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‘Yes.’
‘Couldn’t you have told me? Then some things would never have been said.’
‘Maybe it was necessary that they be said, Brise. I struck you. A man must never strike woman or child, anyone weaker than he. When men cast out the Old Religion, that was a part of the bargain by which the Gods gave men the right to rule.’
She smiled. ‘You struck not at me but at your daimon, and, in striking, you drove it out. The rest of your life belongs to you, not to Patrokles, and for that, I rejoice.’
My exhaustion left me; I lifted myself on one elbow to look at her. The tiny lamp would have been kind to any woman, but because she had no fault it gave her the aura of a goddess, it burnished her pale skin to faint gold and enriched the shimmering fire of her hair, touched her eyes with liquid amber. I put my fingers hesitantly to her cheek and traced a line down to her mouth where it was swollen from the impact of my hand. Her throat was hollow in shadow, her breasts drove me to distraction, her small feet were the terminus of my world.
And because at last I admitted the depth of my need for her, I found things in her beyond my dreams. If I had tried in the past consciously to please her, I no longer thought of her at all except as an extension of my own being. I found I wept; her hair was wet under my face, her hands relaxed and fluttered to mine and locked there in aching comfort, her hands in mine above our heads on the shared pillow.
Thus Hektor dwelled once more in the palace of his forefathers, but this time unknowing. Through Odysseus we learned that Priam had passed over his remaining senior sons to choose the very young man, Troilos, as the new Heir. Not even, so some Trojans were saying, arrived at the Age of Consent – a term we didn’t know or use, but (said Odysseus) which apparently formed the Trojan concept of maturity.
The decision had met with great opposition; Troilos himself begged the King to give the Heirdom to Aineas. This provoked Priam into a diatribe against the Dardanian that ended when Aineas stalked from the Throne Room. Deiphobos too was angry; so was the young son-priest, Helenos, who reminded Priam of the oracle which said that Troilos would save the city only if he lived to reach the Age of Consent. Priam maintained that Troilos had already reached the Age of Consent, and that confirmed the phrase’s ambiguity in Odysseus’s mind. Helenos kept begging the King to change his mind, but the King would not. Troilos was anointed the Heir. And we on the beach began to sharpen our swords.
It took the Trojans twelve days in all to mourn Hektor. During that time Penthesileia of the Amazons arrived with ten thousand mounted women warriors. Another reason to sharpen our swords.
Curiosity oiled our whetstones, for these unique creatures lived lives completely dedicated to Artemis the Maid and an Asian Ares. They dwelled in the fastnesses of Skythia at the foot of the crystal mountains which spear the roof of the world, riding their huge horses through the forests, hunting and marauding in the name of the Maid. They existed under the thumb of the Earth Goddess in her first triple entity – Maid, Mother, Crone – and ruled their men as women had in our part of the world before the New Religion replaced the Old. For men had discovered one vital fact: that a man’s seed was as necessary for procreation as was the woman who grew the fruit. Until that discovery was made, a man was deemed an expensive luxury.
The Amazon succession lay entirely in the female line; their men were chattels who didn’t even go to war. The first fifteen years of a woman’s life after she attained her menses were dedicated exclusively to the Maiden Goddess. Then she retired from the army and took a husband, bore children. Only the Queen did not marry, though she stepped down from the throne at about the same time as other women left the service of Artemis the Maid; instead of taking a husband, the Queen went to the Axe as a sacrifice for the people.
What we didn’t already know about the Amazons, Odysseus told us; he seemed to have spies everywhere, even at the foot of the crystal mountains in Skythia. Though, of course, what consumed us most was the fact that Amazons rode horses. Other peoples did not, even in far Egypt. Horses were too difficult to sit upon. Their hide was slippery, a blanket wouldn’t stay in place; the sole part of them of use to men was the mouth, into which a bit could be inserted attached to a head harness and reins. Therefore the world used horses to pull chariots. They couldn’t even be used to pull carts, for a yoke strangled them. How then could the Amazons ride their beasts into battle?
While the Trojans mourned Hektor we rested, wondering if we would ever see them outside their walls again. Odysseus remained confident that they would come out, but the rest of us were not so sure.
On the thirteenth day I put on the suit of armour Odysseus had given me, to discover that it felt much lighter. We crossed the causeways in the dimness of dawn, endless threads of men trudging across the dew-wet plain, a few chariots in their lead. Agamemnon had decided to make his stand along a front about half a league from the Trojan wall adjacent to the Skaian Gate.
They were waiting for us, not as many as before, but still more numerous than we were. The Skaian Gate was closed already.
The Amazon horde was positioned in the centre of the Trojan van; as I waited for our wings to come into formation I sat on the side rail of my chariot and looked them over. They were mounted on big, shaggy beasts of some breed I didn’t know – ugly aquiline heads, shorn manes and tails, hairy hooves. In colour the horses were uniformly bay or brown, save for one white beauty in the middle. That would be Queen Penthesileia. What I could see was how they stayed aboard – clever! Each warrior fitted her hips and buttocks inside a kind of leather frame strapped beneath the horse’s belly so that it remained firmly in place.
They wore bronze helmets but otherwise were clad in hardened leather, and covered themselves from waists to feet in tubes of leather bound about from ankles to knees with thongs. On their feet were soft short boots. The weapon of choice was obviously the bow and arrow, though a few were girt with swords.
At which moment the horns and drums of battle sounded. I stood upright again, Old Pelion in my hand, the iron shield riding my left shoulder comfortably. Agamemnon had concentrated all his chariots in the van opposite the Amazons, pitifully few.
The women ploughed in among the war cars like harpies, shrieking and screaming. Arrows zipped from their short bows, flying over our heads as we stood in our chariots and coming to earth in the foot behind us. The constant rain of death shook even my Myrmidons, not used to fighting an adversary who engaged at a distance preventing instantaneous retaliation. I pushed my little segment of war cars closer together and forced the Amazons out, using Old Pelion like a lance, fending off arrows with my shield, shouting to others to do the same. How extraordinary! These strange women wouldn’t aim their barbs at our horses!
I glanced at Automedon, his face set dourly as he struggled with the team. His eyes met mine.
‘It will be up to the rest of the army to slaughter Trojans today,’ I said. ‘I’ll count the battle well fought if we can hold our own against these women.’
He nodded, swerving the car to avoid a warrior who launched her steed straight at us, thick and powerful forelegs flailing a pair of hooves big enough to dash out a man’s brains. I snatched up a spare javelin and flung it, hissing satisfaction as it took her straight off her mount’s back to fall under its trampling legs. Then I put Old Pelion down and picked up my axe.
‘Keep close to me, I’m getting down.’