For the Immortal

by Emily Hauser

  Admete leant towards me. ‘Please,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘Please, tell me what you know.’

  I took her hand in mine and folded her cold fingers between my own. ‘I will tell you, my daughter,’ I said, and I saw a smile glimmer across her face at the word. ‘But I do not know how much help I can be.’

  She shook her head. ‘It does not matter. All I wish is to know.’

  I closed my eyes, trying to recall all my mother had told me. ‘Antimache,’ I said after a pause, ‘was born a few years before my own mother, the queen.’ I opened my eyes to find her hanging on my every word, her expression so eager it made my heart ache for what she had suffered. ‘When she was just growing into womanhood, there was a raid on the camp by a group of Greeks who had lost their way sailing on the sea and were starved for food and drink. Though my grandmother, the queen, tried to offer it to them peacefully, they looted our stores, then captured Antimache and a few of the young girls. The others fought their way off the ship and returned. Antimache did not.’

  Admete’s jaw was jutting forwards, her teeth clenched as if she was determined not to allow tears, but her hands were trembling at her sides.

  ‘Reports reached us from across the sea that Antimache had been taken to a Greek palace. They told us she had settled there – that she married a Greek, and forgot all her Amazon ways. From when I was a child her story was told to me – to all of us – as an example of betrayal: to lie with a man beyond our tribe, and to conceive an infant with him in whose veins would run the blood of a foreigner. Yet how wrong they were!’ I said, and I squeezed her hand, hoping to bring some cheer to her, for her mouth was drawn down as if weighted by sadness. ‘I saw it from the moment you stepped ashore on our lands. You have all the looks and ways of a true Amazon.’

  She looked up at me. ‘You thought I was an Amazon?’

  ‘Truly,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘And I suppose – she is not here, then?’ I saw her grip the edge of her skirt and twist it in her fingers, clearly preparing herself for my reply.

  ‘No,’ I said, with a slight shudder. ‘She is not. She tried to return, when I was younger. I saw nothing of her – I was barred by my mother for fear of her influence. They sent her to exile in punishment for having lain with a Greek.’ I swallowed, my lips dry. ‘I have heard nothing of her since.’

  ‘She left us,’ Admete said, her voice blank. ‘When I was ten years of age, she left us, without explanation, without any word as to where she might have gone. I thought I might find her here.’

  I shook my head. ‘I am sorry.’

  She took a breath, straightening her back. ‘Then – well – that is done,’ she said, her mouth tight. ‘There are more important things.’

  ‘You need not be so harsh on yourself,’ I said, leaning towards her. ‘You are grieving. It takes time – many years – to recover from the loss of someone you loved. I, above all, know that.’

  She shook her head, and I saw single-mindedness in the direct gaze of her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘There is more – there is something more important.’

  Silence fell between us, broken only by the whinnying of horses beyond the tent and the drifting sound of conversation as some of my people passed us. I tilted my head to observe her – for, however much she said her grieving was past, I recognized in her apparent self-possession the yearning to be free from the weight of loss. ‘Is there something you wished to ask of me?’ I asked gently, feeling that this was a battle with which I could not help her. All Amazons, at one time or another, had to fight alone.

  She nodded, fingering her plait. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My brother in Tiryns suffers from a fever such as I have never seen. I am come in search of a cure.’

  I leant forwards. ‘What can I do to help you?’

  She glanced at me, and I saw gratitude in her face that I had not tried to console her. Often I had found, as queen of my tribe, that the offer of assistance was more of a gift than a thousand words of comfort. And, of course, poor girl, with no mother to care for her she cannot have had many people in whom to confide. I sat still, waiting until she felt she could speak.

  ‘I mean no disrespect to your healer,’ she said at last, picking her words carefully, ‘but I have searched Ioxeia’s stores and found nothing similar to the treasures of herbal lore of which my mother spoke. I have found nothing here to cure his fever, nothing we do not already have in Greece, except …’

  ‘What is it?’ I urged her.

  She bit her lip. ‘Ioxeia mentioned a garden of golden apples, set far in the north, told of by traders who have come here from the Hyperboreans. She said,’ her mouth puckered in doubt, ‘that they are rumoured to bring immortality, to be the source of a powerful healing that induces life after death and can bring back the spirits of those who have already departed.’

  I bowed my head. ‘That is true. I have heard of them.’

  She nodded, and her speech became quicker. ‘And though I do not believe that the gods send diseases, I have nowhere else to turn, and my brother … Perhaps it is the only way …’ Her voice quivered. ‘I thought perhaps the apples – these golden apples – might be the cure-alls of which my mother told me.’ She turned her face up to mine, her eyes filled with a quiet desperation. ‘Do you know anything of them? Do you know where they might be found?’

  I considered her. ‘I have heard the legend,’ I said, ‘of the apples of gold that make men into gods. And it is true that the Hyperboreans with whom we trade have spoken of them. If it is as important to you to heal your brother as it seems to be, then I – like Ioxeia – would counsel you and your Greeks to seek these apples; for sometimes the only cures for our ills lie with the gods, no matter how much we wish it otherwise.’

  She shrugged a shoulder, and said nothing.

  ‘The Hyperboreans,’ I went on, ‘have spoken of them as far to the north, further even than their own kingdom. My outriders will be able to direct you towards the Hyperboreans from the borders of our lands. From them you can take more direction.’

  A strange expression crossed her face – furtive, hesitant. ‘You would do that?’

  ‘Of course.’ I smiled at her and clasped her hand in mine once more, enclosing the fingers with my own. ‘I would do as much, and more, for any fellow Amazon.’

  Ἀδμήτη

  Admete

  Amazons, Scythia

  The Fourteenth Day of the Month of the Harvest, 1265 BC

  I could not sleep that night, tortured by the Amazon queen’s words, her kindness to me, as the winds from the plain pummelled the tent and wolves howled. I wished more than anything to speak with Alcides, to dissuade him from the war-belt, to supplicate him by all the gods if I had to – but though I went to his tent and waited, and kept an oil-lamp burning by my side, I did not see a shadow move across the tent in all the long hours that the stars circled across the sky, and neither he nor Theseus returned.

  I woke from a fitful doze to the pale yellow expanse of dawn through the tent’s opening above me, and the sounds of raised voices. The tent was empty of all Greeks – Timiades, Euneos, Perses, all were gone, their fleeces and blankets pushed back in piles on the floor. Heart leaping in my throat, eyes stinging with fatigue, I threw a cloak over my under-tunic and wrapped a girdle around my waist, then clutched at my sandals and ran outside.

  Alcides, Theseus and Timiades stood before the queen’s tent, as I had feared, their way barred by two axe-wielding guards, and around them, buzzing like a hive of angry bees, Amazons were gathering, my tent-fellows Polemusa, Aella and Deianeira among them. I could hear Alcides shouting at the guards as I ran towards him, breath coming sharp. I could see Timiades gesticulating, and Theseus with his arms crossed over his chest. As I approached, the tent-flaps parted and the queen emerged, soothing the guards with a hand on their shoulders, her face pale as she drew a cloak over herself.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  Her voice was quiet, but all talking ceased, leav
ing only the chattering of the birds swarming overhead.

  ‘Your guards,’ Alcides said roughly, ‘refused to allow us entry.’

  ‘We have come to demand of you a prize,’ Timiades added, as I tried to push my way through the crowd of Amazons, palms sweating now with foreboding. ‘Give it to us, and we will leave you unharmed. Refuse, and we will fight. You will know the pain of seeing your people die, like wheat cut beneath the scythe, before your eyes.’

  I could just make out the queen through a gap in the bodies pressed before me, her dark brows arched, and beside her her guards, their battle-axes still raised, eyes narrowed.

  ‘What is it you seek?’

  There was a pause. Then Alcides said, his voice cutting the air like a blade, ‘Your war-belt.’

  A silence fell deep over the crowd, and I felt the Amazons around me tense, like hares about to spring. Fear welled in me, like a sickness, and all of a sudden I was aware of the sharpened swords hanging at belts all around me, the glinting points of the battle-axes. The air shuddered and seemed to thicken.

  ‘That,’ the queen said, with pride and menace in her voice, ‘you may not have.’

  It happened in a slash of bronze. Out of nowhere, a blade came swishing down, shrieking against the iron that blocked it. The guards closed ranks before the queen, and all around me there were heaving bodies, the flashing of metal and piercing cries.

  I did not wait – I turned and, thanking the gods for my plaited hair and the Scythian tongue, I screamed to the Amazons, ‘I am one of you! I am an Amazon!’ Then, taking advantage of their confusion, I ran faster than I had ever done for the tents. My breath was tearing at my lungs, my senses white-blind with fear. Terror clutched at my heart for both the Amazons and the Greeks, for Alcides and Hippolyta, as the splitting of metal on bone and shrieks followed on the wind. My panic overcame me so that I seemed to skim above the grass, the air curving around me.

  And then I was at the healer’s tent and flung myself inside.

  ‘Oh, gods, Ioxeia, they are fighting! They are fighting!’

  Battle for the War-Belt

  Scythia

  As a northerly wind rides over the camp, stretching its icy fingers across the land of the Saka, Hera drops to the ground and stands. Hidden behind a tent at the edge of the gathering-place, no one sees her arrive, and no one notices as yet another Amazon steps out to mingle in the fray.

  She nods to see the screaming, heaving hordes of Amazons around her, the flashing of battle-axes.

  She is just in time.

  Hera draws a breath. In answer to her call, a fog begins to form, like mist over the sea, and rolls, swirling, snaking across the land towards the Amazon camp. Within moments the Greeks and Amazons are shrouded in an impenetrable, cloud-like mass, their figures shadows in the grey that covers all. She hears Hercules’ cry, ‘What enchantment is this?’ then the Amazons shouting to each other, feels them fumbling their way past her in their panic.

  She smiles and moves forwards through them.

  Hippolyta has emerged from her tent, her war-belt over her tunic, and is turning this way and that, demanding to know what is happening. Hera wraps the fog around her like a swaddling-cloth, binding her, blinding her, and Hippolyta stumbles and falls to her knees at the side of the battle, unable to see and unseen by the rest of the screaming, swarming Amazons.

  And now it is time to whip the Amazons into a frenzy of battle-fury, such as none has ever seen, such that the lives of the Greeks will be ripped from them, and none shall ever leave the camp again.

  ‘The foreigners!’ she screams, and her tongue – shifting shape with her disguise – speaks Scythian. ‘They have taken the queen!’

  The tremor of panic around her shifts to rage. ‘The queen!’ she cries, stirring them up, like wind whipping waves. The Amazons are echoing the refrain, eyes white with anger through the mist: ‘The queen! They have captured the queen! Attack!’

  She parts the fog, just enough to lead them back to where their horses are gathered, grazing the plain, and hears the Amazons, one after another, mounting their steeds, the clatter of quivers at war-belts and the screams of ‘Oiorpata!’ She runs to Orithyia and shouts to her, ‘Treachery! Avenge your sister!’ then watches as Orithyia, her face taut with fear and rage, cries, ‘Oiorpata!’ and brings the gathered battle-lines of the Amazons back to face the Greeks.

  Caught in the fog and trapped between the tents, the Greeks are rushing to redouble their hold on their weapons and gather more, daggers scraping as they pull them from their scabbards. Hercules has his sword held before him in both hands, eyes darting this way and that through the mist; Theseus, Solois and Timiades gird him on either side, spears held trembling at their shoulders. The Amazons charge forwards, horses stamping, battle-axes swinging. First to join battle is Aella, her name given for her swiftness of speed, one of Hippolyta’s chosen band. She rides screaming towards the Greek line, curving her battle-axe as if to cut through the mist that entraps the Greeks. Behind her rides another, but Hera cannot make out her face.

  And then she shrugs. The fog has done what it was meant to do – and what god would miss the chance to see a battle?

  Slowly, like a spinner teasing the wool into thread, Hera pulls the fog towards her, wraps it round and round her finger into a silver fibre until gradually it thins. Riders loom suddenly high out of the darkness, and the Greeks are caught by the Amazon onslaught, blinking into the light. Aella rides through the cowering Greeks, dealing death to right and left, shrieking the war-cry as her blade cuts down the enemy. Orithyia has leapt from her steed and fights hand to hand with Hercules – Hera watches, fascinated, as the sister of Hippolyta raises her axe, gritting her teeth, to block Hercules’ blow, then draws her sword and, as Hercules prepares his next attack, strikes his blade with a shuddering stroke and brings it around, the hilt slipping from his fingers, the blade tumbling to the earth …

  On Hera’s right stand three sisters, and she turns to watch as they advance on a pair of Greeks, stabbing back and forth with their swords, goading the Greeks into following them. One Greek leaps forwards, and the Amazon takes her chance. Swiping with her sword she deals him a deathly blow, slamming the blade between his ribs, and he collapses beneath his brother’s feet, his sandals staining with blood. Hera’s eyes dart between Amazons and Greeks – three to one, now – as the Greek screams and rushes at the warrior-women, swinging his spear through the air.

  There is Orithyia again, striking out at Thoas and Solois, battling both with a sword in each hand and a laugh on her lips. She dances with them, playing, tapping back and forth as the men battle her, their faces streaming sweat. Melanippe comes to join her, hair whirling as she battles Hercules, her sword slicing through the air with the deadly force of the wind itself. And then Hera hears a scream. Orithyia is poised with her swords outstretched, her mouth gaping in a vaunting laugh and a bloody gash ripping across her chest, tearing at her breasts. Timiades’ spear, sent aslant, rips through her skin and falls to the ground, blade burying itself in the earth.

  ‘Having fun, are we?’

  Hera whirls around. A Greek stands beside her, thick-set and with oiled dark hair, yet there is something about the mischievous glimmer in his eye that not even the disguise can hide.

  ‘Oh, no. Not you.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Hermes says. The battle-cries and sounds of clashing swords fade around them as the two gods speak. ‘Glad to see you’ve been keeping busy.’

  Hera’s eyes are drawn back to the chaos surrounding her. ‘It’s only a minor skirmish,’ she says. ‘Not even a battle, really.’

  ‘And I’m only a messenger,’ Hermes says sardonically. ‘But it’s against the rules, and you know it. You and Zeus agreed, after the oracle: no interfering in Hercules’ labours. If he succeeds or fails, it will be on his own merit.’

  ‘Yes, yes, very well.’ Hera waves him away impatiently. ‘I know. There’s no need to rub it in.’

  ‘In any case,’ Hermes says
, ‘I would have thought you had other matters to occupy yourself.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Hera snaps.

  Hermes gives an innocent shrug of his shoulders. ‘Nothing. But I did happen to see a certain Muse on my way here, getting awfully close to the Garden of the Hesperides …’

  Hera swears under her breath. ‘Can I not have one moment’s rest?’

  ‘When you want to rule the universe,’ Hermes says, twiddling his thumbs and giving her a look of benevolent amusement, ‘apparently not.’

  Hera tears her gaze away from Orithyia as she slumps forward in death. ‘Oh, all right,’ she says. ‘I’ll leave.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But, Hermes,’ she bites her lip as she prepares to go, ‘don’t stop the fighting, will you? I mean, it would count as interfering, after all.’

  Hermes grins at her. ‘Wouldn’t stop it, even if I could,’ he says. ‘Not to worry.’

  And so, as the queen of the gods departs, making with quick steps for the forests of the north, Hermes turns to watch the battle –

  – and the full force of Zeus’ favour swings towards the Greeks.

  Leaving the Land of the Saka

  Hippolyta

  Amazons, Land of the Saka

  The Forty-third Day after the Day of Earth in the Season of Apia, 1265 BC

  I stumbled to my feet, shaking, my limbs filled with fear. Some terrible curse of the gods must have come upon me. All I remembered was darkness, like the yawning chasm of night, descending on me from the sea, and then I fell, blinded, as if dead.

  And now the wind was whipping at my cheeks, bringing me back to my senses. My vision was clearing. My legs, though trembling, bore my weight once more. I looked around me, surveying the scene of chaos before me with a growing sense of horror. The gathering-place of the camp was a raging tumult of bodies – horses bucking and rearing, riders screaming battle-cries, sword clashing on sword, spears shivering through the air, darts hailing from every side, like rain from a clear sky. The tang of sweat and blood and death hit my nostrils and I leant forwards, trying to regain control of myself as the horror clamoured and battered against my senses. My people … My people …