Last of the Amazons (4 page)

He had defeated us, and others would follow, seeking to emulate his glory. Yet his aspect spoke now, I perceived, of grief and contrition.
I performed my Father's bidding,
Heracles' eyes seemed to tell mine, begging their remission.
I had no choice.

Heracles, as the world knows, had come to the Amazon Sea twenty years earlier, first of the southern races to bear arms against the free people. He came with thirty companies of infantry and five of cavalry and encamped before the Typhon's Gate of Themiscyra. This was at the rising of Arcturus, when the clans of the daughters of Ares gather from as far as Libya, and, declaring he had been sent by King Eurystheus of Mycenae to bring home our queen Hippolyta's virgin girdle, tantamount to demanding her submission to him as a concubine or whore, he called out to single combat any and all champions of the free people.

Hippolyta reckoned at once the evil borne by this man and the woe it foretold for the nation. But the young bloods could not see past the outrage he offered. They clamored, these daughters, to be first to face him. Hippolyta commanded forbearance. She would deflect Heracles' purpose. She would deny him the fight he had come for.

Hippolyta stripped her girdle and offered it in peace, appending tokens of respect, honoring the invader's enterprise and lineage as child of Zeus. Heracles accepted with gratitude, to his credit grasping the purpose of this device and wishing, since he had achieved his aim, to depart without bloodshed.

But Melanippe, “Black Mare,” who held that year the post of war queen, and Alcippe, “Powerful Mare,” her commander of cavalry, could not bear this affront. Pride spoke to them out of their strong hearts, inciting them to battle. What force had deranged their reason? Who but Zeus, devious-devising, to grant, by their vanquishment at his hand, honor to his son Heracles.

There is on the landward side of Themiscyra a dry course called the Raceway, where the traders' market stands in summer but which on this day had been cleared for the games in honor of Phrygian Cybele. Onto this field the pride of the free people rode. They sent an unbroken colt into the Greek camp, sign of challenge understood by all, and called Heracles out.

On that day he slew in single combat Aella, “Whirlwind”; Philippis; Prothoe, my mother's mother; Eriboia of the electrum helm; Celaeno; Eurybia, who had slain a leopard with her bare hands; Phoebe, called “Manslaughterer”; Deianera; Asteria; Marpe; Tecmessa; and at last Alcippe and Melanippe themselves, champions of the free people.

The harpers tell it thus: that Heracles' famous lion skin, which he wore draped about his shoulders, impenetrable to all save its own claws, had preserved him from the darts and axes of the daughters of Ares. This is nonsense. My mother was there and saw it. This she told: it was no beast's hide beneath which Heracles took the field, but iron armor of such weight and thickness as no other could bear and still move and fight. The flung javelin caromed off this blacksmith's plate, even at point-blank range, and Heracles was so strong that though the impact might arrest his advance momentarily, it could not knock him off his feet. Sword and spear were as straws against him, and the mass of his great club, which an ordinary mortal could barely lift, staved our bronze shields and helms as tissues of flax.

In a duel of honor, single combat is law. Yet who, male or female, could stand up to such a prodigy one-on-one? My mother made his height at six and a half feet; I would declare him taller, even when I saw him at Sinope at over forty years old. He could kill an ox with a blow of his fist, men swore, yet I saw him as well outsprint in the races even the swiftest lads and all the men. Such physical primacy bred a fearlessness that made his precocity even more formidable. Nor were these the sum of Zeus' gifts to his son, but supernal vision and reflex as well. At Sinope he put on a demonstration. He stood at the neck of a stone runway, hemmed by barricades, while three warriors, doughtiest in the city, slung javelins from inside a dozen paces. No one could hit him. He could snatch an arrow out of the air; sidestep its rush and catch it by the shaft as it flew. Stones and sling bullets he caught in his fist or dashed aside with his club, as boys on the line-field bat away the bowled ball.

So they advanced to their doom at Themiscyra, the champions of our race, one succeeding another, like knights hurling themselves from a precipice. Heracles took his girdle prize, its luster now amplified by blood, and sailed home.

A calamity of such scale had never befallen the daughters of Ares—the loss in their prime of the flower of the nation. My mother's generation grew to womanhood in the shadow of this shame, and my own imbibed as mare's milk both the trauma of that vanquishment and the foreterror of some more catastrophic overthrow, borne upon us by the next wave of invaders, successors to Heracles, who must ineluctably follow.

Champion of our generation was Antiope, granddaughter of Hippolyta and triple-mate to Stratonike and Eleuthera, the most brilliant archers and riders of the day. Antiope it was, even as a child, who resuscitated the nation. At that time the ancient rite of
mastokausis,
as the Greeks call it, the searing off in infancy of the right breast, had fallen from favor. Antiope revived it. At seven years she ordered her own mutilation, that all strength, as she grew, would accrue to the muscles of her shoulder and back, and no womanish flesh impede the draw of the bow and the cast of the javelin. Not one of our generation failed to emulate her. When at age ten the trikona of Antiope, Eleuthera, and Stratonike were called to study war with the northern tribes, they went with hearts singing with joy. They elevated to a peak unprecedented proficiency in the use of the
pelekus,
the double-bladed axe, and roused the generation of youth to mastery of the javelin and the Cimmerian bow. The practice of the steel-rimmed discus they learned and taught, to hurl from horseback, taking a man's head, helmet and all, at one howling swipe. Antiope's flesh she trained to be superior to heat and cold, hunger and fatigue, and schooled her string from colts, driving them again and again into the storm beneath Zeus' bolts, to fear neither riot nor havoc, but to love battle and drink with joy from the well of strife. About her she assembled a corps of champions—Eleuthera; Stratonike; Skyleia; the younger Alcippe; Glauke, “Grey Eyes”; Xanthe, “Blonde”; Euippe, “Beautiful Mare''; Rhodippe, “Red Mare”; Leucippe, “White Mare”; Anteia; Tecmessa, “Thistle”; Lyssa; Evandre; and Prothoe—a match and more for the paragons of old, and dedicated, all, to the reclamation of preeminence for the race. Their zeal fired not only our nation, the Lycasteia, but the Themiscyra, Chadisia, and Titaneia, and the clans and tribes as far as the Iron Mountains and the Belt of Storms. The elders looked on with pride as the plain rang with horses and young women training in the arts of war.

Antiope's gifts were not of valor alone, but statecraft and generalship. The combat of solitary champions, she persuaded the elders to debar, drafting in its place cohesion of cavalry and unity of assault. She called for return to the old ways. At her impetus the Corps of Mounted Archers was reorganized into companies, squadrons, and wings under commanders accountable not to those beneath but those above. She reinstituted the crescent charge and the assault called “chest-and-horns.” For her hand Antiope fashioned a type of javelin unknown heretofore, weighted with iron in its core and warhead. Such a missile was too heavy to throw, even on the run, unaided. But catapulted by a sleeve extender, to amplify the leverage of the shoulder, and hurled not sidearm but overhand and from horseback, to add moment to its launch, it could be propelled to devastating effect. Antiope added a belly-band for her mount, with a step stitched in, so that she could plant her sole and rise at the gallop, driving the big muscles of her legs and back into the cast. At seventeen she could splinter a pine big around as a man's thigh. At twenty-four, when she acceded to the post of war queen, she had strung upon her lance the scalps of twenty-nine enemies slain hand-to-hand upon the steppe.

Let the next invading heroes come, be they Heracles' sons, or any army of champions seeking to emulate him. Not armor of adamant, nor the ramparts of hell itself, would preserve them.

Time passed and they did come, led by Theseus, prince of Athens.

I had not been born to daylight in Heracles' prime. This time, for Theseus a generation later, I was present and grown. Eleuthera was there too. She was twenty-two and a wing commander; I nineteen and her lover and friend.

BOOK TWO

THE RIVER OF
HELL

5

PHALANXES OF IRON

Mother Bones:

W
ithin the forepeak of a ship, where the beam of the cutwater seats into the head timber of the keelson, is a cramped kennel used for the stowage of sails. It is called the wreath locker because into this space the priests, at embarkation, lade the holy boughs of myrtle and rowan, an offering to Poseidon and the daughters of Proteus.

In peril on the salt waste

Turn ye home again to these,

Lest you lose your way.

It was to this closet that I repaired when the posse launched in pursuit of Selene.

No female is welcome aboard ship; her presence is considered unlucky. And though Father and Damon spared no exertion to moderate my disquiet, and no other offered overt insult, yet I could find no congenial berth. I hid. The locker was cozy; it smelled sweet from the scrubbed linen and wreaths of myrtle. I tucked into a ball within the folds of the sails and sought solace in slumber.

The ships as I said were four,
Theano, Euploia, Herse,
and
Protagonia.
They were undecked “fifties,” reconfigured to hold six double horse stalls amidships. Oarsmen were thirty-four, with a captain of infantry, two wranglers and a cavalry sergeant, a ship's master and his steersman. All took their turn at oars, even Prince Atticus, who commanded the armada entire.

Passage to the Amazon homeland would take sixty days. The squadron would traverse waters no Greek save Jason, Heracles, and Theseus himself a generation prior had ever sailed, at such a remove from civilization, men feared, that Zeus Himself was unknown, but such savage races ruled as knew neither manners nor law nor deference to heaven.

Indeed I hid. The usages of the sea were alien to a child, and repellent. I was sick. I could keep nothing down. Ashore each night I yet felt the lurch and yaw of the main. I huddled in a fleece at Father's side, wretched as a trussed sow. How I missed home and Mother! How I longed for my snug little bunk and solid earth beneath my tread. The fourth day out I had this dream:

I was home, trapped by mischance in Mother's closet. She came swiftly, responding to my cries, and commenced beating at the door to free the latch. I was so relieved! I blinked awake, eager to rush into her arms. But it was no storeroom door against which my cheek was pressed, but the sodden timbers of the ship's keelson, and no mother's palm hammering but the tempest-driven sea. The ship pitched and slewed. I was sick again and cramping in my guts. A gale had got up. Through the deck I could see the sail drawing full. I sought to escape again to slumber. When I next came to, the sea's concussion had redoubled.

The ship was bucking now. Sky had gone the color of lead; squall-driven torrents lashed the deck. The sail was brailed up to quarters, then eighths. Clewed to a patch no bigger than a pot holder, it drove the ship like a courser. The heavens went black; cold rose off the deep. By God, the storm had struck fast! Only moments earlier the ship had raced on a high line; now she plummeted to trenches and canyons. Salt summits arose on all quarters. I gaped out upon mountains the color of iron.

I was puking again. I set both palms upon the futtock timbers and braced against the heave. How could this crate of spars stand such a pounding? A crewman reeled from topside into the locker. “Father Almighty”—I could see his breath shoot like steam—“spare me for my bride and babe!”

A dire keening cut my kennel. These were the forestays, singing in the gale. Suddenly they snapped, with the concussion of a bullwhip; the sail tore loose and, moments later, mast and yard vanished into the storm. At home Selene had schooled my sister and me to feel contempt for death, and this had seemed a fine idea on dry land. Now on the main my flesh revolted. Fear screamed from every sinew. My tongue was ash; my limbs quaked as if palsied. But the harder I struggled to be brave, the more terror-stricken I became. Father! I burned to burst from my hiding place and, crying his name, rush into his arms. Then I glimpsed him, on his feet amidships, as the ship dove into yet another trough. He had seized a man of the crew and driven him to his bench. I saw Father shout into the fellow's teeth, a cry of such rage as I had never imagined him capable. He shoved the man down and thrust an oar into his fists. The ship careered wildly now, not only fore and aft but up and down, and side to side. Two men grappled the steering oar, useless now in such steep seas. The poor horses! They had long since been driven from their feet. On knees and flanks they lowed like cattle.

The storm was on us now. The universe had contracted to a disk of iron-colored deep no broader than a bowshot. We had lost all sign of the other ships. On one side, seas ascended; on the other they crashed and withdrew. One sea mounted at a time, its mass obscuring sight and sound of its successors, and with it the ship must duel one-on-one, employing all her skill and courage, while she readied for the next and the next after that. Sea succeeded sea, each resounding with malevolence, each different from the sea before. One became a connoisseur of seas. Those which rose gradually, solid at the crest, were the easiest. Into their faces the ship pulls bows-on, aligning her keel with the axis of their advance. Those seas with shoulders may be slipped at the low point, but invariably at their backs arise greater seas and steeper, transversely driven, so that crest becomes shoulder and shoulder crest in such immediate alternation that the men at oars must often haul and back water in successive strokes, the oarsmen's task rendered diabolical by the press of the gale which twists and wrenches at their blades, seeking to wrest them from their grip.

Again and again seas rose. At last ascended the One. I could see it coming. It mounted and mounted and, when I thought it could mount no more, mounted again. I could not believe a sea could be so tall. Twice the height of a mast, if we had still had a mast, and broad as a castle, it loomed like a fortress and crashed like a battlement of stone. Thwarts snapped down the vessel's length; men were swept from their benches like dolls. Salt sea frothed to the gunwales; the weight drove the ship under. Men were crying, soundless, amid the thunder.

Over she heeled, so nigh vertical that a man could reach out with his finger and trace his name in the wall of water. Then she rose. Tons emptied over her rails; the vessel righted, yawing violently onto the opposite beam. I saw two horses, yoked head to tail, spill over the gunwale as casually as a comb of honey at the lip of a wine bowl. The beasts did not even bob, but plummeted like lumps of lead. Seamen beholding this gaped, waxen as ghosts.

The ship righted. Men clawed and swam to their places. So many thwarts had been staved as rendered half the oarsmen benchless. Worse, their wreck had ruptured the integrity of the hull. I heard a ghastly sound and realized it was the timbers warping. You could sight down the gunwale and watch it bow like a celery stalk. The hempen girdles, the
hypozomata
that bound the exterior of the hull, were now all which held the ship from disintegrating. I could not believe the sound as they warped and torqued. Strips of timber began shredding from the hull. Planks and carlings tore past, gale-driven. I saw one strike a fellow as he labored to set a beam; the blow sheared his ear and half his scalp clean as a cleaver. The man did not even notice until the blood, streaming horizontally in the gale, painted a swath before his eyes.

His need drew me from my covert. I waded to him, hip-deep in the seas which swamped the ship. But the prow behind me plunged in the afterpass of a sea; I spilled down the cataract, fetching up against the sail locker, upon which I remained impaled by the weight of water. The man saw me. Such a cast illumined his eye as wrought my terror to yet greater epitomes. For he seemed to descry my apparition not as one of this life perceiving another, but as one already dead to her first beheld upon the other side.

Uncle appeared beside me. He clutched me to him, shouting something I could not hear. Suddenly a hand seized his shoulder. It was Father. Before I could speak, he had wound a line about my waist and, binding this to his own, bawled to Damon that both must resume their benches. Father hauled himself—and me, yoked to him—to a shattered thwart and there, reseating his oar, set back to labor.

How excruciating that toil! Hour succeeded hour. Men's frames racked and broke. The horses' suffering surpassed description. The walls of their stalls had long since been splintered, yet the beasts themselves remained roped in place, not only hobbled fore and aft, but tethered to the footing timbers of their stalls. As each sea passed over, their heads and necks were driven under. Such horror: to see their hooves only, thrashing above the seas. Then the ship rights herself and the beasts, in whose goggling eyes terror finds no more eloquent depiction, heave up into God's air, manes and forelocks running rivers, to gasp the salvation that may endure only another breath.

I peered into the faces of the men at oars. Rivers of brine sluiced from their beards. Their long hair stood sideways with rime shooting from it. Into a trough the ship plummets; for a heartbeat the cosmos becomes pacific. Then that sound ascends and the ship, rising, shoots anew into that maelstrom which not all the howls of hell may replicate. My own hair, snapping like a pennant, became bound about the oar against which I too pulled, with palms riven to pulp, beside the bulwark of my father. How valiantly he labored! Nor did he toil alone, but all up and down the benches men strove with as much resolution and as little hope. I was seized with compassion for these gallant, luckless men. How brave they were! How nobly they persisted into the teeth of doom!

Last of terror's stages, Selene had tutored Europa and me, is busyness. This succeeded now. Men simply had no time to fear. Each instant arose freighted with so many exigencies that fear could no longer shoulder in. How insignificant one felt! I beheld Father and Uncle, the bastions of my universe, and knew both as but stalks within the maw of the Almighty. I spoke into Father's ear, as casually as if he and I sat at ease upon a bench at home.

“Selene has not fled to the Amazon homeland, Father, but to Hell's River in Magnesia. Europa will have followed her there, seeking to overhaul her.”

How did I know this? Perhaps a god whispered. Yet I knew, certain as my own death.

Father's eyes never lit on me, bound as all to Atticus and our pilot. Yet he heard and believed.

The men rowed and rowed.

How long the trial endured I cannot say, save that at last, when I swooned into the lap of my father, the men yet maintained their resolve, until, the tempest's fury at last abating, the vessels sighted haven and rushed toward her to embrace their reprieve.