by Emily Hauser
‘What does that mean?’
I let out a slow breath. ‘I do not wish to quarrel with you, Alcides. The gods hate to see old friends at odds with one another. But you should remember, when next you name the crew of your ship and your companions on your voyage, that it was at my request that my father sent you on this task, and that we are here for my brother. My brother alone.’
He let out a crack of laughter that punctuated the tumult of the hall. ‘Is that the source of your discontent? That I did not name you to Lycus?’
I felt my face grow hot. ‘No, it is not. It is that you seem to have forgotten why you are on this quest and with whom.’
‘What do you want, Admete? You wish me to proclaim your title and patronage to the king of the Mariandyni – here and now?’
‘No,’ I said, wresting the goblet from his grip so that his grin twisted into a childish scowl. ‘And I am not jesting, Alcides. I wish you to put a stop to this war, and leave as soon as we may for the Amazons, so we may find a cure for my brother.’
I glared at him, as Theseus grabbed at the hand of a serving-girl as she walked past, and Telemus laughed and pulled her to sit beside them. For a moment Alcides and I glowered at each other, the shouting, the laughter and the twanging of the lyre ringing in our ears. Then—
‘Oh, let us not dispute,’ he said, and took the goblet back from me, his fingers brushing mine, his eyes softening. ‘I am sorry for my words. I will speak with Lycus and, in any case, the Bebryces are almost vanquished.’
I let out a breath. ‘I thank you,’ I said, clasping his hand. ‘I knew the old Alcides was in there somewhere.’
He said nothing, though I thought I saw the muscles of his jaw twitch at the name. Through the brief lull between us the bard’s song floated across the chamber.
Theseus, bold son of Aegeus, seized his massive axe
and plunged into the midst of the fray; with him
charged Hercules, warlike Amphitryon’s son, and with him
cunning Telemus.
I glanced at Alcides, but he was looking away and I could not see his expression. I knelt forwards and placed a hand on his shoulder to push myself to stand. At the last moment he turned to help me, his hand easily supporting my weight. ‘Thank you,’ I said again, and he gave me a half-smile.
‘Off with you, then,’ he said, making as if to push me from the hall. I laughed, feeling lighter than I had in days, now that I knew we would soon be on our voyage once more, and made my way back across the crowded room. I accepted some meat and bread from a slave and a little wine to take to my chambers, and when I passed the bard at his seat by the doors I heard again his song.
And so, like shepherds smoking bees from a rock,
and they murmur with a low drone till at last
they swarm away, ousted by the dark smoke;
so the Bebryces fled …
I decided to take it as an auspicious sign.
The War-Belt of Hippolyta
Ἀδμήτη
Admete
Amazons, Scythia
The Tenth Day of the Month of the Harvest, 1265 BC
The journey seemed interminable, every new appearance of the sun over the watery horizon bringing with it the fear that we might be too late, that Alexander might not live for our return. Yet now, weeks after our departure from Lycus’ court, I stood at the prow of the ship, leaning over the water and straining my eyes, my heart pounding in my chest. Yes, I was sure of it – there, on the horizon, to the east of the line of surf where the river met the sea.
Flat grassland was coming into view under the rolling clouds of the sky, the line of the river marked by dotted tufts of trees, and as the drum beat, and the sailors rowed towards the mouth of the channel, I thought I could begin to make out peaked tents, scattered over the grass, and figures moving between them.
My breath caught in my throat.
I could hardly believe it. There – before me …
The Amazon camp.
‘Take care you do not fall in. It would be a pity to see you fail at your quest now, after coming all this way.’
I turned to see Alcides pulling at the oar on the thwart closest to the prow. He was grinning, the sleeves of his tunic rolled up to his shoulders as he stroked the blade through the water.
‘What do you think they will be like?’ I asked, leaning on the beam of the ship’s side.
‘I hardly care,’ Timiades answered, before Alcides could, seated one berth back. ‘As long as they have fresh meat, and water to bathe in I, for one, shall be a happy man.’
‘And you, Alcides? What do you expect of the Amazons?’
He paused for a moment. ‘That they live up to their legends,’ he said, then went back to his rowing.
I turned towards the shore, feeling the wind blowing into my face and the kiss of sea-spray. And you, Admete? I supplied.
A shiver flared up my spine and I closed my eyes, fingers gripping the carved wood of the prow. Oh, gods, what am I doing here? Forebodings crowded my mind one after another. Perhaps these are not the Amazons. Or perhaps they will not have the cure for my brother’s illness, and our voyage will have been in vain …
Or perhaps my mother will spurn me, in front of everyone, tell me she did indeed depart Tiryns because of me …
Fear prickled my scalp, sickness rose in my belly, but I opened my eyes and forced myself to stare at the shore to keep the queasiness at bay, still clutching the prow. We were nearing the river’s estuary now and the currents pulled and buffeted at the keel. The camp was set back a little from the shore but clearly visible. I could make out the tents properly now, covered with felt and animal-hide, horses wandering on every side, their coats shades of gold, chestnut and bay, the women chopping wood with bronze-bladed axes, flaying and preparing meat. My fingers flew to my mouth as I realized I knew their clothes: they were the same as my mother had worn. Cuffed boots, patterned trousers in vivid greens and blues, pointed caps, tunics bound with leather war-belts from which hung swords and battle-axes – though my mother’s belt had always been bare.
And then I saw something that quite distracted me – a figure with hair unplaited. There, brushing down one of the horses … A man?
I stared. From all I had heard of the Amazons since my mother had left – morsels of information gleaned from conversations overheard and visiting bards at court – they were a fearsome tribe who shunned all relations with men, women who were truly the rivals of men and had no need of husbands or keepers.
Yet, now I think on it, my mother never told me it was so …
I felt pressure on my arm and blinked. Alcides was leaning forwards from his seat. ‘It is natural to be afraid,’ he said. ‘You have waited many years for this.’
A rebuttal rose, then died in my throat.
I nodded, pressing my lips tight. ‘What if they do not have the cure we are searching for?’ I whispered, so quietly that only he could hear it, as I slid down inside the hull to sit on the planks by his thwart, my knees tucked into my chest. ‘What if everything I knew about them is wrong?’
He said nothing. Moments passed, in which the prow dipped and broke into the waves, and I huddled against the ship’s side as if to pretend I was back in Tiryns, seated in my chambers and waiting for my slave to fill the bath.
Alcides’ voice broke into my thoughts. ‘Admete, look,’ he said.
We had entered the river now, slow-moving, quite unlike our darting Greek streams, and as I stood I saw the current swirling in eddies around the ship’s hull. And then, with a thrill of fear and longing as real as physical pain, I glimpsed them ahead, along a bank and shaded by trees, some of the tribe, spears planted in the sand. A woman, tall with a hide cloak on slender shoulders, stepped forwards, a battle-axe at the gold-plated belt over her tunic. At once everything was forced from my mind, everything except this moment, as the steersman turned us to the bank and the keel ploughed into the sand. And I knew, as a bird, a yearling, flying to the south over winter
knows its way, not because it thinks it, but because it feels it in every feather of its wings.
We had reached the Amazons.
Hippolyta
Amazons, Land of the Saka
The Fortieth Day after the Day of Earth in the Season of Apia, 1265 BC
I stood on the shore watching the ship sail towards us, my heart thrashing like a blue-thrush trapped in a net. It was a Greek ship, I knew it: I could have told it from the black-tarred keel to the square sheet and the deck astern with the steering oar pooling in the river. Just as his was when he left me. I could hear the sounds of their language floating towards me over the water: a long-forgotten music, which set the blood in my veins singing and made every nerve in my body thrum.
I tightened my grip around my spear and my knuckles whitened. Melanippe stood beside me on my left, Orithyia on my right. I knew Melanippe could sense the stiffness of my body, as easily as if I were a high-strung mare champing at the bit. But I refused to meet her eye.
I could look only towards the ship.
It was coming ever closer, its prow turning now towards the shore. Soon it would run aground and they would have to pull it up to land. I could see the faces of the rowers, began to make out their features, and I searched them as quickly as I could, eyes darting back and forth. I was not sure even what I wished to see, or whether I looked in hope – my heart pounding, searching … The dark eyes, the flax-gold hair …
It took me only a few moments to know that he was not there, and another to know by the drop in my shoulders and the hollow ache in my chest that I had hoped indeed. But then I thought, Perhaps one of them may know where he is, or have some news of him, and my breath caught in my throat once more, followed by the familiar pang of bitterness that I had allowed myself to be reduced to this, and the still-raw wound of his betrayal.
The first of the Greeks was leaping from the ship and wading through the water towards us: stocky, broad-shouldered and built like a bull, with a swagger to his stride as he crossed the sand towards me. As he knelt and our eyes met I saw a great emptiness in his gaze, a longing that would not easily be filled.
‘My lady, daimonié,’ he said, and I felt a surge of barbed joy at the sound of the word the other Greek had once used to say to me. ‘I ask you as a traveller, in the name of Zeus who watches over guests and gives voyagers a roof above their heads. Have we come across the Amazons, or must we journey further?’
How like the Greeks to assume their language is spoken everywhere, I thought. Melanippe’s eyes were darting between me and the newcomer, and I heard Orithyia mutter, ‘A foreigner, then! A barbarian!’
I stepped forwards and took him by the hand to raise him to his feet. ‘We are the Amazons indeed,’ I said, feeling my tongue roll over the Greek again, unfamiliar as a kiss. ‘And I am their queen, Hippolyta. What brings you here, stranger, and from so far?’
A moment’s silence, then a whisper flew around the rest of the tribe, standing gathered behind me on the bank, ready to welcome my guests or join battle against them at my command.
‘The queen speaks their language?’ I heard my archer Aella murmur nearby.
‘A strange tongue!’
‘How can she have learnt it?’
‘A foreign tongue!’
I turned towards them, frowning. The Amazons were wary of foreigners to a fault. We had been told by our mothers, and by their mothers before them, that – ever since Opoea, daughter of Targitaus, had founded the race of the Amazons with her consort-brother Colaxais – the gods had forbidden us to lie with others beyond our tribe, for fear of losing our warrior-spirit. Since I was a girl the women of the camp had spoken above all of Antimache, captured by a foreign tribe before I was born, still talked of as a traitor to our ways. She had lain with a foreigner – a paralati – a man of the earth, they said, and taught the outcasts our Amazon ways. We were a strong people, they said, and could not lose the ferocity that ran in our veins by befriending anyone beyond our borders, as Antimache had done. Any paralati was regarded with the utmost suspicion. The slanting glances they were giving the rowers on the ship now, and the way their fingers curled around the hilts of their swords, were proof enough of that.
We sisters had kept our secret well.
I gazed around at the Amazons, saw some of them lean back from whispering as my glance fell upon them, others – the councillors Thoreke and Iphito – hushing the younger warriors. I nodded this way and that, as if to say, This is nothing but my duty as a queen – and they seemed to settle, loosening their grip on their swords and shields once again.
Then I turned back to the stranger, and the Greeks gathered behind him. For a moment my breath snagged, like a thread on a hooked clasp. One of the Greek men behind him had turned his head, and for a moment, just a moment, I saw the face of another in his. Those fathomless eyes that seem to scorn the world and everyone in it … the angle of the jaw …
But then I blinked, and the resemblance was gone. This man was broader of chest, and surely years older than the Greek would have been, the hair at the edge of his temples streaked with grey.
I drew my gaze back to the stranger before me, who was now speaking, though my breath was coming fast and the collar of my cloak felt hot around my neck.
‘My name is Hercules, son of Zeus,’ he was saying, ‘and these,’ he gestured towards the band behind him, ‘are my men, the finest warriors in all of Greece. We beg your hospitality, and …’ his eyes flickered aside, then back to me ‘… that I might talk with you.’
I waited, taking the measure of him. ‘You say you come in peace?’ I glanced at the swords hanging at their waists, the spears and shields bundled on their backs. ‘Why, then, do you bring so many arms to my land?’
He spread his hands. There was a smirk on his face, which I did not quite like. ‘We come in peace – if you will but speak with us.’
I matched my gaze with his. ‘I see,’ I said, running my finger over the looped plates that fronted my belt. ‘Then we should talk, as you say.’
As he inclined his head, I noticed, for the first time, a woman standing behind him, among the crowd of warriors and slaves. My lips parted to utter an exclamation – for in everything but her dress, which was barbarously long-skirted and completely unfit for riding, she was an Amazon. Her dark hair was plaited long to one side, her cheekbones high, her eyes slim and sloping, and filled with bright, burning curiosity as she looked at me.
I turned my eyes back to the man who called himself Hercules. ‘You are full of contradictions, stranger,’ I said. ‘You sail across the seas to the ends of the world merely to speak with us. You bring with you a woman who looks in every way an Amazon, yet wears Greek dress …’
And you are Greek, but you have not brought him with you.
He gestured to the woman. ‘This voyage is a labour imposed on me by her father, the king of Tiryns. I must complete twelve tasks in his service. Admete requested that we journey to the Amazons.’
I smiled at the woman, and saw a swift response in her eyes.
‘It is the law of the gods,’ I said, raising my voice so all the Greeks might hear, ‘that we take you into our homes, and offer you gifts to take back to your country when you leave so that all may know of the might of the Amazons. But first,’ I gestured to the camp above the riverbank, ‘let us sacrifice together to the goddess who creates all things, and eat and drink our fill. Then you will tell me whence and why you have come.’
He bowed his head. ‘That would be welcome.’
‘They come in peace,’ I said, in our native tongue, and the tension in my clansmen’s faces released, though Orithyia’s scowl did not lessen.
‘They are foreigners!’ she hissed, coming close to my side. ‘How can we trust them? They come laden with weapons, swords sharp at their belts – and still you invite them to our hearths?’
I turned and made my way towards the trees. ‘It was my mother’s command before me, and mine too, Orithyia, that we welcome all and every gue
st to our tribe. We must treat them as we would hope to be welcomed if we wandered far on the plain.’
As I glanced towards her, I saw the man who resembled my Greek across the shore, marshalling the drawing of the ship onto the sand. My eyes followed the turn of his head, watching the sunlight sew threads through his loose hair and letting his commands fill my ears.
Melanippe’s voice cut across my thoughts. ‘Have a care, sister,’ she said, from behind me, and her voice, though low, sounded a warning.
Her words were like an awakening from a dream. I shivered and turned back, trying to gather myself as I trod the sand and the stranger’s footsteps crunched beside me.
Remember who you are, Hippolyta, I commanded myself, biting my lip, and the voice that reprimanded me was my mother’s, stern as a horse-whip: a queen who had always known her duty to her tribe and the customs of her people. Remember your duty, as you did not when you were with the Greek before. The creeping sensation of guilt and shame, so familiar for so many years, laced its way through me and urged me on, as it always had.
You are the queen of the Amazons. You have to think of your people.
My fingers slipped to the eagle tamga at my belt, the cold bite of the iron against my skin like my mother’s love, fierce and proud. I walked on, head high, towards the tents. And this time, I did not look back.
Ἀδμήτη
Admete
Amazons, Scythia
The Tenth Day of the Month of the Harvest, 1265 BC
It was like a vision, yet better than a vision, because it was real. Often I had to blink to remind myself that I was awake, not dreaming. I had imagined the home of the Amazons so many times. First it was my mother’s whispered tales as she rocked my cot in the summer evenings. I had seen her as I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep, riding across the plains with a hunting-eagle on her arm and the wind in her hair. Then, with growing clarity, when I was older and had to fall asleep alone without a mother’s arms to hold me, I had added to the scant details I had from her. Lying awake during the starless nights, I had made a world for myself, a refuge of scree-covered mountains, tribes covered with furs and women calling to each other, like falcons. And in the midst of it all my mother rode.