Father rubbed his eyes.

  “Apollo gave me the gift of future sight. Isn’t that true, Cassandra, my dear?”

  “As much as I have it.”

  “This is the future I see: Menelaus will come with his fleet of heroes to besiege the tall towers of Troy, but we have—”

  Eurus dropped a two-headed calf at Helenus’s feet.

  Everyone gasped, even Helenus.

  From the balcony, Aminta said in the quiet that followed, “This portent needs no interpretation. Troy will suffer if these two stay.”

  “My children,” our father began.

  I started to hope.

  The monstrous calf was still alive. It lowed pitiably through two throats.

  “I will not risk—”

  Helenus, who seemed to have recovered, held up a hand. Father stopped.

  “Which god do you imagine sent the monster? We all know Poseidon adores the Greeks. Achilles’ mother, Thetis, wants her son to be safe, and everyone knows he’s to die young if he goes to war.”

  I saw where this was going. What could I do?

  Helenus listed gods and goddesses who were more friendly to the Greeks. Then he said, “They fear us. Our heroes surpass theirs—Hector, Aeneas, Agen—”

  Eurus dropped a dead raven on him, but Helenus used it to fuel his argument. “One of them wants to frighten us.”

  The calf moaned again.

  When it stopped, Helenus said, “I prophesy this with the power that Apollo gave me: Troy will defeat Greece. Tribute will pour in from the city kingdoms.”

  Three crows flew down—real, living crows. From their flight, Eurus couldn’t have blown them in. They landed on Helenus’s shoulders and pecked his cheeks. Everyone saw them. I know because Mother ran to him and bravely shooed them away.

  Speak, crows! Tell my parents that Troy will fall!

  They flapped away.

  Father said, “Son, if you’re right, then the seer who foretold about Paris at his birth was wrong. If you’re wrong and Troy will be destroyed, those events will happen. No one can evade destiny.” He turned to Paris. “You and your wife may stay.”

  I saw Troy burning.

  Eurus didn’t finish what he might have meant to say to me on the shore. We doubled each other’s sadness. I stopped visiting him, because I reasoned he’d be happier without me, but I sent a servant with offerings every day and continued weaving his himation.

  I played with Maera and predicted small moments just before they arrived. I didn’t look further into the future than a few minutes ahead. My gift allowed me to spend more time with Hector than I would have without it. After he and Andromache married, I smiled at her working at her loom across the women’s quarters. I rarely visited her there because I wanted her to have friends.

  In a year, the Greek ships sailed into our harbor.

  When Agamemnon and Menelaus entered the palace after the Greeks made camp, I didn’t hang over the balcony to see them. They had come to negotiate for Helen’s return, but she wouldn’t be returned. Why watch it happen?

  The next day, the war began.

  Part Two

  Rin

  A hoopoe fans its feathers in the dust;

  mares race across the plains.

  A proud Amazon draws back her bowstring

  and shoots her arrow,

  thinking she can wound the moon.

  1

  I ride Short Black into the mountains long before daylight, as I’d been doing for a week. Young White Chest, my hound, trots along and stays with me after I dismount to climb among boulders and rockfall. I hope not to turn an ankle in the dark. As the sky lightens to gray, I make out a rivulet, cutting between two crags. Grass pokes up from cracks in the stone.

  The boulder we’d hidden behind before seems unlucky, so I choose again, an overhang where three rocks meet. I pull my bow and five arrows out of my gorytos, the case that holds my bow and arrows, and stand still. A hoopoe calls, Oop-oop-oop.

  After a few, slow minutes, Young White Chest’s ears prick. I hear irregular taps. The hound watches me. I wait. Wait. Clench my fists. Wait.

  I hear lapping.

  Wait.

  I raise my bow and jump out while nocking an arrow.

  The ibex, a big male with magnificent horns, looks up. I loose my arrow, which pierces his shoulder. That won’t slow him. He flees upward, fast for such a big beast. I shoot again, and Young White Chest gives chase.

  My second arrow goes wide. Cybele, I pray, thank you for bringing him to me. I’ll reward you by keeping him.

  I reach for more arrows and clamber, seeming to bounce from rock to rock. Young White Chest is with the goat, nipping his ankles and slowing him. I shoot from below and pierce his stomach.

  In the end, he takes fifteen arrows before he falls, and one more finishes him. A lump rises in my throat when life leaves him. Why am I sad since I wanted him?

  Soon, though, pride and happiness take over. I spend a while admiring him. I’d never managed more than small game before. “All of you will be used,” I promise his carcass.

  Then I run for Short Black and gallop to our wagons for help bringing my kill home. Young White Chest trails us, falling behind.

  My mother, Queen Pen, promises not to let Barkida find out what I’ve brought down. Though she’s our queen, Pen does everything we all do, and she’s a fine butcher. I spend half the afternoon scraping blood and skin away from the horns.

  When I finally finish, I hide the horns behind my back and stand over Barkida, where she’s kneeling in the dirt on the other side of the wagons from the rest of us. I bounce on my toes and grin.

  “You again.” She doesn’t look up.

  I don’t say anything.

  She goes back to rubbing dried horsetail sprigs along one side of a length of oak to smooth it. When she’s finished, the wood will be as slick as dewy grass.

  In my imagination, her big hands are my hands. I feel the rough bark cradled along my left arm. In my right hand, the horsetail is scratchy.

  Barkida won’t let me try this task, though I’m convinced I’d do it well. Only she and Gamis, our second bowyer, perform all the steps to produce a bow.

  With the hand that holds the horsetail sprigs, Barkida pushes her red hair away from her forehead. We’re all redheads. The Greeks call us Flames of Rage and are cautious in their dealings with us.

  “You’re in my light, Rin.”

  I step to the side, even though she’s already in the late-day shadow of her wagon. Her gorytos leans against a wheel. Mine still rests at my left hip on the strap across my shoulders. An Amazon—woman or girl—keeps her best weapon close. Our favorite possessions are our bow and arrows, and we never know when we’ll need them.

  Over the sh, sh of her scraping, Barkida says, “Be useful. Get a skin ready.”

  She wants me to make glue, but I don’t move.

  Finally, she turns. “Rin?”

  I shake my head.

  She frowns, but it’s a mock frown. “Why not?”

  “My hands are full.” I’m making her ask.

  “What do you have?”

  I bring them out.

  “Rin!” She groans as she stands to take the ibex horns from me. One she puts on the ground and the other she turns over in her hands. “I haven’t seen a pair as good in years.”

  Happy tears threaten to spill. “Let me help you work it when it’s ready.” In a few months, after the horns dry, long strips will be cut from each one for a bow’s limbs. The strips will be scraped smooth, steamed, and gradually shaped. Making a bow is complicated and slow.

  Instead of answering, she asks, “Did you take down the goat?”

  I nod.

  “Rin, you might make a mistake and waste part of the horn.”

  “I’d be careful!”

  “Thanks for your gift.” She goes to her wagon and takes out a length of felt. “I’ll use one of the horns for Rethra’s bow. You’ll have a place in the rites when she gets it.”

  Rethra is my cousin. She’ll receive her bow when she’s big enough and strong enough for it. I got mine at the beginning of the past winter.

  Barkida puts the horns in the wagon, atop a pile of felt sheets, then returns to me. “They’ll be dry enough by . . .” She calculates. “Midsummer. We need glue now.”

  I don’t move.

  She takes my face in both her hands and smiles into my eyes. “You want to learn to do everything, right?”

  “Every single thing.” I’m almost as tall as she is. “Already, I can hunt and shoot.” I went out with Pen on our band’s last raid, when we cut a dozen sheep out of a flock and herded them away with us. Along with everyone else, I shot backward at the villagers who came after us, who never got close enough to be hit.

  I continue my list. “I gave Rethra her first tattoo.” With her mother supervising, and the sun in the tiny sunburst is more oval than round, but it looks pretty on her left calf. “Also, I etched a fawn into my gorytos gold.” We hammer flat the gold we get from spoils and tribute. Then we engrave designs on the sheets and cover our bow cases with them.

  I pinch out a bit of my leggings, which collapses back when I let go. “I’ve made more felt than this. I can do every step. Can’t I make just Rethra’s bow?” I don’t want to actually be a bowyer, because bowyers aren’t allowed to hunt or fight. We can’t afford to lose them.

  Groaning again, Barkida kneels to resume her polishing. “If she understood anything,” she says, “she wouldn’t make such a stupid request.”

  She is me.

  “I would spend four years teaching her to make one bow. I could die in less than four years.”

  Barkida isn’t old, just an adult, but anyone can die at any age. People sicken or are killed in battle. In a skirmish, another cousin of mine caught an arrow in her shoulder and was gone in two hours. We poison our arrows with snake venom. So do other bands.

  My nose is suddenly stuffy. I stand over Barkida, remembering my cousin. I feel as heavy as the ibex carcass.

  Barkida goes on. “She could die, and then I would have wasted my time.”

  I remember that Cybele honors my cousin, and she’s fighting now in whatever wars the goddess wages.

  I give up. “I’ll prepare the goat hide.” Glue-making starts by boiling scraps of hide in water.

  My ibex’s skins make an awkward bundle. I heave them into Barkida’s wagon, saving a single length in my hands.

  Aunt Lannip bellows, “Zeeyaa!” It’s the dinner shout. My ibex is cooked.

  I go to our wagon, where we keep our things and where I sleep at night with Pen. I climb in and put the skin on top of a pile of felt. Then I find my willow-wood bowl, which is light as a handful of grass. My gazbik—spoon on one end, ladle on the other—is harder to locate, because it’s small and likes to dive between blankets. Pen says I’m untidy. When I have it, I head for the blankets and skins that are spread around the cookfire.

  Pen and my aunts and older cousins take turns cooking. Tonight, it’s Lannip, so everything is sure to be good. Pen waves to me to join her and Young White Chest on a lion skin rug as soon as my bowl is full. When Pen cooks, I help her. I’m learning cooking too. People still tease me about the weeds I once added to a stew in hopes of making it more pungent.

  Away from the fire, strips of meat hang from branches of the only tree here, an oak. Now, in early spring, the tree is bare except for ribbons of ibex, dripping blood. Lannip didn’t put the whole goat in our deep iron pot. Once the strips are air-dried, we’ll eat them for months, whenever we don’t have fresh kill. Amazons never go hungry.

  Lannip limps to the pot. The others have served themselves, but she takes my gazbik from me and ladles stew into my bowl. “I buried the best for the hunter.”

  The tastiest part is the back meat.

  “And I saved the biggest carrots. Here are dandelions and bulrush hearts.” The gazbik goes back in. “And juice.” She pours on the gravy. “Now yogurt.” From an open leather bladder, she spoons a dollop of yogurt on top of the stew.

  I thank her and take a silver cup from the jumble of silver cups around the silver pitcher—all plunder from raids on villages. The pitcher holds fizzy koumiss, fermented mare’s milk.

  When I sit, Pen rises to her knees. “Ouch!” She rubs her hip.

  Every Amazon past early womanhood has aching hips or knees or both. Already, I feel twinges when I stand up. When we meet other bands in autumn to worship Cybele, everyone—men too—limps. Cybele gave us horses, and horses bounce us into pain. We spend as much of our lives on horseback as walking on earth’s belly.

  I manage not to spill my meal while Pen hugs me, musses my hair, takes my face in her hands, shakes my head back and forth, and, finally, kisses my cheek. “Another hunter for the band.”

  Young White Chest, the beggar, uncurls himself and sits up, staring at me. With the knife from my belt, I spear a morsel of meat and hold it out. Young White Chest eats and lies down again. He knows better than to expect more.

  In a big voice, Pen says, “Rin will be queen after me, and my next daughter will be her lieutenant, and the daughter after that will be her lieutenant.”

  Some laugh. Some cheer. No one is unhappy.

  Pen had a son last year, but she gave him to his father, who leads a band of men, to raise. We keep our daughters and teach them to be riders, hunters, and fighters (or, occasionally, bowyers). The fathers do the same for their sons.

  We’re a small band. Pen is queen over forty adult subjects and twenty-seven children, all of us women or girls and all blood relatives. Everyone loves my mother. Anyone who doesn’t, leaves or is chased away.

  Aunt Zelke says, “How many daughters, Pen?”

  “As many as I can make!” She sits again. “I’m proud of you, Rin.” She laughs. “Before you killed that enormous ibex, I had to content myself with loving your shining hair, your endless freckles, your big hands.”

  We all have freckles, but mine are so crowded together, I expect fighting to break out.

  I protest. “I went on the raid!” My first.

  “Did you hit a villager?”

  “No one hit anyone!”

  She’s laughing again. “Exactly.”

  I taste the ibex. Succulent, tender, juicy. I had gotten it when it was full grown but not so old that it would be stringy.

  Pen and I settle in to steady eating. People murmur. A light breeze blows from the north, fresh, chilly, but without winter’s bite. The first star comes out. My older cousin Khasa takes out her bone flute and starts a melody.

  In unison, we sing, “We’ve eaten meat. One of us hunted. One of us cooked. We have music.”

  We fade out until a high pure voice comes in. “We have our horses . . .” The voice quiets.

  Aunt Serag: “Our flocks . . .”

  “Our grassland . . .”

  Pen, with laughter in her mellow voice: “Our daughters . . .” She puts her arm across my shoulders.

  I sing, “Our queen . . .”

  “Our sky . . .” As if we own it. How confident we are.

  “Our bows . . .”

  In turn, voices name our weapons as the sky blackens. The stars brighten, and my eyes get used to the dark. People name events of the day. Barkida sings, “Ibex horns . . .”

  Finally, our ideas peter out. We stop to take a breath before the usual ending, but Rethra pipes in. “Our tattoos.”

  Yes, it was good to mention them.

  We all join in for the end. “We’re what you mean for people to be: riders, fighters, hunters, roamers. Cybele, this is our song for you. Thank you, Cybele, for smiling on us.”

  Everyone stands. Young White Chest follows me as we bring our bowls to the dying fire, where the dogs lick them speckless. Tomorrow, we’ll wash them in the river.

  Young White Chest growls, barks, and rushes away. All the dogs are barking.

  Two men ride straight to the crowd of us and rein in their horses. Slung across their chests are ridiculously enormous bows. Their quivers hang from their belts. Even though they’re on horseback, I can tell both are shorter and stockier than we are. Darker too. They’re the brown of oakwood to our yellowy white of mare’s milk.

  One man says, with an accent, not pronouncing his l’s, “We’re ’ooking for Queen Penthesi’ea.”

  Pen goes to them. “Yes?”

  The man, who seems to be the speaker for both of them, says his name is Pammon, and he’s a son of King Priam of Troy, where war has been raging for years. I press my hands together and wish on my bow, my arrows, my strong body.

  The man’s voice takes on the cadence of a recitation. “Mighty Troy hovers between defeat and victory. Renowned is the courage of the Amazons. Warrior women and their immortal deeds will propel us to success. Will you come to our aid?”

  Pen says nothing.

  Say yes! Please!

  Pen! Why are you waiting?

  The man’s eyes travel from one of us to another and pass by me quickly.

  At last, Pen says, “We’ll take what spoils we want and as much as we want.”

  Pammon thinks for a moment, then nods.

  “I’ll command us. No Trojan will tell us how to fight.”

  Pammon agrees to this too.

  “We’ll rescue you.” Pen turns to me. “Yes, puppy. You can fight with us.” Back to Pammon: “We’ll stop for a day at Cybele’s rock to worship her.”

  My true life is beginning.

  2

  Pen chooses eleven others to fight with us, among them Lannip, Serag, Zelke, and Khasa. The Trojans seem satisfied. I’m untested, but everyone else is a seasoned warrior. The unchosen in the band will wait for us to come back.

  At dawn, we’re ready to leave, though the others are just beginning to sit up in their wagons.

  Each of us warriors—including me!—has a skin flask of koumiss, a sack of dried meat: rabbit, deer, squirrel—not my ibex, which is still fresh. We’ll hunt as we go and drink raw milk when the koumiss runs out.

  My gorytos is slung across my shoulder. From my wide leather belt hang my shield and my other weapons: battle-ax, spear, and sword. I used the spear once to fend off a lion, which I failed to kill—and vice versa.