Imperial Lady

22

The discipline of the Hsiung-nu held true, and the lines of horsemen stayed where they were. With a contempt that showed in every leisurely movement of his body, Tadiqan edged his horse closer. So, Silver Snow noted, did the Yueh-chih’s lord. Vughturoi rode out to meet them.

“Brother,” Tadiqan spoke, without the decency of allowing the shan-yu whom he betrayed to speak first. He might as well have spat. One of Vughturoi’s men shouted in outrage, but Vughturoi held up his hand for silence.

“You profane the name,” Vughturoi told him, “and your oath as well. When I was raised to my father’s seat, you bowed yourself before me. Is this how you serve the clan?”

“Yes!” screamed Tadiqan, his face beginning to go crimson with one of his rages. “You will make us into mincing copies of those half men of Ch’in, sell us into slavery for more silks and gems. That whey-faced girl who whispers by night of the splendors of her home will betray us all. Put her aside and ride free! Or, by all that is under heaven, step aside and let a man lead!”

“A man?” Vughturoi asked, his own voice rising with a dangerous anger. “A man who hides behind his mother and wars on ladies? I call such a one not man but boy and traitor. And to that one, I give a choice. Exile or, here and now, before our men, a final submission. And if you betray that, know that my vengeance may not be swift, but it will be painful and utterly sure.”

This time, Tadiqan did spit. “I shall have your place, and my kinsman of the Yueh-chih shall have your head!”

“There is no dealing with a madman,” Vughturoi observed. “We shall speak when you are sane once more. You are worse than the people whom you claim to hate.” Contemptuously he turned his back on the traitor, and rode toward his own line.

Silver Snow drew a deep breath, fully expecting to see a war begin. Stunned by the audacity of the shan-yu in turning his back upon an enemy known to be as deadly as he was treacherous, his men and those of the other side held their places.

Then Tadiqan’s hands flashed to his bow, nocking arrow and drawing with the terrible grace that made the Hsiung-nu feared throughout the world. Before she could control herself, Silver Snow screamed, and the first arrow went awry.

Time seemed to slow then. It seemed that Silver Snow sat her horse amid a field of statues in which only three people moved: Tadiqan, Vughturoi, and herself. Vughturoi, who took such care of his mounts, turned his with such speed that it screamed and reared. For that moment, he was so occupied in controlling it that he had no chance to draw weapon.

He could be killed before he could defend himself!

That shall not he! Silver Snow vowed. Though she was no warrior, she was a huntress of no mean prowess. Only it had been so long since she had ridden out with her bow! That made no difference. Even as she lamented her lack of practice, she seized an arrow without looking at it, nocked, and shot.

A terrible whistling shrieked out and the arrow flew—not a deadly shot to throat or belly—but pinning Tadiqan’s arm. Silver Snow’s eyes widened. By some fortunate chance, she had used the single whistling arrow that she had preserved! Tadiqan screamed, not in pain, but in protest and dreadful fear as, from behind him, that whistling found an answer from the men whom he had trained to shoot upon hearing it.

A hundred shafts whined out in deadly obedience that hurled Tadiqan from his saddle and toppled his horse. Arrows pierced man and horse so many times that some shafts had broken before they could sink into flesh. Blood seeped out from between the shafts and puddled in the trampled grass.

Madly daring, Silver Snow forced her horse forward. “You sought a cup made of a human skull!” her voice rose shrill above the tumult of man and beast as she confronted the Yueh-chih. “Then take this!”

She pulled the cup from its silk wrappings and showed it to the man who had sworn vengeance because that cup existed at all. “As a loyal son,” she told him, “take that and bury it after the custom of your kind.” She replaced it in its shroud and held it out, offering it to his suddenly reverent hands.

“You do not need another such cup,” she added quietly. Her eyes pleaded with him to agree with her even as she hoped that Vughturoi would not race forward and slay him to protect her.

“No,” he muttered, turning the wrapped bundle over and over in his hands. “We do not, now that we have my father’s honor back. Lady, I have heard of you. They hail you as the queen who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu; and now I see that it is true. I will do homage to you," he said, and dismounted.

Even as Vughturoi rode up, his eyes distended, his horse lathered, Tadiqan’s former ally went to his knees, then to his belly. Quick to seize the opportunity, Vughturoi beckoned his own men forward to encircle the others.

From behind his own ranks, however, rose a tumult of horses, shrill screams, and finally the deep-throated death shriek of a warrior.

Silver Snow dared to glance behind her.

“It is Strong Tongue!” cried Sable. “Somehow she freed her hands, slew one of her guards, and seized her drum!”

Silver Snow had heard that great grief, or rage, or fear could make people inhumanly strong. Thus it was with Strong Tongue, who now strode forward, beating the spirit drum to a rhythm more savage and more compelling than any she had ever heard.

Faced with a shaman mad with grief and rage, even the bravest among the FIsiung-nu blanched, and many on both sides hurled themselves from their horses, to cower with their heads to the ground.

“I have it!” screamed the deposed shaman. “And soon I shall have vengeance on you all for my son, I and my demons!”

“Mad,” gasped Willow from where she sprawled on the ground. Silver Snow could see white around her eyes, which glared with the terror of madness that haunted human and beast alike.

A howling wind blew up about Strong Tongue. Even as a guard tried to pierce it with his spear, it seized him and tossed him high and far. They could hear bones shattering as he landed. Still the wind intensified until it drowned out all other sotinds. Mouths worked on prayers or shouts; horses tossed their heads, whinnying in barely suppressed panic; and all anyone could hear was the whining snarl of the wind, a miniature version of the kuraburan, or goblin storms, of the deep desert, a thousand-thousandfold worse than Tadiqan’s whistling arrows . . . until the first of the demons laughed.

Shapes worse than any nightmare out of Taoist magical texts half materialized within the whirling vortex of wind, grit, and sand. They danced and gibbered and held out grasping claws. More and more fiercely Strong Tongue beat upon the spirit drum until Silver Snow thought surely that it would shatter, loosing the demons forever upon an unsuspecting world.

“This for my son,” she shouted. That much Silver Snow could hear over the roaring of the wind and the giggling of the demons as they headed toward her.

Already she could feel the wind’s hot breath. There was no place, she knew, to flee.

“No!” A wail of rejection pierced the sounds of the black storm as Willow forced herself to her feet. Her lame leg buckled, but she caught herself by staggering sideways and steadying herself against a horse.

“Elder Sister, Elder Sister!” she cried and hurled herself, not at Strong Tongue but between Silver Snow and the storm. Her hands fumbled in her bosom and produced her greatest treasure, the silver mirror incised with magical symbols that only she could read. It looked pathetically small, no larger than the disk of the indifferent sun now high overhead, but it flashed with light and in it was reflected, in miniature, all the fury of the storm and, at its heart, Strong Tongue, who summoned it.

The storm seemed to shrink, as if somehow the mirror controlled it. Willow swayed on her feet like the tree for which she had been named. Her head dropped, her whole body sagged, but she held up her hands strongly as though she held a shield against the swordstrokes of a near-invincible opponent.

Slowly the storm reversed the direction around which it spun on its axis. Even more slowly it turned toward Strong Tongue, to engulf her who had summoned it in the first place. Strong Tongue shook her head in rejection and pounded her spirit drum, and the storm edged back toward Willow.

The maid trembled, but forced herself to limp forward, first one step, then another, always holding the mirror between the demon storm and herself, as she stood before her beloved mistress.

“No, Willow,” gasped Silver Snow, but the maid shook her head once frantically, rejecting as impossible any help that her mistress or some warrior might offer. Silver Snow herself considered drawing bow and firing into that storm; but who could tell what those winds would do to an arrow? They might send it anywhere, including back upon the archer.

That was what Willow sought to do: deflect the storm upon its sender. Just as clearly, Strong longue sought to overpower her enemy and overwhelm first Silver Snow, then the camp. Drum and mirror contended, the storm between them.

And then, as if it had waited all these years for the most auspicious moment in which to turn upon its mistress, the yellowed skin of the drumhead tore, and the wind rushed free, overwhelming Strong Tongue’s screams. Even now, they were screams of rage, not fear.

Only an instant later, Willow’s mirror broke into two pieces. Strong Tongue fell, lashed by the gale she had summoned; but the maid fell too, a slender tree exposed to a storm too strong for it.

A warrior leapt to Strong Tongue’s side, his spear poised for a stabbing thrust at her throat.

“Do not slay her!” Vughturoi shouted, his voice hoarse.

What kind of strength would allow a woman to survive that storm? More, Silver Snow feared, than poor Willow possessed. Silver Snow slid from her saddle, ignoring the pain of her foot to run toward Willow, who lay motionless upon the ground. She arrived just as Sable did, but when the Hsiung-»nu woman would have sheltered her, Silver Snow pushed forward.

“Little sister?” she asked in a tiny voice.

Strong Tongue had weathered the storm. Was it asking too much for Willow, whose only thought was to protect, to help, to serve, to have survived it too? After all, lame she might be in human guise, but she had all of the vitality of the fox kind, too. She had taken the entire brunt of the storm upon herself to deflect it; and in doing so, had saved countless lives.

Tenderly Silver Snow turned her maid over. Delicately she brushed dust and grass away from the pale, still face. Willow’s lips were blue, and her chest did not seem to rise and fall, even faintly. A mirror . . . where was a mirror? If mist formed on it, then the girl breathed, lived, and might be healed. Never taking her eyes from Willow, Silver Snow scrabbled with one hand in the grass. When a sharp edge nicked her finger, triumphantly she brought forth one of the pieces of Willow’s mirror, broken by some fate in the shape of a half-circle that bore a darker splotch at its center. Sable brought up the other half.

Yang and Yin. Neither, when held to Willow’s lips, showed any trace of mist. And then both shards of mirror dissolved.

Her own lips trembling, Silver Snow glanced over at Sable, who shook her head and began to straighten Willow’s garments, pulling them down decorously to cover her legs, the straight one and the lame. Even as she watched, whatever knot of muscle and sinew had shortened Willow’s bad leg seemed to untwist: lame in life, Willow lay whole and straight in death.

That sight broke Silver Snow’s fragile grip on self-control. She laid her head on Willow’s stilled bosom and wept as a mother would mourn for the death of her first-born.

Vughturoi knelt at her side. “She said that she would endure testing unto death,” he said. “I had no idea of subjecting her to such an ordeal, no thought but that she would prove as true as she has.” She felt a light touch on her hair, and looked up in time to see Vughturoi rise.

“Take that witch”—he pointed at Strong Tongue’s unconscious body, and his voice was chill with loathing—“and bind her. Bind her well, gag her, and guard her until a wild horse can be brought.”

In silence, Vughturoi waited while he was obeyed. “Now, tie her to its back.”

By this time, Strong Tongue had recovered consciousness, but that terrible vitality of hers showed only in the fires of her eyes.

“I cannot punish you as you deserve,” Vughturoi told her. “And being what you are, a wife of my father and, once, before you turned to evil, a mouthpiece for the spirits, I think that I dare not punish you at all. So I shall send you hence, and whatever spirits find you may do with you as they will. Hei-yahhh /” he cried, and slapped the horse’s hindquarters.

Maddened by the unfamiliar feeling of a burden lashed to its back, the horse reared, plunged, and dashed away.

Faintly Silver Snow heard Vughturoi inviting the Fu Yu and the Yueh-chih—those who had not fled, much to the mirth of their fellows—to dismount and share his hospitality.

She knew that she should rise, should greet them properly, as befitted a queen. She also knew that she had neither strength nor heart to do so, now that Willow was dead.

She shut her eyes and wished that the darkness would overpower her. To her astonishment, warm hands lifted her and held her.

“I cannot have you grieving thus,” her husband told her. “What would she say if she saw you?”

Silver Snow gulped down a sob. “She would scold me for endangering my baby, and she would dose . . . dose me with dreadful-tasting herbs.”

“Then listen to her memory,” Vughturoi ordered. “I . . . we . . . owe her everything. What would you have us do? Just say the word, and we shall give her a funeral finer than any that the grasslands have known before.”

Sable gasped. “Oh, but look!”

Two large foxes, totally against the nature of their breed, which hid from humankind whenever possible, emerged from the cover of the long grass and crouched, belly-down, beside Willow’s body, nuzzling and prodding it. When Willow did not respond, they yapped shrilly, as if in lamentation, and disappeared once more.

Sorrowfully Silver Snow watched them vanish. “A funeral finer than any that the grasslands have known before?” she repeated her husband’s words as a question. “Say, rather, the funeral of a princess. May I ask . . . ?”

“Anything,” said Vughturoi.

“Then let my Willow be buried on the border between Ch’in and the lands of the Hsiung-nu, somewhere near green trees and flowing water. Let a mound be heaped up over her, a mound that shall ever be green, even in the depths of winter. No hunter shall come to that place, which shall be as a sanctuary for all living creatures, to honor a maid who was true to Han and Hsiung-nu, to the human and the fox kind.”

“Let your women prepare her for burial, and it shall be done,” said Vughturoi. “We shall ride before winter. Perhaps some among the garrison will ride with us. Your Willow will rest warm before the snows fall. But you must come now, come and help to seal this new peace. After all, is that not how you are named?”

She let him lead her away toward the great tent where, at least for now, she must greet warriors from the other tribes, who must now be won over as friends and allies. Behind her rose the tribeswomen’s lament for Willow, who would be celebrated in death as she never was in life. Silver Snow wondered what she would think of it.

I will say farewell later, she told her friend’s memory. I will never forget you, and, when the time for my own funeral comes, I will join you and we both shall guard these lands, together, for always.

She blinked away her tears and cocked her head. Abruptly she gasped, her hands going to her belly. Gazing at her, Vughturoi stopped in alarm, his scarred face turning gray under its weathering. He had lost children before to Strong Tongue’s spells and poisons, Silver Snow knew.

“Nothing is wrong,” she told him. “Our son just kicked me.”

“He has his mother’s daring,” said Vughturoi. “And his mother should sit down.”

In that moment and ever afterward, Silver Snow would have sworn that she had heard Willow laugh.