by Emily Hauser
‘Helen,’ I said, bending to her, ‘Theia will take you back to Sparta. I want you to ride with her, and be good on the journey home. Soon you will see your parents again. Yes?’
I took her head in both my hands and planted a kiss on her curls. ‘Here,’ I said, moving to a stall at the back of the stables where we were sheltered from the view of the slaves, and unknotting the reins of a bay mare from its post. It snorted and whinnied, and I smelt the familiar scent of hay, horse-sweat and leather as I helped first Theia, then Helen to mount.
‘Take the gate to the east, and circle the battle,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the figures at the stables’ entrance. They were gathering spears from a stockpile near the door, passing them one to another in a chain. ‘I do not know the way to Sparta, so you must ask at the villages if you lose the path, but speak to no one till you have ridden a day or more from here, and if you come across the Amazons then say Queen Hippolyta,’ I felt a thrill to say my name once more, ‘has granted you safe passage. They will know me by the sign of the eagle, the tamga of our tribe.’ I pulled a ring from my finger, gold shaped into an eagle with encircling wings, and dropped it into Helen’s hand. Theia’s arms were wrapped around the child. I could see her pale little face shrouded by Theia’s embrace. ‘You have not a moment to lose. Leave here at speed. They will not challenge you if you keep your hood up and say you are riding in aid of Theseus. And, Helen,’ I said, reaching out to stroke her cheek with my finger, ‘hide yourself in Theia’s cloak. It will not do if you are seen.’
Theia reached down to take my hand. ‘How can we ever thank—’
‘Go!’
She nodded then, wheeled the horse around in the stall and, with a final glance, raised her hood over her hair and cantered out of the stables. I heard the men by the door crying out as she knocked through the pile of spears – ‘What – hey!’ – and Theia’s shouted reply: ‘I ride for Theseus!’
I crept to the next stall where a black stallion flicked his dark eyes warily over me. I stepped nearer to him, soothing him with words in my own tongue and stroking his nose. He calmed, quietening at the closeness of my body, allowing me to slip the bridle on him and throw a rug on his back. Silent and quick, I leapt up to mount, taking the reins into my fingers, feeling the leather rub at my thumbs. A swell of exhilaration – to be mounted again, to be free – surged in me, and a smile, the first in many days, broke across my face.
‘Come, ippa,’ I said, digging my heels into the horse’s sides, then turning towards the doors that opened onto the palace forecourt and the boundless night beyond, where the slaves had run out to follow Theia, crying and waving their arms. I took a deep breath.
‘We’re going home.’
The Battle for Athens
Mount Olympus
If you were to journey back across the night-darkened Sarmatian plains, cross the ridges of the Carpathian Mountains and traverse the wilds of Thrace into Thessaly, if you were to climb the seven folds of Mount Olympus with a flaring torch in your hand, scrambling through pine-forests and rocky scree to the highest peak, you would find almost all of the gods of Olympus gathered there to watch the battle for Athens.
The assembly-place is crowded as the gods jostle for the best view south towards the city. Zeus, Poseidon, Athena and Ares are seated, each leaning forwards to gaze eagerly at their contenders. Athena is for the Greeks, of course – Athens is hers, recently founded and raised from the rock, the olive trees still young and shallow-rooted. She hardly wants to see it ransacked and burnt by an invading barbarian horde. Zeus is feigning neutrality, though in truth both he and Poseidon – having vested interests in the Greeks by way of sons – are more than a little partisan, and Zeus’ thoughts are, in any case, far away with Hermes as he tails Hera through the wilds of the north. Ares, for his part, is shouting for the Amazons: for it was he who had given the war-belt to Hippolyta’s mother, Marpesia, and he cannot help but admire their skill.
Ares peers through the darkness. The Amazon general Melanippe decided – against his attempts to direct her otherwise – to launch an offensive against the Athenians at night; and, he thinks, rubbing his chin, it seems to be working. The Amazons’ allies, the Scythian tribe of Sagylus whose help they had enlisted on their journey to Greece, are ravaging the countryside of Attica, torching villages and isolated farms which burn like fireflies over the landscape. The Amazons themselves have breached the walls of Athens and set up camp on one of the western hills. Their army is ranged in a line to the Pnyx, and though the Athenians are galloping down into the valley from the Hill of the Muses and blasting their trumpets, they will be no match for the Amazons.
Ares, a connoisseur of war, has to admire the sheer extent of their prowess in battle. Take Melanippe. She rides her dappled grey stallion as if they were of one body, one mind; her sickle-shaped shield seems to be but an extension of her left arm. Galloping up and down the Amazon ranks, calling her orders and summoning them by name, she brings them round in a pincer movement to entrap the Athenian troops, who, unused to fighting at close quarters without the serried ranks of the army lines and the warriors’ shields locked side by side, stumble and break apart. The narrow valley becomes a vicious killing-ground, as Melanippe and her Amazons descend on the encircled Greeks and deal their blows, swiping left and right, some leaping from their mounts to fight hand to hand, others trampling the Athenians beneath their horses’ hoofs. The clanging of bronze, the screams and cries and the blaring of trumpets drift to Olympus on the breeze, like the chirruping of cicadas, and from time to time a sword-blade catches the moonlight and reflects a beam of silver towards the watching gods.
And then Ares blinks.
He hears Athena beside him splutter, and he knows that she, too, has seen.
A figure is charging on horseback down the rock of the palace hill, slaves running after her and throwing spears that hurtle far from the mark, her hair flying loose in the wind behind, weight effortlessly balanced as the horse stumbles over the rocks. She is screaming the war-cry, and even the way she rides – hips moving seamlessly with her mount, chin held high – it is clear she is a queen. The Amazons hear her shout and turn to see her as she gallops through the clustering pine trees of the valley, up over the boulders and through the dark-flowering shrubs, beating their spears on their shields and shrieking till Olympus shudders with the clamour. Queen Hippolyta bows her head and smiles. She reins her horse in, stamping and snorting mist into the night air, and catches the battle-axe that Melanippe throws her from her steed at the army’s head.
Then, together, side by side, grim with determination, the sisters turn to battle.
Some gods, however, are not watching the battle as it rages over Athens.
Calliope, disguised as a Hyperborean, is pacing up and down a colonnade of the palace of the king of the Hyperboreans, Abaris, at the world’s other edge. Her sand-coloured robes swirl out behind her, her hair furling in the wind that whips inland from the storm at sea. She can barely hear her own thoughts over the thundering and crashing of the waves and the rumbling of Hera’s storm, which has followed Hercules all the way from Sarmatia, pouring on him the displeasure of the queen of the gods. Calliope glances out at the sky, but the moon is swaddled in clouds and she cannot tell what time it is. She checks the colonnade again for the two goddesses she has summoned, but it is empty, the benches unoccupied, the pine torches flickering in their brackets.
She tightens her grip around the coffer she is holding, and begins to pace again.
‘Calliope!’
She whirls around. There, seated by an arch, as if they have been there all the time, are Aphrodite and Iris. They are disguised as Hyperboreans too, as she bade them, with their robes knotted across their breasts, their sleeves slipping down their shoulders and laurel leaves in their hair – yet nothing could mask the voluptuousness of Aphrodite’s silken curves, or Iris’s sharp, knowing look.
‘So you have been hiding here,’ Aphrodite says, getting to her feet
and kissing Calliope on one cheek. She holds her hands and stands back, appraising her. ‘The Hyperborean dress suits you,’ she says, tilting her head to one side and taking in Calliope’s loose hair falling over her shoulders. ‘I cannot stand to see you in the plain poet’s robes you usually wear.’
Iris stands too, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘Let us get to the point. Why have you brought us here, Calliope?’
Calliope sucks in a breath through her teeth. She hates having to do this, but what choice does she have? Hera is almost onto her: she can feel the presence of the queen of the gods nearby, just as a farmer looks at the skies and senses the chill onset of winter.
She looses her hands from Aphrodite’s grip and pulls the casket from beneath her arm. ‘It has to do with the golden apples.’
As the goddesses watch, she slides a fingernail beneath the clasp and opens it. There, again, are the three sockets, engraved with gold. One is empty, but the other two are filled with the perfect gleaming apples. She feels her chest constrict with the burden of it. If her gamble doesn’t work … But it has to.
Iris’s eyes dart to her face and back to the chest. Aphrodite lets out a snort of laughter, which she attempts to stifle behind her hand. ‘So it is true! I thought Hera made it up … You know, to make Zeus pay her a bit more attention. But you did, did you?’
Iris’s face has taken on a look of grudging admiration, and her eyes narrow as she scans Calliope’s. ‘How, by the waters of the blessed Styx, did you manage it?’
‘Never mind that,’ Calliope says. ‘We do not have much time.’
‘What happened to that one?’ Iris is pointing at the empty socket, where an apple once lay.
‘You have to listen,’ Calliope says. The truth will be told soon, but not yet. ‘Time is short.’ She gestures to the bench, and Aphrodite moves with a swishing of robes and sinks down on the cushions, gazing at Calliope with a curious smile. After a moment or so, Iris follows suit.
‘I have three apples – how I came by them is no concern of yours,’ she says, stifling Iris with a look. A gust of wind from the shore blasts through the colonnade and the torches sputter and spit. Another rumble of thunder rolls in from the sea. She feels her throat tighten. Hera is very close now. ‘All you need know is that Hera is after them, and knows I have them. I had to hide to be close to the mortals, to bestow it on one when the time was right yet keep them from her. I have done so for the first. The others I can no longer protect. She has almost found me – I cannot hide for ever. I need you to safeguard them for me.’
Iris raises an eyebrow, and a wave tumbles onto the shore with a resounding crash. ‘Why would we do that?’
Calliope ignores her and carries on, pacing up and down before them. She will tell them everything in due course – that is part of her plan – but it has to come at the crisis-point, and not a moment sooner. ‘I have already given one to the mortal Hercules – you will know why soon, do not ask me now, I beg you – and the other two I give to you, to guard until I tell you that the time is right.’
‘Hercules?’ Aphrodite asks, sitting up a little taller. ‘Son of Zeus?’
Calliope nods impatiently. ‘He was ready, the labours were complete. I diverted his ship, sent him to an island north of the Hesperides. If he were to land at the Garden, the daughters of Atlas would have alerted Hera at once. He thinks he has the apple for his labours. He need never know otherwise.’
‘But,’ Iris says, frowning and leaning forwards, ‘supposing we do accept the apples, what are we to do with them then?’
Calliope stops pacing. ‘Is that a yes, daughter of Thaumas?’
Iris scowls. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Aphrodite says, and stretches out her hands. Calliope prises an apple from its slot and places it, with the care of a mother handing her newborn to the wet-nurse, in Aphrodite’s palms.
‘Look how beautiful it is!’ Aphrodite holds the apple by its stalk and sends it spinning with one finger, so the torchlight glints off it and out into the darkness beyond the arches of the colonnade, like the beam of a beacon to a stranded ship.
‘Don’t do that!’ Calliope snaps. She snatches the apple and clamps her hands around it. ‘Don’t you understand? We have to hide them from Hera until the appropriate time! You cannot flash it about as if it were … oh, I don’t know! Some bauble fashioned for you by Hephaestus!’
There is a moment of silence, punctuated only by the storm pounding the shoreline and the hissing of the waves, as Aphrodite pouts and Iris runs a finger over her lips, thinking.
‘And this is directly calculated to put out Hera?’ Iris asks at last.
Calliope pauses, and Aphrodite takes advantage of her distraction to snatch the apple back and bury it in the folds of her robes. The Muse rubs her eyes. She anticipated a problem here. Iris is Hera’s messenger, after all, bound to her by the ties of loyalty and service, but she had not been able to think of any goddess as cunningly greedy as Aphrodite, or as clever as Iris, with whom she could trust her secret.
‘Yes,’ she begins, ‘and I know you are Hera’s messenger, and—’
‘I’ll do it,’ Iris says, holding out a hand.
Calliope stares at her. ‘Really?’
Iris snaps her fingers. ‘Yes.’
Calliope fumbles at the final apple and lifts it out, handing it to Iris, who pockets it with the swiftness of a practised thief. Calliope looks down at the chest in her hands, feeling as bereft and empty as the open sockets – but she knows she has done the right thing. She sets it down and takes Aphrodite and Iris’s hands in hers.
‘You have my gratitude, and the gratitude of all the gods,’ she says.
Iris stands, and Aphrodite follows suit beside her. ‘And we are to keep them hidden until …?’
Calliope bows her head as she leads them to the opening in the colonnade and down the steps into the hammering rain, and they prepare to transform themselves into the birds in whose shape they flew here from Greece. ‘As I said,’ she watches the robes slither off Aphrodite’s back into the soft plumage of a dove, and Iris’s nose lengthen into the down-curved beak of the falcon, ‘I shall tell you when the time is right.’
Final Encounter
Hippolyta
Athens, Greece
The Thirty-eighth Day after the Day of Fire in the Season of Tabiti, 1265 BC
I saw the battle from my vantage-point on the hill, like a bird swooping over the moonlit plain. Our left wing, stretching to the right upon the Pnyx … The Greeks plunging into the valley ahead from the Muses’ Hill …
I charged, shrieking the battle-cry. Melanippe echoed it at my side, and behind me my troops clashed their battle-axes on their shields. I felt the war-fury rip through me, turning the scene ahead into a smudge of opal moonlight, bronze and the black silhouettes of trees. Anger and a fierce, pounding joy to be riding as an Amazon once more hammered in my chest as I galloped down the western slope of the hill, yelling, whirling the sagaris around my head, like a demon sent by Tar the storm-god. I wheeled at our right-hand flank, then charged the full length of our battle-line – archers arranged on the steep overhang of the hill, bows taut, arrow-tips shimmering, riders on their mounts with me in the valley below, teeth gleaming in the darkness, screaming back to me the battle-cry as I whipped past them.
Through the clustered trees ahead I saw the shapes of the Greeks emerging, heard the thundering of their hoofs over the dry earth and smelt the pine-needles they threw up beneath them. I pulled my horse around at the furthest left of our line, where the hill I had ridden from dropped into a narrow valley, edged on the other side by the white-shining rock of Athens. The Greeks had taken my bait: they were charging towards me, dust like mist behind them, and as I cried ‘Oiorpata!’ my warriors circled in, tighter and tighter, like a net, driving the plunging horses of the Greeks into the chasm between the two hills.
Galloping into the fray, I twisted right and left, my battle-axe meeting skulls, cracking shoulder-blades,
felling warriors, like a scythe to long grass. Ahead of me, cut into the rock, I saw a shrine Theseus had once told me of – a worship-place to the Furies, goddesses of vengeance, a bowl still standing on the altar filled with fruit and grain – and thought that we were, indeed, the Furies of whom Theia had spoken, come to bring revenge on Theseus for his crimes against the gods.
I moved as if in a dream, possessed by my fury, my vision streaked red with blood, slicing and plunging. Time seemed to stand still as I worked.
It was an eerie orange glow burning at the back of my eyes that awoke me. I peered upwards, craning towards the source of the light, aware now of my ragged breathing, the sweat dripping down my neck and between my thighs. I registered flames – sparks leaping into the air above, pillars of red-orange fire – then smelt the acrid scent of smoke. It was the smoke – sharp, in the back of my throat, making me retch and my eyes water – that brought me back to myself.
‘Melanippe!’ I shouted, clutching at her as she cantered by me.
‘Sister?’
I pointed up to the burning flame on the rock above. ‘What—’ But I could not finish. Visions were shimmering before my eyes. Slaves trapped in the palace kitchens, rushing screaming through the burning chambers, their hair alight, arms clutched around their children … A convulsion of pain shuddered through me.
‘They were innocent,’ I gasped. ‘The slaves were innocent. The palace should never have been touched.’
Horror spread through me. I saw the scene before me as if for the first time: the Greek dead lying sprawled over the earth, arms flung out, trampled and mangled by horses’ hoofs, their armour, crafted of fine bronze, dented, their spear shafts broken. The helmet of one of the soldiers before me had rolled away as he fell, and I saw his face – white with youth, his black hair tousled, the same age as my own Greek had been when we had lain together beneath the pines. An Amazon lay beside him – I recognized her at once as Arga, daughter of Iphito – her legs curled into her body and a thin, shining slash across her pale cheek, her limp arms stretched out to the Greek youth as if to embrace him. It was as if I were looking down at myself and the Greek, embracing in death. Sickness welled in my belly and threatened to overtake me, bitter-tasting in my mouth.