Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons

CHAPTER NINETEEN

AN ENEMY SOLDIER

HIPPOLYTA URGED THE horse eastward as fast as it would go. As the animal galloped along, both she and Tithonus fell into the steady, hypnotic rhythm. The sound of the hooves thudding on the grass, the wind in their ears, made conversation difficult.

Tithonus went for whole minutes at a time without saying anything. Mostly when he did speak, he simply asked questions, which he framed in three or four different ways. “Where are we going?” he would say. “Are we going far?” And then: “Will it take long where we’re going? What is the name again of the place where we’re going?” Then he’d lapse back into a long silence.

Hippolyta ignored him, trying to focus instead on the tasks ahead. Arimaspa! she thought, trying to remember all that she knew of it.

She knew it was the place where the first Amazon queens had lived. Where a pair of arrogant princes had stolen gold belonging to the gods. She knew the women had left that cursed place and wandered for many years till settling at last in Themiscyra and the other Amazon towns.

But it had been foretold by Apollo that a second son grown to manhood would summon the Amazons to their deaths.

Well, Tithonus was the first son, not the second, and he was not yet full grown.

Artemis had also said that in Arimaspa the first blood pact had been made, and there Hippolyta would make that pact anew.

We can do it, she thought with fierce determination.

We.

Tithonus and I.

Suddenly she felt as if she had a bronze dagger in her heart.

Would Tithonus understand when the time came for him to be killed? The Trojans had been willing enough to sacrifice her for their own city’s sake.

Whatever we face in Arimaspa, she concluded, will be worth it to save my people. Worth it to me, at least.

She did not want to think about what it was worth to the boy.

Hippolyta decided the best route was to go directly to the southern coast of the Euxine Sea and follow the coastline until they reached the border of Colchis. There they would swing south, skirting the actual country, for the Colchians were a suspicious people. It was said they jealously guarded some great treasure gifted to them by the gods. She smiled crookedly. Rather like the Trojans and their precious statue of Athena.

Two mornings farther along, as they were washing their hands and faces in a cold stream, Hippolyta worked up the nerve to ask Tithonus about sacrifice. Not naming names, of course. Not mentioning the actual ritual to come. Just enough to sound him out.

“Tithonus,” she said. His name came out as a croak, and she had to clear her throat to speak properly. “Tithonus, do you think a warrior should be ready to give his life for his city?”

He thought a minute. “Father says so,” he replied, shaking droplets of water from his hair. “He’s sent a lot of soldiers to do that already.” He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know what the soldiers thought about it, though.”

Hippolyta stood and spoke without looking at him. “Suppose Troy was in some terrible danger,” she said, “and you were the only one who could save it, but you’d have to sacrifice your life to do so.” As they talked, they walked back to the horse, and Hippolyta busied herself untethering the beast and making it ready for riding.

Tithonus wrinkled his nose. “How could my life save the whole city?”

“Well, suppose an enemy army is approaching Troy because you’ve made their king very angry.” She spoke to the horse, not Tithonus.

“How did I do that?”

“You wouldn’t find it hard. Trust me.” Hippolyta sighed.

He nodded as if he suddenly understood. “Yes, kings get angry very fast. I expect it’s because they’ve a lot on their minds. Wars, taxes, sea monsters.”

“Well,” said Hippolyta impatiently, “you’ve made this king angry by—by setting fire to his beard.”

Tithonus laughed and slapped his leg. “That would be funny.”

“Not to the king with the singed beard,” Hippolyta said.

“True.”

“The point is,” Hippolyta persisted, “would you give yourself up to the king to save the city?”

“To save the whole city? My sisters and my friends?” Tithonus stared off into the distance as though he were recalling their faces. “And my father and Dares and—”

“Everyone,” Hippolyta said firmly. She mounted the horse in one quick, flawless motion, then reached down a hand and pulled Tithonus up behind her.

“Yes, I would,” he said at last, into her ear. “If I didn’t, it would be like living under a curse for the rest of my life.”

Absentmindedly stroking the horse’s mane, Hippolyta murmured, “Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?”

A week after leaving Themiscyra they passed through a land of low, rolling hills. It was a pleasant land, where plovers danced on the wind and dappled deer could be seen grazing under small trees.

They kept to the back country, and the few times they spotted other travelers in the distance, Tithonus wanted to rush over to find out who they were. But Hippolyta insisted they needed to hide.

“Why?” Tithonus asked. “Why not talk to them? Why not get the news? Why not see if they know where Arimaspa is?” The farther they had gotten from Themiscyra, the more his spirits had lifted.

She turned in the saddle and hushed him with a look. “Because I’m an Amazon, and too many people outside my own land will want to capture me. Because you’re a Trojan prince and could be held for ransom. Because it’s best that no one knows what’s behind the walls at Themiscyra. Just because …”

It shut him up.

For a little while.

But Tithonus’ tongue was loosened now, and he clattered on like a nest of starlings. Whenever they let the horse walk—and the poor beast carrying two could not be made to run at length—Tithonus chattered.

He talked of Troy and its unbreakable walls, of his father and the many rules a prince had to follow. He was just going on at length about his old nurse, Trophima, when he spotted something ahead that made him bite his lip and stop talking.

Hippolyta was so relieved by his lack of speech that at first she didn’t notice what had silenced him. Then Tithonus pointed a shaking finger, and she followed its direction.

Lying at the foot of a dry tree, clad in gray drawstring trousers and a badly torn and bloodstained gray shirt, was a dead man. A pleated cloak, once green, now also gray, wrapped his shoulders. His sandals were cracked and old.

Hippolyta reined in the horse and peered down at the still figure.

“There’s blood on his arm,” Tithonus observed. “And his head.”

Hippolyta scanned their surroundings with sharp eyes, looking out to see if whoever had killed the man was lurking in ambush nearby. When she saw nothing suspicious, she urged the horse on. They trotted a good thirty feet past the prone figure.

“Are we just going to leave him?” Tithonus sounded shocked.

“There’s nothing we can do for him,” said Hippolyta. “And we’ve nothing to gain by burying him but the loss of precious time. His clothes are too torn and old for use. Why rob the buzzards of a meal?”

She tried to ride on, but Tithonus reached forward and grabbed her arm. “He moved!” he exclaimed.

Hippolyta squirmed around and looked back. As if to confirm what Tithonus had just said, the wounded man let out a loud groan, and his right arm fluttered.

Immediately Tithonus slid down from the horse and hurried over to the stranger.

“Stay back, Tithonus!” Hippolyta called after him. “It might be a trap.” She’d heard of robbers who sometimes pretended to be dead or injured in order to lure travelers into their reach.

But Tithonus paid no attention to her. He was already bending over the stranger and examining his wounds.

Hippolyta gritted her teeth in exasperation and dismounted. Leading the horse, she moved cautiously over to the wounded man, but she kept her hand close to the ax just in case.

Tithonus pulled the waterskin from the horse’s pack and took it over to the stranger. He yanked out the stopper and was just leaning over the man when Hippolyta called out, “Ho, Tithonus, that’s our water. We need it for our journey.”

“We can get more along the way,” said Tithonus.

The stranger was trying to push himself up on his good elbow. He muttered a few incoherent words as Tithonus put the waterskin to his dry lips and let the water trickle into his mouth.

Hippolyta scrutinized the injured man. Clearly he was wounded, but that didn’t entirely argue against a trap. Still, she thought, perhaps we can get some information from him, or …

All at once she saw that he’d been lying on a dagger. Now that he was sitting up, it was exposed. She’d seen similar weapons hung up as trophies in the banqueting halls at home.

“Get back!” she growled to Tithonus, raising her ax. “He’s a Lycian.”

Tithonus didn’t look up from his task. “So?”

“He’s an enemy of the Amazons.”

“Look, he’s hurt. We need to help him.”

She grabbed Tithonus’ arm, spilling a great deal of the water on the Lycian and on the ground. “Help him? I don’t think so. You don’t know what his people and their leader, Bellerophon, did to us. Hundreds of Amazons were slaughtered by them. The smoke from the funeral pyres filled the sky for days.”

“He’s not an army, Hippolyta,” said Tithonus. “He’s just one man.”

“Yes, a man,” Hippolyta said, suddenly bitter. “My point exactly. Reason enough to leave him to his fate.”

“I’m a man—well, almost—and you didn’t leave me to my fate,” Tithonus reminded her.

“Maybe it would have been better if I had,” Hippolyta snapped back at him.

A momentary hurt passed across the boy’s face. Then he squared his shoulders stubbornly. “You can’t just leave him without helping,” he said. “We’re not barbarians.”

“I am,” said Hippolyta. “Remember?”

“That was a long time ago,” said Tithonus. “You’ve gotten a lot nicer since then.”

The unexpectedness of the remark stung. “Not as much as you think,” Hippolyta murmured under her breath.

Tithonus helped the Lycian drag himself to the base of the tree and lean his back against it. Dried blood stained his right arm and temple, and there was a wound in his side that had been hastily bandaged with a torn strip of cloth.

Hippolyta stood over him, hefting her ax threateningly. “You’re a long way from home,” she noted coldly.

The man looked her over with half-lidded eyes. “Amazon,” he said heavily, “it’s because of you I’m here.”

He stopped to wipe his watering eyes and catch his breath.

“I’m not to blame for your misfortunes,” Hippolyta answered scornfully.

“I was guarding a merchant caravan on its way to trade with the Ashuri,” said the Lycian. In his weakened condition each word seemed to cost him an effort. “Your raids have made such an escort necessary.”

“Nevertheless,” Hippolyta said, “it wasn’t Amazons who did this to you.” How could it be, she thought, when none of them could venture more than a few feet without being overwhelmed by nameless grief?

“No,” the wounded man admitted, “it was the Kethites who attacked us.” His face twisted as much with pain as hatred.

“Kethites?” Tithonus looked puzzled. “I’ve never heard of them.”

“Pray that you never meet them, either,” the Lycian said, then groaned. “They swept down on us in their great war chariots with all the fury of the storm god they worship. They forge their weapons out of iron, not bronze, and with them they slaughter everyone who stands in their way.”

“What’s iron?” Tithonus asked.

“A stronger metal than bronze,” the man said, coughed, and for a moment was still, as if gathering strength. “A gift from the gods of war.”

“So, how did you survive?” Hippolyta asked pointedly. “By running away?”

The Lycian bristled. “I’m no coward, young Amazon.” He tried to reach behind and pick up the knife but was too weak to do so. “I was brought down in the first attack and knocked unconscious, left for dead. I managed to crawl away after they fled with their booty.”

“And where is the rest of your party?” Hippolyta asked.

But before the man could answer, a dull, rumbling noise made them all look up. A cloud of dust was rising up over the eastern foothills.

The Lycian grimaced in pain. “Only the chariots of the Kethites raise such a cloud,” he said, and groaned again. “They’ll kill us if they find us.”

Hippolyta grabbed Tithonus by the sleeve of his tunic and started to pull him away. “Come on. If we start now, we can be gone before they get here.”

Tithonus tugged himself loose. “We can’t just leave him.” He tried to help the soldier up.

Hippolyta was so exasperated she wanted to punch him. “What are you doing, you stupid boy? The horse can’t carry all three of us!”

“Then we’ll just have to hide,” Tithonus said, trying to support the man’s weight by himself and failing.

Hippolyta didn’t know whether to leave them both to their fates or whether she should knock the boy on the head and drag him away with her.

“He’s the enemy!” she howled.

“He’s not an enemy of Troy,” Tithonus said. “And how can he be your enemy? He can’t even walk.”

“And neither can you, carrying him!” Hippolyta let out a screech of frustration and kicked the nearest rock so hard the pain shot straight up her leg. The rumbling sound was growing louder by the second, and the cloud of dust was drawing worrisomely close.

She turned and shoved Tithonus aside. Pushing her shoulder under the Lycian’s arm, she managed to keep him standing.

“Go get the horse,” she ordered the boy. “We’ll try to reach those rocks over there.” She pointed to a great jumble of gray stone hard against a low hill. Each of the boulders was as large as a temple door. “If we could hide from a sea monster, surely we can stay hidden from a band of Kethite warriors.”