Chapter Sixty-Five
Horses and women combined, we lost twelve lives.
Twelve lives that had passed through to the land of the dead because of my choices.
Among the dead were Rilaena and Glykeria.
Someone said that Glykeria had never intended to survive the battle, that she had raced into the fight, waving her knife and stabbing wildly.
They said she had hoped it would be her way to earn forgiveness from the gods for the wrongdoings of her son.
I do not believe that one person’s sacrifice can outweigh another’s misdeeds, but we found her body among a pile of dead men, all killed by a blade. At least she had tried.
Of the remaining dead, only one other than Aina was originally from Ninniya.
The other five were from Oreia. Five women had paid the price for their sisters’ freedom.
The remaining deaths were horses—a bay colt ridden by Chrysothea, a mare that had bolted from its rider, and of course, there was Myrina.
Myrina, whom I grieved almost as deeply as I did some of the women.
Myrina, who would be buried with Aina, as was her dying wish.
It took six women to lift the mare, and we had barely carried her to the side of the road when Althea approached me, still mounted.
“We need to rest, Otrera. Here is as good a place as any. The women need food. They need sleep. They need to recover. Even more so if they are to carry the horses back. There is food here, rabbits and boars. There is a stream for water too. We should rest here.”
Rather than replying, I scanned the area. The men’s bodies had been dragged to the side of the road in the long grasses where they could rot and give their life to the earth. They would receive no ceremony, though it was Sotiria, not I, who made that choice.
“Let them rot. They would have done the same to us,” she said.
So we did, watching as flies settled and vultures readied themselves for a feast. And there, directly above us, six crows circled.
Damaris’s omen had come true. Circling crows had brought us death.
Two lives lost for every one of the birds.
Everyone was bloodstained and bruised, limping or being held up by those who were only slightly more steady on their feet. It was a small miracle the women had been able to lift Myrina at all. Althea was right. They needed rest, but they would not do so until I commanded it.
I found Erebus grazing near the roadside. I had expected him and his herd to bolt the moment they were given their freedom, but they remained close. I wondered if they had stayed for their own dead and perhaps for Aina, whom they had loved as their own.
I rode slowly, picking a careful route back to the group.
In my head, I rehearsed how I would tell them we would rest there until the morning, then leave, taking our dead and traveling as slowly as we needed to.
But as the women fell silent and looked up at me expectantly, I knew they needed more.
They deserved more. So I began to speak.
“I will not stand here before you and pretend that today did not come without loss.” I did not know how to start but with the truth, though my voice trembled.
I forced the volume through the tears, holding them fast in my throat and refusing to let them spill.
“I will not stand here before you and pretend this battle was easy.
But I will stand before you and say that once again, we have risen in a way that women have never risen before.
“We are no longer wives. We are no longer widows. Whatever our origins, now we are sisters, bound by more blood than kin could ever be. We are warriors, as true as any army from Sparta to Athens. We have battled, and we have won. Not through luck but because the goddess willed it so.”
Silence met my words, a silence that pierced through the air. I needed to do more. I needed to name the dead, to honor them as they deserved. But as I opened my mouth to do so, a single cry rose from the crowd.
“To Otrera, blessed by the gods,” Boryana shouted, loud enough to send every bird flying from their roosts.
“To Otrera!” Damaris joined in.
The cheers that followed would have drowned out a thousand battle cries. The horses whinnied, rearing up on their back legs, not as if to bolt but to express adulation.
As the sounds filled me, I raised my bow and arrow to the sky, then rode in a loop around the living and the dead. Cheers were joined by the clanging of metal on metal, by hands in the air as the women danced to the sounds.
I could have stayed, could have yelled and shouted and celebrated our victory with them, but instead, I hastened away, riding to the forest’s edge.
I rode as fast as Erebus’s tired legs would allow us until a canopy of leaves shaded us from the sun and the women’s cheers had faded with the whirring of the wind.
Then I dropped from Erebus, fell to my knees, and vomited. And with no one there to see my weakness, I cried as I have never cried before.