack of colour, sweat, or shortness of breath, although all three began to manifest as the silence trickled on. One or two of the horsemen urged their horses in Sonata’s direction.
Adagio tried rapidly to think of something, anything to say. Something that would serve to get them out of this, and avoid whatever horrible fates these men might try to inflict. Proficient in taking down beasts that they were, Adagio had no delusions about being able to take down five heavily armed humans without risking severe injury or death. It only took one of those swords reaching her, and it was over. One-on-one was doable. One-on-two was pushing it. Three and above was a risk she didn’t much feel would yield good results.
As her mind churned out pathetic excuse after pathetic excuse, and Sonata continued to look around as though an excuse might decide to pop out of the ground, another noise to their rights turned the group around.
“Captain!” a distant voice called.
Adagio felt whatever was left of her hope for a positive resolution fall flat down dead on its face.
Six more horsemen galloped towards them in an arrowhead-formation, the front two holding something thin and squirming between them. Within moments the horses galloped to a halt, and the two foremost soldiers dumped their bundle to the ground with what Adagio thought unnecessary roughness.
“Captain,” the foremost horseman said gravely. “We found this wretch upon the water as described, performing some obscene rite.” He pointed behind him in the direction of the tributary. “It was clothed in nothing but this.”
The leader held out a hand for the wolf pelt the horseman held out to him.
“Not even treated yet,” the leader muttered, grimacing at the interior.
“Give it back!” Aria snarled. From her kneeling position on the floor, her arms held tight across her nakedness, her attempt at scorn and ferocity only thinly veiled the embarrassment she was obviously feeling. Embarrassment only partially aimed at her unclothed vulnerability, but mainly Adagio knew, from the fact that she’d been overpowered and humiliated. Even the fire in her purple eyes was undermined by the reluctant wetness around them. What was perhaps worse was that despite it obvious that she’d tried to clean herself, the wolf’s blood had managed to stain her back, mouth, and forearms.
The leader ignored her, and turned to Adagio.
“She is your third companion?” he asked.
Adagio’s immediate thought was to say no, impulsively thinking that perhaps she could maybe deflect focus onto Aria, and then help her later before anything could happen. She dismissed the idea right away however. If these men had spoken to the villagers, then they knew who Aria was.
“Yes,” Adagio said quietly.
“Captain, I don’t know what sort of heathenism this child is involved in,” the mounted soldier began harshly, “but she managed to knock us down with unnatural strength before three of us restrained her.
The leader looked sharply at Aria, and then at Adagio. Adagio couldn’t bring herself to look at him, but simply stared at the floor, her mind desperately scrabbling by this point for escape plans.
Looking down at the pelt in his hands, and running his thick fingers over the deep grey fur, the leader looked thoughtful. His small black eyes were half closed as though in deep thought. Adagio, Aria, and Sonata watched him in tense expectation. Adagio’s mind went back to considering all of the horrible things humans did to people they perceived as magical. As each fresh wave of fear hit her, she felt it feeding her anger. If it came to it that he proclaimed death upon them, then at the very least they wouldn’t get it easy. With eleven of them it would be messy, and probably not even possible that the three of them would survive, but they’d take down a few in the struggle.
The leader looked up.
“This may be what we were sent to find,” he said, his voice low and thoughtful. He pointed at the four men he’d arrived with. “You men will remain here and supervise their departure. The rest of you with me.”
“Departure?” Adagio echoed, furious to hear her voice sound so shaky. “What are you going to do with us?”
The leader paused as he reached his horse. “You have some idea that we’re here to punish you,” he guessed, looking at her face. “I don’t know what is planned for you, but I find it hard to believe that the general would send us out to find and execute witches just before the war begins. No, he will find a use for you. We shall need an and all advantages we can find.”
“War?” Sonata piped up. “What war?”
“With the Romans,” the leader said, mounting his steed. He looked to one of the remaining soldiers. “They may have half an hour to prepare. Get that one dressed. We ride out with the volunteers after that.”
With a shake of the reins, he and the six who’d found Aria rode back into the village centre.
Adagio looked up at the four seated horsemen still watching them. None of them spoke, but all of them had the same implacable expression on their face. She and the others had no choice.
“Bastards,” Aria swore under her breath. “Ass holes. Whoresons. I hope someone nails their mother’s entrails to a tree!”
“Do we really have to go with them?” Sonata asked despondently as she packed a pelt sack full of dried meat. “I don’t wanna leave. I want to eat that dolphin.”
“We’ll have to leave for now,” Adagio said quietly, picking up a wooden box. “And we’ll have to be more careful from now on.”
“Like I said,” Aria growled, ripping on a new tunic and nearly tearing the seam.
“Yes,” Adagio whispered, opening the box. “Like you said.”
The red gems within glittered from under their wrapping cloths. Powerless as they were, they remained the last vestige of their old lives. Snapping the box shut again, she rammed it into the bag with the dry meat. Sonata looked at the bag, and then at Adagio, her expression stricken.
“We’re taking...” she said weakly. “We really are leaving.”
“For now,” Adagio repeated quietly. “Keep them safe, Sonata. We don’t need people trying to steal them.”
Sonata’s tense expression hardened into resolve. She nodded, flashing a look towards the door, and the men outside.
“You sure it’s alright giving them to her?” Aria muttered in Adagio’s ear. “Shouldn’t we each carry our own?”
“Less likely to find them if only one of us has the box,” Adagio replied under her breath. “And lets face it. Of the three of us, she’s the least suspicious.”
Aria seemed about to argue the point, when Adagio held up the wolf pelt. Aria’s lip twisted, but snatching the pelt back, she said nothing more.
“So where are we going?” Aria asked the town’s blacksmith. Or rather, the town’s former blacksmith.
“North, I think,” Salicar said. “The siege of Saguntum is over, so we’re to go there whilst the recruits move up from Qart Hadasht and other places.”
“And why exactly are you coming?” Adagio asked, trying to sound politely interested. “What’ll the village do without you?”
“Hamil is taking over as blacksmith,” Salicar replied. “He’s not as good as me, but it’s worth letting him try things on his own until I get back.”
Adagio raised her eyebrows. “You sound confident that you’ll survive this. I’ve seen wars before. Life expectancy isn’t exactly in the ‘likely’ category.”
Salicar grinned, twitching his thin black beard. “I’m a smith. I’m not going to be in the actual battles.”
Aria scoffed. “You know, for a big guy, you’re kind of a coward, aren’t you?”
Adagio sighed internally. Ever since they’d realised that the three of them were functionally immortal, all three had learned not to develop overt attachments to anyone they came across. In a world where most people were expected to die before the age of thirty, it just wasn’t healthy. Given their natures, it hadn’t been too difficult, especially for Adagio, who at the best of times was scornful of human beings. Even those that she had occasionally companioned with, it was always merely physical with no emotional attachment.
Aria and Sonata on the other hand, well...
Aria’s abrasiveness often put her at odds with anyone she came into contact with, but this was still a form of contact, and sometimes this bizarrely led to the sort of friendship that she and Salicar shared. It was like some odd form of bromance, or fraternity relationship, except that Aria was female.
“Care to test that statement, little lady?”
“How about we save it for when we can get some drinks,” Aria answered, waving him off. “Humiliating big strong men after wine makes the victory taste sweeter.”
Giving Salicar’s brawny bronze arms a playful squeeze, Aria flashed her teeth in a half-mocking, half challenging way. Salicar hefted the bag over his shoulder, and merely smiled.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Adagio said companionably. “Why are you here?”
Salicar shrugged. “Same as the others, I guess. I want to do my part. Can’t let the Romans push across the Iber or they’ll think they can come down here with impunity.”
“I thought Saguntum was north of the Iber,” Adagio pointed out.
Salicar waved dismissively. “It’s the same principle. Eventually they’ll push and they’ll push, and before you know it we’ll have legionaries planting eagles in the village square. This war has been coming from the beginning,” he said. “Hannibal’s been saying it for years, I heard. And I reckon he’s right. They say his father knew it back in his day, and prepared Hannibal to take the fight to the Romans first.”
Adagio considered this. In the few hundred years she and the others had been in this world, she’d long known of Carthage. An ancient and powerful maritime empire descended from a race called the Phoenicians who hailed from the far east. Their name inspired fear in all those whose business was conducted by sea, and any whose interests lay in trade of any sort. It was said that all coins in existence had passed through a Carthaginian’s hand at least once.
The Romans on the other hand had been a relatively minor power when they’d first heard of them, a small kingdom on the Italian peninsula. Comfortable on land, they’d spent their time quietly assimilating their neighbours, somewhere Adagio had not been before. But eventually their territory had grown to the point where theirs and Carthaginian interests had come into inevitable conflict, and so they’d gone to war. They were the only two major powers in the region (so far as Adagio knew), and to her surprise, Rome had won. She’d had a bet going with Aria for a collection of honeyed deer’s eyeballs that Carthage would sweep a quick victory. By the time the war ended over twenty years later, Adagio claimed that she’d misplaced the prize.
Whilst she was ignorant of most of the political machinations that went on behind the scenes, word spread far and wide of the general affects of the war, and it was clear that Rome was not to be underestimated. Carthage relied heavily upon using its money to fight, where as the Romans typically used swords. She did not relish the thought of having to be in the path of the dreaded Roman war machine.
Fervently she hoped that whatever they’d been roped into, it was a logistical role like Salicar’s.
Two days later
The former Greek city of Saguntum
The road to Saguntum was a relatively uneventful one, but came with a thoroughly sobering sight for Adagio. As they closed in on the defeated city, they came across the remnants of the eight month long siege that had taken place: ruined farms and desiccated buildings, the picked bones of animals scattered across the road and the neighbouring countryside, and the grisly signs of warning stretching the main road to the city. Strong stakes planted into the ground bore signs that they had previously been occupied by the bodies of the fallen, although whether Greek, Carthaginian, or otherwise it was impossible to say.
But none of this was what made Adagio think perhaps they had been brought into something they hadn’t bargained for. She’d seen worse. What gave her pause was the large numbers of men seemingly heading in the same direction, some heavily armed and marching in step, others on horseback, others looking like little more than bandits held back only by the guard of horsemen that were escorting their group. Still others looked like their own group: ordinary people with mingled expressions of fear and determination staring straight ahead to the distant trails of smoke still rising from the object of their trek.
“Still think we shouldn’t have tried to run for it?” Aria muttered to her as the walls of the city came into view.
Adagio bit her lip but made no response. The idea had been raised early in the trip by both Aria and Sonata, but Adagio had rejected it. Coerced as they were into whatever service awaited them, she had no doubt that their mounted escorts were anticipating runners, and as swift footed as she and her fellow sirens were, they were no match for horses on open terrain. A statement that even in her mind still made her stomach churn, given what might once have been...
“Cheer up,” Salicar said robustly. “We might get to see him.”
“Who?” Sonata asked, frowning at the great scorch marks and cracks in the walls surrounding the main entrance gate.
“Hannibal,” Salicar answered eagerly. “Don’t you want to know what he looks like?”
“I expect he looks as most men do,” Adagio said, repressing a sneer.
“At least there’ll be somewhere to get that drink,” Salicar quipped, eying Aria as they paused a moment whilst the guard by the gate conferred with the escort captain.
Aria narrowed her eyes as they emerged from the shadow of the second wall.
“I’m beginning to doubt that,” she muttered grimly.
Adagio couldn’t argue the point even if she’d wanted to. As long as they’d lived in the human world, she, Aria, and Sonata had been lucky or wise enough to stay away from battlefields in progress. They had a nasty tendency to suck you in even if you’re not part of it. Consequently, none of them had had a first-hand experience with the aftermath of a defeated city.
The three of them were no strangers to sadism. As efficient as they were during their hunts, personal feelings sometimes entered the predator-prey dynamic. Aria’s relatively new wolf pelt was a testament to that. But upon catching sight of the city’s interior, it had to be said that human beings seemed to have more of an imagination for making an example and inflicting retribution.
The overwhelming stench of blood polymerised with the equally bitter stink of burnt wood and stone. Smoke hung over the buildings like the resting wings of some enormous creature of ill fortune, casting its grim shadow across the city in the form of scorch marks, blood splatters, and the occasional corpse that had yet to be removed. But what attracted all of their eyes was the enormous pile of corpses already gathered in one side of what was once the city’s market. Whilst many of the bodies seemed to have been casualties of the battle, others appeared to have more uniform wounds indicative of execution. Many of these hung from posts or from wooden walkways, whilst along sets of stone steps stood like grisly ornaments the severed heads of men and women on spikes, their bloated, sagging faces stretched in warped screams that none living could hear.
“This stinks,” Sonata said morosely.
“Well done, Sonata,” Adagio murmured, with the faintest twinge of wryness. “You managed to combine an idiom with a statement of fact.”
Two things raised the company’s spirits as they proceeded into the city. First, the macabre decor of the front gate extended no further than the front gate; a display of victory for those travellers well intentioned towards the conquerors, and a firm warning to all others. Barely a street on, and the horrors of battle dimmed down to the off splatter on a doorframe, and the dark, dry trails running down the inclined streets.
Secondly, it transpired that there was a place to get a drink, and it was packed. Despite this, Salicar managed to spirit away several jars of wine whilst Sonata lifted a few drinking bowls, and they took their place on a nearby overhang, soon settling into pleasant conversation about how Adagio, Aria, and Sonata were magical immortals, and what exploits they’d engaged in over their already long lives.
“It be dust!” he exclaimed, sweeping his arm dismissively. “The Alexander? As in name-a-city-on-every-continent-after-myself Alexander?”
Aria nodded, grinning. Even Adagio couldn’t keep a smile from her lips.
“It’s not as extraordinary as you’re making it out to be,” Adagio assured him in suave, patrician tones. “We all had a go.”
“Except Sonata,” Aria added. Sonata smiled placidly in response, offering a small shrug as she downed the remnants of her bowl.
“You’re trying to convince me that you slept with Alexander of Macedon. Conqueror. Scourge of the Achaemenids. Creator of the largest empire ever formed.” He snorted. “You can’t expect me to take you seriously.”
Aria shrugged. “I slept with him three times.”
“Honestly,” Adagio said, smirking, “You’d have been harder pressed to find a woman he hadn’t slept with.”
“Or a man,” Sonata put in helpfully.
“Alright,” Salicar said, setting his bowl down and trying, despite his partial intoxication, to look serious. “I’ve got a question then.”
“How big was he?” Adagio asked in mock exasperation.
“How good was he?” Aria added in the same tone.
“Did he drink a lot?” Sonata guessed.
Salicar seemed to consider. “Yeah, all those things,” he said, not remotely abashed.
“He was about average,” Adagio summarised.
“He drank way too much,” Sonata put in.
“And it didn’t do him any favours under the sheets,” Aria concluded in a voice of flat certainty. “Although he was enthusiastic.”
They all let out a series of raucous laughter.
“Thought he was the gods’ gift to women, that one,” Adagio coughed, wiping her eyes. “I suppose he deserved to be, but he was really quite full of himself.”
“He treated relationships like he treated territory,” Aria intoned, smirking. “He could get into anywhere, and conquer it easy. But he wouldn’t stay there; there was always something finer just over the horizon.”
“Didn’t he go after Sonata after he was done with you?” Adagio asked innocently.
“Yeah,” Aria replied lightly. “But he came to me after he got bored with you.”
“Which raises another question,” Salicar said, turning to Sonata. “Why didn’t you sleep with him?”
Sonata smiled. “He wasn’t my type,” she answered succinctly.
They all laughed again, during which time Salicar pulled Aria into a one-armed hug that looked suspiciously like a headlock. As the laughter wound down yet again, Adagio noticed Sonata off to one side. For reasons known only to herself, she was leaning on one elbow and peering off the edge of the overhang, although all Adagio could see were people and soldiers walking through the streets. What could be catching her intertest so Adagio had no clue.
“Huh?” Sonata blurted in response to Adagio’s asking what she was looking at. “Oh, nothing I guess,” she said distractedly.
Mentally shrugging at Sonata’s vagueness, she turned back to the conversation, only to see the Captain approach from the opposite direction, his distinctive white-plumes of his helmet tapering behind him, and his deep purple body bulging with fresh tension. Urging his horse to a halt, his eyes found Adagio.
“The general wishes to see you,” he said without preamble. “Come with me.”
Adagio set down her bowl of wine. “Just me?” she asked.
“For now,” the Captain answered. “Come.”
Built on uneven ground, the city’s interior rose the further back one went, leading to the remnants of the city’s last stand. Here too bore scars of the recent battle, and seemed to be where most of the smoke was rising. Up a wide set of stairs leading to what looked like a temple, dark stains running down the yellowish stone, the Captain dismounted outside of a side-building, and gestured Adagio forward passed the single sentry standing at sudden attention by the entrance.
The building’s interior was a little cramped, but in a way that stressed the severity of the aesthetic, the practicality of the space used. She took some pleasure in knowing that wealthy Carthaginians in general preferred the grandiosity of wide spaces and open work environments. The decoration seemed untouched by the battle, but a little sparse in furnishings.
The General, or whom Adagio supposed was he, sat at a desk reading over what looked like a pile of missives. He looked up at the Captain’s entrance, and then his eyes flickered to Adagio. She couldn’t help but notice the mingled look of puzzlement and irritation he was directing at both of them.
“Captain,” he said warily in greeting. “The army is still recovering from its winter positions. You have news?”
The Captain raised a fist in salute. “Yes, my lord. I have brought a potential weapon to bear against Rome. In keeping with the imperative your lord brother has laid out for us during our recruiting.”
The General paused for a few moments, his eyes still occasionally moving to Adagio.
“You can’t be too confident in this idea of yours,” he said finally. “If you have to bribe me.”
Adagio had to fight to keep herself from sneering, as she had taken the meaning immediately. The Captain took a second or two longer to get it.
“Oh, no, my lord. She is one of the weapons I speak of.”
The General looked, if anything, even more sceptical, and was starting to look angry.
“In the interests of finding decisive advantages,” the Captain went on hastily, I heard tell of a group of magickers on the coast who used supernatural means to hunt large game. Beasts that the bravest men wouldn’t dare to track alone.”
The General hesitated, and then put down the missive he was still holding, and gestured at Adagio. “Turn around.”
Adagio did so, raising her arms slightly and curving her mouth into a slightly knowing smile. Despite this the General showed no sign that he was the least bit interested in her subtle insinuations.
That’s not good, Adagio thought. She had been hoping to at the very least be able to manipulate his soft male mind. Apparently this general was able to keep his mind firmly on task. At least this wasn’t Hannibal himself, if she was interpreting the Captain’s words correctly.
“You’ve wasted enough of my time with this,” the General said, gesturing dismissively.
The Captain stammered. “But, my lord, surely there’s—“
“Tell me, Captain,” the General interrupted. “What would you have me do with her?”
“I agree,” Adagio intoned, treating the Captain to a gimlet stare. “I’m simply a girl. I’m unable to understand why your fine officer, who seems a sensible fellow otherwise, took such rumours so seriously.”
The General gave his head a slight jerk, his eyes still glimmering with doubt between her and the Captain. “My brother’s orders were vague, I’ll grant.”
“So with that settled, I think I’ll just be going home, now,” Adagio said, straining a small amount of sycophantic deference to cover her relief. “Good day, my lord. Fair fortune with the war, I’ll just see myself out.”
The General raised supercilious eyebrows, but made neither movement or word to prevent her. The Captain on the other hand reached out and seized her forearm as she turned swiftly for the door.
“Impudent witch!” he snarled.
“Let go of me,” Adagio growled from between her teeth.
“You’ll tell the General the truth,” the Captain insisted, tugging her back towards the desk.
“Captain,” the General said, warningly.
“General, I will not be named a liar by this creature!” the Captain barked, clutching Adagio’s arm harder. With a sharp tug he yanked her towards him.
Filled with anger, feeling the skin tingle where he touched, Adagio felt her restraint slip, but it was too late to stop it. Reflexively, her free hand shot out, and took hold of the Captain’s wrist. A sickening crack followed by the Captain’s startled and pained yelp, and what Adagio had intended to be a moderate shove just to get him off her. Instead, the Captain went crashing backwards, collided with a chair and collapsed upside down in a heap against the wall.
Adagio’s mouth slipped open as she stared at her handiwork. It had all happened so fast. She spent so many years keeping her preternatural strength in check, and now in the most crucial moment...
Furtively, not daring to breath, she looked towards the General. Disconcertingly, he hadn’t reacted the way Adagio would have expected. He was still seated, sitting straighter and with a tenser expression than before, but not exactly panicked looking. Tense as she herself was, her senses automatically sharpened into hunter mode. In the confined space of the smallish office, she could faintly hear the deep beats of his heart. Her predator’s instinct detected the increased palpitations of a being either excited, angry, or afraid.
He looked at the Captain, supine on the floor, and then gave Adagio a penetrating look. She herself felt an immediate need to run, but fought it down; it wasn’t like she would escape the city should he raise the alarm. On cue the sentry from outside burst into the room, levelling his spear at Adagio in uncertainty as he detected no obvious threat in the room.
“Halt!” the General snapped, still looking at Adagio. He stood up. “Perhaps I do have a use for you,” he said slowly, his eyes becoming distant. “How’s your latin?”
Road to Tarraco, south of the Pyrenees
“I cannot believe this.”
“Shut up.”
“No, seriously, I’m thinking about it, and it’s actually happening, but I really can’t believe it.”
Adagio stopped, and turned to shoot Aria a gimlet stare. Sonata had long since managed to cope with these such confrontations by imagining amusing scenes going on around her, but this glare was so searing in its intensity, that all Sonata could imagine was wilting plants, reddening skies, and cute, furry animals bursting into flame.
“The Flutterpocalypse,” she muttered fearfully, although the other two didn’t hear.
“Tanit’s tits, will you just give it a rest!” Adagio snapped. “You’ve not stopped complaining about it since we left.”
Aria shot Sonata a meaningful look before returning Adagio’s burning stare.
“Can you blame me?” she demanded. “I mean, dust in life, why did you agree for us to do this? Why don’t we just slip away?”
Adagio lowered her gaze. “If it was just that captain, we probably could,” she said through gritted teeth. “But the general is from some powerful family. They basically rule here on Carthage’s behalf. I doubt we’d be able to stay anywhere Carthage has influence if we cross them.”
“Then why don’t we go to live with the Romans?” Sonata put in helpfully. “They couldn’t get us there.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Aria mumbled, biting a finger. “We’ve been on the run before, and that got boring real fast.”
“Exactly. And if this war between the two goes to Carthage, then we have nowhere to go,” Adagio said firmly. “So we do this job, give him what he wants, and ideally we then leave and go home.”
Aria scowled and folded her arms tightly. “Yeah, that ain’t happening. We’re well and truly stuck now that he thinks we’re useful. Speaking of which, what exactly are we supposed to be doing? Find the Roman army marching down the coast towards us?”
“Well the Carthaginians burned down a friend of Rome,” Adagio pointed out, the tension in her face easing out as her usual smooth confidence returned. “Go figure, now that the winter is done and the war season’s up again, the Romans are sending an army to get their own back. Our dear general would like to know which of Rome’s mighty champions has taken up the call.”
“I hate this already,” Aria said flatly. “He expects us to infiltrate Roman territory and find out who’s in charge?”
“I doubt we need to go that far,” Adagio said smoothly.
“Couldn’t we just ask someone we meet?” Sonata asked, fiddling with a few strands of her long blue hair.
“Oh, right,” Aria scoffed. “We just ask any old Roman we find?”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Adagio said in little more than a whisper.
Aria gaped, whilst Sonata looked rather pleased with herself. Then her smile dimmed, as puzzlement sank her brow into a frown.
“But, we’re not in Roman territory,” she said slowly. “We’re not even passed the northern mountains.”
“Indeed,” Adagio replied easily. “But you’re forgetting: there’s been a battle involving a Roman ally, and a Roman army is on the way.”
Aria’s scowl vanished as realisation hit her. “Ah,” she said. “So that’s why we’re not travelling along the actual road.”
She looked to her right, where the wide length of the simple stone road ran between the two stretches of divided forest. Sonata spoke to it.
“But why would they use the main road?” she asked. “Won’t that make them easy to see?”
“Once they get closer, I dare say they’ll go off road,” Adagio agreed. “But for the main leg of the journey, they probably don’t know the terrain, so they have to use roads.”
As it transpired, Adagio was quite correct. After two hours of walking, and much complaining on the part of Sonata for how hungry she was, they heard the sound of hooves in the distance.
“Now remember,” Adagio said in a hasty whisper. “Only speak Greek. Got it?”
“Um...” Sonata began, putting up a tentative finger.
“It doesn’t matter which dialect, Sonata,” Adagio said patiently, “I don’t want you to say anything anyway.”
Sonata smiled in relief, and then frowned. “Hey, wait a minute—“
She was interrupted from protesting more as Adagio smacked her with a handful of dry red soil. As she rubbed some into the struggling girl’s cheek, Aria tossed herself casually into the dirt too, coming up as though she’d been through a rough tumble.
“There,” Adagio said, grinning wickedly as she messed up Sonata’s hair. Aria obligingly let her own hair down and swung it into a half-mess. “Now remember, we’re local Greeks from north of Saguntum, and we’re scared of Carthaginians. Try to act pathetic and scared, and however else people are supposed to react to their countrymen being massacred.”
Sonata replied with a somewhat bone-crushing hug. Adagio looked down at herself as the other pulled away, noticing the red streaks down her own clothes.
“Thanks, Sonata,” Adagio said dryly as Sonata grinned innocently.
“They’re here!” Aria hissed urgently. “Quick!”
Emerging from the trees at an angle so as to appear that they had been using the road, they saw ahead of them three figures on horseback.
Perfect. Adagio thought.
As the riders came closer, Adagio put up a desperate hand and called to them, trying to put as much mixed relief and latent horror into her voice as possible.
The lead rider, a middle-aged man in the red and bronze colourings of a roman soldier urged his horse to a slow trot, and then to a halt. His maroon body colour added to the sense of gravity he exuded, indicating to Adagio that he was probably an officer. That wasn’t so good; she’d heard of the fierce loyalty of the Roman officer corps., since they’re political careers hinged so heavily upon it.
“You, girls,” the officer said. “Are you Roman? Speak.”
“We are Greeks, sir,” Adagio said breathlessly. “We live in these parts.”
The officer narrowed his eyes. “Your accent. ‘Tis not one I have heard.”
Adagio swallowed. The three riders were glaring at her, the younger one to the left looking... amused? Intrigued? It was hard to say. There was something hungry in his expression.
“Unsurprising,” Adagio said. “Our father was Greek, and took us and our mother to Iberia when we were young.”
“Ah,” the officer said, comprehending. His suspicion seemed to abate somewhat. “Greetings to you. I am Gneaus Lurius. I am the Roman representative to Massalia, and we are reconnoitring this passage for Rome, Perhaps you could answer a few questions I should like to put to you.”
“Could we do so somewhere more secluded?” Adagio asked, glancing over her shoulder.
The younger looking rider stifled a snort.
“It won’t take a moment,” the officer said, a slight stiffness coming to his voice.
Adagio tried to stop her mouth from tightening, and willed Aria and Sonata to remain calm. “If we could go just a little into the trees. There’ve been riders up and down the road in these parts. We think the Carthaginians send their Numidians to patrol.”
“If any such men come,” the officer said, “we shall defend you.”
“If I might say so, sir,” the younger rider began, urging his horse forward a step. “Perhaps these girls need a moment to rest. We could provide some assistance there, I think.”
The words were spoken quite respectfully, but he never took his eyes off of Adagio’s face. And suddenly, the meaning in the look he was giving her became plain to see, and Adagio’s ire spiked.
“We need no such help,” Adagio replied, her calm tone edged with contempt.
The young rider’s hungry look turned to one of indignant anger. “Who do you think you’re addressing, girl?”
“Silence, Lucanus,” the officer barked.
“You’re lucky there are men like us to keep you safe,” the rider went on.
“I said enough!”
The rider bit his tongue, although it looked hard.
“Now,” the officer continued. “Are you going to answer my questions? If it has to come to persuasion, then it will.”
As though in response to this, the other two riders made small adjustments, their weapons more visible.
Adagio kept his penetrating glare for a few moments, but much like trying to keep in a laugh, she felt the build of tension, and she blinked first. She allowed the look of barely suppressed panic to melt off her face.
“I suppose there’s no recourse,” she sighed, glancing back at Aria and Sonata.
“What the hell are you!?”
What a predictable question. Adagio was glad that animals couldn’t speak, or she’d probably get that question daily.
The young rider lay prone on his back, Adagio straddling him just so she could be sure she had his undivided attention. Being able to see the corpse of his commander might have proven distracting.
“You are going to tell me a few things... what was your name?” she asked casually, running a finger along his breastplate and landing it on his nose. “Lucanus, wasn’t it? Well, Luc, if you don’t answer, well...” She looked to his right.
“The arm or the leg?” Aria asked, seated next to the other man that she and Sonata had subdued in a kneeling position.
Adagio made a show of considering whilst keeping her own prisoner speared on her gaze. “Mmm... the arm I think. What do you think?”
The soldier she was sitting on looked frantically between her and his colleague. “I can’t give you military information,” he said through his teeth, making a brave effort to sound authoritative. “I won’t.”
Adagio raised her eyebrows, her eyes hard. “You know your commander over there?” she asked, pointing over her shoulder. “I liked him. I don’t like you. So if I’m okay with throwing him headfirst into the ground and snapping his neck like a tree branch, what do you think I’m willing to do to you? You can, and you will tell me what I want to know,” Adagio continued in a bored tone of voice. “Or else Aria is going to rip your friend’s arm from its socket. And when he’s out of limbs to pull off, I’ll start with yours, and leave a hangnail from your armpit all the way to your ankle.” She gave him a dark look mixed with just the right amount of cruel and delicious promise that brooked no alternative. “And it’d be such a shame to see this handsome face of yours contorted into one of twisted pain.”
The soldier hesitated for a long moment. Shrugging, Adagio gestured, and Aria obliged.
“No, no, wait!” he blurted as the other soldier began screaming in mounting agony.
Adagio gestured again, and Aria let the arm back down again, albeit with a distinct appearance of regret at not even getting to dislocate anything.
“Fine, what do you want to know?”
“Simple, really,” Adagio said equably. “First, the name of the commander.”
“Cornelius Scipio,” the soldier said quickly. “Publius Cornelius Scipio.”
“Just one commander?” Adagio asked. That didn’t jive with what the General had said to expect.
The soldier’s lips thinned. He breathed heavily for a few moments. “His brother too, another Scipio.”
“And how many make up their army?” Adagio inquired sweetly.
The soldier hesitated again.
“Sonata,” Adagio drawled impatiently. “Do the eye thing.”
“She doesn’t mean your cutesy crap,” Aria grumbled.
“Oh!” Sonata cried, snapping her fingers. “That eye thing!” She let out an excitable squeal and clapped her hands together eagerly. “I’ve never tried it human eyes before.”
Aria coughed.
“Okay, that one time. They were delicious though.”
“Last count was thirty thousand!” the soldier cried as Sonata’s fingers waved before his comrade’s eyes.
“Last count?” Adagio asked with mock delicacy.
“T-There might be more coming!” the other soldier stammered, trying to pull his head away as Sonata kept her slender digits an inch from his face. “Please, please don’t!”
“Sonata,” Adagio said nonchalantly.
“Aww,” Sonata grumbled.
“How many?”
“We don’t know!” Lucanus said quickly. “Just that there are reinforcements on their way.”
“Fine, whatever,” Adagio sniffed. “Last thing: what route are they taking?”
Lucanus scowled. “By sea, obviously. Passed the Massalians. The Greeks there are friends of Rome. Even the Carthaginians know that.”
“Just checking,” Adagio said, smiling. “Okay, Sonata. Do the thing.”
“You sure this time?” Sonata asked grumpily.
Adagio threw her a dark look. “Yes. Don’t give me that—“
Aria pointed, looking alarmed. “Hey, watch—!”
WHAM!
Adagio crashed heavily to the dirt, a spike of pain shooting through the side of her head. She cursed loudly, clutching at her throbbing skull as her sight warped and blinded her with a light that wasn’t there. When she felt her senses come back to her, the first thing she saw was the helmet on the ground, a bright red stain at one corner. She brought her hand down from her hair to find the palm smeared with blood.
Cursing with rage and pain she stood up, the world seeming to tilt and shift as the dizziness hit her. Nevertheless she watched, powerless to act as Lucanus mounted the closest horse, charged Aria and Sonata, and pulled his companion up behind him.
“Let them go,” she grunted as Aria made to dash after them. “You’ll never catch them whilst their on horseback.”
Aria scowled after them, but then smoothly transformed her fury into malicious glee. “Oh well. The look on your face almost makes it worth it. Maybe if you weren’t so busy making goo-goo eyes at him.”
“I really wanted that eye,” Sonata sulked, brushing herself off and folding her arms moodily.
“Both of you, just... just shut up,” Adagio breathed, putting a hand to her head. “No, shut it!”
Aria closed her mouth, but there was little Adagio could do about the smirk. The image of Lucanus’ terrified expression was emblazoned on the inside of Adagio’s mind, and if it took another lifetime, she swore that she’d see that exact same expression on his face again. And she would make sure that it was the very last expression that crossed his handsome and contemptible face.
Returning to Saguntum a day later, and reporting what she’d discovered to the General,
“Excellent,” the General said. “Perhaps my brother’s ideas will provide us with a windfall, then.”
Adagio had time to allow her injury to fester within her, and fester it did. Not just upon her wounded pride.
“You’re going to have to see a healer for this,” Salicar said ruefully, gingerly poking the darkened and bloodied patch of Adagio’s cranium through her thick hair. “I honestly don’t know how you got back here with an injury like this.”
“Pure stubbornness,” Aria snickered.
“You should be able to survive a similar injury, no problem then,” Adagio snarled, aiming a misjudged strike at Aria’s head.
“Seriously, you should at least get a poultice or something for it,” Salicar said. “At least you didn’t get a concussion from the hit or you’d probably already be dead.”
Fuming, angry at herself and at the soldier Lucanus, she made her way to the military headquarters in the rear of the city, where for the most part Iberian levied soldiers milled around with injuries for the Carthaginian healers to look at. Hoping she could just grab something that she could apply herself instead of letting some fatuous yokel doctor tell her about all the demons and bad spirits that were intruding on her daily life, she dawdled the way there, trying to take her mind off how much her head hurt.
Then she saw something that... gave her pause.
The triage deployment rested under a series of tarpaulins stretching around a large square, from whence many smaller paths and a larger thoroughfare ran. The resting, sick, and dying lay or sat under the shade of the cover, but in a far corner near to where one of the smaller pedestrian paths led off into the shadows of the drabber buildings, was a kneeling figure.
It was impossible to mistake the hair, the light blue skin, and the bright pink of the eyes even from this distance. As Adagio continued to walk further into the square, she began to see the short figures that Sonata seemed to be looking at. They were all completely still, and had no expression in their postures. In the shadows of the buildings in the apricot evening light, they appeared as shadowy premonitions, ill omens made real and cast into vague and insubstantial forms.
All that talk of witchcraft must have gotten to me, Adagio thought as she continued on. Looking away for a few moments, she was relieved to find that the figures had disappeared, and that Sonata was standing up, an odd expression on her face. Adagio paused momentarily under the shade of one of the triage areas as she watched Sonata leaving. If she hadn’t been talking to living shadows, then the question was: what was she really doing?
Brainlessly carefree as Sonata usually was, there were times when this cheerfulness was not present, and this sometimes happened when Sonata was acting... strangely. What Aria referred to as Sonata’s “episodes”.
Sirens at the Gate The former Greek city of Saguntum, Late Spring, 218BCE
The city was a hive of activity, excitable and chaotic. Adagio felt only contempt for it. She found she could feel little else at the moment.
Whilst she hadn’t expected to just be left to go back home after performing her “reconnaissance duty” for the General, she certainly hadn’t expected the response he’d given her. After two months of deliberation, instead of simply allowing her and the other two to remain in Iberia, or even in the city as scouts for the inevitable arrival of general Scipio and his army (thus perhaps allowing the three of them to escape their unjust and unwilling service), he insisted that they accompany him and his brother in their mad march on the Italian peninsula.
Adagio’s fury had scarcely to have been described. If not for her supreme self control and half-awareness of the baseness of these pathetic human beings, she’d have left his office decorated in a charming new colour she called ‘hint of disembowelment’.
On the plus side, fleeting and insignificant though it was, as a “mercenary” in the employ of the Carthaginian army, she’d been granted a wage. And she supposed grudgingly that it was a fair amount. Despite some little spending since she’d started collecting, the rough bag she carried still fairly jingled with silver as she walked towards the burned out business that she, Aria, Sonata, and Salicar were using as a temporary home.
Adagio supposed they were additionally lucky to get this building too. Most of the rest of the soldiers, mercenaries, drafted native Iberians, and other groups come to join the latest round of one tribe killing another slept around the city’s exterior in makeshift shelters of their own construction. For some reason no one wanted to either live with, or even kick the four of them out. Adagio allowed the corner of her mouth to twitch a little. Now that some of their non-human nature sat astride the ungainly rumour mule, she supposed it couldn’t hurt to take advantage of it from time to time.
As she entered through the partially burned and broken archway into the shop, she heard the definite commotion of activity in an adjacent room. She placed two fingers to the side of her head and massaged her temple as she stood before the wash-bowl to freshen herself.
“You two could at least put a belt on the door or something!” she called in the direction of a heavy wooden door.
The sounds of passion paused for a moment. Then she heard the distinctive sound of Aria’s stifled snickering, followed by a continuation of the previous activity. Adagio huffed and rolled her eyes, taking the bag of silver back up. She definitely wasn’t staying here to listen to that.
Her travel through the streets of Saguntum reinforced her earlier hypothesis about the people’s views of her. All but the most grizzled and weary soldier seemed to give her a wide berth, going out of their way to cling to the building fronts or drift casually to the other side of the street. Even the enterprising traders and merchants who had taken the opportunity to sell to the growing horde seemed to become quieter and more distracted when she came by. One man seized his child bodily as the youth made to run out from behind the stall, and clung to it as though he thought Adagio might decide that the fruit and grains of his stall couldn’t compare to the soft and juicy flesh of the boy.
The only one who didn’t flinch from her was too embroiled in ranting, raving, and threatening dismemberment, to spare her much attention until she stepped up to the stall and rapped her knuckles on the bare wood. The merchant looked around, and his eyes narrowed with recognition and loathing.
“Part of this little scheme, are you?” he addressed her. “What part were you supposed to play?”
“Sonata, what did you do?” Adagio asked patiently, ignoring the merchant.
Sonata, who looked as though she was preventing herself from tearing the man’s restraining hand off at the wrist with no little effort, pouted at Adagio as she tried to extricate her forearm from the man’s grip.
“I didn’t do anything!” she said indignantly. “This guy is making false accusations!”
Adagio raised her eyebrows in genuine surprise. “Four syllables.”
“The price of stealing from me is a broken arm!” the merchant growled. “I’d cut it off if I had a blade to hand.”
Sonata stopped struggling for a moment, her lip curling. “To hand,” she echoed, chuckling.
“What did she steal?” Adagio asked, giving the man a tired look.
The merchant seemed rather offended to be talked down to by someone who was a clear head shorter than he was, and considerably younger. Or so it appeared.
“She did not manage to steal it. I caught her and her child servants in the act!”
“That’s so not true!” Sonata barked, stomping her foot. Although no one else seemed to notice in the noise and bustle of the market, a hairline crack ruptured into the paving stone where Sonata’s foot landed.
Adagio cleared her throat meaningfully at Sonata, and then looked back at the merchant. “If she stole nothing, then let her go.”
The man sneered. “Ahh, yes, is very likely.”
“It is if you don’t want me to bring this to the General’s notice,” Adagio said, affecting a casual manner but with a biting undertone barely concealed beneath it.
The merchant glared at her, his narrowed eyes seeming to search her face.
“I just got back from a scouting mission for him,” Adagio went on. “I’d hate to disturb him whilst he’s taking our observations into account of the war effort.”
Several drawn out seconds went by. Then with a snort of contempt, the merchant threw Sonata’s arm away from him, and folded his arms, giving full vent to his dissatisfaction by giving the pair of them an impotent black look. Sonata vented her own feelings by returning the look, only with a rude gesture and a stuck-out tongue for good measure. Adagio let the man’s ire slide off her as she fished in the pouch at her waist and casually tossed a coin in his direction.
“For your trouble,” she said languidly, not looking back at him. “Well done restraining yourself,” she added to Sonata as both started towards the cloth merchant further up the road. “Even though they know we’re not like them, it doesn’t do for them to know what we can do.”
“I know,” Sonata said, fishing a hand in the money pouch and looking over the coins. “I don’t get money,” she added in a sceptical tone. “I mean, what’s it good for if it only has one use?”
“Who can tell what goes through these people’s minds,” Adagio said, giving the plaza a sweeping look. “No different than the ponies with their gems and gold coins. Perhaps we could have conquered the humans instead of the ponies if our pendants worked here.” She gave Sonata a sideways look. “Incidentally, what’s this excitement about you and child servants?”
Sonata exhaled loudly. “He was making stuff up. I was just getting the kids some food, and he straight up out of nowhere accuses us of stealing. I was going to pay!”
Adagio raised an eyebrow, curious. “You were giving the kids food? What kids?”
“Just some of the orphans around the city,” Sonata replied, shrugging. “I see them everywhere. Haven’t you?”
Adagio supposed that she had. Some alone, most in groups, a lot of children of one age or another haunted the shadowy parts of the city, orphans of the city’s original citizenry who’d either been killed or executed, or fled without their children. Apparently having enough empathy not to kill the children outright, the Carthaginian occupiers left them instead to starve slowly to death, ostracising the children as the spawn of their foes. Or at least a lot of them did. If Sonata’s story was to be believed, the merchant may be one such person.
Adagio frowned as her stomach twisted in that particular way it did sometimes when her indifference was challenged.
“Well, don’t go getting attached to any of them,” she said swiftly. “We’re not staying here, remember.”
Sonata said nothing to it, remaining quiet as Adagio finished her purchases.
“We’re not going back to the shop, by the way,” Adagio said flatly. “Aria’s busy.”
Sonata rubbed her chin. “Salicar?”
Adagio jerked her head up in a half-nod.
“So what should we do instead?”
Adagio gave the bag of silver a squeeze so all of the coins clinked. “I’m sure we can think of something.”
“You guys are ass holes,” Aria grumped, eyeing the colourful clothes Adagio was working on. The complimentary blue of Sonata’s new dress and the off-purple of Adagio’s had been expensive, although not nearly as expensive as true purple. Not that actual purple cloth had been available so far from Phoenicia.
“You don’t like wearing dresses,” Sonata said innocently.
Aria simply scowled and glared, no longer interested in plucking the chicken Salicar had bought. Adagio was content to allow the simmering resentment to continue, but Sonata evidently couldn’t contain herself.
“You’re so easy to tease!” Sonata cooed, wrapping the large wolf fur she’d been hiding around herself. With a spin she bumped into Aria, winking cheekily at her. “How do I look?”
“Like a wolf I used to know,” Aria said, smirking. She yanked the pelt away from her, sending Sonata laughing into another spin. “Now, what was it I did to him?”
“Probably what you did to Salicar,” Sonata said in a sing-song voice. Her eyes flashed down to Aria’s face as a wicked smile came to her lips. “Or something close.”
Aria wrapped the fur around herself. “We all have needs,” she said lightly, pinching a section of the fur’s interior. “Glad I had time to put the salt on. When did you have this done?”
“Over a month back,” Adagio said, plucking a thread with her teeth. “Did you really not notice it was gone?”
“It needed drying out,” Aria said, shrugging.
“Do you like it?” Sonata asked.
“You even kept the face,” Aria half chuckled, cupping the long snout in her hands. “Now I can forever stare into his face and know the sweet, coppery taste of victory.”
“That’s kinda creepy, Aria,” Sonata said pleasantly, leaning away from her.
“Whatever. I can be as creepy as I want,” Aria said, pulling the fur around her as though it was a heroic cape. “We’re witches, and all that crap.”
“Something we need to be careful not to give too much away about,” Adagio warned. “The sooner we find a place to skip out on this nonsense and get back to our lives, the better.”
Aria let her arms fall to her sides, the fur going limp around her shoulders. As Adagio continued sewing, Aria seemed to be building up her gumption to say something. With a scowl of self-disgust, she forced herself to speak.
“I’ve been thinking about that recently,” she said a little stiffly.
“About what?” Sonata asked.
Aria flicked her eyes to Adagio for a split second. “You know. About being in the war and stuff.”
Adagio paused in her hemming as what Aria had said hit her. Her brow furrowing, she looked up, all of her attention on Aria’s colouring face.
“What about us being in the war?” she asked levelly.
Aria bit her lip. “Well... I was just thinking maybe,” she began in a rush. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for us to... you know, change pace.”
Adagio’s brows rose high up into her fringe, her eyes turning glacial. She kept Aria fixed on her stare for a few moments, trying to think just what could have—
“Salicar,” she breathed, as though the name were some ancient and abominable utterance. “He’s got you hooked on this patriotism fix of his.”
“Ooooh,” Sonata cooed long and loud, her pink eyes going wide.
Aria gritted her teeth, snarling. “I knew you two would take it like this,” she growled. “It’s just my opinion.”
“Aria and Salicar, in the house of Tanit,” Sonata sang, shaking her hips to the rhythm. “He says he’ll give it any way she wants it.”
Adagio shook her head, returning to her needlework as Sonata dodged out of the way of Aria’s retaliatory swipe. “Whatever,” she sighed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Aria said tightly. “It’s not like that. It’s just sex.” She glared ferociously at Adagio. “Are you of all people going to lecture me on keeping things physical?”
“Not at all,” Adagio replied smoothly. “But you’ve gone off with soldiers before, and I’ve never heard you spout any of this change-of-pace babble before.”
Aria shrugged uncomfortably, drawing the fur back around her. “But don’t you ever feel... I don’t know.” She made an impatient noise. “Don’t you ever feel bored?”
Adagio kept threading the hem, but internally the words gave her pause. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sonata’s smile freeze and slowly fall from her face. Apparently taking Sonata’s reaction as encouragement, Aria went on.
“I mean come on. We were going to take over Equestria once. What do we do now? We hunt, survive, move, and then do it all over again. For hundreds of years.”
“It’s not our fault,” Sonata said quietly, sounding unsure. “Our pendants don’t—“
“Maybe we don’t need our pendants,” Aria interjected, a renewed urgency in her voice.
“We can’t do it without our pendants,” Adagio intoned decisively. “All of these civilisations are male-dominated. The powerful ones at any rate.”
Aria’s lip twisted. “Maybe. Perhaps we couldn’t be the leaders. But we could have power. If we were important in the war, then maybe we’d get something at least behind the scenes. It doesn’t even have to be official, just something... I don’t know.”
Adagio on the other hand, did. Aria’s words stirred an idea in her head. Whilst it was true that none of them could safely be a visible leader of any of the known powers, perhaps it was possible instead to be a shadowy influence. Behind the scenes, working the powers that be out of the public eye. And Carthage was powerful. Rome was powerful too, sure, but there was no guarantee that they were going to win a war with Carthage. Perhaps it would do to wait and see, and then decide which side to choose.
Adagio mentally shook her head. “It’s a bad idea,” she stated. “We’ve stayed clear of human wars before for good reason. The sooner we can get out of this one the better.”
Aria compressed her lips. “Fine. Excuse me for wanting more than an eternity of playing it safe.”
With that she flounced out of the room, her wolf fur swirling behind her, and leaving a stodgy silence in her wake. The air was thick with uncertainty and resentful feeling, at least on Adagio’s part. Whilst she couldn’t speak for Sonata, the blue girl too seemed to be mulling Aria’s words.
Ridiculous, Adagio thought, internally shaking her head.
Unfortunately, a small, persistent part of her couldn’t help but consider the thought. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t at one time dreamed of overcoming the additional adversity of their stultified powers, and rise to prominence over this world in spite of what she was sure Starswirl had thought a foolproof method of keeping them out of trouble. This drive had died hard, lingering for decades into fruitless efforts to make their pendants work, use their superhuman strength and speed to rise through the ranks of human influence, or otherwise scheme their way into prestige and power. Each attempt had fallen flat, usually sooner than later, and many of them had come back to bite them. The varying degrees of misogyny found in most of the prominent cultures, their lack of presence in any established nobility, and their perceived age combined to render them powerless in every instance. Most powerful men and women didn’t want to listen to teenage girls telling them what to do, and even manipulations of the more vulgar sort were so tenuous and short-lived that they’d quickly given them up.
It sickened Adagio to her soul to think how much she’d internalised and justified it all in her own mind.
Setting down the dress she was making, unable to focus on it any longer, she contemplated for a second whether she should find a vessel to throw up in, or just walk it off. With no vessels to hand, she opted for the latter, leaving Sonata alone in the room.
Aria’s foolishness blew Adagio into a fearsome rage. Like a tiny flame let loose on a pile of dry leaves, it rose up, blown by contrary winds into a furore. The more she thought about it the angrier she became, and it wasn’t until she reached the city outskirts that she began to think of it in any way that might have been reasonable.
Hunger gnawed at her, and not simply the prosaic sort. Her ire drove her blood lust as naturally as thirst drove one to drink. She glanced around, her instincts taking subconscious note of the dimming light, the limited number of humans going about their meaningless tasks. At a quick pace she made for the closest line of trees set back from the walls. Her senses branched out, her hearing sharpening, her olfactory picking up minute scents upon the evening breeze. It was so easy to lose herself in the rhythm of the hunt, to let her senses overtake her mind. As though in reward for this surrender, her ears pricked up at a small sound.
A deer, prim and graceful, stepping carefully through the trees, its ears flicking in search of danger. Danger came, light feet treading quickly around fallen leaves and creaking tree roots. Before the deer’s large black eyes could track her, she’d decimated the distance between them and was upon it before its legs could make the crucial turn in the opposite direction. Whilst she moved she undid the sash at her waist, her garment falling from her as she shrugged the fabric from her shoulders. She and the deer crashed to the floor before the clothes even hit the ground.
The deer’s death was as quick as its fall. As usually, cruelty did not inform the killing method, and the deer’s blank stare into everything arrested its expression even as Adagio laid its entrails bare. Unfortunately, now that Adagio’s bloodlust was sated, her conscious mind began to reinsert itself, and questions began in the back of her brain.
She sat back on her haunches, looking at the dead deer, lying in the stinking remains of its gore.
An eternity of playing it safe.
Adagio’s lip curled. It was still ridiculous. What was wrong with playing it safe? Did Aria think being recklessly stupid was the better course? Because they’d all lived long enough to know the grisly fates of some of those whom had thought like that. On occasion they’d even caused said fates when in a bad mood.
Adagio fingered a large, lumpy, blood filled chunk of liver, suddenly no longer quite so hungry as she first imagined she was.
Her ears pricked. Steps behind her. She looked quickly around, breath caught in her throat as she tensed to spring out of sight, only to find Sonata standing there.
“Hungry?” Adagio asked. “Dig in. I’m finished.”
Sonata didn’t move towards the deer, but picked up Adagio’s clothes from the floor, folding them over her arm. Her brow puckered, she looked deep in thought.
“You ran off so quickly,” she started quietly. “Did Aria get to you?”
Adagio scowled. “What do you mean, ‘get to me’?”
“Don’t you think she’s right?” Sonata asked, scratching her head for an excuse to look away. “Maybe not about going to war, or whatever...”
Adagio let out a deep, heartfelt sigh, her eyes still fixed on the deer’s black, empty stare.
“I don’t know,” Sonata continued when Adagio said nothing. “I don’t really have a problem with what we’ve been doing, but—“
“Don’t you?” Adagio asked, her voice hard. “Whatever Aria’s reasons are, I don’t think it’s too far from the truth that we’re just content with the status quo.”
“Haven’t we needed to be?” Sonata said quietly. “I mean, every time we do anything remotely weird, stuff like this happens.” She gestured back towards the city. “We’ve done it a long time now.”
Adagio considered that. Standing up, feeling the mild breeze on her bare chest, she thought about the centuries they’d spent trapped in this world. What Sonata said was true, she recalled even recent instances of them shying away from discovery, the idea becoming a natural part of their daily lives; simultaneously trying to stem the danger of discovery whilst pushing the boundary of it. It just about characterised their last few decades of life.
“We didn’t even realise that we’ve been playing it safe, did we?” Adagio asked, smiling a little ruefully. “Just trying to survive. Damn, now I’m starting to understand what Aria meant. It is boring.”
Sonata shrugged and smiled with equal awareness of the absurdity of their situation. “Like normal people,” she said, putting her head to one side.
“But still. War? Getting involved in human politics?”
“It’s not like we have a choice, is it?” Sonata suggested. “We’re in it, whatever now.”
Adagio gave her a probing look. “Do you agree with Aria? It doesn’t matter if you do, you can tell me.”
Sonata pursed her lips. “I don’t think she’s right. Like, ever. But this once, I kind of think maybe she made a few good points.”
“That’s the problem,” Adagio exhaled. “So do I.”
An eternity of playing it safe.
Sonata left Adagio to her thoughts, disappearing into the forest. The mood had been so heavy and sombre that she hadn’t even taken the time to try and steal a bit of Adagio’s kill; semi-acceptable behaviour amongst their kind, so long as one can lift the kill without engaging the owner directly. Consequently Adagio returned when it was a great deal darker, and re-entered the city through its blasted gate. Passing through a gap in the somewhat fixed heavy wooden gates, Adagio expected the square beyond to be empty, and at first it appeared to be so.
Looking up, she saw the shapes of the night-time guards marching along the walls. She’d avoided them easily enough, but as she made her way casually into the city, she felt something was off. Pausing half-way out of the wall’s enormous shadow like some half-formed apparition of mist and darkness, she considered her surroundings. In the almost perfect dark of the night, she permitted herself to rely temporarily on her sight, and tapped into the small part of the infra-red spectrum she had access to. For a moment, nothing, just cold spots that registered to her as inky blues and greens amongst deepest black. Then she caught sight of something brighter, a glow of red cut in half by a straight line of black. Once she saw it, it vanished, retreating into the blackness.
Her eyes flashed an arc, and she saw many other little glows of red and orange, all obscured behind the edges of buildings. Then her ears picked up.
“Witch,” a terse voice rumbled. “I would have words.”
The Captain strode forward, descending a set of steps Adagio had not thought to look up to. He came unhurriedly, his eyes fixed upon her face, his own expression a stony representation of disapproval. His arm, Adagio couldn’t help but notice, was bandaged and splinted where she’d crushed his ulna and radius. Using her unique sight, she saw that despite his impassive expression, his cheeks radiated a stronger heat than should have been the case for someone walking down some stairs.
“I wasn’t aware my whereabouts were your concern,” Adagio said airily. “I answer directly to the general, you know.”
“I’m not interested in whatever sacrilegious devilry you and your heathen cohorts get up to,” he growled. “I just want to make one thing very clear to you.”
Adagio didn’t reply, but just looked up at him, her eyes cold and unconcerned. Genuinely, she was not afraid of him. He was a broad and muscular man, but her natural strength would be enough to overpower him, even if he tried to pull a weapon. The other three, four... no, six men standing by around the square however; they were more of a problem.
“You have humiliated me,” he breathed, stepping close. “I will not forgive this, and one day soon, you will be made to suffer for it.”
Adagio frowned. She glanced again at the men standing all around, hidden in their dark corners. She’d been anticipating retribution now whilst she was at a disadvantage. Why would he choose to tell her revenge was coming, and not do it when he had the chance? What was more, why were they all hiding instead of simply confronting her if that had been their objective?
Perhaps the moon above shone just enough light for him to see the question in her face, for he grimaced, an action somewhat like a smile. If boulders could smile, that is.
“Why not now?” he asked. “It shall come at my choosing, not before. I wish you to know it so that you may ponder when I shall strike, and be eaten up with the fear of the inevitable.”
With that, he turned casually, and walked away into the square. “Pleasant travels in the dream realm,” he said, echoing off the buildings all around.
Adagio allowed a scowl to form on her face as her lip pulled back in a leer.
“A time of your choosing,” she chortled scathingly, amused disdain creeping across her face. “You mean when the general isn’t expecting it. It’s obviously not me, a little girl you’re afraid of, of course. That’s why you got your little pankration team together here so they can hold me down while you do...” she let out a small chuckle, venomous as a cobra. “Well, whatever it is you do to fifteen year-olds. Far-be-it for me to question your kinks.”
The Captain had paused at her words, and now half turned, taking in a sharp breath. After a few moments however, he turned back, and continued up the street. Adagio saw the warm spots wink out as the other men departed as well.
To her disgust, Adagio found herself holding her breath. Letting it out in a controlled but shaky breath, she allowed herself time to calm down.
Despite what she knew to be the correct assertion that his stay of action was because of blowback upon himself from the General’s wrath, that didn’t mean that he was powerless, nor alone. As a captain, he had some influence, and she’d probably bolstered it if anything by proving herself useful to the General, since it had been the Captain who’d brought her to him. He could make trouble if he wanted to, and it irritated her that it was so.
An eternity of playing it safe.
Grinding her teeth, she made her way quickly back to the burned out shop.
Slightly to her surprise, she came back to find Aria still sitting up whilst Salicar slept. Adagio looked around.
“Where’s Sonata?” she asked.
Aria shrugged, her brow furrowing. “Dunno. Don’t know where either of you were.”
“So why are you still up?” Adagio narrowed her eyes. “Not like you to not take advantage of alone time.”
Aria’s mouth thinned. “Yeah, well, I might just have taken a few advantages,” she began darkly, “if not for a certain captain and his cronies sneaking around.”
Adagio’s insides squirmed, though she showed no visible sign of it. She allowed a curious frown to tug her elegant eyebrows out of alignment.
“Did he confront you?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yeah,” Aria said slowly, giving Adagio a knowing sort of look. “You too?”
Adagio gave a curt nod. “What did he say?”
“Not much,” Aria shrugged, putting her hands behind her head. “Asked where you were, and if Sonata was around. I don’t know what his little crowd of buddies gathered behind him was supposed to be there for though. Salicar thought maybe he was coming to arrest you.”
Adagio considered this information. If she understood rightly, the Captain’s entourage hadn’t been hiding when they came to see Aria, so why had they been hiding just now?
“When was this?” Adagio asked.
“Hours ago. A little after you and Sonata left actually.”
A tension filtered into the room as both of them recalled. Adagio gave her head a sharp turn as though shooing away a fly.
“Speaking of whom,” she said in an affectation of boredom. “Where is the idiot?”
“Right here!”
Sonata swanned in, swinging her arms in a wholly unnecessary way, her face bright with merriment and her clothes grubby.
“Did you really just answer to where is the idiot?” Aria asked monotonously.
Sonata shrugged, her face still split in a smile.
“What the hell have you got to look so happy about?” Aria demanded, clearly irritated by Sonata’s overt cheeriness.
Instead of answering the question, Sonata turned to Adagio, leaning slightly so that her finely curved hips and shapely shoulders presented an attitude of supplication that nicely harmonised with the I-want-something look on her heart-shaped face.
Adagio, still caught up in her speculations regarding the captain, didn’t notice any of this until Sonata’s face was uncomfortably close to her own, and even then she opened her mouth to ask a question rather than attend to whatever Sonata was bursting to ask.
