 After Hercules helped him forge a swell knife, Iolaus finds out his village sweetheart Syreene just married another. On the rebound he falls for Xena; Hercules  distrust at first sight is waved by his mother Almene. Xena tells Iolaus she was preparing with some men to chase war lord Petrakis, who terrorizes her native Arcadian fields, to get him to come help; meanwhile she pushes her actual lover Theodorus to go kill Hercules, but he falls to his death in the duel, saying he regrets failing Xena. As Alcmene predicted, Iolaus won t believe his friend over his lover, so Hercules refuses to help the countrymen shed the warrior princess s oppression, till he meets Petrakis, actually an old farmer whose son died another victim of Xena s seduction...