My brother and I, it chanced, were among those detailed to retrieve the dead from the previous day’s battle. The Amazons and Scyths had already claimed theirs. When we passed out the Nine Gates that evening we could see them, in their camps on the hills across from the Rock, laying out the coal trenches over which they would spit our captive countrymen and erecting the gibbets upon whose cross-ties these poor wretches would be flayed. This is how the savage entreats heaven’s favor.
The tribesman wagers on how his victim will endure. One who has not witnessed such an orgy cannot conceive the ecstasies to which such a brute may ascend, applying iron and flame to the flesh of his foe. Nor are these acts cruelty in the savage’s eyes, as they would be, performed by a man of civilized station, but rather a trial of the captive’s aedor, his magic. The prisoner too participates. By an equation incomprehensible to the emancipated sensibility, the clansman acclaims his victim even as he impales and vivisects him. For the captor’s object is the acquisition of the aedor of his prisoner; the victim’s, to prove his magic superior to his torturer’s. The more nobly he endures, the greater his power. He suffers, does the captive, not for himself (for the savage cannot conceive of himself apart from his gods and tribe) but for the grantors of his luck, those Otherworld guardians who have endowed him with his soul magic. He seeks to prove his power mightier than his foes’ and, expiring, wring the last drop of renown. I have seen victims spit their terminal breath in their tormentors’ faces and dive to hell with a laugh.
The Scyths had tortured Athenians in the early stages of the siege but found it so unsatisfactory that the practice was discontinued. To the savage our woeful performance was proof of Athenian gutlessness. Their contempt for us redoubled. They came to deem even the happiest outcome of the war, victory and plunder, as beneath their dignity. They even gave up taking our scalps. Our hair had no aedor. No respectable warrior would hang it from his belt.
This night however, my brother and I saw, the art of torture had been resurrected. Atop the Hills of Ares and the Pnyx, the first fortune-forsaken were being trundled to their ordeal. Soon their cries would ascend in choruses hideous and appalling, to mingle with timbrel and tom-tom and the orgiastic ululations of the foe.
We could hear the Scyths and Amazons scarifying themselves now. They perform this rite in pairs as they dance. An instrument like a carpenter’s chisel pares strips of flesh from legs and backs and bellies. By such ceremony, the savages build up power for the duel of champions to come. Elias and I could see their stewards beneath Market Hill, preparing the runway where the champions would meet. On Ares’ Hill the Amazons were sacrificing horses in the night rite they call Nikteria. Bonfires blazed along the summit. Below, on the field of the slain, we used the light to work by.
The savage strips every rag from the foe he has vanquished. He takes ears and noses, looping these onto strings, which he wraps about his midriff. The foe no longer took scalps, as I said, or heads; rather he hacked off limbs or cleaved the skull clean through, to rob the soul of its magic in the life after. Can there stand a chore more dolorous than this: to collect the corpses of one’s countrymen, hewn in two, naked and mutilated, impossible to identify? We heaped the dead atop blankets, two and three to a pile, and dragged these to the base of the Three Hundred Steps. No mules remained to haul them topside; all had been butchered for meat. From here each corpse must be shouldered, intact or otherwise, and humped to the summit.
That night Theseus made no speeches. “If I fall, return the lady Antiope to her people.” This was all he said.
Antiope was there that night when our retrieval detail quit. She had come out at last from her cloister. I passed close by her on the battlement; she did not see me, nor did I seek her attention. Her gaze stood fixed upon the pageant of horror being enacted on the hills across.
My duties took me away for the watch. When I returned, past midnight, Antiope had not budged.
The lady stood alone at the embrasure south of the summit gate, compassed only by the pages and guardsmen Theseus had assigned to protect her. I had forgotten what a specimen she was. She wore Phrygian boots with trousers bloused and an Amazon riding wale about her waist. A quilted spolas jerkin bound her torso. Over her left shoulder was draped the panther skin she had worn defeating Borges at the Mound City. Her right breast was bare, revealing the starfish scar called tessyxtos, produced by the searing of the breast in childhood, and the chevron slashes of the matrikon, the ritual self-mutilation Amazons perform on the eve of battle.
The foe’s orgy went on all night. Antiope never left her station. Would she join the battle? On whose side? Theseus had forbidden her to arm, as I have told, and set death as the penalty for him who aided her. Would he rescind this? Would it take his own death to annul it?
Two hours before dawn the king withdrew to the citadel. Antiope preceded him. She bathed and armed him, so we heard (for she debarred all entry, even to the King’s Companions), and dressed his hair. Her own spear she set in his grip.
The fight took place on the grounds of the marketplace, beneath the foremost of Athens’s last untaken portals, the Sacred Gate of the Enneapylon. The King’s Companions defended this. Behind, the Three Hundred Steps had been spiked and crosswalled, should the foe offer perfidy. The last houses and treasuries had been fortified; upon and above these massed the final four thousand able to fight. It was dawn. Wounded lined the Fortress at the summit.
Eleuthera’s seconds—Stratonike, Skyleia, and Glauke Grey Eyes—rode onto the flat from the north, in armor but not painted. Their hair had been dressed. They were helmetless. Three posts had been erected at the far end of the chute; each rider reined-in beside one. Stratonike came forward alone. At the south waited Theseus’ seconds—Lykos, Peteos, and Amompharetus, chief of the Spartan spearmen. They too wore dress armor. The orders of combat were rehearsed by Saduces, prince of Trallian Thrace, speaking flawless Attic Greek. Killing may be done only within the ring, which admonition was moot, as neither rival would forfeit honor to preserve his or her life.
Theseus slewed forth in a chariot, the royal car of his father Aegeus, driven by his cousin Iophon. He wore black armor, a breastplate with a bull’s head and matching shield, a twenty-pounder, bronze sheathing atop an oak chassis three thumbs’-breadths thick. His helmet was black with a crest of white kestrel feathers. He had shaved his beard and shorn his forelock to afford his rival no berth of purchase. His weapons were three javelins, in an ox-hide quiver on his car, two eight-foot spears, ash tipped with iron; and the thrusting sword in a baldric at his hip. The chariot drew up at the southern posts. Theseus did not dismount. His seconds crossed and spoke briefly with him.
Eleuthera entered from the north on Soup Bones. She made no show at all. No chariot. No conference with her seconds. She carried a small bronze target shield and one horseback javelin. A pelekus axe rode in a sheath between her shoulder blades. In a case at the small of her back nested an iron discus. She carried no bow and no sword.
“I am Theseus, son of Aegeus—”
“Enough! I know who you are!”
Horses on both sides stamped and snorted. You could see the chariot wheels rock, rollering a trace in the dust, and the leather-gauntleted forearms of the henchman restraining the team.
Eleuthera did not drive Soup Bones forward, only let him surge, reining after ten paces, yet a hundred apart from her rival. Her right hand rose to the cheekpiece of her helmet. “Kill me if you can!” she called. With a snap of her neck, she dropped the iron plate before her eyes.
A cheer shot from the throats of sixty thousand as chariot and horse churned from the standing start and gathered way, hurtling toward one another. Theseus elevated his shield, lapping its convex bowl over the prow of the car, and seated his shoulder within the hollow of its rim. His right arm held the first javelin, a five-footer; he set his left foot foremost upon the platform, right planted at the rear to push off into the cast. Eleuthera came at him with the horseback javelin. In instants the
antagonists were upon one another; Theseus threw, Eleuthera held. The king’s lance would have taken her full in the chest had she not plunged to her horse’s flank, hanging on by her heel only and a loop through the mane. In a heartbeat she was astride again. Theseus’ javelin had been hurled with such force as to pass on, clear of the arena, and fix among the spectators of the Thyssa Getai, striking a luckless fellow in the foot. He yowled. A great cheer arose. Chariot and horse slewed at the terminal of the runway and wheeled to return.
The second pass, Eleuthera made on the left of the car, veering at the last instant in front of the team. Again she did not throw; again Theseus’ cast slung wide, as his rival spurred unexpectedly so that his second lance deflected off her target shield, sailing across the arena to fix into a stake at the far rail. As the chariot spun for the third track, one could see the king strip helmet and shield, so as not to impede his throw, wedging both into their nests on the car. He knew he had been bested twice and must hit home with this cast or fight on foot against a mounted foe.
Again the rivals dug toward one another; again Eleuthera held fire; again Theseus’ shot screamed wide. As his car slewed again about the turning posts, the king sprang to the sand; henchman and team withdrew; Theseus advanced on foot, helmet reseated, with shield and spear. Eleuthera wheeled at the far end of the chute, reining Soup Bones, who was already lathered beneath his armor, slinging spume from his bridle; his jaw worked furiously at the bit. From beneath Eleuthera’s faceplate spit shot in a plume, pink with blood from her tongue, bitten through in the excitement. The Amazon took the reins in her teeth. From its sheath at the small of her back she extracted the eight-pound discus, seating it in her left fist, counterweight to the horseback javelin in its sleeve extender in her right.
Cries for blood ascended from every quarter. Among the clansmen watching from elevation, wild fellows could be seen pounding each other’s shoulders and backs. Faces crimson, they bellowed in their savage tongues, making the veins of their necks stand out, while clashing spear shafts against shield bowls in a thunderous cacophony. The Amazons loosed such yip-yipping as made the stadium keen like a pine copse in a gale.
On foot Theseus dashed forward to the center of the ring, seeking to shorten his rival’s run-up. He worked in fast shuffle steps, at a half crouch, the bowl of his shield before him at an angle, lower edge leading, with its ox-hide skirt skimming in the dust. He canted the shield sidewise as well, to deflect Eleuthera’s shot when it came, with the nasal of his helmet set against the sweat stain on the leather of his shield’s upper rim, leaving visible to the foe only the eye slits and the kestrel-plume crown. My eye found Selene among the champions; she trembled, it seemed, like a bowstring at the catch.
I searched the battlements for Antiope and could not find her.
Now came the rush Eleuthera had saved for. Seating her right sole within the loop of her horse’s belly-band, she drove Soup Bones forward. The steed accelerated to the gallop as only the chargers of the steppe can. The horseback javelin looked lengthy as a tent pole, iron-freighted shaft spanning from its sleeve extender at the terminus of the Amazon’s drawn-back right arm to its warhead nearly between the horse’s ears, above Eleuthera’s counterweighted left hand, clutching the discus, and beyond.
Theseus dropped to a crouch as horse and rider thundered upon him. His helmet pressed against the crown of his shield. This was the royal aspis of his father, Aegeus, of oak so strong that a waggon could be driven across it and it would not bow. The king skimmed the lower lip of the frame across the earth, canting the bronze sheathing skyward. His eyes peered over the rim. His right hand clutched both eight-foot spears, flat on the earth so that no blow of axe or disk might shiver them, drawn back beneath the shield’s cover, that no hoof strike stave them to splinters. The front he presented to his rival was what infantrymen call “shadowing up,” meaning the foe saw the bowl of the shield alone, with all vulnerable flesh tucked beneath. The king crabbed right and left, making himself a moving target. His hand on the dirt felt his rival’s closing gallop, seeking that instant either to hunker and endure or to plant his right foot and elevate the thrusting spear to take the charging foe head-on.
Eleuthera gave him no chance. She slung from beyond his range. So violent was her rush and so powerful her cast that her sleeve extender struck the crown of Theseus’ helmet as she hurtled past. Warhead and shaft drove through the shield entire, passing so close to the fatal mark that a splinter of ash severed the ox-hide thong which bound the cuirass beneath the king’s ribs. The missile seated into the earth like a pavilion pole. The great bowl of the shield stove upon Theseus, pinning him beneath. Eleuthera wheeled and drove back. She had shot her only lance; she must dismount now and close hand to hand.
The Amazon scissored off Soup Bones at the gallop; her feet struck the ground running. The horse, trained for this, bolted clear. Eleuthera rushed upon Theseus from the rear. His shield remained nailed to the earth by her tent-pole javelin. The king owned only two options: expend precious instants wrenching the shield free, or dump it and face Eleuthera’s onslaught naked.
The Amazon had the discus in her hand. One saw it swing wide, the eight-pound stone ringed with iron. Eleuthera was twenty paces from Theseus now, coming low and hard. The king at last wrested his shield free of the earth and wheeled to face her. Eleuthera drove, erect now, into that one-two-three spin that throwers of the disk employ; her hurling arm extended wide, moment magnified by the furious rotation of her torso; her right foot planted at the peak of her spin; she loosed the disc point-blank. I have never heard a sound like that iron made upon the bronze.
The shield’s face sundered; its frame cracked like a walnut. Theseus’ arm fell limp. Eleuthera had hurtled past him in the violence of her rush. She wheeled now and brought herself under control. If you have never seen an Amazon draw her axe from the sheath between her shoulder blades, it goes like this: as the right hand elevates, reaching back over the shoulder to clasp the honed iron, uncinched already within its scabbard, the left hand reaches around to the small of the back, catches the butt of the shaft, and pushes up. In a tenth the time it takes to tell, the weapon has sprung clear of its nest and leapt into the fighting fist of its mistress. Eleuthera rushed. Theseus met her shield-on, seeking to pierce her with the thrust of the great ash spear. In midstride her axe head bashed the killing point aside, slipping the death it bore as it entered the linen facing of her corselet, opening a gash across her ribs.
In two score tongues clansmen cried, “His arm is broken!” Eleuthera saw it. She gathered. With all her strength she drove upon her rival’s buckled shield such a blow as made the field resound. Theseus’ forearm was imprisoned in the bronze-and-leather sheath that supported the weight of the shield. He cried in agony as the impact drove him down. Eleuthera forsook the axe for the instant; instead she seized Theseus’ shield rim in both hands and drove against it with all her weight, seeking to snap her rival’s bone or wrench it from its socket. The king dropped to a knee and an elbow, slashing sidelong with his spear. A second slice opened across Eleuthera’s thigh. Had a housefly lit upon her it could not have affected her less. The defenders clamored from the battlements, summoning their champion to his feet.
Now in Eleuthera’s fist reappeared the pelekus. Theseus lunged with his spear from the dirt; she dodged and hacked the ash shaft through. He sought to bring her to grips, to overcome her by brute strength. She slipped his rush with ease. Two more blows of her axe and Theseus’ shield split in half. A third two-handed swipe sheared the crown of his helmet. His scalp dangled in a flap; blood sheeted over his undercap and his fore-cropped hair.
Now from the Amazon’s throat arose that war cry that turns men’s knees to jelly. She went for the kill. The king toppled rearward, seeking with his last strength to preserve his vital parts.
Suddenly from the south end of the ring burst a wedge of King’s Companions. With a cry this corps flooded upon Eleuthera, beating her back from Theseus with their
spears and swords; the Companions lapped the king within a wall of shields, behind which they sought to haul him clear. Eleuthera howled in outrage, hacking with her axe at the picket of bronze.
To her aid rushed her seconds, succeeded by the squadrons of Amazonia; then the Scyths and Getai and the floodtide of the foe.
BOOK TEN
IN LOVE
AND WAR
29
RATS
Selene’s testament resumes:
When Horse first hoisted the free people to her back she established ordinances of honor by which compacts between nations and individuals were to be prosecuted. Foremost among these stood the sanctity of single combat. Who won, won alone. Who lost, lost alone.
Theseus had lost. Yet he lived, preserved by the arms of others. What kind of war was this? One conquered but could not prevail, took trophies only to be shamed by their possession. I was among those that day who overran the Athenian Enneapylon, tore down the Sacred Gate, and drove the last of the foe to the summit of his citadel; I had three scalps and more weapons and armor than my ponies could carry. I dumped them to the dust in contempt.
The last fight had cost horses and women in the hundreds, including both my novices, Kalkea and Arsinoe. Yet it was not the numbers, however exorbitant, but the want of honor with which the foe contested. I summon memory of it now, that hour of infamy when Theseus’ Companions lapped shields and hauled him from the field, and my gut turns in revulsion.
Already traitors of the Athenians had begun slipping through the lines to us, pledging to betray the city in return for eminence beneath our rule. Borges impaled them in disgust, not, however, before extracting intelligence of the quantity of gold Theseus held on the Rock, and what more had been evacuated to Euboea with the women and children.
Last of the Amazons Page 27