The Tattooed Princess

Women Warriors

        When Sharvur and his contingent of counselors with soldiers returned after four days, as planned, the Pazyryk people once again lined the dusty roads to greet them. The men returned in good spirits and made it a spectacle that their warriors had captured five women. These prisoners rode tied and gagged atop their own horses into the tent city. They were not ordinary women taken easily as the spoils of war like Zaria, Branka and Svetlana had been. These were members of the elusive Amazon culture—those legendary women warriors who fought with the ferocity of men and once lived as a large nomadic nation totally free from males.

            The name "Amazons" quickly spread through the crowd, as most of the Pazyryk had heard of these phenomenal women but had never seen one up close. With the pride of hunters returning with their kill, Sharvur's soldiers led the five young women into the square where all could behold them as an oddity of nature. It was obvious to the crowd of men, women and children, that these legendary women had practically had been raised on their horses, as even though their arms were tied behind them their animals moved deftly beneath their bodies almost as if two the creatures—woman and horse were one.

            Each had long, greasy hair and wore a tunic top with what seemed to be woolen tights with geometric patterns adorning them and short leather boots. Their tunics had a wide opening at the neck causing it to slide continually to the side exposing just one of their breasts. This was perhaps the origin of the myth that the Amazons removed one breast when the girls were young to allow them to be better archers. The fact of the matter was that their name "Amazons" contributed to the long-heald misconception.  The Greeks who encountered them on the battlefield heard them described by their own enemies the Persians  as "ha-mazon"—the phase meaning "enemy warrior."

            And to the Greeks, whose language dictated so much about the ancient world, their own term αμáζος—"a-mazos," meant "without breast." This name and misconception stuck for some five-hundred years, as the Amazons reportedly during their peak of power, fought on the side of the Trojans against the Greeks at the Trojan War. Their domain once spread far to the south near the Bosporus, around 1200 BCE.

            These captured women were apparently from one of the last clans of females who had held true to their traditional conviction to live without men and hold their own admirably against them on the nomadic plains of Eurasia. That they still existed in small numbers and were feared so many centuries later, proved just what a formidable foe these women had once presented around the borders of the Black Sea. They had not only been encountered and engaged in battles with marauding Greeks, adding to their myths and history, but also the Scythian nomads themselves from whom they had splintered away from--some half a millennium before.

            As the women warriors were being escorted by a group of soldiers to a location where they were to be caged, one of them, perhaps the boldest, suddenly gave a whistling command for them all to bolt away on their horses at full gallop across the plains. The group of Pazyryk soldiers gave them heated chase. And as it was becoming obvious that they would be out-run by the women, the commander of the archers gave the order to bring them down with their bows and arrows. This final  attack was brutally executed.

            Three of the five women were immediately and lethally felled by the shower of arrows, while one Amazon got away completely. This left the last woman on the hard earth where her beloved horse was shot from under her. When the soldiers surrounded her they found that she would not let go of her dying animal, all the while speaking to it in her native tongue and trying to comfort it.

            With great effort  she was finally apprehended and carried away from the horse, though it took four strong soldiers to do so. When word reached Sharvur of the incident, he ordered the remaining Amazon woman to be held under heavy security at the palace, specifically in the chamber formally assigned to Svetlana. As the Slavic slave recently had returned to the palace following her attempted murder by Dressa, Murka's mate, Svetlana remained under the care of Branka where she shared the room with her.