Last of the Amazons

by Steven Pressfield

  For once the prince of the Scyths was not drunk, or not so as to slip on his own spit, as usual. “There is no honor in defeating a people such as these,” he declaimed in council the night succeeding the duel. When Eleuthera pointed atop the Acropolis and said, “There is your gold; take it,” the lord of the Iron Mountains met her eye and affirmed, “It is not enough.”

  The allied camps now ringed the Acropolis entire. Everywhere lay our wounded and dead. Here was the most grievous woe. In raids upon the steppe one rarely lost a comrade; never beyond two or three, save in the gravest action. Now a hundred, two hundred melted away each night. In ninety days a third of the nation had perished, while another third bore wounds from which they would never be made whole. Beyond this stood the suffering of the horses. How many had we lost? Five thousand in battle, thrice that to falls and affliction. Even our captains’ mounts, accorded the choicest feed, could not last ten minutes in action. A rider went through four and five in one fight. All must be rested for days after, and even then they grew more gaunt and cadaverous.

  Borges was right. We must take the island. Only that would make the Athenians come down and fight. And we had to get grain; our horses were emaciated; Attica had been cropped dry.

  I dropped all subordinate duties to hold myself available to Eleuthera. I learned to step in among petitioners and detach her from their press. I picketed her catnaps and set my cloak as shade when she dozed midday. My body I planted across her threshold, not to slumber, but to debar from access those who would steal her sleep or tear her, for their self-interested ends, apart from the cause upon which all depended.

  Each night, and night succeeding night, Eleuthera made her rounds from camp to camp, stopping at fires to lend a word, share a jibe, or simply to let our knights and novices feed upon her presence, she who had vanquished the great Theseus in single combat. A hundred times I sought to break off these junkets. Rest! The flesh can only take so much! “No,” she rejected all such calls, “our sisters on the line labor harder, for the weight I bear is rendered lighter by my office and the honors accorded me.”

  Casualties had sapped the corps’ resolve to such extent that warrioresses, in the exhaustion after action, could barely find the strength to bury their horses—not in this shingley marl which must be mined with pick and mattock and even then yielded only stone beneath stone. At this chore again and again Eleuthera shamed her compatriots. Taking station beside a fallen mount, she commenced spading the trench with her own hand, and by her exertions compelled all to emulation. The army ached for the steppe; Eleuthera knew it. We feared for our children, our mares and foals, in peril even now from enemies emboldened by our absence. Eleuthera sought not to throttle such grief but shared it. I watched the bucks and troopers as she passed among them through the camp. Their eyes shone, feasting upon her apparition. They would tell their daughters of this hour, when the great Eleuthera spoke to them, took their hand, smiled at a jest they had made. One read in the eyes of all the readiness to die for the nation. It shamed you and made you humble.

  I had sensed as a child the scale of my friend’s ambition; I feared that such adulation as she now received would turn her head. Instead, it transfigured her. A hundred times a night one witnessed this exchange: our commander kneeling at a crippled novice’s side or clasping the hand of a mutilated veteran. The faces of the wounded lit beneath her touch; their eyes went liquid with love. And they read this in hers: that she would donate all to preserve the nation.

  They began to call her Parthenos, the Virgin. For the people meant by this that she lived for them and them alone.

  Of all our race, Antiope, I believe, was the noblest. But Eleuthera was the greatest. The love she bore for tal Kyrte transcended all passion of woman for man or woman for woman. It was a love not of flesh but of spirit, whose expression was not self-assertion but self-abnegation. From the most proud of warriors, Eleuthera had become the most humble. I marveled to behold her. In my own heart I still yearned for Damon. I experienced shame to feel this. In the end, what is erotic love but vanity and the wish to submerge and surrender? Even to produce a child, I scored myself in secret, was self-interest and conceit alongside this love which Eleuthera bore like a flame for the people.

  Envoys of the Athenians now began coming over. Rats deserting the sinking ship, they delivered their messages, then slipped away through lines made porous by our allies’ intoxication or their decampment to complete the causeway to Euboea. Word came to Eleuthera from the Athenian general Lykos: he would deliver Theseus’ head in return for being spared and made regent. Others pleaded for their families, pledging ransom from overseas holdings. More simply made a run for it, roping down the cliffs and bolting into the dark.

  The seventh night Damon appeared with an embassy sent by Theseus. The king still reigned, the legation testified. The proposition they bore was for tal Kyrte’s ears alone.

  I studied Damon as he addressed the Council. He was gaunt. His cheeks were hollow, the bones prominent beneath his beard. Never had I admired him more. He wore that look which declares, I have no fear of you, I am ready to die. My heart felt love for him as never before.

  One saw he loved us. He was one of us. As he recited the proposal his king had charged him to convey, one read between its lines the same of Theseus. He loved us too.

  The king, Damon informed the Council, offers five hundred talents of gold, an enormous sum, all the city possesses, if tal Kyrte will cease hostilities and ally itself with Athens. Together, Theseus proposed, our nations would turn upon the Scyths, Thracians, and Getai.

  “Tal Kyrte knows her enemy is not Athens,” Damon recited, “however grave the grievance she bears. How can our distant city harm the free people? Only those can whom she now calls her allies. Borges and Saduces own designs upon your homeland. The casualties you must suffer to unseat us from our hold will only waste you for the trek home, which will be marked by battles against those who hate you for what you are and who covet your lands and stock.

  “Say that you despise us. Say you abhor our ways. But acknowledge the wisdom of having it out with your real foes here and now, while you still have strength and may employ us as allies, fighting from the stronghold of our citadel. We will fight hard, for your enemies are ours, and we wish to drive them out as much as you wish to deplete their capacity to work you harm in the future.

  “Consider this alliance, Theseus, king of Athens, beseeches you. By mighty deeds tal Kyrte has proven her preeminence and achieved imperishable glory. Now, Theseus urges you, secure your survival. See prudence and make us your allies against those who seek only your extinction.”

  Damon finished. The deputation was dismissed. All withdrew, save him. He refused to depart, but held, alone, at the portal of the pavilion.

  One could see his fellow envoys turn about in bewilderment, seeking to draw him away with them. He would not go. The Council looked on, puzzled.

  Damon addressed them. “The words I have spoken are those of my king and people. What I say now comes from my own heart.”

  He straightened.

  “I will not return with my comrades to the city. I wish to stay with you.”

  Skyleia snorted in ridicule. “As what?”

  Damon balked, as if command of our tongue had deserted him. Eleuthera stepped before him.

  “You have been the lover of Selene?”

  “I have,” Damon answered.

  “What is this you make now? A gesture of romance?”

  Further derision poured upon him from my countrywomen. Damon maintained his resolve. “What then?” Eleuthera demanded.

  “As I have spoken,” he said.

  I stepped in. “His heart loves the wild ways.”

  Scorn greeted this, from all and in abundance. Damon was accused of being a spy or assassin, a coward seeking to save his skin, and worse.

  My lover bore this abuse without rejoinder. Eleuthera studied him hard. She glanced once to me, deadly sober, then elevated her palm to stay
the excoriation which continued to be heaped upon Damon by our sisters in arms.

  “Stay tonight,” she commanded him. “Decide tomorrow.”

  To me she signed: Show him the causeway.

  30

  AT THE THRESHOLD

  OF VICTORY

  The straits of the Euripus separate the mainland from the island of Euboea. The narrows are a quarter mile. I rode out that night with Damon.

  I had long rehearsed this hour. I knew how I would touch him, take him again as my lover. I had worked out what to say and how to say it.

  In the event, all fell out otherwise.

  It was dark when we reached the straits. Cressets flared; the site seethed with industry. Progress was spectacular. Where the channel had been looked now like dry land. The causeway spanned three hundred fifty of the four hundred yards needed. This was the least of it. The Tower People had taken command; they had founded not only the central axis of stone, wide enough for a span of oxen, but built out trestles at each flank, along which riders could advance three abreast. Sidescreens protected against seaborne counterattack; the span bristled like a fortress. Drawn by bounties, adventurers had swum the straits at night, holing numbers of Athenian craft and incinerating others. On our shore the Tower People and Chalybes carved finishing touches in a great rolling drop bridge. This would be warped into place for the attack. The Athenians had erected a palisade where the ramp would crash. But what would this serve, manned only by old men and boys?

  Damon and I passed among the host. Here were more troops, and of keener spirit, than besieged the city itself. No captain of Amazonia contributed. These were Scyths and Thracians and Getai, under their own.

  My lover and I drew up, overlooking the channel.

  “My mother and two sisters are there,” Damon said. “Their children are with them. My brother’s wife. I have aunts and cousins and grandparents.”

  With this, I saw all hope had ended for us.

  “Theseus must come down now,” Damon declared. “Eleuthera will get the fight she came for.”

  He meant the Athenians would descend from their bastion atop the Acropolis. They had no choice. They must break out, do or die, to breach our lines and destroy the causeway.

  We returned to the city around noon. The camp on Ares’ Hill thrilled with some fresh crisis. The Council convened; slopes teemed with warrioresses in a state of agitation. I hailed Glauke Grey Eyes. “What has happened?”

  “Follow me,” she commanded.

  She spit the tale as we mounted to Eleuthera’s command compound. Antiope, Grey Eyes said, had come down from the Acropolis. Our lady had appeared at the head of the Three Hundred Steps an hour after dawn, mounted on Sneak Biscuits, and been permitted to cross, with an escort of King’s Companions, to our camp.

  “Antiope came before Eleuthera,” Grey Eyes narrated, “bearing her war shield. She set her knee to the earth and her shield at Eleuthera’s feet. These were her words:

  “‘Our two sides are locked in an impasse which neither can win; all that remains is a bloodbath, destroying both—Athenians now, tal Kyrte later. I know no way out but swear to you, sister, and pledge my holiest oath upon it: I will do anything to procure peace. Name the sacrifice and I will bear it: my life and that of my child, if you so command. You have won. State that price you need to satisfy your honor and I will pay it.’ ”

  Among tal Kyrte the shield represents a warrior’s pride; her victories and wounds are recorded upon it; it is synonymous with her soul; it may never be relinquished. Even in death the warrior’s shield lies at her shoulder, emblem of her integrity, in this life and the next.

  Eleuthera’s wrath dissolved before Antiope’s gesture of submission. Who had shown such greatness of soul? Her love for Antiope rekindled.

  Eleuthera addressed the Council. “Let us withdraw,” she proposed. “We have received our queen’s capitulation. We have conquered Athens’s king. This is victory. Let us go home!”

  Of all people, it was Hippolyta who debarred this. She banished Antiope from the camp and reproved the people, declaring that if they returned to their homeland bearing some imperfect or conditional victory, their rivals of the plains would eat them alive.

  “You understood when we embarked upon this war, sisters, that the stakes were all or nothing. You may not back off now. The causeway complete, nothing will stay the cataclysm. We must bathe in blood. Prepare yourselves. I will not let you act otherwise!”

  So contrary to expectation are the workings of fate. For now, at the terminal hour, it came Eleuthera who called for peace and Hippolyta who demanded war.

  Damon champed to return to his people now, to tell what he had seen at the straits. Eleuthera would not let him go. Past midnight she addressed the Council. She rejected Hippolyta’s interpretation of events. “Victory is victory! We have it. As for allies who may protest, let them take it to hell!”

  The following were the terms she proposed, which, if the Council so ratified, Damon would carry to Theseus and the Athenians:

  “Abandon your city this night. Accept safe passage through our lines. Our allies will not be informed. Each man of Athens may take his arms and one garment. Antiope may depart too; we will not prevent her. Take to your ships with your women and children. Settle elsewhere, in Italy or Iberia, anywhere you wish. Cede us possession of the city, all gold and treasure, and the fame of having driven you forth. This will suffice for our honor. With this we can withdraw. Later you may return and reoccupy your country. We don’t care what you do once we are gone.

  “You have as much time to answer as it takes one brand to burn down to ashes. For our allies’ ears are long and they will never permit this, should they learn.”

  The Council approved, Hippolyta dissenting. Damon committed the proposal to memory. I was sent with him, to translate and to ensure there was no miscommunication. I rode in armor, on Daybreak. Stuff accompanied me as my novice.

  31

  THE WATCH

  COMMANDER’S TOWER

  Theseus accepted.

  The Athenians packed up in the dark. The mobilization went with remarkable swiftness, considering the stakes and the risk of discovery. Stuff and I were held at the watch commander’s tower. For the first time we could see the enemy close up. He was a mess. Nearly every man was wounded; the maimed and blinded made a third of the ranks. Rations were exhausted; the foe had neither wine nor bread nor splints to bake it with. He gnawed grain raw and the leather of his own shoes. I felt revulsion to observe this, not out of compassion for these beleaguered wretches, though God knows they deserved it, but for the degradation of spirit inflicted on both sides by this honorless war.

  Our site of detention was the eastern bastion of the Fortress, the great defense work that ringed the summit of the Rock. Directly beneath our battlement the summit square seethed with the press of men (and the women they had kept with them to cook and clean) massing before the portals by which the mob would make their getaway.

  At once a murmur came. Clearly its sense was alarm. Athenians were pointing in agitation to the camps of the besiegers below. Stuff and I peered over the parapet to the lines of tal Kyrte. Other troops could be seen hastening up in overwhelming numbers, moving in behind our lines and on the hills beyond. They lit great bonfires. A second ring of besiegers took position to the rear of ours.

  An Athenian corporal passed. “Betrayed,” he spat.

  Men seized and bound us. We must kneel at swordpoint; a guard was posted over us.

  The troops streaming in below, we were made to understand, were Borges’ and Saduces’. Give these buggers credit: they had not only sniffed out the double-cross Eleuthera and Theseus had planned for them, but got ten thousand back from the causeway, across miles in the dark, and into blocking position, annulling for the Athenians all possibility of escape.

  The Scyths put up picket fire after picket fire, making a show of it, while those clansmen who had acquired snatches of Greek bawled up to the defenders, taunting
them that their scheme had been sold out.

  “Make out your wills, men of Athens!”

  “Leave everything to us!”

  The causeway would be completed tomorrow, the Scyths called.

  “Your wives will be our chattel!”

  “Your daughters will be our whores!”

  All night they kept it up. They detailed the crucifixion that awaited the old men and boys on the island and the fates of the matriarchs and maidens when their captors had wrung the last amusement from them.

  Stuff and I were not permitted to speak or to vacate our kennel, even to heed nature’s call. The Athenians had taken our weapons; clearly they would slice our throats when the morning’s fight began.

  I asked if I might get a message to Damon. The watch sergeant laughed in my face.

  Two hours before dawn, Damon came on his own. He had water for us, even a heel of bread. He convinced our jailers that we were no spies but as much victims of Borges’ stroke as the Athenians. We were freed at last and our weapons returned. Damon himself was in armor. Within the hour, he informed us, the defenders would make their break from the Rock.

  Theseus would lead. Damon had seen him. His fractured left arm had been splinted and bound to his chest with straps of ox-hide. A half shield, bronze over oak, had been riveted to his breastplate. His scalp, torn in the clash with Eleuthera, had been stitched back. He bore two score other wounds, Damon reported, including a broken foot (bound now to a stump), ruptures of both groins, and half his jaw sheared away. When he crossed this night to address the commanders, every man on the Rock stood, wounded included. All would arm, even the blinded and concussed; men who could not walk would limp on staffs or crawl on their knees. Boys and women armed in the panoplies of the dead and strapped up to move out. One had to admire them: they showed a kind of nobility, these carpenters and mechanics, unbred for war.