The Bull from the Sea (22 page)

The fugitives told their tales, and the people listened with fear-sharp ears. And each tale had some word of the warrior women, the Sarmatians who must each bring as her bride-dower the head of an enemy killed by her hand in battle; and the bright-clad Moon Maids charmed against fear and weapons, who led the vanguard. All this I learned from the suppliants when I questioned them. My own folk never spoke of it in my hearing. We both knew what that meant.

One morning Hippolyta got up from my side, and went over to the arms upon the wall, and put on the dress she wore when she drilled her Guard.

I jumped up and put my hand on hers to stay her. She shook her head, saying, “Indeed it is time.”

“Steady, little leopard,” I said to her. She looked thinner, and too clear, as if burning with an inward flame. I told you to let me deal. I am taking those lads back into the Palace Guard; you need answer for them no longer.”

She searched my face. They have not told you. I must then, since they are all afraid. The barons have been putting it about that the Maidens are coming for my sake, to avenge the slight to me, because you married the Cretan. They are saying I sent them word.”

Without thinking what I did, I took one of the javelins from her; then I found I had broken it in my hands.

She said to me, “Dear love, you have made there your own omen. With such broken arms you will go to battle, if in anger you divide your chiefs and warriors. You can do nothing, Theseus. The Athenians will believe what they can see. I must answer for myself; no one else can do it.”

“When we first met,” I said to her, “you called me pirate. And what better have I been to you, if it comes to this?”

“Hush,” she said, “these are words,” and kissed me. “Fate and Necessity are here; and like us, they are what they are.”

Then she went out and called her Guard, and spoke to them of the trial to come, urging them on to honor, before she put them to throwing at the mark. The youths sang out her paean; the barons’ faction looked downcast. It was true enough that she had done what I could not. Afterwards she went about laughing and gay. It deceived everyone but me.

That night our love burned up as bright as it had beside the Euxine. But in the quiet after, when the heart tells all it knows, she said, “Is it certain they have wronged me? What if I have really brought this on the land?”

I tried to hush her. There are some things best not spoken of, lest you give them power. But she whispered, “What I gave you, Theseus, I had vowed before to the Maiden. Did you guess?”

I answered, “Yes. But there was some god within us. What could we do?”

“Nothing, perhaps. If two gods do battle for us, it is our fate. But the loser will be angry, and is still a god.”

“So is the winner. Let us trust the strongest.”

“Let us keep faith. One does not change sides upon the field… We said that Maiden Crag was far away, but now it has come to find us.”

“Sleep, little leopard. There is work tomorrow.”

In that I was right. Before the stars had paled, the light of the beacons leaped on Parnes; and at daybreak there was war-smoke on the hills.

It took them two days to come down through the passes. The watch I had set there harried them by rolling boulders down, and shooting from the heights. I could not spare men for more. Soon we saw from the walls the dark tide creeping on the plain, like waters that have cracked the dam. I did not go out to meet them. We were too few. The men of Eleusis had to hold their own strongholds, and the men of Megara to close the Isthmus. And if all of us had come out into the plain together, we would still have been swept away.

I trusted in the Rock, as my fathers had for longer than men remember. It would be a siege; but one done backwards; it was we who must sit down and starve them out. In these early months, the fields were bare of everything; they could not close us round and wait in quiet. To get a living at all, they would have to straggle. The farms were stripped bare, the strongholds well stocked and manned. I reckoned to let them waste themselves little by little, with want and vain assaults; then when they were most dispersed and weakened, to choose my time.

As they came near I saw they had cattle with them. But they were lean with winter grazing, and when they were gone there would be no more. As for us, men can live long and keep their strength up on barley and cheese and raisins, olive oil and wine.

The Eleusinians had sent their cattle and the useless mouths across to Salamis; and there also I sent my ships. We had signals agreed on, smoke by day and fire by night. They knew my plan for them, when the time came.

The moving mass came over the level plain; the cattle slowly, the warriors at the front and flanks, with horses and in chariots, going about the horde. I remembered old tales of how our own fathers had come down like this from the north; just so they must have looked to the Shore Folk, gazing from this rock that they could not hold. I wondered how it had fallen, by treachery or assault. Then I called the herald, and said, “Sound for the fire.”

He blew; and from the houses down below, outside the walls, came the first thin smoke. Soon flames leaped through it, for brushwood was stacked inside. I had left this till the enemy was in sight, to daunt them. Before long there was a heat like summer on the Rock; we coughed in the smoke, and the warriors whose homes were burning smiled grimly. The men who had set the torches came clambering back; then the gates were closed, and great millstones rolled behind them. The Rock was sealed.

Now after so much haste and toil there was a pause. The fire had devoured the smoke; the distant hills seemed to dance and ripple in the rising air; one heard no sound but the roar of flames and the loud crack of timber. All night it spurted and crumbled and flared again, so bright that the watchmen could not see beyond it. But at dawn the horde was on the move, and by noon the vanguard was before the Citadel.

Soon all the plain between us and the harbor seemed filled as if by swarming ants. It was well to be seen that they were led by warriors; they took the low hills that faced the Rock, and began to throw up walls.

On the Palace roof Hippolyta watched beside me. Her eyes were good, as mine are. The clothes of the Scythians seem dark from far away, when you do not see their ornaments. Even from here, you could not mistake the bright spots of color moving about in front, the scarlet and saffron and purple of the Moon Maids. I remembered how she had told me the chief of them had their own colors, which they were known by. I turned to her, and found her looking at my face. So she stood awhile, then said, “I have seen nothing there but your enemies. Come, let us go in.”

Thus the siege began. They took all the hills: the Pnyx where I called the people to Assembly, the Hill of Apollo and the Muses, the Hill of Nymphs; all but the Hill of Ares, which faces the great gate. That is in bowshot, and my Cretan archers covered it. One night when the moon was dark the enemy crept up there and built a bulwark; from that time on, stray arrows fell within the walls, but we shooting down did better, and they never came there in strength.

The nights were worst. There seemed as many watch-fires on the plain as the sky had stars. But, as I would tell the men on the walls when I did my night-round, many were cook-fires at which they were eating up their stores, and they had all their folk there, while we were warriors only. In rain or snow, rested or weary, I always went round the walls in the dead hour of night. It was partly to see good watch kept, but partly lest the married men grow envious; for, except the priestesses, mine was the only woman on the Rock. Often she would divide the round with me. She knew each man’s name as well as I did. Now the old men who hated her the most were gone with the women to Euboia, factions grew faint, and the danger that pressed us round drew us together. Valor and steadfastness and high-hearted laughter were the riches of our state; no one could show them forth as she did, and not be loved.

And then one morning, at the light of day an arrow was found shot from the Hill of Ares. It had a sickle head, which is for witchcraft, and a letter wrapped round the shaft. No one could read the language, and they brought it me to see. Hippolyta, who was by me, took it from my hand, saying, “I can read it.”

She read with a steady countenance; but I saw her face grow drawn, as if it had drunk her blood. At the end she paused, but not for long. Then she said aloud, in hearing of the warriors round us, “This was for me. They ask me, because I was once a Moon Maid, to let them in by the postern.” Only I, who was near enough to touch her, could tell that she was trembling. “If more of these come,” she said, “I will not see them. Give them to the King.”

They murmured together, but I could hear they were praising her. Then Menestheus said, as eagerly as if he feared someone would be before him, “Did they fix a signal? Or name a night?”

It was then I wished for the first time I had put him to death with the rest of his clan. He had no feeling, but for himself, and saw that everywhere. Such men turn even the good they seek to evil.

I took the letter from her hand and shredded it, and scattered it on the wind. “Her honor is mine,” I said. “Do you think it fit for a warrior, to play decoy and lure old comrades into ambush? If any man here would do it, I would not trust my back to him in battle.” Then I looked at him straight. He turned red and went away.

When we were alone, she said, “They would have guessed. To tell them outright was better.”

“Yes, little leopard,” I said, “but now tell all. What threat did they put on you if you said no?”

“Oh, they reproached me for living on when I had lost my maidenhood. Then they said the Goddess would forgive me if I betrayed the Citadel, because you took me against my will.” She smiled. But when I had her in my arms I felt on my cheek her tears, trickling like blood in silence. I knew then that they had cursed her. And the curse had not far to fly.

My own body seemed to chill and sink, as if I felt it with her. But I forced a cheerful face, for curses feed on fear, as I have often seen. “Apollo will take it off,” I said. “He can cleanse a man even from his mother’s blood; this will be nothing to him. He is Artemis’ own brother, and she must obey him. Once he himself took a huntress from her, and got her with child, and their son founded a city; You will see, he will be your friend. Get ready, we will go to the shrine together.”

She said she would; but some of the captains had to speak with me, and while I was busy she slipped off there alone. When she came back she looked clear and calm, and said the god had given omens of consent to turn the curse aside. So I was glad and put it from me.

For two nights all was quiet. I guessed they had waited till then for a sign from her. The third night, they tried to scale the walls.

Some time before, I had picked out the men who saw best in the dark, and had one or two on every night-watch, walking round and round. But for that, the attack might have succeeded; it was led by skillful climbers, who had blackened their faces and their limbs. At the alarm, we threw down torches and fired the brush below; by that light we aimed our spears and arrows, and the slingers shot. Hippolyta with her strong short Cretan bow stood at my side, aiming steadily as if at the mark. She had changed since the letter came; I felt her no longer pulled two ways. When the dead were carried off below she stood quiet and calm. She sang with our men the paean of victory, and came away with me and was gentle, saying little. Her still face in the torchlight put me in mind of her son’s.

As the days passed, we saw the cattle dwindling upon the plain; and bands of Scythians would go off into the country round. They seldom brought cattle back with them, mostly poor herds of goats; and often the men looked fewer. Then a smoke would go up from some castle that its lord still held, on Hymettos or towards Eleusis, signalling that they had beaten off a raid, or, with an extra puff, that they had made a good killing. But one day over on Kithairon, instead of the signal-smoke came a great cloud, and we saw no more from them. It was the hold that had been Prokrustes’; with so many angry ghosts in it, one could not expect much luck. That time the band returned well laden, and we heard the rejoicings from our walls. Still the fort had been stocked for a garrison, not a tribe. Soon they were ranging further and further off.

Twice more they tried a night assault upon the Rock. On the seventh dawn after, we saw the horde thickening and working, like dough with leaven in it, and knew they meant to try by day.

They swarmed upon us from south and west at once, clambering on over the bodies of the fallen, with ladders and notched pine-trunks to scale the walls. As they came on, I shouted to the warriors, “Hold on through this and we shall win! This is high tide! They are desperate now; they will not have heart to try again. Blue-Haired Poseidon; Pallas Athene Mistress of the Citadel; save your own altars! Help us in our hour!”

Against this time, I had had stones piled thick along all the ramparts: pebbles for slings, hand-sized stones for hurling, and great boulders with crowbars and levers under them, all ready to roll down. We held our hands till the slopes were thick with men, and then began. Our weapons we saved for close quarters.

In this battle for the first time we could see the warriors clearly: the Scythians in their sheepskin coats, and loose trousers tied at the ankle, with leather helmets long behind; the Sarmatians who fought in pairs, a man with a youth one would have said, if we had not known the beardless ones for women by their screeching war-calls. They looked savage, and dirty, and unkempt; yet when I saw one sink, and the other bend over the fallen, I was glad to look another way. But wherever one looked, out in the vanguard with bow and javelin, slender and swift and bright as fighting-cocks, were the girls of the Goddess, light on their feet in the trance of battle, feeling neither fear nor prick of weapon until they died.

Beyond the scrimmage, the folk stood watching from the hills. Now one could tell out the fighting strength from the useless mouths; from where I stood, I reckoned them half and half. Most of the weak, and the old, and the babes in arms, must have perished in that winter wandering, over the mountains and on the march. The watchers were mostly women—the Amazons and Sarmatians were the only ones in battle—but I saw herdsmen among the cattle, and wondered it had not been left that day to the young boys. But Hippolyta said, “Oh, those will be slaves who have lost their eyes. The Scythians do it to captives they take in war. They can milk the cows and make cheese as well without them, and they cannot run away.”