Penthesilea's Wish [Vol.2]

Chapter Ten

(Near the Sea of Marmara, Western Anatolia, 1244 BCE)

It had been rumored for many years in the northlands of Anatolia, among the wandering horse tribes where Penthesilea and her clan extended their nomadic domain, that a great war was raging around a city below them on the peninsula of the Bosporus. It was called Troy—Ilium to the Greek invaders. This citadel had been ruled by a powerful king named Priam with a strong and noble wife, Hecuba, It was also said that she had bore him some fourteen children—ten sons and four daughters. All of these children were to have exceptional qualities and a resolve to maintain their supremacy as a dynastic empire within the walls of their impenetrable Trojan city.

This fortress, well known, throughout the ancient world, sat strategically at the very edge of the Mediterranean Sea. A federation of many warring tribes of men had been formed by this king to defend his great complex of walls and terraces, atop which gleamed a renowned, colorful palace with balconies and battlements providing a vantage unobstructed to the sea. The entire complex sat overlooking the Hellespont, controlling the passageway from the Mediterranean waters northeastward into the Black Sea.

It was also rumored that the multi-racial inhabitants of this impregnable city spoke no one language but many, and they shared no allegiance to any one pantheon of deities as the Greeks, but maintained the worship and tolerance of many diverse gods. King Priam presently, and for the past decade, had been embroiled in an intractable war with the Greeks. They had come by sea, contesting his son Paris' right to keep a woman within his walls. Helen, it was claimed by the Greeks, was said to be stolen from them. This celebrated war over one woman had waged on for nearly ten years. Helen, whose beauty was believed to be without compare, was the former wife of a distinguished Achaean king, a man who commanded the respect and allegiance of other Mycenaean warlords from the mainland to the west. These leaders were all reluctantly enlisted into the effort to rescue Menelaus' wife, but nevertheless shared the great resolve to vanquish the Trojans and their city out of revenge. Such a victory and with the return with Helen, would establish their dominance in the world.

It was also understood that many of Menelaus' fortunes had also been stolen by Paris when he had fled with Helen—shipped with his great trophy back to the family palace at Troy. Of such beauty was this captive, that many of her former suitors from other Greek kingdoms had made a pact to fight for her honor should it ever be in danger. King Priam, however out of pride, stubbornness, or simply the love for his son Paris, refused to release Helen to the Greeks who had sailed the distance to Troy in warships in order to return her by force.

Still others had said King Priam did not release Helen because she herself wanted to stay with her captor's family and remain the  wife of Paris. In addition, this youngest of Priam's sons was believed in legend to be the most beautiful man in the world. He was therefore seen by many to be her rightful counterpart—sanctioned divinely by the Greek's goddess of beauty and love, Aphrodite, herself. According to the celebrated myth which led to the war, Paris was rewarded with Helen for choosing Aphrodite in a contest of who the most beautiful and powerful Greek goddess was.

To Penthesilea, newest queen of the Amazons, and champion of her clan of independent women, these stories only made them laugh. There was simply nothing new about men abducting women against their will, and they had spent their lives in training with tactical efforts to never let that happen to any member of their tribe. Many a male warrior had tried and died in the effort to capture an Amazon as merely a prize of war or some entity of his wealth, property or sexual fancy. There were further stories in addition to this 'Great War to the south' which involved other abductions of females as the spoils of battle. To the Amazons these were nothing more than men's self-serving pride and a need to dominate women—to further control them as mere entities in their gluttonous catalogue of wealth, lust and status.