The land itself lay in ruin. Not a tree remained, it seemed, or a house or gate or so much as a stand of brick against which to rig a tent fly. The sanctuaries of the gods themselves had not been spared, but all, down to the wayside shrine of Pity, had been broken apart, stones conscripted for ammunition. Worst of all was the stench. For days corpses turned up beneath mounds of rubble; rescuers toiled across a landscape of devastation and death.
A perverse malevolence suffused the wrack, Damon reported, by whose mandate, it seemed, no article of site or gear, however humble, might remain unannihilated. So that if you came upon a bench, say, it had been demolished; or a wall, a plate, a child’s doll. Down to single roof tiles, every element fashioned by man had been sundered or riven. If by chance the odd object remained intact, someone came along and smashed it. What the Amazons had not reduced to wreckage, our own countrymen beat down themselves, toward no end but alignment with heaven’s malice and the pitilessness of war. In the end, Damon testified, you could trek from one end of the city to the other and not find a single usable item, other than weapons and fighting kit. The landscape was a wasteland. When the first wives and children were brought back from Euboea, their despair was so great at the ruin of their country that Theseus had to order such repatriation put off, however fervently the men wished their spouses and infants brought home.
Burials began. For days pyres burned in the camps of both armies. It seemed, Damon said, as if grief were the sole commodity the two sides still owned in abundance. The scale of the calamity, now that casualties could be tallied, overwhelmed both nations’ capacity to absorb it. Further, the lines of the foes lay so close across from each other that each could witness the other’s rites and attend his or her hymns of woe. From the Muses’ Hill, Athenians looked on by the thousands as the Amazons interred Eleuthera. When it came time to raise the mound over Antiope, Theseus dispatched a runner to Hippolyta (who now held sole command of the invading army) to inform her that any would be welcomed who wished to attend.
The entire corps of Amazonia crossed over.
After this, rancor relented between the antagonists. Access to springs and wells, particularly the abundant Klepsydra and the Deep Spring within the Rock, was granted by the Athenians to the Amazons. Our countrymen permitted the foe to water her horses and provided a market for grain and food. The invaders let the defenders return to their farms. It came about that numbers of wounded Amazons were ferried to sites of recuperation on Euboea, while others found themselves tended by their former enemies within that bastion they had striven so mightily to surmount, the summit of the Acropolis.
Twenty-nine days after the final clash, terms of truce were ratified upon that site that would come to be called the Horkomosion, the House of Oaths.
That night the Amazons began to withdraw.
36
THE COMPLICITY OF
THE GODS
Uncle brought his tale of battle to its close. The hour was late beside the beached ships on the strand at the Nave of Mercy. Damon glanced to Father, as if asking his permission to append an afterword to his yarn. The company remarked this exchange, curious. Father nodded. Damon took a draught of wine and resumed:
“Now, brothers,” he addressed his shipmates of the posse, “I will tell you something you do not know. Or rather, confirm that which you may have long suspected.”
Damon told of a patrol dispatched to the hill country south of Oinoe, some four or five days after the Amazons’ decampment. The troop’s captain was Xenophanes, brother of the general Lykos; Damon was sergeant of the first platoon, Father its lieutenant. At that site called the Horns, just below the pass, the company came upon a gang of bounty hunters. The bandits had cornered several wounded Amazons in a herder’s hut and were setting up to smoke them out.
“The villains took off when they saw us,” Damon recounted. “We kept back, out of range of the Amazon bows, on a rise overlooking the cottage. Suddenly one of the women emerged, on foot, carrying in her arms the body of another. Elias and I drew up in astonishment.
“The maid was Selene.
“She advanced within a hundred feet of our position. She looked dehydrated and emaciated. If she recognized Elias and me, she did not let on. She identified herself to our captain and called out in Greek that the warrior in her arms was her sister, Chryssa, severely wounded but alive. If our commander would guarantee safe conduct out of Attica to the disabled woman, that is, permit her to be borne on a litter to rejoin the Amazon column withdrawing north, then she, Selene, would surrender herself and serve in any capacity we appointed. Such a prize was unheard of, to take an Amazon alive, and excited our captain Xenophanes no end. He ordered my brother and me forward to examine the wounded warrioress.
“We obeyed. We could see even at a distance that the woman’s overcloak was the same that Chryssa habitually wore. We both recognized Chryssa’s jerkin with its sign of the turtle, and her Phrygian cap trimmed with white marten. But when we got closer we saw that the woman was not Chryssa.
“It was Eleuthera.
“She was alive.
“Elias and I had now drawn up directly before Selene. For our captain’s eyes the maid still feigned not to know us, yet it was plain she understood that one word would mean her end and Eleuthera’s. I shall never forget the expression on my brother’s face. It went without saying that to capture alive the great Eleuthera, whom Athens thought dead and buried, would catapult to fame not only ourselves but our posterity. Down centuries our family would reap the renown of this exploit. My brother met my eyes, then turned back to our captain.
“‘It is the woman’s sister, by name Chryssa,’ he called. ‘I recognize her from the Amazon homeland.’
“At once I confirmed this.
“Selene held her aspect emotionless. She whistled sharply to the tree line. At once two novices materialized (Stuff and another I did not recognize) carrying a reed litter. Elias and I volunteered to escort the outfit north; Xenophanes assented and assigned a detail of eight to accompany us, to protect against the gangs of cutthroats who infested the hills at that time.
“Selene stripped her arms and surrendered herself. Our captain took her into custody.”
Here Damon drew up and again glanced to Father, who was seated at his left beside the beached ships. The brothers’ eyes met, much as they must have in that hour.
“Why did we do it, comrades?” Damon resumed to the posse. “Perhaps a god commanded, compelling our complicity. Perhaps we could not but acknowledge the greatness of the Amazon nation and reckon the ordeal its corps yet faced seeking to get home, or the need it had of Eleuthera, who was the race’s last best hope. Perhaps the selflessness of Selene’s gesture touched our hearts.
“In any event we sealed the compact. We told our lie and made it stick.
“Thus Eleuthera was granted passage home. Thus, after certain negotiations and appropriations, Selene came to serve Elias and be governess to our young Bones here and her sister, Europa. And thus did Selene, all these years later, come to break from her indenture, and we, this posse, to toil in her pursuit.”
37
A NEW ORDER
Damon’s narration had now brought us to the present.
The ships of the posse continued east. We were now well inside the Amazon Sea and within days, Prince Atticus reckoned, of striking the Mound City. Yet nothing we could see on shore resembled the country that Damon had described as existing as recently as twenty years past.
The plateau beneath which we coasted, which Uncle had portrayed in his chronicle as teeming with horses and game, was scored now in the present with waggon ruts and pocked with rude turf granges. Dirty settlements squatted wherever a rill cut down to the sea. These, we learned, were Borges’ property. Vassal villages. They were growing barley and emmer wheat. This was the Scyths’ new business. They did not farm the land themselves, such drudgery being beneath their knightly calling, only swept down twice a year to exact tribute. Borges took this tariff not in
produce, the villagers told us, but in a potent red stout which the locals stored in huge clay jars with the grains of barley still floating on top. The Scyths ringed these vats like pigs at a trough, sucking the brew up through reeds.
What of the Amazons? We had not seen a single one. Only their graves.
The posse had remarked these in numbers for the prior twenty days. They had appeared on promontories visible from the sea, great barrows heaped up in the shape of crescent shields. When our company landed for fresh water or to give the horses a run, more mounds were found. At the Nestrus and Hebrus rivers our parties trekked inland, led by guides. They were shown fords and passes, sites of battle. More graves were seen at the Danuvius and the Tyras. Clearly Hippolyta’s forecast had proved true: those same clansmen who had played servitor to the Amazons at their apex of power had turned predator in their hour of vulnerability.
The posse continued east. With each stop ashore, Atticus inquired of the locals: Had they seen a lone Amazon? Had they seen one traveling with a girl?
The villagers shook their heads.
No Amazons.
No more.
One morning our lookouts spotted wild goats on a headland; Atticus sent in a hunting troop to bag a few for the pot. Beside a stream they discovered a party of women, washing clothes. To our fellows’ amazement the maids inquired of our “other ships.”
Three vessels had put in on this site two days prior, the women reported. The master of this squadron had asked after us, describing our craft precisely. Atticus sought out the village headman. He returned with a letter addressed to us.
“From Theseus,” the prince affirmed to the posse, as astonished as they. He skimmed the roll. “The king has come out from Athens. He has overshot us, so he declares, but will hold for us, east, at the Mound City.”
The squadron put back to sea. Within hours two sail were sighted, Athenian, making for us. Our men hauled, cheering. But when the ships came alongside, our countrymen aboard manned the oars and nothing else. They were held at swordpoint by clansmen of the Scyths.
“Your king is in our hands,” their skipper bawled across, “and commands you to follow us in.”
The Scyths did not board our vessels in mass, only sent pilots over to take us in charge. The dandy posted to Atticus’ ship was no seaman but a buck baron of the plains, handsome and shirtless, wearing doeskin trousers and gold jewelry in such quantity it threatened to pitch the ship out of trim from its weight alone. He was in soaring spirits, clapping our lads like long-lost mates. “You hunt the Amazon,” he divined. “How much? How much?” He meant for her head, if we got it.
Atticus informed him we did not want her head. The buck laughed as if he would fall down. All Greeks were crazy.
It took minutes to discover that he meant Eleuthera, not Selene.
Who was Selene? He had never heard of Selene! He cared nothing for Selene!
“’Leuth’ra, ’Leuth’ra,” the young blood repeated, shouting, as if we were the numbest skulls he had ever encountered.
Our proudfoot narrated his account. The race of Amazons, who had numbered at their peak above a hundred and fifty thousand, lingered now at their last extremity, down to two or three thousand. The main of this remnant, older women and girls, had long since withdrawn north through the Gate of Storms to the Land of Perpetual Snow in the Rhipaean Caucasus. War parties still ventured south however. One of two hundred had struck the herds of Princes Maues and Panasagoras—Borges’ son and nephew—three months ago, driving off two thousand prime stock. A chase had ensued and a battle been fought, north beyond Lake Maeotis, in which half the Amazons had been slain and Eleuthera herself gravely wounded.
Clearly this was the extremity that Theseus had reported to Selene that noon on our farm. It was why Selene had bolted, to offer the Underworld her own life in place of Eleuthera’s. It was why the posse pursued her now.
Eleuthera was forty-one years old, our Scythian brave reported, but still preeminent, the last of her race the clansmen still feared. Maues and Panasagoras were scouring every league of the Wild Lands for her now. When they tracked her down and killed her, the last of the free Amazons would be exterminated, and they, the princes, would have won renown everlasting, to eclipse even Borges, and have attained for themselves supremacy of the steppe.
Our buck assumed that we, the posse, were after Eleuthera too. He would not believe our tale of Selene. He had never heard anything so ridiculous.
The shore we coasted was pastureland descending from high plateau. By nightfall the expanse teemed with the hordes of Scythia. Ahead our lookouts reported harbor beacons. Galleys and traders, broad-beamers, could be glimpsed at anchor. Atticus made to put ashore where we were, several miles short of the Mound City, deeming the run-in too risky in the failing light.
“No stop! No stop!” commanded our gallant. He shouted to his mates in the other ships, who at once bared their blades above our comrades’ throats. “Fires ahead! Lights! Go on!”
Atticus acceded. The ships made for the channel. Thus, on the ninety-ninth day since their embarkation from Athens, the vessels of the posse rowed in and beached upon that shore whose bastion, the Mound City, had once been the seat of the Northern, or Lycasteia, Amazons, the tribe of Antiope, Eleuthera, and Selene.
38
PRINCES OF THE PLAINS
The first items the Scyths seized were our horses. These would be impounded temporarily, Maues’ adjutant assured Atticus and our officers, though it was clear from the glee with which his compatriots took possession of the animals that they would never appear in Athenian livery again.
Our complement was united with Theseus and his crews. The Scyths herded us into one pack, officers alongside men, and drove the lot into a wharfside stock pen whose rails, to keep out wolves, had been topped with rolls of that wicked thorn the Amazons call agre arra, “penance maker.” From these kennels the captives could view their hosts stripping the ships of all articles of value. Our guards had already performed this service upon our persons. Throughout two nights, which yielded sleep only in snatches, Father and Damon secured me in the pocket between them, backed by the crews as one, offering such glowers to our jailers as to preserve me, a lass at the ripest of ages in these blackguards’ eyes, from such uses as they plainly wished to make of me.
The third dawn, Maues and Panasagoras appeared, compassed by their lifeguard of knights. Theseus was hauled forward. It is the nature of the savage not to address but to berate. Our king must endure cataracts of abuse, physical as well as verbal, delivered at such a pitch of outrage, not to say inebriation, as to convince one and all that the sole outcome would be bloody murder. It is all theater to these villains. They champed to torch the ships, which they hated as bearers of evil from afar, and would have, clearly, but for the more attractive prospect of selling craft and crews in one bundle. In the end they detained Theseus, Atticus, and the vessels’ captains. The crews were released, or, more accurately, kicked out, with orders to report back by sunset. “The savages reckon we won’t stray far,” Father observed.
The men were directed by their officers to keep in a body for their own protection. It went without saying that an attempt would be made to retake the ships. Meanwhile, we were free to gawk about the city. Father, Damon, Philippus, and two others—“Beam” and “Mite,” who had come out with Theseus—formed themselves into an outfit.
Mite took charge of me. We were all dirty as death, without even shoes. This put us at a level with the locals. I have never seen such a verminous aggregation. In Amazon days, no permanent habitation had been permitted at the Mound City. The place remained grass and earthworks, consecrated for use only at the season of the Gathering and left to God and the elements the other ten months.
Now a year-round city occupied the site. A boomtown. Its denizens were miners and gamblers, merchants, traders in horses and women, slaves, grain, furs, and gold. Father interrogated our new comrades on Theseus’ advent. When had the king’s ships left Athens,
and why? Had Theseus not sworn never to participate in such a posse?
Mite brought the tale up to the mark.
Two days after Atticus’ ships had sailed from Athens, Theseus had made to offer sacrifice at the tomb of Antiope, beseeching her favor and protection on behalf of the men of the fleet. The king had made something of a show of this, Mite reported, donating an ox and fifty sheep for a great public feast. Crowds thronged the square, eager for a free feed. But as the priests drew forth the bull for sacrifice, the earth shook. So violent was the quake that the very lintel of the tomb crashed. In the city scores of buildings toppled. Hundreds were killed and injured. That this calamity had befallen, not alone before the tomb of our king’s beloved, but on the point of sacrifice of that beast sacred to his reputed father, Poseidon Earthshaker, was an omen whose import it took no seer or mantis to divine.
“The king’s luck had turned evil,” Mite narrated, “and everybody knew it. I served as wrangler on his spread at Phyle. What broke his heart, I saw, was not just the bane of heaven’s enmity, which he had endured all his life, but the treachery and ingratitude of his own countrymen. To behold his political rivals seizing upon his grief to further their own careers—this was the reed that broke the ass’s back. Theseus despaired for the democracy, in whose cause he had donated all. The people hated him and called for his blood. What remained for him at Athens?
“In any event, the prospect of a sea voyage, and the chance of roaming again upon the wild plains of the east, no longer seemed such a chore. He packed his kit himself in minutes.”
Father questioned Mite further. We had heard that Theseus, en route to the Amazon Sea, had offered sacrifice more than once, seeking to appease the ghost of Antiope.
Mite confirmed this. He himself had trekked in the party twice, at Chalcidician Torone and later at the Nine Ways. “But she never comes. Nothing. Not a whisper.”
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