Last of the Amazons (32 page)

With the axe's edge she incised a split upon her own tongue. The child looked on, fascinated. His lips parted in uncoerced emulation. Upon his infant's tongue his mother lanced the matching stroke.

I and the other Companions had crossed to take station at our king's side. I stood close enough beneath the Amazon to see the rawhide ties of her boots and the leather where the quilted pad of Sneak Biscuits' breastplate rode against the whorled hair of his coat. Antiope lifted her son. “Now kiss this face, my love, which you will never see in life again.”

The boy obeyed. I turned toward Theseus. His eyes were dead coins. Antiope passed the infant down. At that instant a cry mightier than all ascended from the foe beyond the gate. Antiope resheathed her axe; her right hand rose; she tugged her helmet-facing down.

Theseus could still have stopped her. He was the king; the gatemaster would not open without his leave. Our lord peered into the mask of bronze, which hid forever the face of her he loved.

He stepped back. The gate groaned open.

34

AGONY OF ANTIOPE

B
rothers, I will not bore you with the lore. You have heard the tales. The heroes of that day were your fathers and grandfathers; you know the sites; you have seen the graves and monuments. Some of you fought then in the ranks, while others, lads at the time, owned enough of sense to apprehend the magnitude of events. You youngsters who had not been born, even you have heard the harpers' lays and attended the rites at the House of Oaths and the Amazoneum. No doubt you believe you possess an understanding of the battle and the impact this lone Amazon had upon it. Believe me, brothers, you do not. None has, who was not there to see it.

Antiope advanced from the gate at the base of the Steps. The upper way had been cleared for her by massive bombardment of rock and boulder, the final barrage tonnage held in the west-facing summit magazines, which the gunners released now and which thundered down the zigzag works of the Enneapylon, producing such a storm of stone and dust, colossal and cacophonous, as to drive the Scyths and Getai, Taurians and Thracians and Caucasians massed beneath the Fortress Gate back down the slope in terror. Behind this roiling smokescreen, companies of Athenian infantry propelled the last diehards of the foe from the clefts they clung to above the Nine Gates. The field was cleared. The enemy remustered, massing outside the wall (or what was left of it) of the Enneapylon at the base of the Rock. Down the Three Hundred Steps descended Antiope.

She did not emerge from the gate first, but two Athenian companies, that of Menestheus and Stichios Ox, preceded her. My place was in the former. The foe greeted us with jeers and catcalls but made no move to attack. Then Antiope spurred forth. She did not charge at the gallop, as I have seen carved in reliefs and painted on the bowls of kraters and the walls of hero shrines. She came out at a walk. Nor did she proclaim her identity, citing descent and lineage, as one of her stature had every right; rather, held silent, neither elevating an arm to signal combat's onset nor hoisting the boar's-tooth plate that sheathed her eyes to confirm for all who she was.

Behind her the ranks of Athenians decanted from the gate like winter honey from a jar, sluggishly and tardily. They were terrified. The first line set its backs to the remains of the wall, compelling each succeeding rank to take station before it—the inversion of good order and the very opposite of what their officers had commanded. Still, as each rank accreted, the front advanced. Antiope advanced before it. Clearly no few of the foe took her for a goddess, with such splendor did her armor gleam and by such brilliance did her aspect exceed the common measure of humanity. The hour was still early, the west-facing slope deep in shadow, so that the Amazon, seen from the besiegers' lines, advanced from gloom into flares of blinding dazzle.

Out came Athens's champions, Lykos and Peteos, Bias and Telephos, Tereus, Eugenides, Phaeax, Pylades and Demophoon, the heroes Pirithous (on a splint of iron) with Peleus of Thessaly, Cretan Triptolemus and the Spartan Amompharetus. Last, Theseus.

All yielded place to Antiope. Nor did she acknowledge their existence but, as the paragon in a tiara, shone forth foremost and apart. She elevated the plate of her helmet, revealing her face. Cries rang across all the field.

There is a phenomenon which occurs sometimes among massed armies and even flocks of sheep or birds. Movement at one extremity is communicated, precipitating movement at the other. Fear is the engine. Impelled by dread, a man seeks to withdraw from prominence, to add one pace to the distance between himself and those who seek his slaughter. He backs half a step into the throng, onto the mate at his rear. This fellow, driven by his own fear, yields as well and presses in turn upon the man at his back.

Fear is contagious. Motion multiplies. One man can break an army and one step precipitate a rout.

This is what happened to the foe now. As his upslope ranks stuttered rearward before the apparition of Antiope, the mass compacted upon the ranks beneath on the incline, and so did their fear. The savage, recall, holds his own gods in awe, but even more the gods of his enemies. Looking on peerless Antiope, he perceived an immortal. Who else could she be but a goddess, or a champion with a goddess unseen at her shoulder?

The mass began edging back, gathering moment as a tide in its swing, so that even those at the rear who maintained courage were powerless to stand against their fellows of the fore, but gave way as their comrades retreated upon them.

Antiope advanced.

The mob backed before her.

Another step. Another. Now Antiope elevated her right hand and with a tug seated the armor of her faceplate before her eyes. In the same motion she reached behind her shoulder to draw from its sheath the
pelekus
axe. A cry burst from the companies of Athens. Their ranks swelled forward. The foe's bellied back. . . .

Which champion fell first before Antiope's onslaught? Many cite Harpalus, prince of the Rhipaean Caucasus, whom men called the Bear for the pelt of his chest and whose father, Typhaeus, claimed descent from the North Wind. Harpalus burst at the gallop from the host of the foe, seeking the glory of being first to engage the peerless Amazon. The prince plunged from his horse's back, impaled on Antiope's javelin, which she did not deign even to cast but thrust as a lance, catching Harpalus below the right nipple and driving through the thoracic spine. He crashed to the dust, spitting out his hero's blood.

Next to stand before Antiope's rush was Amorges, lord of all Caria south of the Maeander, who faced her on foot, so brazen was his conceit, seconded by his cousin Arimapachus, prince of Mysian Mariandyne. Their weapons were the whip and the noose, with which they were accustomed to taking down the wild bulls of their country and by which they meant to unhorse the Amazon and dispatch her afoot. Amorges, she shot through the eye slit of his helmet. The shaft penetrated with such force (so the prince's retainers reported later when they came to dress the corpse) as to pierce the skull clean, front to back, and burst forth through the helmet's bronze two hand's-breadths at the rear. Amorges fell as a wall does, and his armor clashed as it toppled. His cousin Arimapachus had snared Sneak Biscuits' neck with the noose and sought now to upend him; Antiope wheeled with such speed as to tangle the prince in his own snare. She jerked him off his feet and dragged him to death across the stone.

The poets tell how Antiope slew next the twins Agenor and Geryontes, princes of the Lykians, who pastured their herds from the Simois to the Scamander. Both stood six feet and fought with the boar-hunter's pike, which they wielded, so men said, with the ease of a fowler his gutting knife. They faced her at the footbridge where the hero shrine of Pandion stands. The first, Agenor, she cut down with the slung axe, the ironhead entering his belly at the navel, tearing through both cuirass and war belt to uncinch the sack of his guts. He bowled rearward, still alive and howling in rage as Antiope vaulted to the earth and, wrenching her
pelekus
from his belly, wielded it to take his head. In an instant she had remounted and spurred to the gallop. The second brother, Geryontes, thrust with his pike as Antiope wheeled to flank him, striking Sneak Biscuits in the hindquarters and tearing off a piece of flesh the size of a cutlet. The horse wheeled in fury and stove the foe's brains with his hooves.

Next to fall before Antiope's rush was Maimon, son of Saduces of the Trallian Thracians, a youth yet beardless but whose pleas to accompany the expedition had softened his father's heart. Now evil requited the prince's concession to sentiment: his child beaten down beneath the Amazon's axe. She sent to the house of the dead Elpenor and Gigantes, lords of Colchis, and, when they rushed upon her, Ixys, prince of the Macrones, and Otos, war chief of the Copper River Scyths. About her had now rallied four Athenian companies, half a thousand men, led by Stichios Ox and the hero Pirithous, fighting upon one splinted leg, with Telephos of Marathon and Phaeax of Eleusis.

I witnessed only the commencement of this, brothers, for at the instant the first champion, Harpalus, impaled himself upon Antiope's lance, all hell broke loose across the field. Harpalus' fall signaled battle's onset. With a cry the formations swelled and surged and crashed together. My company was swept south toward the Hill of the Muses. Antiope drove hers north, beneath Ares' Hill and into the flat of the marketplace. Here the foe were Scythians, Thracians, and Caucasians. No Amazons. Was this deliberate on Antiope's part? Perhaps she hoped to break her people's will without actually engaging their champions.

Where I had been driven to, in the companies commanded by Menestheus and Peteos, the Tower, our lines engaged Amazons of the Themiscyra, Lycasteia, and Titaneia. The enemy were mounted; we were on foot. I could see Eleuthera at the far left, where Lykos' platoons dueled her, and the other great champions, Hippolyta and Skyleia, Stratonike and Alcippe and Glauke Grey Eyes. Did they too seek to evade Antiope? Perhaps they hoped, as she, for some resolution short of face-to-face. Yet who could hide from her? For such were the cries of jubilation resounding at each blow Antiope struck and each champion she took down, and such the echo upon the compact and enclosed field (for end to end the widest reach was under a thousand yards), that every warrior on every quarter could tell her triumphs.

Antiope was winning. Across two hills we could hear the exultations of Athenians pressing forward and the dirges of Scythians and Caucasians giving back.

All who have dueled in massed combat know how swiftly sound communicates across the field. Groans of overthrow and shouts of acclaim the infantryman interprets untutored and obeys as the wolfpack the howls of its leader. The great tidal surges of battalions may be accounted not by orders of their captains (for who can hear even his own name above the din of battle?) but by this measure alone. Our companies yielded Muses' Hill to Eleuthera; there was nothing there anyway. In fever we flooded toward Ares' Hill and the marketplace. Antiope! Victory! We smelled it like wolves and stampeded, baying as we ran.

A boulevard yawed open before us. We were fighting below Market Hill now. The foe were male tribesmen. It seemed the clash had gone on all day, yet the hour was still early morning. At the southern entrance of the market stands a colony of cists and crypts. Here my company, Menestheus', with two of Peteos', locked up with a huddle of Taurian and Rhipaean clansmen. The enemy had learned enough of phalanx fighting to know he must seize turf and hold it; this he did now, with a bitter and brutal stubbornness. His rampart was a line of chamber tombs; our rushes could not dislodge him. The site spawned its own species of horror as antagonists overturned the capstones of the crypts and both fired from behind them and used them to shield themselves from each other's missiles. As the pitch of the clash intensified, Athenians and tribesmen took cover within the sepulchres themselves, soles treading upon the baskets containing the bones of the dead while they themselves dueled and perished. The fighting was not house to house but crypt to crypt.

In the midst of this I fell wounded. A lintel stone collapsed on me, shattering the trestle of my right foot. I pitched in agony so acute it took me blind. A mate whose name I never learned hauled me to the lee of a tomb, binding my hoof with the jerkin torn from his own back. He had been hit too, shot through the calf with a Scythian ironhead. “Do you hear, brother?” he cried, calling my attention to shouts proclaiming another conquest by Antiope.
“Passa plemmyris peritrepetai,”
my savior cited the proverb: “Every tide turns.” He propped me against a boneyard berm and gimped back to the fray.

How long I remained in that posture I cannot say. I saw Selene pass afoot, fighting as an infantrywoman. I blacked out and came to; I thought two soldiers appeared; they seemed to bear me higher up the hill. Someone got wine in me. Lucidity returned.

Now for the first time I saw Antiope. She had reined on the rubble field north of the Cemetery, on that slope where in peacetime the day laborers assemble, seeking work. Prince Saduces, lord of Trallian Thrace, had been searching the field for her, raging to avenge the slaughter of his son. Now he had found her. I saw Selene again, with her novice Stuff. They dashed afoot among Saduces' cohorts, joining the phalanx, which lapped the prince right and left. Directly across massed the lines of Athenians, within which Antiope now wheeled, horseback, to embrace the challenge of the lord of Thrace.

The prince went for Antiope head-on, wielding the two-handed Edonian mace. He meant to decapitate her as the horses passed but at the last moment either lost his nerve or thought he saw a better shot. Instead of bashing with the club, he slung it, sidearm, so that its mace end, which must have weighed twenty pounds, hurtled toward Antiope on the horizontal axis. The great spike would have hewn her in two or taken her horse's head entire had its warhead struck the mark. But Antiope gauged the cudgel's rotation, spurring enough that the killing end pinwheeled past, the shaft only striking her hip. Even so the impact bowled her from her seat. She spilled, weaponless save the axe on her back and the shortsword at her waist. About her collected half a hundred Athenian infantry, the companies that had fought in her train. These scattered like quail as Saduces wheeled his steed, brawny as a draft horse, and, retrieving his mace at full stride, galloped upon the downed Antiope. She met him on foot, slipping his right-handed rush at the last instant, to plunge her blade left-handed into his horse's breast as it passed. So deep did the weapon seat, the burial crews reported later when they purged the field, that shaft and grip were swallowed whole within the animal's flesh and had to be groped for by hand only to be found, let alone drawn forth. The beast tumbled, pitching Saduces. Antiope hacked his head off with her axe.