Last of the Amazons (5 page)

6

A TRANSIT TO THE UNDERWORLD

T
he companies trekked to Hell's River by tens, with me yoked to my father by a rein of rawhide, that I might not bolt at bogeys ascending from the mire, or, if I tumbled into one of the bogs of the approach, be roped to safety. It was raining. Chill sheets drenched the parties, turning the track to slough.

Sixteen days had elapsed since the squadron's deliverance. It had taken that term for the four ships to reacquire one another, each having fetched up on a different shore, and, once reunited, to refit the vessels, see to the wounded and lost, and to permit horses and men interval to recover. As early as the second night, Atticus and the officers had interrogated me.

What intelligence had I imparted to Father about Hell's River? Had Selene indeed fled there and not to the Amazon homeland? Why would she do this—and how did I know?

I recalled to the officers that the incitement for Selene's flight had been the report, conveyed to her by Theseus on the noon of his visit to our farm, that her lover Eleuthera stood now in peril of her life, somewhere in the Wild Lands above the Black Sea.

“Amazons bond in threes,” I heard my voice address the captains, “and believe that hell will accept any one of this trikona in the stead of another.”

“What does this mean, child?” Prince Atticus pressed gently.

“I cannot know for certain, sir, but common sense tells that Selene will make first for some portal of the Underworld and there offer sacrifice, perhaps of her own life, beseeching the gods to spare her mate Eleuthera's.”

A second council was held that night, and a third when all four ships had at last reunited. A number of speakers confirmed the existence of such sites as I had suggested, where the tributaries of the River Styx—Acheron, Cocytus, Aornis, Lethe, and Phlegethon—twine in their circuit beneath the earth.

The nearest, at Raria on the Magnesian coast, was Fire River. This was the one I had been inspired to cite and the one for which plain sense argued the most compellingly. Its entrance lay within ten days' ride of Athens. It could be reached entirely by land, requiring no sea crossing (since Amazons fear and despise the salt element). And it was the only one on Selene's likely track, that is, to the ultimate destination of her homeland.

At the twelfth dawn, then, the patched flotilla put back to sea, retraversing the expanse across which the storm had driven it, to beach three days subsequent on that strand of shingle called the Hollows, in Magnesia, again on the mainland. A party of twenty was detailed to guard the ships, while the main body, fifty or more under arms, commenced the tramp inland seeking the portal to the Underworld.

This proved a desultory shuffle, as several among the crew who had personal acquaintance of the site had reported that “Fire River,” so daunting in its appellation, was nothing more than a subterranean sump void of supernatural substance, a tarry trickle stinking of sulphur and bitumen. The stench was so foul, these fellows recounted, that neither bird nor beast inhabited the region but only lizards, serpents, and slugs.

The belt Father had cinched about my waist was of a type whose usage he had acquired in Amazonia twenty years previous, on the original voyage under Theseus. The Amazons call it an
astereia,
a “star belt,” and the Greeks a riding wale. Selene wore such a wale always, for, as all horsewomen know, nothing comes in handier in the company of fractious mounts than a good length of rope, as lead, halter, hobble, or lasso.

So tethered, I advanced in Father's train. A stink ascended from the ooze, vile as eggs gone rotten. Men packed their nostrils with moss and bound muffles about their faces.

There was no village and the only locals, a runt race calling themselves Rarians, “Womb People,” over whose greased topknots even I towered, spoke a form of shore Pelasgian so antique than not even our mates from Brauron or Marathon could savvy it. Heaven knows how these beggars made their living; perhaps they rustled lizards or swamp cats for the hides. Their fingers were no greater than my toes, and the stunted limbs from which these nubs protruded appeared more like the paws of some species of nocturnal rodent than the extremities of God-spawned humankind. Their mantles were of rat skin and opossum with the heads and tails still on, while both male and female ran naked from the waist down. Their loins they smeared with particolored mud, perhaps for its protective shell, or, as Prince Atticus reckoned, they were just plain dirty. Coin or gold meant nothing to them, but they would jig with glee over any artifact of fired clay. They coveted drinking cups, which our men carried strung to packs and belts, and would offer any tale for one. Yes, they had seen an Amazon. Make that ten, or a hundred! A young girl, indeed! Of roan hair, wasn't she, or did we say raven? Three times these denizens directed our companies to the Portals of Persephone, the debouchment from the Underworld (they claimed) of the River of Hell, each sortie revealing a less illustrious backwater than the one before.

At one point Damon achieved a parley with their headman. “These wart bastards worship the Womb Goddess” was his report to Atticus and the captains. “We're trespassers. They won't steer us near the cleft, bet on it, and may strike a ruckus if we stumble too close. Here's more to chew on. Every swamp breed I've heard of are master poisoners. These may tip their arrows, or paint thorns, even set sharpened stakes for us to tread upon.”

The posse slogged on all morning. The country was asphaltine swamp, into whose ooze the men's tread sank to the ankles. What elevations there were rose only inches above the mire; vegetation was canebrake and deerwood, whose stalks, dense as the shafts in a quiver, could not be prized apart but must be hacked through with the bronze axe, while a canopy enforced a stoop upon even the runtiest. Beneath this vault the natives of the marsh glided with ease; they tracked us, so close you could hear their sparrowlike gibberish, while our party thrashed in mounting vexation. Men hung their footgear round their necks and slogged on, while leeches fastened to their crotches and armpits. The companies, at last breaking through to an eminence, rallied upon a shelf in the lee of a face, attempting to fire stalks of sodden pulp for warmth. Father wrapped a fleece about my shoulders and trundled to take counsel with the commanders.

I leaned against the cliff, out of the rain. The morning's labor had drained what little hope I yet held for this site. Of all the self-advertised Rivers of Hell, if in fact such a site was Selene's object, who was to say this was the one to which she had made, or that Europa had believed so and followed—and what made us think that either of them was still here? Such were my ruminations, when a cry came from the men on the shelf.

They were jigging and hooting, pointing to the rock at their feet. A trickle of flame meandered within the cracks. This was
naphtha.
Dragon's blood, the men called it, though a child could see it was but some naturally occurring form of flammable liquid bitumen. The men called for Atticus and the officers. I scooted forward to hear.

At the brink of a bluff a flammable trickle spooled netherward, self-extinguishing into a natural well five feet across and twenty in depth. Steps had been carved in the funnel, looking ancient as Cronos. At the base could be distinguished crude glyphs. A cleft led into the earth, such as a man might squeeze through sideways, and whose terminus, if there was one, could not be made out.

Atticus, Father, and the captains worked forward through the press of men. The pilot Leon, whose spark had ignited the find, grinned up from halfway down the steps. He held a flint and horn charm, an
aestival
such as Selene had hung on our camphor tree the night before she made her break.

“This trash was looped at the brow of the bung, Cap'n. What d'you make of it?”

Father recounted the charm's significance. It was Damon, however, and four others chosen by lot (beans from a shaken helmet) who entered the crevice. The ingress was so close-fitting they could not scrape through in armor, but must shed all body plate save shields, rolled after them through the slot, and javelins to be used as spears, as the eight-footer was useless in such a strait, and the bow as well. Down they went. The remainder of the outfit clustered about the inlet, hallooing for reports as they descended. I begged Father and Atticus to let me accompany the party; my size would let me slither where grown men could not, and I could both speak the Amazon tongue and read its sign. Father would not hear of it. “Damon will reckon all you can and more. Find a seat and practice silence.”

Here, then, is Damon's account of this descent to the Underworld, as I many times heard him retell it, both in that hour and in subsequent seasons.

Damon's tale:

I was picked because I had some of the Amazon lingo, and was well known to Selene, should we butt into her. Then too, if the lass Europa were indeed down this dungeon and repented her recklessness, it'd serve her to parley with me, her kin. I suffer the phobia of close spaces, but there was nothing for it. Wedge down we must.

The party was five: two brothers called Ironhead and Colt, both peerless horsemen—a lot of good that would do down this rat hole; Phormion, called Ant for his strength, who wanted no part but proved doughtiest of all; and my cousin Io's boy, Mandrocles, a lad of great courage but who couldn't swim. You'll see how this figures soon enough.

We wriggled down. The first twenty feet was close, but we could stand; daylight still filtered in. Ant took the lead and called back what was coming. It got tighter. We had to crab sidewise, then stoop; after that it was all fours, like miners; then belly-down like a snake. We spooled a rope marked in feet. At a hundred Ant balked. “This hole's going nowhere, Sar'nt.” He was so close ahead I could touch the soles of his feet but fear made him shout. I poked him on. The shaft must lead somewhere or there wouldn't be steps at the entrance. “This ain't the mouth, Sar'nt, it's the asshole.”

Ant crabbed on, nursing a lighted taper. “A cavern, mates!” We spilled like turds onto a sand flat before a lake of bitumen, a bowshot across. A gallery rose thirty feet above us. There was a tar beach, wide enough for two score to stand. I ordered all to hold, not to foul any spoor. The lake was tar, thick as broth. Little falls of naphtha cascaded into it. Glyphs painted the walls, not animals or men but spirals and rosettes, magic signs.

“Is this the Underworld, sir?”

“Yes, and I'm the Hound of Hell.”

Sandal treads showed in the torch flare. A woman and a girl. You tell a print's freshness by edges fallen in. But in the tar the walls held sharp as if carved in stone.

“Could be ten days or ten minutes.”

They had been here, Selene and Europa, that seemed certain. Who else would wriggle into this hellhole?

“Did they cross the lake, sir?” Ant asked.

“They didn't fly,” answered Colt.

“Then do we have to cross too?”

I ordered all to scan the walls for sign.

“Amazon!”

Mandrocles cried this, making all jump from their skins. But he was only playing for the echo. His mates cursed him and laughed as men will with relief from fright. The oldest was twenty-two. They began spooking each other for fun, fancying beasts in the bowels of the lake.

“How deep, you reckon?”

“Step in and find out.”

Then: a sound.

“What was that?”

From across the lake.

“Sounded like a horse.”

“You're cracked!”

“Like hooves on stone.”

All listened, breathless.

“If it is a horse,” Colt offered, “it's a hell of a sprat, eking through that crack we just crabbed through!”

None dared voice the obvious: the cavern might have another entrance. Across the lake.

I called Selene's name.

No answer.

Again, identifying myself: “Selene, do you have Europa?”

Nothing. I ordered the men to hold their torches clear of the surface and follow across the lake. I probed in calf-deep, waist-deep; then the bottom dropped away. Ant followed, then Colt; the others were too scared to stay behind. We swam, shields propelled like skiffs before us, javelins and brands atop. Mandrocles clung to Ironhead, dog-paddling. The distance must have been a hundred feet. We came out soaked in tar to our beards. The smoke from our torches smudged the ceiling. Suddenly winged harpies thundered by the thousands. Bats. The men plunged in terror as the flock shrieked from the vault. It took eternities, it seemed, to recover breath. The banshees had fled deeper into the cave—or toward an egress we had yet to discover.

“Have a look ahead, Colt.”

“What, alone?”

“Give it a squint.”

“You're the sar'nt, Sar'nt. You go.”

“I am the sergeant. And I'm telling you to go.”

We groped on, along curtains of stalactite. A scream. Colt's brand had lit his oil-soaked beard. We pressed about him, beating out the bushy smudge. Ahead plunged a manhole.