by Rex Sumner
“They stick out the side and are even more in the way,” she said.
Niamh breathed in heavy pants, controlling her anger. “Legend tells of our ancestors, Shelagh na Gig from many years ago, called Amazons by you humans. They would cut off the right breast to enable them to swing a sword and fight properly.”
Susan stared, distracted. “You can forget that for a start. It’s just a matter of getting the clothes and support right. I can’t believe any girl would cut a tit off. I expect that story was made up by girls without anything to interest a man.”
No sooner where the words out of her mouth than she regretted them, and she wondered why she had even said them to a girl as flat chested as Niamh. She grabbed her spear from the ground in a hurry, and just in time.
Niamh said not a word, though her face tightened as she came at Susan, fast and vicious, the blade seeming to vibrate.
Susan batted it sideways, sliding the haft down to smack into her hands. Niamh stared at her as she sucked her bloody knuckles.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Susan with complete lack of sincerity but a sweet smile. “You rushed me a little, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Interesting,” said Niamh. “Your style is different, unusual. Fast as well. You fight well with a spear.”
“In truth, I am using it as a staff and I would prefer to take the head off, make it a bit shorter. It would balance then, and I am better with a staff than a spear.”
“You can’t kill a man without a spearhead,” said Niamh, only for Susan to interrupt her.
“I have.”
Silence stretched between the two girls. The moment lengthened, Niamh nodded and at last Susan relented.
“The side swipe is all very well, but it is the end of the staff that does the damage. I broke his knee after I mashed his balls, then smacked him between the eyes with the end of the staff. A good staff carries a lot of weight, but you are trying to do something completely different, damage rather than pierce and cut.”
Niamh shrugged and came again, keeping the spear head low, sliding from side to side and Susan struggled to combat it. The spear just felt wrong, out of balance and her movements were still obstructed by her breasts, the sides spilling out and stopping her natural swing. She missed a stab and felt a searing pain in her leg as Niamh cut her, following up fast and furious while Susan did her best to hold her back.
“Hold a moment,” she said. “I need to adjust my harness.” She started to lower her spear, but Niamh didn’t stop, came again, a smile now on her face, thrusting hard and low for her legs.
Bewildered, Susan staggered back, slapping the spear away with the haft of her own and beginning to wonder as to Niamh’s intentions. Damn it, she wanted to hurt her, maybe even kill her. Did she fear her as a rival? What was going on?
Niamh switch to a high attack and Susan countered again, still on the defensive, and the spears came together with a crack, the blade of Niamh’s biting deep into hers, just beneath the blade. She swung again and the blade wobbled, loose in the bindings which came unstrung. Niamh smiled, a leisurely movement as she came in for the kill.
Susan’s lips thinned, and she stabbed at her eyes with the wobbling blade which Niamh deflected, before whirling the haft around and smashing into Niamh’s shoulder. As Niamh twisted away, Susan turned to the nearby building and smashed the head down on the spear rack, sending the blade flying and leaving her with a usable staff. Turning back, she found Niamh still adjusting, and pulled quickly at her harness, so her breasts poked out in the front and the supports went around the sides, getting the side swelling out of the way of her swinging arms. Pushed forward and out, they were no longer in the way.
Niamh recovered, turning back and her eyes widened at the lack of a blade on Susan’s spear, dropping for a moment to her prominent breasts, before smiling and coming hard and fast, the spear lunging straight at her breasts.
Meat and drink to a staff fighter. Susan slapped the spear sideways, spinning the staff so the other end slammed into Niamh’s hand, crushing the fingers and causing her to drop the spear. She reversed the spin, coming into the back of Niamh’s knee and laying her flat. She reversed the staff and slammed the blunt end into Niamh’s midriff, leaving her coughing, gasping and heaving dregs of oatcake and nut to the ground.
“Don’t play with me, girl, or you will suffer,” she said, grating out the words with menace and threat. She felt something flow back into her, the confidence and strength missing since Praesidium. “I am the Mistress of Harrhein and you don’t fuck with me.”
Niamh lay on her back, staring up at this Valkyrie standing over her, the staff inches from her mouth, and fear drifted through her eyes. She nodded.
Susan let her lie, allowing the seed of terror to plant deep, before pulling back and stalking to the horse trough by the spear rack and dousing herself. Standing up, and seeing the men approach, she shrugged her breasts back into the harness and browsed through the spears, keeping an eye on Niamh in case she needed another lesson.
The first warrior arrived and spoke to her in their guttural tongue.
“I don’t speak your rotten language, Twat,” said Susan in Elvish.
“Hah,” said the warrior. “But you are no Elf. Human, I think.”
“Harrheinian, damn you and take your eyes off my tits or I’ll reposition them.”
Her anger caused the warrior to step back a pace, and laugh to show he wasn’t scared.
“A new Shelagh na Gig? The first of your kind, and you can fight, it seems. I look forward to testing you in the arena. You want to practice now?”
Susan thought about that for a moment, the joy of battle still coursing through her veins. She could lay this arrogant bastard flat in seconds and she revelled in the thought of doing just that, before shaking her head in regret.
“I am testing my fighting costume, trying to get something that works for my build and doesn’t restrict my fighting,” she said. “I have enough knowledge from today, I’ll spank you another day.”
The warrior laughed, sharing a few words with his fellows, all grinning at her bravado.
“We await that day with pleasure, Shelagh na Gig. We will see how many of us you can take.”
Susan ignored the implied threat, seething inside, and stalked back to the palace or temple, she still wasn’t sure what it was or her bearings, taking her improvised staff with her. She determined to recover her proper staff and use that in future. Niamh she ignored, left her still crawling in the dirt.
She retraced their earlier steps to the door in the great stone building, which went up in steps to a point. Going inside, she stopped, beginning to lose her confidence as she wondered how to make her way back to her room, let alone find her old room with Fionuir.
A figure blocked her way, and she hesitated, recognising the Matriarch.
“Good skills, girl,” she said, in Elvish. “Come, we must proceed with your education. I am Diane.” She turned, her hair a long lustrous mane, grey and gleaming, as she strode down a corridor. Susan followed her to another sitting room, where she sank into a cushion opposite the older woman.
“You have many questions, child, I know. Today I will answer some, I expect, but I am going to tell you history, not answer questions. So listen.” She poured some liquid into two goblets, passing one to Susan who sipped, watching Diane with close attention over the rim.
“We are ancient, our race, unchanged in millennia, more than ten thousand years. We arose in a country far to the east, by a huge land-locked sea, a mountain country. The pre-men, the old race, with their dark skin and green eyes, they covered the world, but a new race had arisen to the south, a race with white skin and yellow hair. Another race arose even further to the east, red haired and slanted eyes. Great horsemen, they travelled west, seeking the setting sun, till they met the yellow hairs. We, the Tuatha da Danann, are the result of their
merger.” The old lady sipped her drink and her eyes unfocused, her thoughts and memories far away.”
Interested that she was receiving a repeat lesson, Susan leaned forward. “These yellow-haired people, do you mean they looked like me? Am I a descendant of them?
“What? Oh, I suppose so, but I am talking about long ago, and you humans mix with each other all the time, with wars and conquest, trade and migration. It is rare for a race to remain isolated, as we have done. So few can know their own bloodlines, but are mongrels in truth.”
Susan didn’t really like being called a mongrel. “I see. We have something in Praesidium we call hybrid vigour, when we cross two strains of a rose. Bigger, stronger and more beautiful than either parent, which indeed can become weak and insipid from inbreeding.” She sipped her honey wine and smiled sweetly.
Diane didn’t seem to notice. “In those days, we studied the mind, the dreamworld, and we communed with the spirits, understood our souls and we learned how to engender power in our bodies. We were proud of our understanding, and we shared what we knew with others, answering their requests, and some stayed with us, becoming our Brownies. They became our helpers, feeding us by raising the food we eat and bringing the wood for our fires. We concentrated on our secrets and they revered us, for we passed on messages from their ancestors and helped them appreciate the world.”
“Really? Messages from the dead? Can you still do that?”
“Of course. All the dead are laid to rest in the Rath, where we sleep, so it is easier to hear their voices.”
“Oh,” Susan was not sure she liked this idea. “Will your Shelagh na Gig be required to sleep there as well?” She toyed with her goblet, avoiding the Goddesses eye with studied nonchalance.
“Not in the Rath itself, but nearby, for sure. Not asleep, you are our guardians.” The old lady smiled, lighting up her face, as she continued. “The races from which we sprang changed, and became warlike, destroying the pre-men and mixing with them, splitting into bands and tribes. This is when the Shelagh na Gig arose, as we needed guardians for the first time. And they serve another role, our reservoirs of power, the Milkers of Men.”
Susan leaned forward, intrigued. “Milkers of Men? What a peculiar title? And how do they do that? Cut them and drain their blood?”
“In due course, my child,” said Diane. “The new tribes also came and asked our help, not understanding our lessons and instead calling us Gods for we knew so much. They replaced the pre-men across the land and when they travelled to new lands, they called to us, asking us to come and look after them. Some of us did. We went, different families, and they revered us, made us true Gods. We, the Tuatha da D’Anu, came with the Tuatha da Danaan.
“We kept in touch, through our power of astral travel, and we know where our cousins settled and lived as we have always lived. The tribes fought, and the victors slew the Gods of the conquered, including our cousins, many of whom became warlike themselves. The worst came when a tribe called the Aryans arose, swept all before them and slew our brethren in our original mountain home, tearing down the great pyramids of power, taking and amending our teachings to their own ends. They conquered a great area, spreading their blood and our changed teachings across the world.
“Many fled, to the great island in the sea where the teachings thrived till the sea arose and crushed the land and the survivors spread again, some going south and the teachings changed over the millennia.”
Susan listened, wide eyed, not sure what to make of this. Her knowledge of history was scant at best, stretching back a bare couple of hundred years and devoted to wondrous Galicians, warlike to a man.
“It was women who understood the void, the otherworld, who talked with the spirits and the souls, who calmed the mind and kept people sane. We do this through the power of the mind, and we assist our friends in changing their thoughts and dreams, through our wondrous draughts, brewed with mushroom and herb, and the power of our sex, for we learnt to take men to ecstasy, allowing their minds to leave their bodies.”
“Sex?” Susan asked, as the earlier lessons rose in her mind and a vision of the carved Shelagh na Gig arose in her mind. “Is this like a seminary, then, where you teach people to make sex more enjoyable? To control the men?”
“That is a feeble and unnecessary power, my child. No, we take the man to ecstasy, the greater the better, and when he reaches his pinnacle he brings forth not just his seed, but his energy, spiritual energy, and the true power of the feminine is to receive that energy, bring it back through her Source and be able to store it for future use.” Eyes sparkling with mischief regarded Susan over her wine, and a bemused Susan noticed they were blue instead of the usual green.
“I’m not sure I follow you,” said Susan, while a growing shock inside her showed her fear that she did.
“Energy flows through your body, child, energy we can control. Feel it circulate, as you place your attention to one part and move your attention to another. Start with your womb and move upwards. Yes? Of course you do. Rise your energy up through your body, to your heart, your throat, your mouth, your Eye of Power, and your crown. Now run it down your backbone and return to your womb.”
Susan’s eyes widened as she felt the warmth travel around her.
“That is your energy,” said Diane. “Your womb is a portal. It generates energy and behind it is a reservoir in which you can store the energy and build up power. This is the power of a woman. Your first task is to gain control of your own energies, then we can show you how to add more, to milk men of their energy and store it, before bringing forth your own power which you can share with others, both to heal, to enervate, to travel, and to seduce.”
Susan considered this for a moment, while Diane waited. “What do you mean by travel?”
“As you travelled to fight the dragon, so you will learn there are many ways to travel, with your mind, powered by your womb. Yes, and you can take others with you. You will learn powers others consider magic, the powers which led ordinary mortals to call us gods. This was our undoing, for men arose, our own cousins, jealous of the women, who sought power for themselves, desirous of the riches showered upon the women by thankful devotees, yeah, and the power that came with this. They took the left hand path, the forbidden route to power.”
“The left path?” Susan was confused.
Diane tossed her head with impatience. “The left path is where one seeks power for oneself, not for the good of all. It is the temptation we must all resist, always there, always nagging at us. They threw down the women, proclaimed themselves priests and foreswore the Mother. They banned the use of drugs and sex to achieve the godhead, and instead preached abstinence. Abstinence! Pah!” Diane spat in outrage. “Oh, it can work, but takes twenty years or more, separated from the Mother, with the soul yearning for union. It was but a way for the men to keep the women from power. The left hand path.”
Diane shuddered, her eyes misting, and she sipped her tea while Susan felt her soul shrivel and sadness leach through her being.
“All gone,” said Diane, “nobody is left. And we would have gone as well, but for our men staying loyal and the trick we played upon our cousins, the Milesians. They sought to trick us, to send us into our graves and underground, but we were stronger and Manannan nac Lir led us here, instead, to Elphame where we brought our Brownies and now we overlook and follow the world, keeping the Elves from conquering us and instead becoming their Gods. And Crom, demon that he is.”
“This Crom, he is different?”
“Aye, you will see he is different, for in his line the old race, the ape men, stays strong. Like the pre-men, his skull is long, their ancestral memories powerful, and he is powerful, skilled at war.
“And in the rest of the world, you are gone, no trace?”
“Oh, there are plenty of tracks from our passing. We devised these buildings of power, these pyramids, which amplify the soul e
nergy. Our cousins to the south, as taught by Thoth, built huge ones, manifesting great edifices of power and love, only to be overwhelmed by an aggressive race from the east who used them to bury their kings. In the east the Aryans took our teachings, and wrote them out in new ways, called them vedas and lived by them. Whole new religions arose, following these paths, and remembering some of our names and practices, but much changed, to give power to the priests. Nowhere did the priestesses survive, thought they lingered in Ancient Thrace. Nowhere now are people brought to the divine through the perfect vessel, the Divine Feminine.”
Diane scowled at Susan. “Damn you girl, I have told the tale and now I am sad. Go, go and we will speak again on the morrow, working on your duties and the lessons you must learn, how to dream, how to milk the men. Leave me with my memories.”
A Shelagh na Gig waited outside, and took Susan by the hand, inspecting her with care.
“So you are the feisty one, who sat Niamh on her bottom.” The girl grinned, short for a Tuatha da Danann but radiating power and purpose. “I am Cara. Come now, we have a ceremony tonight and you must prepare. Diane told you about farseeing? Overlooking?”
Susan nodded, not seeing any signs that Cara disliked her; she showed no anger at Niamh’s fate.
“Good. Tonight you will join us, for there has been a mighty battle in your lands, and tonight Crom shows us what happened.”
“A battle? Oh, who won? Were many killed? Where did it happen?” Susan’s mood shattered as her heart went out to her men, her special soldiers in the Pathfinders, her friends and her king.
“I don’t know, nobody knows except Crom and he will tell us all tonight. He is full of himself, blowing out his chest, the big brute. Says his Brionne is back, the best one ever.”
