(The Battlefield of Troy 1241 BCE) 

The sudden appearance of Achilles as he took a mount on the battleground, riding before the Greek ships, brought a new wave of confidence and energy to the Achaeans. It also roused the mighty Ajax in his parallel efforts to push back the Trojan forces to the citadel walls. Ajax further gave the charging hero open access to confront the Amazons solely, the remainder of whom still fought valiantly against a last formation of Greeks. Achilles struck out against the women warriors at a gallop, curious foremost of their queen, Penthesilea, whom he had heard routed so many of the war-seasoned Achaeans.

Riding forward with the warrior queen in his sight, he slew with one swing of his sword Penthesilea's beloved Derinoe, who tried to slow his progress. A Greek charioteer named Chalcon, whom had watched Penthesilea's valor with great respect that long day, and with the heart-softened nature of youth, called out to warn the Amazon of Achilles' lethal approach. For this sedition Achilles stuck him down, branding him a traitor in the eyes of his comrades. Riding at full gallop, he then intercepted the women in a flurry of arrows and the clanging of their spears against his armor.

The young Antandre fell first, nearest him and from a hurl of his first ashen lance. The power of his thrust compromised her leather shield, thrice laminated, as if it were the shell of an egg. Its gleaming iron point entered her chest and found her heart, ceasing it to beat even before she hit the earth. Penthesilea groaned and pivoted her horse to better position her arrows. Three shafts she let fly in rapid sequence, but none embedded in either flesh or bone of Achilles, save for the loud sparking off his charmed chest and head protection.

Polemousa and Antibrote, both girls Penthesilea had once collected snakes with as children, rode upon him in tandem, only to be dismounted after deflecting their spears. A grasp of his hand upon one of their shields and a clubbing of the other's helmet by the handle of his second lance sent them tumbling off their mounts. The Slayer then rode back and impaled them each in sequence by the same lance as they lay between their horses. Penthesilea witnessed her losses with great anger. Using her waning strength but with no lack of skill, she hurled her labrys, razor-sharp and heavy, strait for the demigod's face. His speed and instincts evaded the missile which entered and split a wooden post behind him.

Next it was Harmothoe, who, blood-drenched of tunic from her earlier victories, circled the invulnerable destroyer once in a wide gyre. She then swooped in for a throw of her javelin, already the instrument of numerous kills. The spear glanced off the impervious Greek's chest plate and he quickly threw his own, a last, while she remained in deadly proximity. The long, hewn point of the shaft pierced her neck, half-severing her head, while her horse, witless and uncontrolled, carried her dying body off and back toward the citadel.

This left Penthesilea and Achilles facing each other, alone on horseback, in a clearing not far from the river. They were soon surrounded by forces from both sides, realizing the outcome of the duel might determine the day's victory, and perhaps be decisive toward ending the long siege once and for all. Penthesilea, with her rage boiling charged Achilles with all her horse's speed. Her war sword was drawn, and all her resolve to kill this cursed opponent surged through her veins. She wished to send him to the midnight world where his fellow Greeks believed hell to be.

As she neared his horse to place her downward swing, he shifted radically in his saddle. Making the pass emptily, Penthesilea cut only a swath of air, sending a light breeze over his horse's mane. At that same instant, Achilles swung his own Mycenaean blade from below, landing deep into the muscles and windpipe of her loyal horse's neck. It brought the animal to the ground in a tumble and threw Penthesilea at a distance, stunned and weaponless. The event surprised the crowd which had gathered around them. All gasped at the maneuver's tactical loss to Penthesilea's defenses.

Gathering her wits and undaunted, the courageous warrior ran to her animal first. She could see and hear her old friend was breathing her last, suffering greatly with legs pumping uselessly in the air. With tears of anger and sorrow in her eyes, Penthesilea took out a small dagger tied to the inside her tunic and threw to the side its carved ivory sheath. While Achilles himself dismounted, picked up a spear and slowly walked toward her, Penthesilea held the animal's heavy head up and quickly sliced through the thick tissues of its throat, releasing its vast storage of blood—putting an end to the life and agony of her childhood companion. The act of love released the animal forever from its life labor and heroic duty.

Penthesilea then sprang to her feet and spotted her weapon and shield. She ran at top speed, dove and rolled. In the process she retrieved her lost javelin and, nearby her moon-shaped barrier. Standing in a crouched position, her legs shaking from fatigue, she held the weapon in her right hand, ready to either throw or use it in close combat against the demon warrior—a beast unmatched on any battlefield, as his legends truly told.

Achilles then approached her cautiously, crouching slightly himself. He rotated his spear point in front of her, mesmerizingly. She glanced to the side and could see that the crowd of Greek soldiers held among them her remaining sisters Alcebie, Hippothoe, and Polydora. They were tied in ropes as hostages, and looked on helplessly. The group of men had swollen to several hundred, mostly Greeks, as the Trojan nomad forces were being collected and bound as well. Ajax and the Myrmidians had by then routed most of them back into the walled citadel, once again to be prisoners of the hot Anatolian plain. I was clear that the issue of Helen's release from the palace, at once again on everyone's mind, and as a renegotiation to possibly end the long war, would no doubt be attempted diplomatically that evening by the likes of Odysseus or Agamemnon, regardless of Penthesilea's immanent fate.

The men remained silent—almost reverent at this final contest between their own hero and the best of the legendary Amazons. Spontaneously, the group moved the physical space for the ordeal between Penthesilea and Achilles, into a closer circle. The injured and dead of their own were being removed from the surrounding grounds of the encampment. An air of entertainment had settled over the dirt and blood-covered faces of the men as they watched, many dropping their weapons and drinking water voraciously from barrels brought out on wagons.

As Achilles approached Penthesilea, her helmet still obscuring her face, he watched her skilled movements with great wonder. She was indeed a poised and formidable opponent, he noted, tall and supple of action. It was true that she fought better and more fearlessly than many men he had faced at the very gates of death. He had watched from a distance her graceful savagery, and her capacity to kill ordinary men by the din of her short lifetime of warfare.

But could she still be a woman, as he knew them, he wondered? All the men who looked on silently wondered this as well, missing their wives and lovers so far from home. Yet, they all wished her now slain, for she had erred from the ways of her sex, and was a creature most unnatural on this battlefield. She was seen by them now as a beast and a perennial enemy of men, no different than the centaurs or titans with whom the Achaeans had to slay in their Attic history to remain superior as a race of men.

Penthesilea looked back at Achilles, so near to her now. She could see in him a paragon of men in their most brutal and destructive form. But did he have the capacity to ever give back in affection what others had given to him? Did he have any true admiration for these followers? For women—whether warrior or wife? Could he ever worship, like her sisters, the simplicity of nature and the wild beasts whose lives had sustained them from birth? This man was no match in destruction to any other man or woman, or to any beast precisely for his flaws.

As she prepared her next move, Penthesilea questioned if the monstrosity before her would not in some way meet his end eventually, at the hand of a greater power. For if it was to be now, at her own hand, it would require all she could give in her efforts. All she had ever learned. But more importantly, it was in her attempt to return one day to her sisters—with dignity and honor, regardless of the judgment of Artemis for whom she now must act with conviction.

To return to her society, if not in the flesh, at least in the memories of all who were there that day, was what Penthesilea hoped for all along while coming to Troy. This thought, while she anticipated hers and the slayer's next moves, replayed over in her mind. For her return one day in victory to lead and assist her sex had always been the young queen's greatest wish.

As Achilles moved nearer to her still, and stood waiting to resume their dance of death, Penthesilea could see in the reflecting light the images which had been embossed on his shining new armor. They were adorned loudly upon his breastplate, helmet, and broad shield. The designs were strangely dreamlike and beguiling, with no connection to the agent of death such as he was. They depicted dancing children, serene pastures, constellations of the heavens, and peaceful cities of men.

Both combatants, champions of their own, faced off now motionlessly only three spear-lengths apart. It was a lethal distance for both. Penthesilea, still stinging from the loss of her beloved sisters, suddenly charged forward, readying her javelin both offensively and defensively. Both warriors, having only one weapon each with shield, were compelled to rely on their war-gained strategies of hand-to-hand combat and their steely psychological strength. Achilles, famous for his minimal battle style, coolly side-stepped Penthesilea's advance, using an economy of movement. She then recoiled and twirled her spear in a menacing manner, alternately showing its point then handle, as blade and club—each equally lethal if employed with force.

Achilles could see that Penthesilea's arms, thighs and tunic were streaked with the blood of the day's long battle, while the champion from Pthia showed no such vestiges of his recent kills. He was still new to the battlefield, and fresh with energy, while his fair opponent's arms and legs were cramping for repose.

Again Penthesilea charged, coiling her arm back with the spear, preparing to throw her lance with confidence. She then held back, as a strategy to see his reaction. There was strangely no reaction, while she skipped to the sides, first left then right, anticipating his next offensive maneuver. It became obvious that his tactic was to tire her out through defensive moves only, capitalizing on her already exhausted state.

Realizing this, she tried to maintain her energy through slower movements and to stay alert. Then, suddenly, Achilles feigned a throw of his lance head-on, causing Penthesilea to whirl around, thrusting her shield into the air in preparation to deflect the missile. While the shield passed for the instant in front of her face and blocked her sight, he moved forward, as quickly as a leapard. He thrust his spear point beneath her moon-shaped barrier, inflicting a deep slice on the inside of her thigh. The crowd of men and Penthesilea's sisters gasped at this parry, and it was obvious to everyone he was now only playing with her exhaustion. There was not one present who did not believe the Greek champion could take her life at any moment. Many of the men, seeing the crimson gash on her leg, only wished it would be over quickly for her.

Penthesilea once again gathered her strength and made the best of her waning energies. She took several side steps, crouching with her spear in a position ready to thrust it forcefully. There was a hesitation while Achilles shifted his weight from foot to foot. Then, surprisingly, with all her might she charged him like a mad lioness. At only two spear lengths between them, she spun around once, like a wheeling hawk, regaining her forward momentum in midair. At the same instant she flung her spear in the direction of the champions face. Grasping with both hands the shaft of his lance, Achilles pushed it up horizontally, deflecting the incoming javelin. Penthesilea's weapon sailed over his head, far and away. To the cheers of the crowd now, he moved toward her with a final determination. He swung his shaft once more, knocking her shield out of a defensive position. Then, spinning around like a majestic eagle, he thrust the point of his gleaming spear deep into her chest, before she could regain the toppled barrier. Penthesilea fell back onto the ground, dying at last before the ecstatic crowd.

As the men crowded in closer, and Achilles slowly approached her body, all watched as Penthesilea's chest slowed in its upward heaving until permanently at rest. There was no doubt that the queen of the Amazons was now dead, defeated before them and to the sound of wailing by her sisters on the sidelines.

The men in the crowd made way for their superiors to come to the front. Agamemnon was there—and so too, Odysseus, Diomedes, Nestor and his son Thrasymedes. All watched as Achilles knelt down and carefully took the helmet off his former opponent. The men heaved forward to see the Amazon's face in death. There were gasps of surprise and groans of sorrow as Penthesilea's young face was exposed to the last light of day. Her beauty silenced all of them, though her sisters were still heard to weep.

Suddenly, there was a piercing wail of great anguish and remorse which haunted the crowd greatly with its volume and passion. It was Achilles himself, who looking down upon the warrior he had killed saw for the first time her essence—first and foremost, a beautiful young woman. There was not a face in the world the men could compare to the dead Amazon to for its nobility and beauty as she lay there in the dying light. This included the great warlords who had earlier in their lives looked closely upon the radiant face of Helen—she who now watched in silence and dispassionately so far away on the ramparts of Troy.

Sobbing now and wild with regret, Achilles tore away Penthesilea's tunic and began to expose her lovely pale body from head to toe. He then removed his armor, and to the shock and outrage of his comrades, threw himself on top of her, pulling her lifeless thighs up around his own. The men were angered and disgusted at this mad antic, born out of such destructive remorse. One among them, a warrior with a hideous face whom they called Thersites, ran forward out of the crowd, screaming obscenities at the great hero. With both hands, the warrior pulled the grieving slayer's body off his naked trophy, stopping what Achilles was attempting as the most vile of acts—a brutality unfathomable among the others. He then picked up Achilles' blood-drenched spear and held it menacingly over Penthesilea's face. He threatened to disfigure the defenseless, beauty's countenance, which many could only believe had now been divinely witched.

"What man are you, brave Achilles, who would take to bed your enemy? What beast would molest the dead out of its unearthly lust and display such an act to the gods? It is an unnatural sin you have committed here before us. Unjustly kindled by our own blood here on the battlefield!"

Achilles stood half naked and pressed his face to Thersites' own ugly countenance closely. The hero's expression still revealed an inconsolable rage.

"Who could praise this son of Peleus and Thetis now as a paragon among us?" the inferior warrior shouted out to the men. "Your weakness and vile lust are all we can see beneath your prize armor!"

His rage never abating, Achilles silently raised both fists at his own brother-in-arms for mocking him so severely.

Thersites did not cease, however, directing his diatribe to the silent and unmoving crowd of men whom he now faced.

"Have we all not learned these past ten years that nothing is more ruinous to a man than his lust for a woman's beauty? It makes fools of the wisest of us. And even the greatest of us! I condemn you to hell, Achilles, for this act of weakness!"

With this, Thersites angrily shoved the lance point down, into one of the eyes of the lifeless queen. The act incited groans and shouts from the gathered men. Achilles then charged him, and with no words, struck the Achaean in the face so heavily that his teeth rained out at once onto the ground. The warrior fell backwards, unmoving—his neck clearly broken from the tremendous blow.

The young Diomedes, a relative of Thersites, ran forward and lifted his cousin's head carefully. From its pliable movement and the warrior's deathly silence, all could see that Achilles had indeed killed the Achaean in his uncontrolled anger.

Confusion began to break out in the Greek camp, arguing about what to do with Penthesilea's body. At the same time, a Greek contingent of military leaders who ordered the remaining Amazons be taken away, began to discuss with urgency something of infinite more importance to them. It was how Achilles might be purified for his greater sin of killing fellow warriors on the battlefield—firstly, Chalcon, the young charioteer enamored of Penthesilea, and now most dramatically, Thersites who excoriated their heroes honor and questioned his ethos in attempting to defile Penthesilea's corpse.

Diomedes avoided all discussion of a proper burial for Penthesilea by quickly lifting and carrying her remains to a chariot. Taking the reigns, he lashed the horses with a whip and rode her out to the banks of the Xanthus River. There he threw the lifeless Amazon into the shallows and returned. A tribunal was then staged immediately in the matter of Achilles' fall from grace before his comrades. Attending them on the blood-soaked field remained Agamemnon, Nestor, Odysseus, and Teucer, the half-brother of Ajax. All were anxious to see their paragon of valor be forgiven by the gods for his rash indecency and anger-laden acts. In the end it was decided that Odysseus himself would escort Achilles immediately to the island of Lesbos to make sacrifices of purification to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto.

As the Greek forces broke up and returned to their camps, haling the battle that day a victory for their own, it gave no additional relief to the overall curse the protracted war had become for so many, for so long—and all over a woman whose looks alone could unhinged the psyches and faculties of men. Over the remaining year which ensued, a final siege of Troy ended the great conflict, breaking apart forever the House of Priam and sending the Achaean princes and kings home to their kingdoms victorious—yet forever scarred and humbled by their losses.

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In the centuries that followed, it was rumored that it was Achilles himself who allowed for the proper burial of Penthesilea. Before he traveled with Odysseus to the island of Lesbos to be purified for his sins, he requested the release of the remaining Amazons who had been taken prisoner. It was they who were allowed to find and mummify their queen's body, according to their customs. And the legend was also carried into the next millennia that her body was interred secretly nearby in a humble tomb, marked at a location 'indicative of a female.' It was further rumored over time that Penthesilea's remains had indeed been found on the banks of the Scamander, the river the ancients called Xanthus. The cult which developed around the Amazon queen's wish to someday return to her Sisters began with her birth—but never ended with her death.

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