Last of the Amazons Last of the Amazons Last of the Amazons

by Steven Pressfield

  This would be, if such proved true, the greatest war in history.

  The date of the army’s departure was the Moon of the Iron Frost, the dead of winter, that the straits might be crossed south to north on the ice. The central corps of tal Kyrte had summered at Themiscyra, on the southern shore of the Amazon Sea, recruiting allies from among the nations of Anatolia and the Troad, Armenia, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, Mysia, Lykia, and Phrygia. The army would cross to Europe via the straits, transit the Wild Lands to the Mound City, there to link with the allies of Maeotia and the Scythian plains; the host would provision in the European Chersonese at the Hellespont, then proceed by shore and inland routes across Thrace and Macedonia, turning south and entering Thessaly just as the land greened up with spring. Thessaly was horse country, rich in pasture. The force would lay over a month or more, permitting its stock to fatten and recover from the march, while assembling further allies. From there it would strike Athens.

  Victory, tal Kyrte believed, was foreordained. What individual warriors seeking glory feared was not that the foe would resist, but that he would turn rabbit before our army had even struck his frontier, abandoning the country entire, to recolonize on some site across the sea. That the Athenians would stand up to us seemed a hope beyond imagining. In fact, the main of Eleuthera’s diplomacy was directed toward this end only: to estrange from our cause as many of Athens’ allies as possible, incenting them to combine and stand. She sent no spies with bribes or offers of alliance. She wanted a fight. To tal Kyrte, one Greek was the same as another. They were all city-dwelling, sea-ranging pirates who spread the contagion of netome, evil luck. Time to gut them all and be done with it.

  As to the princes through whose lands tal Kyrte and her allies must pass, these were approached in the following manner. First were dispatched embassies of six and fewer, under the protection of the herald’s staff. These missions were composed of nobles and warrioresses of distinction, when possible daughters and sisters of the army’s commanders. Celia, Antiope’s mother, headed a number of such deputations, as did Eleuthera’s sisters Clonie and Paraleia; as well, Stratonike, Skyleia, Alcippe, Glauke, Tecmessa, Arge, Rhodippe, Adrasteia, Enyo, Deino, and Pantariste led others. I myself served. Male allies were included in these legations, often prominently, to mitigate the shock of our corps’ apparition upon the wild chieftains, to whom all females were chattel. We brought gifts; magnificent war mounts and weapons of iron, bridles and helmets of gold, charms and amulets in silver and electrum, copper tripods and stocks of amber and cobalt and bronze.

  Succeeding the embassies came light cavalry. These were picked companies of the tallest and best-looking warrioresses, mounted upon the most superlative stock. They were unique in that they included both older knights, past fifty, who had served their seasons as dams and matriarchs and wished now to return to action, as well as maidens as young as ten and eleven, chosen from among the brightest and noblest-born, to expose them early to great events and fire their hearts with aspirations for preeminence.

  Last came armored corps, heavy infantry, men, to stake out pasturage, if it could be found, silage if not, and water. These established camps for the main body, cut firewood or acquired it by goodwill or purchase. Often Eleuthera and Hippolyta accompanied these brigades in person, for their presence accorded honor to the princes upon whom they called.

  It is no mean skill, treating with such wild barons as held the provinces through which our multitude must pass. Their gods must be reverenced; one must know their conventions and not offer unwitting offense. Days were spent rehearsing such missions. But what nothing could prepare one for was the sensation ignited among these tribesmen’s women by the apparition of our corps.

  The sequence never varied. The dames of the villages gaped first, huddling along the roadsides, sullen and mute. This state was succeeded by disbelief, as if they could not credit the sight of free women, armed and autonomous; then came a species of anger, at our liberty or their slavery, one could not say. Next they wept. At last they broke into cheers, these chattelwomen, and, bursting from their places, thronged about the column, clutching at our trousered legs, stretching up to touch our hands, burying their faces into the flanks of our ponies, as if to confirm by this the reality of our existence, while tears flushed their cheeks made ruddy by the frost. The lads and buck warriors tracked us too in awe. At each tribe hundreds recruited themselves to our adventure, so lifted out of themselves as to offer all they owned, bronze and silver, arms and horses and oxen. Among the Thracian Dii, one lass stood out. This was Dosteia, whom the corps came to call “Stuff.” Thrice in one departure this girl was rousted from the waggons of our commissariat, each time returning to stow away again. At her last ejection she flung herself before Skyleia, captain of the column, with a flint knife at her own throat, threatening to slay herself there in the road if we would not take her. “What will your father say?” Skyleia confronted the maid through an interpreter.

  “Let him salute this!” cried the child, lifting her skirts. The corps howled.

  Skyleia indicated the baggage train. “Pack yourself among the stuff!” The girl did not wait for the translation. “Stuff!” she cried. From then on, that’s what we called her.

  The army breasted the Strymon in cold so bitter that dagger blades came undone from their hafts; touch iron and your flesh peeled away in sheaves. Still, recruits poured in. My pony fell in step beside Eleuthera one gale-scoured noon. Why, I shouted into the blizzard’s teeth, did these tribesmen permit us passage? We claimed no alliance with them; the treasures we bore them were but baubles to these lords, who held lands in leagues and herds by tens of thousands. They had suffered no ills at Athens’s hands; most had never ventured within two months’ ride of the place and never would have, except for us. They should have fortified the passes against us and blockaded us in force on the plains. But they didn’t. They opened their highways and storehouses. They showered us with provisions and permitted their noblest youths to march off with us to war. Why?

  “Because,” Eleuthera answered, “they fear Theseus more than they fear us.”

  At once I knew she was right. These rude princes understood in their guts that tomorrow lay not with them and the free life of the plains, but with the city and its walls and ships and, before all, the engine of its ascendancy, the masses of its commons.

  “The army of Amazonia passes over these princes’ lands and moves on. Theseus’ army, the army of the city, comes and stays. It will efface these clansmen and their way of life as surely as it will us and ours.” My friend whose name means Freedom turned to me, her breath pluming upon the air. “And nothing we can do will stop it.”

  But our story has gotten ahead of itself. Let us reverse two years and address how the march on Athens came to be conceived and put into action.

  On the night of Antiope’s flight aboard the ships of Theseus, the corps of Amazonia, which had watched in impotent fury as the vessels glided from its grasp, repaired to the Mound City in a state of dismay and dislocation. All sensed that an epochal overthrow had taken place, yet none knew what to think of it. We were lost. We did not know what to do.

  Rumors raged through the assembly. One declared that Antiope had dueled at Theseus’ shoulder beside the ships; she had fought against our own people, this report proclaimed, and taken flight of her own free will. Another story said she was dead, slain by Theseus, her corpse borne to Athens as his prize of war. A third restated the calumny that Theseus and Antiope had conspired to assassinate Eleuthera but, this treason discovered, had been forced to flee for their lives. Such profusion of hearsay cast the congress into chaos. I recall my own novices, Kalkea and Arsinoe, so beside themselves with agitation that I must apply the quirt just to make them obey me.

  The Mound City has only one square great enough to accommodate the nation entire, the Grand Avenue beneath the outer earthworks, the site where Antiope had dueled the princes Borges and Arsaces two months previous. Within this plaza the
host now assembled. The hour was past midnight; rumor and slander continued to whipsaw the throng. From the same platform on which Theseus and Antiope had jousted so brilliantly during the Gathering, lesser orators now offered hearsay and humbug as to what had driven them forth. At last Eleuthera and her Companions, among whom I took pride to number myself, succeeded in clearing the stand and restoring order. The host hailed its new commander, crying her forward to rally the nation, inform it of the truth. Eleuthera addressed the corps from the Stone Palisade.

  Our Lady Antiope had been raped, she declared.

  At swordpoint and employing a force of men at arms, the pirate Theseus had ravished Antiope in the mountains (so Eleuthera swore), where she had gone alone to seek counsel of heaven after the victory of the Parched Hills.

  Theseus had caught Antiope, Eleuthera proclaimed, unarmed and at her prayers. But such was the least of the evils inflicted by this villain, for he had stolen not only our lady’s virtue but her wits. Among his company stood warlocks and sorcerers, who had drugged our queen and made her turn against her people. Antiope fought these potions with all her strength, Eleuthera now reported. But Theseus’ magicians, in league with Hades and those gods who hate the free people, had overcome her. Torn with grief at her violation, our lady sought to return to us, her people, but in our blindness—here Eleuthera included herself among the blameworthy—we had spurned her. At last, helpless beneath the alien’s evil draughts, Antiope fell.

  Raped and kidnapped!

  Borne in bondage across the sea!

  Of course I knew this to be rubbish. Yet the people devoured it as fact. The host thundered in approbation. At one stroke all trepidation fled the corps, supplanted by hate and lyssa, war fury. The nation clamored for vengeance, shrilling Antiope’s name as its battle cry, and calling upon Eleuthera to lead it in avenging her abduction.

  Over succeeding days, reports corroborated Eleuthera’s story. Drudges who had served the Greek camp were produced and tortured; they repeated her account word for word. Eyewitnesses came forward of our own people, swearing mighty oaths that they had been present upon the strand where Theseus’ ships lay beached; they had seen Antiope dragged from her horse by a mob of men whence, her will vitiated by the narcotics with which her predator had enfeebled her, she fell resisting to the last.

  More troubling to the people was this dispatch from the east: the pirate Theseus’ vessels, far from sailing west toward home, had beyond sight of shore put about toward Colchis and the river Phasis. There even now, the report declared, the Greeks traded for iron with the Chalybes, grain with the Royal Scyths, and gold with the Rhipaean Caucasians. In each land (so these reports told), possession of our queen had elevated Theseus’ prestige spectacularly, while painting us as impotent and vulnerable.

  North of the Mound City is an eminence, the Hill of Ares, upon which the Council convenes, in a pavilion erected for such occasion, to debate and declare war. To this site Eleuthera and her Companions made, myself among them, ten days subsequent to Antiope’s flight. We purified the ground and set up the Council tent. Past dark on the eve of assembly, chance set me at Eleuthera’s shoulder within the pavilion. My heart was afflicted and she saw it.

  “Spit it out,” my friend commanded.

  I obeyed. “You have spoken falsely before the people.” From my breast burst this indictment: “Antiope was not raped and you know it. She fled willingly. You compelled her with your two hundred. You meant to murder her!”

  The Companions drew up in astonishment at this outburst from me. Eleuthera responded for all to hear.

  “Do not confront me, Selene, with the fatuous indignation of a child. We are women now. Antiope had to die. I took the step to effect it. I miscalculated one factor only—the power of her presence. Two hundred I sent, and she cowed them all!”

  My mate met my eye with a look I had never seen. “Understand this, Selene. From the moment our lady sought clemency for the foe at the Tanais, her doom was sealed. She knew it. All that wanted was the site and the hour. Let her be slain by her sisters; this would be well. The nation may grieve and grant her honor. An orderly transition of power may take place. More important, our enemies will perceive no crisis. One outcome alone could not be permitted, the very one which has eventuated: that Antiope flee or be stolen alive by such pirates as the Greeks.

  “Nor is this the worst of it, my friend. But Antiope has abandoned us, not for love of a man (which I could admire, after all, as it is founded on passion and ecstasy) but because her heart has rejected the way we live and who we are. She has named us savages. Our society she abhors as unnatural and condemned.”

  Two pages chanced to enter at this moment. Eleuthera banished them with a glower. She turned back, not to me alone but to the others of her circle—Stratonike and Skyleia; Alcippe and Glauke Grey Eyes, Tecmessa, Xanthe, and my sister Chryssa, as well as Electra, Adrasteia, and Pantariste.

  “Antiope believes Theseus superior to us. She warrants his way worthier than ours. And here is a further truth, Selene, since you prize candor so highly: if the people learn this, it will crush them. Do you doubt? Then tell your tale. Tell the people there was no rape. Tell them our lady flew, uncoerced and unabducted. And while you’re at it, tell them she is with child. Theseus’ child. Tell them that knowing herself to be impregnated, she fled to bear her babe at Athens. Tell them that. Do you know what will happen? They will not believe you. They will take your life on the spot for offering such slander, which in their hearts they know to be true but cannot bear to hear spoken.”

  Eleuthera addressed the Companions. “Understand, my friends. Tal Kyrte’s ways are pure but they are also vulnerable. The stainless heart is most easily corrupted. As Antiope fell, so others may, and by the same contagion. So I keep it simple for the people. I tell them the foe has forced Antiope’s flesh. This is enough. This they understand.”

  I sought to protest. Eleuthera cut me off.

  “You have imbibed too much of civilization, Selene. Your sojourn among the shopkeepers of Sinope has estranged you from tal Kyrte’s simple ways. This is why you take Antiope’s side against me. It is why you have found a lover among men, as she did, and surrendered yourself to him as she to Theseus. Your devotion you have withdrawn from me, Selene, whom once you loved beyond all others.”

  Eleuthera turned away. I saw that the loss of Antiope’s love—and perhaps mine as well—had stricken her to the quick. I would have felt pity for her had she been less formidable. One might as well dole leniency to a lioness.

  Voices could be heard outside the tent. The elders entered for their convocation and, discovering Eleuthera and her Companions in the posture of conflict, held up at the portal, preserving our dignity by affecting not to see. In moments we had hustled the site into shape. The council reentered and took their places, seventeen in all, including male chieftains of the Maeotians and Gagarians, the body as a whole presided over by Hippolyta as peace queen and ranking elder.

  A page attended each councilor. These set before their mistresses the low four-legged altars tal Kyrte calls “smokers.” The pages piled sweet herbs atop each, lit the mounds and withdrew. The elders, sitting cross-legged, plied the ascending vapors with their palms and their raven and eagle wings, drawing the wisps over their crowns and shoulders, inhaling. None spoke, but each convened with her own spirit, while the priestess chanted the invocation and call for counsel. The chamber thickened, blue with smoke. At last, by a look Hippolyta indicated Eleuthera, directing her to begin.

  Eleuthera spoke from her seat, cross-legged, within the circle. She did not plunge at once into matters as a Greek would, but offered first prayers for the free people’s well-being. She acknowledged her own shortcomings as a commander, praised the elders for their forbearance, and supplicated heaven for guidance in the days to come. The council looked in every direction except hers; they seemed barely to attend her. Yet they missed nothing. Observing, one marked only the graceful plying of palms and raven wings, and the smo
ke passing over each listener in purifying purpose. Eleuthera spoke of Antiope and the loss the nation had suffered. She remarked the consternation into which the people had been cast and assailed those who sought to underportray its moment. Then, speaking calmly but with emphasis, she arrived at the meat.

  “In the absconding of Antiope, I perceive an epochal overthrow which threatens the very survival of the nation. Here, my heart tells me, is the most critical reverse since the champions fell before Heracles, not only for the blow it deals the people’s self-certitude, but, far more gravely, for the evil it will inspire in our enemies. The nations of the steppe are superstitious. They will perceive in Antiope’s flight evidence of heaven’s disaffection. With her has perished our aedor, they will believe, our soul and power. The princes of the plains will be emboldened to make trial of us, perhaps not at once, perhaps not in force, but by degrees they will be nerved to step up their aggression along our frontiers, to poach more aggressively upon our herds. Nor may we except our foes across the sea, Hittites and Armenians, Medians and Cappadocians, not to say Pelasgians and Greeks, who will be drawn like wolves smelling blood.