An Amazons' Moon

Three leagues away, the lieutenant of Persian cavalry stood on a hill, slightly away from the campfires of his two dozen men. As they talked softly in the background, he studied the glow on the horizon to his south. His concentration was interrupted by his immediate subordinate, who walked up next to him and folded his arms across his chest. They both squinted through the darkness at the horizon for a moment, and then the subordinate spoke.

"Strange glow. What do you make it to be, Lieutenant?"

He shook his head. "Can’t tell for sure, but it comes from the direction of where the Amazon village must be."

"I’ll bet the general is burning it. He must have gotten across the river today and made short work of those....." He snorted and continued, "Women warriors. Who ever heard of such a thing?"

The lieutenant looked over at the soldier and grunted. "Once again we have been deprived of the glory of a successful battle. Well, we will be there by tomorrow afternoon and get to pick through the ashes for our loot. Those infantry peasants have probably already had their way with everyone and everything of value. That is the lot of the cavalry, though, always out on the flanks and never at the thick of things."

The soldier nodded. "At least we do not have to walk everywhere. Better get some rest, sir. We may have made it across the river this evening, but we still have the better part of a day to ride." The lieutenant turned and walked back toward the campfires with the soldier. In the darkness, at the edge of the camp, the soldier tripped and fell. He hit the ground with a thud, cursing quite colorfully, and the lieutenant heard him roll over in the grass, his sword clanking. The lieutenant laughed and spoke to the darkness at his feet.

"It is a good thing that you are cavalry. Your horse walks better than you do. If you were infantry, you would probably be marching on your ass half the time. Where are you, anyway? I can’t see a thing in this damned dark."

The sky parted its blanket of clouds, bathing the hill in silver moonlight. The lieutenant stared at his feet, his mouth open. There, next to the clumsy soldier, lay the body of one of his sentries. The throat had been slit, and in the moonlight, his face showed a ghastly grimace of death. The soldier on the ground recoiled at the sight and crawled backward and away from the body, horrified. The lieutenant grasped the hilt of his sword, and as he turned to look around him, he came face to face with what could only have been a demon from the underworld. Blazing, light eyes glistened in the moonlight, outlined in fierce tattoos and surrounded by a frame of reddish hair. For a moment, he just stared, frozen in fear. He felt his knees become weak, and he opened his mouth to sound an alarm, but a searing pain swept across his throat and he found that he could not speak. His head swam, and his legs collapsed. As he lay upon the ground, his life ebbing from him, the last thing that he heard was the unearthly howls of what must have been the denizens of the darkest hell, as feet pounded past him towards the camp and the screams of his soldiers echoed through the night.