The Goddess of Vengeance

Arifadee smiled, fingering the satchel filled with herbs at her side. The muscles of her arms flexed, enlarging the moon of the Goddess, a deep black tattoo, a constant reminder of who ruled her. It had been a good day to gather in the forest. She nudged her horse with her knees, causing him to jump into a run. She’d only been gone a few hours but still, she missed her children. They spent the day with their father, tending the garden. With the herbs in her satchel and the vegetables they collected, she would create a wonderful meal. A smile touched her lips as her horse rounded the house and slowed her to a walk. Out of the blue the horse jerked his head back and started sidestepping. Confused, Arifadee yanked on her reins that were the only gear she used. Saddles were too expensive and she preferred to ride bareback, feeling the movement of the horse’s muscles.

 

 

 

The joy crept from her eyes as she gazed over the farm, calming her horse with soothing words. Her husband and children were laid out on the ground before the garden. “That is not funny, Daiden,” she cried. “Get up, all of you."

 She slid from her horse and clambered to the ground in a pile of skirts. “Get up!” she shouted, forcing herself up and rushing toward them. She felt her face flush with anger, her eyes stinging, burning with tears. Bile rose in her throat, cutting off her intake of air. With a wail of sorrow, she dropped to her knees beside her husband’s bloody body. “No!” she screamed.

 

Arifadee’s hand stoked across the still warm body of her daughter, new and remembered pain flashing in her eyes. She checked her husband then each of her children, hoping to find a pulse. Only her baby son’s heart still beat but it was erratic and painfully slow. The woman pressed her hands to the gash that split his throat, trying to keep anymore of his precious blood from spattering the ground. With her other hand she dug in her satchel, searching for the right herbs. She ground a few in her fingers and put them on the baby’s tongue then wrapped his throat with a strip from her skirts. It wasn’t easy, her hands shook, her vision clouded, but years of tending wounds led her. For a moment the baby opened his eyes and gazed at his mother, but then his heart fluttered and he was dead. Arifadee’s screams broke the quickly failing light and her body shook with pain.

 

Dazed, she remembered her mother and sister dying. She’d been only twelve and walking through the hot sands of the desert, following her father to a new home, a new life. Their war torn country was slowly slipping into oblivion. Men from across the sea, a different country, a different world, had come to take the land. They murdered without care, spilling the lifeblood of any native they saw. Arifadee’s mother and sister had fallen behind when the men came, their horses hooves quieted by the insulating sand. They gone by in a blur, slitting throats as they went. Arifadee, her father, and her brother went unseen by the laughing, hurried men.

 

Her hand draped listlessly across the cold, limp body of her two year old son, her unseeing eyes gazing into the darkness of the night. She’d shed tears for hours over the bodies of her family and could find no more. A great rumble rent the sky and icy droplets rained down on her already shivering skin. “Why do you spite me so?” she cried into the night.

 

The scorned woman kissed her son’s forehead and laid him gently beside his father. She stood with her fists at her sides and her face turned to the sky. “I shall have my vengeance!” her voice cracked as she screamed. “I shall see the men who did this lying as cold as my family. I shall see them covered in their lifeblood, dead as they have made me.”

 

Thunder cackled back at her, as if laughing at her vow. She turned her emerald eyes back to her children, scattered about the ground, her jaw set in grim determination. “You will see, Great God of Life, you will see. I will have my vengeance,” she cried, shaking her fist at the looming clouds, knowing it was the vile God of Day that had taken her family.

 

Lightning streaked from the sky and struck her in the chest, thunder singing with laughter. Her feet stumbled on the muddy, blood soaked ground and she clenched her jaw in pain. Forcing herself upright, she felt the power of the lightning coursing through her body, living just under her flesh. She snatched a shovel from the dirt of the garden and began to dig. First, she would see to her family. She would bury them lovingly in the precious earth, and then seek her retribution.

 

There were no signs of a struggle. It was as though her family had gathered at the end of the garden to greet a visitor and were cut down where they stood, without any words passing. Her husband’s sword hadn’t even been removed from its sheath; smiles still perked her daughter’s cheeks. Who would they be so happy to see that they didn’t even try to defend themselves?

 

Her fingers stroked her husband’s brow, blessing him before she removed the sword from his waist and sunk his body in the ground. She removed the charm bracelets her twin daughters wore and buried them together, their hands entwined as they had always been in life. A dagger fell from her eldest son’s belt as she tried to lift him. She laid it with the few other treasures of her family. Caressing her baby son to her chest, covering him with kisses, she cropped one of his delicate curls and tied it around her neck with a thong of leather.

 

When she’d finished, she stripped the mud and blood covered clothes from her body and let the rain wash her. After strapping her husband’s broadsword to her bare waist, she fastened the bracelets around her wrists, tucked the dagger in the sword belt, and mounted her shaggy, brown gelding. With one last look over the graves, she kicked her horse into a run. Arifadee’s long, black curls trailed behind her in the early dawn light like a banner, waving her intent in the wind, her blue eyes cackling with electricity.

The woman’s father had been a tracker so she had no trouble picking up the trail of the men who slaughtered her family. For two days she rode, not stopping to eat or sleep, only to let her horse drink his fill at every water hole she saw, until finally she rested on a ridge above a cavalcade of rowdy looking men. “I shall have vengeance,” she whispered into the night.

She watched the men for hours as they drank and sang, getting drunker and drunker by the minute. When the last collapsed in a heap near the fire, she stalked down the hill, the sword at her hip and her hair trailing behind. The man near the fire stood and stumbled toward her as she approached. His eyes followed the movement of her naked body with a leer that would have made her slap him had she not intended to kill him.

The sword slipped from the sheath and his eyes tripled in size. Before he could so much as protest, the blade was wedged between his ribs, a grim reminder of how her husband must have died. With a twist, she pulled the sword free and watched the man fall face first into the fire.

She stalked into the nearest tent and stared down at the man lying there. From watching she knew him to be the leader, from life she knew him to be her brother. Her breath came in forced raged breaths. Her vision swam as though she’d been knocked up side the head. The sword rose, her muscles flexing, straining to hold the heavy weight so high. It crashed down on her brother’s throat, severing his head from his shoulders.

By dawn she was covered in the blood of a dozen men, but still her heart ached for her family. Twelve deaths were not enough to ease the pain that wreathed inside her.

She looked up to the sky, her teeth clenched together. A rain of tears erupted from her eyes as she fell to her knees, feeling the emptiness in her womb. Lightning streaked out of the clear blue sky, hammering into her chest. Her body fell into the dirt, all power given her by God gone. She raised her head from the ground and reached out for the sword. After one last silent prayer for her family, she plunged the sword into her own heart, becoming, in her own right, the Goddess of Vengeance.

by Jezzilin (Viewed 212 times)