Partu Patima is the great warrior-heroine of Lak historical legend, celebrated in a heroic song that ranks among the best-known monuments of Lak oral literature. She belongs to the age of the Turco-Mongol invasions, and the tradition sets her at Gazi-Kumukh, the old Lak capital, at the head of the mountaineers resisting the armies of Timur in the late fourteenth century. When the men hesitate she arms herself, mounts, and leads the Laks into battle sabre in hand, and though the legend has her fall, her stand becomes the pattern of Lak martial honour and of the woman who defends the homeland. Standing between remembered history and heroic myth, she is the human counterpart in this tradition to the beings of sky and wild.