“You will. It is my decree as princess of Shu-Chen. It is your mandate to comply.”
Thus was the exchange between two women who occupied the opulent throne room of the royal palace of Shu-chen.
One was Princess Ban-Fayan, ruler of the Khitan province for the turbulent fortnight following the death of her father, Ban-Guang. An elegant, petite woman of renowned beauty, she stood proud and erect, her silky ebon hair cascading over a resplendent gown of green silk that was intricately embroidered in golden thread with images of swallows in flight. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes were tranquil, and there was the hint of a faint smile on her exquisite lips even as she issued a grim edict to her subordinate.
The recipient of the command contrasted wildly with the princess. A tall, powerfully built woman clad in the armor of a Khitan warlord. Her golden hair was confined in a thick braid that trailed down her back; her piercing green eyes glowered from a face as pale as the icy wastes that spawned her. In thickly accented Khitan, Sigyn of Asgard pleaded with her princess.
“There are other ways. I can spirit you out of the city before Zang-Jizu arrives. I have a friend who dwells with the prince of Chosan! We’ll…”
“No Sigyn. It will not do. What will I do if I agree to your plan? Live in exile among the Chosan? Join you in your wanderings? Nay.”
Ban-Fayan stepped forward and calmly reached out. Placing her soft, saffron-hued palm over Sigyn’s sword calloused hand.
“I was born and reared to be a princess of Shu-Chen. I am fit for naught else. Chamberlin Wei-Ao has betrayed us and sent my personal guard to their doom. My armies are defeated by Zang-Jizu; he will arrive soon and take this palace. You, my loyal bodyguard, will no doubt slay many, but you will fall. What sort of death do you think Zang will bestow upon me? Would you have that?”
Sigyn struggled to suppress a sob. Tears started from her eyes.
“No, but I will not do what you ask. I cannot! I…”
Ban-Fayan reached up and cradled Sigyn’s face in her hands. She smiled. “You will. You will do the deed and flee. Resume your wanderings. Forget this day and recall only the joyous times we have shared, Sigyn. My servant. My bodyguard. My friend.” She caressed the barbarian’s face, wiping the tears away. Then she turned and kneeled, pulling aside her hair and exposing the nape of her pale neck.
With a trembling hand Sigyn drew the heavy Khitan saber that hung at her side. “Fayan…” she croaked.
The Princess of Shu-Chen leaned forward and stretched out her neck. “Strike well Sigyn, I look forward to sharing your company once more in the Celestial Palace of Jade. Fare thee well.”
With a strangled cry, Sigyn brought the saber down in a whistling arc, swiftly and neatly beheading Princess Ban-Fayan.
***
“You do well to weep, foreign she-devil! Your time is at hand!”
Sigyn raised her head to regard the speaker. It was Wei Ao, Chamberlain of Shu-Chen, who had less than an hour agone been revealed as an agent of Zang-Jizu. Sigyn had rewarded him for his treachery by hamstringing him with a swift slash of her saber. Now he sat in a heap by the wall opposite of her his robes of blue silk sodden with blood and his aristocratically coiffed hair in disarray. He leered and berated the Aesir.
“Soon Zang-Jizu will arrive, purging Shu-Chen of weaklings like Ban-Fayan and foreign interlopers like you! No longer will our sublime kingdom be sullied by foreigners, their decadent gods and their arcane rituals.”
Sigyn took up her saber and approached the fallen chamberlain.
“Aye! Strike, barbarian whore! I will not precede you in death by very long.”
Sigyn paused. Something the Chamberlain had said stirred a dim memory. Gods. Rituals.
Seizing Wei-Ao by his braided topknot, she drug the chamberlain to a nearby balcony overlooking the palace square. Here was from here the rulers of Shu-Chen would deliver orations to the citizenry. A small throng was gathered here now, no doubt hoping for an edict to come from Ban-Fayan. They would be witness to a far different spectacle. Sigyn forcefully stripped Wei-Ao to the waist and bound his wrists securely to the balcony railing with strips torn from his silken robe. Aye, the chamberlain struggled, but he was a pampered aristocrat, weakened further by blood loss, and Sigyn was an iron-thewed daughter of one of the harshest environments of her age.
Sigyn had recalled a ritual she had been compelled to witness in her youth, performed by her tribe’s shaman on a captured Vanir raider. She set about performing it on the chamberlain. First she secured a sturdy carving knife from the kitchen, then she tore down several lengths of silken cord used to hang plants and decorative gewgaws from the palace ceiling. Returning to the balcony with these, She began reciting the simple, barbaric litany as best as she could recall it. At a proscribed point in the litany, she began her work on Wei-Ao.
Deaf to his screams, Sigyn sliced into his chest, cutting through the ribs and separating them from the sternum, Carefully avoiding piercing the chamberlain’s heart or lungs. The ritual would be for naught if he died before the proscribed time. Making openings on each side of the ribs, Sigyn threaded lengths of cord through them, and then brought them around to form a loop behind the chamberlain’s back. She then attached the remaining lengths of cord to the loop and secured the opposite end to the railing. Then she cut the bonds about his wrists and let him slump to the ground.
The bloody ruined heap that was Wei-Ao spat at her. “Do your worst, witch! These savageries will avail you naught! I will be avenged! I…”
Sigyn ignored this last tirade and pitched Wei-Ao over the balcony. He fell about halfway when the slack in the cords ran out, and his rib cage was violently spread apart in an explosion of scarlet. he hung there, twitching, and each member of the crowd below either recoiled in horror or stared numbly at the exposed, still beating heart and the still heaving lungs of the chamberlain, laid bare and dripping. Sigyn finished the last words of the litany, and went back to the kitchen for a bottle of rice wine.
******
Some time later, near the pool of blood that gathered under the ruined corpse of Wei-Ao, Sigyn lay sprawled on the steps of the palace in a drunken stupor. The crowd had dispersed at her arrival, thinking her a demon of vengeance dispatched from the Mountain of Flames.
Sigyn was roused from oblivion by a frigid caress upon her cheek, and a lilting, musical voice that spoke to her in her native tongue.
“Wake, little sister! Would you have the target of your vengeance find you in so slovenly a state? Wake! Wake and behold!”
Sigyn slowly opened her eyes. Before her stood an ethereally beautiful woman. Her magnificent snow-white body was naked, and unruly coils of reddish gold cascaded down her back and shoulders and glistened like a sunlit glacial waterfall. Her laughter was like the tinkle of shattering icesickles.
“You did not truly believe your call would be heard this far from Nordheim, did You Sigyn? But you remembered the ritual well! Look upon me! Have you beheld the like of me before?” The woman laughed again, and arms spread wide she spun and capered about the square with girlish glee. She finally stopped and adressed Sigyn with a gleam of cruel amusement in her eye, as though she were telling a sprightly jest at someone's expense. “Rise Sigyn, your foe comes to you! Normally he would be fodder for my brothers, but they are…indisposed. You will have to act in their stead! True you are shamefully drunk, but Zang-Jizu has run so very fast, and so very hard to be here, in his state you should be evenly matched. AH! Here is our little warlord now.
General Zang-Jizu, Warlord of Shu-Chen, staggered into the palace square well ahead of his army. His hair and beard wildly unkempt and framing a face contorted with maddening lust. Upon the field of battle where he had smashed the last of Ban-Fayan’s army, he’d beheld a woman of such cold, impossible beauty that he lost all ambition or motivation save that to possess her. Madly he had pursued her, first on horseback, then when his horse stumbled and fell, on foot. Ever the ivory skinned, golden haired vision had been just beyond his reach. But now, in the very square of the palace he would soon rule from, he had caught her, he had but to slay the armored demoness who now put herself between him and his quarry, and he would possess the maddeningly beautiful sprite and crush her to his bosom.
Sigyn lurched into his path and swung her saber with savage abandon. Zang-Jizu brought his own saber up to parry, and to make a wild slash that narrowly missed taking the Aesir’s head off.
The foes crossed swords dozens of times. There was no hint of the acrobatic techniques so often seen in Khitan swordplay, they hacked and slashed at one another savagely like wild beasts. Drawing blood here, slicing away a bit of lacquered armor there. All the while the naked, ice cold beauty danced and capered about them giggling with cruel glee.
Sigyn smashed Zang-Jizu’s blade out of his hand, but before she could strike him down he leapt upon her and clasped his hands about her throat, the force of his charge knocking her on her back. Sigyn’s barbaric, preternatural strength had made her often the equal of any civilized man, but General Zang-Jizu was a mighty warrior; and in the grip of madness that lent even more power to his grip. Sigyn soon found herself struggling for air. Weakening. Darkness closed about the edges of her vision, framing the slavering, lunatic face of Zang-Jizu.
Calling upon the last of her strength Sigyn lashed out and drove her thumb deep into the warlord’s eye. Clawing ferociously, she ripped out the orb from its socket and the general howled in agony. Amazingly he did not release the Aesir’s throat, but his grip weakened, giving Sigyn enough respite to reach out again, and claw the warlord’s remaining eye out of his skull. This time Zang-Jizu let go. Howling and babbling in inarticulate rage he crawled about the flagstones, his raw, empty eye sockets streaming blood.
Sigyn leapt upon him. Pummeling and clawing at him with her bare hands. She tore loose the lacquered metal breastplate from his body and smashed its edge repeatedly into the warlord’s face. She continued until her arms became numb, and the piece of armor fell from her weakening hands. For at time she rained weak blows down upon the ruined mound of blood, bone, flesh, and brains, until finally she could raise her arms no more. She sat astride the body of Zang-Jizu and wept.
“Fayan…” she sobbed.
The pale, horrifically delightful creature that led Zang-Jizu to his weird now came to Sigyn’s side, bearing her saber.
“His heart! Cut out the dog’s heart so that I might lay it before my Father! Complete your blood offering and gain his favor!”
Sigyn crawled off the general’s body and struggled to her feat unsteadily. The fire of combat had burned away both anger and drunkenness, leaving her only the cold, sick burden of grief.
“Cut out his heart yourself, Atali; I have spilled enough blood for now. If Ymir demands more, I will spill it as I carve my way out of this kingdom through Zang’s army. If that does not satisfy his appetite, then try and take my heart. I care not.”
Atali, Ymir’s Daughter, again tittered with glee. “You speak boldly to your gods, Sigyn of Asgard! But do not worry unduly, little sister. Father finds you among the most amusing of those who invoke his name. Verily, he doth hold you in high esteem! Aye, your place in his hall will be one of great honor when you die!” Atali punctuated her statement with more tinkling laughter. “Now I must be off! While I am here in this exotic land, I think I will lead a few more of these tiny, yellow warriors to their doom, ere the local gods become intolerant of my presence!”
“You are a monster.”
“Nay, Sigyn. I am Atali Ymirsdottir, I fulfill my purpose in the cosmos, just as you fulfill yours. Do not think ill of me, for it is you that called me hence.”
Sigyn struggled to wipe blood and tears from her eyes and drew a deep breath. “I was wrong to call you here. In my rage and grief, I thought only of revenge. And the memory of the ritual sprung into my mind so clearly.”
“Yes. Funny about that isn’t it?”
“I think I will swear less by Ymir in the future.”
“Perhaps you will, but the memory of this awful day will fade and you will slip back into old habits. The names of your gods will again come unbidden to your lips.” Atali covered her breasts with her hands and advanced until she was less than a handbreadth away. Sigyn felt the cold emanate from the goddess’ frigid skin. She leaned forward and whispered in Sigyn’s ear. “You will no doubt vulgarly invoke these, as you are wont to do, most churlish and disrespectful! But again you are so very amusing.”
Atali’s lips brushed Sigyn’s cheek and she cried out as the flesh was stung with frostbite.
The daughter of Ymir capered away toward the palace gates. “Farewell little sister! I look forward to seeing you again.” She faded from sight in a gust of cold wind and the sound of musical laughter.
Sigyn watched her depart. Surveying the royal palace of Shu-Chen one last time, she took up her saber and strode out into the city.
End
No comments:
Post a Comment