Last of the Amazons (30 page)

32

THE BATTLE, MORNING

Damon:

T
he companies of Athens massed on the summit two hours before dawn. The plan, such as it was, was to attack with everything we had, seeking not to retake any position but only to punch a lane through the foe and drive down this, as swiftly as we could, with as many men as we could, striking for the straits and Euboea. Beyond that . . . what? Could we even reach the causeway, let alone tear it down? Would our force simply be swallowed by the hordes of the foe? These were questions none owned the bowels to ask, but each man huddled in his armor in the predawn chill, steeling himself for this trial whose outcome would be victory or death, not only for himself and his wife and children but for his country and his gods.

Theseus moved among the troops, seeking to inspirit courage. I had found a space beside Elias, against the Fortress gate; I studied the faces of our countrymen. They had indeed become soldiers, these carpenters and masons, vineyardmen and shopkeepers and weavers. They bitched and spat and hammered each other's leathers tight to their shoulders; men bound each other's shins and passed the whetstone down the line, cinched corselets tight and farted and pissed and blew snot onto the stones. This at least could be said for the scale of our casualties: so many had fallen, there was armor for all who had not. And for our defeats: so many had been wounded, the mob looked a veteran corps. Theseus prowled among the platoons. Messengers, he said, had reached the camps of our countrymen on Hymettos and Lykabettos; their companies would rally at our signal. Close in, our brothers at Ardettos armed now to fight at our sides. The upcountry barons would come on the run; the allies of the Twelve States had sworn this time to honor their oaths. Amazons and Scyths have lost all trust in each other, Theseus swore. He himself had laid intrigues with critical commanders; our feuding foes might yet prove their own ruin. Darkness was our ally; the omens promised glory. Trust in the gods and strike hard!

The initial rush we never even got down the Three Hundred Steps. The foot troops of Trallian and Strymonian Thrace were massed in such multitudes, and so hard by the summit, that a greased hare could not have wriggled through. Nor did darkness impede the Amazon horse. They rode their night mounts, sure-footed, these warrioresses raised on mare's milk and starlight. Slinging brands, they thundered upon us. I was in the third rank at the right, with my brother and two uncles in the division commanded by Menestheus. Our corps had been a thousand on marshaling; under two hundred got through the summit portal before it boomed shut beneath a storm of iron and fire. The Amazons fell on our unshielded right. Behind us pitch shafts turned the face of the gate into an inferno.

No option remained but to elevate shields, lap edges, and endure. I seated the crown of my helmet beneath the upper rim and dug all ten toes into the clay. Stones and sling bullets rang off the bronze. One felt the concussion of ironheads and heard mates fall fore and aft. The left arm and shoulder cannot bear the weight of the shield alone under such onslaught but the right must assist, seating the spearshaft upright like a tent pole behind the shield's right-hand rim, yoking ash to bronze within the gripcord in one's fist and pressing the unit forward as if into a gale. Drop to one knee, use the other to post the facing rim, plant crown and trapezius, and pray. I could hear Elias at my shoulder, crying the names of the gods. I thought absurdly, So long as he calls, I shall live.

Now came the Amazon rush. “Stay low!” I heard someone bawl, and then the foe was on us. Animals feel terror too and, like men, evacuate themselves in the teeth of peril. I was slipping in horse shit. I felt a hoof ring off the bronze at my temple, dropping me nasal-first onto the stone. The beast, or another, trod on my shield, which splayed flat on the dirt, inverted, spread-eagling me with my left forearm pinned in the sheath and the limb half wrenched from its socket. I felt my spearshaft splinter as another hoof punched into the stone. Horse piss sluiced on me as if poured from a bowl. I rolled left, to keep my arm from breaking, simultaneously thrusting with the broken butt of my spear. It hit something but I couldn't see; my helmet was smashed over my eyes. No hope is too ludicrous in such an exigency. I recall repeating to myself,
Hang on, it has to turn.
Of course nothing would turn. Why should it?

We learned later that our countrymen, the last three thousand, who had fled back behind the summit gate and left us to perish, were confronted at this extremity, not by their officers, who quailed as dread-stricken as themselves, but by a shoemaker heretofore called Finch, so inconsequential a fellow had he been judged to be. Now in the ultimate hour this cobbler strode not only to the fore of his countrymen but into their annals of glory.

“Why do you shrink behind gates of oak, men of Athens? Do you imagine you will be granted quarter by the foe? Our brothers are dying while we cower like dogs!”

The shoemaker raised his spear and strode for the gate. Incredibly, the men followed. The portals groaned apart; with a cry our fellows surged forth, filling the void behind us. The mass swelled to our deliverance. We clambered to our feet.

Fighting long enough in these mobs, one acquires a feel for their currents, as a sailor for the sea. They own much in common, these oceans of salt and of men. Both have waves and tides, and both can turn. If you can start the enemy's front ranks pedaling backward, even a step or two, their weight will press upon the shields of those to the rear. The second-rankers can no longer project their spearpoints over the shoulders of the first but must pull their shafts back to vertical, seat them within the rims of their shields, and push on the backs of their rearward-pressing mates. You can feel it when this happens. The experience is elation. Now the foe's third rank starts to buckle too. Cohesion breaks down. The formation becomes a mass, then a mob. You can hear the enemy's curses and feel his knees giving way beneath him. Your blood surges. You enter a state which is primarily relief from fear but owns as much of rage and exaltation. “They're falling back, men! Push, brothers! Heave!”

Theseus broke now to the fore. The mass of our companies drove the foe down the hill. The individual could see nothing, only hear the cries of his mates amid the din. Ahead lay the Enneapylon, the Nine Gates at the foot of the Rock. “Press on, lads! Break through!”

Here the foe's commanders had miscalculated. Had they left the Gates and Half Ring intact, they could have fought from atop the battlements, hemming us in as we, before, had held them out. But in their hatred of our city and their zeal to wipe us from the earth, the enemy had torn down the walls, leveling the field for cavalry. Our mass rolled over their razed remains and swept toward the marketplace.

Here fortune aided us further. Outside the Nine Gates are a number of wells. Prior to the siege, these had fed fountains in the courts of private homes; the Amazons had first demolished both homes and wells, then rebuilt the latter when their horses began to fail from thirst. The wells sat so close beneath our towers, however, that the foe seeking a drink must run a gantlet of Athenian bowfire. Countering this, his Tower People carved aqueducts in the stone and erected penthouses and mantlets, a regular thicket of them, to shield his thirsty troopers from our bolts.

Into this obstacle course Theseus now drove the foe. As our massed infantry heaved forward, aided by the downslope, the Thracians and Scyths and Getai backstriding before our rush suddenly found their footing fouled by the channels and aqueducts, and their formations broken apart by the forest of timbers and overheads. A slaughter ensued. For the first time, the tide ran in Athens's favor.

Even in the purblindness of the clash, the soldier senses which units of the enemy are weakest. He calls these
trogalion,
“candy.” Who fights hardest on the field? One trying to get through to candy. The foe's Thracians and Getai were brilliant horsemen but worthless on foot. Many had been made infantry by the starvation of their mounts. They felt shame to fight this way, and this made them candy.

Theseus found them and went after them. The foe fell back. Our companies punched through. For the time it takes to count to five hundred, I thought we might even conquer. For now the mulishness of the Athenian soldier-farmer, the pigheaded refusal to yield which had at first been scorned by his betters—now this shone to the fore. By the gods, these clodkickers had learned to fight! The alternations of terror and elation, which had unmanned them in the early stages of the siege, had now become familiar. They had learned not to be downcast by the one or carried away by the other. They no longer fell apart at the apparition of cowardice among their comrades or themselves, but had come to understand that the same man may play the craven in the morning and the hero in the afternoon. Give them this: they were tough. Tougher than the Scyths and Getai, for all their savage valor, and tougher than the Amazons, despite their dash and dazzle.

The company I was with, under Menestheus, had broken all the way out through the Nine Gates now. We were on the flat at the base of Ares' Hill, straining north toward the Cemetery and the Haymarket. Battalions under Theseus fought on our right, the forest of wells, while further platoons, squads, and catchalls under Lykos, Peteos, and the Spartan Amompharetus comprised the far right, flush against the Rock. Our total made perhaps four thousand. Against this stood nearly fifty thousand of the foe, Scythians, Thracians, Taurians, Caucasians, Maeotians, Armenians, Cappadocians, Issedonians, Rhipaeans, Colchians, and Ceraunians, horse tribesmen dueling afoot, with additional companies of Lykians, Mysians, Phrygians, and Dardanians—true armored infantry—blocking the northern go-round of the Rock, across which, we learned later, three thousand of our countrymen from the pocket fort at Ardettos had struggled without success to reinforce us. The Amazon stronghold on the Hill of Ares was directly above us on the left. From these heights descended a rain of iron. Men of both sides were being mown down like barley beneath the scythe. I looked up; the Amazons were so close you could see the irises within the painted grotesqueries of their sockets. They shot and shot. A man could do nothing but jack his shield above his skull and promise heaven every payback he could think of. The storm drove down around our ears. Amazon war cries fused with the screams of dying men in a cacophony of ungodly ghastliness. Yet within the pandemonium, some god took Athens's side. For as the squall of Amazon iron cut down our men at the clash's fore, it worked the same murder upon the Thracians and Scyths massed against us. Which side wanted the win more? As the front ranks fell, Theseus and Menestheus seized the main chance. They led the charge; our battalions punched through.

We had reached the marketplace now, the flat where Theseus and Eleuthera had dueled just six days prior. The press of bodies defied depiction. From the Hill of the Nymphs to the Eleusinion, every yard of dirt stood packed with contending agonists. By now men of both sides were so exhausted that overhand blows could no longer be struck or fended. One simply fell against the foe and humped his guts upon him. The spear is useless in such a mob. The shortsword—that's the ticket. No need to plunge it hilt-deep. Just poke your man. Make him leak. Leave spear and longsword to heroes. Hang on to the pig-sticker.

Our fathers had taught us the shield was a defensive weapon. We had learned better. When limbs turn to lead, a shield fights fine. Back your man against something and bash him with your bronze. Kick him. Smash the bones in his feet. If he falters, drive your shield into his face. Use the rim. Uppercut him. Onion-chop him. Break his spear arm. If you can't move, fall on him. Use your heels. Go for his temple. Punch his shins and knees. Break his nose. If he gets you in a chokehold, chomp a steak out of his arm. Spit blood in his face. Drive your knee where his fruit hangs. When he falls, stick him. Just once, that's enough. Now get out. Find your mates and form up. If you face the foe alone, don't play hero. Call for help and take him two-on-one. If he flees, let him. That is called victory. Thank the gods and get the hell out.

By sun's rise we were beaten. The foe was just too many. Four times, thrusts under Theseus and Lykos broke through. As many as five hundred got past the foe and formed up for the push to the causeway. But each time Amazon cavalry cut us off; each time our companies were forced to fall back. Enemy horse was near its extremity too. The Amazons were fighting at ten mounts for each rider, so emaciated had their strings become and so swiftly did the animals wear out in action. From the floor of the marketplace I could see their reserves atop the Hill of Ares and the novices riding them down, ferrying the jaded ones out. Though the foe struggled, she still had enough.

We fell back to the Nine Gates. The enemy's champions now drove upon us. I saw Eleuthera at the head of a squadron; Skyleia, Stratonike, Alcippe, and Glauke Grey Eyes led more into the fray. Every inch we had won had been surrendered. We were back where we started. Hundreds bunched up before the First Gate. You could not get through; our keepers wouldn't open; you had to clamber up the timbers, hauled by your mates on rat lines and shafts of pikes. Before the bolted face, the foe pressed in such numbers as to mount upon the bodies of his own slain. Scyths and Taurians and Rhipaeans poured over. We fell back through the zigzag works, second gate, third gate, fourth and fifth and sixth. Cretan and Athenian archers poured fire on the foe from above, then withdrew higher on the face to regroup and launch again. Before the seventh gate is that terrace sacred to Aphrodite Pandemos and Persuasion, where the choruses marshal on the eve of the Anthesteria. A score of Amazon horse under Enyo Warlike, had got into this court; they rushed the gates, slinging grapnels. Our bowmen could not plant their feet to fire, so many were their own countrymen—myself among them—scrambling over the works, dislodging them. The Amazons sunk hooks into the timbers and hauled on the lines. Forty horsewomen packed the court now; every one, it seemed, had buried iron into the beams. Their teams strained; the doors warped and started off their hinges. I had scrambled topside now. Iron grapnels were ringing off the stone like bells. The wall was only fifteen feet at that point; from a standing spring off the backs of their horses, the Amazons and Scyths needed but three hauls on the line and they were over.