Hirene

Hirene is a Scythian, Srayanka’s trumpeter and battle partner. This is probably not the place to explore ancient views of sexuality — my feeling as an historian is that our attempts to study the sexuality of the past always says more about us than it does about the past — but for what it is worth, Hirene is what we’d now call “gay”, meaning mostly homosexual (lesbian) in her orientation, as one might expect in a society of warrior women where pregnancy spelled the end of your military career. Hirene is also tough as an old sandal and very capable, and suspicious of Kineas when the other Scythians are more welcoming — perhaps from jealousy, or perhaps from a sensible instinct for Kineas’s power.

For what it’s worth, my character of Hirene (and she really doesn’t get the page count she deserves) is based on my first riding instructor, who was neither gay (that I know of) nor much inclined to war — but had iron gray braids and could ride anything that moved, and was justifiably amused by the pretensions of young men. I thought the world of her.