Free Last of the Amazons by Steven Pressfield

out the bushy smudge. Ahead plunged a manhole.
    â€œI ain’t going down there, Sar’nt.”
    I led down a shaft steep as a stairwell, then along sandhills of some extinct river. I had expected bones or crypts, but there was nothing. Just walls and galleries, spooky with the drizzling of unseen cataracts.
    â€œIt’s far enough, Sar’nt,” pronounced Ant.
    He wanted to call it a camp. Let our mates from above carry on.
    â€œWe’re not here to bivouac, Ant.”
    Ironhead repeated that we’d pushed far enough; more must reinforce us. Colt seconded this. We had done our bit; let our comrades take it from here. Of a sudden Colt shuddered and lurched, as if shoved from behind. His speech choked off; he looked down, fingers reaching to his chest.
    From his breast jutted the warhead of an arrow.
    â€œI’ve been shot,” he said casually, as if remarking the passage of a cloud. Blood burbled from his nose and over his lip. I heard Ironhead bawling in anguish behind me. I reached to haul Colt clear (for it was certain a second shaft would materialize instantly) but he dropped so fast my arms couldn’t catch him. He fell as only the dead fall, unstrung at every limb.
    With a cry his brother dived to his side. I confess I thought of neither; it was Ant who, maintaining sense, covered his grief-mad mate with his shield. At once a second shaft thundered into the oak-and-ox-hide chassis. I had recovered my own wits enough to reckon the direction of the attack; I seized Ironhead by the hair, as he still cared for naught but his brother, whom he sought to reanimate, as the horror-stricken often will, simply by the intensity of his grief. Ant and I hauled him behind a face of rock. All had dropped their brands, which lay on the oil ooze, setting it to blue flame.
    â€œGoddess and ye Princes of Hell!” a female voice cried in Greek. “Take this, the first!”
    From Selene’s throat arose that war cry of Amazonia which turns men’s spines to squash, echoing and reechoing about the cavern.
    What of our valor, you ask? Not a jot remained. We began screaming, myself not least, as if our cries could carry back up to our companions still in daylight.
Help! Help!
    Selene was above us, somewhere in the dark. Boulders plummeted from the galleries. The very roof of the sepulchre seemed to sunder.
    â€œCome forward, two!” Selene cried in Greek. “And two go free.”
    She meant she needed three heads to appease the Lords of the Underworld; she had one in Colt. Each of us wheeled to the others, ready to take the deal if we thought we’d be among the pair to skate free. Shame sobered us. Without speech, all knew what we must do: rise and run for it.
    â€œI’m not leaving my brother,” Ironhead swore.
    His whisper carried like a shout.
    â€œRise and join him!” A third shaft ripped the ooze.
    â€œEuropa!” I cried into the black. “Are you there, child?”
    No reply. This made me certain she was to hand, ordered mum by Selene. God help us if the lass drew down on us too. We snatched the brands; Ironhead and I grabbed the heels of our dead mate; we elevated shields and bolted. Along the dry river and up the staircase chimney, Ant took the lead. We tore down the tunnel leading to the lake. We could hear Selene’s tread above us, sprinting along the gallery down which the bats had fled. Colt’s corpse we dragged like a sack of onions, skull banging on the stone.
    The lake shone black, dead ahead. Selene had gotten around us. From the shelf above, stone after stone plunged; from there one woman could pin us all day. We must break past, and hell take the hindmost.
    Out we hurtled, flinging ourselves shields-first into the lagoon. I heard my cousin’s boy, Mandrocles, that cry which follows being hit. Ironhead and I still hauled Colt’s corpse. The lad Mandrocles had been struck by a boulder; half his face had been staved. He could