Last of the Amazons (36 page)

39

SPAWN OF
THE DARKNESS

G
ive the savages this: they can ride. And their horses, plug-ugly beside the steeds of the Amazons, can stand a pounding. Three days and two nights the ruck beat north. Our Athenian troop could have bolted at any moment, but to what end? Bloods in a pack would run us down before ten miles. Damon made me see the necessity of Theseus' ploy, to league with these butchers in their chase.

Somewhere ahead was Europa.

Somewhere ahead was my sister.

So long as she lived, or Father and Damon so believed, they must make for her by all expedients, fair or foul.

The third evening the horde came on the wreck of a battle. You could tell miles off by the ravens and the waggon ruts converging from all quadrants. These carts haul the dames and urchins of the Scyths. We came over a crown and saw them, harvesting the field. The mob must have made three thousand, industrious as ants. The Scyths scalp and mutilate the corpses of their victims. A war party alone or in enemy territory will take the skulls, which they gild for boozing vessels, but when they range on home turf or know their women are close, they leave the bodies intact for these scavengers to render.

You could tell the Amazon horses even in death by their size and length of bone. Three to five hundred spread across the plain. The Scythian women butchered these for meat, beating back the dogs, domestic and wild, with the same jerking bats they would use to pound the flesh for drying.

As for myself, though I recount this spectacle seemingly void of affect, in that hour my soul was rent with grief and anguish. Was one of those bodies my sister's? Was one Selene's? Maues and Panasagoras scoured the field, seeking Eleuthera's corpse. Whooping broke out when it was determined that the Amazon yet lived. On her trail! The princes could still win the glory of eviscerating her.

I quartered the plain beside Father and Damon. Father's eye scanned each child's remains; consternation convulsed him; his limbs quaked. I examined my own heart. Woe-riven as I was, a cool hardness had settled in my gorge. It was as if heaven had set this challenge before me and I, to my relief, discovered myself equal to it.

I turned to Damon. He was like me, I saw. He knew hate and how to use it. I saw him study me to see if I would crack, and, satisfying himself, proffered a glance so fleeting that an observer would have missed it had he turned but half away, yet which communicated infallibly to me: You are child no longer. I call you woman now.

This look said more. It warned that Father had broken. He cannot endure, Damon's glance pronounced. Therefore you and I, who own strength, must donate ours to sustain him.

All this I assimilated in an instant and shot back to Uncle with a glance.

Now look again, his aspect commanded. I obeyed. Facing to the field of massacre, I felt such emotion rising from the earth as nearly hoisted me from my seat. The blood of these women cried to me. I could hear it, resounding down halls infinite inside me. The call was hate. I recognized it and embraced it with every sinew.

The Reed Sea lay north. To this Eleuthera's remnant had fled. The horde under Maues and Panasagoras abandoned the harvest of slaughter, spurring in this direction. Our Athenian party hauled in the Scyths' train. The ponies our captors had cut out for us were their most balky and least hardy; we fell miles behind, trotting afoot more than riding, and did not overhaul our captors' camp till midnight.

The sprawl of the site was prodigious, extending for furlongs along the Milk River, whose water, glacier-fed, was the color of its name. Maeotians and Copper River Scyths continued to pour in all night. Parties were setting out, seeking Eleuthera's last band. The result was that the camp was unquiet across its expanse, as great companies and herds came and went.

This was when the Amazons struck.

The first thrust hit a mile south of our outfit. Racket and clamor ascended, but with so many herds passing in and out, no one took especial notice. Then the blazes flared. Waggons burst to flame. Riders of the Scyths galloped past, crying the alarm. Now a second assault struck from the west, and a third immediately north.

“Eleuthera,” Damon said.

For all the tales I had imbibed over years from Selene, not to say Damon's reports and the trials endured on this voyage, I had never till that moment witnessed a true clash of arms. As the sun's brilliance excels the guttering of a closet lamp, so did actuality eclipse depiction.

Into the lane thundered half a hundred Amazon horse. Their mass appeared so swiftly and with such violence as to snuff the wind within one's breast. No prior citation could have prepared me for such ferocity. The Amazons were hacking through the axles of the waggons, butchering oxen, sowing panic in every quarter. My God, how they shot! I saw a man of the Scyths swing his
sagaris,
cutting an Amazon horse off at the knees. As the whetted iron passed through the gristle and bone, and the beast, not knowing what had hit it, pitched forward onto its face, the warrioress on its back loosed her shaft. The warhead entered the clansman at the plexus of the breast, driving through lungs and spine to exit by three hand's-breadths from his back. He reeled rearward against a waggon; before his groping claw could clutch at purchase, the Amazon had sprung to the turf, taken his scalp, and opened his guts from crotch to apple. He spilled at my feet, alive and gaping horror.

I was in the open. A horse ran me down. I felt its hooves punch the sod a thumb's-breadth from my skull. I plunged clear, toward the steppe and a picket line of Scythian ponies. Two girls my age were freeing the hobbles. They were Amazon novices. One shouted to me,
“Aanikat ehur!”—
“Drive the ponies off!”

They took me for one of them.

A transformation overcame me.
“Ephorit Selene?”
I demanded. “Where is Selene?” Both girls pointed south, where the attack had struck.

I took off for this quarter on the run, crying Selene's name and Europa's. Father tore after me. All about, ghastly carnage was being enacted; conflagrations ascended; men and women dueled and perished. Twice Father caught me and twice I slipped his claw.

I was somewhere in a pocket between two waggons which were overturned and aflame; before me bawled a string of mules, which a line of Amazons were freeing and driving into the night. A score of tribesmen swept onto the site, armed with pike and mace. The Amazons wheeled to repel them. Suddenly a single Scyth caught me from behind and snatched me airborne by the hair. I could not see his face, only smell his breath and hear the swish of his dagger on the air, elevating to slice my throat. At that instant an Amazon axe, slung overhand, pinwheeled over my shoulder from the fore, striking my assailant where teeth and jaw conjoin. The iron drove through the fellow from craw to brow, fixing at the base of his skull between the jawbone and the cervical spine. I crashed to the earth atop the brute, who was still alive and clutching at my throat.

Above me my savior reined. Her hair was jet, greased stiff and flaring. Her face was painted grey and white, the sign of the moon, with circles about her eyes, nose, and mouth. Her mount was sorrel, fifteen hands, and she sat it like a god.

It was Selene.

She signed to me,
Get my axe.

My heart swelled as if it would burst.

“Pelekus!”
my tutor barked. The Scyth in the dirt was still writhing, with the axe in his face, while his arms flailed unstrung from command. I seized the haft and heaved. The axe came up with skull and living man affixed.

“Set your heel on his face,” Selene commanded.

I obeyed. The axe came clear. Selene held out her hand for me to take and mount behind her.

At that instant Father burst from the darkness. I felt him snatch me by the waist. Damon roared up on horseback.

“Give me the girl!” Selene commanded.

I saw her nock an arrow and draw down.

“Selene!” Damon cried.

I stared down the shaft of my tutor's ironhead. In an instant her bolt would take Father between the eyes.

“Selene, are you mad?”

Damon spurred to cut her off. I saw her bow hand rise. She gave back.

Alarms broke from the south. Scyths rushed in hundreds; the Amazons wheeled and fled. Selene bolted in their train; Damon spurred after her.

I cannot say how I got clear of Father or from what string I tore a horse. I was on the steppe at the gallop. Selene's and Damon's trace ran away beneath the moon. The Wild Lands run in breaks and washes in that region; I tracked the pair over what seemed a dozen ranges. At last their hoof strikes shortened. I came round the shoulder of a rise and saw them, beneath me, half a bowshot off.

Selene and Damon brawled in the pan of a dry wash. He had got her off her feet. She sprung clear; he caught her again. They had not heard me. Should I rush down? Below, Damon dropped, gasping, onto hands and knees. Selene heaved above him, equally spent. I strained in the starlight. I could see Damon sit up, breathless, onto his heels. Selene stood directly before him. She addressed him not in words but sign.

She sought to send him away. He would not go. He got to his feet and reached for her. She dodged his grasp.

Selene signed that her time was over, the spool of her days had reached its end.

“You have won.” I saw her hands frame the speech, but the stroke she made upon “you” carried the meaning beyond Damon as an individual to denote “you Athenians,” “you men,” “you of the male race.”

This sign struck Damon like a blow. “How have I won,” he cried in words, “if I lose you?”

He swept across the breach between them. His arms embraced Selene about her hips while he, sinking on both knees, buried his face against her belly. She bent at the waist; her shoulders covered his; her long hair draped his back. I watched, nailed to the site. I could neither command my voice to call nor feet to fly, nor respond to the hoof strikes I heard hastening behind me. Father overhauled me from the rear. Below in the wash I saw Damon and Selene mount. When I found my breath to cry, the lovers galloped away together. Father pinned my limbs with the despair of one who has lost all and cannot lose more. Still I squirted free. On foot I bolted after Selene.

Father did not try to run me down. He mounted and trailed at the trot, letting me exhaust myself, and, two miles on, or five, when I had fallen, he hoisted me in his arms and bore me back.

The Scythian camp, when we returned to it, had rallied from its riot. Clansmen marshaled to aid their wounded and recapture their stock. Father set me down beside Philippus, instructing him to bind my wrists and hold the lead himself, releasing it to no one. I spat when he sought to touch me. Two of our party chanced to pass in that moment and, sighting Father, addressed him as captain, seeking orders. Shall we help tend the wounded? they inquired, meaning the Maeotians and Scyths and Copper Rivers.

Father hesitated, still trembling from his ordeal.

“Let them die,” I returned in his stead. “And may their souls wander between the worlds forever.”

40

AN AMAZON

T
hat dawn the Scyths marooned us. They took horses and arms but left our lives. This was no slim fix, however, as the men, many stripped of kit and without even shoes, now possessed neither means of defending themselves nor of obtaining food. The trek to the coast was a hundred and sixty miles.

Atticus called a council to consider what to do. Father did not speak. Theseus likewise held his tongue. Since the Mound City, the king had placed himself under Atticus' command, pledging to earn his keep as a common soldier, and he had done so. At each crisis, however, the men naturally had looked first to him. Yet each time he deferred to Atticus, so that the company, with far less reluctance than one might have imagined, came to accept the king as mate and not monarch. The men were shaken by the horrors of recent days and, no little, by Damon's defection. Numbers besides Father appeared at the point of coming undone. The main voted to strike for the sea. When their count had been tallied, Atticus spoke.

“Brothers, the object of our expedition appears now moot, that is, to apprehend and bring back for trial the Amazon Selene. I daresay we own as much chance of lassoing a griffin. Nonetheless, this remains my charge as commander. Further, speaking as a man, I cannot but believe that Elias' daughter and my betrothed, the maid Europa, remains alive and in peril somewhere north among the foe.”

He would not, Atticus said, set the men's lives at further hazard on this commission; he released them to make for the ships and home. He, however, must remain. He would track the Scyths, with Father and others if they wished, or alone if necessary.

You may imagine the murmur that succeeded this. Men on the steppe make seats about a fire (since there is no wood and few stones) by cutting bricks of turf and stacking them into a kind of stand, grassy side up. Theseus, like the others, hunkered on such a perch, to the left of Atticus and some seven or eight men down. He now rose and took up his footstool; without a word the king crossed to Atticus' right hand, where he set this pew down and took station upon it. As one the men burst out laughing. Father and Philippus followed to Prince Atticus' side, Beam and Mite succeeding. In the end, seventeen made to stay, while sixty-some set off south. The mood on parting was so black it was giddy. Eighty-odd men with no horses, no food, and no arms, splitting up to march from nowhere to nowhere.

One may ask how it struck me, a lass of not yet twelve years, to find herself at last upon those Wild Lands on which her fancy had fed from birth. Such ordeals and adventures as I had suckled on, so to say, at my governess' breast, these now had become real. Was I stricken with terror? Did I yearn for home and Mother's bosom?

Not for the time it takes to spit.

I
was
home. This was my country and these, the race of free women, my people. Nor was this fatuity, as it might have been attending Selene's yarns in my childhood bed, but fact I felt in my heart and my guts. What maid could want more than what spread before me? Look left: herds of antelope sprawl to the horizon. Turn right: eland and gazelle carpet the pan. That the nation of free women stood at its extremity only further animated my zeal. These were epochal events; I would be part of them. I felt exalted and lifted out of myself.

The third noon our party sighted smoke. We came upon gear and discarded tackle, next slaughtered animals, then men. The company cadged weapons from the corpses. Philippus caught a horse and used it to round up more. Our outfit had mounts now; Atticus called it together.

Either the Scyths had overhauled Eleuthera's Amazons or the latter had set ambushes to hinder the pursuit. We might come on a battle, Atticus warned the company. He forbade heroics: “Forget Selene. Seek the maid Europa. If we can't secure her to hand, we may be able to treat with the Amazons, if Europa is among them, or with the Scyths if they have captured her.”

Atticus ordered me kept back and set Mite to watch. The smoke seemed just over the next hill. But distances play tricks in so vast a country. Night fell and our party still hadn't reached it. We pressed on, fixing bearings by the stars. But the breaks of the plain could not be gotten round in the dark, and when the sun came again, fresh smoke pocked the horizon. It seemed battles raged in every quarter. The ponies we rode were Amazon. “Give them their heads,” Theseus suggested. “They will take us in.”

All day we kept on, making meals of weevils and prairie hoppers. I ate my shoe. With dawn fresh smoke appeared. We closed on it; this at last was no mirage. Atticus made signal, “Take arms.” The company formed into a front. We spurred over the terminal rise.

What we came upon was no battlefield but a graveyard.

The sward before us had been swept scrupulously of refuse and debris. A solitary Amazon held at the crest. Across the slope beneath her, twoscore fresh barrows had been arrayed in a sort of colony, with pyres of bone burned to ash. The mounds were crescent-shaped.

Father reined beside me, studying the field. Amazon dead had been borne to this place to be cremated and interred. Perhaps it was a site of prior significance, he reckoned, or consecrated by this recent fight. Atticus divided the party, one squad to remain in place at alert, while he led the other forward toward the lone rider.

I went with the prince. We could see the solitary Amazon clearly now, above us on the spine, astride her pony. She was painted, with her hair greased stiff, and made no move to make off, rather maintained her post above the leftmost of the mounds, watching the party approach. Was this a trap? Atticus reined, sending a rider ahead. The courier approached the Amazon, communicating with her by sign. He drew rein at the crest, signaling all clear.

Both companies now advanced. The Amazon held motionless. Atticus trotted toward her from the right. I saw her hoist an arm to bid him hold and then sign, to me, that motion which Selene had taught whose meaning is: Come forward, do not delay. I squinted harder.

The warrior was Europa.

The Amazon was my sister.