Witch Bone and the Mongol Queen Ch. 02

It was good that Saru'sinul-tu was a warrior and not a poet, for her voice was creaky from disuse but she sang with emotion and Turakina understood that the pain the girl sang about came from somewhere deep inside:

I walk to where the river turns to falls and watch the mist rise up and up. Regret at my fate; a dying girl who recalls all that she'll never know. Monks of Tibet do not know pain like I do. My hair turns autumn, though my summer has just begun.

Under tender moonlight my young heart yearns for all I shall never know, a common enough longing: that is my name. This war has left my tribe in ruins while boatmen doze in the calm eddies of a sandbar.

I ask this river, again and again, to send me lovers, ones I can confide in, while I feel the pull of my fate's tide.

Her village destroyed, her parents slaughtered, her people nearly exterminated from the face of the earth, Saru'sinul-tu had left the desert because there was nowhere else to stay. That had been in 1294. Seven years of war and machinations in Mongolia had exhausted her, even at the age of eighteen. When it was rumored that Lady Linshui was amassing a new army through various dark arts at her disposal, the girl had joined the tide that had been swept into China and their doom. Now here she was, a sheep herder's daughter, standing in the blue-domed palace of the fabulous city of Karakorum, while the last of Genghis Khan's granddaughters listened to her recite bad poetry. Fate was curious, indeed.

* * *

CHAPTER 03

While her enemies' bodies rotted on the plains of Xi Xia, Lady Linshui turned her attention to the south and trampled the Muslims warlords that called the Silk Route home. The Tibetans, the Koreans and the Liao she ground beneath her celestial legions. Her shamanesses summoned up infernal warriors, whose frenzy astounded even her toughest mortal vassals. The men of the world flowed whimpering between her iron fingers and she hammered the golden crowns of princes and kings to tin. Somewhere in the heat mirage of the Gobi, though, sat the one last obstacle for conquering all of Central Asia: the Borjigin queen known as Turakina Khatun. It was to her that Lady Linshui sent envoys with declarations of war and slaughter. No response was forthcoming, but word came along the oases of the desert of a mighty Mongol army riding forth and a great war in the west; of Turakina joining forces with her kinfolk that made up the Golden Hoard and crushing the Tzars of Russia. Lady Linshui gave little thought to that; Russia was no more real to her than was to the Pope of Rome. Europe had foolishly burned its witches and then the Plague had ravaged the rest as a punishment for Christian hubris. It would be an afterthought in her campaign, if there were any bones left to pick over. Her eyes were turned toward crushing the last of the Mongol empire; weakened, but still a truly formidable enemy.

"The Tao of the Left Hand shall burn the horse-girl khanates with steel and shadow," she said. "I shall ride their queens like beasts of the earth and the bones of their men shall be food for fireflies and the dark grubs of the night."

Then, in the early spring of 1302, there came to Lady Linshui, as she labored in an inner chamber of her personal temple in the Forbidden City, crafting red and black talismans to bind and command ghosts, certain of her tamed female demons. With them they brought a tall Kara-Khitan girl, one whose macabre body was darkened by the sun of steppes and the scars of a thousand blades.

"She rode from the desert's source and then to the gates of the City on a foam-covered horse," one said, for tamed female demons always speak in rhyme, "saying she demanded to see our Lady. What is your passion? Shall we flay her alive before you? or tear her between sword and talon?"

"Horse-girl," said the Taoist sorceress, putting down her brush and cocking her head to one side, "you have found Lady Linshui. Speak, before I feed you to those who have a perverse pleasure for female flesh."

"Who doesn't?" said the other in a dead-pan, then, "is this becoming for the once and future Empress of all of Asia? I have ridden far to serve you and all you do is scowl and puff and stuff. I am called Saru'sinul-tu and among your scrawny shamanesses and giant breasted demons and sickly queens there is no warrior who can best me while using a sword; among your slovenly wrestlers there is no woman whose back I can not break."

The Taoist sorceress cocked an eyebrow and considered the strange girl. She was in her early twenties, perhaps. Unlike many of the Borjigin women she had known Nature had not endowed this girl with the sort of top heavy titties that made steppe concubines famous the world over ... then again the bulky deel jackets Mongols habitually wore covered up far to much for Linshui's tastes. "Perhaps she will be pleasing when I strip her out of those garments?" the woman known as the Witch Bone thought.

"I wish you were not a horse-girl," she said, "for I love a woman with a sharp tongue that can get into tight places. Tell me more, darling girl! What else can you offer me that will allow me to become, as you put it, a humble empress?"

"Shape I have, but not that of size. I am locked to your body, but easily fly. I follow you to bed, for I can never be contained. Under the sun I crawl, but under the dark I reign."

Lady Linshui stiffened, everything about her subtly changing; for behind all her blood-lust and sorcery there lay the most penetrating mind south of the Great Rock Gorge of the Chuluut River.

"Are you drunk, girl?" she asked. "What do you mean by this riddle?"

"I speak no riddle that you don't already possess the answer to," snapped the Kara-Khitan.

"I have no time for games. When I was a girl, I spoke and thought as a girl. But when I grew up, I put away girlish things. Do not trifle with me."

"Pff," the other retorted. "That's too bad for you." And then, when it became obvious the Witch Bone was ignorant of the answer, Saru'sinul-tu gave an ungainly curtsy, and added with a nod, "my Mistress of the Dark."

"Dark? Shadow? That's the answer, in truth? You're a shadow? You risked everything on the chance that you'd find me in the mood for childish games; knowing that I have had my captures torn apart by my celestial army just to wile away the time?"

"When you have heard what I have had to say, please do with me as you like. But know this: I hate your enemy, the one who is called Turakina. She is a cowardly woman. I went to her seeking honor as all warriors hunger for, because she was of my people, my kin, but how was I rewarded? Camel dung was thrown in my face."

At the name of the one who stood between her and all of Central Asia, Lady Linshui stood up, scattering talismans and brushes.

"What? You served under that half-crazed she-bitch of a dog?"

"Yes. I was her toy. I rode beside her and guarded her back. I climbed fortress walls under a shower of arrows and broke the ranks of the Muslim soldiers who controlled the oases and Silk Route. When the pillage and plunder was distributed among the generals, what was given me? Jeering and abuse. 'If you want pretty gifts, puppy,' said that woman, 'seek an audience with the Ming Court, their eunuchs will be holding a spot especially for you.' And because in Borjigin eyes I am not shaped for buxom tricks; because rudely stamped, according to that woman, cheated, deformed, her khans and generals roared with laughter at her wit. As Wet Mother Earth and Endless Father Sky are my witnesses, I will wipe out that laughter in the burning of walls and the screaming of flames!"

Saru'sinul-tu's passionate words reverberated through the chamber and her eyes were cold and cruel. Lady Linshui thought for a long moment.

"You come to me for revenge?" The Taoist sorceress composed herself, sat back down at her low table. "Because why? Because you were too weak to do it yourself? So ... you needed the shadows of the dark to aid you?"

"Weak? No. Shadows? Yes! I came here to be your shadow."

"O mighty warrior, stupid little girl, were you so deluded to think that I would wage war against the Mad One simply because of some slight given to a wandering Kara-Khitan vagrant? You look as if you brought half the desert with you in your clothes."

"I am of the desert and you will war against here, sooner than you think, because she is about to wage war against you," answered Saru'sinul-tu, undaunted. "When that 'half-crazed she-bitch of a dog,' as my lady so astutely called her, rode west to wrestle the city of Constantinople from the hands of the Sultan, Othman I, who you once called El-Gazi, his army was strengthened by a thousand Ming horsemen, sent by you, yourself. Now the House of Osman is cast down, Constantinople has been looted and even the Bosporus burns from the Mongol's engines of war. Turakina has destroyed your comrades and she is exactly the sort of woman who will not forgive my imperial lady for interfering."

"What? Were you the concubine of Divooneh as well to know so much? Did she talk in her sleep?" Lady Linshui asked, incredulous. "You? A worthless vagrant? Why should I trust a Kara-Khitan? We crushed you at Xi Xia! Go whore yourself out in the brothels, if any man would have you. By Hsi Wang Mu, Goddess of Plagues and Pestilence! I shall deal with those fucking Mongols by the dark arts and hell fire!"

A ferocious, defiant flame blazed for an instant in the Kara-Khitan's eyes, but a moment later the sun-burned and scarred face showed no signs of anger.

"Know this, O my lady," Saru'sinul-tu answered, slowly, "I can teach you not only how to break Turakina's army, but I can bring you her head."

"Lap dog of a she-bitch!" shouted the Taoist sorceress, and the tamed female demons standing on either side of her shook their snake-like dreads and hissed hideously. "Do you think that I, Hongwu's most trusted vassal, need the assistance of an orphan girl to conquer the Mongols?"

Saru'sinul-tu laughed in her face, a hard mirthless noise that shocked all present.

"You think that commanding demons will save you. Turakina will lay you to waste," Saru'sinul-tu said, purposely. "Have you seen Genghis Khan's daughters in war? Have you seen Mongol arrows darkening the sky as they rip through the air, a fifty thousand all at once? Have you seen their cuirassiers making the desert shake beneath their horses' hooves?"

"Actually, yes," answered the Taoist sorceress, not particularly impressed.

"Yes, the whole world has seen that, but what you haven't seen," returned the Kara-Khitan, "is Turakina's own necromancy."

"What?" asked a startled Lady Linshui. "The Mongols have their own dark arts that I was unaware of?"

As if for an answer Saru'sinul-tu pulled the sleeve of her deel back to reveal her left arm. It wasn't so much a scar revealed, but a dreadful curse; almost as if she had been branded by the Mongolian circle and four horse-headed device Turakina had placed on her army's shields, a design had been etched there. But no white-hot cattle-brand could ever sear such an intricate pattern. This had been done by something vastly unearthly.

"Fire shadows did this?" asked Lady Linshui after a moment of studying the ruined arm. "Feisty little bastards, though they pale in comparison when summoning an earth djinn or a sky elemental."

"Of the cities of the Ural, Turakina left but her only ruins. She tore down even the broken walls and replaced it with a pyramid of skulls. Kingdoms that stood for a thousand years fell to her as will the Ming once ground under her foot, my Lady Linshui."

"You say this to me, unbeliever?" cried the Taoist sorceress. "I will cast you into such a deep pit that not even your souls will find their way out for a million generations to come!"

"Ho, are you proving your righteousness over Turakina by threatening to damn the same vagrant she banished from her sight?" Saru'sinul-tu asked, bitterly. "Chinese, Mongols and Turks: power corrupts you equally, I see."

"By Meng Po, Goddess of the Dead!" Lady Linshui said, "you must be possessed by a dung spirit to speak like this to the Witch Bone herself! You come to the Forbidden City seeking alms, little boy? Stay in my palace until I can decide whether you are a seducer, a fool, or a madwoman. But if you are a spy, my little lap dog of a she-bitch, that cursed flesh on your armm will have felt like a mere kiss compared to the torments I shall lay upon you."

Their interview over, Saru'sinul-tu settled down into the court of Lady Linshui, whose friends and enemies called the Witch Bone. Soon there came diplomats from Turakina Khatun, no one less than the princely general, Bayan of the Merkid clan, who asked if the Ming court would give up the shameless girl who had openly mocked their queen? This Mongol clan wanted justice served, surly the Ming court would keep the peace between the two nations by turning Saru'sinul-tu over to them?

Lady Linshui, scenting an opportunity to slight her enemy, twisted her black hair between her fingers and looked directly into Bayan's eyes as she gave the reply, "I know you, Bayan Khan, and that our people are in no place to be attempting to bargain for the life of anyone. You know me, little man; nothing stops me from taking your empire when I feel like it and feeding your favorite wives to my army as spoils of war."

Bayan Khan neither blinked nor showed the smallest trace of anger. He simply paused as he was bringing the cup of rice wine to his lips, arched one eyebrow and replaced the cup upon the table between them, untasted.

"You do my hospitality ill service, little man, by not tasting the wine I have so generously offered."

"For give me, my lady," the Mongol said, rising, gazing down at the general in something akin to amazement. "Talk of conquest has turned my tongue ... sour. I would be doing your wine an even greater disservice by attempting to drink it with such a ... foul taste in my mouth."

No further diplomats came from Turakina.

One day, as Saru'sinul-tu practiced her wrestling in Lady Linshui's Gong Fu Hall, the Taoist sorceress approached the Kara-Khitan girl, marveling at the other's thick thighs and tiny breasts, the arms that could bend a mortal man in two, the fine sheen of sweat that hard exercise brings to the body.

"Horse-girl, you have labored hard enough for one night. Go bathe yourself in the hot springs we call Sihnon. Report back to me ... later ... after you are done."

"The advantage of being part of a celestial army," Saru'sinul-tu thought as she lay naked on a bamboo table after her sore muscles had recovered in the scalding hot water, "is that it doesn't really matter whether it is a spirit or demon attending to my needs, they all can get into tight corners no one else can."

She sighed.

There were around a dozen invisible hands working on her -- kneading muscles, pulling, rubbing in deep -- Saru'sinul-tu was grateful for them all, especially the ones that kept sliding into the wrong places. She could feel countless ghostly fingers move from her hips over her sensitive ribs to her breasts, where her erect nipples was tweaked this way and that. The hands would begin their journey down her front once more, traveling up her muscled back, her scars, from her shoulders to her fingertips, to her chubby ass. Other hands worked hard on her inner thighs. Much to her joy there was even one hand that did nothing more than massage the lips of her furry cunt.

By this time Saru'sinul-tu's body was beginning to strongly respond to the tamed female demons' efforts. Even the hand supporting her by her cunt seemed to be constantly working the hyper-sensitive flesh of her clit.

After a time, she could hardly concentrate on anything, even laying still; the sensations radiating from her cunt, her breasts, every inch of skin, were so overwhelming. After a moment of teasing the heat would return intenser than before, wave after wave, clinging tenaciously to her burning, quivering flesh. Her body trembled from the terrible, marvelous pressure building up inside her.

The hands were joined by hungry, voracious mouths that were all lips and tongues, seeming intent on sucking the very marrow out of her bones. Saru'sinul-tu felt herself drowning in a whirlpool of incredible fires that reminded her of blood-lust, the battlefield's need for slaughter.

Soon Saru'sinul-tu became a mindless creature intent only on her own pleasure. When the Kara-Khitan grabbed an invisible head nursing on her breasts, felt the heavy breasts of another flatten themselves between the splayed open cleft of her ass the four demons let themselves be seen and immediately devoured their cum-dripping, eager warrior; dividing up the girl between themselves. When they each had their fill, Saru'sinul-tu's burning body was pleasured out of time. Orgasms that run amok.

It took a very, very long time before the girl had the energy to roll off the bamboo table and try to clothe herself without getting too much of her own cum all over her robes. It took an even longer time before she left the Sihnon in search of Lady Linshui. She hoped, that maybe just perhaps, if she waited enough time the four demons would return.

"Next time I'll ask for five," the girl mused.

As the months progressed Lady Linshui drew Saru'sinul-tu deeper into diabolical sex and wild schemes of war and conquest, plied her with opium from Afghanistan, sake from Japan, a bright hell-water distilled from something potatoish the sorceress called the "water from the lake of fire." Even as Saru'sinul-tu roared and reveled in the Ming court, Linshui penetratingly observed the girl from Kara-Khitan. But as time passed her doubts grew less suspicious; for, when at her drunkest, Saru'sinul-tu spoke no word that might hint she was anything other than what she seemed to be: a warrior of little skill, an orphan unwilling to work the brothel-trade when she still could swing a sword. She cursed the name of Turakina and all the barbarians. Under close, subtle scrutiny the Kara-Khitan, apathetically moved, drinking all but the Taoist sorceress onto the floor in the wild drinking-bouts and bearing herself with a reckless valor that earned the respect of the hard-bitten eunuchs.

Lady Linshui lay about the walls of Shigatse, which the Mongols called Samdruptse, in the mountain kingdom of Tibet. Her preparations were made: Shigatse, after that, the city of Tsetang; the fate of Tibetan Buddhism wavered in the balance. The wretched Tibetans, worn and starved, had already drawn up a capitulation, when word came flying out of the East, a dusty, bloodstained courier on a staggering horse. Out of the East, sudden as a desert-storm, the Borjigins had over the meager defenses of Erlian, Ming's border city, had fallen. That night the shuddering people on the walls of Shigatse saw torches and cressets tossing and moving through the celestial army's camp, gleaming on dark hawk-headed women and shamanesses who summoned the dead, but the expected attack did not come, dawn revealed a great regiment of foot soldiers moving in a steady double column back across the bridge at Monk Jump Gorge, bearing a steady retreat back into China. The Witch Bone's eyes were at last turned homeward.

"Here we will camp," said Lady Linshui at last, shifting her stiff and sore arse in the saddle. She glanced back at the long lines of her army, winding beyond sight over the distant hills: over 200,000 fighters; grim skirmishers, cuirassiers glittering in plumes and silver armor, heavy cavalry in silk and steel; her allies and alien subjects, Korean and Khololo archers, the twenty thousand daughters of Xerxes of Persia, armored from crown to heel; there were troops of Russians, too, who had wandered into Central Asia, stocky Cossack girls, Ural witches, female swordsmiths from the river Don.