Last of the Amazons

by Steven Pressfield

  “As the days pass and Antiope’s loss is felt more keenly within the tribes of tal Kyrte, those qualities which she accorded us will be missed more and more. I reckon my limitations. I am no Antiope. I am a fighter not a queen—and we need a queen. We own none Antiope’s equal, save you, Lady Hippolyta, and if you will forgive the harsh finding of my speech, your years prevent you from acting as a war queen must. Hear, sisters and elders, what my heart tells me:

  “The nation of tal Kyrte possesses many strengths but also weaknesses. Most pernicious is this: we do not act but react. It is our way to tarry and dilate, awaiting signs of heaven and the ancestors. Our enemies don’t. They act!

  “Theseus acts.

  “He beyond all our foes hatches schemes and lays designs. He strikes with vigor and audacity. Tal Kyrte must learn to fight as its enemies do, behind a commander unafraid to employ cunning and art, and whose will is iron to drive the people to victory. When we played at war as girls, did we rehearse ourselves as deer? No, lions! I would rather have an army of deer commanded by a lion than an army of lions commanded by a deer!”

  Here Eleuthera drew up, perceiving that the fire of her speech had distressed the elders, that they read it as a strike for more power, even absolute power, for herself. Reining her zeal, Eleuthera addressed this head-on:

  “Hear, sisters, what my heart proposes. Let me not stand alone as war queen but be yoked with Hippolyta as co-commander, abolishing the office of peace queen, and making two mistresses of war, peers and equals. By this stroke, lady,” Eleuthera addressed her elder directly, “your vision may be coupled to my passion, in that way which may best serve the free people. Perhaps together you and I may make one Antiope, until that day when our arms restore her and bring her home.”

  This motion found approval. Eleuthera followed up, urging war on the Iron Mountain Scyths and their allies, not alone, but in concert with other nations who hated Borges and wished to see him fall. “This has been coming since Heracles. Let it be decided now, while we are still strong, and by blood, which alone our enemies understand.”

  Others of the Council spoke, some seconding the course of militancy Eleuthera urged, others counseling restraint. At last the staff came round to Hippolyta. The peace queen had then sixty-one years; her hair, iron-colored, fell in a plait to her waist. As eldest her word bore the most weight. No motion would be passed in the face of her resistance; conversely, few causes she championed could fail to prevail.

  Hippolyta elected to speak now, not with words but by sign. She indicated Eleuthera.

  “I have watched our sister, whose name means Freedom, since she was so small she could be set within the bowl of this smoker. Always my heart has shown me: she beyond all of her generation craves honor, setting it before love, happiness, life itself. In warlike virtue none is her equal. She bows to no man, but ever sets the weal of the free people before all.”

  As Hippolyta’s hands spoke, the elders acknowledged. Eleuthera held, still as stone.

  “Yet,” Hippolyta continued in sign, “I discovered our sister deficient in temperance and self-command, rash and easily provoked to anger, headstrong, stubborn, and violent. Like a racing colt she bolts to the gallop and bites the bit at every stride. In times of peace, one of her nature must be reined by wiser heads, or her love of strife may lead the people into reckless adventures.”

  Hippolyta shifted now and spoke in words.

  “These, however, are not times of peace.”

  The lady Hippolyta rose. From around her neck she unbound the raven’s wing, signalizing the priestesshood of Ares, and, crossing before her younger compatriot, cinched it about Eleuthera’s throat. Tears stood in the younger woman’s eyes. She dropped upon one knee before her elder.

  “I second your accession, child,” Hippolyta spoke, “and accept your proposal of joint command. Take this Raven Wing, which has marked the Society of War time out of mind.” She set one hand upon Eleuthera’s head and elevated the other, palm upward, to heaven. “I thank thee, Ares, god of war and progenitor of our race, and thee, Great Mother, Hecate Dark Moon, Black Persephone, and all lords and ancestors who stand sentry over the free people, that they have brought forth at this hour such a champion as this.”

  The Council assented with raps and murmurs. The co-commanders resumed their places, Hippolyta retaining the staff. Long moments passed; the councilors made smoke and held silence. At last Hippolyta straightened and resumed.

  “Captains of the rising generation,” she spoke toward Eleuthera and the Companions, “I honor your war plan with this sole reservation: it has not gone far enough. Let tal Kyrte not content herself with skirmishes against the tribesmen on her borders, but carry hell’s bane to that state and its monarch which has set our survival at hazard.

  “I mean Theseus.

  “I mean Athens.”

  Citations of approval growled from the gorges of the Council.

  “It was my folly that brought this necessity upon us.” Hippolyta meant the surrender of her virgin girdle to Heracles, which act decades prior had prompted the bloodbath of the champions. “By my appeasement of the Greeks, two generations gone, has their aggressiveness grown wanton and inflamed. To this offense I own. I ask you now to let me make it good.

  “Let us enlist hate now, as we should have then.

  “Let us invoke Ares now, as we should have then.

  “Let us make war now, as we should have then!

  “Athens!

  “Let us strike there, at the belly of the beast, and bring it low!”

  At once cries burst from the Council: Aii-ee! Ai-ee! Even the sober elders whooped. Outside the chamber the tribes had massed in their multitudes. Hippolyta could hear the pages and heralds relaying her words and the roars of approval ascending in rejoinder. The queen rose, drawing the Council in her train, and emerged beneath the dark moon whose face is Hecate of the Crossroads, mistress of the track to hell, and, mounting the stand before the people, pronounced for their hearing all that had been debated and proposed within. The nations roared in approbation. Eleuthera looked on, watching the spark she had struck ignite to conflagration.

  “As to the male nations of the steppe,” Hippolyta addressed the daughters of tal Kyrte, “let us not make war upon them but enlist them to our cause. I will treat with these myself, the Massa Getai and Thyssa Getai, Taurians, Maeotians and Gagarians, Mysians, Carians and Cappadocians. I will approach the Colchians and Chalybes and Issedones, Phrygians and Lykians, Trojans and Dardanians, Saii and Androphagai, the Black Cloaks and the Tower People, Saiian, Trallian, and Strymonian Thracians, the Royal Scyths and the Scyths of the Copper River. They will come for plunder and glory. Even those of the Iron Mountains will fight at our shoulders. They will be swept up as wildfire on the steppe!”

  Acclamation saluted this. The cry of “Antiope! Antiope!” rang beneath the cresset flare of Hecate Dark Moon.

  Two years it took to forge the alliance. But at last, at the floe-mantled straits of the Cimmerian Bosporus, the hour of departure had arrived. Two hundred thousand marshaled on the shore; the crossing buckled with drift ice gale-borne from Greater Scythia. The order of march called for the army to cross as a body following the night sacrifice to Cybele and Asia, but numbers of high-spirited novices, and particularly the horse troops of the Fox River clans, could not be held. They bolted onto the floe field, driving their mounts in that sport called macronessa, which is played with a stuffed skull wrapped in ox hide, and which they contested by torchlight all the way across.

  To the brink of the ice the main body advanced. I rode Daybreak, trailing Knothole and Thrush, the first laden with bedding, armor, and spare arms beneath a bearskin mantle lapped across his chest to protect on the headwind marches. Kalkea and Arsinoe were my novices, trailing a string of eleven. Thrush bore a shell like Daybreak’s but of elk and sable, atop which rode a pack frame balanced with sacks of parched oats and rye, as well as horsehair blankets, picket stakes and lines, windbreaks of ox-hide an
d ibex, which would be rigged each night to shield the stock. Both mounts wore hoodwinks, as did Daybreak, as cloaks against snow glare and gale-driven ice. Cured and fresh meat were sealed in bags of badger gut and stowed beneath the pack shell.

  As to kit, I rode upon a half-frame wolfskin saddle, with my crescent shield slung from the cantle behind my left thigh. On its face was my war totem, Selene Bright Moon, in ivory and gold, ringed with those annals, the celts and amulets commemorating each raid and fight, which comprised my history since girlhood and simultaneously shielded me from hazard and called forth by their placement and power further glory. I had crafted none, as was tal Kyrte’s law, but each had either been won as a trophy or made for me (as I had for others) by lovers and friends. Quiver and bow case hung at Daybreak’s right shoulder, both of doeskin with flaps of fox fur, quill-embroidered and trailing bands of ermine and mink. I packed twenty-seven primary shafts, straight and true, which had taken me two years to fashion, and another two score with Knothole in the spare kit. My bow was a four-footer of ash and horn with a grip of boar skin trimmed with amber and jet. In my right hand I bore the death lance of my “stick,” or fighting unit; six feathers of hawk and osprey, for comrades gone to the life beyond, pended from its tip. A buckskin trophy-fall hung at my back, with more glyphic annals, and seven scalps woven to tassels, which whipped and snapped in the wind. My boots were fireproofs of ox-hide lined with sable and fox; atop these, wolfskin trousers with the fur on the inside, overmantled by leggings of buckskin. Twenty charms of electrum and silver were woven into a stripe down each leg, talismans of the gods and heroines into whose care I had surrendered my soul during the Gatherings of my youth. Around my waist I wore a star belt of seven windings, gift of Eleuthera. My breast was mantled with a vest of fox fur and fleece, thick as a hand, with an overcloak of bearskin, tightest against the wet, and a hood lined with the fur of white marten. Over my right shoulder rode a black panther skin, with the head still on, draping my back to form a pouch in which I carried my moon bundle. On my head I wore a Phrygian cap of doeskin lined with otter; its flaps shielded my ears, while through its forestall of horsehair, bound across my mouth and eyes, I could see into the sternest glare. My battle-axe I wore not as others in a scabbard between my shoulder blades but loose, across the tops of my thighs, in an antelope case lined with fleece. Daybreak’s coat was shaggy with winter, a pile so thick it swallowed both fists to the wrist. You could hang by it at the gallop. On all sides warriors advanced in such pride, numbers, and brilliance as surely heaven had never looked upon before.

  Hippolyta and Eleuthera had meant to leave a third of the nation behind, to safeguard our lands and herds. In the event, half of these could not be contained, but veterans and novices in thousands swept upon the column, leaguing with its squadrons and refusing to be driven off. I was there when the clans of the Titaneia marshaled before the strait. Uncommanded they set fire to their tents and waggons. Everything they owned beyond what could be borne to battle, they torched and good riddance. The Lycasteia followed, and the other tribes of tal Kyrte; even the Scyths and Taurians, the Massa Getai and the clans of the Caucasus were caught in the fever. As the storm of smoke sheared skyward, the corps as one put up the Hymn to Ares Manslayer.

  Victory or death

  Victory or death

  No outcome other

  Victory or death

  What treasure was going up in smoke! The merchants who tracked the army could not bear it, but dashed in among the tents, seeking to retrieve items of value. The column burst into laughter, succeeded by cheers. In and out of the flames the vendors shuttled, cloaks smoking and beards scorched, to snatch the prize of a copper skillet or emerge triumphant bearing a Mysian carpet.

  The horn sounded. The column stepped off onto the floe. At its head advanced a picked company founded by Hippolyta’s order: Antiope’s company, with Sneak Biscuits led, riderless, at its fore. Before Athens’s walls this corps would be drawn up and our lady summoned to step down and assume its command.

  I fell in between Stratonike and my sister Chryssa in the battalions of our nation, the Lycasteia. Never had my heart swelled so; I must bury both fists in my horse’s coat simply to keep from pitching faint. My glance found Eleuthera at the column’s crown. She was right: tal Kyrte had gone too long without war. War is what we were born to, daughters of Ares. We had drifted apart from ourselves by falling away from war. Let us return to it and to the ground of our greatness!

  Ai-ee! Ai-eee! The column spurred onto the field of ice. An image of Damon ascended before me. I banished it with hate. Who was he to me but that demon, as his name, who had bewitched my heart and estranged me from myself and from my people? Let him fall beneath my axe and hell take him!

  The army swept in lines onto the frozen strait. It was impossible not to look right and left; we all did, and when we saw what a magnificent body we composed, an emotion of awe and humility overcame us. I glanced to Stratonike and saw she wept. I said nothing then; not till the far bank, which took all morning to reach, when the army doubled and redoubled, linking with the clans of the Taurians of the northern steppe and the massed companies of the Rhipaean and Iron Mountain Scyths.

  I fell in at Stratonike’s shoulder. “Why did you weep, sister, back there when the corps first advanced onto the ice?”

  Chryssa rode at our friend’s other flank; remarking my question she too drew in closer to hear the reply. Stratonike’s gesture swept across the seabound plain, indicating the spectacle of the massed armies of the East.

  “It struck me,” she said, “beholding this host and reckoning the scale of its daring, that none of tal Kyrte will return to this place the same as we are now. Even if heaven grants us victory, that life we knew is over.”

  Stratonike’s words chilled me, as I saw they did my sister. For moments we three rode in silence. Then Chryssa spurred and straightened, facing into the gale.

  “Then may hell take me in battle before the walls of the foe, for I wish to remain above the earth for no life other than this I love.”

  BOOK SEVEN

  ATHENS

  22

  THE USES OF ECSTASY

  Damon:

  The first tribesmen into Attica were Fox River Thracians. Their numbers were about three hundred. They torched farms at Aphidna and Hecale and swept round the shoulder of Parnes into Paeonidae and the outer boroughs. At the same time troops of Sindic and Alanic Scyths punched south out of Thebes, cresting Cithaeron at Eleutherai and Oinoe, breaking through to Acharnae via the Parnes-Aegaleos gap. The date was Munychion thirteen, two years and seven months since Theseus’ ships had made their forced decampment from the Mound City, bearing Antiope home as the bride of our king. One might imagine, reckoning the scale of the army marshaled to take vengeance upon us, and the hundreds of reports of its advance received at Athens over the succeeding two years, that no exertion would have been spared to prepare the citizenry and to fortify the state. On the contrary, accounts of the plains nations’ mobilization were dismissed as fiction and fabulation. Tall tales arrive with every ship, so Athens believed, and poets routinely send children quaking to bed with bugbears of centaurs and Amazons. The very scale of the foe’s undertaking confuted its credibility. Who could believe the unbelievable? That a ragtag confederation of savages, indeed savages perpetually at war with one another, could summon the cohesion to pack up and vacate their homelands, trekking three months across hostile territory, in the dead of winter, no less, and toward a site that was, to them, the extremity of the earth, all in the cause of repatriating one lone absconded female … this was preposterous. It could not happen.

  Indeed, my friends, I anticipate your next query. Reports from fifteen hundred, two thousand miles away in the Chersonese, even five hundred miles off in Thrace, yes, you say, such could be dismissed, citing the remoteness of their sources and the hyperbole common to all tale-tellers arriving from foreign lands. But the Amazons had been within a hundred miles for days! Was no alarm rece
ived, even then, at Athens? Had no warning come from our allies at Thessaly or Thebes?

  I answer thus. A Greek commander might have held his forward elements until the main body could be massed for the attack. Amazons and Scyths did not think like that. Once their advance parties struck the frontier, no curb or injunction could hold them back. They went after every stick of loot they could lay their fists on.

  Why had no warning come from Thebes? Simple: the main body of the foe had not even reached Thebes! Her vanguard shot past on the fly. Why assault walled cities on the way in? Cut them off to starve! Pick them clean on the way home!

  By the second day Athenian cavalry had got out into the countryside, if you can call an undermanned posse of ring riders and parade prancers by such a name. I rode with Philippus, keeping on our own. We identified Rhipaean and Ceraunian Caucasians later that day and, toward nightfall, the first clans of Greater Scythia. These were all males. And not in mass but small groups, raiding parties. My mate and I fled from them at first. But they had no interest in us. They were after fatter kills—cattle and farms and estate houses. Each gang competed with its cronies. One band would set-to, torching a farmstead; another would gallop past, whooping in derision. The first, fearing its fellows would beat it to choicer pickings, now jilted the original kill and made off at hot spur to overhaul its rivals.

  This was no joke. For the foe’s numbers and the astonishing swiftness of his assault had put him in command of the countryside before the citizen populace could be alerted, let alone evacuated. Our compatriots must flee to the city now, not over secure roads in Athenian possession, but across country already overrun by the foe.

  Now a more perverse crick arose. This was the farmers themselves: they would not quit the land. You know north Attica, my friends; the yeomen live on leeks and poached hares; they are mean as dirt. They would not budge. All day Philippus and I lurched from hold to hold, crying the peril. Will you credit: no one believed us, or if they did, told us to take it to hell. They would dig in, to stand or die.