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Andy stares into the fire and kicks at the dirt and the pine needles on the ground in front of her.
“Alright. Alright,” she says. “How about something different?”
“What do you have in mind, boss?” calls Joe.
“I want to talk about Alexander the Great. Sort of.”
Andy does not need to look at her to feel Quynh’s smirk. Quynh squeezes her hand and Andy grins. Oh this is going to be fun.
It began, as it always would, with a dream. Flashes of skin and blood and faces and landscapes.
Dark skin. Blood soaking into bright sands. A spear twirling in the air.
Andy and Quynh woke with a start, jerk up. Their chests heaved. Their eyes met. Quynh’s hand groped for Andromache’s and Andromache took it, gentled it, rubbed her thumb soothingly.
“Another one,” she gasped as the phantom tang of copper lingered on her tongue.
“Another one,” Quynh replied.
They joined up with Alexander of Macedon’s forces. Every army needed scouts and every traveller needed food and shelter. It was an arrangement that would get them closer to the new one than they ever could on their own.
Andy remembers little of the years they spent with Alexander of Macedon’s army. She remembers Quynh’s lips cracked with thirst, the deadness in her eyes as they crossed the harsh sands of the north African desert and then turned around and crossed them again.
And she remembers a spear landing right between her shoulder blades, a glance back as she toppled off her horse. The man’s face was obscured by cloth, but the crinkles around his eyes meant that he was grinning. She’d seen that grin. She knew those eyes.
“You,” she called as blood soaked into the sand, her blood, this time. The man paused, silhouetted against the cloudless sky, but then turned and swung back onto his own horse and ululated as he and his fellows rode off into the night.
The bandits only took one of their horses. This was Andromache’s definition of a small mercy for many, many years to come.
Andromache and Quynh limped into Memphis several days after the main column of Alexander’s army had arrived. They found themselves a room with a bed and then ordered up cups of something strong and fermented in the tavern below.
All Andromache wanted was to feel delightfully intoxicated and then take the love of her life upstairs to their room and make her scream with pleasure before curling around her and falling asleep on something far more comfortable than the hard, sandy ground. She did not think this was too much to ask.
It was, apparently, too much to ask.
In the din of the crowded room packed with Alexander’s soldiers and locals alike, several men jumped to their feet. A table flipped. Words flew, barbed and angry. Hands curled into fists.
Quynh rolled her eyes. How many taverns had they been in with scenes just like this one?
Andromache settled back to enjoy this evening’s wine-soaked entertainment, when she noticed one of the local men, boys really, posturing and shit-talking and raring to fight.
Quynh had seen him, too.
Andromache sighed. Here we go. Wordlessly, she poured the rest of Quynh’s drink into her own cup. Quynh placed a quick kiss on her cheek and then slipped away. Andromache stood.
“You absolute bastard,” Andromache cried, affecting the aggrieved tone only a woman cheated upon can muster, as she moved across the crowded tavern with ruthlessness. Men and women both jumped out of her way. She sent the cup flying and the liquid splashed all over her target. “You good for nothing, lying scum.”
Andromahce walked straight into the middle of the posturing men, landed the first blow herself, a smack across the cheek, and then bunched the front of his tunic in her fist. “We’re leaving.”
She heard the spluttering of the man. She heard the laughter of his fellows. She heard the scrape of knives coming out of sheaths and scabbards and was glad all of that was at their back.
Once they are out the door the man finally gathered his wits, and ripped himself free of her and yelled, “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m here to help.”
He clearly didn’t believe her, with his fists curled and the fingers of his right hand itching towards his belt where a dagger rested. Andromache took a step forward. He took a step back. She shifted a little to the right and he shifted a little to the left.
Got him.
“I don’t need a woman’s help.”
“Oh really? So that fight in there that you started -- it was going to be a fair fight?”
The man laughed, absolutely laughed at that. And took two more steps backwards.
“They’re invaders, those hoplites. They don’t deserve fair.”
“Just like those scouts in the desert, hmm? Who you ambushed from behind?”
Andromache saw the man’s eyes flare with recognition.
“They should better watch their backs, then.”
And then he collapsed forward, howling in pain, hands clutching at the soft, sensitive bits between his legs.
“Works every time,” said Quynh with a smirk.
“Filthy daughters of whores,” he spat into the dirt as Quynh pressed a knee into his back and bound his hands together. “Both of you.”
“Well, I’ve been called worse,” Andromache quipped.
“Wait. Wait. Hold on,” blurts Nile, waving her hands frantically. “This is Lykon? The one you,” Nile’s finger points towards Quynh, “called a glowing ray of sunshine?”
“Not everyone can make as stellar a first impression as you,” mutters Booker, just loud enough for the rest of them to hear. Andy can see he’s got hearts in his eyes, but Nile just punches him in the shoulder for this attempt at flirting.
“You wanna know Booker’s first words to me?” calls Joe from across the fire. He doesn’t wait for a response before barging ahead. “I thought hell was supposed to be a republic.”
“That,” Quynh declares, “makes much less sense than calling us daughters of whores.”
“In Paradise Lost,” Booker begins with sigh, “the devils have a sort of parliamentary council. And when you get to a certain point of hypothermia you start to feel excruciatingly warm… Look, it made sense, at the time.”
“You’re an incorrigible nerd, you know that right?” teases Nile.
“And then,” Nicky says, “he vomited all over my shoes because he ate too much stew after too long with nothing in his stomach.”
“And how many times did the two of you kill each other before you decided fucking was the much more fulfilling pastime?” says Andy, with an arched eyebrow in their direction.
Nicky and Joe glance at each other. They know. They’ve always known. Andy’s never gotten a straight answer out of either of them.
“Many times,” says Nicky.
“So immortality has a bad track record with first impressions,” says Nile, pulling all their tangents back together. She gestures with a hand and Andy nods at her and continues.
“Who are you?” he asked again, from where he sat on the floor of their rented room.
“I think you know the answer to that question,” said Quynh as she pulled her tunic over her head and flopped down onto their bed.
Andromache saw his eyes follow her love’s movements. “What’s your name?” she asked, as she began stropping the blade she kept at her hip.
He spat at her feet. “Filthy invader.”
Quynh surged off the bed, and brought her face inches away from his. “Alexander of Macedon means nothing to us. He has served his purpose of bringing us to you.”
“To me?”
Quynh smirked. She dragged a finger down the side of his face. “Just like in the dreams, isn’t he, Andromache?”
“Just the same.” Andromache noted the man’s stricken expression, part anger, part arousal. She scooted her stool closer and continued. “You know why we are here.”
“I must confess that I do not.” The man’s voice was strained as he glanced between the two women.
Andromache’s knife flashed across the man’s throat.
Blood spurted down onto his tunic, across the planks of the floor. They would have to clean up before leaving.
The silent moments of wait stretched out and out.
And then his head straightened out onto his neck and he gasped back to life.
“What’s your name?” Andromache asked again.
“You killed me.”
“And yet you did not stay dead,” said Quynh.
“And that is why we are here,” Andromache said, slicing across her palm, down to the bone, with the knife. She watched the man watch as her muscles and ligaments stretched for each other, as the skin knit closed without any sign anything had ever happened. “You are one of us.”
“You have come to kidnap me then? My family will not pay an invader’s ransom.”
Quynh sighed loudly as she retreated to the bed. “The bindings are so you will stay long enough to listen, something you have not yet achieved.”
“Untie me,” the man said, with a proud jut of his chin. Andromache conceded that he was stubborn and brave, though perhaps foolishly so. “I will tell you my name if you do.”
Andromache glanced at Quynh, who quirked an eyebrow. To anyone else it would be meaningless. To Andromache, it contained whole paragraphs of information.
She twirled the knife through her fingers as she approached the man. She circled him and cut the bindings in a swift, deft downstroke.
“They call me Lykon,” the man said, as he jumped through the window opening, fell to the ground, and took to the streets at a run.
“And that’s how we met Lykon,” says Andy with a shrug.
“There has to be more to it than that,” protests Nile.
Quynh grins. “You are leaving out the best part, my beloved.”
“The part where we gained Lykon’s trust by systematically killing off the force Alexander left behind to maintain his dominion by pretending to be whores? Or the part where you befriended Lykon’s mother and got yourself betrothed to him?”
“Oh I’d forgotten we were officially betrothed before he ran away with us.”
Andy looks around and sees four open mouths gaping at them.
“What?” she bristles. The others shake their heads and murmur excuses at her.
And then Quynh leans into her side, lays her head upon her shoulder.
“He could be so fucking stubborn,” she whispers, only for Andy’s ear. Andy nods and Quynh adds, “I miss him.”
“Me too,” she replies. “Me too.”