The Celestial Whore 2- The Yokel and the Snow Bitch

This is Chapter 2 of the story. First Chapter of this story in this link. 

Boyish worries bubbled under his armor as he again caught up to Lady Snow's lacquered carriage, his old worries, worries that she would not be alright whenever he was not near failed to be banished by this reassuring sight. Behind her carriage, was that of his lord- commander's chief wife's: Lady Yue.  Despite his disquietude, the lad closed the gap in the convoy's wake. His gallop a steel blur along the road's man high reeds.

“Still no news” he reported, blemished with the slightest suggestion of his *Annamese accent.

The two black wagons were each the size of a village shrine, with gilded dragon- eaved roofs and several sliding screen windows on each side. All around, lush wet landscape distorted in the humid heat as their procession wound its way through the fertile fields. Tall marsh reeds swayed hypnotically by the balmy wind. Lusty cicadas sang amidst the high wall of swaying reed that separated the lone muddy tract, filling the balmy air with their droning melody. 

His commander simply nodded, repressing his own tensions.
“Some times they are not punctual with orders.” He snorted, though the lad knew it was his way of making these things palatable. “Could mean anything really.”

Then as the lad rode past the older man added. “I'm sure they'll be fine. They've seen our shares.”

"Just keep your wits until we get to the fort."

With that, the armored lad rejoined the 2 columns of armored horsemen screening each side of the wagons. Two thin, mobile barrier of lamellar and veteran steel between the occupants inside and the sun tarred native gawking with dumbfounded eyes from the wet rice ditches below. His people.

The mirage like dream of such a procession, made even more robust with the bold sight of 2 columns of these armored horsemen and their banners and panoplies had made the locals imagined these must have been reserved for the recent Tang Emperors or even that of the reincarnated Buddha Himself. All of it was, to the locals, a surreal luxury that verged on divinity.

...But to his eyes, eyes which had seen the fullness of the empire's north and its heartlands, and the fullness of its decadence, the 2 wagons held little wonder or charm. They were merely stalls to keep others from ogling his lord-commander's female pets.

And now? Fate had conspired to leave them to his home.

Annam was his home, these, his yokel people.

Despite decades of hard riding and hard killing on armored horses for the empire before his pubescence, a part of him had always still stayed here. Stuck here despite himself. Here among his yokel people. For now, he was content being a screen that separated those 2 worlds.

But an unfaithful part of himself disobeyed. As he rode close alongside her window, he stole a glance within. She was kneeling inside the carriage and reverently bent over a lacquered box. Her jet black hair affixed in a luxurious coiffure of an exquisite gentry, and her pale porcelain skin was glowing slashed by the rays of window light. She was smiling as her eyes remained affixed and lost on the box, although the lad could barely make out from her half silhouette. And then it all dawned on him.

A gift. A sweet mother's gift. With whatever inside unwrinkled and ribbon-ed. When she finally get to see him in the fort. 

“They will eat your heart raw!”

He remembered his old mother's dreadful warnings, which were later echoed by his gaggle of older sisters, and soon even the gaggle of his little nieces.

“Stay away from the pale Hoa chó cái tuyết, (Chinese Snow Bitch) They are all whores.”

“Don't you be getting hanged for starin' at one of their women's arse!”

“It's probably full of crab louse inside anyway.”

Then they'd burst out laughing, a blur of old and young women of his home, with their scraggled teeth agape and doubling back at how funny that joke was.

Story takes place during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, early on in this time, Annam, consisting of what is today's Vietnam was still part of a larger Chinese empire. Despite this, the locals retained their distinctive language, and local prejudice against haughty Chinese Hoa (Chinese) governors appointed from the northern metropolises and distant courts. Over time the native Viets achieved ever greater local autonomy as many local Chinese warlords destroyed each other in their wars. Countryside folks vs Cityside folks.

Their words echoed in his head and helmet but his eyes were still lost.
If only they'd have seen her though. If they could only see that paled vision that was her. For silly Annamese boys to sell their silly souls for.

Dragonflies, as if sensing something between his buried imaginings and their object, flitted between his helmet's dome and the roof of “the Snow bitch”'s carriage.

They will never understand. Never understand that he would never give his job to anyone else. Of killing her husband's enemies in battles, and being paid spending the rest of his hours as her watcher. ...Or that time when he stumbled upon her uncaring form, glistening out of the bathing pool. She must have said something to him then, but he did not remember. He only remembered running away with a beet red blush, frantically apologizing all the way.

“Boy”
His mother's words interrupted in his ears.
“Stay away from her. Whores are not real people.” 

Everyone and their mothers knew that girls who were trained in Ngô Việt (Wuyue, or Suzhou) have the best faces and gave the best heads. But he didn't care.

Well.
The thought about her made him turn to gaze at her carriage window.
Ironically she was indeed raised from a brothel. But he didn't care.

Suzhou is called “Venice of China” had always been the cultural and leisure capital of old China. It had many beautiful canals and courtyard mansions for imperial scholars and nobles. Also it was always famed for its gorgeous and refined concubines. Like geishas and Oirans of feudal Japan, the renowned cathouses of Wuyue would take in abandoned wives, homeless waifs and war orphans left to their care and gave them a refined education. The best among them were especially trained to become concubines (2ndary wives) to men of extremely high positions. 

Ever since he first saw her in that mansion, she carried herself like a wounded saint. 

Some flightless white bird. Bred to love as a pet.
Some half destroyed prize. Bought and cannot be refunded. 

Which he knew,

was often mangled at the hands of the chief wife.

...And kept on living because of the only good thing in her life.

Ah Yao was his name, and he had grown old enough to not use that boyish nickname she gave him anymore. He~ the only good thing in that mansion which was her only world. And like so many times before, this time he would make her smile again when they meet again in that fort.

Though the lad in armor imagined maybe he was too.
...Something... good in her stormy life.

Before all of this, before having to take flight in these lands. In that massive, hurtful mansion. His calloused heart would never not bruise at her unhappy eyes. Every time he'd want to rush close, and pick up his pace after her, then force himself to walk away in fear. Despite 10 years of killing her lord- husband's foes and keeping watch on her in his other days, She probably does not know his yokel name. 

And then those mournful tunes she played would turn out more melodious.

Yet...somehow a part of him knew, although they have never been introduced, never spoken in full. She still knew of him. Not by reputation of his war feats, but by his other qualities. Somehow, whenever he approached at her side on his guard duties. She knew it was him. 

 “Riders!”

The horsemen at the front of the column screamed, snapping the lad out of his delicate memories, and soon the report rippled throughout the 2 lines of guards. 

“From our fort!” 

He turned to see a group of familiar armors under familiar banners riding towards the front of their column, their faces grim and their horses hoarsely gasping from the hard ride.

“Hail. Your ladyships. Hail.” 

Instead both she and the watching armored lad felt themselves shiver in the blowing wind. Though it was a hot day. 

Lady Snow emerged from the ornate carriage wagon, a half formed smile already on her lips. In her slender hands, she clutched her gift box wrapped in silk brocade. But seeing the men's faces, her delicate face then contorted into a puzzled grimace. Instead of being greeted by the sweat- glistened ruddy face of her son, so she could remark on how much he had grown in these years, and Ah Yao could offer to ride by her wagon's side as he always does, instead, she saw that he wasn't among their numbers.

Instead her eyebrows knit with concern, and she asked the riders of what had transpired.

“Your son was given the honor of leading the patrol, my lady.” related one of the fort's riders between greedy gulps of water from his water pouch, his armor stained dark with travel.

When Snow asked who gave such an order the soldier replied that it was a lettered missive from her lord-commander husband. After he was duly convinced of this course of action. 

“But we best hurry.” Without any shred of civility, the brusque guard then doused the rest of the water pouch's water over his sun scalded lamellar helmet. “The general also wrote our whole circuit's north's pinned everywhere.” 

“Lord Qin had made a move on us and west also joined him.” 

At this the rank of soldier's eyes widened, including the lad's, Two fronts. None of them can head back now and north might fall in weeks. 

But the soldier from the fort did not even let the pause to sink in.

“We best hurry” the water pouch flew to his back, its strap still struggling on his slackened shoulders, “better get you ladies inside the fort before nightfall yeah?” 

He didn't even catch the sight of Snow stumbling backward as he spurred his steed back toward the direction of the fort, soon followed by his gang of the fort's riders. But for Snow, there was only a delicate hand rising to stifle a cry.

Rather, the lad froze there atop of his horse, silently observing as Lady Snow stood transfixed by the news. He saw the way her shoulders slumped in defeat, the way her hand shook as she clutched the precious gift box to her chest. 

Then he felt it, the armored hand from his nearby companion. Pointing toward the carriage behind Snow's. 

To his horror, he saw another was also watching the same sight as he. 

Lady Yue gloated from the screen door of her own ornate wagon, her eyes were locked onto Snow when she turned her own head back.

When Snow turned to her, Yue feed back a meaningful smile, as if confirming some threat she had long promised to her rival. And now, after making sure she had taken the gift bearing mother's heart like some predatory bird, as if to twist the knife further, Lady Yue jauntily sauntered back behind her screen doors with a frisky laugh.

So that none was left in doubt that she had been the cruel mistress behind Ah Yao's “honorable” mission.

That stupid, petty cunt. But those words never left his brain, nor the mouth of his other companions, but he knew they must've figured the same thing out. Knowing her, she must have fancied herself that being in the wagon BEHIND her rival was an unimaginable grievous insult to her position so she fashioned this little prank of a revenge to vent her pride. Now Snow might not even have a chance to see her son at all during her stay. Little did Yue figure out that the wagon placed at the front would often be the one that would be first the first to be porcupine with a hideous storm of arrows and crossbow bolts. Which meant that her being in the back and safe was precisely the appropriate dignity befitting the chief wife and mother to the heir of this house. That stupid, petty, stupid cunt. 

Instead (again) Lady Snow retreated to her lacquered home without a backward glance. But for the guard, her guard, her torment was seared upon his memory like a brand. So he turned his steed away from her carriage and with a heavy heart, he signaled to his fellow horsemen to continue on their journey. They rode back into their previous phantom positions, the lad seethed under his rustling steel, seethed at things he was powerless to countermand. Seethed at the truest “Snow Bitch” if there ever was one.

BRED FOR LOVE

Perhaps had she had not had a kind whore god mother. Perhaps had she not had a cathouse of sisters, she might have endured life. At least she always thought so. Many of them were orphans or were sold there and their god mother mentor had spared both the rod...and them. And despite them all learned how to please a man, including with detailed anatomy diagrams and music instruments and dirty pillow talks, it was more like a library garden with dreamily swaying banana leaves. Made holiday sweets and dumplings with each other. Somehow they made that place theirs.

She still remembered how they reacted when he plucked her hand from that house. A dashing general after all, and that was like a prince from the story books. The way her sisters who were not born her sisters were squealing around her and chatting about her many happy futures. She must have had a stupid smile too, she thought looking back, as she smiled to herself. She should have thought more about the streaks of masquera she found on her whore god mother's cheeks. And how she cannot spare them from life. Maybe, just maybe she was too cruel to let them have dreams. 

BRED TO RULE

The oldest of the men could remember when Lady Yue was not always the bitch in silk. In fact there were a times when she tried to liven up their barracks with rounds of expensive white liquor. The men could also tell that she was always afraid of something...which turned out could be anything. They could tell though she was born with that huge silver spoon in her mouth she had always been as skittish as a bunny. It's just that she happened to be born a rich bunny that could have paid for a lot of things that scared her to be torned to pieces. So that spoon also became that humongous stick that disappeared up her silky ass.

And what she feared the most, was losing the things she never knew how to quite keep~ not that her coin monger father failed to scold her for it her entire life. And one day, that fear became a face that walked right into the gate of her expensive Suzhou mansion, which her lord father had bought for her lord husband for future favors. With pale flawless skin like snow. Who came in with that form- fitting robe of hers, with that stupid smile of hers, thinking she was going to make new friends there, thinking she could be one of her friends. With no name to her own name, and raised among whores on how to be whores.

And it was then Lady Yue, who had been assured of herself as beautiful, who always wrapped herself in expensive silks, felt fear. She felt the deepness of her smile lines (though she never smiles,) she felt the belly she gave him which life never gave back to her, she felt the age that always seemed to never spared her, and most of all, she felt his eyes wander away, and his deflated cock flab inside, and his eyes wandering further, and the love for her children all turned to that woman's boy.  

As they lurched onto the road drawing near to the fort. The yokel lad's heart was gripped tight again. Again he spurred his mount closer to Snow's carriage window and peered through the filigreed windows at her private grief. 

Her slender form was still racked with silent weeping. She had discarded her cloth, which she had dressed up for the supposed meeting. Instead she was strewn in the tussled bed-sheets which fanned out all around her. The young guardsman watched, transfixed, as her delicate shoulders shook with suppressed sobs and her mascara, so meticulously applied this morn formed long dark ribbons down her snowy skin. Ribbons hidden from the eyes of the world. But he had seen them.

...that woman's boy.  

But he dared not interfere with her private grief. 

All the passions he had long kept caged within rose up at the sight of her distress. But there was nothing to be done—the boundaries between them were not his to overcome. 

Yes he was her bodyguard, but never a guard against emotions, which was so often trampled by none other than his own employer.

“Please don't go” 

His eyes widened in shock as he was riding away, her voice behind him.

His heart nearly popped as he saw her tear-streaked face craning toward him out of her carriage window. "Please, fetch me a pouch of water," she begged, her voice barely above a whisper. 

“Ah Yao cannot see me like this.”

The yokel lad in armor nodded, his heart heavy as he raced off, like some kind of unthinking dog.

Behind him, the frantic green reeds flailed in the mud scented wind. 

Some where out there, Ah Yao's head flew off his armored shoulders- the last of his captured men's to be severed. Although no one really calls him by that name anymore save his mama.