Amazon Moon (21 page)

Cautiously, Litha explained to Zelena that she was committed to the slave Melos and was carrying his baby. Zelena looked pained by rejection. The following day she complained among warriors that Amazon values were decaying, that a limping male slave was rated more desirable than a brave fighting woman. Zelena was seen protesting to Eila the priestess. Next, ominously, the council met without my presence as its scribe. Afterward, Hella called me to her quarters and told me:

"I tried to protect you, but Zelena and Eila were strident. They argued that we Amazons are growing weak, losing our solidarity, which worsened our losses in the brothel raid at Balaris. Zelena and Eila convinced the council that strong action is needed to reassert faith in the Amazon way. The council decreed that the next male baby born in our village will be sacrificed to Hera, so the queen goddess always will accompany our warriors to protect them in battle. Your best student, Allena, was chosen to write this decree and post it for all."

I was dismayed. Even though our baby's birth was months away, and even though it might be a girl, the action was aimed squarely at Litha and me. Ours was the only known pregnancy. Essetha, who milked the nanny goats, had given birth to a girl the previous month. And Bellina, a young warrior who excelled in horseback combat, had suffered a miscarriage, perhaps from her violent riding. No other Amazon showed looming maternity.

When I told her, Litha grew agitated, almost irrational. I held her until quiet returned. We talked far into the night about our predicament. The next day, as I fashioned bricks at the clay bank, she came and called me aside urgently.

"We must escape this place," she said. "We don't belong here any more than we belong among the Greeks. However, my cousins in Slavia would give us a home in the hills, far away from people."

I interrupted: "We've discussed this before. You know that I can't run."

"But you can
ride
! The solution came to me this morning. Late at night, we could take horses from the pasture and sneak past the sentry on the cliff."

I saw her logic. "Yes, especially during rain. It would muffle our sounds. And the sentry would be under her horsehide shelter with rain patter filling her ears."

Our plan was set. We began secret preparations. Litha and I each hid packets of dried food. We observed horses in the pasture and learned the location of bridles and saddles in the tack shed so we could find them in the dark. Rain was sparse in this land south of the Black Sea, but we knew that our night would come.

It did. Drizzle started one afternoon and didn't cease. I saw Litha briefly as we passed on a lane and we both nodded. We were tense with anticipation. Unfortunately, during dinner a girl came to the slave quarters and notified me: "The warrior Comella orders you to her chamber tonight. Bathe and obey."

Consternation flooded me. I hurried to Litha's room.

"Shall we cancel and wait for another night?"

"No," she replied. "It may not rain again for a month, and by then I'll be too big to gallop."

"Shall I go to Comella and meet you afterward?"

"No, because she may make you sleep with her all night. Besides, from now on, all your nights are mine."

On the spot, we agreed to take the gamble immediately. The rain was bringing darkness early. I returned to the slave quarters, got my food stash, and pretended to go toward the lower pool. Then I hobbled on my cane to the horse paddock, where Litha was waiting.

"After a while, Comella will wonder why you didn't appear," she said. "But by then we will be heading down the Thermodon Valley to freedom."

We chose two calm mares, slipped on their bridles and strapped tight the sheepskin saddles over saddle blankets. We tied our food pouches behind the saddles. I never had ridden before, but my mare was gentle and obedient. We slipped like ghosts through the rainy darkness.

As we neared the sentry station, we dismounted and led the horses quietly. The pouring rain concealed us. We passed undetected and entered the broad Thermodon Valley. We were afraid to gallop in the dark, lest a horse stumble over a rock or break a leg in an unseen hole, as befell unlucky Oona. All night we proceeded. The rain ceased.

At dawn we could see Balaris in the distance. We turned westward, threading through hills, wondering if the lookout Olandra might be posted on a crest. Finally we hid in woods and let our horses graze in a grassy patch. Freedom was within our reach. At the western end of the Black Sea, we would turn north to Slavia. We ate our dried food, spread our saddle blankets on moss, crawled between them, and slept soundly.

Our freedom lasted only one night. We woke with Baloo the tracking hound licking our faces. Behind him were two mounted Amazons, Leeantha and Comella, grinning about their ease in capturing us.

"Melos, you should have come to my bed last night," Comella taunted as she dismounted. "I'd have given you a better ride than your escape horse."

Leeantha joined the mockery: "Remember when you made me scream in bed, Melos? How could you forsake a real fighting woman like me for this spindly sheep-tender?"

They didn't bother to draw their weapons because they knew we were defenseless before them. Fleeing on foot would have been futile, while the pursuers had horses. I doubt that they would have killed us, but they might have put arrows into our legs if we kept running. The warriors continued chuckling as they pulled us to our feet, tied our hands behind us, hoisted us onto our horses, and led us back the way we had come.

The return to the Amazon hideaway took all day because our captors watched carefully for travelers and stayed in woodlands most of the way. It was dusk as we were led into the heart of the village. Women stared at us. The War Queen and the priestess glowered. Hella shook her head sadly.

"Tomorrow evening, the council will decide their punishment," Saria declared. "Lock them in the confinement room."

We were led to the Amazon barn. Most of the interior was a high open chamber. At the rear, reachable only by a ladder, was an attic room behind a narrow landing. We were led up the ladder and shoved inside. Our hands were untied. Then a wooden bar was inserted outside the door and the ladder was removed. Prisoners, Litha and I held each other tightly.

"Surely they won't put us to death," I speculated.

"I don't know," she replied. "Maybe they'll make us wish we were dead."

We lay down in straw, holding each other, and fell asleep.

33

We woke next morning when the ladder clunked against the landing and the bar scraped outside the attic door. Two girls greeted us with breakfast of bread and goat milk. Then they barred the door again, removed the ladder, and left us alone. The Amazons knew that we couldn't escape and didn't bother to send an armed warrior when our door was opened.

We ate quietly. Our attic cell was windowless but had two air vents large enough for us to peer outside. We surveyed the village. After the rain, morning sunshine was streaming into the lovely valley. Late-summer heat was returning. In the distance a few women splashed in the bathing pool, their wet bodies sparkling in the sun.

The hillside used for morning warrior practice was directly behind the barn. We heard voices and saw Amazons scrambling up the slope for their daily drill, almost beside us. They were in full armor and carried bundles of arrows and javelins. For archery training, they shot at targets on a mossy bank that was soft enough for arrows to be extracted undamaged.

"I don't see Mitha among the warriors," I said.

"She drew sentry duty above the cliff each morning," Litha replied.

We sat in the straw, resigned to a long day of waiting, unsure of our evening fate before the council. We discussed ways we might plead for leniency.

Near noon, horror struck. We heard galloping hoofbeats, male war shouts, and an outcry of Amazon voices. Stunned, we leaped to the air vents and stared. A brigade of Greek troops rushed from the downstream thicket and charged into the village with weapons flashing. The naked women and girls in the pool froze, defenseless. The onrushing soldiers swept past them. The long-feared Greek army attack had burst upon the Amazon village like a tornado. We hardly could breathe. Our hearts pounded violently.

On the slope beside us, the War Queen shouted for her fighters to repel the invaders. Luckily, the female warriors had full quivers of arrows, plus their swords and axes, with javelins stacked nearby. From their vantage point, the women archers had deadly effect. They brought down the foremost charging horses, then killed the staggering riders as they struggled to their feet. Greek foot soldiers shrieked and fell as javelins and arrows whizzed into them. A soldier with an arrow through his abdomen groaned and cursed as he crawled desperately. Another died grotesquely with an arrow in his eye.

Greek archers fanned out rapidly near our barn and began flanking the women fighters on the hillside. Greek arrows found their mark, and some Amazons fell down the slope. Around the village, home women ran from doors and grabbed swords, shields, spears and double-bladed axes from the armory hut. They rushed to the fray, striking from behind at Greeks facing the hill. The battle surged horribly, with clanging metal and screams of the wounded. Gruesome death took first a Greek, then an Amazon, then another Greek, then another Amazon. Bodies littered the ground, but remaining fighters seemed oblivious to them as they flailed each other in a frenzy. Fighting toe to toe, an Amazon and Greek ran each other through simultaneously, their sword points emerging from each other’s backs. They fell together almost in an embrace.

Litha and I were paralyzed as we stared at the slaughter. We saw Leeantha, who had laughed at our capture only the day before, swing her ax ferociously, toppling Greeks who surrounded her. Then one speared her in the back. Blood gushed from her mouth and she fell face-down.

We saw Olandra, the maimed lookout from the Black Sea coast, gallop into the fray on horseback, striking Greeks from behind. She had returned to the hidden valley just in time to encounter the battle. Using her one healthy hand, she swung her axe ferociously, downing three male foot soldiers. Turning, other Greeks hacked her legs with their swords and Greek archers targeted her. An arrow pierced her shoulder, but she kept swinging. A second arrow lodged in her side and her attack wavered. A third went through her neck and she slowly slid from the saddle.

By a paddock stall, Bellina, the star horseback fighter, was mounting a steed when a Greek arrow killed her. She fell into the dirt, but her foot remained caught in a stirrup, and the startled horse dragged her body across the field.

The rage of battle was mindless. Among the bypassed women and girls in the pool was Zelena, who had craved Litha. Zelena was the only Amazon warrior who hadn't been training when the attack erupted. She scrambled nude from the water, seized a tough tree branch lying on the creek bank, ran after the charging Greek foot-soldiers, and clubbed them from behind. She struck down two with ferocious blows that broke their necks. As others turned, she killed one with a terrible smash in the face. But other Greeks, armored and shielded, surrounded the naked fighter and chopped her down with their swords.

We saw the Home Queen swing a long sword, decapitating a Greek foot soldier. Then a young Greek in the fine armor of an officer appeared on a rock above her with his sword raised for a lethal blow. Incredibly, it was my old best friend, Rectus from Aegolus, now a Kavopolis warrior. I was stunned and heard myself yell from the air vent: "REK! NO!"

At my cry, Rek looked for an instant toward the barn. The Home Queen whirled and thrust upward with her sword, stabbing deep beneath his armor. Immediately, a Greek javelin plunged through her. They fell together in a heap. I was so horrified that I vomited in the attic straw.

Litha clutched her throat, choking back sobs as she remained at the portal. I held her and we both peered through the same vent.

The battle ended quickly. Below us was a sickening scene. All the Amazon warriors lay dead or groaning with horrible wounds, along with the home women who had joined the bloodbath. The War Queen's body lay head-down below us. Princess Xanthia was sprawled over a rock, an arrow protruding from her chest. On the slope below her lay the corpses of her two former maids. The freed slave Pendilee lay curled in a ball, hugging her fatal wounds. Farther away, Eila the priestess was face-down under the Hera statue at her shrine. Not far from her lay a dark form that I recognized as Racha the Nubian. She had fallen across the corpse of Theba, the prince's daughter. Astelle the baker was dead in the doorway of her bakery. Nearby lay the body of the Amazon construction chief, my former bedmate. Hanging lifeless from a window of the warrior quarters was Allena, my star writing pupil. Beside the door of the armory, where she had been handing out weapons, lay Kella, the elder council member. Essetha the goatherd lay on the creek bank with a spear through her. Farther away, we saw more Amazon bodies in the creek.

Most of the Greek force likewise was dead. Only six Greek warriors remained standing, along with their sharp-faced commander. At his order, the Greek survivors walked around the battlefield spearing fallen Amazons who still moved. Elysia, the young warrior who had read aloud in my class, was trying to rise from the ground, clutching her wounds, when a soldier ran her through. She fell lifeless.

The aftermath brought a stunned sense of unreality. Male slaves emerged from their workplaces, staring at the carnage. Old Octos arrived on his crutches and was speechless for the first time in his life. He looked open-mouthed at the sprawled bodies. Augur, the bungling astrologer, was even more round-eyed than usual.

Two wounded Greeks called out from where they lay. Their comrades carried them to the commander and bandaged them.

The Greek soldiers searched buildings and found two dozen home women and girls hiding behind barricaded doors. They were dragged out and lined up, along with the nude group from the pool. Without a word, soldiers threw two of the naked women to the ground and raped them. The women didn't resist or cry out, knowing they would be killed if they did. The Greek commander watched in silence, then turned to the male slaves: