Author: Steven Pressfield
Category: Nonfiction
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“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 longe
r stood apart from our ways, studying, but had surrendered to them, transfixed in ecstasy.
BOOK FIVE
THE WILD
LANDS
16
OUR SEA
Damon’s voice resumes:
The third day ended; the fourth began. The Amazons trekked now, no longer mounted but at the foot trot to spare the horses, which were swapped, jaded for fresh, five times a day. The country had gone from level pan to rugged plateau, cut by great washes and ravines. You could see where these breaks had checked the foe’s flight by the boulevards churned in the turf as he drove his herds, hunting a path to get round them. Now the track became stony. The Amazons wrapped their mounts’ hooves in ox-hide and packed their kit on their own backs.
To have known women of Athens, my own mother and sisters cloistered within the fold, and then turn to these specimens of the steppe was to behold not different cultures but different species. Do you imagine you can trek with these daughters of the plains? Give it up, my friend. They will run you into the dirt. As for strength, I adduce this incident with the captain Alcippe, Powerful Mare, to whom I had been assigned one noon as liaison. In a stand of sycamore she discovered an infant wren toppled from its perch. Cocooning the fledgling in her right hand, she grasped the bough above with the left and hauled her entire weight one-handed, eye level to the nest. This, with ten pounds of axe and sheath on her back, as well as a fore-and-aft cuirass of leather and bronze. On a bet I called out Selene to a javelin cast. I could not come within thirty feet of her. As to the current trek afoot: I have never suffered as on those two days, and they who were my companions may testify now: Theseus himself must summon every reserve simply to keep up.
At the fourth noon the dust of Borges’ rear guard was spotted, twenty miles ahead. At once a hundred took off in pursuit. Amazons run their prey down in relays, with fresh mounts trailed up under the care of their novices. I straggled far to the rear, with my brother and several others, arriving at dusk on our spent horses to find Selene’s sister Chryssa and a party of six just scalping two Scyths whose mounts had played out beneath them. To the nations of the steppe the hairs of the head are receptors of divine aedor, soul; to take a scalp is to possess the foe’s essence—and to prevent it from finding rest in the life to come. To our party Chryssa presented the grisly sheaves. We withdrew, appalled. The women eyed us with incredulity. These fellows, they clearly concluded, are madder than we thought.
We were picking up a feel for Amazon life. The males of the kabar, the smiths and mechanics, are granted by their mistresses all freedoms save two: they may not speak in counsel and may not ride. They are permitted mules and asses for their waggons but may not learn horsemanship. This is for warrioresses alone.
Like their horses, Amazons take no bread. Wine too they will not touch. Meat and mare’s milk, from the teat when they are children, in the fermented form of yourte when they are grown, comprise their diet, with goat’s milk and cheese, honey, berries, and the marrow of reeds. When depleted, they tap their herds’ veins and gulp the blood, patching the incision as insouciantly as a tailor mends a tunic. They gnaw clay and chalk, and think nothing of devouring an antelope or aurochs, bones and all.
The depth of their intimacy with their horses may not be overstated. Each beast is known to each woman, across herds of a thousand, and each knows his station within the string and the band. Primary mounts lord it over lesser, while night horses hold themselves apart, haughty as barons.
Amazons of different ages take differently to the horses, the elders with matter-of-fact ease, warriors with proprietary dash, young girls deliriously in love. Not all the gold of Babylon may detach these maidens from their mounts, and this love is returned thrice over. On the trek the girls seem more like horses than people. Their language is sign and posture; they communicate by whistles and squeals, indistinguishable to Greek ears from the sounds made by the horses themselves. The concept of “breaking’’ a horse is inconceivable in such an environment, as the animals seek the society of the girls out of love alone and may not be parted from them by fire or flood.
On the army trekked. The Wild Lands, one came to understand, were to our patronesses not featureless wastes but peopled across every league with gods and ghosts. Descending to a course unexceptional to civilized eyes, the brigade breaks into a hymn. I query Selene. There, she points to a depression, Mother Horse first struck the earth with her hoof, bringing forth water. Farther on, we mount a plateau pocked with chunks of black pumice. Here the bolts of Zeus drove the race of Cronos under. The corps puts up “Fall of the Titans”:
Now the hour of their passing.
Younger wait to take their place.
Even they weep who have them vanquished,
Never more to see their face.
On the trail Greeks and Amazons share scant intercourse; at night they pitch their camps apart. At that season the heat of the steppe is fierce, but plummets with darkness. Nights are frigid. The Amazons sleep with their kind, by pairs and trios, under the ground-hugging elk-hide shelters called “downwinders,” pillowed on the wolfskins and fleeces which make triple duty as saddle cloths and blankets.
Of all Greeks and Amazons, beyond myself and Selene, only two took pains to acquire knowledge of the other’s tongue. These were Theseus and Antiope. I saw them converse directly no more than twice a day, governed by a self-imposed reserve, but each independently sought out those like Selene who had proficiency in both tongues. My brother and I were present in the Athenian camp, the third night, when Theseus and Prince Lykos got into a row on this account.
The company had settled about fires of bricks. Theseus was observing that the Amazon word for acorn is “nut small hand,” as the oak leaf to their eyes seems to have five fingers. Our king was charmed by this simplicity, remarking it direct and pure.
“Rubbish!” declared Lykos. He proclaimed the Amazon language the tongue of savages, “the speech beasts would make if they could.”
“Exactly!’’ replied Theseus with animation. “The Amazons tread lightly with language, not to rob a thing of its spirit by the magic of giving it a name.”
Around the fire, looks were exchanged. “Indeed the woman is beautiful,” observed Philippus with a laugh.
“The charm of these bitches lies between their legs,” Lykos declared, “the same as with all women, and we are drawn to them for this and no more, the same as all men.”
Theseus regarded his countryman with patience. “I asked the maid Selene what her people meant when they said they ‘dream.’ She indicated the steppe, which she called aral nata, ‘Our Sea.’ I could see she meant not plain and sky alone, though these comprised the physical expression of the term, but rather an inner plain and sky, save that to her, I believe, inner and outer were indivisible. ‘All that we do and speak arises from this sea. We listen to its voice. This is dreaming.’ ”
“This is twaddle!” snorted Lykos.
Theseus: “Have you seen them stand beneath the sky, these women, the way horses do, motionless for hours? Is it not a marvel?”
“They are dumb as stumps,” declared Lykos, “and stand so.”
“Two will stand,” Theseus continued, “wordless and motionless, neither touching nor regarding the other, yet clearly yoked. Now a third approaches. She greets neither, simply assumes station, beside her sisters yet apart. The first two have taken no notice, it would seem, yet clearly they welcome the third. All simply stand, as they are.”
“They are daft!”
“They are ‘dreaming.’ ”
“Mackerel may dream, my lord.”
“Yes, and leviathans. They swim in this sea, these braves, and wish to be plucked from it no more than a cetacean seeks to be beached upon dry land.”
“And what is this sea, Theseus, but the sea of ignorance? The ocean of barbarism and benightedness. They are a race of savages, however shapely their hips. It sits not well upon a king of Athens, my lord, to yield to such sentimentality. The language
of Greece is mankind’s glory! It has raised us from the slough, and its reflection, reason, has elevated us above the base and the bestial. What would you have us do, Theseus? Lie down in this sea of ‘dreaming’ as a hog in a wallow? If you want to have your way with this wench, take her! Pack her home as your bride, for all I care. But spare us the humbug, if you please!”
All this was reported to Antiope, one may be sure. Little took place that she didn’t know of. Did it cause her distress? I chanced to approach Selene that morning as she groomed her mount; I failed to notice Antiope, standing on the further side. From the queen’s lips I heard, “Are we savages, Selene?”
Antiope saw me now. I flushed and stammered an apology. She did not curb her query.
“Are we savages, Greek, as your captain, Lykos, contends? Is Selene? Am I?”
That morning male riders joined the column from the north, Caucasians from the mountains on the track to the Gate of Storms. They brought reports that Borges’ men had taken another herd and butchered the lasses defending it. The Scyths, the new arrivals told, had scalped a number, and taken the heads of most. They would make drinking cups of the skulls and pend them as trophies from their war belts.
All lightheartedness now fled the column. The pace redoubled. Warriors began to paint themselves and their horses. Now the names changed of every weapon and item of kit. They became war names. This was new to me. That battle-axe called a pelekus was now named arapata, “soul slayer”; horses became “eagles,” shields “walls.” Each item became personified. One observed Amazons addressing lances and ironheads aloud, as if these possessed reason and the capacity to respond. Each arrow had become a living thing; the warrioresses made compacts with them, beseeching their favor, and sacrificed strips of skin and lines scored in their own flesh.