Chapter Seventy-Eight
“Everyone up! Arm yourselves! Mount your horses!”
I had checked the view several times, hoping it was the shadows of a dream somehow clouding my vision, but I knew in my heart it was not. There, in the distance, a small group of men was making its way from the forest toward us.
“Fetch your arms!”
I raced between the houses. Sotiria had been the one who suggested we build them close together so that we could always hear one another should we need to. Now, more than ever, I was grateful for that decision.
One by one, the women appeared, some bleary-eyed, some already dressed with knives in their hands.
“What is it?”
“Get to the horses!”
“Otrera, what is going on?” Thalassa met me on the way to Erebus, a large blade in her hand.
“Men, coming from the east. Five of them.”
“And they are men, you are certain? Perhaps it is our women coming back before winter settles.”
“Our women would come on horseback, not on foot. They have breached the edge of the forest. Everyone on horseback!” I commanded the women gathered around me. “Surround them! Leave them no way out.”
The dew-soaked grass was trampled beneath us as the horses’ hooves thundered toward the gathering. Whoever they were, their pace was slow, and they were not far beyond the forest’s edge when we reached them. Immediately, they dropped to the ground.
“Women!” I yelled.
Needing no more command, the women fell into a circle around the group, nocking their arrows. Fifty of us. Five of them. There would be no escape, and from the trembles that gripped the men, they knew this. Yet one of them lifted his head.
“We do not mean you disrespect,” he said. “We have come for help.”
“Stand up. I cannot hear you.”
My voice was a bellow, giving an order that he did not ignore. He leaped to his feet, though the rest of his men remained flat and quivering against the earth.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What is your name?”
My question was a simple one, yet he stuttered and stumbled before answering. “My name is Leander. I come for help from the great warriors. From the Amazons.”
“The Amazons?” This was not a word I had heard before. An amalgamation of terms, perhaps, in a language I did not speak. “The Amazons?” I repeated.
“I believe it is us he has come for,” Trapezitai said on the other side of the circle. “It means ‘warrior women’ in my father’s tongue. That is us, is it not? We are the warrior women.”
I pondered the question. Could it be that we had been given a name? It certainly appeared that way, though I cared little for what the men were calling us or why they were trespassing.
“Why are you here? Why do you seek these Amazons?”
The name rolled off my tongue.
“We need their help.” Only Leander had the courage to speak, and he sniveled through his words. “We are being raided, our town. There is a dispute. We need you to fight for us.”
“To fight for you? Why would we do such a thing?”
“You are mercenaries, are you not? We can pay you? We can pay you greatly. We can get you whatever you ask for. Gold, silver, anything.” He looked between us as he spoke, though I met his gaze only with a scowl.
“Tiles?” Thalassa said in the quiet. “Can you get us tiles?”
My scowl shifted momentarily from the men to Thalassa. Then, with a squeeze of my thighs, I pushed Erebus forward so that we stood inside the circle, marking my role as leader. Thalassa may have worked hard to regain my trust, but she had no right to speak for me.
“You trespass. How did you know of us?”
Leander fell to his knees.
“You were our only hope. There was a woman who passed through our town, who saw the battle we fought. Zehra. She saved us. Saved my daughter too. From a different fate.”
Zehra. The nomad I still had not met. I gritted my teeth at my decision to let these women roam free, particularly ones I did not know, for I had not realized it would cost us our privacy. Then again, another girl had been saved, and another rapist was dead. The world needed such a balance.
“We are not warriors.” I corrected his belief. “We have fought, and we have killed, but that was for ourselves. I will not put my women’s lives at risk for a cause that is not theirs.”
His hands clasped in prayer.
“I have seen what one of you can do. What a single warrior is capable of. Please. We need you. You need things here. We have skilled men. They can make you whatever you desire, from wood or met—”
My stomach jolted. Not from his words but from the child within me. A sharp pressure pushed behind my ribs as though I had been kicked. Gasping, I loosened my grip on Erebus, who staggered sideways in surprise.
“Otrera?” Damaris paled.
The pain had gone as quickly as it had come, but I knew I could not linger.
“Hear these men out. Learn everything you can about them,” I said to Damaris as I kicked my heels into Erebus’s sides.
“Where are you going?” she called after me, but I did not reply, for I was already galloping away.