Chapter 4
The kings and queens of other countries wore crowns and held scepters. The chiefs and their wives in other tribes lived in tents embroidered with gold thread, ate from silver plates, and wore shimmering tunics. Talestria, queen of the Amazons, had no jewels or sumptuous gowns. She was not crowned. She simply dazzled. She was queen and warrior chief by her wisdom and strength.
Talestria held no scepter. She had no powers. No one in our tribe liked power. The word was forbidden, cursed. To us, the daughters of the steppe, women who valued freedom, our queen was like the nectar hidden in the heart of a flower. She was that fragrance transmitted from generation to generation.
The spirits of our ancestors chose one girl as the incarnation of their power. The queen was our voice to communicate with the invisible world. She was the path that led us to the Siberian glacier.
I, Tania, did not know where my queen had been born. All the girls in our tribe had been abandoned as children. What did her mother and father matter, what did it matter which blood flowed in her veins? Talestria was betrothed to the God of Ice. She was the daughter of autumn and winter. She conversed with horses, sang with the birds, and read the stars. She held the secret of the spirits in the palm of her hand. She reigned over the seasons, over time as it sped past and fled, over eternity.
In the kingdom of the girls who love horses the sky was our timepiece and the trees our calendar. That is why the ancestors dictated that, wherever we went, we should plant trees for the girls who would pass there hundreds of moons later. They would cut their trunks and read the years that lay between us and them by the rings traced in the wood. Trees were an invisible river allowing us to go back in time or navigate the future.
Once a year we celebrated the queen's birthday, even though not one of us knew the date of her birth. Our ancestors decreed that the day of the previous queen's death marked the birth of the new queen. During that year's celebrations Talestria was sixteen.
She was decked in flowers, and her loose hair floated in the wind. She stood in the middle of a clearing, and we, the daughters of the steppe, danced around her. We threw flowers at her, and leaves and catkins. She smiled and accepted our homage without a word. Then we scattered in the long grass, where a great banquet had been prepared over several days. We ate, drank, sang, danced, and laughed. At nightfall we gathered around a huge fire. The eldest of our number narrated legends she had learned from those who were no longer. We fell asleep one by one beneath the starry sky.
We woke at dawn to the whinnying of horses. A new year was beginning for us, and with it came the great gallop to the market of the steppes.
In the market there were new faces: men in luxurious clothes selling off their jewels, and soldiers bartering over looted spoils. All around us people were talking in Persian, and this made me wary. This empire, which cultivated its taste for power, had been casting its covetous eye over the vast steppes for some time. Its military intrusions had been valiantly rebuffed by warriors from all the tribes working in unison. During our frenetic headlong gallops we sometimes crossed into its territory. From the rocky mountaintops we would watch caravans passing far below. Laden with worldly goods like ants toiling with pieces of food ten times their own size, they crawled laboriously over the arid land. The Persian Empire is the kingdom of men. We, the daughters of the steppe, are the birds of the glacier.
I lost no time finding the explanation for this pandemonium, and hurried to explain it to the queen. Alexander, the warrior who came from the West with his army of lancers and crossbow-men, had defeated Darius, the Great King of Persia. Babylon had fallen, and part of the Persian army had joined the ranks of the invading foreigner, setting off in pursuit of Darius, who had fled eastward. Alexander's name was on everyone's lips in every language. People said he was intelligent and beautiful as no man had ever been. They said that, decked in armor that flashed golden rays of light up to the very clouds, he had launched himself at the ramparts at the head of his army, and that no arrow could harm him. They also said this king liked only men; he was not drawn to a woman's flesh, had rejected Darius's three thousand concubines in Babylon, and declined the princess's proposal of marriage. They said he did not want to be the Great King of Persia, he wanted to be master of the world.
Talestria smiled. I asked why she was not worried like the chiefs of other tribes.
"Why worry?" she asked me.
"None of this bodes well. A powerful king has defeated an emperor. The Persian Empire that acted as our shield has fallen. The West will reach farther and farther into the East."
"Tania, we can wield weapons as well as any man. If the enemy appear on our horizon tomorrow, we shall fight them."
"Alexander, the son of a warrior and a sorceress, wants to be master of the world. His appetite knows no limits. He tortures and kills anyone who resists him. His army rapes the women in its path. Not satisfied with invading lands, they sow their seed and multiply using the wombs of the defeated. With such a strategy they will turn every free people into slaves!"
"The world is in decline," said Talestria. "The Persians were weakened by their wealth. Babylon was conquered because it had walls instead of wings. We, the daughters of Siberia, form attachments to nothing; we have no houses, no land, no fields, no gardens. We are invisible and invincible. We shall defend our freedom down to the last of our number. Death is nothing, you know that."
There was great agitation among the one hundred tribes of the steppes. Concerned about Darius's defeat and Alexander's advances, the chiefs wanted to find a common strategy to bar the way for the West. Some advocated a temporary tactical submission, citing those cities that had resisted and then perished in flames. Others sang the praises of courage and combat. Others suggested the possibility of sending men to infiltrate Alexander's army, to secure his trust and then put mortal poison in his food. Still others put forward the idea of a counterattack: We should invade Persia, they said.
The discussions went on for ten days. The debates were punctuated with banquets, when the men succumbed to alcohol, and sang and danced. The queen and I stood in our corner, watching impassively.
As usual, the kings reached no agreement, each afraid the others would steal his cattle while he was at war with Alexander. The men of the steppes had many, many discussions but never made any decisions. Tempers flared; they argued and then dispersed like a swarm of flies.
The tribes withdrew with their men, women, children, and flocks. Talestria, queen of the Amazons, ordered us to sharpen our weapons and stay vigilant on our homeward journey. She had spotted numerous Persian spies mingling in the Great Assembly. In her thoughts she had heard the inner murmurings of the tribal chiefs. These cunning ambitious men had decided to profit from the atmosphere of fear: they planned to devour the weaker tribes.
The wind made the white clouds billow. Green waves of vegetation reared up and crashed down toward us, then flattened to let us pass. A girl who had been sent ahead as a scout returned announcing that there were hundreds of horsemen in the hills. Talestria ordered us to slow our pace and form a line of attack.
A square formation of soldiers appeared, wearing magnificent clothes dulled by the dust. Their purebred horses looked exhausted; I had never seen such beautiful stallions, so tall and fine with long, thick manes. Ten men came forward from the ranks till they were one arrow's range from us. They called out to tell us that the Great King of Persia wanted to speak with our queen.