Witch Bone and the Mongol Queen

That night, La noche del pecado, as the Spanish would say, the two women sat together around a small fire, naked save for their twisted thongs of cotton between their legs. The Kara-Khitan had consented to let Fatima undo her long braided hair and was combing the oil of sweet nuts through it, to prevent lice. Lice might be an issue for some but the Tartar had solved the problem herself by simply shaving her head uncharacteristically bald. Let the Chinese be obsessed over tiny, bound feet; for a Mongol all female beauty and erotic symbolism rested upon a woman's visible face. Broad foreheads were especially fetishized by smearing yellow powder across them, making anyone as beautiful as Lady Ot, the goddess of the fire and the moon.

"Ah, my daughter has perfect, beautiful hair," Fatima said, sitting behind the girl and running her shell and ivory comb through the thick mane.

"My mother, do not tease me, everyone can see my hair is dirty and ratty."

This talk was, as they say, ritual. Older women in the tribe were, naturally, pleased to extol the beauty of their younger female offspring, while the girls in turn would praise the wisdom of their mothers and grandmothers. Sitting in their gers, large yurt-like tents the nomads carried with them, it did not matter if the mothers and daughters were blood kin or not, everyone who lived on the steppes and followed the path of the stars was related, in one way or another. Every girl was her tribe's daughter, every woman their mother.

Fatima took a handful of the girl's thick hair and brought it up to her nose. Tartars did not enjoy perfumes, as a rule. The natural musk and odor of the body was the best aphrodisiac. The Kara-Khitan smelled slightly of nut oil, but mainly of eighteen years of hard living. Fire and blood could be found in her scent, horse and desert and slaughter -- all the things that made life worth living.

"My daughter has many perfect, fascinating scars," marveled Fatima, her hands running over the old sword cuts and ancient wounds inflicted from a dozen different battles that adorned the girl's arms and thighs. It was obvious the girl did not mind the exploration, for she simply sighed a little louder at the touch and shifted her wide ass in the hot sand.

"My daughter has perfect, hard nipples," Fatima purred in her ear, reaching around and cupping the small breasts in the calloused palms of her hands.

"Ma -- my -- my mother -- O! uhhh ..."

The girl panted, her eyes partly closed, her mouth open, her tongue hanging down as she felt her flesh pinched, the juice of exhilaration stirring deep between her legs. The older woman pulled on her nipples, large and soft and brown. They stood out hard in the hot night air, waiting eagerly for fingers or lips to suckle on them, to tease them, to stir them alive. Already the twisted thong of cotton pressing in-between her shaggy cunt lips was soaked.

"My daughter is such a hairy girl," Fatima said huskily, her fingers slipping down between the splayed-open legs. It was a forest jungle that she entered; a dark triangle overflowing the cottony creases of her thong. The girl's clit was long and quite erect. Fatima pulled the fabric to one side and held the clit gently between her thumb and forefinger, starting to move her fingers in a slow, lazy figure-8.

The Kara-Khitan hissed, her fingers digging into the sand.

Fatima's tongue traced a brutal half-moon a Chinese scimitar had once carved into the girl's left shoulder blade. Sweat built up between them; girl-cum ran down their thighs. Somewhere in the endless stars overhead the young woman, leaning back, thought she saw a pair of celestial eyes looking down on them. It sent shivers down her spine but she couldn't tell if it was the intoxication of being watched or finger-fucked that made her head swim just so at that particular moment.

Fatima pressed the girl forward, bending her over, getting her onto her hands and knees, presenting her gushing cunt to to the stars and moon. She rubbed her tongue around the girl's lower lips, bathing her own mouth in cum, teasing her. The Kara-Khitan turned her head to one side, stared up at the heavens. She was sure she saw the eyes now, yes. They were watching. The whole damn world was watching her cum.

"My daughter ... tastes ... so ... nice," murmured the Tartar from deep within the quaggy marshlands of the girl's pubes. Saru'sinul-tu, for that was the girl's name, a poetic description for a type of lust only found by moonlight, cried out, her muscular thighs pinning the older woman's head like a wrestler, clamping her lips onto her clit, cumming for all that she was worth.

They slept that night in each others' arms and by the time the sun was sinking below the western hills on the next night they stood on a crest of a rise overlooking a desert city, studying its spires and minarets covered in turquoise, that iconic blue-green stone. Fatima drew in her reins and sat motionless for a moment, sighing deeply as she drank in the familiar sight. As metropolises went, it certainly could not compete with mighty Beijing, in China, but she would take it over the Persian city of Khorasam or Nishapur in Iran. It was a nomad's city and that meant hard-won pleasure.

"Karakorum," Fatima announced.

"We have traveled far, my mother," answered her young companion. Fatima smiled.

Saru'sinul-tu eyed her guide. Even after sex the Tartar's attire was remained filthy, her expression remained exhausted; her eyes, though, continued to sparkle. The Kara-Khitan regarded the view, voicelessly; recalling the days and nights of ceaseless riding as they passed across the Gobi. She had followed Fatima, unquestioningly, even before their peccadillo on the plains. They passed over vindictive mountains and bypassed enemy patrols they happened upon in the eyeless wilderness. They passed around hills where the hot southern wind blew, that led them into wastelands of steppes. Saru'sinul-tu's memories of the time were of the cantering of hoofs, orgasms, sun. Saru'sinul-tu marveled at the remote distance that had led them to the oasis of blue spires that marked their journey's end. Vast was the empire of the female regent, the woman called Turakina the Divooneh.

The two riders traveled down into the plain and worked their way between the lines of caravans and ox herders, whose drivers and shepherds shouted unceasingly, all bound for the Great Cobalt Gate. These were merchants ready to sell spices, silks and jewels: the merchandise of India and China, of Persia and Europe.

"All the world rides the road to Karakorum," said Fatima, nodding.

They passed through the wide turquoise-inlaid gate and rode through the winding streets, past clay-built apartments and bazaars thronged with the people of a thousand tribes and a hundred races. The Kara-Khitan saw figures from the mysterious reaches of the north; the stocky Yakuts with the rolling gait of a lifetime spent in the saddle; Cathayans in robes of silk; round-faced Kipchak soldiers. She saw turbaned Arabs, lean Syrians, hawk-faced Indians, languid Persians, swaggering Afghans.

Saru'sinul-tu 's wonder grew as they turned into a wide gateway, guarded by terracotta camels. There they gave their horses to Muslim grooms, walked along a winding path lined with ancient green palms. The Kara-Khitan, looking between the trunks, saw fountains jetting arches of water against the endless blue sky. At last they came to the royal palace, gleaming white and gold in the noonday sun. They passed between columns of marble, entering the inner-chambers with walls decorated in delicate reliefs by Persian and Armenian artistry.

In a blue-domed room that looked out through stone windows upon a long line of broad, shaded, garden paths the two women stopped. There muscular attendants took their weapons and led them between a double row of mute eunuchs in snow-tiger loincloths, half-men who held two-handed scimitars between their beefy thighs. At the far end of the room Fatima knelt before a figure seated on a plush divan. Saru'sinul-tu, however, stood silently erect.

The Kara-Khitan looked closely at the woman on the divan; was this, then, the all-powerful Toregene? She beheld a woman in the prime of life, with a wide sweep of hair pinned under a conical hat crowed with a fanciful knot. As with almost all Tartar women, her deel could hardly conceal her colossus breasts. She did not sit cross-legged as was the habit for Muslims, nor with one leg tucked under the other as was the way of other Mongol tribes. There was power in every line of her being. Her crisp black hair was untouched with gray despite her forty-one years. There was something of wolfish hardness in her appearance, thought the girl, that suggested the soul of the everlasting nomad.

"Speak, my darling Fatima," the khatun commanded in a low voice. "Vultures have flown westward, but we have yet to hear any reports and what took place at the front."

"My lady, we rode before the slaughter had even finished," answered the older warrior. "That news shall travel slowly on the caravan roads. What I shall tell you is that a great battle has been fought in the foothills of the land of our enemies; that Lady Linshui has broken the army of the Une-Calada."

"I thought as much. The man was a fool. Tell me, Fatima, who stands beside you?" asked Turakina, resting her chin on her palm and fixing her deep eyes upon Saru'sinul-tu.

"A warrior of the Kara-Khitan clan who escaped the slaughter," answered Fatima. "She alone found Une-Calada and his rabble and extracted justice for his outrage against the Great Khan's person."

"A curious tale, indeed. Why did you bring her to me?"

"It was my thought that she would aide you, my lady, when the time is right."

"Can she understand us?" asked Turakina.

"She speaks Manchurian, my lady, a little."

"What are you called, Kara-Khitan?" asked the khatun. "What is your title?"

"I am Saru'sinul-tu," answered the girl. "I come from the east of the Gobi, where the last of the Kara Khitans have made their khanate. I have no title, neither in my own land nor in the army that I once followed."

"Why do you come to see me?"

"Lady Fatima told me that you could offer me anything I might desire."

"And what is it that you desire the most?"

"Vengeance."

"Against whom?"

"Lady Linshui, the demon vassal and general of the Emperor of China, the one whose enemies have named her Witch Bone."

Turakina let her chin sink down upon her massive breasts for a moment and in the silence Saru'sinul-tu heard the silvery tinkle of a fountain in the courtyard and the musical voice of a Persian poet singing on a morin khuur, a curious two-stringed lute.

Finally the Tartar queen lifted her head.

"Sit down with Lady Fatima upon this divan close at my left hand," said she. "Tell me about your life and then I will instruct you in how to destroy a demon."

"My Khatun," Saru'sinul-tu began, bowing to the Great Tartar. "I am no story teller but I shall sing to you a poem my mother taught me on the eve that I left home. I hope this small thing pleases."

The Kara Khitan bent a little, as if to draw in air to her lungs. Fatima smiled and licked her lips, she had yet to wash the taste of the girl's cunt from them, a taste more intoxicating than airag, the fermented mare's milk the Mongol habitually guzzled down in large quantities.

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 westward to its doom. Now here she was, a sheep herder's daughter, standing in the blue-domed palace of fabulous Karakorum, while the last of Genghis Khan's granddaughters listened to her recite bad poetry. Fate was curious, indeed.