Penthesilea's Wish [Vol.2]

Chapter Twenty-eight

(The coastal mountains of the Hellespont. East of the city of Troy, 1240 BCE)

Penthesilea and her contingent of twelve warriors crested yet another mountain before nightfall and set their camp near the banks of a freshwater creek. The Mediterranean Sea could clearly be seen in the distance from this lofty site, shining with the setting sun. It was unseasonably cold at that altitude and the women hastily staked their leather tents to the damp earth in preparation for the night winds. Their horses, with their winter coats and manes waving like flags in the strong breeze, stood huddled together at dusk between the shelters. They would sleep out the night standing, as they had learned to do over millions of years of evolution in this unpredictable environment.

These twelve strongest and most devoted of the tribe's women, had come prepared for full combat alongside their queen after her two year long wait for atonement. They were on a volatile mission which was born of Penthesilea's self-sense of honor. Each had pledged to accompany her into battle at what ever the outcome, and they were all hopeful to witness and participate in her final redemption by ordeal. Only Penthesilea's valor and survival could purify her, their young queen believed. Participating in this foreign war, now so close to them, could give her the inner peace she wished for-and to carry on gloriously as their former Amazon queens had done for generations.

For twenty-four moons following the death of her sister, Penthesilea had sought such a trial, yet, after the sudden death of her revered mother, not long after Hippolyte's burial, she had to take the reigns of the tribe officially at age twenty two. The word of her great courage and strength in subsequent battles with men who had challenged them, had already spread in all directions of the ancient world. Yet, the honor and gravity of this could still never quench the undying pain of her deep guilt. It could only be released there in the distance, she believed, at the venue of a major war that was producing such wide-spread notoriety. It was a conflict which had waged for ten years on the Anatolian plains below them-the great battlefield at Troy.

Such an ordeal, whether survived from or not, meant that the deities to which the Amazons had always given their worship-principally Artemis and Cybele, could now pass their judgments upon her once and for all. And it was there at 'Ilium,' as the Greeks called it, where a battleground had a decade before emerged, emblematic of men's foolish desire and pride. There the 'lethal combat' over a single woman had become immense and was sufficient enough to grant her the promise of the release she had so longed for.

The Trojan citadel was an inspiring view in the distance. It glowed orange below them in the night sky from the many fires of the Greek warrior camps outside its city gates. Penthesilea's decision to enter the fighting in favor of the Trojans had been pre-arranged by a delegation from her clan several weeks before. Five women elders from the Amazon homeland had met with King Priam, the legendary leader of the Trojan city. They convened at a small temple outside the gates of his walled kingdom, considered neutral and respected by all combatants during brief truces.

Knowing of the Amazons' strength and resolve on all battlefields, and much of their honor to die in combat rather than retreat from it, Priam accepted Penthesilea's delegates request to fight in his favor against the Greeks. He told them he fully understood their queen's dilemma as a monarch of honor himself, and of the ethical substance of her decision. The king, however, though noble in his own right, craftily saw the advantage of the Amazon's assistance both physically and psychologically for his forces. For there was not a man who carried a spear or sword in those times, on either side of the battle lines who had not heard of the destructive potential of the 'Daughters of the Moon' and their legacy as Amazons-"women warriors equal to men."