Last of the Amazons (38 page)

43

PASSENGERS

T
he Amazon horses must be hoodwinked with cloaks and blankets to get them up the ramps to the ships. They smelled the sea and hated it. Nonetheless they obeyed; all six vessels got away, bearing their complement and an additional hundred and forty—Eleuthera's warrioresses and the wrights of the
kabar.
Every stall was filled save six doubles on Theseus'
Aethra;
these held one mount apiece.

It is no small excursion from the Mound City to the Tanais. Nor could the vessels stop ashore to let the women and horses exercise their legs. The Scyths knew whom the vessels carried; they would stay at nothing to overhaul their prey. Aboard ship the Amazons hunkered, miserable as soaked cats.

Father would not let me from his sight. Or should I call him father? Though he succeeded in keeping me apart from Europa, it was no chore to communicate with her by sign. I would flee with her; I would join my people, the free women of the plains. I bided, confident I could make the jump any time I wished.

On the ships an Amazon with a lurid scar across her cheek and breast took charge of me. She was a captain immediately beneath Eleuthera and, judging by the deference paid her by her countrywomen, a warrioress of singular celebrity. Her birth name, she told me, was Dosteia. “Though you know me, if Selene spoke true, by another: ‘Stuff.' ”

How curious is the ordination of the heart. For I, who had held the stopper on my grief so ably and so well (or so I flattered myself), now, at the hearing of this name which had been linked in memory to Selene so vividly and for so long, now I felt the dam of my heart burst. I fell into the Amazon's arms and wept like a child.

Stuff imparted the particulars of my birth, which tale she had had from Selene just this month past. A union of happenstance, such as falls out not infrequently on the land: Mother delivering a stillborn babe, Selene bearing at the same season a healthy girl. Within the private sphere of the farm the switch was made, opposed by none and breathed abroad by none. Even Europa, not yet three years old at the time, was never informed of the truth; she had believed me her sister until only days past.

The question Stuff's tale did not answer was the identity of my sire. It was inconceivable that Father would have betrayed Mother's bed by skulking to Selene's. Who then but Damon? Uncle read it in my eyes the first night we made camp after the burial mounds.

“Do you hate me, daughter?”

Children are cruel, and I was not as grown as I contended. Yes, I hated him. Not for the truth but for keeping it from me. Why must I not know? So I would grow up a proper Athenian girl, to be given to a proper Athenian husband? So none of society would scorn me for my savage dam?

I drove Damon from me and would not speak to him, even on the ships.

Stuff communicated as well the context of Selene's decease. It was not in a fight but a fall, and not from a horse but a riverbank. Selene was gathering willow shoots as treats for her string. “The ground was not stony where she struck, nor was the plunge from a great height. But it broke her neck. She lasted till the mounds were dug for those you saw.”

Stuff had a reading of this. She believed that Selene had completed her testament, that is, she had consummated the covenant of the trikona, by which the gods had agreed to accept her life in the stead of Eleuthera's. With this, her task was done. The earth had borne her in its time and now, in its time, took her back.

Eleuthera herself believed this, Stuff asserted, for when Eleuthera offered the tribute over Selene's grave, she did so not in speech, as is customary for one perished apart from battle, but in sign, as the nation reserves for heroes fallen in war.

“Selene believed,” Eleuthera had signed, “that she had committed a crime against the people, that is, her failure to take my life and her own when we were wounded and faced capture at Athens. She feared I blamed her these years since, even hated her, for this abdication. I could not hate you, Selene. For this act you performed from love. Not love for me alone, though that was abundant, but for tal Kyrte, for whose weal you offered your liberty, that it might preserve mine. Beyond all others, you have donated your substance to the free people. More, you have made this gift alone, in isolation, cut off from our society and our care. Who has shown such devotion?”

Here, Stuff reported, Eleuthera's composure had broken. Long moments passed before she recovered self-command.

Eleuthera had concluded her eulogy thus:

She made first the sign for “Moon,” which was my mother's name, Selene; then the sign for “fallen.” Not fallen as in moonset but as a stone or leaf falls. As if, the sign imparted, the moon had fallen out of the sky.

Next Eleuthera made that rotary motion which means the turning of the seasons.
Ektalerin
is the word in the Amazon tongue; its connotation is “that which may be depended upon,” as the rising of the sun or the greening of the plains. Only, Eleuthera made the motion in reverse, as if to say, All we have known has become inverted.

Eleuthera had then made the sign for “moonrise.” But at the end she turned it by that stroke which makes a statement into a question.

Moon has fallen.

Will moon rise again?

This was my mother's encomium, by which Eleuthera denoted not the woman alone but the nation.

At the fifth noon the armada had entered Lake Maeotis; by the night succeeding it had reached the mouth of the Tanais. The river was even greater than I had imagined. You could feel its current half a mile out.

At fifty yards I made my leap. I dived over the prow and swam for shore. It is a misconception that sailors don't fear the sea. Not one made after me, including Father. They couldn't swim.

Ashore I fled on foot, north along the course of the Tanais, putting miles between myself and the ships before I stopped. Europa would pick me up when the column passed on its trek to the Gate of Storms.

I would be one of them.

I would never look back.

But when horsewomen appeared toward sunset it was to arrest me, by Eleuthera's orders, they said, and truck me like baggage back to the strand. I was delivered into Father's custody. This time he bound my wrists behind me and held the lead as one does on a dog.

The Amazon companies had been assembled, ready to depart. My sister marshaled among them. In moments they would make away. I looked up to discover Eleuthera reining-in above me. She had never addressed a word to me, nor evidenced before this an awareness of my existence, yet it was clear in this instant that she understood all and had commanded all.

“Would you obey me, daughter?”

I saw hope and affirmed this with emphasis. The Amazon indicated Father.

“Then obey him.”

And she wheeled and spurred away.

With bitter tears I parted from my sister. We were on a neck of land with a salt marsh at its shoulder. In moments the Amazon column had rounded this, making north. The thicket swallowed them. They were gone.

The ships of the posse had been beached to disembark the Amazon horses. Atticus now gave orders for the men to take their dinner. The site seemed secure, on the far side of this great river, away from the direction from which Maues and Panasagoras would approach. But before the first parties had returned with firewood, horsemen appeared. In minutes the shore was thick with Scyths.

In the scramble to get away, all ships got off but one, Aristides'
Theama.
The enemy sunk grapnels in her and hauled her back to shore. Atticus signaled the other vessels to heave-to beyond bowshot. We could see
Theama
on the strand, swallowed in a sea of savages.

Now for the first time Theseus pulled rank. He commanded Atticus to hold the squadron offshore in safety where it lay. Atticus was to land his men under no circumstances, no matter what he heard or saw.

The king now commanded the tow skiff brought round. He stripped his weapons and, taking only Damon as interpreter, embarked in the gig and rowed ashore.

44

AN ACT
OF STATESMANSHIP

T
he Scyths set upon the king and beat him like a beggar. We witnessed from offshore, and I have this also from Damon and the testimony of
Theama
's crew, who witnessed it on the strand.

Theseus had anticipated such usage; it was why he had ordered the ships to stand off at all events. He offered no resistance to the savages, only endured till his arms, chest, and back were gummed with blood and ash, which the clansmen threw on hot and beat in with whips and quirts.

The princes raged at Theseus for abetting the Amazons' escape. They had chased him in hot blood for days and now took out their frustration upon his flesh. Meanwhile the Scyths had upended
Theama
on the shore, cooping the sailors beneath. The clansmen made a sport of packing blazes at the lip of the inverted gunwale and thrusting burning staves beneath the shell. The smoke quickly reduced the sailors to an extreme state. Theseus and Damon had been bound to stakes and slathered with pitch and turpentine. Up next would be opening their guts and lighting them like tapers.

“Suddenly,” as Damon later told, “a great hubbub resounded. Into the camp rode King Borges himself, who is Maues' father and Panasagoras' uncle, and fit to lance both like boils. He was hopping! The bucks, it turns out, had chanced across him, with his own army, on the plain riding in. Why Borges hadn't come straightaway to the shore was he was busy ferrying a pack of his own rustlers across the river and setting them on the trail of Eleuthera and the Amazons, to run them down, if they could, before they got away through the Gate of Storms. Borges meant to take charge of the business personally as soon as he set straight this ruckus on the strand. But when he spied his ancient enemy trussed up and painted for torture, a sea change overcame the old man.

“‘Can this be Theseus of Athens you hold?'

“Borges shoved through the young bloods and commanded them to cut us loose.

“Maues and Panasagoras told him to strike for hell. Borges bawled for his knights. The mob stood one pinch from a bloodbath. The princes were hot. They wanted the ships. They hated the ships. Maues howled in Theseus' face, naming him and all Greeks agents of evil. Borges snatched up a bucket of brine and hurled it over him. The brave howled like a caned dog. The old man cuffed him, hard, beating him back, apart from Theseus.

“‘My apologies, sir,' Borges bayed in that trumpet he calls a voice. ‘Youth, it seems, can no longer recognize its betters.'

“How old was Borges then? In his sixties, certainly. He had changed from the seasons of siege at Athens. In those days he wore his tiara even to move his bowels and decked himself with splendid headdresses and tokens of rank. Now he wore a plain cavalryman's cloak and a wolf-skin cap. Even his boots showed no gold. He ordered Theseus and the crew of
Theama
released and made fit to dine as gentlemen.

“‘We shall sup as friends,' he declared for his braves to hear, ‘and you shall attend the speech of this great man who by the device alone of some meddling god has fallen into your clutches, for surely absent heaven's intercession you could never have closed within a league of him.'

“One who has not experienced a banquet of these tribesmen cannot know the meaning of extravagance. The Scyths take their liquor neat and mark him of no account who will not duel them horn for horn. By midnight the lot were soused as hogs and as convivial.

“‘Inscrutable are the ways of God,' Borges pronounced for all. ‘How else account this usage, that enemies of yore may, by the passage of years alone, become friends? So my heart feels now toward you, Theseus. The rancor I once bore recedes, supplanted by admiration and a sense even of loss at the mates we might have been and the times we might have shared.'

“Theseus applauded his companion's magnanimity. ‘Indeed, we own a bond, my friend. That most sublime of all: reminiscence for our vanished youth.' A man of latter years, the king observed, recalls as golden that epoch when his hopes stood high and his strength undiminished. ‘What could be more natural for this man than to draw to his bosom all with whom he shared that time, even his foes? Perhaps his foes more than any.'

“Before Borges' seat spread a welter of battle spoils. He lifted an Amazon helmet and turned it over in his hands, admiring the play of firelight upon the bronze. ‘Indeed,' the Scyth nodded. ‘Each man recalls not the enemy he hated, but the champion who engaged him with such valor.'

“Theseus commended his companion's greatness of heart. Borges, he declared, had grown distinguished with the years. Time has stolen vigor but appended wisdom. Theseus praised the lord of the plains for the lands he had added to his province. ‘Nor have you acquired these from insignificant adversaries, but from the most formidable cavalry of the world, the warrioresses of Amazonia.'

“‘Indeed,' remarked Borges, awaiting Theseus' point.

“‘The Amazons too were foes of our youth,' Athens's lord noted. ‘Do you not find your heart relenting toward them, Borges, as it has toward me?'

“Maues and Panasagoras broke in, confronting Theseus. He pleads for these women! Beware another Greek trick!

“Theseus put his case to Borges succinctly. Before all, he stressed, the Amazons are beaten. ‘Their hour is over; they can harm you no more. Even your young braves must concede this. The Amazons seek only to retire from lands that once were theirs but whose ownership they no longer contest. They fly before you, Borges, to wastes no other nation wants, so inhospitable and remote are they.'

“‘And shall I let them go?' Borges inquired, loudly for all.

“The princes put up a howl. This was seconded by the multitude. Theseus permitted the tumult to subside.

“‘Is not the greatness of a monarch,' he addressed Borges, ‘measured by his leniency to defeated foes? Does not the lion turn apart from his vanquished rival, permitting him to retire from the field? The bull elk displays such clemency, and the wolf and the eagle. By such acts do we reckon their greatness.'

“More peals of outrage erupted from the young bloods.

“Borges regarded Theseus. ‘Once before, my friend, I took lead from you, believing it gold.'

“All Greeks are cunning, the princes roared. What plot does this one hatch now, he and his countrymen?

“Theseus countered to Borges that he had been deposed at Athens. His enemies now ruled the state. ‘My luck has turned evil, Borges. You need have no fear of me.'

“The Scyth smiled. ‘What do you care for these Amazons, Theseus, that you should stand before me as their advocate? Is this love, for her whom you once took as your bride, or only soft-headedness in old age?'

“Theseus indicated the princes of the plains. ‘Young men see the years stretch before them without limit. But you and I peer down that lane and glimpse its end. Perhaps our freight of winters works upon us, my friend, evoking empathy for others whose time draws to its close.'

“He indicated the Amazon helmet in Borges' hands.

“‘Like ourselves, the race of free women accounts the setting of their moon. But while our nations will live on after us, even prosper, theirs will decline and die.'

“More outcries from the princes. Borges ignored them. His attention held on Theseus.

“He would make a deal, Borges declared. And his sons would abide by it; he would see to that.

“‘I will let the Amazons go,' the lord of the plains promised. ‘I will call off the pursuit I have mounted and initiate no other. The great Eleuthera and those who ride with her, I will permit to rejoin the last of their clans beyond the Gate of Storms, and may God preserve them if He will. But if I forswear my vengeance, Theseus, you must renounce something in requital.'

“Our king waited.

“Borges spoke. ‘You must never return to Athens.'

“Our lord's crew revolted. ‘What is Athens without Theseus? What is Theseus without Athens?'

“Borges let this outcry abate.

“‘I fear you, Theseus, and I fear your city. You are a nest of trouble. Therefore enter exile. Go where you wish. Stay here with me if you like; I will grant you honor and provide all your needs. But never return to your home. If what you have spoken is true, that your countrymen have indeed disowned you, then you will make this pledge. I will forgo my vengeance if you will forgo your repatriation.'

“Maues and Panasagoras protested vehemently. Why listen to this pirate? Why account his word in fixing the fate of these women?

“‘Because,' Borges replied, ‘it was by his hand that they were vanquished, not by ours.'

“Borges lifted the Amazon helmet. It was of bronze, rimmed with cobalt and electrum. At its crown rose an emblem in gold of a stag taken down by a griffin. The piece was exquisite; Borges regarded it with appreciation.

“‘Shall we cede them clemency, Theseus, who excelled us in valor, and who fell not by their failings but by ours?' ”