Finding the Road (1/2)

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Title:  Finding the Road
Author: Athena
Archive: Seventh Dimension - Yes please!  Others please
ask.
Characters: Methos, Kronos, Caspian, Silas

Feedback to: athena@bigtitch.freeserve.co.uk

Disclaimer:  They're not mine, I'm just playing with them.
I'll put them back when I've finished - honest!

Acknowledgements:  Big thanks to Rachel and Sonia, fellow
Betas of the Apocalypse, for the super beta service and
encouragment.

Notes: This was my submission to the HLDU4 story competition -
the requirement was to supply a missing scene to one of the
episodes.  My scene is missing from CAH/Rev6:8


Finding the Road
================

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake


The snow came just after midday.  Methos watched the first flakes
disappear on the already snowy ground and found the energy to
smile in relief.  This is what he had hoped for.  He looked up at
the clouds and found them grey and laden. It seemed that the
slave-girl had been right: in three days the mountain passes
would be blocked.  Now he just had to make sure he was on the
other side before this one closed.  He reckoned he was still two
or three hours away from the head of the pass; it was just a
matter of pushing through.  Methos turned his head to look back
the way he had come.  He could see nothing in the swirling
flakes, nor hear anything in the rising wind, but he strained to
see horsemen, to hear hoofbeats, because he knew they were there
behind him, following him, hunting him: his brothers.

His horse stumbled and he pulled his attention back to the
present.  He dismounted and went to pat its head.  "You're
tired," he said.  "So am I.  But not much further now and then we
can both rest.  When we are safe."  He took the reins in one hand
and started to walk.

It was hard work.  The snow blurred road and landscape into a
shifting, white plain.  It deceived him so that he was
continually stumbling deeper into little gullies or banging his
feet and shins against hidden rocks.  The wind was vicious; it
wrapped his cloak tight around him and then flung it open so that
the snow could get in.  The blizzard meant that he walked in a
white twilight of confusing swirls and patterns of flakes.  He
peered into it trying to make out the real rocks, the real
features from the phantoms his tired brain was piecing together
out of eddies of snow.  Every so often the wind would drop for a
moment and it would be possible to faintly see the outline of the
mountains on either side so that he could keep track of his
direction.  He walked on, stumbling wearily, his tired horse
following him.

For Methos was tired.  His need for sleep lay like a weight at
the back of his head.  His body ached and he struggled to breathe
in the cold, thin atmosphere.  It had seemed a simple plan
originally.  The mountain passes would be closed in three days,
the mountains were two days travel from the camp, so if he could
get at least one day ahead of his brothers he could get over the
mountains and leave them on the other side.  That would give him
the winter to lose himself in the lands beyond.  It was a good
plan.  He had packed his provisions, stolen his brothers' horses
and left in the middle of the night.  The next two days had been
spent riding hard, driving himself and his horse on, constantly
listening for hoofbeats behind him.  Now he only had to make it
through the mountains.  He endured a blast of wind that seemed to
come straight at him.  He leaned into it, forcing his way forward
and stumbled to his knees when it abruptly ceased.

As he came up to one knee he saw a figure standing in front of
him.  He raised his eyes to a familiar face.  Kronos?  He jumped
to his feet and reached for his sword, but the figure was gone.
Methos bent down and caught his breath.  "I'm seeing things," he
muttered.  "Great!"  He reached for his mercifully solid horse
and started walking again, stamping his feet to get some feeling
back into them.

The snow kept on falling, blinding and freezing him.  He could no
longer find the road; he just had to trust that going up meant
that he was going in the right direction.  He stumbled over
another concealed rock and stepped heavily to one side to save
himself.  The impact jarred painfully through cold-numbed bone
and muscle and he groaned.

"It's not going very well," remarked Kronos.

Methos raised weary eyes and looked at his brother as he stood
beside him.  Kronos was standing with his arms folded and an
amused grin on his face.  The wind did not ruffle his hair and
the snow blew straight through him.  Methos ignored him and
walked on.

"Why are you doing this?"  Kronos' voice asked beside him.
Methos said nothing and just kept on walking, drawing the hood of
his cloak closer around his face.  "You hate the cold.  Why are
you putting yourself through this?"  Kronos persisted.  "Why are
you leaving us?"

Methos did not mean to answer, but he thought back to when he had
finally made the decision to leave The Horsemen and he found
himself saying, "It's because I've had enough."

#########

How long the word had been waiting to be found he did not know,
but it had arrived like a thunderclap in his mind four days
earlier.  It had been just another raid on a camp on the wide
plain beside the mountains.  He had buried his sword to the hilt
in a peasant's chest.  When the man had raised a hand to pull at
Methos' skull mask, he had put his left hand to the sword and
twisted it within the man's body.  His victim had screamed and
gone limp but not before a wave of blood had flowed down the
sword and over Methos' hands.  Methos had pulled the sword out
and, ignoring the man who now sprawled at his feet had stared at
the warm, sticky liquid that covered his hands.

'Enough!'

The word echoed in his brain.  He had had enough of this killing.
The idea shocked him, and yet there was an inevitability about
it, a rightness.

How long he stood there, staring at his scarlet hands, while the
screams and killing of the raid went on, he did not know.  An
arrow, thudding into the ground beside his foot, broke his
concentration.  A contingent of new horsemen had arrived.  They
circled the camp on their small steppe horses, firing arrows into
the camp as they did so.

Suddenly the rules of the game had changed.  It was no longer a
raid on a mostly unarmed camp, but a battle with an enemy who
could wound them at a distance that left the four horsemen
helpless.

'Back!'  Methos and Kronos yelled the word together.  The
brothers headed for their horses.  Silas went down, clutching his
thigh and Methos pulled him up, supporting him until they had
scrambled onto their mounts.  Kronos led them in a charge through
the yelling, circling enemy and they broke free, with Kronos
catching an arrow in his arm as they did so.  Their superb horses
quickly outpaced the smaller, steppe horses of their attackers
and they made it back to their camp safely.

The camp soon resembled a disturbed anthill; with slaves
scurrying around shocked and scared by the outcome of the raid.
Methos was less surprised; there had been defeats for The
Horsemen before, but not in a few centuries.  He supervised the
removal of the arrow from Silas' thigh and then went to attend to
Kronos.

The Immortal was in his tent with Caspian.

"This is a new development," Methos said, holding up the
bloodstained arrow.  "I think we should move somewhere less
prickly."

Caspian snorted in disgust.  "We should not run from these
archers," he said, holding up the other arrow.  "These toys
cannot kill us.  We should kill them all.  Slowly."  He savoured
the last word, tasting the imagined agony of his victims.  Methos
could almost see the blood on his lips.

"The arrows can't kill us, but they can kill the horses," Methos
said patiently.  "We're the Four *Horsemen*, Caspian.  Somehow I
don't think the Four Walkers are going to have quite the same
impact!  We need to move somewhere else."

"I want us to winter here on the plains," Kronos said, inspecting
the healing wound in his arm.  Then he looked up at Methos.
"Find us a way to deal with these archers, brother.  I rely on
you to come up with a plan to defeat them."  His pale eyes bored
into Methos', daring his brother to argue.

But Methos had long ago given up even the thought of rebellion
against Kronos.  He nodded and walked from the tent.  He had
always been aware of the ties that bound The Horsemen together,
but now they seemed suffocatingly tight around him.

That night, as they sat around the campfire discussing the day's
disastrous raid, Kronos had turned to him and asked, "Well
brother?  Have you come up with a plan to succeed against these
archers?"

Methos had shrugged modestly.  "We could stampede their horse
herds through their camps, that could cause a bit of damage.
Maybe set fire to the grass where it's dry enough.  Set fire to a
few tents at night?"  He imagined the screams of the people
trapped inside the blazing tents and shivered inside, but kept a
jovial exterior.  "We *could* train Caspian to shoot arrows back
at them, but I don't know if one winter is going to be long
enough to do that!'

Kronos and Silas laughed at that.  Caspian glowered at Methos
from his side of the fire and Kronos' smile broadened at the
tension between his brothers.  "That's it then," he said.  "We'll
stay here, now that our clever brother has provided us with the
means to win.  Thank you, Methos," he added, knowing that this
was against Methos' wishes.

Methos merely smiled back, accepting the complement, while he
seethed inwardly.  After a thousand years of trying to work out
what his brother was planning, he still failed again and again.
Suggest Plan A, and Kronos would want to do Plan B.  Suggest Plan
B, hoping that Kronos would pick Plan A, and Kronos would pick
Plan B, or maybe not.  Methos had given up.  Whatever the
reasoning that went on in that twisted mind of his, the only sure
outcome was that Kronos would do what he wanted to do.  Of course
if that choice tortured Methos, then it was a bonus.  So Methos
had learned to hide his true feelings, he made sure that Kronos
never had anything to use against him.  It had become almost
instinctive, so now he smiled blandly at his brother and hid what
he was feeling inside.

##########

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