Chapter Sixty-Three
I did not soften my words; there was too little time for that.
“They are coming,” I said as I reached them. “And they are armed. Rilaena is right. They mean to kill us all.” I did not let the whispers begin, although I felt them burgeoning on the others’ lips. “We need to get close before we attack. I have a plan. But we need to act fast.”
“You had a plan,” Thalassa replied. “This was your plan. The men will be drawn to the women walking on the road, then we attack from a distance. Why are you changing it now?”
“Because before, I believed they would be unarmed. And it is only a small change. Any woman who has come to the village from Oreia, you need to dismount and head to the road.”
“You are sacrificing us?” Boryana’s voice was thick with a sting of betrayal as she sat upon a palomino mare. “We came to you for safety. For over a year, we have considered you our friend, and now you are sending us back to the wolves?”
I did not raise my voice, though it stung that she thought so little of me.
“I am not betraying you. I am trying to save you. And listen, because you will need to tell the others. We do not have long.”
The plan was simple enough. They were to convince the men they had seen the error of their ways and were returning home. They were to beg and plead and cause the men to hesitate long enough for us to sweep in on the armed ones. Those who were young, we would not attack.
“And what of the children?” Boryana said when I was done. “They are to believe that we returned without our children?”
I pondered the question only momentarily before Thalassa replied.
“Tell them we are barbarians. That we were tricksters. That we did more despicable things than they would ever fathom. Tell them we held you captive and that you have only now managed to escape. They would believe that.”
Thalassa’s eyes met mine, and I nodded my approval.
“Do not forget, you must fall to your knees,” I reminded them. “When you do that, arrows will fly through the air. Those of us on horseback will circle around and take down who we can. If you stay low, it will be easier for us.”
“And what of us? How are we to be armed?” Boryana’s questioning was wasting what precious time we had. Yet without answers, she would be a greater risk.
“Keep only the knives that you can conceal in your clothing,” I told her. “Hide all other weapons in the grass. If you feel you can strike, then do so, but not until our arrows have flown. Do not put yourself at risk. We can do this. We will do this.”
“We will not let you down. You are part of us now,” Aina said. “We promise.”
It was her assurances, not mine, that finally persuaded the women off their steeds and onto the ground, and when Boryana spoke again, it was no longer to question me.
“You heard what Otrera said. We must act fast.”
The women had barely swapped places by the time the men crested the hill and came into view. Upon seeing their wives, they lifted the weapons and cheered.
“We could go now?” Trapezitai was by my side, struggling to steady her horse. Her impatience barely hid the fear in her voice. “We could circle the men as they are. It would work.”
“No, we need them to get closer. Some could bolt, fetch more men from other villages to band together and attack. I will not allow that to happen.”
Behind me, the women and horses were ready. The archers already had their weapons raised. Both Thalassa’s and Damaris’s arrows were trained on targets, tracking them as they stepped closer. But rather than approaching their wives as we hoped they would, the men stopped a distance away.
“What do we do?” Althea said. “Should the women keep walking? Should we fire now?”
“Wait. Sotiria will make the decision.”
Oh, how I doubted. What did I know of battles and wars? I was nothing more than a murderous wife at the head of an unskilled army. But the gods were on our side. I believed that.
The women kept walking, lessening the space between them and the men. Each step lasted a hundred heartbeats. Each inch they moved was miles within my heart. Finally, when they were but the length of a house apart, they stopped. Sotiria alone stepped forward.
“What is she saying?” Thalassa asked, as if I had the ability to hear across the fields. But what Sotiria said did not matter. For a moment later, she knelt on the ground. And every woman with her followed.
That was when I let my first arrow fly.
“Erebus!” I did not even need to strike the horse, for the fire in my voice told him all he needed to know.
Together, we galloped down the hill. The distraction was all the other women needed.
As the men looked around in surprise, Sotiria and several others grabbed the knives from their robes and stabbed through the hearts of the men within their reach.
Other women fetched the weapons they had hidden in the grass or yanked the young boys away from the fray.
“You will not ruin our peace!” Aina yelled as she raced forward on Myrina.
She had chosen a scythe as her weapon, not wanting to be slowed by a bow.
With a swing, she cut through the bulbous belly of an armed man.
Blood spurted from the wound, and he fell forward, his innards reaching the ground before he did.
“It is no different from the blood of the goats,” I shouted when I saw how she paled. She nodded, and a moment later, her scythe was swinging again.
From all around us came the cacophony of battle and the shrieks of men and women.
There was a distinct difference, for the screams of the women were not cries of fear or pain but of defiance.
Of strength. Of war. Man after man fell, not to rise again.
But as I had promised them, the women were rising, higher and more powerful than ever before.
“To the east!” I do not know who made the cry, but it was I who responded, firing an arrow through the air and into the back of a cowardly man running from the fight. As he toppled forward, I raced toward him, leaning over on Erebus so that I could retrieve the arrow for another kill.
“Mercy, mercy!” Men who were not fleeing were surrendering, begging for clemency from women for whom they had never spared such a thought. And they were repaid as they should have been. With knives and axes and no remorse.
“Otrera!”
I heard Damaris call my name. She was on the ground, clutching her arm, her horse nowhere to be seen.
I could only assume she had been bucked, but her injury was the least of her concerns.
Two men strode toward her, wielding wooden stakes.
Their hands were already red, though with whose blood, I could not tell.
“Otrera!” she shouted again. I had barely nocked the arrow when I pulled it back and released.
It struck my target, though not as squarely as I had hoped, striking him in the shoulder.
I fired again; the second arrow met its mark and finished the job.
I reached into my quiver, only for my fingers to fall upon air. It was empty.
Damaris was scrambling away from the second man, pain contorting her face.
“I am coming!” I shouted as I kicked Erebus hard in the flanks, but the bodies around us made it impossible for him to gain the speed we needed.
He bucked and reared as people buffeted him from every side.
I could not reach Damaris in time. With panic rising in my throat, I twisted in my seat, searching for someone to make the kill before it was too late.
“Aina! Help Damaris!”
Even through the clattering and clanging, she heard my voice.
She scanned the battlefield, for that was what the road had become, and her eyes fell on Damaris.
Needing no more instruction, she spurred Myrina toward her.
The horse’s nostrils flared as Aina brought her scythe down across the assailant’s chest. Relief flashed on Damaris’s face as she flopped to the ground, relief that I reciprocated before I realized it was misplaced. And I was too late to do anything.
I had not seen the third man. Perhaps he had been lying low, feigning death in hope that he might escape.
Perhaps he had been too deep within the fray.
Wherever he had been did not matter. He held a stake, nothing more than a sharpened wooden spike.
But it did all it needed to do. He thrust upward, piercing Myrina’s soft underbelly.
“No!” Aina’s scream was a match for my own as her horse reared. Aina clutched the mare’s mane while leaning against her neck, as if her hold would be enough to save the animal. Yet as Aina leaned forward, Myrina toppled sideways. There was no way to escape.
Aina fell to the ground, trapped beneath her horse.
“No!” I did not care who or what remained between us. I pushed Erebus with every inch of strength I had to reach her.