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

by Steven Pressfield

  How long does a battle last? Who can tell, in the soup of it? I found myself afoot amid a huddle of infantry. Amazon cavalry in hundreds drove us in a rout. We fell back to the Antiochid district, directly beneath the Acropolis. Here stood the mansions of the great families, the court dwellings of Cecrops and Aegeus and Erechtheus and the ancient bastions of Erichthonius and Cranaus and Actaeus, constructed of stones so massive they could not have been set in place by men but only giants. The foe had not been able to wreck these citadels when she leveled the surrounding shanties. As our companies fled into this province, a miraculous revolution took place.

  The stoneworks of the great manors broke up the enemy’s pursuit. Mounds of rubble offered us ammunition. A wall stood under construction bisecting the Hoplites’ Square; our masons had thrown it up before Borges’ Scyths had overrun the quarter. Our corps now poured over this in flight. Inspired by heaven, or only the serendipity of the magazine, men snatched up stones and hurled them in fusillades upon the horsewomen. It worked! If not at first upon the Amazons themselves, who smelled victory and ravened for our blood, then upon their animals, to whom blows about the chest, legs, and head, and especially the barrages of stones beating about their feet, broke their order. The foe’s rush split apart in the face of these broadsides.

  The square had been carved into trenches by our defenders earlier in the siege, and these now worked further mischief to the enemy, for when her reinforcing companies burst onto the site, their rear elements, blinded amid the dust and smoke, pressed unwittingly upon the fore, driving them onto the excavations. The floors of these lay spiked with a jumble of fittings, debris, timbers, and stakes, onto whose jagged ends horses and riders now plunged at the rush. Was this luck or a god’s hand? Who cared? For the first time our companies heard the foe cry in anguish and saw her bleed red blood.

  The quarter itself proved wonderfully defensible. For these ancient estates had been strongholds in their day; their construction, of walls enclosing courts, acted like a series of forts. Often two or three commanded a square, their proximity producing interlocking fields of fire, so that one house protected another. Our men mounted to courtyard walls as if to battlements and from them slung stones and bricks. Here too the prowess of our Cretan archers proved miraculous, for, given an elevated platform, and a stationary one, they could shoot like gods.

  The fight, which had started as a sally, turned into an all-day war. Our side began to discover its courage. Singing the Hymn to Athena Promachos, our men, first in tens and twelves, then in platoons as great as forty, braved rushes upon the foe. The trick, we learned, was to lap shields into an unbroken wall, projecting from this the shafts and warheads of the eight-foot spear. Again it was less the Amazons who were unnerved than their horses. The creatures seemed to perceive the phalanx as a single beast of bronze. They spooked and shied and, once spiked, needed the whip to be induced to charge again.

  The defenders had learned to knit a line of houses into a wall. We had got the knack of throwing up barricades between buildings or even between mounds of rubble, binding a block or square into a defensible redoubt. We knew too to punch holes in the party walls between the houses, fighting and retreating from one to the next. As the foe advanced, our fellows bolted through one mousehole to the next, sealing each with rubble and timbers as they went. It did not require mason-built walls to repel cavalry, we learned, but only a pile of stones too high for a horse to leap and pocked with too many voids to overrun. Better yet, walls and ammunition were the same. Had you shivered your eight-footer? Grab a stone and sling it. A two-pounder can knock out a jawful of teeth. A fiver will stave a skull.

  Since each lane mounted in elevation toward the Acropolis, the defenders discovered they could retreat uphill from one position to the next. For the foe, taking one fort made it no easier to take the next, but each exacted its toll on warriors and horses. This was not how Amazons fought. They hated it. It was unknightly. Worse for them, in those lanes beneath the overstanding Acropolis, artillery of stones could be called in from above to cover a beleaguered position. A wing of Taurian infantry had backed a platoon of ours against the face of the Rock. Tons thundered upon the foe from above, knocking half to hell in a single bombardment, breaking their charge and daunting all enemy units to try again.

  Yet again they came. Toward evening I saw Hippolyta thunder into the Square of the Basket Bearers. She led a hundred upon our corps of forty. We hunkered, shields lapped and spear points projecting, while they flung shaft after shaft upon us. Yet the wall of shields did not break, and when the horse rush receded, we found courage to pursue, putting up a clamor. We had learned to honeycomb our lines, so that the second rank of spearmen could thrust through the gaps left open by the first, thus doubling our front of pikes, and to maintain this cohesion in retreat as well as attack. Again, it worked. If we kept together, it worked.

  There is this too about an army of disunited allies, as our besiegers were. Each is jealous of his turf; he fends his own patch like a staked cur, but will not donate a gob of spit to preserve his fellow’s. Our companies found seams between the foes’ camps. Here we could fight. Within such pockets Athenian squadrons could take ground and even fortify it.

  Theseus fought with superhuman valor, migrating from battalion to battalion across the field. It seemed he knew every countryman’s name, and his wife’s and children’s too, and to each standing at his shoulder infused tribute and resolve. Or perhaps it was a god taking our king’s form.

  Lykos too displayed courage commensurate to his rank. He had come back through the lines from the bastion at Lykabettos, with two companies led by the heroes Peteos, called “the Tower,” and Stichios, hailed as “Ox” for the ferocious rush he employed in wrestling, which proved of even more terrific effect in close fighting. With this guard Lykos joined Theseus, Pirithous, and the hero Peleus. These, seconded by Menestheus, Peteos’ son, Pylades the boxer and Telephos, champions of the city, thrust on foot into the teeth of the enemy advance. You could see down the hill the pockets of resistance created by each principal. Where the channel of the Ilissus divides is a footbridge called the Girdle, because in ancient times condemned men were led across it, by their belts, to their executions. Here Lykos, fighting with only Peteos, Ox, and their squires, held back half a hundred horse, enduring clouds of missiles, then rushing with their spears upon the foremost riders. Theseus and Pirithous fought with matching valor, holding first the crossroads before the shop of the barber Timaeus, then the mouth of the Street of the Saddlers. But such a defense of champions could not hold. Each pocket drew more and more gallants of the foe, fired to make a famous kill. The heroes fell back, making a wall of their shields, into which the shafts of the foe affixed in such numbers that each face bristled like a hedgehog’s back.

  In the end the foe’s numbers were simply too many. Pocket by pocket, Athenian resistance broke. The exhausted remnant fell back toward the Rock. The Enneapylon still held. Hundreds reached safety through the Sacred and Aegeid Gates. This was on the west. I was on the south. These were the companies under Theseus. Our only way in was through the Callirhoe or the Melitic, and we were cut off from them by an eighth of a mile of field. We could see the ramparts and our countrymen lowering lines and ladders, crying, Hurry brothers! Fall back!

  The companies outside the walls were down to a thousand men, half of whom were wounded so severely as to be unable to fight, with another quarter incapable even of getting off the field under their own power. About these swirled horse troops of Amazonia and Scythia and tribesmen on foot in numbers ten times theirs. The hero Pirithous had fallen to wounds, beaten by Borges the Scyth. He had been evacuated to the summit. The knight Peleus had likewise succumbed, driven down by Eleuthera. Theseus and the surviving captains rallied the mass into a perimeter, shield to shield. Two hundred feet separated us from the wall and deliverance.

  We could not get across. Eleuthera, Borges, and their champions had massed in our way. They could have overrun the
walls, so great were their numbers, but for the fire of our artillerymen on the summit, who kept up barrages of stones, some as massive as fifty and sixty pounds, to keep a lane clear between ourselves and safety.

  The foe soon got the hang of dodging these rock falls. She reckoned how far she could advance and how long each battery took to reload. Each time our pack bolted into the no-man’s-land between ourselves and the walls, the foe’s companies hurled themselves upon us. Our countrymen above were forced to break off their volleys, lest they pulverize us along with the foe, and in this interval the enemy ground our rush to mince.

  Night was falling. Four times our corps sallied; four times we were beaten back. With each, more of ours fell wounded. Worse, when we abandoned the safety of one position, Scythian and Amazon cavalry seized it and launched from it yet more terrific volleys.

  Eleuthera ranged before the Callirhoe Gate, barring our entry. “Coward with the heart of a deer!” she bawled to Theseus. “You should have fought me when you had the chance! Your corpse would now feed crows and dogs, but you would at least have fallen with honor!”

  Our pack had strength for one more rush. We knew it and so did the foe. All vaunting ceased. I could see Eleuthera prowling the front, mounted on her long-legged Soup Bones. The champions of Amazonia massed at her shoulder. Hippolyta and Skyleia; Alcippe and Stratonike; Glauke, Enyo, Deino, Adrasteia, Tecmessa, Xanthe, Evandre, Antibrote, Pantariste, Electra, and Selene. And Borges and Saduces and Hermon of the allies. Here was their chance to cut out the living heart of our corps, and to do so before the eyes of the last defenders. Across the field, infantry and squires of the foe scurried in hundreds, hauling off all impediments to cavalry, clearing the field for our slaughter.

  Our company formed into a hollow square, meaning those on the right had to advance backward, so that their shields would protect that flank. Theseus passed among the company. No speeches now. “Athena Protectress!” he cried, cinching up. “Athens and Victory!”

  With a shout the mass pushed off. Scythian foot troops immediately swept in to seize the heights of our vacated position. The foe began pouring bowfire from there. Amazon horse attacked from both flanks. We huddled in our moving square, men falling and tripping, particularly the side I held to, the right, which must advance backpedaling. The Amazons shot their bolts across the tops of our shields, right firing on left and left on right. A man hit may not fall but must make his way as best he could, for to drop underfoot would impede his mates, who were already burdened with wounded. The Scyths fell upon the rear in waves, attacking not only with spears and axes but with great stones, twenty- and thirty-pounders, which the tribesmen bore in two hands over their heads and hurled in a howling rush upon the shields of our rear ranks. When these buckled, the savages flung themselves bodily upon the facings, clawing at the shield rims and pulling them down by the weight of their flesh. The foe attacked clad in mantles of bearskin and bull’s hide, many with heads and horns still on, which rendered their apparition even more beastlike, and against which the thrusting sword was worthless as a wand. The brutes poured flush among us. The Amazons fired indiscriminately into the mass; one found himself employing as cover the torsos of the very tribesmen beneath whose onslaught he reeled. So many sprouted arrows, foe as well as friend, that men began stumbling and fouling on the shafts which jutted, numerous as seamstress’s pins, from shields and breastplates and living flesh. Artillery stones continued to plummet from the chutes two hundred feet above, keeping clear the last fifty feet before the walls. The sound these boulders made as they shattered on the stone was appalling, not to say the blast of shards which mowed men down like sling bullets, and the choking clouds which roiled upon all, enlarging the theater of terror.

  Now came the final push. The artillery atop the Acropolis ceased firing. Across no-man’s-land our swarm surged. Our object was a front of wall between two turrets, perhaps a hundred feet across, atop which hung our countrymen, lowering ropes and ladders. As the foreranks reached this face and began to scale it, the center compressed against them, driven by the terror of the foe at the rear, who cursed their countrymen for mounting so tardily. The mob bunched up like bees. In its midst an undigested clot of Scyths went after us with shortswords and bare hands. From all sides pressed Amazon cavalry. As our fellows mounted rung to rung and hand over hand, the foe fired into their exposed backs or, upon those who had draped their shields turtle-style, into their legs and arms. Bodies plummeted from the face; blood and piss sheeted down the stone. I found myself at the foot of a ladder and confess I kept sending others up before me. If I could have burrowed into the rock, I’d have done it and traded places eagerly with a worm. The ground at our feet was strewn with splinters of the boulders already dropped from above. When you lost footing, which you did again and again in that mob, shards ripped your knees and palms. Thighs and arms grew lacquered with blood, to which the stone dust adhered, bleaching all to an unearthly pallor. The sight was ghastly beyond recounting, as it seemed not men but shades dueled, and not aboveground but in some sun-forsaken netherworld.

  Eleuthera led the rush upon us. At her side pressed Stratonike and Skyleia, Alcippe and Glauke Grey Eyes; Evandre and Pantariste; Enyo and Deino and Adrasteia. Theseus massed the stoutest of our corps but the Amazon horse punched through. Their weapon in close quarters is not bow but axe, which they wielded overhand, staving shields and helmets, hacking men through at the neck and cleaving arms at the shoulder. They hauled our ladders down with grapnels and buried their blades in the backs of men mounting the walls. I was flush against the face when a wedge of the foe lanced across, driving us out into the open. More Amazon horse poured in behind. We were cut off. Enemy volleys swept the ramparts above. This was the finish. In moments, all would be lost. Then from the melee arose such a cry as surely none save gods and titans had heard heretofore.

  This was Theseus, bellowing to the gunners overhead. His call ascended not in words but in some idiom primordial. “Upon us!” his cry commanded. Meaning, Loose your stones on us and the foe together!

  My father’s kinsman Talos served among the chute gangs on the summit that day. He told, later, of the despair atop the Acropolis as the artillerymen released their fusillades upon the commingled masses of Athenians, Amazons, and Scyths. With terrible prayers our gunners winched up their drop ramps, while along the brink of the Rock, wives and comrades peered down in horror, beholding their countrymen obliterated alongside the foe. Where I hunkered, flush against the face, was a pocket of safety. Yet such sounds and sights assaulted as none may bear and stay the man he was. Boulders plummeted weighing fifty and a hundred pounds, in salvos across two hundred feet of face. Where this tonnage struck, the concussion was titanic. Fragments as big as a man’s head blew in every direction. I saw Diognetus the weaver sheared off at breast height. One moment he was a man, the next a tower of sundered guts. Stones plummeted in such quantities as to annihilate a square ten yards by ten. Yet pairs of men still contended. Nor did one cry for cessation, so desperate had become the struggle, but each, convinced of his own end, fought only to take his enemy with him to hell.

  Atop the Rock the woe of the artillerymen was amplified by their awareness of that pollution, monstrous and ineradicable, which they brought upon themselves by this slaughter of their countrymen. Men understood, Talos recounted, that this iniquity would haunt them to the end of their days. Numbers defied the order, deeming no fate worth an action so abominable, while others denounced these as traitors. All sacrifice must be borne, however horrible! Your king commands you, at toll of his own life! Men lamented the bitterness of their fate and cried out to the gods to witness their reluctance to perform it. None owned the stomach to look down, my father’s kinsman said, but, weeping, loaded truck upon truck and levered these into the chutes and over. Talos himself did peer from the brink and rued this felony all his days. To see your tons of stone plummet, he declared, while gauging with the eyes, as one cannot help but do, upon which province the mass will fall;
then the impact itself, the shrieking slivers and detonating dust . . .

  Gunners dumped chute upon chute. What else could they do? Their king had commanded, and commanded still. In anguish the men redoubled their salvos, as if by this intensification they could bring the slaughter to a swifter close. Bystanders uncompelled, and even women, seized stones and slung them, amid the most baleful imprecations, upon the foe and on their own.

  The enemy fell back. Our men waded to the walls. Their comrades lowered ropes and poles and even bedding straps. I saw Theseus beneath the eastern turret, defending a patch so that others might climb, before he himself took the tether and was hauled clear. For myself, I mounted the face with my bare hands, securing purchase on such nicks as would not support a lizard, so compelling is the impetus of terror and so mighty the imperative of self-preservation.

  28

  A TRIAL OF AEDOR

  Damon continues:

  Where the marketplace had stood, on the flat beneath the Hill of the Nymphs, was the only level ground that had not been appropriated for camps (the Amazons and Copper River Scyths had rigged it out as a racetrack). Here at the second dawn succeeding the fight, Theseus met Eleuthera in a duel of honor.

  No formal stakes were established, that is, there was no deal that if Theseus won, the Amazons would pack up and go home, nor, should Eleuthera prevail, would the city tuck tail and quit. Nonetheless the freight of the outcome was monumental. The duel would be viewed by both sides as a trial, not only of their champions but of their gods. Who owned the magic? Who had the power? Indeed among the tribes of the East no event, down to the declination of piss in the wind, is accounted innocent of supernatural import. This is why they love to gamble. In the savage’s eyes such sport is no vice (the conception would be absurd to him) but a finding of each man’s soul power, or aedor, as he calls it. A tribesman will bet on anything, from the whorling of leaves in a doorway to the agony of a captive under torture. Let him call the wager right; he is flushed with esteem. Wrong, he plunges to despair.