Last of the Amazons (18 page)

20

THE WILES OF
THE GREEKS

T
he two hundred broke into view and reined across from Antiope. They were young, buck warrioresses my own age, the same who had harassed the Greek camp. I recognized Glauke Grey Eyes, Tecmessa Thistle, Xanthe Blonde, and my own sister Chryssa. All were armed and painted. What was their object? Perhaps they had hoped to discover their queen in flight, in which case they could either drive her out of the country or overhaul and murder her. Instead they found her facing them, one against two hundred. Antiope called for a champion to stand forth and state the two hundred's errand. No one budged. Awe of her held them paralyzed. “Follow when I get clear,” Antiope commanded me.

She spurred straight into the mob's teeth. Not one stood to check her. The front parted, permitting her passage, then wheeled and fanned in her train, blocking any reverse toward the steppe but initiating no action to attack or arrest. I found myself at the rear of this formation. Antiope made for the city at the canter. What did she intend? To call out Eleuthera and face her down? To try the people and make them choose? Did she seek some worthy death, knowing herself foredoomed? And her pursuers; what was their aim, now that their prey had faced them down? We will never know. For halfway to the Mound City Theseus arrived at the gallop, backed by two score of his own and a number of mercenaries who chanced to be in the city on other business. A skirmish ensued in which Theseus' company, now shielding Antiope, broke from the two hundred and fled back to the ships. Warrioresses had been wounded. Blood had been shed.

The plunging sun cast the scene into further disorder. I found myself racing flat-out beside my sister and Glauke Grey Eyes, pursuing the party of Theseus and Antiope. I was among the two hundred. Chaos reigned, and the sense of events catapulting out of control. What did I hope for? To stand with Antiope and meet my death? To overhaul Damon and flee with Theseus by sea? I glanced to Chryssa and Glauke. They knew nothing of my turmoil, only that I had delivered Eleuthera's message as ordered. In their eyes I was one of them. Yet should I try to bolt, to join Damon or Antiope, they would slay me as a traitor, as they should. My heart hammered; I could not catch my wind or command my reason.

Where the northern earthworks of the Mound City extend into the plain, the Greeks turned the corner and got out of sight. Darkness had fallen. Suddenly from the west appeared riders of tal Kyrte. They were hundreds; Eleuthera rode at their head. Antiope and the Greeks were fleeing for the strand; the host of our squadrons galloped after. At the Lion's Gate, Eleuthera commanded the two hundred to break to the west, cut off the track that Theseus must take to the sea. I kept with this corps. I could not tell if the brigade pursuing Antiope intending her slaughter or to preserve her from abduction. This I know: I never saw cavalry in mass move so fast. Three miles remained for the Greeks to cross. They would never outrun this pack.

The two hundred galloped in double column across the tidal flats between the Aryan road and the Barrows of the Champions. The companies ploughed through the slough at the gallop, sending cranes and plovers wheeling into the dusk as they swept toward the promontory of Cynoscephalus, Dog's Head Point, upon which the Athenian ships were beached. Cresting the inner causeway, the column could see ahead to the strand.

The ships were gone.

The two hundred slewed up in confusion. We could see Eleuthera's division, which had taken the shore road to trap the Greeks should they seek to reach Dog's Head by that route; they thundered into view out of the gloom. Their mass too reined in in consternation.

Theseus had moved his ships earlier, undetected. His riders compassing Antiope had not fled to Dog's Head, where the vessels had been beached as recently as this postnoon, but to another launching site called the Flat Iron, two miles east, which both pursuing divisions had overrun in their haste. The corps of Amazonia wheeled back now across the marsh, spurring all-out toward this second strand. Night had fallen. One glimpsed ships' lanterns in the distance, rising and falling—that motion produced only by vessels already on the sea.

A score of horse squadrons ascended from the bottomland and pounded onto the strand at Flat Iron. Eleuthera had the lead. Across a mile of front, mounts were reined-in, lathered and steaming. From where I found myself, at the center right, I could make out four hulls in the channel, already beyond bowshot, yet close enough to hear the steersmen's cadence, even above the hammering of one's own heart and the heaving and stamping of the horses, as the vessels rowed seaward by surges and the deck crews stepped the masts and ran up the yards. Behind me the last of the riders emerged from the lagoon, their horses' coats steaming from the run and the slathering of salt sluicing from their muzzles and barrels. Along the front the corps brought itself to line. In the last light one could see Theseus' sails drop and, drawing against their brails and sheets, fill before the wind.

Hope is a stubborn goddess. Could our lady yet be with us? Had Damon jumped ship to stay with me? I knew his vessel and bench by heart. I peered to sea and found the mark. Alas, there was no gap in the oar bank, but all shafts pulled in strength and unison.

At once all animation fled my heart. Fatigue crashed on me like a wall of stone. Had the world ended? Was I in hell? My bones seemed to come unstrung; teeth chattered; my limbs quaked as if palsied. I could reckon nothing but that I was wet and cold and hungry. My horse was drenched. I must rub him down, I heard my voice instruct myself, and get something into his belly. I must look to the care of his feet.

The squadrons were keening now in agitation. Something had caught their eye down the strand. I looked. Two horses, the latter riderless, transited before the front at the hard canter, coming from where the Greeks had launched, hastening toward the rise on which our commanders now marshaled. The rider was a maiden named Sais, Eleuthera's favored courier. She spurred past my position now, sitting her own mount and leading Antiope's Sneak Biscuits. Our queen's saddle was empty, her
gorytus
quiver gone.

21

AMAZONS AND ALLIES

Selene's testament continues:

W
here the foothills of the Taurian Caucasus descend to the Amazon Sea lies that strait known as the Cimmerian Bosporus. Upon the Asian shore two and a quarter years later, the hundred and twenty-nine clans of tal Kyrte assembled for the march on Athens. This was the mightiest massing of horse warriors in history and the only occasion on which all four nations of tal Kyrte, the Themiscyra, Lycasteia, Chadisia, and Titaneia had united beneath common commanders.

The corps of Amazonia was reinforced by male allies of the Rhipaean Caucasians, Chalybes, Issedonians, Cicones, Aorsi (the “Whites,” or “Westerners”) Arian, Sindic, and Alanic Scyths, as well as our own male auxiliaries, the
kabar,
with additional brigades of the Strymonian Thracians, including the fierce Saii, Tralliai, and Androphagi, “Man-Eaters,” who had attacked Theseus' ships. This host was further augmented by detachments of cavalry of the Lykians, Phrygians, Mysians, Cappadocians, and Dardanians; mounted infantry of Mariandyne and Hyperplakian Thebes; plus two tribes of the Mossunoikoi, called Tower People; horse warriors of the Massa Getai and Thyssa Getai, lacking of their own only the Ptyregonai, the Eucherai, and the Tetyai (for reasons of tribal feud); with further battalions arriving unsummoned from the Maeotians, Gagarians, Taurians, the Royal and Copper River Scyths, and the clans of the Armenian Caucasus known as the Black Cloaks, who spoke a language so savage it could be comprehended by none save their immediate neighbors, the Tisserandic Alans, and who were mounted not on horses but wild asses of such swiftness that when they spooked from the cavalcade, nothing and no one could run them down, but riders must be left on the plain to secure them when they returned of their own, which they invariably did, once they had shaken the gallop out.

The entire force of tal Kyrte were mounted archers; of the allies, the steppe nations and those of the Troad were heavy cavalry; the mountain clans archers and light infantry, slingers and javelineers. The Royal and Copper River Scyths were both horsemen and foot bowmen, firing the heel-braced bow, which can propel a warhead a third of a mile. Tal Kyrte's mounted corps totaled thirteen thousand primary horse, supported by thrice that in the cavalcade, the novices and elders herding the strings. In command rode Hippolyta and Eleuthera sharing equally, the former now sixty-three, the latter twenty-four. The post of peace queen had been abolished; both served as war queens. As Eleuthera had foretold, the Scyths of the Iron Mountains, despite our massacre of their women and children at the Parched Hills, proved not only tal Kyrte's most ardent allies but the most extravagant donors of foot and horse, providing four thousand of the former and twenty-five hundred of the latter. Their commander was Borges himself, seconded by his son, Prince Maues, at seventeen holder of three prizes of valor, and his nephew Panasagoras, son of Sagillus, Overlord of all Thrace, who did not ride in person but sent three waggonloads of gold, his personal seer and physician, and a suit of armor for the first fighter to plant his standard atop the Athenian acropolis. Borges had been brought over to our cause by a private embassy of Hippolyta (upon which she had donated a thousand horses to ring the barrow of his brother Arsaces) and by the prince's own hatred of her who had shamed him, Antiope, and his greed to exact vengeance upon her. The grand total of the forces, excluding the general crowd of sutlers, whores, slave dealers, camp wives and children, stood between ninety-five and a hundred and five thousand. The citizen population of the Athenian foe, not counting women, children, and slaves, could not exceed thirty thousand. Estimates for the size of the army which might face our brigades, once the Athenians had applied to the Twelve States and other allies across northern Greece, Crete, and the Peloponnese, were between fifty and sixty thousand.

This would be, if such proved true, the greatest war in history.

The date of the army's departure was the Moon of the Iron Frost, the dead of winter, that the straits might be crossed south to north on the ice. The central corps of tal Kyrte had summered at Themiscyra, on the southern shore of the Amazon Sea, recruiting allies from among the nations of Anatolia and the Troad, Armenia, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, Mysia, Lykia, and Phrygia. The army would cross to Europe via the straits, transit the Wild Lands to the Mound City, there to link with the allies of Maeotia and the Scythian plains; the host would provision in the European Chersonese at the Hellespont, then proceed by shore and inland routes across Thrace and Macedonia, turning south and entering Thessaly just as the land greened up with spring. Thessaly was horse country, rich in pasture. The force would lay over a month or more, permitting its stock to fatten and recover from the march, while assembling further allies. From there it would strike Athens.

Victory, tal Kyrte believed, was foreordained. What individual warriors seeking glory feared was not that the foe would resist, but that he would turn rabbit before our army had even struck his frontier, abandoning the country entire, to recolonize on some site across the sea. That the Athenians would stand up to us seemed a hope beyond imagining. In fact, the main of Eleuthera's diplomacy was directed toward this end only: to estrange from our cause as many of Athens' allies as possible, incenting them to combine and stand. She sent no spies with bribes or offers of alliance. She wanted a fight. To tal Kyrte, one Greek was the same as another. They were all city-dwelling, sea-ranging pirates who spread the contagion of
netome,
evil luck. Time to gut them all and be done with it.

As to the princes through whose lands tal Kyrte and her allies must pass, these were approached in the following manner. First were dispatched embassies of six and fewer, under the protection of the herald's staff. These missions were composed of nobles and warrioresses of distinction, when possible daughters and sisters of the army's commanders. Celia, Antiope's mother, headed a number of such deputations, as did Eleuthera's sisters Clonie and Paraleia; as well, Stratonike, Skyleia, Alcippe, Glauke, Tecmessa, Arge, Rhodippe, Adrasteia, Enyo, Deino, and Pantariste led others. I myself served. Male allies were included in these legations, often prominently, to mitigate the shock of our corps' apparition upon the wild chieftains, to whom all females were chattel. We brought gifts; magnificent war mounts and weapons of iron, bridles and helmets of gold, charms and amulets in silver and electrum, copper tripods and stocks of amber and cobalt and bronze.

Succeeding the embassies came light cavalry. These were picked companies of the tallest and best-looking warrioresses, mounted upon the most superlative stock. They were unique in that they included both older knights, past fifty, who had served their seasons as dams and matriarchs and wished now to return to action, as well as maidens as young as ten and eleven, chosen from among the brightest and noblest-born, to expose them early to great events and fire their hearts with aspirations for preeminence.

Last came armored corps, heavy infantry, men, to stake out pasturage, if it could be found, silage if not, and water. These established camps for the main body, cut firewood or acquired it by goodwill or purchase. Often Eleuthera and Hippolyta accompanied these brigades in person, for their presence accorded honor to the princes upon whom they called.

It is no mean skill, treating with such wild barons as held the provinces through which our multitude must pass. Their gods must be reverenced; one must know their conventions and not offer unwitting offense. Days were spent rehearsing such missions. But what nothing could prepare one for was the sensation ignited among these tribesmen's women by the apparition of our corps.

The sequence never varied. The dames of the villages gaped first, huddling along the roadsides, sullen and mute. This state was succeeded by disbelief, as if they could not credit the sight of free women, armed and autonomous; then came a species of anger, at our liberty or their slavery, one could not say. Next they wept. At last they broke into cheers, these chattelwomen, and, bursting from their places, thronged about the column, clutching at our trousered legs, stretching up to touch our hands, burying their faces into the flanks of our ponies, as if to confirm by this the reality of our existence, while tears flushed their cheeks made ruddy by the frost. The lads and buck warriors tracked us too in awe. At each tribe hundreds recruited themselves to our adventure, so lifted out of themselves as to offer all they owned, bronze and silver, arms and horses and oxen. Among the Thracian Dii, one lass stood out. This was Dosteia, whom the corps came to call “Stuff.” Thrice in one departure this girl was rousted from the waggons of our commissariat, each time returning to stow away again. At her last ejection she flung herself before Skyleia, captain of the column, with a flint knife at her own throat, threatening to slay herself there in the road if we would not take her. “What will your father say?” Skyleia confronted the maid through an interpreter.

“Let him salute this!” cried the child, lifting her skirts. The corps howled.

Skyleia indicated the baggage train. “Pack yourself among the stuff!” The girl did not wait for the translation. “Stuff!” she cried. From then on, that's what we called her.

The army breasted the Strymon in cold so bitter that dagger blades came undone from their hafts; touch iron and your flesh peeled away in sheaves. Still, recruits poured in. My pony fell in step beside Eleuthera one gale-scoured noon. Why, I shouted into the blizzard's teeth, did these tribesmen permit us passage? We claimed no alliance with them; the treasures we bore them were but baubles to these lords, who held lands in leagues and herds by tens of thousands. They had suffered no ills at Athens's hands; most had never ventured within two months' ride of the place and never would have, except for us. They should have fortified the passes against us and blockaded us in force on the plains. But they didn't. They opened their highways and storehouses. They showered us with provisions and permitted their noblest youths to march off with us to war. Why?

“Because,” Eleuthera answered, “they fear Theseus more than they fear us.”

At once I knew she was right. These rude princes understood in their guts that tomorrow lay not with them and the free life of the plains, but with the city and its walls and ships and, before all, the engine of its ascendancy, the masses of its commons.

“The army of Amazonia passes over these princes' lands and moves on. Theseus' army, the army of the city, comes and stays. It will efface these clansmen and their way of life as surely as it will us and ours.” My friend whose name means Freedom turned to me, her breath pluming upon the air. “And nothing we can do will stop it.”

But our story has gotten ahead of itself. Let us reverse two years and address how the march on Athens came to be conceived and put into action.

On the night of Antiope's flight aboard the ships of Theseus, the corps of Amazonia, which had watched in impotent fury as the vessels glided from its grasp, repaired to the Mound City in a state of dismay and dislocation. All sensed that an epochal overthrow had taken place, yet none knew what to think of it. We were lost. We did not know what to do.

Rumors raged through the assembly. One declared that Antiope had dueled at Theseus' shoulder beside the ships; she had fought against our own people, this report proclaimed, and taken flight of her own free will. Another story said she was dead, slain by Theseus, her corpse borne to Athens as his prize of war. A third restated the calumny that Theseus and Antiope had conspired to assassinate Eleuthera but, this treason discovered, had been forced to flee for their lives. Such profusion of hearsay cast the congress into chaos. I recall my own novices, Kalkea and Arsinoe, so beside themselves with agitation that I must apply the quirt just to make them obey me.

The Mound City has only one square great enough to accommodate the nation entire, the Grand Avenue beneath the outer earthworks, the site where Antiope had dueled the princes Borges and Arsaces two months previous. Within this plaza the host now assembled. The hour was past midnight; rumor and slander continued to whipsaw the throng. From the same platform on which Theseus and Antiope had jousted so brilliantly during the Gathering, lesser orators now offered hearsay and humbug as to what had driven them forth. At last Eleuthera and her Companions, among whom I took pride to number myself, succeeded in clearing the stand and restoring order. The host hailed its new commander, crying her forward to rally the nation, inform it of the truth. Eleuthera addressed the corps from the Stone Palisade.

Our Lady Antiope had been raped, she declared.

At swordpoint and employing a force of men at arms, the pirate Theseus had ravished Antiope in the mountains (so Eleuthera swore), where she had gone alone to seek counsel of heaven after the victory of the Parched Hills.

Theseus had caught Antiope, Eleuthera proclaimed, unarmed and at her prayers. But such was the least of the evils inflicted by this villain, for he had stolen not only our lady's virtue but her wits. Among his company stood warlocks and sorcerers, who had drugged our queen and made her turn against her people. Antiope fought these potions with all her strength, Eleuthera now reported. But Theseus' magicians, in league with Hades and those gods who hate the free people, had overcome her. Torn with grief at her violation, our lady sought to return to us, her people, but in our blindness—here Eleuthera included herself among the blameworthy—we had spurned her. At last, helpless beneath the alien's evil draughts, Antiope fell.