by P. K. Lentz
One of Arixa’s early hosts had gifted her a plain cloak of wool felt. When the half-day’s trek was half-complete, she pulled it up to cover her head, lest a comrade recognize her prematurely and spoil the surprise of her return.
By mid-day, she spied the tents marked by the fluttering golden banner adorned with the Dawn’s rising sun emblem. Though she had planned to enter the camp as any stranger passing through, upon seeing that sight on the horizon, her taste for childish ploys evaporated. She ran.
Even after five days on horseback and a full morning of walking, she ran faster than she had in her life.
Her body was indeed changed, as Vax and Fizzbik had claimed. The last six days had left her certain of it.
She ran over the plain, wind throwing the cloak’s hood from her head and cooling her close-cut scalp in a way she had only begun to get used to. Eventually, annoyed by the drag and flapping of the cloak, she shed it altogether. When she was close enough to discern the individuals in camp as small dark shapes, they took notice and sent up shouts of warning. Riders mounted and set out to meet whatever crazy man or woman was hurtling toward them.
Ivar had once told her of Sviar men who charged enemy ranks in a blind fury, clad only in wolfskins. Arixa forgot what he had called them. Like one of those Northers she came upon the camp heedless of the threat of four riders charging to intercept her. She was confident they all had sense enough to recognize her before cutting her down.
As she darted between the horses without slowing, the riders reined and wheeled their mounts. One cried out: “It’s Arixa! Arixa!”
Riding up from behind, they flanked her, shouting to summon every man and woman of the camp to its southern edge to witness their lost Captain’s return. In the space of a minute, Arixa found herself running toward a human wall of warriors drawn up not in defense but welcome, hands and voices raised.
Many of the welcomers raced forward to hasten the reunion. First among those was Ivar Shieldbreaker, who met her in a half-embrace, half-collision which sent them both to the ground where they rolled and wrestled like children in the grass. A moment later, others arrived and piled on until Arixa drowned in a sea of hands reaching out to touch her, familiar faces pressing in to kiss her cheek.
Throughout it, Arixa laughed.
She was home.
“Clear away! Clear away!” Ivar began to shout, digging her out from the pile. “You want to kill her again?”
When he had cleared a small space and helped Arixa to her feet, he studied her face with utter disbelief in his wide, blue eyes. He clapped one palm to either side of her jaw and rubbed as if to test that she was no phantom. When his gaze went to her scalp, his brow wrinkled. He looked straight into her eyes and squinted as if to peer past them and into her skull. For her part, Arixa had yet to stop smiling.
Ivar threw his head back and cried skyward, “Our Captain is returned to us!”
As an ecstatic cheer arose, the Norther jerked Arixa into a fresh embrace, squeezing her with rib-crushing zeal. Arixa returned it but held back, lest she break the Shieldbreaker with her augmented limbs.
The cheer was prolonged. When it faded, Ivar broke his embrace but clasped Arixa’s arms as though she might fly away again if he let go.
“We searched for days,” he said. His look remained one of astonishment. “We had hope, but..." He laughed, tearfully. “Where were you?” He touched her head. “And where is your hair?”
Every eye was on Arixa, every ear hers.
“I have taken a life-changing journey,” she said for all to hear. “I will share it later. For now, I would rest and be among friends. However much you missed me, I have missed you more. I love each and every one of you.”
In the minutes that followed, Arixa shared kisses of greeting and strong embraces with some two dozen men and women, all those who were closest to her. There was huge Dak, and Memnon and his sister Andromache, her uncle Matas and his son Plin. It was one of her dearest female friends Tomiris, a steppe-sister, who held Arixa the longest. A certain hollowness in Tomiris’s eye was perhaps explained by an absence: another woman who’d joined the band with Tomiris two years earlier, Opiya, almost always found by Tomiris’s side, was nowhere to be seen.
Others were missing, too, stark reminder of the battles Arixa had missed.
The homecoming celebration made its way to camp, where food and drink were forced on Arixa and twenty voices competed to inform her of events in and outside the Dawn since her disappearance.
Taking Tomiris quietly aside, Arixa learned that Opiya had indeed fallen to the Goth cavalry forty days ago. Holding Tomiris tightly, cheek against cheek, she stroked the woman’s hair and mourned with her for some minutes before wiping Tomiris’s tears and making her swear to ask for anything she might need for as long as they both lived.
All waited respectfully until Arixa returned with Tomiris on her arm before engaging her again. It was also out of respect that none asked Arixa where she had been. She had pledged to tell them later, and that was enough.
After a while, she and Ivar and Uncle Matas excused themselves to Ivar’s tent, where they sat on the rug. Arixa faced the two men, whose looks were intense with the need to know the full truth. Arixa was both eager and not so eager to tell it.
“I warn you,” she began, “there is a slight chance... just the slightest... that you won’t believe me.”
“We already believe you,” her uncle assured with conviction. Ivar nodded emphatic agreement.
Arixa smiled at the display of support. Her story was about to test it.
“The dog-man I saw was real,” she said. The pair’s expressions did not change, testament to their discipline and loyalty. “But I didn’t catch him. I fell and shattered my every bone. When I awoke, I was healed. It was the dog-man, whose name was Fizzbik, who had healed me. His companion told me that forty-four days had passed. Then he flew me back to Scythia in a skyboat from a land where the snow falls so thick that no one can live.
“There is more than that. Much more. But that is the shell of it, and I swear to its truth by Tagimasad and Tabiti and on the lives of all my sisters.”
Silence. Uncle Matas’s face was stony. Ivar’s brow furrowed as he stared briefly at the rug.
“Do you remember,” Ivar began, “—and I say this with utmost love and respect—do you remember the time I got very, very drunk and passed out in the cannabis lodge, and you lot just left me there? When I crawled out, I swore up and down that I had made love to the goddess Freyja herself and three of her shield-maidens.”
Arixa gave the Sviar a tight-lipped glare and said flatly, “This is no delusion.”
Matas swatted Ivar, who fell backward, but said, “I’m sorry, Arixa. You must know how it sounds.”
“Of course I know. That’s why I speak it in private.”
“Do you have proof?” Ivar asked, sounding hopeful that there would be some.
“I have this.” She fished in the small satchel on her belt and extracted the item which had been there since her exit from Vax’s skyboat.
She set the slender, polished, two-pronged fork on the rug in front of Ivar and her uncle.
Both stared. Ivar picked it up and examined it.
“Arixa, this is cutlery,” he said.
“It’s all I could get.”
He waved it. “Does it fly?” He opened his fingers and let it fall. “I don’t mean to give insult, Arixa. I am only saying what others will think. I am bound to you with the last drop of blood in my body, and no one is happier than I that you’ve returned. Yet, if even I have difficulty accepting this—”
“Ivar is right,” Matas agreed solemnly.
“I know!” Arixa said. “Those portions of the tale need never leave this tent. They are not what matters. It’s what I learned that is of more importance.”
“We’re listening,” Matas said.
“The one who fixed me and his companions—”
“Were they all dog-men?” Ivar asked.
> “No,” Arixa answered with a sigh. “Only one. The others were human. They gave me a vision. But it was not only a vision, not like your orgy with Freyja. It was a true glimpse of the past. I saw ships of the gods descend from the sky upon a city. They took scores of its people as slaves, slaughtered the rest, then smashed the buildings and towers with thunderbolts that didn’t stop until all was destroyed. This is what happened to the Parthians, the Hellenes, the Persians and every other nation that has built a city and ruled from it.”
“Arixa, you’re sounding like an Ishpakian.”
“Because they are right. The ones who gave me my vision, the ones who healed my body, they also gave these visions to Ishpakai and the other prophets. These gods—false gods—the Jir, forbid us to build cities. Each time they return, they destroy whatever we have built.”
Arixa leaned close to her uncle and friend, speaking urgently, willing them to believe.
“This year, when the false gods are due to return, they will devastate Roxinaki!”
When she was silent, Ivar sighed deeply. “Arixa...” he began disappointedly.
“Give us time,” her uncle intervened. “Give yourself time. You’ve only just returned.”
Arixa groaned, shoulders slumping in defeat. Shaking her head, she took a hand of each man’s tunic in one of hers. “I know how this sounds,” she told them. “To everyone out there, it can be a god who took me, not a dog-man. What’s important is that I have a new purpose now, one in which I desperately hope I will have your support.”
“What purpose?” her uncle asked.
Solemnly, Arixa announced, “We must empty the streets of Roxinaki.”
* * *
After a stunned silence, Ivar asked, “How exactly do you plan on doing that?”
“I don’t have a plan yet,” Arixa confessed. “First I must speak to my father, I suppose.”
“And when he politely refuses to abandon his capital?”
“I don’t know. But it has to be done. If we fail, everyone there will die. Or worse.”
“Of course we shall support you in this,” Matas said. “Won’t we, Ivar?”
“Goes without saying,” Ivar said. “I’m glad to hand the Dawn back to you. In your absence, they have accepted me as Captain, thanks mostly to your uncle and a few supporters like Dak. But not everyone is thrilled to take orders from a foreigner. I want to hand back command, but...”
“What Ivar means to say,” Matas unnecessarily explained, “is that the Dawn may resist suddenly becoming what sounds like an armed wing of the Ishpakians.”
“If you had some proof, it might be different,” Ivar added. “A haircut and a fork, even if it is admittedly the finest fork I’ve ever seen, will not be enough.”
“There is one thing I can prove,” Arixa said hesitantly. “They changed me.”
Ivar asked with sudden trepidation, “Changed? How?”
“My hosts didn’t only repair my broken body. They improved it.”
“In what way? I don’t understand.”
Arriving at a silent conclusion, Arixa stood. “What comes next is best done in plain view of all.”
She strode out of the tent into daylight. The two men trailed close behind.
“What are you planning?” Ivar asked worriedly.
Arixa didn’t answer. Instead, she called out over the heads of men and women who had already begun to gather at the camp’s center in eagerness to resume the company of their returned captain.
“Sandaksatra!” she called. “Dak! Please come. I need a favor from you!”
It didn’t take long for Dak’s massive frame to appear front and center. “I’m yours, Captain,” he said.
Arixa loudly addressed the war band. “Do all here agree that Dak is the strongest among you?”
A chorus of affirmatives.
“If any doubt it, come forward now and put him to the test!”
Silence.
It was the standard practice to establish camps near at least a small copse of wood whenever possible, so that a few trees might be felled for various uses from firewood to hitching posts. Some trunks, either vertically split or as rounds, typically wound up as tables for gambling. It was to one of these that Arixa walked, throwing a folded blanket over its surface.
She knelt before the covered table and set her elbow on it, her forearm pointing up with open palm.
“Dak, I challenge you,” she said.
There were a few uncertain laughs, followed by a more general laughter. Dak hesitated, but shrugged and took his place opposite her, smiling. The mass of watchers flowed around the table, surrounding them and crowding close. Most laughed, not quite sure what was happening but certain they would be entertained.
A chant went up in support of the challenger whom none must have thought stood a chance. “Arixa, Arixa, Arixa!”
“I apologize for this, Dak,” Arixa whispered across the table. “Feel no dishonor. This isn’t a fair contest.”
Confusion briefly wrinkled Dak’s broad face as he set his elbow opposite hers and clasped her much smaller hand in his large one. Smiling, he began to push. Arixa resisted. Dak pressed harder. Arixa matched the pressure, staring at him over their locked hands.
Dak’s smile faded as it apparently dawned on him that something wasn’t right. Leaning in, clenching his jaw and tightening his grip, he began to take the contest seriously.
Until now, Arixa had not strained herself. Now that her opponent was, she began trying in earnest. To the continued chanting of her name, she pressed until Dak’s hand began a slow retreat from the vertical. Gasps and whispers joined the chants as the onlookers became aware of what Dak had learned seconds earlier.
The giant trembled with exertion. Veins in his arm and neck bulged. His face went red as he put all he had into reversing the slow, backward, losing arc of his hand.
He failed. Half a minute into the contest, Dak’s knuckles struck the table, and Arixa, showing no sign of exertion, released his hand.
The chants of Arixa! turned into whoops of celebration, but those did not last long. By the time Arixa rose from the table and put her head close to Dak’s to say, “You are the greatest, Dak. Thank you,” the war band had sunk into stunned silence.
Stepping up onto the wooden round, Arixa addressed them.
“You know me!” she said. “I am the same Arixa who brought you together, who led you to countless victories. Who drank with you, bled with you, wept with you. You are my family. Not by choice would I ever have left you. It was the gods’ choice! I nearly died that day I was lost, and would have had Tagimasad himself not come to me. He healed my wounds, and more. As you just saw, he imbued my limbs with new strength.”
As she spoke, Arixa met the eyes, one pair at a time, of the men and women she knew and led. She turned slowly as she spoke to face in all directions and leave no one out. She had their rapt attention.
“The god also blessed me with knowledge,” she continued. “An unstoppable horde comes to devastate this land. When it reaches Roxinaki, all who are not slaughtered will be enslaved. All alike will suffer: the good and the wicked, the young and the old, warriors and cripples and craftsmen. None will be spared, regardless of clan or station. The gods gave me a vision of this coming devastation, and I know it to be true.
“This war band is strong. Our nation is strong. There is no enemy we haven’t crushed. But this horde is one which Scythia cannot stop, even if we summoned every bow and ax at our disposal. Our army would be broken. Yet there is hope. We must go to Roxinaki and convince the Shath to abandon the city and return its people to the plains and the old way of life. Our ways. That is how our great nation has endured for untold generations: as nomads. That is its only hope of weathering the coming storm.
“I understand there are Khazars to deal with. I burn to ride against them with you. In this I would follow Ivar, who has led you well in my absence. When that’s done, then I will go to the capital. I shall go alone if I must, for this is the path w
hich the gods have set for me. Any who wish to follow will be dearly welcomed. Your companionship is everything to me, and it would lighten my burdens a hundredfold to have you by my side. But you are free men and women, and your paths are your own to choose. You should choose them with care and not too swiftly. For now, there are Khazars to crush. Choose after that what is right for you.”
The band stayed silent as Arixa hopped down from the table. Ivar and her uncle each clapped her shoulders in support.
Sandaksatra, who had watched from the very front rank following his first-ever defeat at arm wrestling, strode up and stared at Arixa squarely, frowning.
But then, Dak always frowned when he wasn’t laughing or high.
Arixa gave the giant an apologetic smile and was about to offer ego-soothing words when he grabbed her torso and hoisted her bodily onto his broad shoulder. He turned, raised a thick, tattooed arm, and bellowed deeply, his voice splitting plain and sky like a battlecry, “Hail Arixaaaaaa!”
The war band echoed the cry.
What followed was almost a repeat of her earlier homecoming. When the crush of bodies eased, it was Tomiris who told her, “I think I speak for most. We would follow you off the edge of this world.”
Later still, in private, Ivar wondered aloud to her, “Why do I ever expect anything less than brilliance from you?”
“It’s not your fault you never learn, Ivar,” Arixa answered. “Still, you try.”
Seven
Nearly every year around this time, the Khazars came in search of better wintering grounds for their families and herds, and it fell to the many war bands of Scythia to turn back their incursions. Khazars presented a challenge in battle, for they fought much like Scythians did, relying on swift movement on horseback and their proficiency with the bow.
This day, the one following her return, Arixa sat in the saddle of her four-year-old red roan stallion, Turagetes, who thankfully had not been slaughtered in funerary rites. She looked down from upon a rise at a party of red-sleeved Khazar warriors in the distance. Their number, all mounted, looked to be at least twice that of the Dawn’s three hundred and sixty. Having seen the Scythians arrayed against them, spread in lines to Arixa’s left and right, they held back for now.