All things have grown the same, since Patroclus.
Achilles is restless and bored at once; the last really satisfying thing he did was fix Memnon, and that didn't bring Antilochus back, any more than fixing Hector brought Patroclus back. Once upon a time, it might have been satisfying to make the fatal point, send an unequivocal message: It doesn't matter how big and bad you are. You can't withstand me.
Battle is tedious now. The Trojans have fielded, and lost, all their really good men, and their allies have either gone home or been broken. Even earlier in the war, nobody was Achilles' equal, but the men they're fielding now aren't even a match for the greenest Myrmidon fresh out of Phthia. They all scream and fall just the same. One day seems to flow into the next.
He doesn't even care what Agamemnon says or does. It doesn't matter anymore. He's going to die one of these days. The thought cheers him. He's already lived too long, and there's nothing worth living for anymore. Someone else will take Briseis; someone else will take command of the Myrmidons. Someone else will marry Deidamia. (Perhaps someone else already has; it isn't the kind of thing she'd write to him about, even if she were the sentimental kind.) The kid—he must be nearly grown up now—can take care of Peleus. As for Thetis, it's hard, but she's immortal and even if he lives to be ten thousand years old, she'll still outlive him, and there isn't anything either of them can do about that now.
The only reason he hasn't fallen on his sword is because he knows what everyone would say, and even in the afterworld, he can't stand the shame. When daylight comes and he finds himself still alive, he sighs, takes a deep breath, and calls for his armor.
She scarcely remembers the alliance her mother had promised, for she was only a child then. It seemed strange, at the time, that Priam should send a man instead of his oldest daughter, but she had known even less of the world then. "Their ways are not ours," her mother had said. How right she had been: where she is used to a glimpse of the open sky through the tents, here they wall themselves in away from nature. She knows only the open steppe, and the narrow streets are enough to make her claustrophobic; that first day in Troy, she had had to excuse herself, rushing to an alley to vomit. Silence has become her preferred métier; they do not know her language, and she knows only enough to make herself understood as simply as possible.
She had loved her sister Hippolyta above all others; it was an accident. They were hunting, and as the day wore on, were separated. She saw movement in the brush, and raised her javelin.
She is Penthesilea; she does not miss her mark.
Ever since then, she has been half in love with death; she took as little of her armor as she could get away with, because she does not intend to outlive this war. After all, her life is only for a little while; the glory will be forever, and she owes it to her sister to take as many of the Achaians out as she can.
The first time he sees her, he's busy stripping a dead Trojan of armor; he has no possible use for it, but the Trojan doesn't need it where he's going either. He notices the horseman, of course—he'd be a fool not to, on a crowded battlefield—but when there's no sword in his back, no spear bouncing off his shield, Achilles wonders if it's an Achaian and lifts his face to see if it's someone he knows.
"You do stop that, please," a woman's voice says; she has an odd accent that he can't place, which turns the words into something like you do stop dat, plizz. "Otherwise, we fight." She is small, probably not grown up yet, and slender; her knuckles, wrapped securely around two or three javelins, whiten.
By Zeus, they must be desperate if this is what they're resorting to. "Oh, really," Achilles says, returning to his grisly work. "Does your husband know you're out running around in his armor?"
Her brow creases as she tries to parse the unfamiliar sentence, and then she flushes bright red when she grasps the meaning. "I don't have husband. I don't need. This is mine." She watches him with disapproval for a minute, and then adds, "We fight."
"Lady, you are fucking kidding me." If she were an ordinary woman, the kind who does laundry and makes beds and occasionally shares them, he would lean on his spear while addressing her, but Zeus alone knows what she might try to pull, especially if she has no idea what she's doing.
"We fight. I fight with Trojans. Now I fight you."
"No, you don't. I don't fight women. Go home." Achilles has just about finished with this corpse, but there remains the problem of the very much alive woman in front of him, and the men she might be a front for. He looks about him, but it doesn't seem to be an ambush.
"I am even as you!" The cry is fierce, almost desperate. "I am Penthesilea, Otrera's daughter. An Amazon, of…" She frowns again, trying to remember their word for her home. "Skythia."
An Amazon? Shit. Priam is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Achilles has heard the stories, of course, but nobody believes them. Then again, Herakles was alive not that long ago; if Tlepolemus hadn't copped it, at least he'd have someone to ask.
"So that's how you want to play this," he says. "Fine. I am Achilles, son of Peleus, and I do not fucking feel like indulging your bullshit today or any other. Get back behind the goddamn lines if you know what's good for you, you dim bitch, or so help me I'll drive you back."
She understands his name, which she has heard before, and the threat:
She doesn't know how he'll respond, and is almost relieved when he looks at her, one corner of his mouth lifting in what might be a humorless smirk; he snorts and puts his helmet back on, and then he advances on her, crossing the open space easily in a few long strides. She stands her ground, almost calmly, and raises her sword,aiming for his guts.
It's on. Achilles draws his sword with an easy grace, and when it connects with hers, the clash nearly splits her ears. The battle rages around them, but for her, there is no one else. Their swords clang and clash, they sweat and pant, their muscles tense. She has promised Priam this man; she will deliver.
She dares move in close, meaning to raise her sword to his throat, to have the last word—he says he will drive her back? It doesn't happen; both of them are ferocious, and when he takes a step forward, she feels her heart pound with fear and excitement. His hand, larger than hers, is wrapped around her wrist, squeezing. Against her will, Penthesilea's fingers open, and she watches her sword fall in the dust. She will wear a bracelet of dark bruises for some time afterwards. Her mouth opens, and Achilles shakes his head, spins her fiercely around. "Go."
She expected him to kill her. "I fight you," she begins again, reaching for her sword, but his foot is atop it.
"I've made my point. Go!" The last word is a roar.
There is a certain amount of campfire conversation, that evening, about the new arrivals and how desperate Priam is clearly getting; there's more cheer than there has been for weeks at that thought. Achilles, silent and sullen at his own campfire, snorts at the idea; he's been cutting supply lines and sacking allied cities for years now. The last two or three years, he's spent every summer out on the draughts-board of islands that constitutes the Aegean. The towns have grown fewer and smaller and more poorly defended as time has gone by.
When will these poor fuckers give up? They can't hold out. Their armies are shrinking. They're probably taking food out of their own mouths to give the Amazons; no army, no matter how close the bonds of friendship, fights for free.
"Hey," Diomedes says, appearing as sudden and uninvited as the plague before dropping down in front of the fire.
"Hey," Achilles says, wiping his mouth.
"Have you met our new friends?"
Achilles snorts. "Who hasn't? Been listening to all these damn grunts yap about how they done met an Amazon in the field and by Zeus wasn't it goddamn something." This is probably the longest conversation he's had with Diomedes since…ever, come to think of it. They aren't friends, exactly.
Diomedes nods, helping himself to the kettle slung over the fire. "Mm. Did you done meet one?" Achilles could break his teeth just for that. Ain't no one up in Phthia speaks Attic Greek, son.
"Ayuh. You?"
"No such luck. Was she any good?"
Was she? Achilles honestly hasn't given it very much thought. She didn't run and scream when he advanced on her, as he expected, and that's worth something. He wasn't worried about this possibly being the sword out there with his name on it, but that's nothing new; still, he knows he won't outlive this war. He supposes his doom could come in a small, female package: the gods' last laugh.
"I dunno. I don't think she's a fake. She seemed used to it, like she knew what to do."
"Hmm," Diomedes says. "I'm curious now. There's been a rumor that Priam dug a bunch of slave girls up somewhere and put them in armor."
"Maybe he did. Not the one I met. She didn't act like a slave." You've been hanging around Odysseus too long. Only he would come up with that.
"Hmm." Diomedes pushes away the plate, which he hasn't had the decency to clean off first, and then stands up. "Thanks. I'll see you around."
"Ayuh," Achilles says tonelessly.
At night, on the balconies of Priam's palace, she lies with Antiope. She is, after all, a foreign queen, and a guest of honor here; why should she not stay in the house of the king? They count the stars above, figuring how far west of Skythia they are from the position of the constellations, the familiar made strange again. Below, the noises of the city at night filter up to them; these are less numerous than they once might have been.
Penthesilea is exhausted, and she cannot sleep for wondering. She rubs her wrist idly, wincing at the still-tender bruises; they have already darkened on her skin, but she doesn't think he broke anything, since she can move her wrist without difficulty or too much pain.
The Trojans say that no one meets the son of Peleus and lives. They say that he was different, once, that once he might be kind enough to sell you instead of killing you. They say that there was a dear friend, once. But Hector, the dead prince, killed the dear friend, and Achilles killed Hector, and ever since then he has been a mad, wounded wolf let loose among the sheep.
And now she must kill Achilles, as she promised Priam. He looked sad and weary, rubbing at his old, rheumy eyes, when she made this impulsive vow at the altar of Ares. One of the old statesman, fancying her ignorant, told her in bad Skythian what he said next: "I don't desire his death. He too is mortal, and he'll meet his fate soon enough anyway. I release you from your vow. You should not have made it."
"I know what I do," she told him, determined to speak his language as an equal. "I say you I do something, I do. By Ares I say you I bring Achilles' armor. I am even as you, a king." They laughed, then, and she did not understand why.
It might be a mercy killing, she thinks. If Achilles is so unhappy, so mad with grief, perhaps it would be the best thing for him. He can be with his dear friend. Penthesilea will bring his shining armor back to Troy, or she will kill him and be killed by him. They will both have what they really want.
"How?" Antiope says in the darkness near her, as if she's read Penthesilea's thoughts.
"I've always had some luck with the spear," Penthesilea says.