Last of the Amazons

by Steven Pressfield

  Eleuthera gestured to the Rock. She would have broken it apart with her teeth, she hated it so.

  “Understand one thing, Selene: we must come away from this place with victory. If we fail and try, then, to get home, these same tribes we call allies will man every pass and bar every river crossing. Perhaps we should not have made this war. Its undertaking may have been madness. But we have stepped off the precipice, and nothing will break our fall till the bottom.”

  Eleuthera had not slept, I knew, in at least two nights. Yet here at dawn my friend stood annealed by such fire as would drive her unfailing, it seemed, this day and the next after that.

  “Tell this to your sister,” Eleuthera addressed me, “and those other knights whose necks are too stiff to fight this war the way it must be fought. I will break their necks! Who resists shall perish, beneath the foe’s hand or my own, by Artemis and Ares Manslayer, I swear. The people’s survival comes before all, victory or death!”

  26

  NIGHTS AND DAYS

  I left my unit in command of Chryssa and Euippe and, packing my novices, took my place among Eleuthera’s Companions. The siege had passed its fiftieth day.

  Borges, greedy to capture the Athenians’ women and children to sell as slaves, had defied our commanders’ injunction and mounted a seaborne assault on the island of Euboea. That is the charitable way of putting it. In truth the mob of clansmen launched upon the channel in log rafts and scows. The Athenians made dice of them. Three hundred drowned, that fate most hideous to a Scyth. The host fell back on the city in grief and rage. They tore apart the Lykomid Wall, which had been captured at such terrible cost, and which was indispensable now in keeping supplies from getting in to the enemy and, more critical, keeping their appeals for aid from getting out. The tribesmen leveled it at one go, with our own rioting to join the entertainment.

  Siege warfare now began in earnest. There was no other way to assault thirty-foot walls; even Eleuthera could see this. The Chalybes, master ironsmiths, and the Mossunoikoi, the Tower People, took the lead. The latter inhabit the densely forested foothills of the Ceraunian Caucasus, a terrain impossible to defend by conventional means, as any encroaching foe can close without being detected, concealed within the timber. Thus the great towers these people build. I have never seen them, but they are said to comprise whole towns, carved of unfireable hardwood and elevated a hundred feet above the forest floor. Roundabout these stockades the Tower People clear the woodland for miles. They hunt and fish and are, so they claim, the happiest of men, invulnerable within their forest forts.

  These fellows now became our siege engineers. Here is the art they employed: They first erected masts, with armored bunkers atop, overtowering the walls of the Half Ring. To these stations mounted archers of the Copper River Scyths, experts in the foot-braced bow, which can fire an arrow a third of a mile. With these shafts—which were of such length and girth that the Athenians used them as javelins when they recovered them—our allies hurled fire over the enemy’s walls and sowed terror along his lanes, as no site within the city was too remote to be struck by these long-range missiles. Many of the foe’s houses had thatched rooves. These he himself tore off. Every street corner, we heard, sprouted its mounds of sand and pumice, with shovels and paddles plunged aboard, and pots of vinegar and birdlime for the brigadiers to snatch up against the conflagrations ignited by our archers’ incendiary darts.

  Alongside the masts our champions next set up towers, sheathed with hides and felt to retard the “fried eggs” (firepots of flaming pitch and sulphur, made to shatter upon impact) and “scorpions” (brands of burning tallow with iron spikes extending, meant to hook onto a surface) which the foe hurled and launched in salvos of a hundred. We countered with volleys of tow and frankincense gum. Six, eight, even ten of our Scyths could launch at once from the towers. With twelve such turrets firing in unison, the barrages cleared the foe’s walls at one swipe and, judging by the clamor within, terrified the defenders all the way back to the face of the Rock.

  The foe countered our broadsides by stringing sails, hides, carpets, and even ladies’ wicker dressing screens across the crowns of his walls. He ran these up on lines and pulled them taut with windlasses. The place looked like a harbor lane on laundry day. But it worked. The enemy also made his battlements taller by erecting towers of baskets filled with sand and brick. These would not stand against troops in the assault but they did the job stopping missiles.

  Our engineers next built rams to assault the gates. The enemy parried by lowering great bags of chaff and inflated ox-hides to damp the blows. He lassoed the rams or poured blazing pitch and sulphur upon them. In gangs the foe would roller a great stone atop the besieged gate’s lintel, then a boy would creep out on a beam with a plumb bob (the lad himself shielded by a rolling carapace of iron maneuvered by his fellows atop the wall, while mighty fusillades of arrows, stones, and sling bullets hailed upon him) to set the ram within the gunners’ sights. Then they’d drop the stone. Hit or miss, one had never heard such a racket of cheers and groans.

  The foe rigged counterrams and sham walls. He erected walls behind walls and gates behind gates. When our sappers sought to tunnel under, the enemy countered, releasing bees and hornets. He even set a bear loose; God only knows where he got it. By the sixty-first day our Chalybes and Tower People had rigged a colossal siege engine, forty feet high, with rollers as tall as a man and overheads of oak two feet thick. The machine had bunkers atop for sixty archers, whose fire would clear the foe from the parapets, while a bronze-faced ram a hundred feet long, housed beneath the engine’s overhead and propelled by two teams of forty men each, would assault the gate. The contraption was sheathed in iron and warped up the slope by teams of horses, four hundred strong. The entire army massed, whooping and bawling encouragement, while the foe’s complement, absenting no one, it seemed, returned the clamor from atop the walls.

  Up the slope the colossal engine trundled. The foe hailed scorpions and fried eggs upon it. These salvos rebounded harmlessly off the iron. What a machine! Even the knights of tal Kyrte had fallen in love with it. We whooped ourselves witless as it beetled, like a moving city, up the incline. I could see the great ram beneath the sheathed mantlet. Our army was massed in its battalions, awaiting only the staving of the gate. But Theseus, that serpent, had outwitted us again. He had sent his sappers beneath the walls in the night, undermining the earth over which our engine must approach. The Chalybes were wise to this gambit, however, and had sent a bold fellow before the machine’s passage, shielded by its brow. This stalwart set a shield bowl-downward on the earth, which he then sounded upon, rapping for such hidden voids. Alas, an unlucky shot (lucky for the foe) took him in the foot. By the time his mates had hauled him to safety, the machine was within forty feet of the wall. No one would call hold now. I was behind and to the left when the forward rollers crashed through the hollowed-out earth. Thirty warp lines snapped as one; the teams of horses at the base of the slope sprawled like spindles. The tower’s rollers punched through the voids. Men were spilling from its upper bunkers like wasps from a hive, some shinnying down the timbers of the face, others mounting to the penthouse, more calling upon the gods and vaulting from the heights. On the walls the Athenians put up a cry. The machine wallowed in its trough. Timbers cracked with a sound like thunder. When it finally toppled and crashed, even our own could not restrain their cheers. It was the most spectacular fiasco we had ever seen.

  Such was the day’s work. At night the army amused itself with a different diversion. This was the hectoring of those bunkers and outworks of the foe that had been overrun when we drove him back behind the Half Ring. These pocket forts still had men in them. Several stood as close to the wall as two hundred feet.

  It became a sport after dark: the defenders dashing to bear food and water to their countrymen, the besiegers sprinting to intercept them. We called their runners “rabbits.” Clouds of missiles flew at these speedsters while their compatriots in the
island forts trailed harnesses over their battlements, into which the racers sprung and were hauled up hand over hand. From the citadel the foe in thousands cheered his champions, while, spurred by corresponding stanzas of the Amazons and Scyths, our own youths galloped the gantlet of protective fire, trying to bag these buggers in midbolt. Boldest of the foe were two lads who came to be called “Spider” and “Scooter.” Bounties were offered for their hides. Everyone took a run at them. Most reckless was my novice Stuff. Going after Spider one night, she foozled her shot point-blank. The host hooted in derision. Stuff was beside herself. She vaulted from her mount, overhauled the youth, and dived onto his back just as he leapt into the haul rig. The pair here snatched airborne jerking like shot eels, the lass seeking to rip her rival from his cinch, the lad kicking to shuck his attacker. Stuff hung on to the top, so close that defenders were piking at her fists and dinging stones off her helmet. At last her grip was beaten apart. She plummeted thirty feet, tumbling another hundred down the slope. Cheers erupted from both sides when she sprang to her feet unhurt.

  The siege was going nowhere.

  I had moved to the main camp on Ares’ Hill. Eleuthera did not call me to her bed. That honor had gone to the maiden Stuff. I was content with this, though bewildered by my friend’s insistence upon my close attendance. Days would pass without Eleuthera addressing a word to me, yet if I made to slip apart she caught at me in alarm. Once, alone with her, I asked why she wished me so near if I were to be neither lover nor counselor. “You are a champion,” she declared, as if nothing could be more obvious.

  Another night I walked the lines with her.

  “Do you see that wall, Selene? No siege engine will take it. We must do it ourselves, by frontal assault.” The Half Ring loomed directly across, so close we must take care for Theseus’ Cretan archers, who had nailed more than one of ours with a potshot. “Yet how do I initiate it?”

  She meant casualties.

  “I spouted bluster the other night, raving about breaking necks.” She laughed. “One cannot enforce discipline on warriors such as ours. They must be led, as children or horses. Speech will not serve. Sign and action they understand. I must produce a spectacle for them.”

  For ten days Eleuthera drew up the cohort of Antiope before the walls. This was the special battalion, whose commander’s berth had been left vacant—awaiting Antiope’s return to her people. To the fore of this company Eleuthera set our lady’s mount, Sneak Biscuits, riderless, in armor. No proclamation was offered, no herald dispatched. A thousand simply took station, silent, beneath the walls.

  The Athenians did not respond. They manned the battlements, at places shoulder to shoulder, but did not launch stones or, more remarkable, abuse.

  Antiope did not appear the first day, or the second or third or the fourth. The cohort held, dawn to dusk. Other than sluices of urine or mounds of apples from the horses, no sound or action came. The odd rider swooned, overcome by the sun; she lay on the stone where she had pitched, till she recovered or till night’s descent dismissed the troop.

  The rest of tal Kyrte were free to look after their own business. None did. All were held by a tension approaching the unbearable. One dozed and woke and dozed again.

  The allies hated this. They did not understand. It bored them. They continued their raids across the Isthmus and north into Boeotia and Phocis. Their greed had reduced every croft within fifty miles. Their horses and ours had cropped the country to whisker.

  Within the walls we could hear the Athenians working. From the hill we could see them. They were breaking up the residential quarters enclosed by the Half Ring, using the stone to reinforce the wall and to fortify positions within.

  Theseus was keeping them busy.

  For our part, we had dammed the Ilissus, the Cephisus, and the Eridanos. Cisterns had been founded to contain the flow of these miserable streams. In the exhilaration of the initial overrunning of Attica, our companies had demolished springhouses and wells. Now these must be restored, stone by stone, as thirst began to torment the besiegers.

  The sixth day passed, and the seventh. Still Antiope did not appear.

  Watch discipline of the Scyths and allies remained atrocious. With the outer wall torn down, Theseus’ couriers came and went all night, bearing dispatches to the baronial strongholds upcountry, to the camps on Ardettos, Hymettos, Lykabettos, and out of Attica entirely. They got supplies from Euboea and, worse, correspondence. Letters kept up the defenders’ spirits, while no measure of threat or blandishment could seal the sieve that was our lines.

  Then one evening Antiope appeared.

  There are two main gates of the Enneapylon—the Sacred and the Aegeid. It was upon the latter that our lady stepped forth. She was clad in mixed attire, Greek and Amazon: a white quilted jerkin beneath a bronze cavalry breastplate and a russet overcloak, with a bear-claw clasp, emblem of Artemis Who Assists at Childbirth, which all recognized as a gift from her mother, Celia, passed down from her mother-mother Hippolyta.

  Within moments of her appearance the entire army had mounted, Scyths and allies included. Atop the Half Ring not a space remained, while the parapets at the summit swarmed with defenders.

  Eleuthera and Hippolyta spurred to the fore of our formation. The allied commanders Borges, Saduces, and Hermon, with Skyleia, Glauke Grey Eyes and Stratonike, took their places on the flank.

  Theseus had not appeared.

  Antiope’s cohort saluted with her war song. She elevated one hand in response. In the stillness succeeding, a child’s cry pealed.

  In the crook of our queen’s arms was her infant.

  With both hands she held the babe aloft. The troops murmured. This ascended to a rustle, then to a sort of rolling anthem. Antiope addressed Hippolyta, directly beneath her on Frostbite, with her leopard skin across her shoulder and her iron-colored plait falling to the middle of her back.

  “Hippolyta, best of the people, I show you your great-grandchild, whom I have named in your honor Hippolytus.”

  From the host arose a rumble, yet inarticulate, but boding of wrath and indignation.

  “Will you accept this innocent, Mother-mother, as blood of your blood?”

  From where I stood I could see Eleuthera’s face. A look shot from her to her elder which clearly warned: Take care, sister, for acts now contain the fate of the people.

  Eleuthera herself spoke first, addressing Antiope:

  “Make no more of this child, lady. Leave him with his father, where he belongs. I call upon you now. Come down and take command of your cohort. And I pledge before God and this host that if you do, I will yield my office. What you order, I shall obey. Only return to your people, sister and friend. Lead us again.”

  Now Theseus appeared. Not at his bride’s shoulder, in such position as would indicate he stood as her lord, but set back several paces upon the battlement. Antiope neither turned toward him nor acknowledged his arrival.

  “If I descend from these walls and take command of the free people,” Antiope’s answer rang down, “my first order will be to withdraw. Will you obey me?”

  “We have made this war for you, lady,” Eleuthera answered. “You restored, we turn for home.”

  Cries of outrage rose from the Scyths and allies. Across the faces of the hills the multitude beat spear shafts against shields. Even the corps of tal Kyrte picked up the tattoo.

  “If I come, I bring this child. Will you accept him?”

  Indignation ascended. From every quarter arose cries of “Never!” and “Take him to hell!” Antiope elevated the babe again, addressing Hippolyta.

  “Look on this babe, Mother-mother, whose blood is yours, and issue of both our nations. How can I hate him? I may not carve him down the middle, giving my heart to one half while warring upon the other. I must love all of him.”

  More outrage from the army. Antiope’s response rang from the battlements.

  “I repudiate these leaders who have used me as a pretext to make this war. I want no part
of it. I will resist any act which promotes war between us, and embrace every undertaking which bears our nations toward peace.”

  Antiope finished. Hippolyta spurred forward. Her speech sounded for the whole army to hear.

  “You dare hold up a boy-child, Antiope. Then hear what my heart tells me. Boys grow to men!” She gestured with her axe in challenge to Theseus. “Will the scion diverge from the stock? Will the heir stand with women against those who would bind them in chains?”

  “Sisters,” Antiope cried, “here is your chance for peace!”

  “I give you peace!” Eleuthera bolted forward onto the flat beneath the bastion. “Fight me! Settle this now!”

  The throng thundered in ovation.

  Antiope held the child close. “You want no peace, sister. You come for hate, which is your anthem and that of tal Kyrte. I fear you and grieve for you.”

  “Keep your grief. Face me!”

  “I will not!”

  “Fight me now!”

  “Never!”

  Antiope’s glance darted to Theseus.

  “Is he your master?” Eleuthera roared. The army clamored its endorsement. Before the host Eleuthera spurred to Antiope’s riderless horse, Sneak Biscuits, who was held by a groom at the fore of the cohort. Without dismounting, she stripped the animal of his armor. His war bridle she dashed; headstall and trappings she flung to the dirt. With a lash of her quirt Eleuthera drove the beast upslope to the Aegeid Gate, from whose battlements Athenian and Cretan archers drew down on her, point-blank. Yet such was the violence of her will that none dared fire. Eleuthera beat on the bronze plate of the gate with the flat of her axe and when the bolt was cleared and the portal cracked ajar, she drove Sneak Biscuits through.

  She lashed back into the open, crying up to the towers. You could not hear above the uproar. You did not need to. The army saw Eleuthera elevate her axe and point it at Theseus. She held this posture, then swept her blade toward that level ground fronting what had been the Athenian marketplace, an arena capacious enough to stage a bout of single combat.