Timeline: between Sin Trade II and Past Imperfect
Borias appears courtesy of Ren Pics. (Nah, who am I kidding?)
Interview with a Borias
by Sofia Gradin
It was a rainy day in the fall. I had finally caught the man I’d been wanting for an interview for so long; Borias.He arrived by horse that afternoon, accompanied by no one. We were to meet at the hut in which the editorial office of the crummy magazine I like to call my job is accommodated, at two hourglasses after noon. The fact that he was, quite frankly, unbelievably late ceased to upset me the minute I laid eyes on him. He was so tall, so intriguingly odd looking and had this aura of potency around him (in the non-physiological sense of the word. *Ahem*).
The first I heard of him was his horse coming to a stop outside the hut and, a few seconds later, him talking calmingly to it in a language that was clearly not Greek. In a moment of utter nervousness at the sound of him, my hands made a violent spastic twitch which made me spill out the pieces of scroll I had been tearing apart to keep my hand busy while waiting for the man to arrive, all over the floor.
"F*cking Tartarus!" I whispered to myself and dived down to the floor to clean up the mess.
‘T was then that he entered. Me being hidden underneath my desk picking up pieces of scroll, the hut appeared to him to be empty.
"…Hallo?" he said with his dark voice, taking a step further in to the centre of the hut.
Before he had even finished the word, my body made another wise decision – this time to suddenly rise up and show itself. Of course I banged my head in my desk on the way up.
He looked at me like he wasn’t sure what to make of me. Then he apologized for being late and said something about a long ride and some people who apparently wanted him dead. I said it was ok, and then I started trying to explain why the warm welcome he got consisted in his interviewer hiding underneath her desk. I didn’t really know what to tell him, but I think it came out as something like:
"The scroll! *forced laugh*… All over the place! And all the picking up!… Here and there and there!… Yeah, yes…*forced laugh*…M-hm…"
Here he was now anyhow, sitting in front of me on a leather chair with his black, pigtail-y hair falling down on his wide shoulders. His big, tattooed arms were folded across his leather-armoured chest and his dark face wore an inquiring look as if saying: "When do we start?". I had given him a stoup of water, but he hadn’t touched it yet.
"So…" I said, unrolling my scroll of questions and dipping my quill in some ink.
"When did you first come to Greece?"
His face lit up with a slightly amused smile.
"Actually this is my first time. I come from a country in the East and I travel there mostly." His voice was both hard and soft at the same time. He spoke quite slowly, carefully choosing his words as he went.
"Oh!" I said, striking the first 60% of my questions on the scroll. "How fascinating!... So tell me about your childhood. Where were you born?"
"I was born in Azov. My father died in war when I was very young so my mother and her sisters raised me. I never had any brothers or sister since my mother was rather young when she had me and didn’t remarry after my father’s death. We all lived in a big house; me, my mother and her two younger sisters Karsha and Nesse. They never married because my grandmother and grandfather were killed by a warlord when they were still children. And after me and my mother moved in with them they never felt the need to."
"Seems like a violent place you come from" I said, alluding to everyone in his family being killed off.
"Yes."
He smiled a tormented smile.
"There is much war there. We were all raised to fight in battle for ourselves and our country. I could use a sword before I could walk!"
He chuckled silently and let his hands fall down on his lap.
"Ancient disputes between different peoples are still held alive by crazy war-lovers. Unfortunately pretty much everyone there is a crazy war-lover since they were all raised with such beliefs. So was I, I suppose. I know war can get you a great many things, if you’re good at it. But it’s not the best solution at many times. Oh, far from it. But sometimes you don’t have a choice."
He avoided eye-contact while he spoke this and still didn’t look up when he was done.
"So your mother and her sisters, were they warriors too?" I asked him after a moment’s silence.
"No. They weren’t allowed to be because they were women. They didn’t really want to either. They probably would have been if they had wanted it, but they didn’t."
His face lit up as he spoke.
"They weren’t like other women. They did what they wanted to do, having no husbands to boss them around. They took care of things for themselves and taught me to take care of myself. They never bossed me around either. Of course they could fight for themselves if they needed to, but they weren’t warriors, no."
"How come you are a warrior then?"
"Well, there is always more influence on a child than his parents. But they knew a lot about war and they taught me too. They weren’t pacifists, they just didn’t feel drawn to it in the same way as I did."
He paused to take a sip of water.
"I was treated very differently by the society because I was a boy, that is quite clear. People are really stupid when it comes to things like that. They think children should be brought up according to their gender rather than their personality. Like your gender determines who you’re going to be. Girls are taught to do housework and boys are taught to make war and build houses. It’s stupid. It was never like that in my home. Karsha and Nesse and mother were never women to me, they were just people. They never treated me like I was different from them. But I was definitely taught things about war by my surrounding, excluding my closest family, that would not have been taught to a girl. That’s a shame. I have come to find that women can make excellent warriors, as long as they don’t get too carried away…"
He scratched the back of his head and took another drink.
"And here you are today conquering the known world with one" I said, shooting him an easy look. He put down his stoup and smiled.
"Well…" he said and shrugged.
I sat silent for a while, trying to decide whether to ask him about Xena or not. He was probably pretty sick of having to talk about her every time he was supposed to be in the limelight. But I couldn’t resist.
"About her… How did you meet Xena?" I said discreetly.
He took a deep breath. Was it a sigh? I hope not.
"I would say ‘she met me’ rather than ‘I met her’. I was married at the time. And I had a son." He paused for a while without looking at me and slowly picked up the stoup in his hand.
"My army wasn’t so big back then. We were doing ok with the money we made, but we weren’t as successful as we wished. We were kind of in a low. Then one day I heard of some little village nearby that was to have some kind of ritual where they’d carry a bunch of valuable stuff all the way from to village to a nearby river and back again. Crazy bastards! I think it was for the burial of their queen, and they had to dip their offerings in the holy river before they could be given to her. The river was a few miles away from the village. It was probably going to be very well guarded, but I though ‘let’s go for it’. So I took my army and went there. We rode through some wastelands for about an hourglass or so. It was very hot. We hadn’t met a single person on our whole journey, but as we got close to the village we found a body lying on the ground. It was completely cleared of valuables and it had blood coming out of its nose even though it didn’t look like it had been beat. We carried on and found another body a little further on, in the exact same condition as the last one. As we continued and got even closer, a rider came storming towards us out of nowhere. A few seconds later it turned out she was a woman, and she had a big sack on the saddle with her that was going ‘ca-clunch-ca-clunch…’. As she passed us in very high speed she kind of laughed scornfully. I figured that whoever she was I should probably go after her if I don’t want to miss out on a lot of money. So I took off on my horse and my army followed me. It took a long while before we even got close to her, but at last we managed to drive her into a pass where we could surround her. The atmosphere was really tense as we just froze and looked at each other for a while. And then she glanced at a part of the mountain that stuck out and said: ‘I would have jumped if my legs weren’t broken’."
He started laughing.
"I couldn’t let this amazing warrior go, so I offered her to join my army."
"And she accepted?" I asked.
"No. She just laughed and told me to go to Tartarus. So I offered her to come stay in our camp for the night and have our healers tend to her, and for some reason she accepted. Maybe it was the huge sword I was pointing at her, I don’t know."
He smiled.
"Anyway, we kind of took it from there. She did get involved with my army eventually, only more as a leader than as a fighter. But don’t ask me how that happened… She had some plans about going east and one day I decided to come with her."
"So you left your wife and child for her?"
His forehead wrinkled up.
"Well, it’s nothing that I am proud of… Maybe I wouldn’t do it if I could live my life all over again. But Natasha was… safe. And Xena was… well… exciting. She had this aura of excitement around her. She still does. She appealed to the conqueror in me and really fired me up. Natasha was always more of a sheep farming girl and that wasn’t really the life I was looking for. If it wasn’t for our son it would have been easier. I guess I thought I was ready to settle down when I married Natasha, but when I met Xena I realized I was not."
"So you just said ‘later’ and took off?"
"It was not just like I left her overnight. We kind of had it coming. Xena got me to go on crusades more often, so we were moving around more and more - something that wasn’t very good for my child. Or Natasha, for that matter. Our relationship was really decaying day by day. I was spending more time with Xena and Natasha was upset because we didn’t have a proper house to live in and things like that. And one day she sort of… caught us… and it all fell apart. Well, me and Natasha fell apart, but to me it was more about starting something new. But like I said, I probably would have stayed if I had that choice again."
"You mentioned earlier that war isn’t always the perfect solution. Why are you a warlord if you don’t believe in war?"
"War is very powerful. It can make one lose everything – one’s family, one’s possessions, one’s mind… But it can also make one rich."
He smiled a wretched little smile.
"Many things can be accomplished by war that can not be accomplished in any other way. War can give you the power of the world. Farming sheep can’t do that."
He took a sip of water.
"Maybe I was foolish to get into that business, but war was something I was really good at. Like I said, I was never taught to despise war – only to treat it with caution."
"Enough talking about the past now. What are your plans for the future?"
"Well I just found out that I’m going to be a father again…" he said timidly.
"Really? Congratulations!"
He smiled and mumbled something that sounded like "Thanks."
"I’m hoping to take better care of this one, though…"
He drank some more water.
"So, is it a boy or a girl?" I asked excitedly, not being able to think of a better question.
"I’ve heard rumours it’s a boy, but I don’t know. The woman who told me that was a little…" He made a nasty face and put his index finger to his right temple.
"It doesn’t really matter, as long as it gets to grow up to be happy."
"What will you teach him or her about war?" I asked, hoping not to make him irritated.
"Whatever I will have to. I’m not going to raise my child to be a warrior. I’m not going to raise it not to be a warrior either. I’m going to raise it to be whatever it wants to be."
"Which is quite difficult when you’re the child of two warlords…" I said, moving my foot a few inches nearer to my mouth. "Isn’t there a risk that the child will see a little too much of war for its own good?"
He started looking annoyed.
"There is a risk. We’re discussing that."
I was afraid I had now crossed the line and decided to change the subject. But before I had the time to speak he added:
"I have some people who are good at taking care of babies. We found a little girl once. She’s doing fine with them."
He drank up the last of what was left in his stoup and sat up straighter in the chair.
"So what do you think of Greece so far?"
"It’s a nice place. Not so unlike home as I had thought. Well, this place is more urban, of course. They have good trading here, so it’s easy to get hold of foreign goods. Like special kinds of wine and such. It’s good."
He paused to think.
"It feels good to be back from the east, even if I’ve never been to this particular country before. It’s really exciting to travel, but when you spend that much time in a place that is so different from what you’re used to you start longing to get back to your old life." He paused again. "They eat living mice over there you know…"
His mouth gave a little twitch.
My nose wrinkled up.
"So did you try it? The mice, I mean."
"Of course! It was disgusting!" He started laughing.
"Do you ever get any time off when you’re travelling?" I asked. "Do you ever get to see more than just your tent?"
"Well, we hardly ever get a whole day, just maybe a night here and there. It’s a lot of hard work being a warlord. There are plans to be made, enemies to be fought, people to be deceived… It’s not your average 9 to 5 job. It’s hard just getting time to get your hair done sometimes!"
An awkward silence broke out.
He laughed nervously and fidgeted with one of his pigtails.
I smiled politely and started thinking maybe it was time to end this interview right about now.
"So, um… thanks for coming! I’m really honoured!" I said and put my quill and scroll down.
"Thank you for having me." he said and smiled a warm smile.
A few minutes later he left on his horse. It had gotten dark and the hut felt really empty now that I was alone again. Nothing was left of him but his empty stoup and the writings on my scroll. The writings I had made while talking to the Man.
Goodness me.