Penthesilea's Wish: [Vol. 3]

Chapter One

(Penthesilea's armed forces—camped above the citadel of Troy, 1241 BCE)

After two days of waiting and watching the eerie inactivity on the battlefield below them, Penthesilea and her twelve loyal warriors arrived just to the south of the Greek encampment outside the walls of Troy. Their vantage point that evening of the battleground and the fortress complex was panoramic from this position. They were suddenly approached by a ragtag group of men on foot who signaled, by dropping their weapons, that they meant them no harm. The women surrounded the fifteen or so men with their bows drawn and brought them into close quarters to speak. They learned critical information from this party of disserting tribesmen, who, being nomads from the north, spoke a language known as Luvian, which the Amazons understood. They told them that they had been fighting on the side of the Trojans for too long as mercenaries, but now they had left the battle and wanted to return home.

The Greeks, they learned, had for several years not been the full complement of warriors they were originally, upon arriving by ship from the south. The men referred to the entire battle theater as "Ilion," just as the Greeks likewise called it. The initial campaign had driven the Trojan defenders into the walled city, giving the Achaeans free passage back and forth to their ships. These first victories allowed them to dig in to strong positions around their anchorage and just outside the fortification's walls. This small group of northern nomadic veterans, the smell of which the women found difficult to tolerate, also told them that after almost ten years, both sides were weary of the fighting. There had been various unsuccessful attempts to negotiate an end to the long conflict, they told them, but now the campaign remained futile and locked in violence. They wished only to return to their families for good.

These exhausted and demoralized men, whom in another time and place would have been enemies of the battle ready Amazons, related to them on this evening of their stay—how the long siege had been driven by the greed and lust of certain men. The women, relaxed now and seated around the evening's fire, were not surprised at this as they listened intently to the mercenaries' report. All the while, however, in the presence of their unsavory guests, the women cautiously caressed the decorative handles of their ever-present bows, swords and skillfully thrown labrys—the double-headed ax. They responded often to the men's reports in their own language and mostly to each other.

The men expressed how it was their understanding this entire war had been waged over the capture and attempted return of just a single woman by lustful, arrogant men who let their pride and competitive natures blind them. The Amazons themselves were historically no strangers to capture and attempted domination by all men, especially the Greeks. Individually they were considered trophies by the warring tribes who had encountered them, including once again these adventuresome interlopers. The women affirmed to their visitors, however, that it was in their code of behavior for an Amazon girl to commit suicide if all attempts to free herself from such males proved unsuccessful. It was a mater of pride in their clan, they said, to never submit to or even survive, trapped in a male's captivity.

The temporary guests of Penthesilea and her warriors nervously went on to tell them of the recent folly which had erupted in the Greek camp, again over mindless lust after women and the perception that these men were somehow entitled to own them. The supreme leader of the Greek forces, Agamemnon—himself a warrior king, had apparently abducted in a raid outside of Troy, a girl, barely a young women, who happened to be the daughter of King Priam's own prophet. A plague had broken out among the Greek forces for nine days in the aftermath of her kidnapping, killing many soldiers in the Achaeans' encampments.

A remedy was attempted to this curse, the men told, suggested by the Greek hero whom many feared as invincible—and the one said to be a demigod among them. The men called him "Achilles," and this celebrated Achaean knew no opponent who could as much as injure him in combat. This undefeatable warrior, they told them, was thought to be protected by the gods. Achilles had, in fact, been seen by all of the men present, killing scores of men in battle, many of whom the Trojans considered their best fighters. And it was this hero who attempted to end the sudden plague and possibly bring a solution to the bloodshed by simple means. Meeting in a war council of the Greeks, Achilles suggested the immediate return of the seer's daughter to her father, bringing her out of her sexual bondage to Agamemnon.