Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons (5 page)

But though the day went by with agonizing slowness, it did go on. Hippolyta wasn’t able to eat either her morning or noon meals, and by evening she felt sick with worry.

The other girls in the barracks ignored her, putting on their ceremonial cloaks and chattering. Then they formed up for the march to the Hill of Artemis.

Hippolyta watched them from her pallet, one hand over her head. She’d planned to feign illness, but having missed all her meals, and with her stomach in a turmoil, she didn’t have to feign much.

A tall, gangly, horse-toothed girl of sixteen summers turned back and said over her shoulder, “Aren’t you coming with us, Hippolyta?”

Hippolyta merely groaned and turned over in her bed.

“You must, princess,” said another, her voice a high whine. “You’ll lose face otherwise.”

“Valasca will be furious,” a third added.

Hippolyta answered them with a groan and held her stomach, and they, thinking it her moon time, stopped bothering her in case they were late for the ceremony themselves. Giggling, their voices like water over stone, they left.

As soon as she was alone, Hippolyta pulled on her riding clothes: tunic, leggings, cloak, cap. She grabbed her ax and bow and quiver from under the foot of her pallet and went out the door.

No one was in the street. The entire community would be at the sacred hill. Still, she went cautiously, pausing at every corner to be sure she wasn’t seen.

Hippolyta knew a spot below the wooden palisade where she could jump and land quite safely on a stretch of soft, grassy ground. All the girls knew of it. The place was far enough from the front gates and the guards. Often they would sneak out in the night and make their way to the river, where they’d swim, naked, in the moonlight, away from the hard eyes of their mothers and older sisters. Hippolyta was just beginning to suspect that the women knew of the place too, that they’d gone there in their own youth.

But it would serve her purpose this night.

In one quick, economical movement, she leaped from the palisade, landed with bent knees, rolled headfirst down the little embankment, and leaped up, ax ready.

But there was no one watching.

So she headed north to meet Demonassa.

For a moment she slowed, turned, looked to her left. She could see the ring of bonfires surrounding the Temple of Artemis. They looked like a crown of flames. Drums were pounding; she could feel the beat in her bones. A pipe shrilled, then another. Lines of torches marked the processions as other Amazons from the far settlements of Satira, Amazonion, Comana, and Amasia came for the sacrifice.

The sacrifice!

All this for a tiny baby.

My … brother,
she thought.

Just then a shadow detached itself from the trees, and for a moment Hippolyta raised her ax. Then she recognized Demonassa.

As the old seeress had promised, she held the baby in her arms. He was so heavily wrapped, against both the night air and his own cries, even his nose was scarcely visible.

“No one saw you come?” Demonassa asked, the baby held against her shoulder.

“No one. And you?”

The old woman grinned, showing the gaps in her yellowed teeth. “On the night of the half-moon I can move about seen or unseen, as I choose.” She handed the child to Hippolyta.

Hippolyta’s arms seemed to move on their own. Suddenly she had no control over her fingers.
Nerves,
she thought. Until this moment everything had seemed like a dream. But now, with the baby’s weight a reminder, she was frightened.

“Has no one noticed the child gone yet? Has no one noticed you missing?”

Demonassa shook her head. “My acolyte is wrapped in a spare set of my robes. Even now she sits hunched over a girl baby as if it were little Podarces. I’ll be back at the temple and ready to bear the supposed sacrifice to the hilltop before anyone guesses the deception.”

“But—” Hippolyta could think of a dozen things that could go wrong.

“If anyone grows suspicious, the girl is to act bewitched. I’ll not have her take the blame.”

Hippolyta nodded. Bad enough that she and Demonassa might be caught.

The old woman grinned again. “By law, no one may approach the babe until he is laid on the altar. After that, I’m afraid, the game’s up.”

“Game!”
The word sat uncomfortably on Hippolyta’s mouth. “This is no game.”

Demonassa tightened the cloak around her old shoulders as if she had need for more warmth.

Suddenly Hippolyta realized that the old priestess was not as invulnerable as she pretended. “What will happen to you then?”

Smiling with thin lips, Demonassa said, “Oh, none of them dare actually harm me. Too many of them owe me their lives. But I expect Valasca will see that my remaining years are spent in acute discomfort.”

She means prison,
Hippolyta thought.
At her age it is a sentence of death.
She looked down at the child, who was quietly sleeping in her arms. “You would risk so much for a boy?”

“I risk it for your mother’s sake. I trust her instincts more than I trust the oracles,” Demonassa said. “You should do the same.”

Hippolyta nodded, but in her heart she was not convinced.

“Go then,” the old woman added. “There’s a horse tethered out of sight beyond those trees, near Demeter’s shrine.”

“My own horse?”

“No,” Demonassa said. “We couldn’t take that one for fear of discovery. It’s one of your mother’s.”

Hippolyta nodded again.

“There are rations and water for you, a skinful of goat’s milk for Podarces. Feed him when he cries.” She touched Hippolyta’s shoulder, turned her, and gave her a small shove forward. “Goddess keep you.” Then she was gone, back into the shadows.

The horse was right where the priestess had said it would be. Hippolyta smiled. Not just one of her mother’s horses, but her swift-footed little brown mare, the one called Rides the Wind.

Hippolyta put her ax and bow and quiver into the blanket packs. Then she untied the mare and started to mount. But with the baby in her arms, she was awkward, and the little horse was agitated.

“This is not a good start,” she whispered.

A familiar mocking voice suddenly rang out from behind her. “I thought you might be up to something.”

Hippolyta whirled around, instinctively pressing the baby to her heart.

Molpadia stood, bow drawn, under the near trees. Her yellow hair looked almost white in the moonlight. “That’s even better,” she said. “Now I can kill both of you with a single shot.”

F
OR A MOMENT HIPPOLYTA WAS
too stunned to reply. Then the malicious satisfaction on Molpadia’s face, its shadowy smile, galled her into speech.

“I’m surprised to see you here. Shouldn’t you be carrying Valasca’s spear for her?” Hippolyta put as much scorn as she could muster into her reply.

Molpadia’s face grew dark and angry. “When I didn’t see you at the ceremony, I asked the girls where you were. ‘Crying in her bed,’ they said. I didn’t believe that. Your pride would never have allowed you to show weakness unless there was a purpose behind it.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” Hippolyta said sarcastically. But she scanned the area as she spoke.

As she suspected, Molpadia was alone, wanting all the credit for capturing her.
One slim advantage.

“No compliment intended.”

Hippolyta thought,
I must play to her sense of history, of destiny. The longer we talk, the more effort it will cost her.
She knew that holding a bow steady was nothing anyone could do for very long, not even Molpadia.

“If you kill the baby,” Hippolyta said slowly, “you’ll prevent the proper sacrifice from being performed. The goddess’s anger might very well fall on you then, not on me or my mother.”

“That may be true,” Molpadia mused. Already the strain of holding the bowstring taut was starting to show on her face. “Or it may be that you’re trying to get out of this by talking.”

“What if I surrendered myself to you?” Hippolyta said. “You could have both the credit for capturing me and saving the baby for the sacrifice.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” Molpadia sneered. A sudden involuntary tremor ran up her bow arm.

“Maybe because you’re an untrusting sort?” Hippolyta said, taking a cautious step forward.

Molpadia’s grin was now as tight as the bowstring.

Hippolyta saw the grimace, and immediately made her move. She stepped nimbly to the right, then fell suddenly into a crouch, hunched over the baby to shield it.

Sensing the movement, Molpadia released the arrow, but she had not anticipated the crouch. “Curse you!” she cried as the arrow flew over Hippolyta’s head.

As soon as she felt the whisper of air over her, Hippolyta rolled the baby onto the grass well to the side, turned, and charged before Molpadia could reach for a second arrow. Her head struck Molpadia hard in the stomach, winding her and knocking the bow from her hand.

They tumbled onto the grass together, Hippolyta on top of Molpadia for a moment. The older girl managed to flip Hippolyta off. Then she leaped on top of Hippolyta, panting angrily.

“Goddess help me!” Hippolyta cried.

“Why should she … listen to you … who would have robbed her … of her just … sacrifice?” Molpadia said, but her breath was coming in short gasps. She reached for the knife in her boot, but Hippolyta grabbed her wrist and held it firmly. In return, Molpadia seized a handful of Hippolyta’s long black hair and jerked her head back violently.

Hippolyta yelped. “Has it come to this? That we kill one another instead of our enemies?”

“You
are
my enemy,” Molpadia cried. “And Valasca’s.”

“I’m only the enemy of those who are unjust,” Hippolyta replied passionately.

“The just follow the laws,” Molpadia told her.

“The just follow their hearts,” Hippolyta answered, still holding Molpadia’s wrist with her left hand.

“Ha! You haven’t the spirit of a true warrior. Don’t hold me. Fight me! Fight—if you are to have the name of Amazon.”

All the while they challenged each other, Hippolyta’s other hand had been desperately trying to find her own knife in its sheath. Instead it found Molpadia’s quiver of arrows, slid halfway down her side.

“Amazons are much more than brute fighters,” Hippolyta whispered, desperate to keep the conversation going so as not to alert Molpadia to what she was doing.

“What else are we, coward?” Molpadia cried.

Snatching an arrow from the quiver, Hippolyta held it firmly. “Smart fighters!” she said, jabbing upward with her last bit of strength and striking Molpadia in the shoulder with the arrow point. Then she fell back, exhausted, onto the ground.

Molpadia screamed, staggered upward, pulled the arrow out, and flung it away. Shoulder bleeding freely, she turned and scrambled over to where the baby lay on the hillside. Crouching over him, she held up her knife.

“I sacrifice you to Artemis, as our laws and history demand,” she cried.

At Molpadia’s cry, Hippolyta sat up. She remembered her mother’s voice saying, “Keep the child safe.” But he was long footsteps away. How could she possibly reach the child in time?

In the moonlight Molpadia’s knife blade glinted.

Then Hippolyta saw, to one side, a figure moving swiftly from beneath the protection of the trees. “Goddess!” Hippolyta breathed in surprise, and Molpadia looked up from her bloody task.

Before she could see what it was Hippolyta had seen, the haft of a spear cracked across the back of her skull, and she dropped without a sound. The knife slipped from her fingers.

Orithya stood over her, spear in hand. “That should keep her quiet till daylight. She’ll have an awful headache come dawn.”

“Praise the goddess you got here in time,” Hippolyta said.

“Oh, I’ve been here for a while, little sister, but you were doing just fine. I saw no need to intrude.” She grinned.

Hippolyta went over and picked up the baby. He had slept through the entire thing. “Molpadia was really going to kill him.”

“And you next, I suspect. I was really saving you, not him. Otherwise Mother would never have forgiven me.”

Hippolyta held out the baby to Orithya, but the older girl took a step back as if afraid any contact with the boy child might carry a curse.

“You know,” she said in a tight voice, “it would be best for all if he just
fell
into the river.”

“I swore to Mother that I’d keep him safe,” Hippolyta said.

“Then wherever you’re going, go swiftly. And don’t—” She held up her hand. “Don’t tell me where. The less I know, the better. And now I’d better get back to the sacrifice.” Her mouth twisted oddly. “Or whatever it will be now. Valasca is sure to miss Molpadia, her little yellow-haired pet. It would be bad for me if we’re both found missing.” She helped Hippolyta mount the mare.

“Thank you, sister. May the goddess bless you,” Hippolyta said, looking at her sister’s familiar face shining through the hard mask of soldiery.

“Here,” Orithya said suddenly. “Take this.” She slipped the serpent bracelet off her arm.

“But that’s your Long Mission bracelet. I don’t deserve one yet.”

“You may need it on your journey,” Orithya said. “For I guess that journey will be longer and more dangerous than any Mission a young Amazon gets to take.”

“But what will you do if they ask you about it?”

Orithya grinned. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll have a bracelet. It’s Molpadia who’ll have some explaining to do. Now go.”

Hippolyta grabbed the rope reins and pulled the mare’s head around till she was facing west. Then over her shoulder she called to her sister, “I don’t know what would have become of me without—”

“Go!” Orithya said again. “We both have little time.”

Hippolyta kicked the little mare in the ribs, but as it started off, she glanced back one last time—at her sister disappearing behind the palisade and at the little town beyond it—and wondered when she might ever see them again.

H
IPPOLYTA HAD BEEN TRAINED
in the arts of hunting and war. She’d been taught how to live on berries and nuts, on wild onions and nettles. She’d spent whole nights on forced marches with her instructors and had to endure their frequent blows. But she was
not
prepared for the journey to Troy. The problem wasn’t the endless hours of riding. Or the heat of the noonday sun. Or the cold nights on the hard ground.