Chapter One: Gift

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The amphora stood on the feasting board as on an altar—a foreign idol awaiting homage. I stood before it in the vast windowless hall, my palms sweating, fists clenched, defying the itch to smash it on the slates. For, I was sure it was a messenger marched hundreds of miles across the steppe to our fortress doors.

Gifts are uninvited guests. They bear expectations, impose obligations. They establish bonds as strong as any shackle, which cannot be broken by any hammer but war.

“Is this his idea of a joke?” I asked of father, who came to stand beside me, his arms crossed firmly over his chest.

“I’ve never known Ariapaithi to be a humorous man,” he said, frowning. 

“Then, what in the gods’ name is he thinking?” 

Together we interrogated the Skythian king’s gift, mystified by the squat vessel basking in the torchlight, mocking us in our own court. Father shook his head as he grasped the double handles and drew the unopened jar nearer the torch. Glazed and embellished all over in black, a wide ground of red clay encircled its belly. Against this fiery sunset, two painted figures froze in the deciding moment of battle. 

At first glance, I admit I found the amphora quite beautiful. The exotic images, the delicate artistry were things of wonder. But then I looked closer. Among those elegant forms, a scene unfolded. A man—a giant—draped in a lion’s pelt raised a club in one hand. In the other, he brandished a golden cord against the rusted sky. On the ground cowered a figure in trousers. Blood flowed from her brow while she raised her shield to fend off the coming death blow. She was Amazon—what the Hellenes called women like me. He, some hero whose name I hoped to never know. His occupation, though, was all too plain. Brush and kiln conspired to join eternal conquest to eternal defeat, sealing them like creatures in amber upon the hardened clay. The vessel’s splendor masked something malicious, something vile, as beauty so often did.  

Why would the Skythian king send such a thing to us, and at a time like this?

“He’s proud of his extensive trade,” father offered. “He just wants us to know how profitable this alliance will be.” 

“Is that all he wants us to know?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.  

“Anaiti, it has nothing to do with you.” He dropped the jar onto the table with a thud. “Don’t always be so mistrustful.” 

“I am the way you made me,” I said, smirking. 

“Heh, you are your father’s daughter,” he said with grudging pride. “Your mother’s, too: quick to bristle at every insult. But it will serve you ill now. She’d tell you that herself. The hamazon lays aside her arms—and all that goes with them—when she finally leaves her father’s home.”

Held captive by the painted scene, I nodded, not meeting his gaze. Is that what mother had done when she wed—surrendered her honor along with her arms? Perhaps the image was an omen. Every gift bore meaning. Possessed some spirit of its maker and the place that gave it birth. It lingered as a curse until it found reciprocation—or destruction.

“Like us, the Skythai are a fearless people,” father rushed to add, striding to his throne and settling himself before his spoils. “I would wager they flaunt this,” he waved his hand toward the jar, “to mock the Hellenes—men unduly frightened of girls.” 

“If that’s true,” I said, taking up the jar for closer inspection, “then I will be glad to meet them.” Father was always ready to feed my dwindling hopes with fresh fuel, knowing how we desperately needed this pact, and I clung to every scrap, despite my misgivings.

Only this past spring, before the festival of fire, our troops amassed along the border with the Agathyrsi, who slavered for tracts of our westernmost farmland. A skirmish ensued and a band of fifty young warriors were taken captive. Father tried to ransom them with grain from our stores. But the Agathyrsi king, Spargapaithi, had the warriors taken to a grove in his country. There, every man but one was sacrificed to their gods—hung from the trees, speared, and dismembered, their heads mounted on poles around the sanctuary.

The lone survivor was a warchief called Dagaric, our tribe’s champion, whose right hand they roasted in a brazier of burning coals before sending him home to relate all he’d seen. Father made me sit here in this hall beside him and listen so I’d know the enemy of our people. He made me look upon the raw, crackled hand of Dagaric that would never again hold spear or sword. Whatever doubts I might have had about the Skythai, they paled beside what I already knew of the Agathyrsi.

“Skythai manners are strange,” he said, “nothing more.”  

Stranger to some than others. Skythai often visited our court to conduct business with father. No matter the season, they refused accommodation within the safety and comfort of the fort, choosing always to sleep in the fields among their horses. Since I was a girl, I’d been warned to keep clear of such men, deemed little better than predators haunting the wilds. I’d never had cause to speak with them, but I often stole away beyond the walls and watched them from the edge of their camps. More beasts than men they seemed at times. Their unbound world, their feral lives, reminded me of my youth—stirred something buried but not dead within me.

Now that the snows had subsided and the rivers were passable, it was only days until we would depart for Skythia, where I was to be given to Ariapaithi. Perhaps then, the true meaning of the king’s troubling gift would reveal itself.

The painter’s purpose, however, was unmistakable. And I could not shake the image of that dying Amazon, nor the exquisite attention the Hellene had lavished on rendering her downfall.

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Chapter Two: Arrival

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