Last of the Amazons (28 page)

I searched the battlements for Antiope and could not find her.

Now came the rush Eleuthera had saved for. Seating her right sole within the loop of her horse's belly-band, she drove Soup Bones forward. The steed accelerated to the gallop as only the chargers of the steppe can. The horseback javelin looked lengthy as a tent pole, iron-freighted shaft spanning from its sleeve extender at the terminus of the Amazon's drawn-back right arm to its warhead nearly between the horse's ears, above Eleuthera's counterweighted left hand, clutching the discus, and beyond.

Theseus dropped to a crouch as horse and rider thundered upon him. His helmet pressed against the crown of his shield. This was the royal
aspis
of his father, Aegeus, of oak so strong that a waggon could be driven across it and it would not bow. The king skimmed the lower lip of the frame across the earth, canting the bronze sheathing skyward. His eyes peered over the rim. His right hand clutched both eight-foot spears, flat on the earth so that no blow of axe or disk might shiver them, drawn back beneath the shield's cover, that no hoof strike stave them to splinters. The front he presented to his rival was what infantrymen call “shadowing up,” meaning the foe saw the bowl of the shield alone, with all vulnerable flesh tucked beneath. The king crabbed right and left, making himself a moving target. His hand on the dirt felt his rival's closing gallop, seeking that instant either to hunker and endure or to plant his right foot and elevate the thrusting spear to take the charging foe head-on.

Eleuthera gave him no chance. She slung from beyond his range. So violent was her rush and so powerful her cast that her sleeve extender struck the crown of Theseus' helmet as she hurtled past. Warhead and shaft drove through the shield entire, passing so close to the fatal mark that a splinter of ash severed the ox-hide thong which bound the cuirass beneath the king's ribs. The missile seated into the earth like a pavilion pole. The great bowl of the shield stove upon Theseus, pinning him beneath. Eleuthera wheeled and drove back. She had shot her only lance; she must dismount now and close hand to hand.

The Amazon scissored off Soup Bones at the gallop; her feet struck the ground running. The horse, trained for this, bolted clear. Eleuthera rushed upon Theseus from the rear. His shield remained nailed to the earth by her tent-pole javelin. The king owned only two options: expend precious instants wrenching the shield free, or dump it and face Eleuthera's onslaught naked.

The Amazon had the discus in her hand. One saw it swing wide, the eight-pound stone ringed with iron. Eleuthera was twenty paces from Theseus now, coming low and hard. The king at last wrested his shield free of the earth and wheeled to face her. Eleuthera drove, erect now, into that one-two-three spin that throwers of the disk employ; her hurling arm extended wide, moment magnified by the furious rotation of her torso; her right foot planted at the peak of her spin; she loosed the disc point-blank. I have never heard a sound like that iron made upon the bronze.

The shield's face sundered; its frame cracked like a walnut. Theseus' arm fell limp. Eleuthera had hurtled past him in the violence of her rush. She wheeled now and brought herself under control. If you have never seen an Amazon draw her axe from the sheath between her shoulder blades, it goes like this: as the right hand elevates, reaching back over the shoulder to clasp the honed iron, uncinched already within its scabbard, the left hand reaches around to the small of the back, catches the butt of the shaft, and pushes up. In a tenth the time it takes to tell, the weapon has sprung clear of its nest and leapt into the fighting fist of its mistress. Eleuthera rushed. Theseus met her shield-on, seeking to pierce her with the thrust of the great ash spear. In midstride her axe head bashed the killing point aside, slipping the death it bore as it entered the linen facing of her corselet, opening a gash across her ribs.

In two score tongues clansmen cried, “His arm is broken!” Eleuthera saw it. She gathered. With all her strength she drove upon her rival's buckled shield such a blow as made the field resound. Theseus' forearm was imprisoned in the bronze-and-leather sheath that supported the weight of the shield. He cried in agony as the impact drove him down. Eleuthera forsook the axe for the instant; instead she seized Theseus' shield rim in both hands and drove against it with all her weight, seeking to snap her rival's bone or wrench it from its socket. The king dropped to a knee and an elbow, slashing sidelong with his spear. A second slice opened across Eleuthera's thigh. Had a housefly lit upon her it could not have affected her less. The defenders clamored from the battlements, summoning their champion to his feet.

Now in Eleuthera's fist reappeared the
pelekus
. Theseus lunged with his spear from the dirt; she dodged and hacked the ash shaft through. He sought to bring her to grips, to overcome her by brute strength. She slipped his rush with ease. Two more blows of her axe and Theseus' shield split in half. A third two-handed swipe sheared the crown of his helmet. His scalp dangled in a flap; blood sheeted over his undercap and his fore-cropped hair.

Now from the Amazon's throat arose that war cry that turns men's knees to jelly. She went for the kill. The king toppled rearward, seeking with his last strength to preserve his vital parts.

Suddenly from the south end of the ring burst a wedge of King's Companions. With a cry this corps flooded upon Eleuthera, beating her back from Theseus with their spears and swords; the Companions lapped the king within a wall of shields, behind which they sought to haul him clear. Eleuthera howled in outrage, hacking with her axe at the picket of bronze.

To her aid rushed her seconds, succeeded by the squadrons of Amazonia; then the Scyths and Getai and the floodtide of the foe.

BOOK TEN

IN LOVE
AND WAR

29

RATS

Selene's testament resumes:

W
hen Horse first hoisted the free people to her back she established ordinances of honor by which compacts between nations and individuals were to be prosecuted. Foremost among these stood the sanctity of single combat. Who won, won alone. Who lost, lost alone.

Theseus had lost. Yet he lived, preserved by the arms of others. What kind of war was this? One conquered but could not prevail, took trophies only to be shamed by their possession. I was among those that day who overran the Athenian Enneapylon, tore down the Sacred Gate, and drove the last of the foe to the summit of his citadel; I had three scalps and more weapons and armor than my ponies could carry. I dumped them to the dust in contempt.

The last fight had cost horses and women in the hundreds, including both my novices, Kalkea and Arsinoe. Yet it was not the numbers, however exorbitant, but the want of honor with which the foe contested. I summon memory of it now, that hour of infamy when Theseus' Companions lapped shields and hauled him from the field, and my gut turns in revulsion.

Already traitors of the Athenians had begun slipping through the lines to us, pledging to betray the city in return for eminence beneath our rule. Borges impaled them in disgust, not, however, before extracting intelligence of the quantity of gold Theseus held on the Rock, and what more had been evacuated to Euboea with the women and children.

For once the prince of the Scyths was not drunk, or not so as to slip on his own spit, as usual. “There is no honor in defeating a people such as these,” he declaimed in council the night succeeding the duel. When Eleuthera pointed atop the Acropolis and said, “There is your gold; take it,” the lord of the Iron Mountains met her eye and affirmed, “It is not enough.”

The allied camps now ringed the Acropolis entire. Everywhere lay our wounded and dead. Here was the most grievous woe. In raids upon the steppe one rarely lost a comrade; never beyond two or three, save in the gravest action. Now a hundred, two hundred melted away each night. In ninety days a third of the nation had perished, while another third bore wounds from which they would never be made whole. Beyond this stood the suffering of the horses. How many had we lost? Five thousand in battle, thrice that to falls and affliction. Even our captains' mounts, accorded the choicest feed, could not last ten minutes in action. A rider went through four and five in one fight. All must be rested for days after, and even then they grew more gaunt and cadaverous.

Borges was right. We must take the island. Only that would make the Athenians come down and fight. And we had to get grain; our horses were emaciated; Attica had been cropped dry.

I dropped all subordinate duties to hold myself available to Eleuthera. I learned to step in among petitioners and detach her from their press. I picketed her catnaps and set my cloak as shade when she dozed midday. My body I planted across her threshold, not to slumber, but to debar from access those who would steal her sleep or tear her, for their self-interested ends, apart from the cause upon which all depended.

Each night, and night succeeding night, Eleuthera made her rounds from camp to camp, stopping at fires to lend a word, share a jibe, or simply to let our knights and novices feed upon her presence, she who had vanquished the great Theseus in single combat. A hundred times I sought to break off these junkets. Rest! The flesh can only take so much! “No,” she rejected all such calls, “our sisters on the line labor harder, for the weight I bear is rendered lighter by my office and the honors accorded me.”

Casualties had sapped the corps' resolve to such extent that warrioresses, in the exhaustion after action, could barely find the strength to bury their horses—not in this shingley marl which must be mined with pick and mattock and even then yielded only stone beneath stone. At this chore again and again Eleuthera shamed her compatriots. Taking station beside a fallen mount, she commenced spading the trench with her own hand, and by her exertions compelled all to emulation. The army ached for the steppe; Eleuthera knew it. We feared for our children, our mares and foals, in peril even now from enemies emboldened by our absence. Eleuthera sought not to throttle such grief but shared it. I watched the bucks and troopers as she passed among them through the camp. Their eyes shone, feasting upon her apparition. They would tell their daughters of this hour, when the great Eleuthera spoke to them, took their hand, smiled at a jest they had made. One read in the eyes of all the readiness to die for the nation. It shamed you and made you humble.

I had sensed as a child the scale of my friend's ambition; I feared that such adulation as she now received would turn her head. Instead, it transfigured her. A hundred times a night one witnessed this exchange: our commander kneeling at a crippled novice's side or clasping the hand of a mutilated veteran. The faces of the wounded lit beneath her touch; their eyes went liquid with love. And they read this in hers: that she would donate all to preserve the nation.

They began to call her
Parthenos
, the Virgin. For the people meant by this that she lived for them and them alone.

Of all our race, Antiope, I believe, was the noblest. But Eleuthera was the greatest. The love she bore for tal Kyrte transcended all passion of woman for man or woman for woman. It was a love not of flesh but of spirit, whose expression was not self-assertion but self-abnegation. From the most proud of warriors, Eleuthera had become the most humble. I marveled to behold her. In my own heart I still yearned for Damon. I experienced shame to feel this. In the end, what is erotic love but vanity and the wish to submerge and surrender? Even to produce a child, I scored myself in secret, was self-interest and conceit alongside this love which Eleuthera bore like a flame for the people.

Envoys of the Athenians now began coming over. Rats deserting the sinking ship, they delivered their messages, then slipped away through lines made porous by our allies' intoxication or their decampment to complete the causeway to Euboea. Word came to Eleuthera from the Athenian general Lykos: he would deliver Theseus' head in return for being spared and made regent. Others pleaded for their families, pledging ransom from overseas holdings. More simply made a run for it, roping down the cliffs and bolting into the dark.

The seventh night Damon appeared with an embassy sent by Theseus. The king still reigned, the legation testified. The proposition they bore was for tal Kyrte's ears alone.

I studied Damon as he addressed the Council. He was gaunt. His cheeks were hollow, the bones prominent beneath his beard. Never had I admired him more. He wore that look which declares, I have no fear of you, I am ready to die. My heart felt love for him as never before.

One saw he loved us. He was one of us. As he recited the proposal his king had charged him to convey, one read between its lines the same of Theseus. He loved us too.

The king, Damon informed the Council, offers five hundred talents of gold, an enormous sum, all the city possesses, if tal Kyrte will cease hostilities and ally itself with Athens. Together, Theseus proposed, our nations would turn upon the Scyths, Thracians, and Getai.

“Tal Kyrte knows her enemy is not Athens,” Damon recited, “however grave the grievance she bears. How can our distant city harm the free people? Only those can whom she now calls her allies. Borges and Saduces own designs upon your homeland. The casualties you must suffer to unseat us from our hold will only waste you for the trek home, which will be marked by battles against those who hate you for what you are and who covet your lands and stock.

“Say that you despise us. Say you abhor our ways. But acknowledge the wisdom of having it out with your real foes here and now, while you still have strength and may employ us as allies, fighting from the stronghold of our citadel. We will fight hard, for your enemies are ours, and we wish to drive them out as much as you wish to deplete their capacity to work you harm in the future.

“Consider this alliance, Theseus, king of Athens, beseeches you. By mighty deeds tal Kyrte has proven her preeminence and achieved imperishable glory. Now, Theseus urges you, secure your survival. See prudence and make us your allies against those who seek only your extinction.”

Damon finished. The deputation was dismissed. All withdrew, save him. He refused to depart, but held, alone, at the portal of the pavilion.

One could see his fellow envoys turn about in bewilderment, seeking to draw him away with them. He would not go. The Council looked on, puzzled.

Damon addressed them. “The words I have spoken are those of my king and people. What I say now comes from my own heart.”

He straightened.

“I will not return with my comrades to the city. I wish to stay with you.”

Skyleia snorted in ridicule. “As what?”

Damon balked, as if command of our tongue had deserted him. Eleuthera stepped before him.

“You have been the lover of Selene?”

“I have,” Damon answered.

“What is this you make now? A gesture of romance?”

Further derision poured upon him from my countrywomen. Damon maintained his resolve. “What then?” Eleuthera demanded.

“As I have spoken,” he said.

I stepped in. “His heart loves the wild ways.”

Scorn greeted this, from all and in abundance. Damon was accused of being a spy or assassin, a coward seeking to save his skin, and worse.

My lover bore this abuse without rejoinder. Eleuthera studied him hard. She glanced once to me, deadly sober, then elevated her palm to stay the excoriation which continued to be heaped upon Damon by our sisters in arms.

“Stay tonight,” she commanded him. “Decide tomorrow.”

To me she signed: Show him the causeway.