2

Pen chooses eleven others to fight with us, among them Lannip, Serag, Zelke, and Khasa. The Trojans seem satisfied. I’m untested, but everyone else is a seasoned warrior. The unchosen in the band will wait for us to come back.

At dawn, we’re ready to leave, though the others are just beginning to sit up in their wagons.

Each of us warriors—including me!—has a skin flask of koumiss, a sack of dried meat: rabbit, deer, squirrel—not my ibex, which is still fresh. We’ll hunt as we go and drink raw milk when the koumiss runs out.

My gorytos is slung across my shoulder. From my wide leather belt hang my shield and my other weapons: battle-ax, spear, and sword. I used the spear once to fend off a lion, which I failed to kill—and vice versa.

Pen gives me Tall Brown to ride. We have two kinds of horses: tall and short. Short are best for milk and are fine for rides when speed doesn’t matter. Tall Brown, no longer in first youth, is fleet and used to battle.

The morning is more winter than spring, and I’m glad for the felt lining under my leather tunic. Scales made of bits of horses’ hooves are sewn into the leather. Amazon tunics are as good as metal armor for turning swords.

I’m not so cold, though, that I want the leopard skin blanket that’s draped behind my felt saddle.

The two Trojans are wrapped in wool cloaks they call himations. We set off at a trot. I pull my felt hat down to cover my ears. The sunrise is behind us. The sky is pale, cloudless, broken only by a circling hawk. How lucky I am. Thank you, Cybele.

Pen says the Trojans and Greeks worship the same gods and goddesses and are forever begging for favors. When she says this, she makes her voice whiny: “Zeus, please win this war for me. Ares, please give me a beautiful shield. Demeter, please keep the rain off my head.”

We thank Cybele for what we have and don’t ask her for anything. After all, she already gave us our grasslands, our horses, our strength, and our roaming natures. The rest is up to us.

When an Amazon is dying in battle, Cybele comes. The Amazons nearby see her, a huge, granite-colored woman with thick, curling red locks. Pen has seen the goddess three times, and Cybele has always said the same words, in a rich, warm voice: “You will fight on my side now. Thank you for your courage. Your friends will miss your arrows.”

Once Cybele has spoken, we know our warrior will be safe, though we mourn her. If he’s still alive, we slay her killer.

Pen trots to me. “Rin . . .” Her face is serious.

We ride together silently before she speaks. We’re all spread out, except the two Trojans, who ride shoulder-to-shoulder as if they were yoked together.

“Rin . . .” She’s silent again.

Is she going to tell me she’s changed her mind about letting me go to battle?

“Rin, how was it when you killed the ibex?”

I don’t know what she means. “I used up fifteen arrows before he fell. I didn’t think he could keep going so long.”

“That’s right. How did you feel?”

“Sad.” Was that wrong? “He was beautiful. I’d taken his life away from him.” I’m feeling bad again. He would never graze anymore, never mate or grow old.

“And later. How did you feel?”

“Happy.” Was that wrong? “He was the biggest animal I’d ever brought down. I was proud. I knew you’d be proud.”

Pen reaches over and touches my shoulder. “It’s the same in battle, though the thinking and feeling happen later—you’ll be too busy at the time. Later, it will be a jumble, regret for the man you killed, who probably had a wife and children, who loved life as much as you do—mixed up with joy that you survived and spared us mourning you. The spoils will be especially precious, won at such a cost.”

I nod, feeling uncomfortable. I want victory in battle to be pure joy.

Surprising me, Pen says, “I prefer hunting to fighting. We don’t eat our human enemies.” She laughs. “I like a good, young ibex.”

I think of the principles we live by: fight for spoils; hunt for food.

Otherwise, we become village women.

Pen guesses where my thoughts are, or she wants to remind me. “Village women are mice, who do what they’re told. Villagers plant wheat and eat bread.”

Of the possible fates, being a farmer seems a terrible one: tied to a scrap of land, begging the sky for sun and rain, starving if the right amounts of each don’t come.

But farming isn’t the worst destiny.

In battle, if victory is impossible, we choose death. We contrive to be killed, open our chests and invite the spear, rather than be captured and enslaved.

“Before my first battle, Lyte told me what I’ve just said to you. Otherwise, I might have been too shocked to keep fighting.”

Lyte is Hippolyta, Pen’s mother, who died before I was born.

Pen kicks her horse and rides to Lannip.

Pen took away the pleasure of anticipating my first battle. I spur Tall Brown into a gallop. We race ahead of everyone. I turn to see the startled expressions of the two Trojans.

Pen will be right about what she told me, I’m sure. Fine. I want to learn everything, so I’ll learn this too: both liking war and being saddened by it.

I face into the wind and stick out my tongue. Ah, the tingle! Here I am. The future can’t change the present. I pat Tall Brown’s rough mane. Thank you, Cybele.

We ride for three days, due west, then south, then west again, following the sea. Troy is to the southwest, but our first destination is Cybele’s island. We want to thank her for the fighting to come, and I have special thanks to give her before my first battle.

Rain falls rarely in the grassland where we roam, but here, so close to the sea, we ride through a chilly mist. I pull the leopard skin over me, and it makes me almost warm and almost dry. And nothing can dampen (ha!) my pleasure in this journey.

The Trojans don’t mind our delay. They say fighting has been halted for a while for both sides to do their spring planting.

Pen and the others tease. She begins it. “Do you stop fighting to wash your face?”

Lannip pipes in: “To trim your toenails?”

“To throw a stick for your dog?”

“To eat your pasty bread? To be gluttons?”

The Trojans are as lean as we are. They smile fixedly at our fun.

I can’t think of anything to add. And I’m sure I’m too young for a remark of mine to be welcome.

Lannip comes in again. “To beg your gods and goddesses for the courage you lack?”

I gasp at her brazenness.

The Trojans don’t let this stand. Pammon says, “We also pause in the fighting for the tempests that Zeus sometimes sends, and to bury and honor our dead.”

We can’t ridicule those. The heckling stops.

That night, around a sputtering fire, as we chew on dried meat, Pammon tells us the reason for the war with the Greeks. The war is over a woman. A Trojan stole her, and the Greeks want her back.

We have no questions, because inquiries are silly when nothing makes sense, but Pammon adds that she was taken because she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.

What good does it do to seize a woman because she’s beautiful? Her beauty still belongs to her. No one else can own it unless she’s a slave. Pammon says she’s a queen, but, really, she must be a slave.

We Amazons are beautiful too, with our bright hair and features that are—as Pen was once told by a Greek artist—a vase painter’s dream. But no one would dare steal one of us, and we wouldn’t live long in captivity anyway.

On the fourth morning, rain lashes us. My hat, which can absorb a lot of water, is soaked and useless. As we ride, I wring it out and slap it back on my soaked head, because I don’t know what else to do with it. I wonder how I’ll climb Cybele’s rock in this weather. But I must! Every Amazon must before her first battle. (Raids don’t count.) If I fail, I won’t be allowed to fight.

Midmorning, we come to the skiffs that all Cybele’s worshippers share, gray lumps in this gloom. They number about fifty, because some bands are much bigger than ours. The boats are far enough onto the beach that a flood won’t float them away. The oars lie wind-tossed here and there.

Amazons aren’t seafarers. We dislike bodies of water bigger than a puddle, but we can row the short distance to Cybele’s island—unless the wind has another plan for us. My heart is hopping. I want to fight for Troy and die if I must. I don’t want to drown.

We dismount. The horses will wait for us. We turn three boats over, put in oars, and push the skiffs to the water’s edge. Six of us get in one boat, seven in another. I’m one of the rowers, which pleases me. I’ve always been too young to row before.

The Trojans say they can manage their skiff without help.

We don’t ask Cybele to stop the wind. The Trojans don’t ask Zeus’s help, either, because, I suppose, this isn’t a bad storm to them, who live close to the sea.

As soon as we begin to row, Cybele or their Zeus stops the wind. The rain still pours down, vertically now.

On a clear day, the island is visible from shore. Now it’s hidden. I hope we won’t be forced east or west by currents and miss it and row until we die. It’s a tiny island.

We don’t miss it, but we don’t see it until we’re almost upon it. We bump onto the rocky shore and haul in the boats.

The island seems to be part of a mountain under the sea. I know from memory, since I can see only a few feet in front of me, that a forest lies about a quarter mile ahead, seemingly growing out of stone. Cybele’s rock—shaped like a fist, roughly three times Pen’s height—rises between the shore and the trees.

Cybele lives in a cave at the bottom of the stone. When she wants to come out, she lifts the rock and exits, but most of the time she’s in there. She’s always there when Amazons visit.

Together, we approach her rock. I wonder, although I feel wicked about my doubting thought: What if an Amazon dies in battle at the same moment other Amazons visit the stone? Which will Cybele pick?

A voice roars between my ears. “Gowk-head! I can be in a hundred places at once.”

Am I about to die, since she spoke to me?

I continue to breathe.

When we’re a few feet from her rock, we stop and begin the ritual. Pretending to be horses, we paw the ground with our right feet then our left. We shake our wet heads as if we were shaking our manes. We prance in place.

Human again, we stretch our arms across one another’s shoulders and begin our thanks, much as we did after the ibex dinner. We go on for so long that Pammon walks away, and the other Trojan sits on the ground and draws in the mud with a stick.

Feeling that I have to make up for my doubt, I go beyond anyone else. I thank Cybele that there’s land beneath my feet, that my toes number ten, that my ankles are strong and my elbows bend.

Pen snuffles, and I realize she’s laughing. I stop.

We prostrate ourselves and kiss the wet stone because Cybele is the earth goddess. We rise and shoot arrows into the sky because Cybele is the sun goddess.

Pen’s wet lips kiss my wet cheek. “Go, darling.”

As I walk to the rock, the wind picks up again, even more than before, seeming to roar. Rain stings my cheek and hands. I run back to Pen and give her my leopard skin, which may hinder my climbing.

Long ago, people drove spikes into the rock. I put my right hand on one above my head. It’s wet, slick, and cold, but my grip is strong. I hold tight, place my left boot on a spike at knee height, and ascend. As I rise from spike to spike, I review my prayer for when I reach the top. I decide to improvise a little in case Cybele is still angry.

Halfway up, I’m panting from the effort of holding on. At last, I reach the summit, which is flat but dented with small craters. I bend over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath.

When I can stand up, I spread my arms. “Thank you, Cybele, who can be in many places at once. Thank you, goddess of earth and sun, for giving me strength in battle. If you grant me victory, thank you for that too. Thank you, Cybele.”

Pen starts the battle shout, and everyone from our band joins in: “Kiikiikaa!”

I begin to descend. The wind picks up, and the roar rises to a shriek. When I’m halfway down, a gust tears me loose.

I fall.