Last of the Amazons

by Steven Pressfield

  Such an urgency of care informed his voice as confirmed my blackest fears. Not of the treachery of the Scythian, for this could be faced, but the concern of Theseus, stricken with love for our queen. Two of his knights, Lykos and Peteos, accompanied him. They saw it too.

  When could it have fallen, this bolt of Eros? Theseus had never spoken to Antiope alone. No messages had been exchanged, and nothing passed between them beyond a look. Yet he loved her; nothing could be plainer.

  I was stern with him, and, pledging that his warning would be faithfully conveyed, banished him from the precinct. How reluctantly he withdrew!

  Returning through the Willow Wall I discovered her, my lady, watching Theseus through the withes. She had read the trepidation on his face and heard the anxiety in his voice. I have never seen such joy as lit her in that hour. Of speech she made none, apart from this: that I leave her bow and lances back, arming her with the horseback javelin, the discus, and the axe.

  Here is how the fight went. Above the Lane of the Champions, upon the earthworks which face the sea and are called the Paeon Gate, the clans took their places in order. Borges and his brother fought from the iron chariot; Antiope from horseback, atop the chestnut gelding she called Sneak Biscuits. Theseus and his men looked on, as did the Iron Mountain clans, eleven hundred in all, with the other tribes of the East and the nations of tal Kyrte, sixty or seventy thousand in all.

  The antagonists rushed at each other down the avenue bounded on each face by the earthworks. This is called in our tongue ana kessa, “up-and-back.” The skill is not so much in the initial pass, with the discharge of missiles at full gallop, as in the double back or reversion, when the antagonists come about and for a moment present their vulnerable flanks and heels. Two cypress posts stand here thirty yards apart, in a space called the Runway. Beyond the poles neither foe may strike, but both must withdraw to commence a second pass. Within this gantlet, however, anything goes. The gallant champion disdains the pole and slugs it out here.

  Three times Antiope made her pass and each time took the pole, much to the displeasure of her partisans. With each rush she endured the shafts shot by her rival from behind his iron wall. This vulnerability Antiope had set for herself, fighting from horseback without armor save the crescent shield on her left forearm, designing to make up for this in agility between the posts, cutting back to the chariot’s vulnerable rear and striking from there. But the henchman, the masked Borges, was no novice and employed the slopes of the earthworks to make his wheel-about, churning up great storms of dust and sand, with Antiope at the gallop hard behind, yet unable to get directly astern, so to say, as the car continued to double with terrific dexterity, descending the bank, wheeling across the lane, and mounting the opposite as it made its escape. All the while the masked Arsaces loosed his bolts rearward with fabulous speed and accuracy, while Antiope picked out the shafts in midflight and batted them aside with the flat of her shield.

  Three times more the antagonists thundered down the chute. Now at each pass Antiope slung one of her trio of iron-freighted javelins, rising upon her sole planted on her horse’s belly-band and slinging at the gallop, the missile’s moment augmented by the sleeve extender. The bolts slammed into the iron facing of the car with such violent concussions as made the multitude cry in wonder. Each time the plate buckled and caved, yet no cast pierced the bunker entire. The chariot master loosed his bolts through embrasures on both sides and rear, standing shoulder to shoulder with his brother, who held the team, and so swiftly did one shaft follow another that it seemed not one man fired but three. Such was the prowess of the youth Arsaces, feigning to be his elder, that the thousands watching from the slopes cried out and even gasped as each bolt screamed toward his rival. Yet Antiope each time fended the hurtling death.

  Six passes had been made, which Antiope had deliberately protracted that the onlookers might begin to suspect, by the skill with which he handled the bow, that beneath his armor the champion was Arsaces, the younger brother, and the henchman Borges, his elder. Now on the seventh rush the queen wheeled her mount so swiftly onto the rear of the slewing chariot that she drew hard alongside, into that shadow of vulnerability created by the relative stations of driver and champion, and from this vantage loosed point-blank the iron discus. The twelve-pound missile, slung at the rising gallop with all the champion’s weight and strength behind it, struck the bowman upon that amber device of a griffin which he bore at his helmet’s prow and, staving at once both helm and skull, dashed the latter and tore off the former. Arsaces’ bow dropped; the prince pitched sidelong from the car. The helmet bounded end over end in the dust, describing an arc which terminated, at last, adjacent the corpse of its owner, which, unmasked, revealed itself to be not Prince Borges, but his younger brother Arsaces.

  I looked to Theseus in this moment, then to Eleuthera, who had sensed as well the Athenian’s passion for our queen. His aspect altered only an instant. Yet in that moment, as Antiope’s foe rolled vanquished in the dust, I read upon Eleuthera’s face such foredoom as compassed not just herself and Antiope but our nation entire. For as our queen here won Theseus’ heart and gave hers to him, by this act she severed herself from the people, whose right arm was Eleuthera, which means freedom.

  Now Borges’ chariot fled. So swiftly did Antiope overtake it that her horse’s forehooves actually mounted to the platform of the car, as she swiped with the axe, first at one flank, then the other, while Borges, slacking the reins and cringing to the floor planks, diced and dodged. When Antiope’s mount spilled from its perch, the prince recaptured his team and resumed his flight, now out of the lane entire.

  The yet-masked Borges fled down the earthway to the corrals where the horses for trade were penned. Into these excavations he lashed his team, with Antiope on his heels at the gallop, so that the onlookers in their myriads had to vacate their stations and scramble up and over the earthworks so as not to lose sight of the spectacle. Now could Antiope have pursued Borges into the pen and cut him down. Yet such an uproar of levity saluted the Scythian’s comeuppance that she reined in, a javelin cast shy of where Borges found himself impounded among the milling herds, while from a score of ramparts the scorn of the nations pelted upon him.

  Antiope tore her helmet back, revealing her flushed and triumphant face. With her axe she gestured to the Runway, where the corpse of Arsaces lay sprawled in the dirt.

  “The challenger Borges has been slain. This fulfills the law. Therefore let his brother Arsaces live!”

  Thus Borges the swindler fled with his servitors, never putting off his helmet to reveal his fraud. By the measure of his disgrace did Antiope’s renown enlarge.

  Men have asked what it was that Theseus loved in her. I answer with this story.

  There is a tree in my country called the Weather Ash, which stands yet, by the river Hybristes, of such antiquity as to bear the lightning strikes not of Zeus but of Cronos, his father, and this tree has a legend. For two boughs grow from her, curved like the horns of a ram. Who could string these and draw them as a bow would rule all “beneath the Bear” and claim whichever bride he chose.

  Many came. Bellerophon and Jason, and Heracles himself, but none could budge the horns. Now, in the aftercourse of this challenge of the Runway, Antiope took Theseus there and bade him make trial. Two thousand rode and witnessed. He strung the bow but could not draw it, though he offered prayers to Apollo and the Muses and promised each a temple if they would grant him victory.

  Now Antiope stepped forward and in the name of love restrung the Horns.

  “Try again.”

  Theseus feared to, lest he fail. But she set his palm against the bole where the horns conjoined and begged him, as he loved her, to draw. And with as little effort as a child bends a reed in play, so he worked the Horns in their draw, and so distant flew the bolt.

  Antiope laughed. “Now you have won your bride.”

  For fairness of form and feature our lady was peerless among women, who could ri
de and run and knew no fear of beast or man, and none of Theseus himself. For other women desired boons of him, if only his seed or his name, or to claim place as his consort. Antiope wanted nothing. Only the man himself, to ride at her side and take his pleasure of her and she of him. At Athens in later seasons he brought her jewelry of ivory and gold; she laughed at it. Nor could her head be turned by fine linen or precious stones or houses or even horses, which she loved beyond all. She wanted only him, and this with all her heart. And what may a man resist less than to be loved for nothing but the fall of his curls and the sound of his voice? Thus Theseus, who had known women before as prizes or competitors, now fell into this wild creature as into a bottomless well, his delight in her society overmastering all other pursuits, so that he forgot his ships and realm and even to eat or sleep.

  But our tale runs ahead. Let us return to the flight of Borges and his eleven hundred.

  There is a rite of the Gathering, a night sacrifice to Ares called the Hecatomb, which comes after the Games of the Moon and inaugurates the final nine days of the season, during which the tribes reconstitute themselves and the novices, horse trials behind them, are enrolled in the clans and the orders.

  The occasion of this ceremony chanced to fall four nights after the duel of Borges, while the camp yet rang with Antiope’s triumph. In these rites the tribes, and all guest nations, are invited to select one of their number to offer an address in praise of that people’s ancestors. This is an occasion of gaiety and fellow-feeling, with each tribe licensed to hoot in derision at the self-congratulation of its neighbors, with none taking offense but all delighting in the give and get.

  A number spoke this night, the Maeotians and Cappadocians, Taurians and Massa Getai. Someone called the Athenians. Theseus stood and started toward the stand.

  Three of tal Kyrte intercepted him. These were Eleuthera, Stratonike, and Skyleia. Eleuthera accused Theseus of bringing evil to the free people. Blood has been shed, she said; we have made enemies on account of this man.

  “To what purpose has this outlaw been given leave to speak?” Eleuthera addressed Hippolyta, Antiope, and the Council of Elders. “Every other nation attends the Gathering at tal Kyrte’s invitation; these Greeks alone have descended out of the sky. Are they pirates? Why have they crossed oceans, except to rob us? A prince and ally has been slain in their cause; war may follow. Beneath our shield they cower, these foreign mice, while our valor preserves them. Yet now they have found their tongue and presume to make speeches on the superiority of their ways!”

  An uproar ascended, seconding the speaker. I glanced to Antiope. Her gaze held fastened upon Theseus, revealing nothing.

  Theseus begged leave to reply. I recall his words because I was summoned to interpret.

  He did not rebut Eleuthera. Rather he directed his defense to the queens and the elders. He acknowledged the straits in which he and his companions had stood on their advent to our homeland. Absent tal Kyrte’s clemency, all would have perished. He thanked the free people for making his men welcome, and Antiope for so valiantly defending their honor. He had heard much of our nation, he declared, but nothing had prepared him for its greatness and magnanimity. He proclaimed himself, and no few of his men, smitten with our young women, not alone as comely females, but as exemplars of the warrior ethic and champions of a proud and noble race.

  Acclamation saluted these sentiments; the people began to warm to the orator. Nor did his good looks work to his disadvantage. You who have known the man only in his middle years may not account his beauty as a young king of twenty-nine or thirty. As he stood before the tribes of tal Kyrte, few could look upon his grace and manliness and not find themselves favorably disposed.

  Eleuthera cut this off. “Sisters, here is the seducer! He sets honeyed words before us as a vendor plies cakes in a bazaar. In just this way is netome, evil luck, brought to the people.”

  More clamor erupted. Theseus clearly sensed the gravity of the charge; he requested that the term be translated, that he might know what he was accused of.

  Tal Kyrte, I informed him, has an evil god, Netosa, who is the lamprey, the succubus. This creature works his mischief at night, to overturn the order of the world. Anything which makes its apparition uninvited is mistrusted as alien and possessed of malign intent.

  “I will not sit to hear this man extol his ancestors,” Eleuthera declaimed, “and I call upon you, sisters, to drive him by your outrage from the stand.”

  More cries reinforced her. Theseus held till the tumult had abated.

  “If it displease you, Captain,” he spoke, addressing Eleuthera, “I shall not speak of ancestors. However, with your exemption, I propose an alternative. I will praise my nation’s issue. Will you permit this? Will you let me speak, not to Athens’s past but to her future?”

  Laughter greeted this. The people approved the novelty and responded with enthusiasm. Eleuthera reluctantly acceded.

  “My city is young,” Theseus began. “In might and fame she stands in the shadow of such courts as Corinth and Mycenae, Elis and Thebes, not to say your own nation. Yet of all these, I propose, she is the only one whose political virtue will enlarge with the passage of the years.”

  Again Eleuthera sought to interdict. This time, however, the people had been caught by the speaker’s theme. “Let the man say his piece!” they cried and compelled her to give back. Theseus thanked his hearers and resumed.

  “Once, my friends of tal Kyrte, all of humankind lived as the nations of the plains do now, keepers of stock, great warriors and raiders, as yourselves. Clans owned no more than they could carry, but lived by their wits and skill at arms. Death skulked about them in the dark. At night the tribesman lay down with weapons to hand; even in sleep he held vigilant, fearful of attack by beasts or men.

  “Then came the city. Her walls of stone held out the enemy; behind her ramparts man might live free of fear. He learned to cultivate the land. The gods taught him domestication of grains and fermentation of the grape; he had bread now, and wine. The potter’s craft and the smith’s provided him with tools and weapons; the mariner’s art extended his reach across seas. He learned to trade. With time, wealth accumulated. He need not merely subsist, but live. For the first time humankind possessed leisure for the gentler pursuits of music, poetry, and the arts. Agriculture banished famine, for the husbandman might lay up from one year’s plenty reserve for the next.

  “In the city man enjoyed protection of law. He might walk abroad unarmed. In his prior, tribal life, all property had been held in common. Now in the city, he might call things his own—land, home, implements with which to procure his livelihood. By hard work one could make a better life. What energy and innovation this released! Community multiplied the individual’s reach and moment, for the knowledge acquired by one might be set at the service of all. Now, each individual need not contain within himself the sum of all experience, but concentrate, if he will, upon a single art, as goldsmithing or physic, viniculture or sailbending. The singer may sing, the weaver weave. Each prospers in happiness and imparts prosperity to all.

  “An individual need no longer be a warrior, whose every hour is spent in war or readiness for war, but each has leisure to think and talk and pray, to participate in politics, travel to the wonders of other lands, erect temples to the gods, and lay out a beautiful city, where the wealth of the world’s goods and wisdom is available to all to enrich his soul. In the city, man’s years are extended by the medicaments of the physician’s art. He need not expire untimely, beneath the blows of the elements or wild beasts, but live out in health the measure of his days.”

  At this point Eleuthera could contain herself no longer. “Ha!” she cried and, calling upon the assembled tribes, sought their permission to rebut, in her phrase, these lies and calumnies. The multitude roared its approval.

  Eleuthera mounted to the stand of cypress hewn into the stone outwork. And it must be told that she matched her rival both in physical stature and presence of p
erson; of such surpassing comeliness was she that the antagonists, standing little more than a spear length apart, seemed struck as two sparks from the same ember, peers and equals in every way.

  “Our visitor,” Eleuthera began, “declares the way of the city superior to our life of the steppe because it produces, he claims, a nobler being. Hearing this, it was all I could do to keep from hooting aloud, which I would have, were I the rude savage he styles us to be.”

  She hailed the life of the plains. The openness of spirit, the equality of station, the rigorousness of person its demands instill in the hearts of all. “I have seen men of the city, with their paunches and spindly hams. They could not last an hour beneath God’s sky. Agriculture! I would sooner carve furrows in the flesh of my mother than rend the earth with the hideous beak of the plough. For what? To prize a mealy legume from the dirt and call it dinner? God made humankind to hunt, as the lion and the eagle, not graze upon straw like cattle and sheep. The chase inculcates vigor and fortitude. It leaves Mother Earth as God intended, unriven and undefiled.”

  Acclamation resounded. The tribes of tal Kyrte, seconded by the male Scyths and Cimmerians, Black Cloaks and Tower Builders, clashed their spearshafts against the bowls of their shields and roared to heaven. I glanced to Antiope, whose eyes still held fastened upon Theseus, himself enduring with patience this rebuke of Eleuthera.

  “Our Athenian guest,” the champion resumed when the tumult had subsided, “claims that cities produce leisure. What rubbish! Who has more free time than the hunter and warrior, whose very work is sport? We of the steppe do not know the word labor, for all we do is engaged in with joy, reverencing the ordinance of our Maker. Our days are passed in God’s play; at night we lie down with the healthy fatigue of activities well shaping to body and soul. Property! What is its produce save misery and estrangement from one’s kind? In the city discontented man toils beneath the lamp, lest his neighbor get the jump of him. The blacksmith becomes slave to his bellows, the musician to his lyre. Each reviles his fellow as rival and foe. City man returns from his day jaded and debilitated and rises to the next dreading his own self-indenture. Tal Kyrte turns to the east with joy, saluting the dawn in wonder and anticipation. For us the day is that to which we surrender, not like the city man, who seeks to shape it to his will. Blasphemy and arrogance! Walk his streets, sisters and guests. Inspect his grotesque spawn. Whores infest his doorways, rogues and mountebanks pack his courts, cutpurses and pickpockets his marketplace. And don’t preach to me of law! What need have we of it? Education? We require neither proctors nor pedagogues to tutor youth in our ways but each maiden bursts her heart to master them, unbidden. We could not stop them if we tried! And as for the arts, which our guest cites as proof of city man’s ascension to nobility, I ask: Why attend an imitation of the nightingale when you can hear the real thing? Why render sky in art when you have but to look up to behold heaven itself? This sermonizer Theseus has praised physicians and their arts of tendance upon the sick. Ha! We know no illness on the steppe. With the city comes unnatural extension of days. When it’s time to die, die!”