The Tattooed Princess: Book Two-- Escape to the West

Stolen by Daughters of the Moon

Seven days into their journey to the East, the rescue party of twelve were camped by a narrow stream, one of the last as the land became more barren and dry across the steppes. The entire group awoke just at sunrise to the sound of horses' hooves pummeling the turf around them, and noticeably not their own animals. Suddenly in a flash and thunder of dust, their sleeping circle was closely surrounded by mounted marauders. Zaria and Tsudros knew the look of these invaders only too well. They were a raiding party of Amazons—the women warriors of the plains who called themselves Daughters of the Moon.

To the Slavic men these attackers were so foreign that they had a hard time believing their eyes. That the entire party of these ten or so 'horsemen' were all women! At first the men remained stunned and waited to see what their options were in this new and suddenly compromised position. The Amazons had craftily surrounded them—their bows drawn and silent. They all dispassionately now waited for their leader to give some signal to release their arrows into the chests of their victims.

Zaria suddenly called out in what she remembered of the Amazon dialect.

"Daughters . . .wait. I am a woman. We must talk."

Their leader slowly rode forward.

"Speak!" she demanded.

"I am Zaria. Friend of your people. I was once a comrade with Aella of your clan when she was captured. And I traveled with young the young and brave Tomyris across the land. I tried to help them return to you from the Pazyryk kingdom."

The interchange of this dialect was totally indiscernible to all except Tsudros. 

"Are you the girl they call . . . the "Painted One?" the Amazon asked.

Zaria was surprised and puzzled by this unexpected description of notoriety.

"Your arms!" the woman demanded, and moving closer. "Let me see them."

Zaria, slowly stood and removed the long wrap she wore around her at night to cut the air's chill. And there before the Amazons and Slavs as well, was her majestic bird motif, with its wings trailing down from her shoulder to her hand.

"Yes. And now your back," The female warrior commanded. "Do you have leopards there?"

Zaria continued to undress her upper body and torso, then turned around making a dramatic display of the seven dancing leopard cubs, playfully rollicking down from her neck to the top of her buttocks. Tsudros looked on cautiously, albeit somewhat proudly.

"So it is you!"  this leader of the Amazons said with a sense of awe in her voice. "We have heard of your painted beauty from men we have killed across the steppes. And our own Daughters of the Moon have claimed to have seen you in their wanderings."

Zaria was still stunned by this revelation that she was apparently known for her tattoos over such a wide stretch of world, both hers and theirs.

"Please do not harm us," she said. "We return to the East to rescue my sister."

The woman now turned and addressed her poised regiment. Some were young, possibly the age of Zaria herself. Their diligence and respect was etched into their tanned faces

"It pleases our goddesses to see a female so special," she told them. "Especially one we have heard of like a legend. For she is like the rarest of birds."

She turned back to Zaria, still standing half naked.

"You are a gift to the eyes of women as well as men, Zaria. Our sacred Artemis must have given you special powers, in addition to your beauty." The leader then smiled back to her warriors with some hint of a pride of ownership.

The sound of this frightened Zaria, as she remembered all too well those powers she had once assigned to her by the Pazyryk shaman, Kreido. 

There was then an unsettling moment of silence.

"I have decided," the premiere warrior stated. "For the gift we give your men of their lives . . . we will take you  in return.  For there you will be at home with us. Putting what powers you have to work. And our eyes may never tire looking upon your painted beauty, Zaria."

Tsudros, who was following this verbal interchange intensely, suddenly began to rise to his feet in anxious protest. The Amazon's hand holding her sword rose above her head in a threatening and lethal gesture.

"NO!" Zaria called out. "Tsudros, let them take me," she said in her Slavic tongue. "I will find a way to escape, my love."

She then turned to Andrik and Marjan, leaders of the Slavic expedition.

"Do not resist them," she said. "They are wild and know the ways of warfare better than you. Just let me go with them. Your lives here and now will be spared."

Suddenly the other men comprehended what the terms of their attackers were—the beautifully ornate Zaria for their lives.

As tears welled up in Tsudros' eyes and the other men moaned and protested the terms of their salvation, the leader took Zaria by her hand and led her to the Amazon's horse. She ordered her to mount it, whereupon she climbed up behind her on the animal for their departure.

With the cheery sound of the birds in the distance welcoming the morning sun, their camp was suddenly disturbed once more. It was the sound of horses' hooves, now thundering away—leaving ten men angry and defiant, and only one severely heartbroken.

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