Amazon Moon (16 page)

As stones were removed from the cliff base, we discovered a grotto that had been invisible behind the rubble. Soon we could peer into its dark interior. As more rocks were carried away, we could see that the chamber had been a shrine, long ago, for former villagers who occupied the valley before plague drove them to flight.

Being small, I crawled into the little cave. A smooth stone wall was chiseled with an outline of Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Before her was a wide rock, a sacrifice altar. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I could see the half-burned bones of sacrificed animals piled in a corner of the grotto. The priest of the former villagers had offered many gifts to Demeter, hoping for bountiful crops.

Slaves carried more rocks away from the entrance, letting in more light. Admer, the devout young man who wore sacred amulets around his neck, crawled in to join me. He moved toward a dark alcove—and shrieked. I rushed to him, and was horrified. Lying in the alcove, side by side, were skeletons of five children.

We scrambled out of the grotto and related our gruesome discovery. As word spread, Amazons came to the scene. We removed more flat stones, flooding the interior with light. Athletic Leeantha clambered inside with Admer and me behind her. Our throats clutched as we neared the small skeletons. Polished pebbles and shiny bits of crystal lay among them, indicating they had been dressed in finery as sacrifices. Sickeningly, each little skull bore a hole in the front. Death on the altar had been inflicted swiftly by a priest wielding a sacred implement. We felt stunned and retreated from the grotesque place.

"The old villagers must have been desperate," Leeantha told the circled Amazons. "Maybe there was no rain at the start of summer and they feared starvation, so they offered a child to Demeter, and then another. Or maybe the sacrifices were done during five different summers."

Silence fell over both Amazons and slaves. From the corner of my eye, I watched Admer, the devout believer. I wondered how he felt about this supreme act of faith. But he only stared at the ground.

As we left the blighted place, I remembered that my boyhood friend Rectus had told me of children being sacrificed to Greek gods. I asked Octos, my counselor. Vaguely he recalled tales of human sacrifice, but said they seemed only legends.

I wanted to learn about the monstrous custom. I hurried to my teaching room and dug through parchments from caravan raids. First in one document, then another, I found various reports, as follows:

When Greek colonies suffered plague, it was a custom for two scapegoats—a man for the colony's men and a woman for the women—to be stoned to death as sacrifices to alleviate the disease.

King Erechtheus of Athens, at war with Thrace, consulted the Oracle at Delphi. The Oracle warned that Athens would lose the war unless Erechtheus sacrificed his lovely daughters. He did so, and the tide of battle favored Athens. During the time of Pericles, when the great Parthenon temple was built to Athena, the long frieze was carved with this sacrifice scene.

Lykaon sacrificed a baby on an altar to Zeus.

At the start of the Trojan War, the Greek fleet was stalled by unfavorable winds. So King Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia to appease the goddess Artemis, and the winds changed.

During the Trojan War, when the Greek hero Patroclus was killed, the mighty Greek warrior Achilles sanctified his funeral by sacrificing captured Trojan soldiers.

At the end of the Trojan War, to sanctify the funeral of Achilles, Greeks sacrificed Polyxena, daughter of the fallen King Priam of Troy.

When next I saw Octos, I related these hideous accounts. He shook his head and said: "How many evils has religion caused."

24

"War is noble, the test of a true patriot," Arctinus declared to our after-dinner circle outside the slave quarters doorway.

A sturdy hulk, he had been a longtime soldier, a squad leader, before Amazons shattered his knee in fighting near the Bosporus and dragged him into slavery.

"Every nation is admired for its strength, its power," he continued. "The weak are contemptible, objects of ridicule. Strength and power come from weapons and the will to use them. That is the glory of Greece."

Unsure silence ensued. I knew that Arctinus was partly right, yet his words disturbed me. He pressed on:

"Why was Alexander called The Great? Because he did not hesitate to hurl armies across the world, slaughtering the mighty Persians and all other enemies. He united Greece into the strongest fighting machine humanity has known and spread our domain to the ends of the earth. His Macedonian Greeks were magnificent. They could crush not just the Persians but all the demons of Hades. Alexander gave us Greeks triumph and made Greece renowned forever."

My mentor Octos interjected:

"Arctinus, we both have chopped young men to death on the battlefield. Perhaps you find that glorious, but I do not. I was sickened by it and remain sickened to this day."

Arctinus turned defensive: "Patriotism does not permit such feelings. A patriot serves his homeland, without question, without fear, without debating his orders. A full army or a small squad must fight and kill precisely as commanded to ensure success. That's patriotism."

Finally I mustered enough thoughts to speak.

"What about the young Persians who died by thousands? Were they patriots to their land?"

"They were the enemy! Alexander and all the councils of Greece declared them aliens to be conquered. A Greek patriot needs to know nothing more."

"In other words," I said, "if leaders say 'fight the Thracians,' a patriot goes forth to kill Thracians—and if leaders say 'fight the Spartans,' a patriot rushes to kill Spartans? And anyone who questions these commands is unpatriotic?"

"Exactly," Arctinus snapped. "It has always been thus."

I continued: "Now that we Greeks have conquered Persia, do you feel exalted as the owner of a foreign land? To tell the truth, I never heard of Persia before I moved to Kavopolis."

"Melos, you are not a warrior so you cannot understand patriotism. You are a scribbler on papyrus. You don't feel the passion of fighters willing to sacrifice their lives for their homeland. Sometimes I doubt that you are a Greek. You seem to enjoy being a slave of the Amazons, enemies of Greece. Have you become their pet?"

Three other ex-soldiers, friends of Arctinus, laughed. I fell silent. Arctinus was correct: I could not understand patriotism that drives strong Greek men to massacre strangers who did them no harm. Why do men and kingdoms behave this way? Why do so many tribes battle other tribes?

"You're right," I finally told Arctinus. "I don't understand the war urge. I don't belong in this discussion." I excused myself and retired to my room.

* * *

One structure in the Amazon village was off-limits to male slaves. It was the armory, a hut beside the warrior quarters. Except for daggers and other side-weapons worn by fighting women, the community's killing power was locked in the hut. It contained most of the swords, shields, bows, arrows, spears, maces and other death instruments seized from caravans and Greek troops over the years. It also contained the weapons for which Amazons were renowned: small, double-bladed battleaxes, easily swung by women. Years before, the female fighters had driven off the crew of a foreign galley that ran aground at the edge of the Black Sea. In its hold they found dozens of the lightweight iron axes, and adopted them. Male armies of the region never were known to use such small choppers.

Also, the colony's mowing sickles, butcher knives, hatchets, pitchforks, leather awls and other dangerous tools were kept in the locked armory.

Each morning the War Queen and her fighters armed themselves from the hut for practice on their hillside training ground. Then the weapons were returned and an armed warrior stayed near the armory during the day. At night an Amazon always slept in the armory to guard the killing implements. She bolted the door from inside and was forbidden to invite a male slave to her bed. The reason for this constant watch wasn't spoken openly, but the purpose was obvious: to prevent male slaves from arming themselves for a revolt.

One morning, rain interrupted my work in the bean field. I returned to my chamber and dozed. Soon I was awakened by voices in an adjoining room, close to my ear. Although exterior walls of the slave quarters were of mud-straw bricks, some interior partitions were only lattices of woven reeds, no barrier to sound. I heard Arctinus murmuring, presumably to his three soldier allies:

"We will be Greek heroes. We will be rewarded as patriots."

I strained to hear. His comrades muttered. He continued:

"Malleus has a thin bone shard that can be slipped through the armory door crack at night to lift the bolt silently. If we eliminate the sleeping Amazon without noise, we will have their stash of weapons. We can sneak through the warrior quarters in the dark and kill them in their beds. Then nothing can stop us from taking horses and galloping out of this valley into the night."

Agreeing murmurs followed. Actinus added:

"We will be hailed in Kavopolis as true soldiers. A Greek regiment will rush back here and cleanse the rest of this bandit nest."

I felt panic. If the soldiers knew that I had overheard, they might kill me to protect their plot, because they deemed me an Amazon sympathizer. I lay deathly still, barely breathing. Soon I heard them leave the adjoining room, and I heard other slaves likewise returning early from the soaked fields.

My panic expanded. I did not want Amazon warriors to be murdered in a slave uprising, nor did I want the rest of the village to be massacred by a returning Greek regiment. Arctinus was right: I had grown fond of our captors.

My mind raced. I could not think what to do. If I warned the War Queen and Home Queen, armed Amazons would plunge into the slave quarters to kill at least the Arctinus group and perhaps others. I would become a hated traitor to fellow slaves, probably marked for death. But if I didn't warn the women, all of them might be killed.

I could not confide in Litha because she would be honor-bound to inform the Amazons. I could not confide in Octos because he remained a soldier, although a disillusioned one, and might tell Arctinus that his plot had been overheard.

I sweated and paced, because every choice seemed impossible. I must do something, but what? The dilemma rested solely on me. I couldn't seek guidance from anyone. Yet I must act, purely alone.

During my afternoon class, I barely heard my pupils' questions. When dinner arrived, I tried to appear casual among the slaves, but my pulse pounded in my ears. After dinner I didn't join in storytelling, but took my cane and walked by the creek. I didn't go to Litha; I let her assume that I had been summoned to an Amazon bed.

That night I couldn't sleep. My mind churned. At times my panic rose until I thought I might vomit. Near dawn a solution came to me. I remembered that hefty Hulta, before her death in Balaris, always fed Baloo, the tracking hound who lived in a box beside her room. With Hulta gone, other Amazon warriors fed him. After daybreak, before breakfast, I hurried to the warrior building and approached Saria with a lie:

"My lady, before the Balaris raid, Hulta told me to move Baloo's box to the armory doorway, so the hound will provide extra protection for the weapons. Hulta's death made me forget, but I just remembered."

The War Queen, busy viewing a map of the Black Sea shoreline, nodded distractedly: "Good idea. Do it."

While the rest of the village remained half asleep, I dragged the heavy doghouse to the armory and placed it by the door. I tied Baloo's leash to it. Thus he became the armory's four-legged sentry, baying when anyone neared the door. No uninvited intruder could get inside without his clamor, which would alert nearby warriors who could rush to the spot with their side weapons. At night his barking would wake the sleeping Amazon inside as well as those in the adjoining barracks.

That evening I saw Arctinus and his three soldier friends staring at the guard dog, looking perplexed. I said hello cheerily as I passed them.

* * *

I thought that my cleverness had ended the escape dreams of Arctinus, but I was wrong. A few days later, while he was picking olives in the grove, he found a strong tree limb and fashioned it into a long club. He kept it near him as he worked. A young Amazon, training for horseback combat, rode by the grove on a lower trail just below the spot where the lame slave was at work. From behind shrubbery, Arctinus swung the club and knocked her from the steed. He grabbed the horse's reins, lunged into the saddle, and galloped toward the mouth of the valley in a headlong dash for freedom.

If the girl had been knocked unconscious, he might have succeeded. But she sat up, clutching her head, and shouted for help. Two other Amazons practicing horseback fighting tactics in the main pasture heard the uproar, saw the fleeing Arctinus, and galloped in pursuit.

The women riders were swift but they couldn't overtake the runaway. As the chase entered the lane through the downstream thicket, the foremost Amazon yelled to the sentry above the cliff: "Drop the barrier!"

As an added safeguard, Amazons kept a tall pole standing upright in a notch of the cliff, with the upper end beside the sentry. It was always poised so the sentry could give it a push, toppling it across the secret lane at shoulder height, creating an obstacle for any intruders. Mitha, who was on duty atop the ledge, shoved the pole, dropping it before Arctinus's escape horse. The frantic fugitive saw that he was trapped, but had no time to react before the two pursuers were upon him with flailing axes. He was beheaded instantly.

With a long strap tied to a saddle, the Amazons dragged his headless body to a remote part of the thicket and dumped it into brush. Then they returned to the village, carrying his head and leading his escape horse. The head was placed on a stake outside our slave quarters. No Amazon gave us a lecture about it. None was needed. The message was clear.

Several days later, after everyone had seen the consequences of the escape attempt, the War Queen ordered us to remove the head and bury it in the latrine pit near where Dalien's body was covered.