Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms

by Sacchi Green

  “If the wind calls to you,” says the wise man, “you know you must follow it. The wind never speaks for nothing.”

  If only it would tell her: Why her? If only it would tell her what path it wants her to travel.

  Before first light, she leaves the valley and the mountains dreaming in the last stillness of winter night.

  I go, she thinks, to almost certain death. But surely the wind cannot be so capricious, so devious. Instinct tells her the trail she follows is not false, and she believes it, though everyone has judged her insane.

  “But where do you go?” Commach has asked. No, demanded, as he thinks he has a right to. And with a stifled sigh, she has, out of kindness, tried to explain. The expanses of land flat as a pancake, jeweled with rivers and great swaths of water. Like lakes, but so flat. Not even a hillock in sight. Buildings and walls of towering, golden stone, sprawling in every direction. Sand and dust everywhere the rivers and strange lakes don’t touch. A land for giants.

  West, the wind seems to whisper. West, where nothing lies but frost and impassable peaks. But perhaps beyond the peaks. What then?

  Commach has turned away in disgust, not bothering for the first time to try to touch her hand. To boldly brush his shoulder against hers. Realizing at last that his bid is lost. You go to your death.

  And maybe she does. She hasn’t told Commach or anyone about the flowers. Red like blood, ringed by thorns. But beautiful, so beautiful. Petals soft as fur. She aches to touch them, willing to brave the thorns, to bleed on them for the chance to breathe their sweetness, to rest her skin against silken blooms. Maybe that will be her demise.

  In the logic of dream, such a death seems worth it.

  In a story, she might have been bewitched, sad and fading under the curse of some ruthless enemy of the state, some deity jealous of her beauty but unable to destroy it. In reality, she has the morning attendants powder her cheeks to restore their glow, line her eyes with charcoal to hide the red cast of sleepless nights. She herself paints on her smile, draws on her gracious hands and more gracious nods. The suitors come and they go. She dismisses them with quiet words. If she laughs without mirth, why, no one hears the difference.

  In a story, heroes and champions might come from far and wide to discover the cure to her mysterious sorrow, to win her hand for the feat. Alone at her window, where no one knows her pain, she gives her songs to the wind that seeps through the gardens and over the lakes, carries the scent of the roses and the notes of the song out across the desert. To whatever lies beyond.

  In a tent under desert stars, Maevyn lies awake, waiting for the wind. Sometimes it’s a useless effort, and the wind is nothing but a harsh, destructive demon, burying men and beast under the pitiless sand. But there are the times when it’s not. Tonight, it’s soft as a veil of silk.

  She opens the tent flap and the wind steals in with gentle touch, not yet bitterly cold, but no longer singed by the day’s fierce heat. It caresses her unbound hair, tugs at the loose nomad shirt she wears. It sweeps around her, singing of longing, of loneliness, and the perfume of the roses fills the tent. She has a word for them now, the fierce, red blooms, but their thorns still haunt her sleep.

  The traders and caravan guards that she makes her way with now cannot help her with the roses. They shake their heads and fold their arms into their sleeves. “The roses only grow at the royal palace,” they say, and look at each other and quickly at their shoes. They have never been to the palace. It is not for folk such as them. It is not for strangers, barbarians either.

  They have given her space in their camps, a place for her longsword and knife to earn passage with them. Even a command, a company of mercenaries both grizzled and green who, willing or grudging, will yet do what she says. They have slept and starved with her across these many months, forgiving her Hadrai ignorance, her strange manners and stranger skin. But their palace they guard with mulish resolve.

  The wind goes, as suddenly as it has come, leaving her empty and aching, kneeling at the edge of the tent. She reaches up a hand to call it back, force it, will it to stay. Tell me why.

  But it doesn’t return. And in the morning, she marshals her troops, standing chill as the morning while she waits. She will go to the palace, no matter what they say. In that, she has no choice. In that, she follows fate.

  Hand raised against the golden warmth of the sinking sun, she comes to the window, to the view that doesn’t change, insensible to months and years. Insensible to time and age. She no longer sings of sorrow. She no longer sings from pain.

  The suitors no longer come and go. She doesn’t have to smile through silent screams of rage. But she has traded a gown for a robe, the politics of the ballroom for the courts of law. Her father sniffs with approval, if not content, and they marvel at her wisdom, at her justice, at her knowledge for one so young.

  If only they knew her for a fool. She has but changed one duty for another, and bound by duty still, she remains.

  Then, as if it has just remembered a forgotten task, a neglected errand, a breath of wind steals by and touches her cheek. It flutters the edges of her long, severe robe, brings with it the cool breath of oasis flowers, the warm dust of horse hooves, the patter of rain on a lake. Her heart suddenly aches, and tears long dry sting her throat.

  She shivers, but she throws the robe back, lets the sunlight wash over her bare skin. In drowsy waves, the scent of roses wafts up from the gardens below, and she abandons herself to the caress of the wind, the sun, and the roses. She sighs gently into the swirling currents of air as her nipples tighten and her sex pulses with need.

  Flushed and gasping, she catches herself with one hand against the window arch, and stares out across the world. To distant roads that wind their slow way across the state, to the palace at its heart. The hooves of a horse fly beneath her, the world a blur through which she speeds. She urges the horse to fly faster, to ride the wings of the wind itself. So long. So long I’ve waited.

  She has no breath to sing, but she cries out. A sound of raw, primal longing. Echoing. Reverberating. She lets the power of her need flow out and away.

  She rides into the city as the sun falls away. Kyre-Maevyn, they call her now. Captain. Master of the Blade. Gold clinks heavy enough in her purse for even the finest inns, warm light and rest and shelter and deference to one who wears the cloth of the Imperial Blades. From the darker, dirtier streets, other temptations materialize in doorways: painted lips and nipples, knowing hands and mouths.

  But she passes it all like a shadow in the night. She knows only impatience. She leaves behind the streets and the crowds, wends her way up. To the center of the city where the palace lies.

  She has served in the farthest outposts, where new recruits and commoners and foreigners serve. In barracks tenanted with rats. Eating gruel and chopping wood, slopping out the filthy backwaters of the state. She has imagined the horrified look on Commach’s face if he were to see her so fallen, digging ditches at the order of fat, provincial governors, and it has made her smile. For this she has done by choice.

  No barbarian will ever wear the cloth of a Blade. No woman will ever wield a Captain’s longsword. But she has proven them wrong.

  They don’t know she hasn’t had any other choice.

  And now at long last, the palace gates will open to her, admit her past the impossibility of the walls. She doesn’t go to the quarters appointed to her in the Kyre-fas. She hands sword belt and bag to a page and lingers in the common room of the fas for a while, nursing a cupful of wine, ignoring the spiced bread and meat laid out on the long, white tables. Listens idly to the chatter of tipsy guards and drunken Blades, the rattle of dice, the hum of a guitar from some hidden corner. While beyond the pillars of the hall, the wind pines and frets, bringing her the scent of roses. Close, so close. So very, very close now.

  No one notices when she rises, slips between the shadows of the pillars and out into the dark. She doesn’t have the measure of the palace, the paths and the step
s and terraces that divide its mazelike, sprawling width. But she doesn’t hesitate all the same. She walks with feverish urgency along the unfamiliar path, following the pull of desire and the promises of the wind, trusting her steps to fate.

  They meet in the scented night, within the shadow of the garden walls. The rose bushes grow high against the stone, supple branches heavy with blossoms, leaves rustling whispers in the night. A secret, wanton arbor where the captain falls to her knees before the princess, who waits lovely and still as the molded statues that grace the fountain gardens.

  “Princess,” Maevyn says, hoarse with the effort to find words after so long. After an age of waiting and aching and following a dream to the reality of lust. After all, she will not meet her death. At least, not in the way of the warrior. She bends her head in supplication, in passion, in the sweetness of surrender.

  “You are forbidden,” the princess whispers. Her fingertips raise Maevyn’s chin up, draw loose the bands that hold back the folds of Maevyn’s hair. She shivers as she lets it flow over her hands.

  “You have called me.”

  She undoes the lacings of Maevyn’s tunic, slips her hands between the leather folds.

  “You break the rules of the state.”

  Maevyn writhes under her touch, nipples pinched into violent need.

  “At your wish,” she gasps, but it is all she can say. Her hands, browned and scarred by wind and blade, reach out, grasping for anchor in this tossing sea of sudden, mindless desire.

  The princess’s hips are soft, curved like the giant bell that hangs in the mountain hall of the Hadrai chief. They yield to her grip, rolling with voluptuous promise as she pulls down, as the princess falls back beneath her, legs parting under the force of Maevyn’s knees. The princess laughs and spreads her legs wider.

  “You violate me,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  The fabric of the judge’s robe rips, no match for a warrior’s strength, and Maevyn discards the torn fabric like a fragment of night, leaves the princess bare and unmasked. She closes her eyes as Maevyn’s lips open hers, and her hands punish again. Finding Maevyn’s breasts, squeezing the tender flesh, nails scoring skin, thumb and forefingers tightening beyond the limits of even a warrior’s pain. For this is not the pain of the battle field. Love devastates as battle never can. Maevyn cries out into the kiss, sex pulsing with torment and need, and the princess releases her nipples to heat and agony, pushes her tunic away.

  Bare skin falls on bare skin, bodies crushed together in embrace. The princess’s tiny cruel teeth find her neck, nip and pull at undefended skin, and Maevyn thrusts her rough hands between untouched, delicate thighs. Feels the princess arch and hears her half-stifled cry.

  My hands to serve her, she has vowed. The words of the Imperial Blades. With a single finger, she parts the princess’s wet folds, circles the tip of her sex. A shudder and another cry as reward. Maevyn smiles as she pushes even deeper, into her princess’s innermost folds. Her princess forgets to bite, forgets that she ought to be punishing her errant Blade. She only clings and quivers as Maevyn slides fingers, now gentle, now rough, deep into her and then out again, teasing her wet sex, rubbing it hard. She sobs with pleasure as Maevyn moves her head to one lush breast, captures the nipple with her tongue, licking it, suckling it, as her fingers carry out their dance. Inside and out, slick now with passion. Relentless in their fury.

  Her princess will be sore, rubbed raw, by the morning. She will feel it with every solemn step, as she makes her way to the courts, to the thrones, as she passes high above the training yards and barracks of the Blades. Maevyn smiles around the nipple in her mouth. The unanswered torture between her own legs is intolerable. It pierces her with every motion, demanding to be addressed. But this is the wind’s cruel promise. The thorns of the rose that bleed her of breath.

  The princess cries out and clenches her legs, but still Maevyn takes her, not allowing any reprieve. And the scent of the roses seems to deepen. The princess shudders and shudders in her arms. Maevyn lifts her head to draw her lips across moist and shivering skin. Finds the princess’s panting mouth and savages her waiting lips. Their tongues meet, twine like mating snakes, struggle against each other. Subside.

  The wind brushes over their bodies, cooling the sweat of their exertions, evening and calming their ragged breath. Frenzy fades into stillness.

  They wait in the dewy garden for the coming of daybreak when they must return to their fates. But the bonds of duty weigh lighter now under the hidden bindings of bliss. Under the secret promise of nights to be.

  “I would go with you if I could,” she says with her head on Maevyn’s shoulder. “To the cold mountains of the East.”

  She turns and lifts a hand, strokes delicate fingers along Maevyn’s cheek.

  “Instead I keep you in exile here, for my pleasure.”

  Maevyn catches her hand and kisses each finger. Smiles at the way it makes her princess shiver.

  “By my choice,” she says.

  TROLLWISE

  Sacchi Green

  Trip, trop, trip, trop. Hjørdis stood back in disgust as Princess Tutti pranced across the bridge, hips swaying, the false tail strapped to the seat of her gown twitching. A coy toss of Tutti’s head knocked the goat horns on her headdress slightly askew. “Oh, Mr. Troll,” she piped in a falsetto voice, “are you there today? Don’t you want to eat us up? Look, this time there is a meatier prey than just we little goats!” She cast a mocking glance back toward Hjørdis. “A buxom brood mare!”

  Hjørdis would have swatted the silly girl’s rump if there had been enough of it to be worth the trouble. Or, more truthfully, if she herself had not been bound by oath to abide peaceably among these puny southerners. For now. As it was, she took a threatening stride onto the wooden planks. Tutti ran off giggling toward the meadow, from which sounds of pipes and laughter and occasional playful shrieks rose above the lazy burbling of the stream.

  Princess Vesla, also adorned with horns and tail, came up timidly beside Hjørdis. “There truly was a troll under the bridge a week ago,” she said in a tremulous voice. “When Tutti called out, I heard his voice, like the rumbling of stones. She thinks it was Werther, the dancing master, trying to frighten us, but I’m sure it wasn’t!”

  “Oh? What did he say?” Hjørdis made some small effort to tolerate Vesla, who was not so spiteful as her sister Tutti. She felt also a slight sympathy for the girl, who had formed a hopeless passion for Hjørdis’s captive brother Harald. At least accompanying them on their outing, however nasty it promised to be, was an excuse to leave the castle.

  “He said, ‘Scrawny bones not fit to pick my teeth! Get you gone!’” Vesla shivered. “But we haven’t heard him since.”

  Hjørdis knew a great deal more about trolls than these little twits ever could. More than anyone could who had not known Styggri. That sounded all too much like what Styggri would say, in a humorous mood. But Styggri had crossed into another world from which there was no return.

  Hjørdis looked more closely at the bridge. Its sides and the pillars beneath were stone, with wooden planking wide enough for two carriages to pass side by side over its double arch. And wide enough for a troll to lurk beneath, although why one should wish to, or venture this far south at all, was beyond her. Still… She gazed far upstream to where water surged out from a cleft in a rocky hillside. Nothing to compare with the jagged mountains and plummeting rivers of her home, but still part of a long arm of hills and ridges reaching out from those same mountains.

  “You go on to your frolicking.” She gave Vesla as gentle a shove as she could manage. Gods, these pampered southern girls were brittle, twiggy things! And their brother the prince— her husband under duress—was no better. “I’ll sit a while here in the shade of the birches. This heat annoys me.”

  “Oh! Are you, then…already…”

  “No! And if I were, it would be too soon to know. Go along now!”

  Vesla went, trying to keep the gi
lded wooden heels of her shoes from making as much noise on the bridge as Tutti’s had done. Once safely across she looked back over her shoulder. “Give Werther a few stomps from me,” Hjørdis called. The foolish dancing master deserved whatever he got, with his tales of ancient times in foreign lands where satyrs danced on goat hooves and bands of women ran wild under the spell of a wine god.

  It had all got somewhat garbled. Tutti had stuck various bits together, so that now the weekly game was for the ladies to pretend to be goat-like satyrs and trample on whichever courtiers and servants were willing to prostrate themselves in the meadow grasses, which turned out to be a surprising number, including, of course, Werther himself. Vesla had said wistfully that she wished Harald were allowed to join them, at which Hjørdis had snapped that if her brother were fool enough to submit to such atrocities, she would abandon him to his fate, vow or no vow.

  Tutti had hinted that even Prince Oleg might be there today. All the more reason for Hjørdis to stay away. Let her husband take what pleasures he might, since thus far he had been unable to take pleasure in her.

  Her marriage to the king’s son had been the ransom demanded for Harald, and even then he would not be released until she had provided a strong grandson of the king’s blood as heir to the kingdom. The marriage vows meant nothing to her, being made before gods not her own, but her personal vow to redeem her brother was a matter of honor. At least she had won the release of the crew that had sailed with him in search of adventure and, of course, of the girls over the next hill, or past the farthest fjord, or in distant lands, who always held the promise of being more beautiful than the willing girls at home.

  Prince Oleg, however, had not yet managed to live up to his half of the arrangement. Hjørdis had tried, in good faith, to be gentle and not loom over him if she could avoid it, but he still trembled when they were alone together, and, though he was clearly aroused, he could not keep from shrinking away at her touch.