Last of the Amazons by Steven Pressfield Read Free Book Online Page B

proficiency in the use of the
pelekus,
the double-bladed axe, and roused the generation of youth to mastery of the javelin and the Cimmerian bow. The practice of the steel-rimmed discus they learned and taught, to hurl from horseback, taking a man’s head, helmet and all, at one howling swipe. Antiope’s flesh she trained to be superior to heat and cold, hunger and fatigue, and schooled her string from colts, driving them again and again into the storm beneath Zeus’ bolts, to fear neither riot nor havoc, but to love battle and drink with joy from the well of strife. About her she assembled a corps of champions—Eleuthera; Stratonike; Skyleia; the younger Alcippe; Glauke, “Grey Eyes”; Xanthe, “Blonde”; Euippe, “Beautiful Mare’’; Rhodippe, “Red Mare”; Leucippe, “White Mare”; Anteia; Tecmessa, “Thistle”; Lyssa; Evandre; and Prothoe—a match and more for the paragons of old, and dedicated, all, to the reclamation of preeminence for the race. Their zeal fired not only our nation, the Lycasteia, but the Themiscyra, Chadisia, and Titaneia, and the clans and tribes as far as the Iron Mountains and the Belt of Storms. The elders looked on with pride as the plain rang with horses and young women training in the arts of war.
    Antiope’s gifts were not of valor alone, but statecraft and generalship. The combat of solitary champions, she persuaded the elders to debar, drafting in its place cohesion of cavalry and unity of assault. She called for return to the old ways. At her impetus the Corps of Mounted Archers was reorganized into companies, squadrons, and wings under commanders accountable not to those beneath but those above. She reinstituted the crescent charge and the assault called “chest-and-horns.” For her hand Antiope fashioned a type of javelin unknown heretofore, weighted with iron in its core and warhead. Such a missile was too heavy to throw, even on the run, unaided. But catapulted by a sleeve extender, to amplify the leverage of the shoulder, and hurled not sidearm but overhand and from horseback, to add moment to its launch, it could be propelled to devastating effect. Antiope added a belly-band for her mount, with a step stitched in, so that she could plant her sole and rise at the gallop, driving the big muscles of her legs and back into the cast. At seventeen she could splinter a pine big around as a man’s thigh. At twenty-four, when she acceded to the post of war queen, she had strung upon her lance the scalps of twenty-nine enemies slain hand-to-hand upon the steppe.
    Let the next invading heroes come, be they Heracles’ sons, or any army of champions seeking to emulate him. Not armor of adamant, nor the ramparts of hell itself, would preserve them.
    Time passed and they did come, led by Theseus, prince of Athens.
    I had not been born to daylight in Heracles’ prime. This time, for Theseus a generation later, I was present and grown. Eleuthera was there too. She was twenty-two and a wing commander; I nineteen and her lover and friend.

BOOK TWO

    THE RIVER OF
HELL

5
    PHALANXES OF IRON
    Mother Bones:

    W ithin the forepeak of a ship, where the beam of the cutwater seats into the head timber of the keelson, is a cramped kennel used for the stowage of sails. It is called the wreath locker because into this space the priests, at embarkation, lade the holy boughs of myrtle and rowan, an offering to Poseidon and the daughters of Proteus.

    In peril on the salt waste
    Turn ye home again to these,
    Lest you lose your way.

    It was to this closet that I repaired when the posse launched in pursuit of Selene.
    No female is welcome aboard ship; her presence is considered unlucky. And though Father and Damon spared no exertion to moderate my disquiet, and no other offered overt insult, yet I could find no congenial berth. I hid. The locker was cozy; it smelled sweet from the scrubbed linen and wreaths of myrtle. I