Last of the Amazons (13 page)

“Sisters and mothers, daughters, allies, and friends, I have not mounted to this platform prepared to rebut our Athenian guest's panegyric. I accede only at your command and speak, not from my reason, as this Greek would say”—here she nodded, but did not look, in the direction of Theseus—“but from the ground of my being and all being, which is God, which is all that is and all that will be. This my heart commands me to speak:

“Humankind may not ascend to God by evolution, as our guest warrants, but only fall from Him. Our guest looks upon God's creatures and calls them brutes. I say it is we who deserve that name. Let us make them our teachers—the earth and her elements, her children of four legs and her winged captains of the air. They have come straight from God and speak his tongue direct and untutored. Only we have fallen, and by those very arts which our friend from across the sea acclaims as evolutionary. He looks upon sky and steppe and sees that which God has created. I look and see God Himself. Let us enroll ourselves in His academy of wind and sky, birth and death, of seasons ordained eternal. Here is our Teacher; in His book is all we need to know.

“The city, our friend declares, is man's creation, the produce of his reason, by which he may ascend from the state of savagery. I answer by calling his attention to this rock. I bid him look to that sea. Has man made either? So long as sun rises and rain falls, man can make nothing. Not the sky nor the earth, nor seeds nor horses nor stone. Man has not so much as seen or spoken even these thoughts which blaspheme His name, save by the Almighty's grace, or drawn one solitary breath absent heaven's license. Moons and stars God makes and throws away. With but a puff He blows out the lamp of our lives.”

As she spoke, Theseus studied her. And though he made his face a mask, yet this was plain: the words with which Antiope refuted his testament arose with such purity from her heart that as each fell upon his flesh, as the blow of a lash, he received them as they were kisses. He had not been felled, one saw, by Eros' bolt. Rather he had encountered in his antagonist that which he had never known before, or even knew existed—a mind and spirit equal or superior to his own—and before this he genuflected, not so much to her, whose gifts struck and illumined him, but to that greater Spirit in whose name she spoke.

And Antiope, perceiving, submerged herself in that stream whose power guided and animated her speech, so that her words beat upon him as combers upon a strand, and he endured them, casting each back with his silence and acceptance, that it in its retreat might assist to form that next crest, which broke upon him and enlarged his joy.

“Our guest in other contexts,” Antiope continued, “has employed the word ‘barren' to describe what he perceives as the ‘emptiness' of the steppe. Look again, my friend. Her seeds and grasses feed us, her wind animates our spirit, her mantle swathes us gently in our sleep. Shall we ‘cultivate' her? I will never let my people farm, for she who farms cannot dream, and who cannot dream cannot live. Husbandry of the earth does not ennoble man but degrades him, for it sows within his breast the blasphemy that earth belongs to him. Nothing belongs to us! Not even ourselves and our lives, which are God's and have been since our birth. To call a thing one's own is madness. Such thinking engenders greed and avarice, acquisitiveness and niggardliness. It rends brother from brother, making men to count and measure everything. Is this ‘progress'? Progress to what?

“Does our guest imagine that the nations of tal Kyrte have stood, for want of intelligence or industry, incapable of building cities? We don't want cities! To dwell within such a press of humanity deforms the soul. Give us silence and solitude, which purify and concentrate the spirit. Shall we build temples to God? Why, when His cathedral compasses us day and night! Preach to us not of reverence, for we tread in God's footprints every step of our days, and account no trespass graver than to stray from His path.

“The life of the city has made men less than they were, not more. And as for your women, I have seen them, I am sorry to say. Is even one as beautiful as these? They are painted whores, your wives, who have bartered their souls for a place out of the rain and not even sold them dear. Your women are shells of what God intended and you know it, or you would not have crossed oceans to trail after us, moonstruck as calves!

“Those gods to whom you erect temples, Theseus, are in my view but reproductions of yourselves, and laughable ones at that. Here is heaven before you! Seek no further, only hold still and annul the yammering of your ‘reason.' I despise reason if it severs me from my soul and from God.

“But the greatest proof of the rightness of my argument (and the mightiest refutation of your own) arises from you yourself, Theseus. For if you truly believed what you preach, you would be home now, trudging behind a plough. But you are not, are you? You are here, with us!”

Such acclaim greeted this as made the very earth pitch and tremble. Spearshafts resounded upon shields, soles smote the plain; even the horses stamped and nickered as if they understood. Antiope elevated her arms to still the tumult.

“And if you would gainsay me,” she addressed Theseus, “declaring that the men you have brought with you from Athens feel bereft upon these shores and pine in their hearts for home, I challenge you to command them now, before the witness of this host, to form again into their companies and embark upon their ships. They will revolt and you know it! They are happy here, as you are.”

The multitude burst into laughter, Amazons and allies first, then Athenians, when I had translated. Theseus replied, in like tone to his men, that in at least one of civilization's arts he and they had been bested—that of oratory.

Antiope grasped the meaning of the Greek before it had been translated, and leapt upon it.

“Not oratory has vanquished you, my friend, but you have fallen beneath your own weapon, which is reason. Is this not your god, Theseus? Then admit that even we who are untutored and uncivilized possess insight from which you may profit.”

The king acknowledged with a bow. Cheers resounded, as much for his concession as for Antiope's triumph.

At this instant a rider galloped in through the gate between the earthworks. This was my own trikona-mate Aella, “Little Whirlwind,” a lass of twelve, whose post at this season lay on the northern steppe with the great breeding herds being moved to summer pasture. She thundered now onto the square, her horse lathered and tongue-sprung, and reined-in before the speaker's stand. Before the maid had caught breath to speak, the nation had divined what evil news she bore.

Borges and his Iron Mountain Scyths, the girl reported, had appeared without warning, two nights past, at the ford of the Hybristes, where she and the novices of the White Mountain clans tended a herd of three thousand. Borges had approached the camp, proffering signs of friendship. He had been welcomed. His men had gone so far as to unyoke the oxen from their women's waggons and even laid out their bedding for the night. But at a signal they rose and attacked. Their numbers were above a thousand; the lasses' under two hundred. Those Borges did not slaughter at their posts, his men ran down and butchered on the plain. He rounded up the herd, three thousand prime stock, and drove east toward the Scythian homeland.

Uproar erupted. Theseus advanced before Antiope, Eleuthera, and the other captains. “This is my fault. Let me make it right. I am not without ability and my companions are heroes and champions all, eager to prove their mettle to you. Give us only a guide and horses and we will set out this night and come back either with your stolen property, to restore it intact to you, or not come back at all.”

15

REFLECTIONS IN
GOD'S MIRROR

T
he avenging brigade was on the move in the time it takes to gallop ten furlongs. Of course Theseus' Greeks could not be licensed to requite an outrage against the free people. They were permitted to accompany the troop as auxiliaries only. Tal Kyrte supplied horses. I gave Damon three from my string. I had assumed sponsorship of him, as they say in our tongue,
yste arran,
to “stand at the shoulder.” This meant I was responsible both for his safety and his comportment. In battle I would defend his life; in society I would make sure he behaved himself.

My first duty was to teach him to ride. This proved no trifling chore. For though he declared himself a prizewinning equestrian in his own country (and though I mounted him on my cleverest and most tractable horse, a gelding named Knothole), not only did he prove incapable of fight riding, to hold a line in assault, say, or execute an up-and-back, but he could not even trot in a straight line across dry level plain.

The novices called him
Motanis,
“Stone Hands,” and trotted in his train, giggling. In his defense, few of his compatriots did better. They were all hopeless. They insisted upon “ruling” their horses, attempting to “handle” them as they would a Greek beast. “Your horse knows how to trot, Damon. You don't have to teach him!”

In truth I was charmed to witness my sweetheart's frustration. I could see he was in love with me. He wanted so badly to appear competent in my eyes. I could not respond, of course. I
would
not, particularly in the stern circumstances under which we rode. But in my heart I felt the sweetness of answered love.

The army pressed on. Damon was keen to acquire our tongue; I practiced my Greek on him, explaining where we were and what would happen.

The Tanais River flows northeast to southwest, I told him, three hundred miles ahead. From here to there is Amazon country; on the other side the Scythian lands begin. Borges must cross the Tanais to get home. We would overtake him at the ford and cut him down.

There was danger on the way, however. For, to reach the Tanais, Borges and his eleven hundred must pass through the territory of the Titaneia, the Eastern Amazons. Within this expanse grazed more of tal Kyrte's herds; the Scyths might attempt to seize these and slaughter the girls who watched over them, as no warning could reach the maids in time.

“How many days' ride?” Damon asked.

“Four or five.”

And what would Borges do with the stolen horses?

“Keep some for his own wealth, bestow others as rewards to his princes. The best three hundred he will keep aside, to sacrifice over his brother Arsaces' barrow. They will constitute Arsaces' fortune in the life after.”

Tal Kyrte does not picket its horses at night but permits them to graze, protected by outriders. I watched Damon's pleasure as he wandered out among them. The bands responded to his approach. They are fearless and full of mischief. The boldest noses up first; he sniffs the man all over, nuzzling between his legs, under his arms, against his ears. Now the whole band packs in. They surround the fellow, picking his wallet for treats, taking his fingers and hair between their lips; they nip him and butt him and jostle him. At times Damon appeared lifted off his feet by their merry press. I could see him weep. I knew this ecstasy. He was being swept up by the wild ways.

“Will we fight the Scyths, Selene?”

“Oh, yes!”

“What will happen?”

I explained that the foe could not outrun us, trailing the stolen herds. He must tarry for pasturage, spend hours crossing rivers, nor would the thirsty beasts be easily driven off from a good stream, once they had gained it. Further, the steppe across which Borges must flee was carved by washes and ravines called “breaks,” whose walls may plunge sixty feet below the level of the plain. To double these without a guide, the Scyths must track laterally seeking a crossing. This could be miles.

Damon asked how the fight would go.

I anticipated a sharp skirmish, followed by a rout. We would slay between thirty and a hundred. The rest would flee. We would take back our herds and avenge our daughters. Equally important, each warrioress would acquire scalps, prize mounts of the foe, not to say fame, glory, and wounds of honor. How many would we lose? Damon asked. I told him none. When he questioned this, I laughed.

“Look around you.”

It was the third morn of the pursuit. The army radiated across that pan called in our tongue
Tamir Nut,
“God's Mirror.” The day itself had come up splendid, as if hatched by heaven for this occasion. It had rained at dawn and the animals, made frisky, capered and bucked along in joy. Upon every quarter arose sights of color and exuberance, not alone the pageantry of the companies of warrioresses, got up in their most brilliant kit, but the cavalcade of reserve mounts, which trailed in hundreds, ruled by the novices, the lasses of ten to thirteen years. Rivals who would demean tal Kyrte have made much of her warrioresses' height and muscularity. Indeed our nation, from the severity of its life, stands second in physical vigor to none of man. But what tenders the race its fearsomeness is not muscle but heart. Though the object of the corps' pursuit, Borges' eleven hundred, eclipsed the brigade both in numbers and armor, not one deemed the foe a match on the open steppe. So preeminent did the mounted warriors of Amazonia account themselves in the type of fighting at which they excelled, on the kind of ground to which their arms and tactics were most suited, that victory in our sight stood foreordained. The air shimmered with the warrioresses' conviction, as did their own persons, resplendent with the iron of their arms, the gilt and platework of their outfit, the electrum and ivory of their horses' caparisons. The observer's eye took in cloaks of lion and wolf skin, leggings of elk hide and buckskin, and helms of silver, cobalt-bossed. A number rode bareheaded, with feathers of eagle and osprey in their hair, one for each enemy slain; others wore the doeskin caps of Phrygia, banded with elk horn and bears' claws.

At the van rode Antiope, in the black leopard cloak and boar's-tooth helm by which her figure could be picked out among hundreds. At her shoulder tracked the mates of her High Trikona, Eleuthera and Stratonike, without peer across the Wild Lands, while at the fore of the companies advanced the champions: Alcippe, Powerful Mare; Skyleia, “Mistress of the Family''; and Glauke Grey Eyes; Tecmessa, called Thistle; Bremusa, called Blur; Rhodippe Red Mare; Xanthe Blonde; Arge, “Fleet''; Leucippe, “White Mare''; Aridela, “Illumined''; and Lyssa, “Battle Fury.'' Hippolyta commanded her own war society, the Black Wings, whose totem was the raven and who painted their faces jet.

Fabulists report that the race of Amazonia dwells apart from men, an all-female society. This is not so. Numbers of males live among us, as camp husbands and muleteers, smiths and wrights, workers in wood and leather and iron. Many pack wives of their own (of nations other than tal Kyrte), which society exists within the greater nation yet apart from it, much as so-called service birds accompany the crocodiles of Libya and the hippopotami of the Nile.

These trailed us now, a score of gaily painted waggons drawn by mules and the half-wild asses the Lykians call clover bellies, which once bolted cannot be caught even by the fastest horse. They speak their own language, these fellows, called
kabash
(“stew”), which even tal Kyrte cannot understand, and are renowned as diviners, of both dreams and omens, as well as bird sign and the reading of entrails. While alive they will not peek in a looking glass, believing the reflected image their otherworld self, yet are buried, as the warrioresses of tal Kyrte, with a bronze mirror at their right hand, through which this spirit-double escorts them to the next world. The
kabar
(as they are called) believe that life is lived not forward but backward. They ask not where are you going but where you have been. To them each hour has been lived before; that which they learn, they only remember, having known it heretofore. They believe that at death (or birth, in their lexicon) a man must be naked both of goods and cares to pass to the Happy Isles. Thus avarice is unknown among them, as is ambition, niggardliness, and jealousy. Their god is Apollo Loxias, the Trickster. They weep when happy, laugh in grief, and are the most hale and carefree of fellows. They make weapons but will not make war. None will fight, even to defend hearth and children, or flee to preserve his life, but each offers his slaughter to the foe of his own will. In consequence, tal Kyrte defends them with unwonted ferocity.

The greater brigade of tal Kyrte totaled six hundred grown warrioresses, with double that in novices, two to each champion. Theseus' Athenians, a hundred and fifty, constituted a sort of infantry on horseback, with volunteer clans of Gagarians and Shore Scyths, heavily armored males, bringing the total under arms to about nine hundred.

The army trekked on, trailing the sundered turf left by the Scythians' passage. The plain teemed with antelope and gazelle. Hunting parties brought in fresh meat, which was roasted over bricks of dried dung. This stuff starts hard but, once caught, burns clean as charcoal and twice as long. Streams rising in the mountains produced draughts superior to wine. The brigade encountered no opposition, only coming upon the paunch fires of the foe, in which the gut sack of the slaughtered beast serves as vessel to cook its flesh, and its own bones as fuel.

I watched Damon when he didn't know I was looking. He was fascinated by the silent tongue of tal Kyrte, which so mimics the language of horses in its signs and postures, advances and retreats, that, as he expressed it to me, marveling, “Your people communicating do not switch from ‘human' to ‘horse' but speak and breathe in ‘horse' the whole of their lives.”

I approved this. Horses offer love without condition and must be given it in the same terms. They are curious, I instructed Damon, and easily bored; they enjoy adventure and human companionship and are never happier than when learning something new.

“Among tal Kyrte is a type of horse you will find nowhere else, what we call
kal ehal,
‘volunteer,' a wild horse come in to us on its own. This friend”—I indicated my sorrel, Daybreak—“appeared like that. Out of the sun, walking straight up to me.”

On the steppe the passage of any herd or cavalcade attracts great flocks of prairie hens, as the tread of the beasts stirs up the insects upon which the birds feed. This produced great sport among the army, as the high-spirited novices love to give them chase. It goes like this. As the girls drive the flocks into the air by their rush on horseback, one or two birds fail of flight, incapacitated by a broken wing or other infirmity. These turf-skimmers become the prize; after them the troop gallops.

One of Eleuthera's novices, and mate of my second trikona, was a maid of twelve, Aella, Little Whirlwind, granddaughter of the legendary Aella who was first to take on Heracles one-on-one, who had raced into the Gathering with the report of Borges' attack. This young champion at once flew to the fore. Across the field the feathered prey scooted with dizzying speed, while the girls, first twenty in number, then twice that, gave chase, hanging off their ponies' flanks seeking to snatch the hen as it flew. How smartly these birds changed direction! Rider after rider nearly spilled in her pursuit, yet so lithe was each maid that she had remounted, it seemed, before her feet even touched the earth. The girls trailed a dragline from their horses' necks for just this purpose, so that even in the moment of their tumble they were already hauling themselves back aboard. To further color this entertainment, the plain was pocked with dens of the steppe marmot, not only a terrific hazard for the horses but an avenue of escape for the birds. Into one such burrow our gallant hen dived. Too late! The lass Aella snatched her up, a hair's-breadth shy of the getaway.

Across the field the conqueror cantered, holding her prize aloft, while the column acclaimed her along its length, even the rivals she had bested. At the fore Aella drew up, plucking a feather for her own hair and one for her horse's mane, then, dedicating her hen to earth, sky, and the four corners, offered this prayer:

“God gave you to me, nimblest of birds; now I give you back to Him. In requital for the gift of your life I pledge to send a man's soul to hell, for you to feed upon.”

With that she slit the victim's throat, gulping the blood as it spilled down her breast and belly. Her reward was assignment, with the older girls, as forerider, to relieve those ahead in tracking the foe.

I turned to Damon as the column resumed its march. He no longer stood apart from our ways, studying, but had surrendered to them, transfixed in ecstasy.