Sarah Lindsay

Themiscyra, 72 BC While Lucullus raided cherry orchards, he left us to besiege, grudgingly, this outlander fortress, named for an Amazon queen, while thinking of food and home. Not one of us has seen a single horse-borne warrior woman. Meanwhile, we dug a tomb. We intended it as the tunnel through which we’d claim the fort. We shored up the sifting roof and dug by lamps that shed more shadows than light. At last we formed up underground to attack with sword and fire, but the enemy tossed in hives, and in a cloud of stinging bees our torches jerked and swung or fell so we could hardly tell where to strike, or what, for next our enemy sent weasels in, and foxes, which seemed to be done in jest until we felt their teeth and heard, more than saw, the larger beasts. A wolf  began my death. I lay in men’s and weasels’ blood and heard the body that dropped at my side ask,What barbarian thought to make of thoughtless creatures weapons of war?