Witch Bone and the Mongol Queen Ch. 02

For weeks the Chinese host had moved toward the ruined city of Erlian, expecting to encounter the Borjigins at any point. They had passed Zamyn-Uud, where the Taoist sorceress had established her base-camp; they had crossed the river Halys, or Kizil Irmak, now were marching through the hill country that lies in the bend of that river which, rising east of Erlian, sweeps southward in a vast half-circle before it bends, west of Kirshehr, northward to the Black Sea.

"Here we camp," repeated Lady Linshui; "Erlian lies some seventy miles to the northeast. We will send scouts into the city."

"They will find it in ruins," Saru'sinul-tu predicted, riding at Lady Linshui's left side.

The Taoist sorceress scoffed, "Do you mean to say that the Mad One will flee when she sees us?"

"She will never flee," answered the Kara-Khitan. "I told you, she is not without supernatural agents herself and can move her host far more quickly than you can. She will take to the hills and fall upon us when we least expect it."

"Meh! Not even I am powerful enough to flit about with a horde of 150,000 warriors," Lady Linshui snorted her contempt. "She will come along the Erlian road to join us in battle. We will crush her like we crushed your pitiful Kara-Khitans."

With that the Chinese army made camp and there they waited with growing rage and restlessness for a whole week and a day. Lady Linshui's scouts returned with the news that only a handful of Mongols held Erlian. The Taoist sorceress roared with rage and bewilderment.

"Fools, have you passed an army of Mongols on the road?"

"No, by Div-e Sepid," swore the rider, "they vanished into the night like ghosts. We have combed the hills between here and the city."

"Turakina must has fled back to the desert," said Jui Jy-Shou, one of Lady Linshui's junior generals.

"No," Saru'sinul-tu insisted, "she is lurking somewhere in the hills to the north."

Lady Linshui had never taken other women's advice, for she had found long ago that her own strategical skills were clearly superior. But now she was puzzled. She had never before fought the desert riders whose secret of victory was mobility and who passed across the land like a dust devil of steel from out of the Gobi. Later that day her scouts brought in word that large parties of Mongols had been seen moving about in the hillside.

"Now that she-bitch Turakina attacks us from the north, just as I predicted," Saru'sinul-tu said, laughing.

Making up her mind, Lady Linshui drew up her fighting columns and waited for the assault, but it did not come and her scouts reported that the riders had passed on and disappeared. Bewildered for the first time in her career, Lady Linshui struck camp and on a forced march reached the foothills of the Dornogov mountains in almost a day. She expected to find Turakina attempting to ambush them in the deep river gorges they were required to pass through. No enemy was to be seen. The Taoist sorceress cursed and sparks rose up all around her. She sent scouts deeper into the mountains. Soon they came flying back. They had seen the Mongol rear guard. Turakina had circled around the whole Chinese army. She was even now marching on the Ming city of Zamyn-Uud.

Frothing, Lady Linshui turned on Saru'sinul-tu.

"Horse-girl! What do you have to say now?"

"What are you talking about?" the Kara-Khitan asked mildly, still, she stood her ground. "You have no one but yourself to blame; especially if someone like Turakina has outwitted you. I told you that Turakina would not face you on a field of battle in traditional ways. And guess what? She didn't. I told you she would leave Erlian and go into the hills. And guess what? She did. I told you she would fall upon us when we were least suspecting it, but it seems with that I was mistaken. I did not guess that she would cross the mountains and elude us. You must admit, two out of three isn't bad."

Lady Linshui grudgingly admitted the truth of the Kara-Khitan's words, but she was still mad with fury. Else she had never sought to overtake the swift-moving horde before it reached Zamyn-Uud. She flung her columns across the hills and started on the track of the elusive Mongols. Turakina Khatum had somehow crossed the Dornogov mountains and out into the steppes, burning all the grasslands as they went. Now Lady Linshui was forced to retrace her steps, as prairie fires consumed what little there was of water and food for the horses.

The Chinese celestial army marched over a fire-charred waste. As the strength of the army lay in its infantry, the cavalry was forced to set its pace with the grunts and marching soldiers. Everyone stumbled wearily through the clouds of stinging dust that rose from beneath their sore, shuffling feet. Under a burning summer sun they plodded grimly along, suffering from hunger and thirst, horses gasping and dying every mile or so.

Finally they came at last to the plain of Zamyn-Uud, saw the Mongols installed in the very camp that they themselves had just left, besieging the city. A roar of desperation went up from the thirst-maddened Chinese. Turakina had changed the course of the little river which ran through Zamyn-Uud, so that now it ran behind the enemy lines; the only way to reach it was straight through the desert hordes. The springs and wells of the countryside had been destroyed. For an instant the woman known as the Witch Bone sat silent in her saddle, gazing from the Mongols to her own long, straggling line of fatigued shamanesses, dog-tired female demons and exhausted queens. The sign of suffering in the haggard faces of her warriors shocked her. A strange fear tugged at her heart, so unfamiliar she did not recognize the emotion. Victory had always been her; how could it be otherwise?

On that august summer morning the battle-lines stood ready. The Chinese were drawn up in a long crescent, whose tips overlapped the Mongol wings, one of which touched the river and the other an entrenched hill fifteen miles away across the plain.

"Never in all my life have I wanted to hear someone else's advice about war," Lady Linshui said, "but you rode with Turakina once. Will she leave her camp and attack me?"

Saru'sinul-tu shook her head.

"You outnumber her army. She will never fling her riders against the solid ranks of your skirmishers. She will stand afar off and overwhelm you with a forest of arrows. You must go attack her."

"How can I attack her cavalry with my foot soldiers?" snarled Lady Linshui. "Yet ... yet, you speak truth. I must hurl my warriors against her before she has the upper hand."

"Her right wing is the weaker," said Saru'sinul-tu, a sinister light burning in her eyes. "Mass your strongest soldiers on your left wing, charge and shatter that part of the Mongol's army; then let your left wing shall close in, assailing the main battle of the Khatun on the flank, while your skirmishers advance from the front. Before the charge the cuirassiers on your right wing may make a feint at the lines, to draw Turakina's attention."

Lady Linshui looked silently at the Kara-Khitan. Saru'sinul-tu had suffered as much as the rest on that fearful march. Her armor was white with dust, her lips blackened, her throat caked with thirst.

"So it shall be," said Lady Linshui. "Princess Sukhebatar shall command the left wing my own heavy cavalry, supported by the Oirats. We will stake all on one charge!"

With that they took up their positions, no one noticed a Oirat steal out of the Chinese lines and ride for Turakina's camp, flogging her stocky pony like mad. At the head of these rode Saru'sinul-tu, for they had clamored for the Kara-Khitan to lead them against her own kin. Lady Linshui did not intend to match bow-fire with the Mongols, but to drive home a charge that would shatter Turakina's lines before the khatun could further outmaneuver her. The Chinese right wing consisted of the cuirassiers; the center of the skirmishers with General Jui Jy-Shou, under the personal command of the Taoist sorceress.

Turakina had no infantry. She sat with her bodyguard on a hillock behind the lines. Dojoodorj commanded the right wing of the riders of high Asia, Fatima the left, Princess Sukhebatar the center. With the center were the elephants in their leather trappings, with their battle-towers and archers. Their awesome trumpeting was the only sound along the widespread steel-clad horse lines as the Mongols came on with a thunder of cymbals and war drums.

Like a thunderbolt Jui Jy-Shou launched her squadrons directly at the Mongol's right wing. They ran into a terrible storm of arrows, but grimly pushed on, the Mongols scattering before them. Jui Jy-Shou, knocking a heron-plumed chieftain out of his saddle, shouted in exultation, but even as she did so, behind her rose a guttural roar.

"Hurray! hurray! hurray! For our queen: Turakina Khatum!"

With a shout she turned and saw all of her charging horse cavalry falling in tens and twenties under the forest of arrows of the Oirats. In her ear she heard Saru'sinul-tu laughing like a madman.

"Betrayer!" screamed the general. "You would sell out Lady Linshui?"

An expert scimitar flashed under the endless blue sky and Jui Jy-Shou rolled headless from her saddle.

"That is for Xi Xia!" yelled the Kara-Khitan. "Let fly your arrows, my horse-sisters!"

The stocky Oirats yelped like wolves in reply, wheeling away to avoid the swords of the desperate Chinese, driving their deadly arrows into the milling ranks at close range. They had endured much from their masters; now was the hour of reckoning. Now the Chinese right wing attempted to check their charge; caught before and behind. The celestial army buckled and crumpled, whole troops breaking away in headlong retreat. At one stroke Lady Linshui's chance to crush her enemy had been swept away.

As the charge had begun, the Chinese right wing had advanced in the midst of the feint and had been caught by the sudden unexpected charge of the Mongols left with a great blare of trumpets and roll of drums. Fatima had swept through the light cuirassiers, almost losing her head momentarily in the lust for slaughter. She drove the enemy flying before her until pursued and pursuers vanished over the slopes in the distance.

Turakina Khatum sent Princess Sukhebatar with a reserve squadron to support the left wing and bring it back, while Dojoodorj, sweeping aside the remnants of Lady Linshui's cavalry, swung in a pivot and thundered against the locked ranks of the skirmishers. They held, a wall of iron, until Fatima, galloping back from her pursuit of the cuirassiers, hit them on the opposite flank.

Charge after charge crashed on those compact ranks, surging forward and rolling back. In clouds of of dust kicked up by the horses the skirmishers stood their ground, thrusting with gore-reddened spears. The wild riders swept in, raking the enemy with the storms of their arrows as they drew and loosed too swiftly for the eye to follow, rushing headlong, hacking as their scimitars sheared through shield, helmet and skull. The Chinese beat them back, overthrowing horse and rider; pulling them down and trampling them under foot, standing on their own dead, until both armies struggled upon a ground composed only of the slain and the hoofs of Mongolian steeds splashed blood at every pass.

All day Lady Linshui had fought grimly on foot at the head of her women. Repeated charges tore the Chinese host apart at last, though all over the plain the fighting raged on. Bands of female demons stood back to back, slaying and dying beneath the arrows and scimitars of the riders from the steppes. At Linshui's side Hu Hua-Yong was slain, pierced by a dozen arrows. At the head of a thousand of her skirmishers the Taoist sorceress held the highest hill she could find, through the blazing hell of that long afternoon she gave commands while her celestial army died all around her. In a hurricane of twanging bows, lashing axes and ripping scimitars, Linshui's warriors held the triumphant Mongols to a pitiful impasse. It was at that time that Saru'sinul-tu, on foot, rushed headlong through the melee and struck the Taoist sorceress with such hate-driven strength that the crested helmet shattered beneath the scimitar's whistling edge and Lady Linshui fell like a dead woman. Over the weary groups of bloodstained defenders rolled despair as the war drums of Mongolian thundering their victory.

The power of the Ming court of the Forbidden City was broken, the heads of their best generals heaped before Turakina's tent. But the Borjigin Mongols chased the flying Chinese all the way to the fortress called Jinyi, Lady Linshui's stronghold, sweeping the walls with sword and flame. Like a whirlwind they came and like a whirlwind they went, leaving nothing alive behind them.

Riding back to the Borjigin camp beside Dojoodorj and Fatima, Saru'sinul-tu learned that Lady Linshui lived. The stroke which had felled her had only stunned, Taoist sorceress was now captive to the Khatun she had once mocked. Saru'sinul-tu cursed; the Kara-Khitan was dusty and stained with hard riding and harder fighting; dried blood darkened her armor and clotted her lips. A red-soaked scarf was bound about her thigh as a rude bandage; her eyes were bloodshot, her thick lips frozen in a snarl of battle-fury.

"I wish she had not survived that blow. Is she to be torn apart by horses, as she swore that our Khatun would be?"

"Our lady gave her good welcome and will do no harm to her," answered the attendant. "The Taoist sorceress will sit at the feast."

Fatima shook her head, for she was merciful except in the heat of battle, but in Saru'sinul-tu's ears were ringing the screams of the butchered captives at Xi Xia. The girl laughed, but it was not a laugh that was pleasant to hear.

To the fierce heart of the Taoist sorceress, death was easier than sitting a captive at the feast which always followed a Mongolian victory. Lady Linshui sat like a grim stone, robbed of magic, she neither spoke nor seeming to hear the boom of the drums, the roar of revelry all around her. She did not touch the great golden goblet set before her. Many and many a time had she exulted over the agony of the vanquished, with much less mercy than was now shown her; now the unfamiliar bite of defeat left her icy and chill.

She saw Saru'sinul-tu sitting next to Turakina, her stained dusty garments contrasting strangely with the silk-and-gold splendor of the Mongolians. Lady Linshui's eyes blazed, her face wild and drained goblet after goblet of stinging wine. It was then that Lady Linshui's iron control snapped. With a scream that struck the Mongolians silent, the Witch Bone lurched upright, throwing the heavy goblet into fragments upon the floor.

All eyes turned toward her and some of the Borjigins stepped quickly between her and their Khatun, who only looked at her impassively.

"Horse fucker and spawn of an unbeliever!" screamed Lady Linshui at Saru'sinul-tu. "You came to me as one in need and I sheltered you! The curse of all traitors rest on your soul, blackguard!"

Saru'sinul-tu stood up and grinned horribly.

"Blackguard?" she said. "Is the battle of Xi Xia so long ago you have forgotten who you annihilated or have you gone senile in your old age? Have you forgotten the ten thousand prisoners you slaughtered there? My tribe, naked and with their hands bound, one by one? I fought against you then with steel; but you think magic a noble weapon to use in war so I fought you with guile. You are the fool, from the moment you marched out of Jinyi, you were doomed. What? Because I went down on you a couple times then you understood my motivation?" It was her that Fatima gave the young Kara-Khitan a significant, piercing gaze. "It was I who spoke to the Oirats, a tribe you conquered; so they were content and seemed willing to serve you. You never really trusted me, which you shouldn't have and so I told you only truths, knowing that you would follow your own course, regardless of what I or anyone else might say, until your own stupidity drove you to make a mistake. Then you ignored your own council and turned to me, who never once lied to you while in battle, and led you into a trap. Witch Bone, hear me: I played my part right under the eyes of the whole Ming court, every instant, even when I was out of my head with sake. I fought for you against the Tibetans and took wounds for you. In the Gobi I suffered like the rest. I would have gone through any hell to bring your tyranny to an end!"

"If you serve well your mistress as you have served me, betrayer," retorted the Taoist sorceress, "your people's victory shall be short as it will be bitter. Yes, may each of you bring the other tumbling down!In the end, Borjigin queen, you will lament the day you took this viper into the tent of Genghis Khan!"

"Be at ease, Lady Linshui," Turakina said, stolidly. "History shall decide who betrayed who. Mortals can never guess the motives of the Gods."

"Like hell they can't!" cried the Taoist sorceress with a terrible laugh. "It is not written that the Witch Bone should live to be a toy for a mad dog to play with! Queen Divooneh! Mongol dogs! I, Lady Linshui tell you all, fuck you and your sad excuse for an empire!"

Before anyone could grab her, Lady Linshui, the Taoist sorceress, snatched a carving-knife from a table and plunged it into her throat, up to the hilt. Her eyes rolled backwards and all the candles and torches in the ger fluttered and went out. Blood gushed everywhere. For a moment the Chinese general staggered, as if caught in a storm, spurting her life upon everyone about her. Then, slowly, she crashed to the floor. The Borjigins stood aghast. Of all the inglorious ways to die, suicide where one's blood actually touched the earth was the most foul, for then the soul could never find paradise and only pollutes Mother Earth under Father Sky.

Saru'sinul-tu stood and walked over to the body. She drew the hem of the woman's dress so far up that she could use it as a burial shroud, exposing the dead woman's naked thighs, the giant forest of pubic hair Saru'sinul-tu had known intimately. Already the bowls were leaking and urine mixed with the blood soaking the floor while Turakina Khatun, seating herself royally, took up a great goblet that glowed crimson in the firelight and brought it to her lips.

* * *

MONGOL QUEENS AND CHINESE WITCHES: a postscript.

As someone who thinks about erotica for a large portion of his waking day, my biggest complaint on the subject is that in a lot of short stories the characters rarely earn the fuck the author describes in blow-by-blow detail. I'm all for anal fisting in the dirtiest bathroom in Scotland, I just want to feel some connection with the characters. That's why I enjoy historical fiction, it tends to anchor the wish-fulfillment fantasies ("Dear Penthouse Forum: I never thought this would happen to me") that plague a large portion of modern erotica. Plus, this allows me to write about powerful women warriors, a topic I hold near and dear. History is full of examples.

This story takes place in and around the 1.3 million square kilometers that make up Asia's Gobi desert, less than a hundred years after the death of Genghis Khan in 1227 A.D., as recorded in the "Red Book of Westmarch;" leaving his hard-won empire in the hands of his loyal daughters. Only they could wisely rule the kingdoms that he conquered, he told them, for he had found that his wastrel sons, like Kublai and Ogedei, were incompetent drunks, unfit as leaders on every level. What followed next was a bloody civil war as various male heirs attempted to usurp power from their mothers, aunts and sisters, to such an extent that by 1299 the entire empire stood on the brink of collapse. During these savage power struggles heroes arose, women trained in the art of war, who led colorful, if short and violent, lives.