by Judith Hand
He smiled. “It’s intended to slow them down.”
“And?”
“I’m still alive.”
She chuckled. He risked a quick look at her. Lovely green eyes returned his gaze.
His cabin was simple—a single room with a small covered porch on one side—but soundly built of logs with a sloped slate roof and sturdy beams and rafters and snugly chinked with sticks and clay. He felt suddenly glad that he kept a neat home. All the women of Themiskyra were accustomed to elegance and order and fine comforts. These two would be no different. Only when they were young and Amazon did Themiskyran women live every bit as ruggedly as he did. The Amazons themselves though, were a different breed.
At the door he set her on her feet. At the same moment, as the three of them stood on the covered porch, the sky released its hold on the rain.
Her friend, quivers slung over her shoulder, still carried Little Wolf.
Damon opened the wooden plank door halfway and said, “Wait a moment.” Inside, he hurried to the perch where, after he worked his Saker falcon, she spent the remainder of her day. He gazed with appreciation at the beauty the two women would soon see: a pale, almost white, head; dark, blue-gray back with deep-black flight feathers; a white, heavily streaked breast; and large, oval, white spots on a brown tail.
The falcon fixed him with her dark, penetrating, and always eerily noncommittal, gaze. “Sorry, Dia. We have guests.” He slipped a tiny leather hood with a jaunty tuft of red feathers over her head. Without it she could likely panic. The only other human she knew was Bias, and the boy had only been to the cabin eight times in the three years Damon had owned the falcon.
Back at the door, he gestured the women inside.
“The pup, too?” asked the smaller woman.
He nodded.
Well-packed dirt covered with boar skins served as his floor. The hearth dominated the room’s center, and a covered opening through the roof let out smoke. A small table with two chairs stood several paces from the hearth. He said, “If you’d like to stoke the fire, there is wood against the wall.”
Overhead, the solid sounds of heavy rain began thumping on the slate.
From the cabinet next to the single window, he pulled out a fresh set of tunic and trousers and then, having pulled the window’s wooden cover shut against the rain, he retreated into the room’s darkest corner. With his back to the women, he shucked the wet tunic over his head, listening to the sound of footsteps and of wood being taken from the pile.
He put on the fresh tunic. Little Wolf sniffed the tunic then darted under foot as Damon unlaced and stripped off his wet trousers, wondering as he bent over if the women were looking at his rear. Actually, he decided, his backside would probably not interest them. Amazons did not live with men, but they had plenty of lovers.
Dry and dressed, he turned to find a small fire springing up in the hearth. The wood being dried spruce, it gave off friendly crackles and a soothing smell. As he’d imagined, both women appeared to have been studying it, not him. He suffered a pang of disappointment, and immediately judged his feeling absurd. The dried ingredients for venison stew—meat, onions, carrots, and herbs—had been soaking in the tripod since morning. He fetched the tripod and positioned the pot over the fire.
Both women rose and, with the wounded beauty limping and helped by her friend, they walked halfway to Dia’s perch then paused and stared at the bird, slack-jawed.
He said, “Don’t move;” then slipped the hood off.
The red-head collected herself first and asked softly, “Is it a Saker?” Her face now radiated remarkable gentleness. Her initial embarrassment past, she was relaxing.
“The bird is quite exquisite,” said her companion.
“You’ve not seen a hunting falcon before?”
They both gave him brief, puzzled stares, then looked again to Dia. “A hunting falcon?” they said together.
“An old man named Noemon, who built this cabin, took me in. And he taught me the art of taming and using the Saker to hunt.” Damon slipped the hood back onto Dia’s head. “It’s something he learned in the southeast. It’s summer now and Dia’s molting. But in winter, the stew we’d eat tonight would likely be a hare she caught. The ferrets that scare prey up for us live in a cage outside.”
The women studied him. The green eyes of the red-head were the lovely color of young spruce needles. Her chestnut-haired companion, he now noticed, was also attractive, especially her rich brown eyes and full breasts.
“You,” said the red-head, “ferrets, and a falcon. And what very much appears to be a wolf pup, not a dog.” She smiled, her lips were inviting, the smile firing her eyes with mischief. “That’s it?”
He returned the smile and added a single nod.
They shared a long look. He once more felt a male stirring, and turning away, hurried to say the first thing that came into his mind. “I’ll lower the tripod a bit closer to the heat.”
The smaller woman said, after settling her friend and herself on one of several bearskin rugs, “Tell us how it is done—with the falcon. A bird so wild.”
Little Wolf bounded into the lap of the red-head, and she massaged him behind the ears.
Damon explained. “First I had to capture her when she was young, from the high land to the south.”
“Hittite land?” asked the red-head. Little Wolf flopped onto his side and the Amazon tickled his belly.
Damon nodded, envying Little Wolf’s position. “She only hunts well in the open:” He stirred the stew, then fetched bread from the shelf next to Dia. He cut the bread, found three clean bowls and a ladle and served up supper. Since he had only two chairs, they ate seated on the skins.
“Over three years ago my friend, Noemon, came to the end of his journey.” Sadness for the loss of a man who had in many ways saved his life, brought a stifling tightness to his throat. He swallowed hard. Finding his voice again, he continued. “The gods took him in his sleep. A good man. A clever man. He had no family, and this place became mine. I have been here six years:”
They finished, and he added a piece of wood to freshen the fire against the night chill. The smaller woman fetched their quivers. Both women dug into one of several pouches.
He blew under the wood a few times until it flickered into flame.
The red-head, who held and was studying three small, oddly chipped pieces of stone—two black and one green—said, “Why a wolf pup? Why not a dog?”
He resettled, cross-legged, on the bearskin. Little Wolf crawled into his lap. The smaller woman began to whittle what he thought might become the figure of an owl.
“I love a wolf’s spirit.”
“But …”
“The Fates brought him to me. Not a dog. His family must be dead or they somehow lost him.”
“Don’t you worry? He’s adorable now, but he will grow wild.”
By Zeus, this woman was a beauty to steal the breath of any man who laid eyes on her. “You think I should worry?”
“You don’t think you should?”
“He will be wild. Perhaps he’ll leave me. Probably not. Wolves are fiercely loyal.”
“So is a dog, and you don’t have a worry about a dog tearing out the throat of your next visitor.”
He grinned. “I don’t have visitors.”
Both women laughed.
He laid the pup on its back and tickled its belly. “It is only essential that in every moment of every day, he never doubts or questions that I am his master.”
She returned the two black stones to the bag and fetched out yet another stone, this one larger, a small piece of leather, and a bit of deer antler tine.
After placing the smaller, green stone on the leather in her left hand, to his surprise, she struck it with the larger stone. A green chunk spun off onto the floor. With another deft stroke, another bit of stone joined the first. He watched, fascinated, as in remarkably short time the green piece achieved the rough shape of an arrowhead. Then, working with th
e antler tine, pressing it just so, she flaked off smaller pieces. Finally, she notched the end. A beautifully crafted arrowhead lay in her palm.
She said, “You learned to work a falcon from your friend. I learned from my mother to make arrow tips as they made them in the days of the old gods.”
He held out his hand, and she tossed the arrowhead to him. With it she sent a smile that suggested sharing. Even intimacy. He felt a quickening heartbeat. He rubbed his thumb gingerly over a cutting edge as sharp as any iron Amazon tip he’d ever felt. Perhaps sharper. But of course, it would be far more breakable.
She dug into the pouch and brought out a black piece and began to work it. Now and then she massaged her hip, as if perhaps thinking she wanted to walk out of this odd place as soon as possible.
He set the pup aside, went to his cupboard, and brought back his fine cutting knife and a nearly-finished dress harness. He needed only to inlay the brow and cheek pieces with bronze swirls he’d gotten on his last trip to Themiskyra and the halter would be ready for trade. For added light, he lit two clay oil lamps.
Seeing the harness, the smaller woman said, “I know you. I recognize the fine work. You are Damonides, are you not?”
He sat again, grinned at her. “My many friends call me Damon.”
Both women smiled at his bit of irony. The shorter of the two continued. “My mother, our mother, is Gryn. She often mentions trading with you.”
“Often?” he said, genuinely surprised.
“Yes, often.”
“And your name is … ?”
“Hippolyta.”
The red-head stopped her chipping to catch his eye, a little puzzled frown creasing her forehead. “Do you never leave this place except to meet Gryn?”
“I’d have to say, I don’t otherwise leave.”
“Why? Why all alone here, with only animals and the forest?”
Violent images from the past began to crawl up from deep recesses in his mind. His mouth went dry. The fragile construct of tranquility at his core began to unravel, and his mind raced, determined to stave off its undoing.
The confident face across from him cut through the panic and moored him again. Still, he could barely get out the somber words. “Because it gives me some peace.”
His words dropped a sudden heaviness into the room. This was all wrong! With determined effort, Damon pushed the past away, forced his voice to the carefree tone that was his natural spirit. “I want my heart to stay light and my life to be simple. Here,” he opened his arms, “with my animals, I live without …” He stopped himself from saying, “the nausea of voices and the brutality of men.” “ … without care.”
“But you are alone,” she said, her voice suddenly tender.
He turned his attention to the bridle.
Mercifully, she seemed to understand and let the subject go. “So, what do you do with the wolf, the falcon, and the ferrets and whatever else you have out there when you come to Themiskyra?”
“An hour’s walk away there is small village. Three families. I trade my leatherwork with them for the help of one of the sons, Bias. He’s twelve. It’s not a burden to them. I don’t need him often.”
He cut away a bit of leather where he would inlay bronze. The sounds in the room became those of thumping rain, crackling logs, chipping stone, and the whisking of whittled wood. He found he often had to force his attention to his hands and his intentions for the bridle since his thoughts stubbornly wandered, instead, to the Amazon’s hair, the remembered feel of her skin against his, and the fire in her eyes.
3
KEEPING HER HEAD BOWED, PENTHA STOLE glances at this strange solitary, Damon “as his many friends called him.” She couldn’t resist the pull of him. How strange that, for some reason known perhaps only to him, he had taken up such an isolated existence. He had a delightful sense of humor and zest for life.
And he was no ugly thing. Quite the contrary. Deep-sea blue eyes twinkled under strong brown eyebrows. To look deeply into his eyes gave her a shiver. He had perhaps forty years or slightly more. Brown, wavy hair, sitting lightly on his shoulders, shone with good health. His close-cut beard, she suspected, did not hide a weak chin or miserable complexion. He did not stay here because of any grand flaw she could see.
He also possessed enormous strength, something she’d found arousing when he carried her to the cabin. She had not had a lover for over a month, not since the night after the last full moon dance.
Hippolyta broke the silence. “There is much talk about you in Themiskyra. In the Amazon compound as well as those of the women and men.”
Damon smiled, not at Hippolyta but as if to himself, as if finding her pronouncement vastly amusing. “And what do they say?”
“They say you are a rebel. That you were always odd. Only someone odd would choose to leave beautiful and peaceful Themiskrya to ‘see the world.’”
“Well, when it comes to odd, I’d say they are right.”
Hippolyta laughed and Pentha joined her. Hippolyta, a darling child of Zeus and Curiosity, pressed on. “And did you see the world?”
“I saw it. I learned to love parts of it. I learned to hate parts of it. Now I prefer the woods.”
“They say you were a warrior. That you fought with Acheans. They tell amazing tales of Damonides, the Achean fighter from Themiskyra.”
“I know war.”
Sensing he didn’t want to talk of war, Pentha said, “We share something. I’ve also seen some of the world beyond Themiskyra. My mother—Gryn took me in when I was seventeen—my natural mother was Amazon, but when she was twenty and five she fell in love with a man who came traveling through. Before I was born, she left Themiskyra with him, to live on Tenedos. Do you know Tenedos, the island off Troy?”
He nodded.
Hippolyta said, “They say you never come into the city or the men’s compound. Gryn says she has asked you to visit and you say no. Don’t you like people?”
“I like people. I just don’t like them in large numbers.”
What a very peculiar man, Pentha thought, sitting there so strong, with strong hands doing fine work, and perfectly happy being alone. He looked up, caught her looking at him. He grinned. “You’ve not told me your name.”
“Pentha.”
Hippolyta added, “It’s really Penthesilea.”
He dropped his hands and the harness to his lap and stared in obvious astonishment. “I am honored to host the Warrior Queen. Somehow I think I should have guessed.”
She couldn’t hold back a laugh. “The Warrior Queen who gets herself caught in a simple rope-loop trap that a child would have seen.”
“I have heard much about you from Gryn, although she failed to mention you are her adopted daughter.”
“What does she say of me?”
“Ah, let me think.”
He stopped working the leather and gazed a moment over her shoulder, then bent again to work. “She talked of you mostly during the time you did contest with Marpessa to become the Warrior Queen.” Without looking at her he said, “Gryn doesn’t like Marpessa. She believes her to be your enemy.”
Hippolyta stopped whittling and said, heat in her voice, “Some feel that because Pentha wasn’t raised in Themiskyra, she was not acceptable to lead our cavalry. But her mother was Amazon, and after Pentha came back to us she trained hard to learn riding and horses and weapons. Pentha won the competition. The issue was settled for good when she saved our troops from a Hittite ambush.”
Again he turned his blue-eyed gaze to Pentha. “Did you like living in Tenedos?”
Was Pentha mistaken or was Damon pointedly uninterested in battles? She said, “I was happy. I loved my mother. I saw little of my father. He stayed mostly at sea.”
Would Damon ask her why she left? She held her breath, waiting for that blow to fall. It had been a long time since anyone asked why she left Tenedos and why she came back to Themiskyra, a long time since she had to tell them it was not their concern.
; Instead he said, “Like your mother, I also found love in that world. I learned that I like living with a woman all the time, not just coming to her at night.”
Damon set the harness and the pup aside and stood. He said, “You are probably tired.”
The insistent thumping of the rain on the roof continued. She watched him, admiring his strong, sure movements as he made two heaps of furs behind where she and Hippolyta sat. On the opposite side of the fire, he made another pile for himself.
She removed her sandals and crawled between the furs. She never tired of loving the softness of furs on her skin. In Tenedos, life had been more “citified,” as her mother called it. They slept between bedclothes made of linen but of coarse texture. She much preferred the furs of Themiskyra.
For a while she watched the fire, listening to dying snaps of protest that produced pops and tiny flashes of light. She could just make out Damon’s form beyond the glow. Soon her eyelids grew heavy and closed, and random thoughts replaced coherent ones.
An image of her hanging upside down.
The feeling of Damon’s arms and body, his strong muscles, like a stallion in its prime.
Image of Valor running down the beach at full gallop.
Finally, Morpheus took her.
IT IS JUST PAST dawn in Tenedos and she has come from her sleeping chamber to let the dog out when the sounds begin. Screaming all around the house.
“Raiders!” someone outside yells.
Now she is crouching, hiding, shaking in the huge basket, a butchering knife in her hand. Her mother lies dead on the floor. And the warrior lays over Derinoe, grunting and grunting, and Deri is moaning.
Pentha should leap out and sink her knife deep into his side. Honor demands it. Love for her sister demands it.
But she crouches, rigid as stone. A sweating stone. She cannot feel herself breathing, but feels sweat pour down her side.
Let it end!
Now her sister and the huge warrior, the biggest man she has ever seen, are outside. The Achean monster is dragging Deri away! This is what they do. Kill the men and boys. Makes slaves of the women and girls.