Last of the Amazons

by Steven Pressfield

  My brother and I fled the last hundred steps to the summit. Every man, it seemed, bore another, wounded or maimed. Blood turned the pavement slick. The final gate, that of the summit Fortress, yawned and swallowed us. It closed with a bang; forty men set their shoulders to the crossbar. We were on the summit now. Within the Fortress court, the last Athenian companies milled in disorder. Suddenly from the inner court appeared, to our astonishment, Selene and the girl Stuff! Both were in armor. Their horses were being brought. A watch commander bawled to hold the gate. Selene and the maid were being released!

  What had happened?

  I tried to push through but the press beat me back. Selene had not seen me. She couldn’t hear my cries in the din. I strained toward her; she appeared distraught, as at the commission of some crime or treason. A groom led Daybreak. The horse reared and kicked. At first I thought it was the boy’s clumsiness. Then I saw Selene’s hand upon the reins; the animal balked and snapped at her in a way no Amazon mount would do, save to a warrior who had lost her hippeia.

  I saw Selene swat Daybreak across the nose with the flat of her hand, an extremity she would never resort to uncompelled by despair. She sprang to her seat, hauling the bit tight, inflicting pain intentionally, as a ship’s master applies the lash to a mutinous crew, then heeled the beast hard and drove him, with Stuff behind, through the portal and out.

  The gates boomed shut. The crossbar was heaved into place; the double bolts thrown. The shattered companies of Athens remustered. Into the court advanced Sneak Biscuits. On his back rode Antiope, in armor.

  33

  THE ARMING OF ANTIOPE

  What turn occasioned this I could not then know. I must cobble this recounting at secondhand, from witnesses, each of whom stood present for a portion of events but none for the full sequence.

  It had been, as I have said, the lady Antiope’s practice in her daily round never to look upon the fighting or permit the babe Hippolytus to do so, but to abide apart in the innermost precincts of the citadel. No other did this. Every breathing soul, it seemed, ringed the battlements night and day, so eager was he for intelligence, well or ill, of the struggle below, and so unable to bear the suspense in its absence. Many bivouaced at these self-appointed posts, refusing to vacate even to eat or sleep. Never—save one appearance on the walls to address her countrywomen and, later, her extraordinary night embassy to the Amazon camp—was Antiope observed outside her cloister. Only with the descent of darkness and cessation of strife, or in the stillness before dawn, would she take the air of the ramparts, and even then made it a point never to look below. Yet surely she heard. It would be impossible not to. With each cry of woe or exultation, so one learned later, the Amazon grew more distraught, uncertain if it signaled the end of him she loved or, equally dreadful to her, his vanquishment of one of her own kind. I have been within the citadel under assault, and I can tell you the rock rings with sound from end to end. Worse, the stone plays tricks, magnifying some clamors while diminishing others. You swear the Fortress Gate has been broken in; you arm and hasten out, only to be brought up by comrades’ laughter, and see the fight a furlong below.

  Apparently the clamor, on this final dawn, had reached such a pitch that Antiope could no longer maintain her truancy. She came out. She mounted to the tower. I know this because men saw her from below and hailed her; others witnessed from within and testified thereafter. They said her face, looking on the slaughter, revealed nothing. Nor did she linger regarding the field, across which men and women were slaying and being slain by hundreds, but turned at once and strode back within.

  At this hour, recall, Selene remained in detention at the blockhouse, with her novice Stuff. My mate Philippus, Dew Lap, chanced then to hold the bell; his post was guard commander; he had charge of Selene.

  Suddenly a messenger approached him from the lady Antiope. Selene’s horse was to be brought round ready to ride, the dispatch commanded. The maid herself was to be escorted to Antiope at once, by the guard captain in person.

  Philippus obeyed in such haste, he testified later, that his corporal and he were packing Selene’s breastplate and herald’s pennant, she herself cinching her sword and baldric, as all trundled across the court before the Temple of Victory, chockablock now with outdoor kitchens and berths for the wounded. When they entered the palace, they were met by a page at the threshold of Antiope’s rooms and redirected to the king’s armory.

  “You know that kennel, Damon,” Philippus told me later, narrating the tale. “It’s tight as a duck’s ass. Barely room to crook an elbow, as it holds the king’s arms and the Companions’. Theseus’ armorer was there and had the hole open. Dark as a crypt, one lamp guttering, stinking of bronze and oil and sweat.

  “When we entered, the lady Antiope waited at the rear, one foot on the bench before the spear stands. Her hair was dressed and bound, as Amazons do before battle, with her helmet, bossed, on the shelf beside her. Her legs and shoulders were bare. I confess I goggled. Not Theseus himself bore as many scars of battle. At our entry the lady looked up as any commander might, cross and impatient at our tardiness. About both shins she clamped greaves of bronze; her soles were shod in those boots her race call ‘fireproofs.’ The remainder of her armor inclined against its stand, wanting only the hand to set it about her.

  “We had the maid Selene between us, my corporal and I, not sure if the lady wished her held or not. I could feel Selene start at the sight of her queen awaiting armor. Antiope intended to fight, that was clear. But on whose side?

  “‘All leave me,’ she commanded, ‘save Selene.’

  “This was impossible.

  “‘I must forbid this, lady,’ I declared with all the brass I could muster. ‘On orders of your lord, our king.’

  “The Amazon did not even look at me. Clearly she had called the maid to arm her. It is some superstitious canon of their race that not any lubber may do it. I summoned my globes. ‘By command of our lord Theseus, lady, you may not be set at hazard.’

  “She met my glance then for the first time. ‘If you love your country, Captain, rally every man and hold them for me, in order, in the court of the Fortress Gate.’

  “Will you believe me, Damon, when I declare I was compelled to obey her? Her will was so strong. I found myself bowing and withdrawing.

  “‘Come, Selene,’ I heard the lady commence in their savage tongue. ‘I may be wrapped in my death armor only by one who loves me.’

  “There is an alcove at the throat of the armory, where the steps turn before ascending. We retreated, my corporal and I. Yet some imperative would not let us depart. We held up there at chamber’s gorge. The conformation of the stone carries sound across the apse, so that the speech of the two Amazons worked to our ears as clearly as from one as close as you are now.

  “Antiope commanded the maid to arm her.

  “Selene refused.

  “Here, Damon, I lament my deficiency in the Amazon tongue. Further the women spoke with haste and in a kind of code, as intimates will. I could make out this declaration of the lady: ‘I will not stand by and witness another slaughter of innocents,’ by which one could only deduce she meant the massacre of Athenian women and children that must ensue when the Scyths and Thracians completed their causeway to the island.

  “Selene rejected this, on what terms I could not call clear, but was overridden by her mistress, dictating with emphasis: ‘Tal Kyrte must be remembered as warriors, not butchers!’ A passionate exchange succeeded, narrated at such a pace that I could comprehend little. The pith seemed to be Antiope’s conviction that their nation was doomed, and all that remained was how posterity would remember it.

  “The maid Selene dismissed this. ‘Listen beyond the walls. Victory is ours!’ A dark ejaculation escaped the lady Antiope. ‘As the pine pronounced to the axe.’

  “Distinctly I heard from Antiope, ‘Only one act can make tal Kyrte turn from this folly: the sight of myself in armor contending against them. This will break their hea
rts, as I read in your aspect, Selene, it now breaks yours.’

  “The lady had drawn the maid to her. They spoke in whispers. Both wept. The enormity commanded of the maid had struck both women numb. You could see that Selene sensed, as I, that this act would alter the fate of both our races. Could she summon, as I had not, the spirit to defy her queen?

  “Antiope indicated the breastplate before her on its stand. ‘Now aid me, my friend, as once you did before.’ The lady straightened and aligned herself so that her mate could install the bronze about her. ‘I must,’ she said, ‘be beautiful today.’ ”

  Such was Philippus’ report. At the same time Antiope had directed Selene she had, apparently, commanded as well that her own horse be armored and brought round to the court of the Fortress Gate. This site is exceptional in its own right. It is a double gate, with a broad square between. On both flanks ascend galleries from which archers and javelineers may fire upon attackers penned below.

  It was into this courtyard now, at the crisis of the siege, that Theseus and the Companions staggered, myself among them, at the extremity of exhaustion. The companies drew up in astonishment to behold Antiope in armor upon her steed of battle. A groom held Sneak Biscuits’ reins. This act stood in violation of our monarch’s orders on pain of death. The lad went white at his lord’s approach. To augment the boy’s consternation was the king’s aspect in this moment. From the ordeal of battle, the crest of his helmet had been sheared; where the horsehair plume had ascended now hung strips of human hair and flesh. The plate where it fell across his eyes shone, lacquered with blood. His shield, bound to his crippled flank with bands of bronze, was black with that paste of gore and dust which all warriors know from the press of close-ranked combat. The king bore neither spear nor javelin, all long since shivered. His great sword had been sundered at the haft; he clutched the blade butt absent the grip. This too dripped with fluids. With his right hand, whose fingers could no longer be seen, bound as they were in rags and leather to seal their wounds, he reached to the helmet and cocked it back above his eyes. Froth and spittle lathered his lips and chin; he wiped and flung this to the dirt. His teeth he swiped as well, black with blood and grime. His eyes were sockets of exhaustion.

  Now he saw his bride upon her armored steed. Clearly he recognized the import of this apparition and the extremity it proclaimed. A terrible groan escaped his breast, as of one who feels the workings of Fate’s engine, and knows the mark of his own hand upon the lever. I recall the boy groom’s face, reacting with relief that he, the mere agent of this calamity, was too slight a pawn to merit notice. Rather our lord’s glance elevated to heaven, to Him who had ordained this overthrow.

  The upper galleries of the court stood packed with archers and javelineers, spellbound by the drama playing out in the square below. Outside the gate the massed foe put up a racket ungodly, clamoring for Athens’s annihilation.

  Antiope reined Sneak Biscuits hard. I did not remark this then, so dislocated were my senses, yet any with eyes could read in her mount’s demeanor, smelling the fight and eager for it, that heaven had restored to the Amazon that mastery over horses, hippeia, of which she had so long been deprived. My gaze held riveted to her, as did those of every other assembled on the summit at this hour of Athens’s extremity.

  The lady wore Amazon cavalry greaves, the kind which cover the outboard portion of the shin only, leaving the flesh bare where it pressed against the horse. Her upper legs were scale-armored, her waist cinched in the seven-stranded wale. A breastplate of bronze defended her fore and aft atop a sleeveless jerkin. A black panther skin, the same she had borne from Amazonia, lapped her left side, gorge to hip. From her belt hung a gorytus quiver bristling with shafts, a bow of horn and ivory clamped in its case; against her back sat the sheath of a pelekus axe; she clutched three horseback javelins. Sneak Biscuits wore a headstall rig of iron over quilted linen, with matching armor plating his neck, breast, and flanks. Every inch of metal on horse and rider had been burnished to a mirror’s sheen. The helmet, cocked back on the Amazon’s brow, was an eye-slitter of bronze etched with cobalt and timonium. It bore no crest but a solitary band of boar’s teeth, lapping the eye slits like a sash. In thirty years of strife on land and sea, I have never beheld a more magnificent-looking warrior.

  At this instant two Athenian infantry companies, or such scrambled miscellany as might with charity be called by that name, hobbled into the court from the palace interior, armed and ready to follow Antiope into the fray. At the sight of their lord Theseus in his gore-begrimed armor, the lot drew up in trepidation.

  The king crossed to the Amazon, seizing her bridle as if to stay her within the court. Antiope met her husband’s eyes. From where I stood, I could see only the nape beneath her helmet. Yet such heartbreak could be read in the aspect of the king, looking up into her face and apprehending the mandate of necessity it told, as to clench my own heart as in the grip of some fell fist. Simultaneously, a thrill coursed along the galleries ringing the court at the sight of this magnificent warrioress, the city’s last hope. Nor could a more baneful contrast have been imagined between the gore-mantled lord of Athens and his impeccable warrior bride. Outside, the din of the foe reascended. Would our king hold his queen from action?

  From the skirt of the court arose an infant’s cry. The babe Hippolytus. He had been brought in by his nurse. At a sign from Antiope the child was borne forward. The sight of his son seemed to unman Theseus’ resistance. Again the clamor of the enemy. Did the lady speak? Did the king respond? If they did I could hear nothing, so deafening was the uproar from without.

  Antiope motioned for the babe to be passed up to her. Theseus took him from the nurse. Antiope lifted Hippolytus from her husband’s hands and set him before her, the infant’s back against her horse’s mane, his legs straddling the animal’s flanks. The Amazon touched belly, heart, and brow in the salute to Ares. Her right hand reached over her shoulder, unsheathing the double axe. She elevated the crescent blades, upright before her. I could see her lips pronounce the anthem of Ares Manslayer,

  Blood to iron

  Iron to blood

  whose import is the warrioress’ abdication of hope, her willing release of life and embrace of her end.

  With the axe’s edge she incised a split upon her own tongue. The child looked on, fascinated. His lips parted in uncoerced emulation. Upon his infant’s tongue his mother lanced the matching stroke.

  I and the other Companions had crossed to take station at our king’s side. I stood close enough beneath the Amazon to see the rawhide ties of her boots and the leather where the quilted pad of Sneak Biscuits’ breastplate rode against the whorled hair of his coat. Antiope lifted her son. “Now kiss this face, my love, which you will never see in life again.”

  The boy obeyed. I turned toward Theseus. His eyes were dead coins. Antiope passed the infant down. At that instant a cry mightier than all ascended from the foe beyond the gate. Antiope resheathed her axe; her right hand rose; she tugged her helmet-facing down.

  Theseus could still have stopped her. He was the king; the gatemaster would not open without his leave. Our lord peered into the mask of bronze, which hid forever the face of her he loved.

  He stepped back. The gate groaned open.

  34

  AGONY OF ANTIOPE

  Brothers, I will not bore you with the lore. You have heard the tales. The heroes of that day were your fathers and grandfathers; you know the sites; you have seen the graves and monuments. Some of you fought then in the ranks, while others, lads at the time, owned enough of sense to apprehend the magnitude of events. You youngsters who had not been born, even you have heard the harpers’ lays and attended the rites at the House of Oaths and the Amazoneum. No doubt you believe you possess an understanding of the battle and the impact this lone Amazon had upon it. Believe me, brothers, you do not. None has, who was not there to see it.

  Antiope advanced from the gate at the base of the Steps. The upper way had been clear
ed for her by massive bombardment of rock and boulder, the final barrage tonnage held in the west-facing summit magazines, which the gunners released now and which thundered down the zigzag works of the Enneapylon, producing such a storm of stone and dust, colossal and cacophonous, as to drive the Scyths and Getai, Taurians and Thracians and Caucasians massed beneath the Fortress Gate back down the slope in terror. Behind this roiling smokescreen, companies of Athenian infantry propelled the last diehards of the foe from the clefts they clung to above the Nine Gates. The field was cleared. The enemy remustered, massing outside the wall (or what was left of it) of the Enneapylon at the base of the Rock. Down the Three Hundred Steps descended Antiope.

  She did not emerge from the gate first, but two Athenian companies, that of Menestheus and Stichios Ox, preceded her. My place was in the former. The foe greeted us with jeers and catcalls but made no move to attack. Then Antiope spurred forth. She did not charge at the gallop, as I have seen carved in reliefs and painted on the bowls of kraters and the walls of hero shrines. She came out at a walk. Nor did she proclaim her identity, citing descent and lineage, as one of her stature had every right; rather, held silent, neither elevating an arm to signal combat’s onset nor hoisting the boar’s-tooth plate that sheathed her eyes to confirm for all who she was.

  Behind her the ranks of Athenians decanted from the gate like winter honey from a jar, sluggishly and tardily. They were terrified. The first line set its backs to the remains of the wall, compelling each succeeding rank to take station before it—the inversion of good order and the very opposite of what their officers had commanded. Still, as each rank accreted, the front advanced. Antiope advanced before it. Clearly no few of the foe took her for a goddess, with such splendor did her armor gleam and by such brilliance did her aspect exceed the common measure of humanity. The hour was still early, the west-facing slope deep in shadow, so that the Amazon, seen from the besiegers’ lines, advanced from gloom into flares of blinding dazzle.