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

by Steven Pressfield

  Roars seconded this. Stratonike spoke: “Where is the honor in dueling those who huddle behind walls and within holes in the ground? They sally to daylight as beetles, trundling their shields before them like balls of dung!” That day, the ninth in a row, our companies had routed the foe in the open, only to have him tuck tail and scurry behind his battlements, from whose heights he launched stones from ramps and machines. Stratonike howled at such abdications of honor. “I will not fall, crushed like an insect! Where is the fame in this?”

  The Scyths and Massa Getai added their outrage to the chorus, though for another reason.

  “No gold in this country!” This was Borges’ complaint, himself blind-soused three hours before midnight. His men could find neither horses nor cattle on this godforsaken promontory, he proclaimed, but only leeks and goats.

  Prince Saduces of the Thracians arose, attempting a case for siegecraft. Our army must build walls of circumvallation, set sappers to dig tunnels, construct siege towers and rams. He was shouted down by knights of all nations, despising this vocation of drudges.

  Glauke Grey Eyes seconded her sister Stratonike’s contempt for the foe. “Who would display a scalp from men of Athens? Behold their potbellies and spindly shanks. We duel not knights but carpenters!”

  Makalas, prince of the Chalybes, backed Saduces, emphasizing the strength of the enemy’s position and urging that we, the allies, make study of siegecraft.

  Alcippe Powerful Mare told the army’s answer. “I know all I need to know of siegecraft. It is warfare shorn of honor.”

  Ecstatic citation acclaimed this.

  “At home,” Alcippe railed, “if someone ordered me off my horse to root in the muck like a sow, I would flay him on the spot. Now I do it all day! What are we becoming, protracting this siege? We will turn farmers, or worse!”

  “Indeed,” Skyleia picked up the tirade she had initiated, “we came to this war as innocents. We imagined we could shame the Athenians, as any warrior people, either compelling them to face us and be defeated or, by driving them behind their walls, heap upon them such ignominy as to render them impotent forever.

  “We were wrong. The Athenians have no shame. I despise them! Their land is so poor they have no deer or lions but only hares, and scrawny at that. What kind of people inhabit such a country? Who elects to gnaw green berries and dry crusts? I hate this place!”

  When the army had cheered itself out and had at last, it seemed, spent its outrage, Eleuthera rose.

  “Sisters, no act would afford me greater satisfaction than to show my backside to this sump hole. I squat over it! I piss upon it!”

  Clamorous acclaim saluted this.

  “I would load up this instant and leave these catamites to steep in their own offal. But hear me, sisters and allies. If we pack up now, the very shamelessness by which our enemies confound us will be invoked by them to claim victory.”

  Howls of outrage ascended. Eleuthera signed for silence.

  “Yes, victory. For what is victory but the driving of the foe from the field? Give Theseus this: he is a genius. And his discovery consists in this debasement of virtue—to prevail at the sacrifice of honor. This is the Athenians’ invention, by which they will overturn all that is free and noble in the world.”

  The throng roared, indignant.

  “Therefore I say: We may not pull out. We may not permit these vermin to claim victory by boring us to death or stupefying us from want of action!”

  Riot acclaimed this.

  “Further, we must not content ourselves with besting these mechanics as we would knights upon the steppe—that is, by counting coup and allowing them to live. We must wipe them out utterly, as an abomination upon the earth and an affront to heaven! Exterminate them to the last man! Enslave the last child and woman! Burn all to the ground! For the crime these reptiles have offered is that most abhorred by heaven, to degrade not only themselves but all who hold to honor and the warrior’s code!”

  For ten days attacks redoubled. Our cohorts overran the last suburbs. The foe fell back to the town. The wall defending this was unfinished. It was nothing but the facings of houses (so squat one could vault to its summit with a leap from her horse’s back) with alleys and lanes bricked up in between. Sections were not even breastworks, but palisades of hides and wicker. We must storm this and root these swine from their sties.

  Eleuthera attacked at the thirty-second dawn. Before the Rock had emerged from shadow, Theseus and his champions broke in disorder. Companies of tal Kyrte punched through the ramparts in a hundred places. Taurian and Lykian infantry swarmed into the borough of East Melite. The clans under Borges cut off two thousand of the foe on the Hill of the Muses; the Scyths swept into Itoneia. The enemy reeled rearward on every front; it seemed the assault would drive him all the way back to the base of the Rock. But pockets of resistance held. The maze of the town frustrated horse tactics. How could one fight in such a labyrinth? Past noon the Athenians, resisting with unwonted stubbornness, recaptured two key salients—the Temple of Herse and Pandrosos and the Square of the Return—from which, when these companies linked with their cut-off troops on the Hill of the Muses, they were able to mount counterattacks on vulnerable flanks of our allies’ advance. Give the foe this: he would not quit. It took till the descent of darkness to root him off the Muses’ Hill and drive him back into the city. Eleuthera ordered the town razed to its paving stones. This was more easily said than done, however, as the knights of tal Kyrte would stoop to such labor no more than Borges’ Iron Mountain Scyths or any of the mounted clans of the steppe, to whom such toil is degrading and abhorrent. Yet it must be done, for without leveling the town, the camps of our army, now throttling the city like a noose, remained vulnerable to counterattack. If Theseus elected to break out in force (and he was canny enough to see that he must), we would be dueling his shield-trundling rabble within a rabbit warren of streets that could not be defended on horseback. We would find ourselves back where the day had started: clashing in a maze of lanes and alleys, within which the might of our mounted cohorts was, if not overturned, then at least neutralized. We must attack. An assault must be mounted at once against the walls of the city, behind which the foe had been, for the moment, driven—that is, the Outer, or, Lykomid Wall and, behind and above, the Nine Gates and the towers of the Half Ring. All must fall. We must drive the enemy to the summit of the Acropolis itself.

  Among tal Kyrte, the unit of cavalry is called a “stick.” Its complement is eleven (though some in raids are small as four or in sweeps as great as thirty). A stick’s string is forty-four, four horses for each woman. Its trikona is twenty-two, maidens and novices in support, each with her own mount in addition to those of the string, and as many more as she can carry, meaning feed and find time to tend.

  These were the warriors of my stick on the day the divisions under Eleuthera assaulted the Lykomid Wall: Anthea, called “Torch”; Arge Fleet; my sister Chryssa; Bremusa, “Blur”; Hesione, who fought with the macerra, the ten-foot pike; Calliste, “Beautiful”; Euippe, who had taken seven scalps at the Tanais; Theodora, past forty years and strongest of the lot; Scotia, “Dark”; Rhodippe Red Mare; along with our eager recruit of Thrace, Dosteia, called Stuff.

  My own horses were Daybreak, Knothole, Thrush, and Snakebite, the last my night horse though Knothole, so named for his toughness, moved surefootedly in the dark as well.

  This was one stick. Above a thousand comprised the corps, with seven hundred more, give or take, of our male allies. With this, my own, I would take on twice its number, the cream of any nation.

  The attack came on the forty-first day. Here was how it went:

  The buildings of the outer town had been broken up, as much as one could such a hive hewn of stone, isolating the city behind its Outer Wall, the Lykomid. The wall was no unbroken rampart, however, but the foe had erected redoubts and salients before it at sites of vulnerability. Staked ditches broke up the approaches. The defenders’ outcamps at the west were
three, at the crown of inclines fronting the Sacred and Panathenaic Gates and at the outer bastion which shielded the Nine Gates. Each was manned by about two thousand, protected likewise by staked ditches and palisades. The slopes north and east of the Acropolis had been quit by tal Kyrte. Too steep to attack. The assault would concentrate on the south and west, beneath the Hill of Ares. The northernmost redoubt fronting the Nine Gates was called the Ravelin. This was the bulwark my stick would attack.

  The honor of comprising the first wave went to the Themiscyra, Hippolyta’s tribe, and to prince Saduces’ Trallian Thracians, all mounted archers, reinforced by elements of the Saii, armored as shock troops, with knights of the Massa Getai and Thyssa Getai fighting on foot. My unit was in the third wave, with six others of the Lycasteia and eight of the Titaneia. The plan was to assault with male infantry first; the wings of horse would follow when these had punched through. It looked good sketched in the dirt. We painted up and made our prayers. Mine was this: that should I encounter Damon across the line of battle, I would own the courage to cut him down. Between the Hill of the Pnyx and the Hill of the Muses, Eleuthera drew up four thousand horse, a mixed company of Lykians, Dardanians, and Amazons. These were to sweep the field once our assault had initiated the rout.

  The battle was preceded by Eleuthera drawing up the cohort of Antiope, with Sneak Biscuits riderless at the fore, and calling to the foe’s camp for our mistress. Volleys of obscenities came back. Before the line, the priestess sacrificed a black ram to Hecate. The hymn to Ares Manslayer resounded. The attack began.

  I had never commanded before, that is, been responsible for lives other than my own. The experience was excruciating. How can one take care for even her own survival, let alone that of others? I ranged the line as the corps marshaled, exhorting vigilance. “Don’t look so serious,” my sister called. “We won’t fall off!”

  With a cry the male infantry charged out. I have never seen men so drunk. The line was littered with discarded skins and “nosefuls.” Still they were magnificent, the Getai with their fox-fur shakos and ten-foot pikes, the Saii pushing fire waggons with tinder prows bigger than warships. Our cavalry squadrons were supposed to hold till the foe had been engaged. But riders and horses became so excited they could not be contained. Sticks of the Titaneia, the two foreranks, bolted onto the field, overtaking the foot troops before these had got within a furlong of the walls. Within ten heartbeats the trick had broken down to fiasco.

  The course was all uphill, white limestone crazed with fissures, the worst footing imaginable for a mounted charge. The horses’ hooves skittered on the stone; mounts spilled, fouling the squadrons laboring up the slopes behind. Attacking uphill the horses presented their breasts to the missiles of the foe, who had the advantage of slinging from above, so that our troops in the assault entered the beaten zone of their artillery a hundred feet before they could bring their own weapons to bear. A hundred feet is an eternity under fire. The Athenians bawled from the heights and let fly. Neither Scyths nor Thracians succeeded in breasting the works nor even attempted to, but beat across on the oblique, launching their volleys and coming about amid wild but empty whooping. Not one shaft in a hundred found its mark. All that prevented calamity was the terror of the Athenians. These were either the rabble of the city, or their betters performing as rabble, the main so addled with liquor they could barely stand. I saw man after man make to sling his stone and literally drop it onto his toes, so pissed or terror-befuddled was he.

  Three times the lead units of Amazons and Scyths hurled themselves into the assault; three times they fell back. My stick still hadn’t budged. We had actually dismounted, lashing ox-hide shoes about our mounts’ hooves for footing, when a cry came from the slope to the left. The lines began moving. I could see nothing. “Strap up!” I bawled, more to inspirit my own outfit than from any intelligence of what was going on. We spurred up the stone.

  The face was in natural stair steps, hurdle-high, so that the rider must scissor heels, knees, and thighs with all her strength, while with each vault and leap, her seat made to skid over her mount’s hindquarters. I could feel my arrows jamming like jackstraws in their quiver; I had to take my bow in my teeth; my axe slammed so hard between my shoulder blades I could feel its whetted edge bursting the sheath and dicing into my flesh.

  The bastion our stick attacked was in three linked sectors. The primary was a stockade of oak and ox-hide, at the crown of an eminence, with staked ditches below. Above and left arose a stone salient, which the Athenians called the Nipple, jutting from the slope below the northernmost wing of the Enneapylon, the Nine Gates. Fire from this covered the flank of the outwork. A third position, forward, reinforced this.

  Foot troops of the Saii had breasted the trench that defended the Nipple. They had hauled a fire waggon to the lip, a feat of stupefying valor uphill under a barrage of stone and lead. At the brink, however, we learned later, they were foiled in setting it ablaze. Someone had dropped the fire jar. In frustration the troops rammed the truck unfired into the ditch, where it overturned among the stakes. Miraculously: a causeway!

  Over this the infantry swarmed. Our stick and others spurred after. On the steppe one fights with speed, slinging fire from behind her horse’s bulk while making herself the smallest and fastest-moving target she can. Not here. The Saii were assaulting the Nipple. The oak stockade protected this position; fire poured from it upon our allies. It was our job to take it, and this could only be done, we saw now, by foot assault.

  The tower was two stories, hexagonal, with bunkers at three corners. The timbers were uprights. The gaps formed embrasures. Through these the foe fired bronzeheads and thrust outward with the ten-foot spear and the marine pike. Oak will not burn and is too tough to be hacked through. The only way was up and over.

  Nimblest of our stick was the maiden Stuff. She taught us a new trick. She drove her mount tight to the stockade, springing from his withers with an axe in each hand; she drove these into the timbers above her head, hauling herself up hand over hand with a swiftness I could not have believed if I hadn’t seen it. At the brink she vanished. The next instant a brute of the foe appeared, clutching his guts and pitching face-foremost from the peak. Stuff was in! She hauled up Anthea and my sister, packing fire. I and four others went against the wall on foot.

  On the southern wall of the stockade a stick of the Titaneia had got a line down; they were going over on that side. The fort had no portal; the defenders got in and out by ladders. I shouted to Stuff to find one and lob it over. She could not hear. We were at the north wall. Defenders thrust through the embrasures with ten-foot pikes. Rhodippe hacked one to splinters with her axe; I seized the shaft of another with both fists and hauled with all my strength. The spearman inside pulled back. I was stronger; I wrenched it from his grip. Bremusa and Hesione had dismounted too. We beat back the foe’s spears with our axes, then pressed against the stockade wall, firing ironheads through the gaps. Such elation cannot be told. We hacked through the ties of the timber and hauled the wall down with our horses. Above us the Saii whooped atop the Nipple.

  We were in the city. The breastworks of the Outer Wall, the Lykomid, dropped behind; the towers of the Half Ring loomed above. The place was a neighborhood, a civilian quarter. The foe had been clever; he had walled up lanes and alleys at random, so that attackers could not tell, spurring into one, whether it led onward or into a dead end. Our horse troops fell for this trick more than once, chasing gangs of the foe into bystreets, only to find ourselves penned on three sides, while he, in squads of ambushers, scurried from house interior to house interior, through whose party walls he had punched passageways, emerging to sling darts from alley grates or unleash fusillades of stones from the peaks of rooves.

  We galloped onto the Ring Road. The defenders had broken it up with pitfalls, staked ditches, and leg-breakers. The tents and shacks of his camps fouled the track further; I saw Hesione’s horse pitch into a trench at a gallop, shattering both forelegs and
hurling her rider like a doll.

  Breaches had been opened all along the Lykomid Wall, and through these Saii, Trallian Thracians, and Amazons surged. But the defenders, in addition to their other ploys, had erected cross-bulwarks, firewalls, at right angles to the Outer Wall, with secondary walls cutting off the go-round, and to these they now retreated, hurling stones and missiles, so that our companies had to fight from pocket after pocket, each of which was too confined to permit cavalry tactics and each of which ran exposed to artillery from the Half Ring above. The layout was a labyrinth; all that saved us was the muddle of the foe. The Greeks were mazed with terror. The first crosswall we rushed was of wicker filled with stone. Horses and women jammed up prime for slaughter, but when artillery began raining from above, it was the foe who panicked and not us. We swarmed the wicker hand over hand. Stick after stick punched through the seams. Before us the enemy stampeded for the next wall. “No trophies!” I bawled. “Just cut them down!”

  At each rupture the foe broke before us. The bow was useless. Over such ground no one can ride hands-free. The axe. We fought with the axe and our horses’ hooves, trampling every man we could get under us. The Greeks fought back from trenches and cavities, on their knees, ramming at our mounts’ bellies with pike and spear and the sundered stubs of their one-handers. Artillery rained from the Half Ring above. Chunks of limestone the size of field balls burst at our feet; rebounds caromed, wreaking havoc on the horses when they hit and sowing panic when they didn’t, from the animals’ innate terror of something sharp and fast-moving beneath their vision.

  I cannot say how many walls we assaulted. The hive seemed to go on forever. Our climax came at the crown of an incline. The crew our stick dueled was a dozen, their fort a bathhouse, which stood at the crook of a lane, demolished and afire. Three had mounted to the roof; the rest made their stand behind the court wall. A noble olive rose in the center. Chryssa, Anthea, Stuff, and I took our mounts over the partition. Within the cloister the struggle reached its crisis.