Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SACRIFICE

AS DEMONASSA HAD WARNED, the day wore on slowly. The sun almost seemed to have stopped overhead, as if the gods had decided to forgo night.

Hippolyta was convinced that anyone who so much as glanced in her direction could read on her face the outline of the plan. Any minute, she thought, Valasca’s guards are going to arrest me. Then a second traitorous thought filled her mind. Perhaps arrest would be preferable to fulfilling her vow to her mother.

But though the day went by with agonizing slowness, it did go on. Hippolyta wasn’t able to eat either her morning or noon meals, and by evening she felt sick with worry.

The other girls in the barracks ignored her, putting on their ceremonial cloaks and chattering. Then they formed up for the march to the Hill of Artemis.

Hippolyta watched them from her pallet, one hand over her head. She’d planned to feign illness, but having missed all her meals, and with her stomach in a turmoil, she didn’t have to feign much.

A tall, gangly, horse-toothed girl of sixteen summers turned back and said over her shoulder, “Aren’t you coming with us, Hippolyta?”

Hippolyta merely groaned and turned over in her bed.

“You must, princess,” said another, her voice a high whine. “You’ll lose face otherwise.”

“Valasca will be furious,” a third added.

Hippolyta answered them with a groan and held her stomach, and they, thinking it her moon time, stopped bothering her in case they were late for the ceremony themselves. Giggling, their voices like water over stone, they left.

As soon as she was alone, Hippolyta pulled on her riding clothes: tunic, leggings, cloak, cap. She grabbed her ax and bow and quiver from under the foot of her pallet and went out the door.

No one was in the street. The entire community would be at the sacred hill. Still, she went cautiously, pausing at every corner to be sure she wasn’t seen.

Hippolyta knew a spot below the wooden palisade where she could jump and land quite safely on a stretch of soft, grassy ground. All the girls knew of it. The place was far enough from the front gates and the guards. Often they would sneak out in the night and make their way to the river, where they’d swim, naked, in the moonlight, away from the hard eyes of their mothers and older sisters. Hippolyta was just beginning to suspect that the women knew of the place too, that they’d gone there in their own youth.

But it would serve her purpose this night.

In one quick, economical movement, she leaped from the palisade, landed with bent knees, rolled headfirst down the little embankment, and leaped up, ax ready.

But there was no one watching.

So she headed north to meet Demonassa.

For a moment she slowed, turned, looked to her left. She could see the ring of bonfires surrounding the Temple of Artemis. They looked like a crown of flames. Drums were pounding; she could feel the beat in her bones. A pipe shrilled, then another. Lines of torches marked the processions as other Amazons from the far settlements of Satira, Amazonion, Comana, and Amasia came for the sacrifice.

The sacrifice!

All this for a tiny baby.

My … brother, she thought.

Just then a shadow detached itself from the trees, and for a moment Hippolyta raised her ax. Then she recognized Demonassa.

As the old seeress had promised, she held the baby in her arms. He was so heavily wrapped, against both the night air and his own cries, even his nose was scarcely visible.

“No one saw you come?” Demonassa asked, the baby held against her shoulder.

“No one. And you?”

The old woman grinned, showing the gaps in her yellowed teeth. “On the night of the half-moon I can move about seen or unseen, as I choose.” She handed the child to Hippolyta.

Hippolyta’s arms seemed to move on their own. Suddenly she had no control over her fingers. Nerves, she thought. Until this moment everything had seemed like a dream. But now, with the baby’s weight a reminder, she was frightened.

“Has no one noticed the child gone yet? Has no one noticed you missing?”

Demonassa shook her head. “My acolyte is wrapped in a spare set of my robes. Even now she sits hunched over a girl baby as if it were little Podarces. I’ll be back at the temple and ready to bear the supposed sacrifice to the hilltop before anyone guesses the deception.”

“But—” Hippolyta could think of a dozen things that could go wrong.

“If anyone grows suspicious, the girl is to act bewitched. I’ll not have her take the blame.”

Hippolyta nodded. Bad enough that she and Demonassa might be caught.

The old woman grinned again. “By law, no one may approach the babe until he is laid on the altar. After that, I’m afraid, the game’s up.”

“Game!” The word sat uncomfortably on Hippolyta’s mouth. “This is no game.”

Demonassa tightened the cloak around her old shoulders as if she had need for more warmth.

Suddenly Hippolyta realized that the old priestess was not as invulnerable as she pretended. “What will happen to you then?”

Smiling with thin lips, Demonassa said, “Oh, none of them dare actually harm me. Too many of them owe me their lives. But I expect Valasca will see that my remaining years are spent in acute discomfort.”

She means prison, Hippolyta thought. At her age it is a sentence of death. She looked down at the child, who was quietly sleeping in her arms. “You would risk so much for a boy?”

“I risk it for your mother’s sake. I trust her instincts more than I trust the oracles,” Demonassa said. “You should do the same.”

Hippolyta nodded, but in her heart she was not convinced.

“Go then,” the old woman added. “There’s a horse tethered out of sight beyond those trees, near Demeter’s shrine.”

“My own horse?”

“No,” Demonassa said. “We couldn’t take that one for fear of discovery. It’s one of your mother’s.”

Hippolyta nodded again.

“There are rations and water for you, a skinful of goat’s milk for Podarces. Feed him when he cries.” She touched Hippolyta’s shoulder, turned her, and gave her a small shove forward. “Goddess keep you.” Then she was gone, back into the shadows.

The horse was right where the priestess had said it would be. Hippolyta smiled. Not just one of her mother’s horses, but her swift-footed little brown mare, the one called Rides the Wind.

Hippolyta put her ax and bow and quiver into the blanket packs. Then she untied the mare and started to mount. But with the baby in her arms, she was awkward, and the little horse was agitated.

“This is not a good start,” she whispered.

A familiar mocking voice suddenly rang out from behind her. “I thought you might be up to something.”

Hippolyta whirled around, instinctively pressing the baby to her heart.

Molpadia stood, bow drawn, under the near trees. Her yellow hair looked almost white in the moonlight. “That’s even better,” she said. “Now I can kill both of you with a single shot.”