Last of the Amazons (33 page)

I could see her as she remounted, several Athenian infantrymen having caught her horse and hauled him back. Her helmet was gone; her hair, gore- and dust-mantled, spread wide in a tangle, wild as a Gorgon's. Both arms shone scarlet to the shoulder. Even her lips ran blood. Her teeth were black with it.

The host of Thracians broke before her. Athenian infantry ravened upon them. Such a shout arose from the field, resounding between the Rock and the Hill of Ares, as to render all interpretation moot. It was the cry of men at the brink of victory.

Now the day hung in the balance.

Now the champions of Amazonia must reply.

Glauke Grey Eyes materialized first, out of the smoke at the shoulder of the fountain house behind the Eleusinion. She was just below me, so that I could see her seat the horseback javelin within the catch of the sleeve extender and call upon the gods to witness her hour of glory. The quarter she had entered from put her behind Antiope, who, pressing forward amid the din of the foot troops, stood unaware of her rival's presence. Grey Eyes could have closed with Antiope and slain her in a hundred ways. Yet she reined in midrush, impelled by honor, and called again, until she saw her countrywoman heed and wheel.

Both Amazons launched at the gallop, but Antiope had the advantage coming from uphill. The flung lances, half again as long as a normal javelin, looked like laundry poles as they crossed in midflight, while each rival, fixing her concentration upon the missile hurtling toward her, heeled her mount to elude its rush. A shaft slung uphill will sometimes “sail,” getting too much air under it. Further, the wind had got up, as it will often at that hour. Both mischances combined to deflect Grey Eyes' lance. Antiope slipped its descent, warhead and shaft passing over her shoulder as she pressed her breast to Sneak Biscuits' back. The lance drove on into the stump of a fig tree, splintering as its iron core burst through the foreshaft.

Antiope's javelin, slung downhill and protected from deflection by the shoulder of the slope, plunged from its apogee as its hurler had intended, so that shaft, warhead, and core fused, it seemed, into one balanced entity. It struck Grey Eyes' horse in the meat of the neck, passing through and entering the warrioress midway between navel and pubic bone. The lance drove Grey Eyes through with such force that its warhead shot forth and seated for a second time into her mount, knitting horse and rider. The knight's arms dropped; reins spilled; the weight of her helmet bore her head and neck rearward, lolling grotesquely, as only the dead do. Rider and horse crashed, shearing the shaft that united them as they fell; blood blew from Grey Eyes' helmet as her skull struck the stone.

Alcippe challenged next. Antiope unhorsed her with a blow of her shield and killed her with a javelin snatched from Alcippe's own fist and plunged two-handed into her breast. Bremusa fell then, shot on the run, and, after her, Clonie and Lysippe beneath the
pelekus
axe. Exigency would seem to dictate that a band of champions rally and take Antiope on in a pack. But the code of the plains forbade this. Each warrior must advance alone, sustained by her own valiant heart, to duel her sister woman-to-woman.

Stratonike succeeded in wounding Antiope, a bowshot slung as the antagonists passed which pierced shield, breastplate, and corselet and would have driven through to the vital parts had its warhead connected on the horizontal axis, as the Amazons always shoot at close quarters. Yet somehow the bolt struck on the vertical and hung up between the second and third ribs. The impact nearly bowled Antiope from her horse just the same. She cartwheeled over the hindquarters, spilling to the right side, so that her feet hit the dirt at gallop-speed while she clung with one fist to the mane (the other yet clutching bow and shafts). What man, Heracles included, could absorb such a blow and still haul his weight onto his horse's back? Yet Antiope did it, one-handed, and made it look like nothing. She could not jerk the warhead from her side, so deeply had it embedded, and so broke the shaft off where it stuck, and kept coming. A cry burst from Stratonike to witness this double prodigy, as she read the hopelessness of her cause.

The rivals wheeled and rushed again. This was on the flat, in the saddle between Nymphs' and Ares' Hills, where all houses had been demolished save the wreck of the saddler Euphorion's shop, whose partial walls, waist-high, still stood. The pair hurtled toward this obstacle from opposing quarters, each seeking to use its obstruction to confound the other. Here Stratonike seemed to outplay her rival, abating her rush enough that Antiope must hurdle the first wall while she, Stratonike, still raced on the flat. Their bolts passed in midair, Antiope's overshooting, Stratonike's striking home. The shaft pierced the shield a second time but failed to find the flesh. Now Stratonike hit the wall. Clearance was not high and the horse was fresh. A hundred times of a hundred, mount and rider would have vaulted it with ease. Yet, inexplicably, both forehooves struck. The steed still landed in balance and, had the ground been clear, would have recovered footing even at speed. Yet chance or fate set his landing against the half-demolished second wall, the partition between the saddler's workshop and his family's quarters. The mount spilled, pitching Stratonike. She crashed helmet-first. Her neck snapped and her limbs splayed, unstrung.

What was the number and sequence of those Antiope slew next? Thistle and Xanthe Blonde may be named with certainty, with Electra and Dioxippe, Paraleia and Antibrote. As the champion took each on, she seemed to court her own extinction with enlarging extravagance, so reckless were the tactics she assayed and so ambitious the shots and blows she aimed, not to mention the wounds she received with each clash and the mounting exhaustion to which even the greatest hero must eventually succumb. Clearly Antiope sought to produce the spectacle of her own death, to break tal Kyrte's heart and vitiate the nation of the will to endure. Yet the very recklessness of her attacks worked to preserve her. The other champions overextended, reckoning that only their most singular strike would stand. Their throws miscarried, while Antiope's found the mark again and again. It seemed she would put the army to rout single-handed.

Where was Eleuthera? The sun had mounted to midmorning. The central corps of Amazonia still fought hundreds of yards away, south and east of the Rock, against Ardettos and the Athenian companies which had retaken the Hill of the Muses. Theseus' foot troops worked to pen the Amazons there, to block them from bearing aid to the Scyths and Thracians being cut up by Antiope beneath Ares' Hill. The king's captains were the champions Bias and Demophoon, with the hero Peleus of Thessaly, the Cretan Triptolemus and Spartan Amompharetus. For all the Athenians' valor, however, Eleuthera's squadrons could easily have punched through, or simply circled west behind Market Hill and gotten to Antiope by that route. Yet they didn't.

What held Eleuthera? Perhaps the gallantry of Theseus' defenders. Or Eleuthera and Hippolyta may have hoped another champion of tal Kyrte would overcome their queen. Plain fear may have held them. Yet my gut tells me different. I think they could not, or would not, believe Antiope's revolution. Despite all, the commanders of Amazonia could not imagine their sister taking the field against them. How often this morning had couriers reported Antiope's conquests? Surely Eleuthera and Hippolyta had been informed again and again of the havoc being wreaked by their countrywoman. Yet, all later reports insist, they banished the messengers in fury.

In the end the cries of the field compelled them. You have all heard the famous exchange. The final dispatch bearer, it is said, galloped up to Eleuthera, reporting Antiope's most immediate heroics. “Heaven,” the messenger cried, “fights at her side.”

“Then I will meet her in Hell,” Eleuthera replied.

She sent for Soup Bones, whom her novices had brought out of the fight to catch his wind, and, arming herself with a brace of three horseback javelins, called upon Ares, Hecate, and the Great Mother to witness the rightness of her cause. “Ye gods, if you possess justice as you do might, then guide my lance!”

And she spurred round Market Hill, seeking Antiope.

Where was Theseus at this point? Twenty witnesses render twenty tales. Sense, and facts established in the aftercourse, place him among the infantry holding the saddle between Ares' Hill and the Acropolis. Did he see Eleuthera, ringed by her Companions, gallop north to seek Antiope? If he didn't, surely someone reported it to him. He seized this moment to break from the fray and mounted to that knob called the Tailor's Nose. Here, men said, he made signal to Borges of the Scyths.

This was an intrigue set in motion days prior by Theseus, namely to buy the clansmen off for gold. Theseus would hand over the treasure of the Acropolis to Borges and the knights of the Iron Mountains, he pledged, if the prince would take this plunder and break off. Borges had assented. Now was the hour. Theseus raised the signal.

But as often falls out in war, opportunism and the main chance trump all. Borges was winning. Why back off and settle for part of the swag, the Scyth reasoned (for surely Theseus held out the plum portion), when he could carry the day and bag it all?

A volley of shafts greeted Theseus' signal. The tribesmen beat forward, bellying the Athenians back.

Now onto the field beneath Market Hill, where the Temple of the Amazons stands today, emerged Eleuthera, crying Antiope's name. Neither she nor any of her nation owned an inkling of Theseus' botched intrigue. Before Eleuthera's rush (for regiments of the foe came with her) our troops reeled in disorder, surrendering the market and the Cemetery, taken this hour at such appalling cost.

The state of the field was this. South and east of the Rock, Amazons and Scyths stood triumphant. Between the Hill of Ares and the Acropolis, the Athenians under Theseus were falling back, pressed upon by Hippolyta's Lycasteia Amazons, augmented by Borges and the Scyths of the Iron Mountains. North, where the Cemetery and marketplace sprawled beneath Market Hill and the Hill of the Nymphs, the Amazons, Thracians, and Caucasians fought the Athenians under Lykos and Menestheus, Pirithous and Stichios Ox.

Here was where Antiope was.

To here Eleuthera came.

The pair squared off on the shoulder of Market Hill. Each jockeyed to get upslope of her rival. Antiope bore a score of wounds, gravest being the ironhead wedged between her ribs; she sought to conceal these incapacities, but the slope betrayed her, compelling her to favor her right side as she rode. Eleuthera, discerning, seized the left of the field so that Antiope, if she cast, must do so across her body. Antiope countered, sheathing her lance and going to the bow. About them on all quarters the fight had broken off, as if heaven itself had commanded. For men are pious in war, and each believed that who won between these champions would seal the fight entire.

Eleuthera launched at once directly across the slope. She had ceded the uphill to her rival, bolting across the face, and as they passed she rose on Soup Bones' belly-band to launch the horseback javelin. Antiope shot. Her arrow crossed Eleuthera's lance in flight, striking the shield of bear-hide, triple-thick and sinew-fused, hard as tortoiseshell, passing through it and the flesh of Eleuthera's forearm to strike upon the iron plate of her cuirass directly below the heart. Here shaft snapped and warhead checked, shy of the fatal mark. Eleuthera's cast flew point-blank, yet sailed, caught by a gust.

The riders came about and rushed again. Eleuthera slung her shield to the dirt. Clearly she had resolved to trade her life for her rival's. She was uphill. She spurred to the gallop, rising upon her belly-band to launch the second missile, heedless of her own safety. Again Antiope's shot rang off her iron breastplate. Again Eleuthera's javelin sailed wide.

With each miss, such groans issued from Amazons and allies as if they themselves had fallen, while jubilation resounded from the Athenian lines, succeeded by lamentations of their own as Eleuthera again did not fall. The Amazon herself rose, coming about, and lifted her voice to the Almighty.

“So, Son of Cronos, you have decided to grant victory to Athens and count as nothing all our nation's valor. Then drive me down foremost to hell, for I will never yield, to them or to you!”

A third time Eleuthera spurred, and a third time Antiope answered. Many observed from closer than I, among them my brother, who was still fighting in the companies under Menestheus that had routed the Thracians. He swears, as do other witnesses numerous and credible, that at the apex of her terminal rush, Antiope veered deliberately, turning Sneak Biscuits' neck so as to expose her own. This much is certain of that pass: Antiope bore no weapon. She galloped empty-handed into Eleuthera's charge.

This was the lady's finish. Eleuthera cast from so close that her javelin's killing point entered Antiope's breast, it seemed, before its butt end had left the sleeve extender in Eleuthera's fist. Antiope bowled over Sneak Biscuits' hindquarters as a doll is swiped from its shelf by a child's angry hand. You could hear the javelin shaft snap as the lady's impaled body struck the stone, not on her back but on her face, her trunk in its armor having cartwheeled through a complete revolution in midair. Her helmet hit first and then her legs. The bindings of her breastplate burst; both greaves sprung from her calves. Eleuthera vaulted to the plain. In an instant the warrioress straddled Antiope's motionless form. The field had gone to stone. Not a sound. Not a cry. So indestructible had Antiope seemed in her hour of glory that not a soul believed she had been brought low. Before all, Eleuthera seemed most acutely stricken. From where I stood, I could see her face clearly. Will you believe me, brothers, when I declare that her eyes pleaded with the lady:
Rise!

“Ai-eee!” Eleuthera howled, a cry not of triumph but of woe. This dirge resounded from the ranks of Athens, amplified by the foe, until both armies, Athenians at the loss of their champion, Amazons at the perversity of fate, wailed in conterminous despair.