Last of the Amazons

by Steven Pressfield

  At that time, in the aftercourse of the recovery of the herds, all warriors who had taken scalps were giving away horses. This rite is called tal Neda, “the Repayment.” It works like this: A warrior’s mother-mother has the herald cry through the camp the names of those to whom she will present horses and arms. These are usually women between thirty or forty whose daughters have not yet reached majority, honored veterans whose role has evolved to that of dam or mother and who possess slender means of acquiring wealth. These, hearing their names, make their way, convoyed by the lasses they are raising, to the Islet and the Needle, the twin yokes of the pens that form the buttressway to the Mound City. Here the horses are awarded. These will become the mounts given to the recipients’ charges, the young maidens in training, or used to pack their kit, or for trade or sale. The Sky Song is sung and the Hymn to Mother Horse, then the individual war songs of the women. Each of these veterans has her own, of her exploits in battle, and the girls in her charge sing this to honor her, as does the warrior donating the horses. Tal Neda is an occasion of joy, in which the generations are bound—the elder honored, the middle honoring, and the younger feeding upon the interchange.

  This time it was different. Rumors flared among the horse pens. The Greeks, it was said, hatched a plot to assassinate Eleuthera and reestablish Antiope. Theseus would seek to extend Greek power by his bewitchment of our deposed queen, to rob us, as the pirate he was, and turn our enemies upon us. So detailed was this report as to include the watch of the attack and even the names of the conspirators.

  You may imagine the outrage erupting in this train. At its peak Eleuthera herself appeared. She forbade the rumor’s further circulation, but stopped short of denying its substance. When she saw me, she called me to her and commanded me to break off the round of tal Neda. I was to bear a message to Antiope.

  “Our friend is in danger, Selene. You have heard the people; you see their state. Bring Antiope to me. I will protect her.”

  I asked Eleuthera why she did not go herself.

  My mate regarded me queerly. “Let me not be seen approaching her; this will only further publish our break. Rather let the people see us together, bond reaccomplished, as though we had never been estranged.”

  I found Antiope at the Runway, training alone, apart from the seven or eight score who also drilled on the site. She was running the stop-and-go exercises in which one races at full gallop toward a stake or post, to accustom her horse to shy from nothing. Mastery of this skill is fundamental; a girl trains her horse to it before she is six. That Antiope ran these drills now with Sneak Biscuits told she had still not regained her hippeia. But what struck one most was that the lane she had chosen was the most remote from the city, with nothing but open steppe beyond. It was a place where a warrior could not be taken by surprise—and from which she could flee with no obstacle intervening.

  I did not ride directly to Antiope, as that would constitute unseemliness, but drew rein at a distance, held for a time, then trotted off around the shoulder of a rise. I did not have to wait long before Antiope appeared.

  She rode Sneak Biscuits and trailed two more of her string, one pack-laden, the other rigged for battle. Her eye scanned the site for treachery.

  “Eleuthera has sent you,” she spoke by sign.

  I acknowledged this.

  “To assure me it is safe to come to her.”

  Again I confirmed.

  Antiope smiled, rueful.

  “We must cross frontiers now, Selene.”

  I dared not inquire what frontiers she meant, though my heart knew: those borders which separate innocence from necessity, on whose far side one’s dearest love may betray her or use her for infamous ends.

  “Tell me, my friend,” our lady spoke, “have all the people turned against me?”

  “Not all, but …”

  She smiled again.

  “Ah, Selene. You are incapable of perfidy. Would that to preserve you thus would hold you from peril.”

  I read fatigue on her. Care lined her face.

  “Do not wonder, child,” Antiope continued, “that I address you so plainly, as though we were closest of friends, for fate has called us to this juncture together. Do you fear me? That association with one so fallen will work mischief to your ambition?”

  My look must have answered. Antiope acknowledged with sorrow.

  “My years are twenty-seven,” she said. “This is ancient among our people, where many by twenty have donated issue and by thirty have put aside their bridles of war. Yet I have held myself till now anandros, unpossessed by man. Do you know why?”

  I did not.

  “Because I had never found one worthy of me.”

  She laughed.

  “In this you have bested me, Selene, and have not had to tarry so late.”

  I understood. Because love had claimed me, as it had her, I might, when others could not, apprehend the conflict of her heart.

  “Do you remember when we crossed daggers in the earth, Selene, and swore a mighty oath, each to take the life of the other should she fail, through madness spawned by love for a man, to put care of the people before all?”

  Our lady regarded me gravely. “Theseus is a great man, Selene. Not alone for his triumphs as a warrior, which place him second among mortals only to Heracles, but for the flame he bears and the destiny he has been called to champion. Do you understand, my friend? Theseus has taken a nation on his back and embodied in his flesh its ideals and aspirations—and no rude or savage nation, as those that surround us in the Wild Lands, but one whose charge is epochal and noble and unmade heretofore, this thing called Athens and democratia, rule of the people, which Theseus has invented by his own hand and bears as a herald a brand in the wind. The gods are with him in this, Selene. It may be true that he is Poseidon’s son, in that mighty forces stand at his shoulder and that he must bear the burden for their manifestation, unsustained by a single ally who comprehends his office and his isolation, but compassed by enemies, devoid of vision, who would snuff this flame and him with it for no cause but their own fear of the brave and the new. Perhaps I was made for him because I too know what it is to bear a nation upon my shoulders, to surrender all that is private and personal and live only for the greater whole. In any event, I am swept up in this destiny. Do I frighten you, Selene? You were charged only to impart a message. Do you wish to fly?”

  What could I say? I understood then and believe to this day that this soul, with whose course fate had caused mine to intersect, was the noblest ever produced by our nation. I knew her too to be what her war name called her, om Kyrte nas, “Bulwark of the People.’’

  She held me with her eyes. “The warrior bound for battle crosses a frontier, Selene, which tal Kyrte calls ahora pata, ‘to abolish the ordinary.’ We honor this passage so highly as to give it its own language, do we not? On its far side we call our horses by different names, and our weapons and even ourselves. We call things by new names because all have been made new by the proximity of death.

  “The same holds true of love. In love we cross a frontier, upon whose far shore all has altered. We have altered too. Beneath love’s hand I am Antiope no longer but some precedentless creature, spawned afresh, as my lover is new, reconfigured by my love and by his own. You understand this, Selene. You too have been transfigured by love. Therefore I beseech you, standing in for the people: be my witness. Do not forsake me because I have been made over into that which you have never known me to be.”

  At this word her speech broke off. I heard hooves approaching at the gallop. Into view thundered Damon, racing from the city.

  If he had bolted the ships it could mean only calamity.

  “Two hundred are coming for you!” Damon cried to Antiope in Greek, using the feminine to denote warrioresses of tal Kyrte. She knew. One saw she had no fear. She saluted Damon in gratitude and commanded him to get clear, before harm came to him. His eyes shot to mine in urgency. I heard Antiope behind me: “Go with him, child.”<
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  I should have known this was the moment. I must flee with my lover, now or never. But to abandon Antiope as I had done before, even now when she commanded it—this I could not do. I could see the dust of the two hundred approaching. If they discovered a Greek bearing warning to their queen, they would tear him to pieces. “Go! Go!” I heard my voice cry to him I loved, and felt my heels drive my horse at his, to put him to flight.

  Our lady held her own mount in a grip of iron. I turned back to her. A peace possessed her, as one who, worn with dread of the worst, hears it acclaimed and breathes at last absent apprehension, knowing she has no more to imagine but only to endure.

  “Your fate has held you at my side, Selene,” she spoke, her eyes tracking with mine my lover’s reluctant withdrawal. “May God preserve us both.”

  20

  THE WILES OF

  THE GREEKS

  The two hundred broke into view and reined across from Antiope. They were young, buck warrioresses my own age, the same who had harassed the Greek camp. I recognized Glauke Grey Eyes, Tecmessa Thistle, Xanthe Blonde, and my own sister Chryssa. All were armed and painted. What was their object? Perhaps they had hoped to discover their queen in flight, in which case they could either drive her out of the country or overhaul and murder her. Instead they found her facing them, one against two hundred. Antiope called for a champion to stand forth and state the two hundred’s errand. No one budged. Awe of her held them paralyzed. “Follow when I get clear,” Antiope commanded me.

  She spurred straight into the mob’s teeth. Not one stood to check her. The front parted, permitting her passage, then wheeled and fanned in her train, blocking any reverse toward the steppe but initiating no action to attack or arrest. I found myself at the rear of this formation. Antiope made for the city at the canter. What did she intend? To call out Eleuthera and face her down? To try the people and make them choose? Did she seek some worthy death, knowing herself foredoomed? And her pursuers; what was their aim, now that their prey had faced them down? We will never know. For halfway to the Mound City Theseus arrived at the gallop, backed by two score of his own and a number of mercenaries who chanced to be in the city on other business. A skirmish ensued in which Theseus’ company, now shielding Antiope, broke from the two hundred and fled back to the ships. Warrioresses had been wounded. Blood had been shed.

  The plunging sun cast the scene into further disorder. I found myself racing flat-out beside my sister and Glauke Grey Eyes, pursuing the party of Theseus and Antiope. I was among the two hundred. Chaos reigned, and the sense of events catapulting out of control. What did I hope for? To stand with Antiope and meet my death? To overhaul Damon and flee with Theseus by sea? I glanced to Chryssa and Glauke. They knew nothing of my turmoil, only that I had delivered Eleuthera’s message as ordered. In their eyes I was one of them. Yet should I try to bolt, to join Damon or Antiope, they would slay me as a traitor, as they should. My heart hammered; I could not catch my wind or command my reason.

  Where the northern earthworks of the Mound City extend into the plain, the Greeks turned the corner and got out of sight. Darkness had fallen. Suddenly from the west appeared riders of tal Kyrte. They were hundreds; Eleuthera rode at their head. Antiope and the Greeks were fleeing for the strand; the host of our squadrons galloped after. At the Lion’s Gate, Eleuthera commanded the two hundred to break to the west, cut off the track that Theseus must take to the sea. I kept with this corps. I could not tell if the brigade pursuing Antiope intending her slaughter or to preserve her from abduction. This I know: I never saw cavalry in mass move so fast. Three miles remained for the Greeks to cross. They would never outrun this pack.

  The two hundred galloped in double column across the tidal flats between the Aryan road and the Barrows of the Champions. The companies ploughed through the slough at the gallop, sending cranes and plovers wheeling into the dusk as they swept toward the promontory of Cynoscephalus, Dog’s Head Point, upon which the Athenian ships were beached. Cresting the inner causeway, the column could see ahead to the strand.

  The ships were gone.

  The two hundred slewed up in confusion. We could see Eleuthera’s division, which had taken the shore road to trap the Greeks should they seek to reach Dog’s Head by that route; they thundered into view out of the gloom. Their mass too reined in in consternation.

  Theseus had moved his ships earlier, undetected. His riders compassing Antiope had not fled to Dog’s Head, where the vessels had been beached as recently as this postnoon, but to another launching site called the Flat Iron, two miles east, which both pursuing divisions had overrun in their haste. The corps of Amazonia wheeled back now across the marsh, spurring all-out toward this second strand. Night had fallen. One glimpsed ships’ lanterns in the distance, rising and falling—that motion produced only by vessels already on the sea.

  A score of horse squadrons ascended from the bottomland and pounded onto the strand at Flat Iron. Eleuthera had the lead. Across a mile of front, mounts were reined-in, lathered and steaming. From where I found myself, at the center right, I could make out four hulls in the channel, already beyond bowshot, yet close enough to hear the steersmen’s cadence, even above the hammering of one’s own heart and the heaving and stamping of the horses, as the vessels rowed seaward by surges and the deck crews stepped the masts and ran up the yards. Behind me the last of the riders emerged from the lagoon, their horses’ coats steaming from the run and the slathering of salt sluicing from their muzzles and barrels. Along the front the corps brought itself to line. In the last light one could see Theseus’ sails drop and, drawing against their brails and sheets, fill before the wind.

  Hope is a stubborn goddess. Could our lady yet be with us? Had Damon jumped ship to stay with me? I knew his vessel and bench by heart. I peered to sea and found the mark. Alas, there was no gap in the oar bank, but all shafts pulled in strength and unison.

  At once all animation fled my heart. Fatigue crashed on me like a wall of stone. Had the world ended? Was I in hell? My bones seemed to come unstrung; teeth chattered; my limbs quaked as if palsied. I could reckon nothing but that I was wet and cold and hungry. My horse was drenched. I must rub him down, I heard my voice instruct myself, and get something into his belly. I must look to the care of his feet.

  The squadrons were keening now in agitation. Something had caught their eye down the strand. I looked. Two horses, the latter riderless, transited before the front at the hard canter, coming from where the Greeks had launched, hastening toward the rise on which our commanders now marshaled. The rider was a maiden named Sais, Eleuthera’s favored courier. She spurred past my position now, sitting her own mount and leading Antiope’s Sneak Biscuits. Our queen’s saddle was empty, her gorytus quiver gone.

  21

  AMAZONS AND ALLIES

  Selene’s testament continues:

  Where the foothills of the Taurian Caucasus descend to the Amazon Sea lies that strait known as the Cimmerian Bosporus. Upon the Asian shore two and a quarter years later, the hundred and twenty-nine clans of tal Kyrte assembled for the march on Athens. This was the mightiest massing of horse warriors in history and the only occasion on which all four nations of tal Kyrte, the Themiscyra, Lycasteia, Chadisia, and Titaneia had united beneath common commanders.

  The corps of Amazonia was reinforced by male allies of the Rhipaean Caucasians, Chalybes, Issedonians, Cicones, Aorsi (the “Whites,” or “Westerners”) Arian, Sindic, and Alanic Scyths, as well as our own male auxiliaries, the kabar, with additional brigades of the Strymonian Thracians, including the fierce Saii, Tralliai, and Androphagi, “Man-Eaters,” who had attacked Theseus’ ships. This host was further augmented by detachments of cavalry of the Lykians, Phrygians, Mysians, Cappadocians, and Dardanians; mounted infantry of Mariandyne and Hyperplakian Thebes; plus two tribes of the Mossunoikoi, called Tower People; horse warriors of the Massa Getai and Thyssa Getai, lacking of their own only the Ptyregonai, the Eucherai, and the Tetyai (for reasons of tribal feud); with
further battalions arriving unsummoned from the Maeotians, Gagarians, Taurians, the Royal and Copper River Scyths, and the clans of the Armenian Caucasus known as the Black Cloaks, who spoke a language so savage it could be comprehended by none save their immediate neighbors, the Tisserandic Alans, and who were mounted not on horses but wild asses of such swiftness that when they spooked from the cavalcade, nothing and no one could run them down, but riders must be left on the plain to secure them when they returned of their own, which they invariably did, once they had shaken the gallop out.

  The entire force of tal Kyrte were mounted archers; of the allies, the steppe nations and those of the Troad were heavy cavalry; the mountain clans archers and light infantry, slingers and javelineers. The Royal and Copper River Scyths were both horsemen and foot bowmen, firing the heel-braced bow, which can propel a warhead a third of a mile. Tal Kyrte’s mounted corps totaled thirteen thousand primary horse, supported by thrice that in the cavalcade, the novices and elders herding the strings. In command rode Hippolyta and Eleuthera sharing equally, the former now sixty-three, the latter twenty-four. The post of peace queen had been abolished; both served as war queens. As Eleuthera had foretold, the Scyths of the Iron Mountains, despite our massacre of their women and children at the Parched Hills, proved not only tal Kyrte’s most ardent allies but the most extravagant donors of foot and horse, providing four thousand of the former and twenty-five hundred of the latter. Their commander was Borges himself, seconded by his son, Prince Maues, at seventeen holder of three prizes of valor, and his nephew Panasagoras, son of Sagillus, Overlord of all Thrace, who did not ride in person but sent three waggonloads of gold, his personal seer and physician, and a suit of armor for the first fighter to plant his standard atop the Athenian acropolis. Borges had been brought over to our cause by a private embassy of Hippolyta (upon which she had donated a thousand horses to ring the barrow of his brother Arsaces) and by the prince’s own hatred of her who had shamed him, Antiope, and his greed to exact vengeance upon her. The grand total of the forces, excluding the general crowd of sutlers, whores, slave dealers, camp wives and children, stood between ninety-five and a hundred and five thousand. The citizen population of the Athenian foe, not counting women, children, and slaves, could not exceed thirty thousand. Estimates for the size of the army which might face our brigades, once the Athenians had applied to the Twelve States and other allies across northern Greece, Crete, and the Peloponnese, were between fifty and sixty thousand.