One GREECE 2814 B.C.
There was the chaos of combat, screams and smoke and the ringing crash of metal against metal. The battle had long since spilled from the city where the Amazons had once been slaves. Hippolyta fought fiercely alongside her sisters, their scattered allies rallying to their cause, but the combat was brutal, the soldiers they faced formidable. Savages, man and beast, minotaur, chimera, minor gods and demons... all had come to Ares's call and fought viciously against the Amazonian uprising.
Hippolyta caught brief glimpses of the fight, death and grace in equal measure, images there and gone in a blink as she, too, was caught in the fury, fighting for their freedom and her own life. A bellowing minotaur tore a sister from her horse; a bearded man fell to his knees, clutching the spear that impaled him; a woman screamed in bloodlust, hacking at a chimera's reptilian tail. The skies, too, rained blood, as winged horses and their riders swept and dodged, fighting Eris, the winged Goddess of Discord, and the horde of monsters who fought alongside her. But it was her brother Ares who had brought this misery upon the Amazons.
Hippolyta buried her sword in a snarling man's chest, then whipped it out again to slash another attacker's throat. To finally unleash her anger at Ares was exhilarating; in battle, her spirit soared, her reflexes danced...but she also recalled the words of Athena, who had warned her to be wary of revenge. Were it otherwise, she half-believed she could take on the army single-handedly, her bitter rage an eternal wellspring of strength. But as queen to the Amazons, she was responsible for her sisters. As well as they fought, too many had already died.
Less than fifty paces from her own position, Hippolyta saw a dozen of her sisters engaged with Deimos, one of Ares's terrible sons, who had been conceived with Aphrodite. He was a towering figure with a beard of live, hissing snakes. His powerful sword arm spun like a windmill with a vicious blade at one end. Bellowing, Deimos scooped up one of the Amazons, snapping her neck with one flex of his giant fist. He threw the corpse over his shoulder and it hit a passing rider, the throw hard enough that the horse rolled over the sister riding it. Even over the dull, ongoing roar of battle, Hippolyta could hear the crunch of bone; both sisters were dead. The horse, panicked, struggled to rise in a mist of sun-baked dust.
Hippolyta started for the horse. Another of Ares's soldiers leapt in her way, a massive, scarred battle-axe clenched in his meaty fists. He swung back, hefting the bloody axe, swinging it up and over. She stepped in to meet him, swinging her sword down and across. The soldier took the hit just beneath his chest plate, grunting in what seemed like surprise as his belly opened beneath the hammered blade. Blood and black offal spilled from the wound. He fell to his knees and she swept past him, taking the struggling horse's reins in one hand. She sacrificed a few precious seconds to calm the animal before mounting, determined now to put a stop to this insanity. She would find Ares, and kill him.
No easy task, she thought, but immediately negated that statement. He was the God of War, true, but her rage would find its way.
She rode across the battlefield seeking the object of her fury, her sword drawn. Her mount forged a path between the locked armies of Amazon and oppressor. The bodies of the dead flew beneath her horse's galloping hooves, their leather armor slick with blood.
Ahead, she saw a man pull his sword from a woman's crumpling form, saw him step out to meet her as she rode. His attention was fixed on her helmet, a feral grin crossed his blood-spattered face as he realized the Amazon queen was within his reach, and Hippolyta felt a renewed flush of righteous anger at these men who had murdered and enslaved them, had tricked her into sacrificing her trust, and more, anger at this man, smiling at the thought of her demise. She raised her sword, her rage spilling out in a wordless cry, and struck him down. She did not look back to make sure he was dead.
Hippolyta searched the field for where the fighting was most violent. Just north of her position there was a rise in the land with a few small stands of scrubby trees near the top. The viciousness of the combat there drew her onward, men shrieking in sadistic wrath as they beat their shields and brandished their spears. She urged her horse north, sure she would find her enemy there.
My enemy. Ares. How she hated him. For a brief time, she had thought better of him, had even thought him capable of contrition, but no more. She would kill him, or die in the attempt. He had become her captor and keeper, had done to her the most unspeakable wrong that a man could do to a woman. Ares was an entity, not a man, even when he clothed himself in mortal form, but Hippolyta would see an end to him at any cost. His bird was the vulture; his animal, the dog; and his name was a black pulse in her mind, his very existence the reason for the butchery that swept past on either side.
Even as she thought this she saw him coming to the crest of the hill on his war horse, looking out over the slaughter he had created when he sought to contain the Amazons for his own prize. There was a wide smile on his darkly handsome face, and his sword was sheathed in blood. Hippolyta gripped her own sword ever tighter, the hilt sweaty in her clenched hand, and rode to meet him.
As she neared, he laughed aloud, his eyes shining with sadistic pleasure. He called down to her, his voice deep and resonant, a god's voice.
"You seem as eager to meet me on the battlefield as you once were in the bedroom, Hippolyta."
That he would taunt her about his treachery caused her nearly to lose control of her senses, to blindly charge him with her rage as her only guide, but, surely, that was his purpose. She kept her wits.
"For your sake, Ares, I hope you prove less impotent as a warrior," she said evenly, and his grin fell away. He raised his sword and she charged.
Their blades came together, hard enough that Hippolyta felt her entire body vibrate with the blow, but she did not give way.
"You need not worry for me," he sneered, reining back to seek another strike, gesturing at the bloody struggle all around them. "This carnage feeds my soul. Every arrow shot and life wasted strengthens me, so that not even a woman scorned will save man from my wrath."
"You know their fate concerns me not," she said. "You murdered the last men I will ever care for. They will be avenged, when your head decorates my palace gates."
The look of contempt he gave her was matched by the fury of his next blow, and the next, and the next. Hippolyta's shield absorbed the worst of the assault, but she had to struggle to hold her ground.
Ares's voice was a roar, as relentless as his heavy sword, striking at her, battering her down. "You may be queen of the Amazons -- "
He struck again, and she felt his power, like a wave of heat and raw energy, and understood that she might very well be outmatched.
" -- but I am the God of War!"
Artemis of the Bana-Migdhall tribe prayed for rain as the heat of the battle rose around her in blood-stinking gusts, but her prayers were not answered. She prayed for victory, knowing that it was only herself and her sisters on which she could rely for a favorable answer. She prayed for strength, hoping, at least, that this prayer would be affirmed -- but if not, she would draw on her own reserves anyway, without the assistance of the gods. All of the Amazons had prayed when under Ares's control, and so few of those prayers had been acknowledged; only Hippolyta's pleas to Athena and Hera -- to grant the Amazons the means to escape after decades in captivity -- were finally realized. Artemis had developed a much firmer belief in the power of her sword and in her own skills than in the willingness of the gods to deign to assist the Amazon sisters in their trials. She worshipped them for having created her, but she knew better than to rely on them in time of need.
She drew strength from the combat, her consciousness retreating into the numb single-mindedness necessary in order to fight -- and win. She had ceased to hear the repeated crash of sword on shield. She had ceased to be aware of the blooming ache between her shoulder blades. Her armor was heavy, but she could scarcely feel its weight upon her shoulders. She was only half conscious of the screams and groans of the monsters and young warriors, the snapping of their bones and the pounding of their falling bodies as they hit the solid ground. She ceased to be aware of her own voice crying out in victory each time another adversary was slain by her own weapon. But she was very aware of her nearby sister Amazons, and where each was situated on this portion of the battlefield. She was aware of her own heartbeat, and how it seemed to throb in tandem with every thrust of her sword, its steady murmur insisting that she not hesitate for even one beat.
Persephone, poised and lethal, swung her weapons with both hands, her mace and dagger slamming into one combatant and then another, ready to turn and strike at one more as he came up behind her. Artemis's sword caught the warrior's blow before Persephone could.
"You are most greedy on the battlefield, Artemis," the beautiful Persephone remarked, her breast heaving with the effort of combat under her battle dress. Artemis yanked her sword free of the man's belly, his glistening entrails slopping down his legs as he collapsed.
Artemis grinned at her sister Amazon, almost relishing the ache in her muscles as she heaved the sword again. "My sword is thirsty," she told Persephone, losing no time between strokes, "I intend she gets her fill." Another clash as the flat of her weapon hit armor, but a second well-placed thrust and this man, too, fell at her feet, strangling on his own blood as it spurted from his mouth and throat. She howled in satisfaction, the battle quickly t...
