In the courtyard.
Lorne watched Helen, whose body and mind had been purified, pull the resentful Medea into the house, and then, under the pretext of cleaning up the dishes, politely declined his big-breasted brother Caenis's invitation to sleep together.
Watching both bedroom doors close, the glowing fluorite inside each room going dark, he let out a breath of pure relief.
He had been running around, inside and out, for so long now that all he wanted was a little quiet.
After spending a little time tidying the courtyard, putting the dishes away and confirming all three women were sound asleep, then stretched out comfortably, ready to head inside and finally enjoy some time to himself.
But the moment he took a step, a low knock sounded behind him.
Lorne turned back with a sigh and opened the door.
Standing outside, tall and composed, was the Amazon queen with the crimson hair, Hippolyta.
"Hippolyta? What brings you here this late?"
"The wall is rebuilt. My task of helping Thessaly with its defense is done. With no other duty left, an attendant belongs at her master's side, keeping him safe."
As she spoke, Hippolyta tied off her chestnut warhorse and walked into the courtyard without waiting for an answer, laying a hide blanket on the ground to serve as her bed.
Then she bent down and began carving wards and defensive sigils into the surrounding ground, setting a handful of simple traps, the picture of a professional bodyguard at work.
Clearly, playing the attendant was not something Hippolyta had said lightly.
Lorne, watching this, waved his hands, caught somewhere between exasperated and amused.
"No need for that. Running errands for me these past few days, getting the Amazons to help see Thessaly through the danger, that's more than enough of a favor already. We're even now, after what happened before."
Hippolyta looked at him, somewhat startled.
"You're sure?"
"Not enough? Fine, I'll add a condition, then."
Lorne thought it over for a moment and smiled.
"How about this. I'd like you to rein in your tribe, stop raiding the Greek city-states for men, and let the Amazons and the Greeks live in peace with each other."
"I want that too."
Hippolyta caught the goodwill in his words, but her expression clouded over.
"But the Amazon bloodline needs new seed to continue. If we can't bring back enough men on the Breeding Days each year, our numbers will keep falling, and eventually the Amazon tribe..."
"So how much has the number of captured men actually gone up over the years?"
Lorne cut her off, asking idly.
"That..." Hippolyta's breath caught as she thought of her tribe's current state, a blank look crossing her face.
Clearly, breeding this way hadn't grown the Amazon warriors' numbers by much at all.
If anything, raid after raid had turned the Amazons and the Greek city-states into enemies, and with sisters dying in growing numbers, the tribe's population had shrunk rather than grown.
Watching Hippolyta's reaction,
Lorne understood at once.
"That's part of why you gave up worshipping the war god and turned to Artemis instead, isn't it?"
Hippolyta hesitated, then nodded, reluctant.
The Amazons' change of faith hadn't come only from their father Ares losing the war among the gods.
It was also an attempt to save a birthrate that kept falling year after year.
Everyone knew Artemis governed hunting and the moon, but she also held power over conception, childbirth, and the protection of infants.
So it really had been Ares who'd come up with that mindless scheme of stealing men to breed with.
Lorne thought this to himself with some private disdain, then looked at the still-confused Amazon queen.
"If you want to protect the birthrate, why steal men in the first place?
Just borrow the seed openly."
"...?"
Seeing Hippolyta still looking lost, Lorne simply laid out his idea from the start, plainly.
Under the full moon, in a courtyard now bathed in light, Hippolyta listened to this handsome demigod's proposal, her eyes flickering with wonder, surprise and interest plain on her face.
Lorne's plan was simple enough, not hard to follow at all.
Put plainly, the Amazons could loosen their restrictions during the annual Breeding Days and invite men from the Greek world to come to Amazon territory, where they would pair off with women of eligible age.
If the Amazons wanted to ensure the quality of the men who came, they could set up a handful of trials, tests of strength, wit, and bloodline, for the men to pass on their way into the tribe, filtering out only the best candidates.
For someone as highly regarded as the Amazon queen, with plenty of suitors to choose from, they could take it further: after an initial open selection, have the arriving Greek heroes compete against one another in an arena, narrow the field down to a set number of winners, and let the woman herself make the final pick.
As for the children born of it, if a girl, she'd stay with the Amazons and help grow their numbers, as expected.
If a boy, there was no need to kill him either; he could simply be handed over to his father's side to raise.
This way, the Amazons wouldn't need to keep raiding for men and feuding with the Greek city-states over it, and this same arrangement could serve as a bridge, winning the Amazons more allies along the way.
"Making men fight each other like animals over women, and setting the bar that high besides.
Would they really come?"
Still, though Hippolyta was struck by how far outside custom and convention this man's thinking ran, she wasn't fully convinced it would work in practice.
Lorne shot Hippolyta a flat look at the question and answered, unimpressed.
"For thousands of years, from beast to man, from man to god, reproduction has always been the first priority.
Males fighting each other over the chance to mate have been the norm since the beginning of everything.
You have no idea what kind of ridiculous things those Greek heroes are willing to do over the right to mate.
Worried they won't come? Please.
As long as the Amazons market this properly, your only real worry should be whether your territory is big enough to hold them all."
Lorne paused, then went on.
"As for why to add conditions to the selection at all: people rarely value what comes too easily.
Give it a hook, make it look hard to reach, and those heroes will come flocking, proud just to be chosen as breeding stock among the Amazons."
In Greek myth, conquering an Amazon woman was a dangerous dream every Greek hero carried somewhere in the back of his mind.
Violence and sex had always been the two surest ways to stir a man's blood, and they were also how men most liked to show off their strength and prowess.
Beating out other men through combat and competition, then claiming a beautiful, dangerous woman as the prize, was a temptation men, and especially heroes, restless by nature, simply could not turn down.
All the Amazons had to do was drop their usual restrictions and prejudices and put out an open call to eligible men across Greece.
After all, as demigods themselves, the Amazon warriors taking part wouldn't lack for looks, and they carried a charm all their own, the kind unique to a warrior race.
Once word reached the wolves of Greece, every last one of them would be racing each other to the Amazon camps to sleep with the women and pass on their seed.
There it was.
What could have been a mutually beneficial arrangement had, thanks to some brain-dead scheme cooked up by Ares, turned the Amazons and the Greek city-states into bitter enemies and nearly driven the whole tribe to extinction.
Tsk. Leave it to the god of war to think, and the whole world ends up laughing.
Hippolyta, entirely unaware that someone was mentally mocking her own father, found herself genuinely taken with these wild, unconventional proposals.
The Amazons had sent their finest to help defend Thessaly and ease tensions with the Greeks precisely because their falling birthrate had become such a pressing problem.
But that had only ever been a stopgap, not a real solution.
If there was a steadier way to solve the Amazons' troubles, she was certainly willing to try it.
Hippolyta drew a few sheets of parchment out of a magic array and pressed the wise man before her for more details on the parts she still found confusing.
"What if the men who come manage to learn the layout of our defenses?"
"Easy. Just move the Breeding Days to a fixed island and hold them there.
There's no shortage of deserted islands scattered across the Sea of Oceanus.
As for getting there, ferry your eligible Amazon women over by ship, and let the Greek men make their own way, in groups, on the appointed date. Convenient, too.
Anyone without the skill or the luck to survive the crossing gets fed to the sea monsters before they even arrive."
"Luck?"
"Never heard the saying? Luck is a kind of skill too."
"And if there are too many boys born? Sending them back one at a time sounds like a hassle."
"Wait until they're nine or ten months old, then send them together to a fixed island and hand them over to their fathers. As for wanting more girls, work out a potion that does the job. You're asking me about that?"
Watching Hippolyta take notes on her parchment like an eager student, question after question,
Lorne answered each one patiently.
Her questions weren't finished yet.
"And what if too few women conceive during the Breeding Days?"
"How long do your Breeding Days usually last?"
"Three days?"
"Too short. Stretch it to about ten.
And for the women waiting on the island to conceive, it's best to pick those roughly fourteen to sixteen days before their monthly cycle. Their chances of conceiving are highest in that window."
"Monthly cycle?"
"The stomach pain every month, when the birth canal bleeds on a regular schedule."
Watching the Amazon queen's blank stare, Lorne realized he'd been a little too optimistic.
If he actually wanted this system to take hold and grow the Amazon population, it looked like he'd need to give her a crash course in reproductive health and basic hygiene first.
Still, this whole matter could be handed off to Artemis to oversee, which would conveniently expand the domain of fertility and childbirth she'd inherited from her mother Leto, and firm up his little girlfriend's standing among the Amazons at the same time.
"All right, Your Majesty. Give me some time, and I'll put together a proper proposal outlining how this could work, then hand it to you. If there's anything you're unsure about, you can always take it to Lady Artemis."
Lorne paused there, calming Hippolyta down a little; after all, this girl had gotten a bit too excited.
"Of course, it's probably best to wait until things in Thessaly settle down before you all head back to the tribe and start experimenting with it."
Hippolyta nodded eagerly, then bowed slightly, fist to her chest, and thanked the wise man before her with solemn respect.
"You're a gracious opponent, and a great mind besides. Thank you for the guidance."
"No need to thank me. We both got something out of it. I'd say we're even now, wouldn't you?"
Hippolyta, hearing the teasing note in his words, felt a moment of quiet disbelief.
As the defeated party, she didn't have to serve in the victor's army, didn't have to trade on her looks, didn't have to buy her freedom with gold.
All she'd had to do was run a few errands and help keep Thessaly stable, and the debt of her defeat was wiped clean, with more benefit besides, straight from the man who'd beaten her.
A defeat like this felt almost like a dream.
"All right. Go let your sisters know you're safe. And tell them next time they run into some Greek man blocking their path, don't be so quick to attack. Not every god-blooded hero out there has my patience, or my restraint."
Lorne waved with a smile, half advice, half teasing.
Between their fierce, combative nature and their custom of dragging strong men back to the tribe to breed, the Amazons didn't exactly have a good name among the Greek city-states.
After so many clashes, whenever an Amazon or a Greek fell into the other side's hands as a prisoner, things rarely ended well for them.
That was exactly why Hippolyta had been so surprised at how easily she'd won her freedom after losing.
Back when the Amazon tribe still worshipped the war god Ares, Lorne would have had no reason to go easy on her.
But now that his little girlfriend Artemis had won the war among the gods and claimed the Amazons' faith away from Ares, he naturally wanted to see the Amazons and the Greeks bury the hatchet and find some way to live together, in peace, for mutual benefit.
Hearing that, though, Hippolyta looked visibly awkward.
"About that. I forgot to mention. I've already stepped down."
Lorne noticed the way her gaze slid away and felt caught somewhere between laughing and sighing.
He could more or less guess why she'd stepped down of her own accord.
Partly it was pride; as queen, she felt she had to answer for the defeat herself.
And partly, she'd worried that as queen she might be pressured into acting against her tribe's interests, so she'd resigned before honoring her promise, just to be safe.
But given how generously Lorne had actually treated her, that precaution now looked a little like judging an honest man by a rogue's standards.
Watching Hippolyta's gaze waver, Lorne rubbed his temples, at a loss.
"So who's the new queen of the Amazons now?"
"My sister, Penthesilea."
Hippolyta answered, looking down, then added with an awkward cough.
"Before I came here, I already went through the handover ceremony with her. She's taken my place as the new queen."
The moment Lorne heard that name, though, his face darkened.
He couldn't help it.
He remembered that sister far too well.
When he first ran into that Amazon column on the march, the white-haired, short-tempered woman leading them hadn't hesitated for a second before swinging a chain-mace weighing several dozen kilograms straight at his face.
Even after he subdued her, she kept shouting for a one-on-one duel.
If he was honest, out of everything that had gone wrong between him and the Amazon warriors that day, that hothead Penthesilea alone was responsible for a good seventy percent of it.
That temper. No surprise she was Ares's own daughter.
No wonder that, in the future, she'd lead the Amazons to Troy's side, fight the Greek coalition to the bitter end, and get sent to the underworld by Achilles for her trouble.
No, this wouldn't do.
Put someone with that kind of temper on the throne, and the Amazons and the Greeks were bound to keep clashing until they ended up as outright enemies again.
By comparison, the former queen, Hippolyta, might be a bit rigid, but she was far more mature and level-headed.
Lorne muttered to himself, running through everything Hippolyta had going for her over Penthesilea.
In the original Greek myth, Heracles's ninth labor had been to retrieve Hippolyta's War Belt of Ares and present it to Princess Admete, daughter of his cousin King Eurystheus.
Back then, Hippolyta, moved by pity for the great hero's plight and respect for his strength, had agreed readily enough to give up the belt, hoping he'd leave the Amazons in peace.
But just as she was about to hand the War Belt over, the rest of the Amazons, misled by a rumor, mistakenly believed their queen was being held hostage and forced into it.
They rallied and attacked Heracles and the friends traveling with him.
In the chaos that followed, Heracles fought back without mercy, killing seven or eight Amazon warriors outright.
As things spiraled, Hippolyta had no choice but to step in and call a halt, surrendering the War Belt in humiliation to save the life of one captured sister and see Heracles and his companions safely away.
From that point on, relations between the Amazons and the Greek city-states only grew worse.
Hippolyta had done everything she could to smooth things over and hoped for peaceful coexistence between the two sides.
But later, this same Amazon queen died in a clash with the Athenians, and after that, any hope of peace between the Amazons and the Greek city-states fell apart entirely.
For a long stretch of years after that, these fierce warrior women fought the Greek city-states to a standstill again and again.
Not until the Trojan War, when the Amazons, led by their new queen Penthesilea, joined Troy's side and were wiped out to the last woman, did the once-glorious Amazon tribe finally begin its decline.
So if it were up to him to choose who led the Amazons, he'd want Hippolyta, the queen inclined toward the Greeks, in charge, not Penthesilea, that iron-fisted hothead.
Besides, the plan he had just laid out, bringing the Amazons and the Greeks closer together, would probably only work in the hands of someone as steady as Hippolyta.
With that in mind, Lorne offered a gentle word of caution.
"The misunderstanding between us is settled now. You can go back and explain everything to your sisters plainly. I wouldn't be so quick to step down, though. Someone with Penthesilea's temperament doesn't strike me as fit to be queen."
"But I've already handed the throne over to my sister. And it happened with the goddess Artemis herself as a witness."
Hippolyta looked troubled at that.
Lorne waved the concern off easily. "So have Artemis preside over switching it back. Simple enough, isn't it?"
"...?"
"Use this to make an offering to your patron goddess. Tell her what I told you. She'll agree."
Lorne pulled a Gorgon emblem out of his robes and tossed it to Hippolyta, then yawned and headed off toward his bedroom, half asleep on his feet.
Would this actually work?
Hippolyta turned the bronze emblem over in her hands, hesitated a moment, then finally crouched down and began tracing out Hermetic glyphs, preparing a rite of divine descent.
A quarter of an hour later, the Amazon queen knelt in the courtyard, set the bronze emblem as an offering at the center of the completed magic circle, bit her finger, let a drop of her divine blood fall, and called out her patron goddess's name.
Hmmm.
A cool resonance answered her call, and the light of the full moon poured down across the completed circle, gathering into a tall, graceful figure.
(End of Chapter)
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P.S: The Patreon run is fifty chapters ahead of this one, if you'd rather read it there: [Patreon.com/abhi28]