Disclaimers & Warnings: See Part 1

It was the seventh day following the defeat of the Legion of Serdica. In the predawn stillness, Tillit had sat above the village on the eastern ridge. Aliah sat quietly watching a few paces away. Suddenly the young princess' spirit had been overcome with anguish. She'd been pinioned by a burning pain that flared through her body, followed by a feeling of final peace in which no suffering remained. For a moment she was overwhelmed, and then she felt a change in the world, as the sky imperceptibly lightened before the coming dawn. In that moment, a rumor of the stillness her mother had so loved descended on the young princess, and she perceived the vast emptiness of the spirit.

Across the long leagues that separated her from Amphipolis, Tillit saw a vision of a shaft of light illuminating a tomb. She watched a figure with black wings gently lifting Gabrielle's limp body. The figure raised its head, and for a moment, Tillit looked her in the eyes. This figure was older, but she looked unmistakably like the girl that the young princess had once seen in her dream, crying bitterly in a stairwell. The shaft of light brightened and soon the figures were eclipsed. The vision shifted, and now Tillit saw two urns resting side by side on a pedestal of glistening marble. One urn was brown-black, the other creamy white. Around them shimmered a golden halo of living light.

Then Tillit saw the joyless dawn brightening the new day's accursed sky. Her feelings and the vision left her no plausible doubts. The reluctant High Queen of the Amazon Nation, soulmate of the Warrior Princess, Bearer of the Eastern Dragon and the wielder of the power of Lao Ma; she who had long ago been the Bard of Potidaea was no more. Tillit knew that her mother was finally gone forever and she broke down sobbing.

She eventually forced herself to convey the news from her vision to the council, and then she spent the day mourning her mother. The rest of the nation mourned with her. The young peasant girl, who'd accidentally become an Amazon on an afternoon fraught with destiny, had somehow become one of the nation's dearest queens.

That night, in the hut she had once shared with her mother, Princess Tillit studied the scroll Xena had penned so long ago. She had retreated into reading to alleviate the sorrow that the dawn had brought. Now, very little of the scroll remained unread, though she understood only a pittance of the truths hidden in its words. The night had grown late and soon she would stop reading, seeking a few hours of sleep. She unrolled the scroll to the next passages, but the text had changed. No longer were they the words of Lao Ma.

Gabrielle had told her that she didn't think the text was complete; it had been only what Xena had remembered and been able to reproduce. Here were words that had come from the Warrior Princess herself. Wisdom learned from her experiences in the world, before her adventures with Gabrielle. Tillit read Xena's words and felt a connection she'd never experienced. These words spoke to her like no others; not even her mother's scrolls had affected her on such a deep level. In these passages she found herself confronting the Warrior Princess, and what she read challenged and enlightened her.

Xena had once been a village girl, like Tillit, or like Gabrielle…someone's daughter, someone's sister. She had grown up knowing love and doubt, often happy and sometimes sad. But somewhere inside her had been a spark that would set her apart; something about her spirit that made her different. She had been driven by fate, had fallen to temptation and darkness, and then had turned away from it in remorse. She had spent the rest of her life trying to atone for her years of ambition and cruelty. In the process, she had drawn on her will to achieve what others didn't believe was possible for mortals, and by her will she had driven herself to wrestle with fate. Tillit read it between the lines. Xena had never claimed to be more than a warrior, and yet, she had been so very much more. She had fought and died, believing that she could form her destiny, both the bad and the good, with her will. She had believed that anything was possible.

With such audacity, she had attracted the attention of both mortals and gods. More than once, she had been counted among a god's mortal favorites. She had been the Chosen of the God of War, and she had been a Valkyrie.

In the days of her corruption of the King of the Norse Gods, Odin had taught her many secrets. Not the least of these had been the chants and the runes of fire. Xena had mastered them, to the point that she could ignite objects and inflame the hearts of men. Added to her natural ability, it had allowed her to more easily inspire warriors to bloodlust. The runes themselves were drawn on the parchment before her, and Tillit read the wording of the chant. They were the same runes that decorated the pommel of her dagger, the one that she'd found with her brother in the bog years before. The words of the chant resonated within her, unaccountably familiar, and she felt confident that she could access their power. Like the Warrior Princess, one could only succeed by trying.

Tillit gazed at an oil lamp, sitting across the room on the chest beside the sleeping pallet. It hadn't been lit since the night before. She recited the words from Xena's scroll, amazed at how easily she had been able to memorize them. Now she concentrated her will as she spoke, focusing it only on her desired goal, picturing the lighted wick in her mind's eye. Her view of the room lost focus with the depth of her concentration. The oil soaked wick sputtered and then burst into flames. She actually clapped and bounced in her chair when she saw it. It was something new, but also something dimly remembered.

She got up from the table, blowing out the lamp that lighted the scroll for reading. As she made her way to the sleeping pallet, she left a trail of clothing that Aliah would scold her about in the morning. (An unprepared warrior is often a dead warrior). Her boots were the last thing to clunk onto the floor. Finally she dived onto the pallet and drew the old blanket up to her chest. It had been a long day and she finally drifted off to sleep.


Tillit was in the midst of a desperate battle. The Amazon forest was a raging inferno, flames leaping overhead from tree to tree. The maelstrom roared like a dragon, driven by a gale of its own creation. Already she had heard the screams of warriors trapped and burning, driven into retreat by the flames. Many more would die before the sun set over the western ridges, while from the eastern border, the fire grew.

Now she was looking down on the Amazon lands, and she saw that the eastern quarter of the nation was obscured under smoke. Pockets of fire raged above the trees, and the hungry flames seemed to be licking at the heavens. Beyond the border in the east, she saw vast ranks of Roman soldiers, thousands of them, and hundreds had been detailed to start the fire. These soldiers were busy, like an unrelenting trail of ants, carrying casks of oil on their backs and into the woods. Watching them from a slight rise, fifty mounted officers directed the assault. Among them sat a man with graying hair, wearing a silver breastplate and armor. His bearing was commanding, and the officers around him did his bidding, quickly relaying his orders. Behind them she saw the standards of three legions from Moesia Inferior, planted in the grass.

Now it was the dark of night, and the Amazons were preparing to fire burning arrows into the vats of oil that the Romans were filling their casks from. A passage Tillit had read came to her; something Xena had written, that had wormed its way into her memory. Though Xena had died before her birth, Tillit heard her voice, silky and threatening, softly tell her that, "Sometimes, ya just gotta fight fire with fire".


Destiny was playing its hand again. Although the remnant of the northern tribe had joined itself to the nation, they had chosen to retain Gabrielle as their queen. It was not done as an insult to Cyane, but rather to honor Gabrielle for the wisdom and leadership she had shown. Because of her status, none of the other queens had objected. Now there was a question. Tillit was, by Right of Caste, the next in their royal line, but she was not yet fully trained to accept the duties, and she was a couple days shy of her seventeenth birthday. At seventeen she could rule a tribe, but to rule the nation, she would have to survive another four years. Many on the council hoped it would come to pass.

In the council, the other queens, particularly Varia and Cyane, urged her to accept the position, even if she wanted to appoint a regent and wait a year to take the reins of power. This was not unusual, especially if the new queen was very young. In this way, they hoped to cement her commitment to the Amazon Nation, and assure the continuity of its leadership. When Tillit realized that she wasn't going to be resented for her age or background, she agreed to accept. She would become queen of the remnant of the northern tribe, make Aliah her general, and confirm Backari as tribal shamaness. She would not wait a year. Rather, she would accept the queen's mask and position in a ceremony two nights hence, for it would be the full moon of June, and it fell on the 21st, the Solstice of the Sun, her birthday, and the longest day of the year. After the dream she'd had the night before, she'd decided that her place was with the nation, in war as well as in peace.

The tenth day following the defeat of the Legion of Serdica dawned bright, hot, and dry. A typical Midsummer Day, and a good day for a birthday and coronation. In the Amazon village, the preparations were being finalized with great anticipation. It had been a long time since a new queen had been installed, and the celebration that would accompany the ritual would be the party of the decade. After the battle against the Legion of Serdica and the death of their High Queen, the nation's tension and sorrow desperately craved release. Tillit had become self-conscious about all the fuss, but the Amazons, particularly those of her tribe, were exuberantly happy for her. She felt it was her destined place, to cleave to the new home and family she'd found. Deep down, she had to admit she was enjoying it.

Outside the Amazon Nation, the legions of Consul Adrianus were beginning the fourth day of their march from Serdica. At their unvarying pace, they would reach the eastern border of the Amazon lands in another day. Without stopping to savage the populace, they would take five days rather than eight to cover the distance.

"What did you just do?" Varia demanded of the young princess. The queen had just come to what she still thought of as Gabrielle's hut, to summon Tillit for the ceremonial bathing. As she'd stepped through the doorway, she'd noticed Tillit seated at the table, muttering, with an intense expression on her face. Then the oil lamp on the table had lit itself.

"Huh?" The princess asked, jerking around to see her visitor. She'd been concentrating so hard that she hadn't even heard her entering and the question had taken her by surprise.

"I thought I just saw that lamp light itself," Varia hedged, "and I was startled."

"Actually, I did light it," Tillit confessed, "it's a power that comes from the runes Odin teaches to his Valkyrie."

"Oh," Varia said, still not understanding. "Is this something your mother taught you?"

"No, Queen Varia," Tillit said nervously. She was still uncertain about how the queen felt about her mother's abilities. "I learned it from Xena."

Varia stared at Tillit. The girl hadn't even been born when the Warrior Princess died. How had she learned anything from Xena, if not by way of her mother? For a moment she suspected the princess was either lying or deranged. Then she realized that Tillit might be talking to ghosts...after all, Xena and Gabrielle had talked to the dead, and the northern tribes were steeped in rituals for accessing the spirit realm.

"What?" Tillit asked. Varia's staring and silence was making her skin crawl. The last thing she wanted was to be on Varia's bad side.

"How," Varia asked, speaking very slowly, "did you learn anything from Xena?"

"She wrote it all down in this scroll after she nearly killed my mother."

Varia glanced down at the scroll. There was no question about it; it wasn't in Gabrielle's hand. This writing was more disciplined, the letters formed and aligned with almost mechanical precision. It was in character with the warrior she remembered. The sight of it and the realization of its import brought Varia a rising anger.

"Are you telling me, that for the last forty-five years, the ability to start fires like that has been just sitting in a scroll in this deserted hut?" Varia's voice had been rising, and by the end of the sentence, she was almost shouting. At the noise, Aliah and Cyane popped their heads through the doorway. Tillit was cringing.

"What's the matter?" They both asked, looking back and forth between Varia and Tillit.

"Tillit, why do you have that lamp burning in the middle of the day?" Cyane asked.

"She lit it!" Varia answered. Now Cyane and Aliah were looking at each other.

"I guess it's alright if you needed the light to read," Aliah offered, trying to defuse the tension. She was wondering if Varia was becoming unstable, or if she'd started blaming Tillit for Gabrielle turning the Romans to stone. She hadn't been quite the same since the war ended.

"I meant," Varia elaborated in an exasperated tone, "that she lit it without touching it."

Cyane looked confused before the meaning dawned on her. Aliah looked elated, while Varia simply appeared irritated.

"That's wonderful," Aliah said. She was one of the few Amazons who had directly benefited from Gabrielle's abilities, still believing that her resurrection had been a supernatural feat. She didn't feel threatened by such abilities anymore.

"Uhhh, yeah," Cyane hesitantly agreed, thinking that Tillit was developing Gabrielle's powers. "Like mother, like daughter." The idea made her feel sort of warm inside.

"But…" Tillit started uncertainly.

"She learned to do this, from a scroll that's been lying here since some visit of Xena's," Varia protested, her voice rising again, "and all this time we could have been defending the nation with this power."

For a while, the four of them stared at each other and at the lamp, innocently burning on the table. Finally Tillit sighed and blew out the flame.

"So anyway," she asked, "I was supposed to take a bath?"

In the late afternoon, Tillit stood before the six queens, wearing an outfit decorated with beads and feathers. It was unusual in that it proclaimed her to be a queen of the northern tribe, but also documented her heritage from her mother's original southern affiliation. It was a subtle acknowledgement that, someday, she would be able to claim the rule of both. Behind them, the rest of the council gathered. They were all standing on the platform, and the meeting ground was packed with Amazons. The young princess swore to uphold the traditions and laws, and then she raised the new queen's mask, and the crowd cheered as she placed it over her face for the first time.

Varia recited Tillit's titles, and even she was impressed. "Tillit, Queen of the Repatriated Amazons of the Northern Steppes, daughter of Gabrielle, the late High Queen of the Amazon Nation, descendant of the Utma, the first Cyane, heiress of the north and south, and wielder of the power of the Valkyrie."

And the daughter of the Norse hero, Beowulf, Tillit thought to herself.

And the reincarnation of the lost Valkyrie, Brunnhilda.

When the velvet shadows of night fell across the valley and the celebration was prepared, Tillit ignited the first torch from a distance of twenty yards. Under the full moon, would have been the party everyone had dreamed of, but scouts from the eastern border burst into the gathering, breathless. They reported that during the evening a huge encampment had sprung up half a league east of the border. The scouts had given up counting watch fires, for they were too numerous. From the standards, however, they could discern the presence of three full legions of Roman troops and four wings of cavalry. They bore the banners of Moesia Inferior, and were therefore from Novae, under the command of Consul Marcus Gaius Adrianus. There would be over twenty thousand cavalry and infantry preparing to deploy, and so far, their intentions were unknown. They outnumbered the Amazon warriors by more than thirteen to one.

"Happy Birthday to me," Tillit whispered. She wished her mother were still here.

The council convened immediately, the gravity of the situation helping to shake off the effects of the alcohol they'd already consumed. Tillit sat in a chair in the inner circle, and she alone had more than suspicions to declare. She had dreamed of the near future, but until tonight, she'd had no clue as to just how near it was. Now, it was her responsibility to speak.

"My sisters," she began, thinking it strange to be addressing them directly, "I have been given a vision of a battle, and I believe the Romans will assault the nation very soon. Three nights ago, I dreamed of Amazonia burning. Romans bearing casks of oil started fires in the forests to the east, and many of our warriors were trapped by the flames and killed. As the vision ended, our archers were moving to attack the oil supplies. We must prepare for war."

"Why didn't you speak of this sooner?" Varia asked from her seat in the center chair. Her tension was palpable to everyone in the room.

"I had no way of knowing whether this dream was of the long past, near present, or distant future," Tillit answered.

"Just like a dream," La'shaunti added with a sigh, "telling of the what and not the why, of the where and not the when. There's no way to tell prophecy from nightmare either. Annoying that they can't come to the waking. And sometimes, a dream is just a dream."

"Are you saying this could be nothing but a dream, and those legions out there have no intention of attacking?" Cyane asked in disbelief.

"Noooo, that would be too good to be, but could be true," the shamaness answered, "yet this one is too bad not to be. Being bad it must be, right? Myrrhphese canon."

"In other words, we're screwed," Varia spat.

La'shaunti seemed to pause for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was the intimidating velvet of the Warrior Princess, "Sometimes ya just gotta fight fire with fire."

Three queens' eyes widened in shock; Varia and Cyane who had heard that voice in life decades before, and Tillit, who had heard it speak those very words in a dream.

The Amazons did the only thing they could; they mobilized all their defenses, readied all their traps, and by morning, the lands were prepared for another invasion. In the morning, instead of an invasion, a dozen Roman officers and a handful of cavalry came to the entrance to the Amazon road and blew a fanfare on their trumpets. Then they waited, honoring the treaty of the Emperor Claudius, and not setting even a single foot across the border.

Queen Varia took two dozen of her warriors and came to the edge of the Amazon lands. The meeting was cordial. When she returned and reported to the council, she was still uncertain of the Romans' intentions. She didn't like being uncertain.

"Their Consul Adrianus claims that he is here to apprehend a traitor, the Legatus Galena. When I told him that his quarry had attacked and been defeated here eleven days ago, he asked if he could have the body. He didn't seem concerned about the legion and he didn't seem to be seeking to avenge their deaths. I am undecided about his intentions, but I see no reason not to give him the "body" of Legatus Galena. What can he do with a rock?"

"Perhaps he is only parlaying to gain proof that we killed him. Then he could strike against us on behalf of the empire," one of the counselors suggested.

"Perhaps he is only seeking to delay and confuse us," another advised.

"I don't really think it will matter whether we give him Galena or not," Tillit said, "one way or another, I think he'll end up attacking us. Maybe he isn't even planning to, but somehow it will start."

"At this point I see no reason not to give him the body either," Cyane said, "at least it will prove that we're willing to cooperate. Anyway, sometimes the enemy of my enemy can be my friend."

"And sometimes an enemy is just an enemy," Varia muttered. She had never really trusted the Romans.

By early afternoon, a troop of Amazons was dragging the petrified body of Legatus Galena out of the forest, across the river, and up to the road. They mounted him on a mule cart, and hauled him to the border in the dying light of the early evening. When they arrived, the officers were gone, and the Amazon detail turned him over to the incredulous soldiers stationed there to meet them. They had expected a reeking corpse. Instead, they carted away a statue.

The next morning, a cavalry officer delivered a sealed scroll to the Amazon border guards, and a messenger rushed it to the council. On the table in the center of the queens' chairs it was opened and read. The Amazons were amazed, insulted, shocked, and finally angered. Consul Adrianus had thanked them for their mockery, accused them of mass murder, and conjectured that they had cannibalized the dead. He declared them misandros barbarians, criminals against humanity, and sentenced them all to death in the name of the emperor. He swore to destroy them for the good of civilization. For some time, all they could do was stare at each other and wonder how it could have happened. Cyane was in shock, Tillit felt like saying, "I told you so", and Varia blamed Gabrielle. They didn't voice their sentiments though, for the last thing they needed was disunity, and they were all too stunned to argue anyway.

The attack began at noon. A full artillery barrage drove the scouts and border guards back beyond bowshot, deeper into the forest, and they couldn't repel the Roman soldiers who moved in to secure the quarter mile of forest at the frontier. These invaders were followed by an endless line of troops, sloshing fuel oil from the casks on their backs. Then the burning started, just like Tillit had seen in her dream.

Yellowish flames leaped up explosively as oil ignited the underbrush. Roiling clouds of choking black smoke filled the air, the heavy scent of burning fuel spread by a gentle breeze. Soon the deadfall, and then the trees themselves, fell prey to the hungry fire. The flames created updrafts, burning hotter, urging the conflagration higher into the forest canopy. From there it leapt from tree to tree. Now the crashing of falling trunks joined the rumbling and crackling of the firestorm that blasted through the ancient groves of the forest. The Romans didn't stop splashing new sites with oil, widening the fire front and driving the Amazons ever further to the sides of their encampment. Soon, no frontal counterattack was possible, and that left only the possibility of flanking maneuvers.

Roving companies of Roman cavalry patrolled the flanks of the army, keeping the Amazons from launching counterattacks against them from the sides. Periodic attacks, by Roman archers and slingers, kept the warriors from returning to the front. They watched helplessly as their forest burned.

Sometimes the Amazon archers were able to pick off cavalrymen and even whole companies of soldiers, but it amounted to nothing. The enemy was just too numerous. It hampered the Roman strategy not at all. Through the afternoon, they continued to burn the forest and ignore the road.

By late afternoon, Cyane had ordered all the eastern streams dammed, turning whole tracts of forest into impassable swamps and precluding ground fires, but the flames continued to leap through the canopy. With the trees aflame, the Amazons were denied their usual stealthy passage above their enemies, and it made attack and retreat difficult. What Tillit had seen in her dream had become reality. Bands of Amazons became cut off on the ground in the thick choking smoke, and the council received reports of many burning to death. Night fell, and the Romans continued to advance, working in shifts, while the Amazons couldn't mount a successful defense. The battle zone was lit with the shifting intensity of the flames, but masked by the clouds of smoke.

In the darkness that night, thirty-six master archers crept to the edge of the forest. Their position was a half-mile north of the burning and a half-mile of perfect stealth would be required for them to reach their target. They intended to implement the attack that Tillit had seen in her dream. Unfortunately, the dream had ended before the outcome was known, and whether success or failure lay ahead was a mystery.

Tha cavalry endlessly patrolled the open lands, but the Amazons believed that at least a few of them might survive to attack the Roman oil supplies. These were wagons carrying huge vats of oil, and to each, a line of soldiers carrying five-gallon casks awaited refills by the quartermasters. The men were walking bombs, each with a reservoir of fuel strapped to his back. The wagons were infernos waiting to happen, and had been prudently parked a quarter mile from the legions' bivouac, but only two hundred yards from the trees. The site was guarded by a full wing of cavalry and two centuriae of legionnaires. It would be a difficult target.

The archers left the cover of the trees in teams of six, waiting to the count of a hundred before the next group followed. The teams advanced in a file, rather than spreading out in an arc, hoping to minimize their contacts with the Roman cavalry's perimeters of patrol. Slipping from shadow to shadow in the open land's minimal cover, they advanced, passing through the outermost patrol without detection. Two hundred and twenty yards ahead, a tighter ring of patrols circled, and equally closer to the Roman camp a third patrol moved. The innermost quarter mile comprised the actual bivouac, the base of operations, and it was guarded by infantry.

Most of a candlemark passed as the groups of archers worked their way closer to their target. They slipped through the inner ring of cavalry, maintaining perfect stealth. Within the gauntlet of the cavalry they redoubled their caution, moving somewhat more slowly but maintaining their spacing. Though they were veteran warriors, they fought the effects of the adrenaline that raced through their blood, and struggled to control their breathing and the wild beating of their hearts. Their hands would have to be steady for their aim to be true.

None of them expected to get more than a couple of arrows away before being cut down. Some had left behind lovers, while a few had said their good byes to children as well. Now, even thinking of their honor and duty failed to squelch the despair this hopeless mission entailed. In the end, the only respite came from forcing their world to narrow until they were wholly focused on the next yard of ground ahead, the next patrol to avoid, and the next intake of breath. Each had become grimly determined to make her death count, and to give up her life only with bitter cost to the enemy. It was a credit to their honor and dedication that not a single one gave thought to surrender…it wasn't even considered. Slowly and silently, the teams advanced. They were moving towards the oil vats now, actually moving closer to their forest.

Another quarter candlemark of crawling on their bellies brought them into range of the targets; twelve carts, each with a six hundred gallon vat of oil and a line of soldiers awaiting refills. Only now did the groups fan out to acquire their targets, slipping apart to make their range. Ideally, each team would attack two carts.

Each attack group had carried a horn lined with clay, containing hot, long burning embers of hornbeam, white oak, or hickory, and a pouch of cattail fluff. Now they gathered dried grass from the field they lay on, setting it for a quick starting fire. While two from each group prepared the fire for their flaming arrows, the other four kept watch. Their orders and their arrows were different. They carried the traditional poisoned bronze-headed shafts that were meant to pierce armor and kill soldiers. They would try to buy time for their sisters to destroy the oil vats.

The Romans were vigilant if nothing else. From the first telltale scent of smoke, as the embers scorched the cattail fluff and sent the dried grass up in flames, they knew that they were under attack. It wasn't until the sources of the flaming arrows could be seen that they actually knew from where. Then they responded quickly, their cavalrymen charging with spears to ride down the archers, as infantry moved to overpower the few enemies who were visible. The first flaming arrows found targets, sending three oil vats up in flames. The oil ignited so rapidly that it fountained up, raining fire down on the lines of soldiers with the casks on their backs. The men fled in all directions, like fast moving flaming torches, creating pandemonium, and spreading the fire to a fourth oil vat.

In the now brightly-lit field, six teams of six archers could be seen, rapidly firing. At the centers of each group, two archers fired long arrows with flaming heads. Around them, knelt four archers shooting anyone who approached. The attack lasted for less than the twelfth part of a candlemark, before the Romans were able to kill or disable all the attackers. By then, the thirty-six Amazons had managed to destroy ten of the twelve oil vats and kill over a hundred and fifty men. They had died with their quivers empty, wielding swords against ranks of infantry armed with spears.

Three gravely wounded Amazons were brought to the consul for his judgement. He stared at them for a moment, asked them no questions, and then ordered them crucified at the head of the Amazon road. After they had been nailed up, and their crosses raised, they were set aflame. Before midnight, the Romans ran out of oil.

The observers in the forest, who had watched the raid, reported back to the council in a fury. Less than a candlemark after they had been crucified, a company of Amazons came down the dark road in the thick smoke. They slew the Romans guarding the crosses and cut their sisters down, and then they marched back into the forest.

On the next day, the Romans consolidated their positions in the burned out sections of the forest, and advanced half-a-mile. At the edge of the forest, new carts bearing full vats of oil had replaced the emptied and destroyed ones from the night before. Again, the lines of soldiers moved into the trees, splashing and lighting the fuel. The burning of the Amazon forest continued. For all their courage and skills, the Amazons couldn't overcome the resources of the empire. They were facing an enemy who knew that victory came most often to he who forced others to fight by his rules and meet on his chosen field of battle. Consul Adrianus would take their destiny and shape it with his will. It was the thirteenth day following the defeat of the Legion of Serdica.

The Council of the Amazon Nation realized that they had few options left, and based on the consul's message, surrender wasn't one of them. Most had opted to move all non-combatants to the western borders, in preparation to abandon their homelands, and in the hours following the dawn, this had been done. It would be a very long journey, paced by the elderly and the children, but they had a destination in mind. Far to the northeast lay the recently vacated lands that had once hosted all of Cyane's tribe. Backari would lead the march; back to the ancestral homelands of the Utma, back to where the Amazons had first become a tribe with their own identity. They would be beyond the reach of Rome, and they would start anew, creating a realm on the northern steppes that could become the Amazon Nation. At least they now had a legion's worth of mules, carts, and supplies. After buying them a head start, the warriors would follow at the last possible moment.

Tillit sat at the table in the hut that her mother and the Warrior Princess had once called home. The young queen sadly looked at the decades of memories that had been collected in the space around her. She had become an Amazon queen, just in time to see the destruction of her nation. She had found acceptance as a princess, only to lose her mother. She had gone on a great adventure, finding a new life, but losing her father. Somewhere far to the north, her beloved brother probably wondered if anyone still cared for him, and if he would ever see any of his family again. Among so many trying pressures, her love for her brother weighed heavily on her heart. She was a queen of the nation and her shoulders shook as she cried bitterly for the loss of her once happy life. Her tears fell on the open scroll that she had read every night since her mother had gone off to Amphipolis to meet her destiny, and her tears soaked the aged parchment, turning it translucent.

For a while she stared at the writing on the wetted surface, but only when she blinked away her tears did she see the letters clearly. Some of them appeared to be written backwards. She had never noticed that before. The scroll had always been weighted and held flat on the tabletop, resisting the rolled shape it tended to return to after its decades of storage. Tillit had never looked at the back of the parchment when she had unrolled its length a bit each night. Now she was at the end of the scroll, where Xena had once penned her treatise on the runes of the Valkyrie. Xena had written a bit more, and with the frugal second nature of a warrior, she had used the back of the scroll, rather than starting another.

Tillit removed the weights and turned the scroll over, and as she slowly read the words, she felt destiny squatting on her back like a harpy. Like mother, like daughter, they were both the instruments of fate. What she read could save the nation, but the cost would be high. Xena had never tried this permutation of the power of the runes of fire, but Tillit had no doubts that it was possible. She just had to work up the courage to try, and she knew just the thing to give herself that depth of resolve. With a newborn sense of determination, she stood up and crossed the room.

The Amazon Council had been meeting for a candlemark following the noon meal. The evacuation of those who would be migrating was nearly complete. Varia looked around and saw that Tillit had still not returned from eating. The nation is meeting its darkest hour, she thought, and our teen queen has gone missing…just like her mother, Gabrielle. Cyane also noticed her absence, and she saw that Aliah was nowhere to be seen either…typical, she thought, where one goes the other follows.

The smoke was choking, and so thick that it was even difficult to determine what direction they were traveling in. They had left the village a candlemark before and had moved through the trees, rapidly covering the miles above the newly formed swamps, to reach the battlefront. Now, less than a fifty yards ahead, they could finally see flames. A shocked Aliah had given up trying to convince Tillit that they should turn around. She had kept her silence, maintaining their stealth and watching for danger.

She had gone to find her queen, at the behest of the Seer, La'shaunti, and had finally caught up with her on the eastern ridge overlooking the village. Tillit had been seated in her usual place, sadly looking down at their besieged home, as if saying goodbye. That was just the first shock awaiting the general of the northern tribe. Her queen had her mask slung over her shoulders, but she had changed her clothes. Now she wore a dark suede two piece set, and the decorations on it were all wrong. The beads proclaiming her true rank had been hastily added, but the rest? Shamaness of the north? Master Warrior of the south? Champion and life partner of an Amazon Queen? These were not Tillit's leathers, and yet, they fit her tall frame as if custom tailored for her. Aliah tried to think of whom they could belong to, but she had never known anyone with such a rank. The grid of war beads proclaimed over a hundred battles, and several were of carnelian…campaigns fought in the spirit realm. She had never even seen such beads before, though her lover was a shamaness.

"Aliah, I want you to wait here," Tillit said, and when she saw the protest forming on her general's lips, she added, "that's a direct order."

Aliah nodded and watched Tillit slipping silently forward towards the burning, where the Romans were still pouring oil on the fire. Bastards! If she could have seen Tillit's face, she would have ignored her order, bound her if necessary, and dragged her back to the village. Her young queen's face was streaming with tears, and her eyes screamed, I don't want to die. It was all she could do to put one foot before the other and just move.

She hadn't gone far before stopping among the burned trunks. Aliah watched as Tillit stood and bowed her head. What's she doing, the general wondered, she's drawn her dagger and it looks like she's stopped to pray. She was too far away to hear the softly chanted runes Tillit recited as she concentrated all her will on the image she had formed in her mind's eye. Sometimes, ya just gotta fight fire with fire.

Aliah saw Tillit's body relaxing, her head tilting back as she dropped the dagger, and then suddenly she was gone. In her place was a softly roaring column of fire, whose clear yellow flames rose higher than the trees. Aliah forgot her queen's order and charged forward towards it. She was eight feet away from it when she realized that she didn't feel any heat. Then she stopped dead and stared in wonder as the face of her queen formed amidst the flames. It spoke to her.

"I'm going to fulfill my destiny, Aliah, and it's something I have to do alone," Tillit's voice gently said, "I couldn't protect the nation in my earthly form, but I am a queen of the nation, and I have sworn to protect it. Tell the council I will destroy their enemies and none but an Amazon shall pass the Ring of Fire."

The face disappeared and the column of fire began to move. Aliah couldn't stop herself from following in its wake. The column became a wall, and the space it enclosed grew in diameter, but the height of the flames and their intensity didn't diminish. She watched the flaming ring racing through the trees, breaching the margin of the forest, and expanding across the open lands beyond the border. It swung around, widening further, until it encompassed the entire Roman camp.

Aliah saw hundreds and then thousands of men dying in agony, burning and falling, and finally charred, lying still. The oil vats went up in a monstrous explosion, but the wall of flame allowed no heat or smoke to pass through. Instead it appeared, for long moments, to be filled with fire, forcing the black sooty smoke upward like a chimney, until all the fuel was consumed. The general of the northern tribe fell to her knees, retching at the horror of what she'd seen. Then the walls of fire swung back towards the Amazon lands, growing ever larger, and Aliah felt the cool whisper of the flames on her skin as it enclosed her.

She had never felt so safe. It was as if a benevolent spirit lay all around her, blessing her with its power. The whispered voice of her queen spoke silently in her mind's ear.

"You feel my love for my sisters and my new homeland, Aliah. I will protect you all, until the nation is no more, for you have become my home. My mother once appointed you regent, Aliah. I too want you to lead our sisters."

The wall of flame had expanded far to the north and south, encompassing the forest and rapidly moving west. When it flashed through the village, the Amazons felt a surge of love welling up in their hearts, directed at each other, their lands, and their culture. It was a love of who they were, who they had been, and who they would become. Purified by fire, all the doubts they had felt after Gabrielle's destruction of Galena were put to rest. Like mother, like daughter…sometimes it is the destiny of one to repair the injuries that the destiny of a beloved leaves behind. From Amazonia, Gabrielle had come to repair Xena's damage in the Norselands, and from the Norselands, Tillit had come to repair her mother's damage to the Amazons. Though the nation could not stand indefinitely, it would be centuries before the soul of Tillit would be reborn. The Ring of Fire continued expanding until it encompassed the entire Amazon Nation.

Aliah began making her way back to the village, to report to the council on all she had seen. Her footsteps led her past the place where Tillit had last stood in human form, and there she found a dagger, almost two hands long. The crossguard was of steel, the pommel of brass. Black leather cord covered the grip. Engraved on the pommel was a design of paired ravens, encircled by Norse runes. Wound around the hilt was an heirloom necklace, once worn by Terries, sister of Melosa. Tillit had bestowed her Right of Caste. The new queen of the northern tribe shed silent tears as she tucked the dagger into her belt.

"My Queen," she whispered.