Silver Island Resort - Chapter 02
THE SWEDISH KARATEKA
by Ajax
David Solomon, Managing Director of Borlax Inc, and one of the world's richest computer industrialists, watched his yacht sail away from the harbour at Forquelle, then went to find some breakfast. Returning some time later, he walked over to the binocular telescope that was set on the balcony, and saw the yacht Solbor II just disappearing over the horizon.
Having lost sight of the Solbor he swung the scope about idly, looking for something of interest. The 20 x 120mm binocular setting gave him a reasonable, but not a vast field of view, so he knocked it back to 10x, a power of twelve, and swept it over the newly-developed and very exclusive little town of Forquelle, squeezed onto the hillside between the Alpes Maritime and the sea. Solomon liked Forquelle. He liked being there; he liked the lazy atmosphere and quietness of the place. No vulgar holiday resort this, but the resting place of financial giants. Where there had been scrubby grass and maquis ten years ago, there now stood neatly grouped villas, groves of lemon trees, exotic shrubberies, rich lawns, and shady harbours, none yet fully developed, but all on the way, fed by the hundreds of truck loads of rich soil brought from the north, and tended by a horde of gardeners, most of them young, and more than half of them female, and the fresh water piped through the headland from the desalination and purification plant that nestled hideously against low cliffs, and around which were grouped the low-rise apartment blocks that housed Forquelle's army of service personnel.
There were but three concessions to vulgarity in Forquelle; the spiral ramp that rose at the back of the town to connect it with the coast road to Italy one way and Monaco the other; the newly built marina-harbour; and the single Fr10,000 per night hotel of suites that the owners of the town had permitted. That was to the extreme east of the town, sprawling lowly over the virgin rock to which it was anchored, and from which some of it had been hewn. Near the other end of the town was the `business district' where were situated the few classy shops and the fewer classier banks designed to serve the needs of the very rich, and the enormously rich. Down there, too, were the restaurants, patronized frequently and very expensively by the residents. There was a fuelling station on the harbour side which served both boats and the few vehicles that were non-electric, and the rest was villas. The villas were of every sort, but all the best of their kind, spacious, tasteful and often spectacular. Trees began to rise between them, enclosing them gradually with a green wall of privacy that would become more and more highly prized as the years passed.
Yes, Forquelle was greatly to David Solomon's liking.
As his scope swung towards the hotel, the image of a girl suddenly moved fuzzily into his lenses. He checked, turned the focusing knob, and brought her into sharp relief. Smiling, he studied her. The excellence of his scope and the brittle light of the hot Mediterranean morning etched her physical beauty sharply onto his mind. He centred her in the middle of the field, and moved to 20x. At that magnification she filled his view, and the smile broadened as he noted her activity.
She stood at the side of the swimming pool of a villa some distance from his own, one of those that seemed to perch over the sea, carried outwards from the cliff on a braced concrete raft, though the pool was, of course, inboard of this. An out-part of the villa obscured his view leftward, and the girl moved into then out of view as he watched, herself obscured by it. This, he imagined, was why he had failed to spot her earlier. She was a handsome woman, young, and nicely built, hardly voluptuous, but substantial, with long, well muscled legs, and a taut body which moved in perfect response to her requirements. These were indeed, harsh, and sweat flew from her skin as she leapt and gyrated in the supreme athleticism of an advanced karate kata. Legs high-kicked, arms pistoned out slamming again and at empty air, yet tautly controlled the whole time. This girl did not lose her balance, spin-kicks and punches flowing smoothly from her.
As he watched, her long blonde plaits, topped with a white head-band and caught at their ends with a dark-coloured ribbon, swished as she move forward, out of sight behind the obstruction, to emerge a few seconds later and renew the spectacular kata she performed.
Solomon saw her in profile, her left side towards him, and he had early noted (with great satisfaction) that all she wore was the bottom part of a minute bikini, little more than a red tanga V slung from a string. Why she should be so startlingly unclad for her kata he could not guess, though her dress was not unusual amongst the younger female guests who proliferated about Forquelle in late summer. That was partly his reason for enjoying the town so much.
Her face set in the unblinking stare of the karateka, she went through the hundred-move routine again, this time, it seemed to him, a little grimly. How long she had been there he did not know, but even through his scope there was drawn look to her face that suggested the beginnings of exhaustion.
He did not know how long he had stood watching, but he became aware that his legs were beginning to ache, and that sweat was sticking his shirt to his back. He left the binoculars, dragged over an armchair, lowered them, reset them, and focused again on the girl.
She was still spinning and punching and kicking. Too far away to be heard, he could see the expulsion of breath she was making from the movement of her diaphragm. Beneath it, across the top of her stomach the flesh was bruised and reddened, and again below the navel. A trickle of blood had started from a scratch and then dried on her body.
Another flick of the set-wheel brought the scope to 40x magnification, and it was then that he saw that her breasts, taut and fine as they were, were also bruised and reddened. His interest quickened, and he went back to 20x to avoid the necessity to work so hard to keep her in the field of view. Again she disappeared behind the obstruction, and when she re-emerged, there was a fresh scratch near the other on her belly.
It was time, David Solomon decided, that he took a walk.
* * * * * * * * *
Kristl surged into the fortieth hundred-move kata unknowing. Knowing nothing but the drive of the discipline she was subjecting herself to. There was no other thought in her - could not be. Eyes red-rimmed from staring blinklessly, her body moved in the tight rhythms of the art, her muscles discharging controlled violence upon the uncaring air, her face blank of all emotion. Within her was a surging pain, a rising exhaustion, a consuming thirst. She could heed none of them, for there was the kata, the fortieth kata, to be endured.
Her legs cleaved the air just as viciously as they had three-plus hours ago when dawn had been expected, her punches slammed molecules of the oxy-nitro mixture that sustained her, and she ignored her exhaustion, abjured her pain.
Like a metronome she performed, her locked mind measuring seconds as well as any clock, thirty moves, forty, fifty...her chest tightening from oxygen debt as she came to the ninetieth, the effusion of energy draining her faster now that the sun seared her tanned form, and had drawn the moisture from her. Not light-headed yet, but nearing it, there were ten of these to go, another forty-five minutes of terrible work.
The hundredth move done, she stepped forward towards her teacher to accept the punishment that she had taken thirty-nine times. The teacher spun and drove a heel full into the pupil's right breast. Kristl felt the surge of agony, but her expression didn't change. Then another swift reverse spin kick assaulted her other breast. Turning square the teacher laced into her stomach with a volley of four thumping punches that her upper stomach took, and another volley at the area below the navel. The force stopped the girl's breath for an instant, but notwithstanding, she replied to the tougher belly of the trainer as she must, before taking the final punches, another four, to each of her breasts, using the consciousness of a burgeoning agony to stiffen the kicks she returned, thumpingly hollowly against another chest. The teacher, unconcerned, drove two more kicks into the upper then the lower belly, and saw Kristl step back to go into the forty-first kata.
She almost faltered as she went into the long routine again, and was now more aware of pain than she had been before. Again she drove it into its corner at the back of her mind, and the momentarily drawn face resumed its kind of blank serenity. She was aware of her pain without thinking of it, but knew it was not the teacher who had been inaccurate, but the first sign of her endurance failing - or her courage, for she had not held her position as the final four punches had crushed her breasts, and the fists had missed the cushioning bulk of her swelling glands and taken the rib-cage beneath. She had exchanged the hell of breast pain for the grind of extra pain in the kata as each breath was that much more painful to draw.
She hated herself for it. It must have been a conscious decision, but she had not known that she was taking it. It represented weakness, weakness that she was here to expunge, and must not happen again. The kata continued.
Her teacher watched every move closely. Kristl was here to be honed to the killing machine that she was to become, but there must be no relaxation, no dilution of the pure discipline of Katsun-Ruy with other less severe styles. The severity of Katsun must be maintained. The girl's evasion of those last punches might have been instinctive. Her agony of breast was already immense, and it was beginning to affect her concentration. The kicks that had thudded hollowly against the other chest should not have done. She had been a inch low, but whether through pain or exhaustion it was hard to tell. The girl had been under immense stress for three hours now, but the wresting of the title from its current holder might well take much longer. Meiling Chung, eighth dan of Katsun-Ruy, and co-founder of the all-female art, would not fall easily. May Ng, teacher of Kristl Christiansen, was no match for Chung, and she knew it. She pinned the hopes of her dojo on Kristl, having vowed to make her the toughest, hardest karateka in the world, male or female. What, as a woman, Kristl lacked in strength, she must make up in endurance. Already few men could compete with her for speed and accuracy maintained over a long period, and it was only the male heavier musculature and more massive bone structure that could defeat her. Twice in her career so far had Kristl lost, once to a punctured lung when a kick had shattered her left ribs, and once to a broken thigh. There were no signs of either injury now, for both ribs and thigh had mended quickly and stronger than they had been before. The muscles were back to the former power quite quickly once the breaks had healed, and Kristl's technique was better now than it had been. May Ng felt it unlikely that she would lose like that again.
Kristl Christiansen was already a remarkable woman. At twenty-two she had already had ten years of Katsun-Ruy, and had begun her fighting career at sixteen. At seventeen her ribs had been shattered, and at eighteen her thigh, both times by men old enough to be her father and highly skilled in the martial arts. Neither setback had dulled her fierce joy of combat, rather had increased it through the enforced inactivity she had suffered. There were few indeed left who might match her. Chung, certainly, Ng probably, and the American, Lucinda Mathers. Three that May Ng could think of and it was almost a year before she would have to meet any of them. They would spend that year profitably. Their rankings didn't matter in this context. Chung was eighth Dan, Ng sixth, and Mathers third. Kristl was a newly-achieved fourth Dan, having only been in the ranking battles a month before.
Ng was toughening her for two reasons. One was certainly for next year's rankings, the other was for more sinister reasons. For Kristl Christiansen was employed. Employed as a bodyguard to the unpopular Countess Maria d'Erche, whose success at the Monte Carlo casinos was legendary. D'Erche was too old to do her own dirty work, now well into her sixties, and dripping with diamonds wherever she went. Kristl had already beaten off four attacks and had hardly been employed a year. One had left her with a four-inch bullet scar along her right ribs. The man had fired an instant before he died with his throat staved in. The other two had departed the scene hurriedly, but neither had escaped the flying figure of the girl in the yellow trouser suit, who despite the bullet furrow, had overhauled and sent both into unconsciousness, while the Countess d'Erche had looked on aghast.
For a bodyguard of that quality there was a high price to be paid. And there were fringe benefits. Born in Sweden and bearing the passport of that country, Kristl had almost been nationalized the previous year when the Government had needed an operative who could dispose silently of a certain enemy of the state, but he had obviated the necessity by electrocuting himself accidentally at a Government computer installation, and she was still free-lance.
Killing, under the discipline of Katsun-Ruy, was easy. It was the avoidance of it that was skillful.
However, May Ng was thinking little of that as she watched Kristl perform the forty-first kata, and much of what would follow within the next forty-five minutes. The girl was pained-racked and exhausted, a dangerous combination in a karateka as skilled as she, and May Ng worried slightly about the degree of control she might display before the morning's workout was over. Her stomach would be aching, and her swollen breasts shimmied overmuch on her chest as she went through the exacting kata sequence this forty-first time. Had she not been so dedicated herself, May Ng might have felt for the dehydrated karateka. She was hardly sweating now, the salt beginning to dry on her body, and yet she stood beside several thousand gallons of water. Not until the fiftieth kata was completed might she dive into the pool and ease herself.
The braided hair was part of the discipline, as was the heat. The plaits gave her no protection from the sun as loose hair of her length would have done. Physically, of course, Kristl was a superb specimen; strong, lithe, and beautifully proportioned. She had a facial beauty that many models would have envied, but in Katsun-Ruy these things were incidental. It was her ability to strike with speed and accuracy, and to endure the privations of pain and injury that counted. Such endurance demanded a dedication given to few. May Ng believed that Kristl had it, and her performance in the morning's heat under the inexorable pressure of the work, the pain and the control would be showing it.
The forty-first kata ended and she stepped towards May for the exchange of blows that had been ritualized by the founders of Katsun, blows designed for the practice of a wholly female art, striking low to the ovaries, high to the breasts, and between to the solar plexus. It was necessary for her to abjure, and this time she concentrated, and took her proper position, enduring fully the blows she had earlier evaded.
Satisfied, May watched her pain-filled pupil start the forty-second kata, and smiled with her eyes. Kristl absorbed her agonies and kata-ed on.
* * * * * * * * *
Solomon had located the position of the villa carefully from his high vantage point on the artificial crag, and estimated a half hour's walk to reach it. In fact, it took him rather longer by virtue of needing a detour he had not foreseen. The name was blazoned plainly on the gate, the Villa Latour, beneath which was set a plate proclaiming the owner as one May Ng. There was, of course, nothing to be seen or heard from where he stood, and his ring at the bell brought a Chinese houseboy scurrying to his welcome. He asked to see Miss Ng, and was ushered inside the imposing premises. "She is on the terrace, but if you would care to wait..." the houseboy withdrew deferentially.
Solomon waited in the quiet stillness of the large room in which he stood. From somewhere outside he could now hear the expulsion of breath that he'd seen an hour ago, and then after a pause a series of loud thumps, replaced by the rapid expulsions once more. Almost immediately a woman in a yellow towelling robe flowed silently into the room.
"Welcome to my house, Mr Solomon," the woman said, and he turned, only then realizing that he was not alone. In his hands was the book he had lifted from the table and had been inspecting. It was in English and proclaimed itself as the `Manual of Katsun-Ruy'. The author was May Ng.
The woman was stately and Chinese, possessing the sophisticated air of the Hong Kongese. Her black hair hung far down her back. Clearly the girl he had watched was not May Ng. She still expelled her breath in short, taut bursts on the terrace.
Miss Ng caught sight of the book in his hands. "You are interested in Katsu-Ruy karate?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered truthfully, "though not personally."
May Ng raised her eyebrows. An impersonal interest in karate was rare. "Indeed!" she exclaimed pleasantly, then, "What was it you wished to see me about?"
David Solomon could see in a moment that this woman was not to be trifled with. He therefore came straight to the point. "The girl who is practicing on your terrace. I should like to meet her."
"She is Kristl Christiansen, fourth Dan Katsun-Ruy exponent." She nodded towards the book. "You may attend our workout if you have the stomach for it," she stated baldly. "Later, if she so wishes, you may meet her."
"I would be delighted," he said, bowing slightly to indicate that he understood the honour she paid him. Then he followed May Ng out onto the terrace.
May saw that during her short absence. Kristl's kata was coming to its halfway point. Solomon remained in the shadows of the out-part of the villa which had obstructed his view. His eyes were rivetted on the blonde girl, who laboured grey-faced through the long series of identical movements that he had sat watching an hour earlier, though now her exhaustion was terrible to see. Yet her beautiful body still responded superbly to the demands of the iron discipline she was under.
Close to, the damage she carried looked appalling. Her breasts were red-blue and empurpled as well a greatly swollen. The left nipple bled a little. Their agony must have been excruciating. Scarcely less bad was the heavy bruising and scratching that marked her belly, upper and lower. Her breath rasped in her throat in the extremity of her dehydration, yet she went on with the kata her face a serene blank, as the well practiced movements followed each other in rigid sequence. The girl was dying out there.
She stepped forward, slamming a kick at May Ng, whose own breast took it before she spun to heel-kick the girl mercilessly in the left breast. The blood-flow from her nipple increased, but no single movement faltered. She might have been made of iron had not Solomon seen the blast of agony blaze from her eyes at the impact. Then a flurry of punches, drummed off her belly; a received kick to May Ng; another flurry from the teacher; a reciprocating tattoo from the girl; and then the final heel-kicks to the student's breasts again.
She retired, stilled, and bowed, her fiftieth kata of the morning completed. May Ng nodded.
Almost instantly the girl seemed to relax. She turned, and unbidden dived cleanly into the pool, mouth open and bubbles trailing as she arrowed into its deep end. There was a swirl as she turned in the water, swam the length of the pool and then surfaced, breathing deeply through her moistened mouth. She turned onto her back, and swam with a powerful, lazy backstroke along its length.
Finally, after several lengths, she lay motionless on the surface in a perfect star-float.
May Ng turned to her guest. "One more task remains, then you may meet her. Chang!" she called, and the houseboy appeared carrying a fasces [1] made up of what Solomon instantly recognized as kendo sticks.
A moment later, Kristl Christiansen flipped out of the pool, and stood brace-legged before May Ng. The teacher took a kendo stick and flailed at the girl's head with it. She moved almost imperceptibly. The stick whistled past her ear and towards her deltoid muscle. Solomon braced himself to see her smashed down in a crippled heap, but instead she rose to meet the stick, flexing the muscle in the instant that the stick hit it. The inert wood was snapped clean through by the flexion, and two parts flew in opposite directions, the end falling into the pool. May Ng was left holding nine inches of stick as a second piece clattered to the terrace and rolled to Solomon's feet.
The display amazed him. The second stick was aimed for her right thigh, and met the same end, as did two to each arm, two to her calves, and one across her belly. Solomon saw the flesh whiten at the moment of impact, and only redden as the broken sticks sprayed about the terrace. Two were shattered against the upper part of each pectoral, and the final stick swiped across her screaming breasts. Only this one failed to break, lifting the girl off her feet and knocking her into the pool. As its agony assailed her Kristl knew immediately where she had failed. In her tiredness she had omitted to impel herself into it. As a consequence the stick had won. The twin cushions of her breasts had absorbed the impact instead of employing it to destroy the weapon.
May Ng handed the stick to Solomon and helped her from the pool. She sank to her heels in a meditative pose, her hands resting palms upward on her thighs, breathing deeply, a fresh purple bruise-line across her ravaged breasts.
"Karate must be total," Ng said to Solomon as though by way of explanation for her torturing of the girl. "Kristl's control is not yet quite perfect."
For Solomon it was perfect enough. He had never seen anyone so calm under such agony.
"But we shall try again tomorrow."
Solomon almost protested. It seemed inconceivable that she could endure such an onslaught again within twenty-four hours.
"You may now meet her." She paused. "You will, of course, stay to lunch?"
He nodded.
She spoke a word in Chinese, and Kristl rose smoothly and crossed to where he stood, extending her hand. He took it and was surprised by its hardness, though not by its strength. "I am Kristl Christiansen," she declared. "I understand that you wish to speak with me."
* * * * * * * * *
Not once during the course of that afternoon had the battered girl indicated in any way that she was hurt, though her breasts had continued to swell as lymph laved the damaged tissue. She drank copiously of fruit juice, and ate slowly, but well. May Ng had donned the yellow robe again for lunch. Kristl remained as she was. She had been so over-heated that any other course would have been foolish.
By the time he left, Solomon had persuaded her to perform again, this time in earnest, not in Forquelle, but in Norfolk, England, where he was founding a martial arts club for women. He wanted them, he said, to see what the ultimate in fighting karate was. The book by May Ng he took away with him, fascinated by an instruction manual devoted entirely to a female form. Before today he had never heard of Katsun-Ruy. He resolved that he would know much of it before he was a great deal older. And in the back of his mind was Silver Island. Kristl Christiansen, the Swedish karateka, could gain him much favour there. One of his ambitions was to attend a meeting with a champion of his own. He might, he felt, have found her.
By four, the girl had gone to her tatami to rest, and he was left facing the powerful personality of May Ng. For a time they talked of inconsequential things, before she brought their thoughts back to Kristl. "She needs," she said, "much severe competition. One day I shall match her against Meiling Chung. For that, she must be perfect."
"Invincible, you mean," he said, but she shook her head.
"No-one is invincible - not even Chung."
"Yet you drive her so hard?"
"That is karate. She has the dedication. Also the time to gain technique."
"Is she prepared to fight men?" he asked.
"Of course. Katsun is an extension of male styles. She has already mastered most of those. In Katsun a woman has many problems of technique. What you saw was only part of what she must learn to withstand. She has much of pain to endure."
"So I observed," he commented drily.
"There is yet more."
He almost winced at the thought, yet knew that mindlessness went hand in hand with skill. What she could give automatically she must also take automatically.
* * * * * * * * *
Country houses were a weakness of Borlax Ltd. They owned a lot. That is to say David Solomon owned a lot through his ownership of the company. Borlax had never gone public - it hadn't really existed long enough. It's field was too new.
Solomon considered it his duty as an Englishman to support his heritage, so he bought and restored them, then ran them as one thing or another. Evendean, in Norfolk, was a sports-club, a very beautiful sports-club, but a sports-club nonetheless. It was perfect for his purposes. Built for the second Earl of Evingdean in 1708, it was a classic example of a grand, Palladian edifice. Towered at each of its corners, it was square, and built around a large courtyard. One approached it down a beech-lined avenue from the west, where one was treated to the sight of a massive Palladian portico, letting onto an entrance hall of heroic proportions with a ceiling valued in itself at the price Solomon had paid for the whole house. From the centre of the hall rose a double balustraded staircase to the gallery that encircled the room, and from which led the corridors running east to west on the second storey. The the third and fourth storeys were reached by staircases in each of the corner towers, as were the extensive cellars. Coach and horses gained access to the courtyard through an archway in the centre of the east wing, opposite where, two hundred yards away, was set a stable block that was almost as impressive as the house. Extensively damaged by fire in the 19th century, the East Wing had lain derelict until the house had been bought and restored by Borlax out of cash that would otherwise have gone in tax.
Fortunately the rest of the house had escaped the fire, and remained very beautiful. Built by the little known architect, Nicholas Raven, it had had from its inception many features considered unnecessary in other houses, but the bulkhead effect of the towers had stopped the fire, and had ensured that Evendean had stood proudly for close to three centuries.
The living quarters were situated in the south wing, as they had always been. The second earl had been noted for his hatred of the British cold, so his main rooms had drunk in what sun there was. His own inability to withstand it had led the seventh earl to install central heating in 1864 - a very early occurrence of it in a house of this size. It was still in place as an historic monument to 19th century technology.
The sporting facilities were housed in the restored east wing. Evendean was a dojo, and a martial and combat arts centre, dedicated, like the Villa Latour at Forquelle to the furtherance of female sport. Students from all countries, and of many styles were seen in and about the deer park, or running on the track that extended the five mile length of the perimeter walls. Much of the enclosed parkland was woodland, some of it lake. Through it ran the Guise Brook feeding water gardens, fern dells and fountains.
Solomon drove into the main gate with Kristl Christiansen beside him, and May Ng in the rear seat. Clad in the yellow trouser suit that was almost her hallmark, the Swedish karateka was not at all like the hurt, intense girl he had watched and spoken with at Forquelle. Relaxed and happy at the prospect of a forthcoming combat, she had chattered almost girlishly on the tedious journey up from Gatwick. It did not seem to worry her that she was to be pitted against ten experienced women, as indeed it did not. Ten, twenty, it mattered little to a woman as skilled and as tough as Kristl. The blue eyes, which had been so clouded with pain at Forquelle, now shone with anticipation, for, for once, there was no pain within the girl. It seemed incredible that only a fortnight ago he had seen her brutalized on the terrace of the Villa Latour, and yet today she presented him with such a picture of robust fitness and liveliness that told more eloquently than any word that she was fully recovered. He would have expected it to have taken many weeks for her to return to normal.
He took them to the suite of rooms on the second storey that had been reserved for them as guests of Borlax Inc. Kristl, he knew, would rest before the evening's ordeal. After leaving them he went to the practice area in the east wing to check that all was prepared for the evening.
* * * * * * * * *
It was quiet in the combat room. At one side of the polished boxwood floor knelt Kristl's ten opponents, at the other knelt Kristl. They bowed to each other and rose. In deference to the tenets of Katsun-Ruy, all eleven of the contestants were clad in nothing more than a tanga-V, something that had embarrassed some the Evendean students, and worried others. They were unused to this naked combat, and did not look forward to the skin to skin contact that it inevitably meant.
Audrey Donoghue stepped forward. She and Kristl bowed, took up their stance, and on command launched into combat. Audrey fended off two attacks before a spin-kick to the ribs sent her sprawling. She rolled to her feet, hurt and shaken, her breathing already upset by the devastating speed of the fourth Dan Katsun exponent. She went to sweep at Kristl's legs, but the blonde pigtailed Swede seemed to step almost lazily over the scything leg, stamping forward at Audrey's belly. Her foot disappeared into the English girl's viscera, and Audrey flopped to her face, retching.
Kristl stood away, waiting for the other to recover. She stopped retching, drew herself up on shaky legs and turned to fight again. An arm flew out block the next kick, and Audrey threw a punch to the Swede's solar plexus. It hammered against her tough stomach muscles and failed to penetrate.
Audrey had been hurt earlier. Now she was scared as well. She had felt the shock of the punch right up to her shoulder. It should have hurt the girl. It hadn't. Appalled, she stepped back. In a kill-fight it would have been fatal, for Kristl was already going into a reverse heel kick. This, though, was only to disablement, and when the kick fired into the underside of the Audrey's left breast, and almost tore it from her chest, she screamed and dropped motionless to the floor. Two of the larger women stepped in and carried away her unconscious form. Kristl returned to the rest position, and bowed.
Next, Pamela Markham rose. She swallowed hard. Audrey was a green belt. She was only yellow. Until now they had thought Evendean a hard school. The Swede's speed and power seemed unreal to the young brunette, as she faced and bowed to the destroyer of Audrey.
Feared gnawed at her belly as Kristl came for her, but she was made of stern stuff. She swayed back to avoid the next heel kick, and straight-legged Kristl to the groin. The blow drove the tanga into her but she reacted just as quickly with a forward punch that drove a hole through Pam's muscle-shield, and caused her to sag. Another of the hard roundhouse kicks to the body took the brunette in the side, and lifted her off her feet, but she was already spinning herself. Kristl shot up an arm, flexing as the leg came towards her body, and there was a sudden agony at Pam's thigh as her flesh bruised straight through to the bone.
The leg would hardly hold her, and already she felt that she had been beaten with iron bars, but she refused to cease her efforts They punched simultaneously, Pam to the navel, Kristl to the breast. Twin thuds sounded loud in the awed stillness, and Pam's mouth fell open under the intensity of the agony from her crushed gland. Standing on her good left leg, she round-housed to Kristl's side with the other, accepting the pain it cost her, but even as she was knocked away to the dark girl's left, Kristl chopped to her diaphragm, cut off her breath and dropped her, gagging.
After a moment Pam painfully dragged herself to her feet, and took a wobbly stance. Kristl smashed through a forward kick to the guts and sent Pam down in a writhing heap beneath the large courtyard windows. She twitched twice, gurgled, and passed out.
The third and fourth bouts were short, and the Evendean girls went down to a wrenched spleen and a jarred neck, but in the fifth Kristl came up against a brown belt. This was the gnarled thirty-year-old, Agnes Worth, one of the few Evendean women at all familiar with the Katsun style, and a teacher most of the time. She suffered hell from bruised breasts and battered belly, but maintained her form well, even dropping the Swede with a side-head fly-kick that made Kristl's head ring. She was, nevertheless, equal to the strain, and respectful of the older woman's power.
Their battle raged the length of the room before Kristl caught her tiring opponent with another side-hand, this time to the jaw. Semi-conscious, Agnes reeled back to fight, and was rivetted by a flurry of knuckle punches to the upper belly and breasts that floored her in agony.
For a moment she knelt head down, shaking herself to free the pain before lack of oxygen overcame her and she slipped forward on her face unconscious.
This fight had brought the sweat to Kristl's body, and she shone almost eerily in the strong overhead lights and the next contestant, swallowing her fear, rose to face her.
Another green belt, Elvi Patterson, also blonde, though slimmer than Kristl, was prepared to take some punishment to gain an opening, and quickly had Kristl in her first serious trouble by driving a fierce punch, almost immediately followed by a powerful kick full into the tanga V. It was the first time the Katsun fourth Dan had been really hurt, and Elvi seemed inspired by Agnes's performance.
She pressed her attack and Kristl was forced to defend. The sickened Audrey, now partly recovered, was forced to watch her equally-ranked colleague fight so well that a faint hope was raised within the remaining four Evendean women that they might somehow force a victory.
Defence, though, was all a part of the Katsun style, and Kristl Christiansen used the time she was gaining to recover her composure. Elvi had undoubtedly hurt her and was a tough woman, but neither thing saved her, when, with a reverse elbow-smash to the jaw, Kristl knocked her clean out, the click of her meeting teeth reverberating in the quiet.
No.7 was the young novice Lisa Starbuck. A brave kid, but hopelessly outclassed here. But she hung in and fought, swapping breast kick for breast kick, and gut punch for gut punch until Kristl reversed heeled her in the vulva and sent her two feet into the air. The agony of this almost shattered her. She felt every nerve ending from groin to top of head burn and jangle at the impact, and landed on her feet by instinct alone. Even then she blocked the follow-up kick to the bush, and elbowed Kristl in the diaphragm, but was already fainting when the Swede punched her between the shoulder-blades, and dropped her half-paralyzed with shock onto the boards. The bearers trooped across and carried her away.
Solomon watched the destruction of the Evendean team with something close to incredulity. Woman after woman was being devastated by the Swedish karateka. Out of seven only one (No.4) had been able to limp away from the fight without assistance. Kristl's face and body showed bruises where she had been struck, but she was breathing easily, sweating freely, and remained perfectly poised to face Angela Court, the first blue belt to go in against her. He remembered that he had seen Angela savage a woman from another school who had visited here for a match. Now, he watched while she was brutally savaged by the fourth Dan. She left the scene of battle, bent double and with one arm hanging limply, either badly strained or broken at her side. Court had retired in less than three minutes.
The last two fighters were Evendean's best, Sally-Ann Roper whose speed and keen sight had to make up for her congenital profound deafness, and Tanzy Green, the only black belt at the house. A first Dan at Aikido, she, all hoped, might hold this Swedish destroyer.
Clearly, Sally-Ann was fighting as much for Tanzy as she was for herself. The fight between her and Kristl was one of the hardest things Solomon had ever witnessed between women. Sally used a fringe style, unrecognized in karate, for she could not afford, without hearing, to turn her back upon her opponents. This led to great problems for her, for reverse kicks and elbow smashes could not be included in her kumite. She was a solidly bodied girl, and large breasted. Thus she was extremely vulnerable to the skilled exponent of Katsun-Ruy whom she faced. Katsun was a female style, and used female areas of attack, amongst which painful damage to the breasts was prime. And Sally took that painful damage from the very start of her battle. Took it and endured it, agony though it was. Some of the reverse kicks she blocked or evaded. One or two she turned to her own advantage, and by holding her ground, twice threw Kristl off her feet. Working low to the Swede's body, Sally-Ann hammered her groin and ovarian regions until Kristl was forced to defend again. Never for an instant did the British girl lose sight of her opponent. Hand-blocks, chops and punches flew between the pair as though they were students of the Filipino art of arnis, and Sally suffered more than Kristl.
But at least, this ninth contest was a match. Each contestant scored off the other, Sally driving kick after kick towards Kristl's lower regions, and accepting punch after punch in return to her hard over-muscle at diaphragm and stomach, as well suffering the agonizing blows to her breasts.
Solomon was shocked by the raw sexuality of the fight. Little was delivered to the head or face, nearly everything driven and received in the groin and breasts. Arms were reddened, legs empurpled by blocks, but staggering thrust after staggering thrust went to the vulva, the pubis and the breasts.
Both women sweated freely as they fought. Even the concrete toughness of Kristl was exposed when she was seen to be staggering under the effects of three sharp kicks to her groin within a minute, and later Solomon saw Sally's breasts bleed under the murderous force of Kristl's punches.
In the end pain broke the deaf girl, a particularly vicious breast attack losing her her concentration long enough to allow Kristl to dispatch her with a combination of the punches to the belly. Sally went down, gobbled out her obscene agony, and lay limp in the centre of the floor. A fight that seemed to Solomon to last for but a few seconds, had lasted twenty-two minutes.
Now, Kristl Christiansen was hurt. Her face was becoming drawn. She had already been in combat for well over an hour and half, and at the end of all that she had to face Evendean's most dangerous girl, Tanzy Green.
Aikido's aerial skills were expected to give Kristl trouble. Katsun-Ruy was a ground-based style, and though capable of aerial manoeuvres, the Swede was no match for Tanzy in the sky. But, as ever, the Swede acted pragmatically, by searing Tanzy's legs, bruising her thighs and calves with sweeps and stamps until the Evendean girl lost height. Again the Katsun girl was knocked twice from her feet.
Arm blocks had saved Kristl the most punishment, and there she was very bruised. Yet she did not falter, blocking again and again, not counting the cost in pain.
Then, with an aerial leap, Tanzy almost got her in the dreaded aerial cross-neck scissors. She failed and paid for her effort by taking a straight-up drive-punch with all the Swede's strength and impulsion behind it full into the labia majora. Kristl's leading knuckles, for a moment almost penetrated her vagina, and Tanzy was screaming even as she somersaulted out of the leap and landed awkwardly five feet away and crippled by the pain of the punch. Her own momentum had coupled with gravity to increase the force of Kristl's blow three-fold. As she straightened from her landing crouch she was wild-eyed, and her whole visceral cavity was full of agony. Had she been other than she was, a tough, fighting woman, she would have been destroyed. As it was she felt ruptured and violated beyond belief.
Tanzy Green, her sexual being torn asunder by the vile punch, straightened, but could not walk. The blow had stunned the nerves in groin, hip and thigh into inaction. Hoping to hide the fact, she set her hands forward into a chopping stance, balanced on the columns of pain that were her legs, and waited, nausea rising within her.
Kristl Christiansen spun into a reverse heel with the right leg, and came hurling at the black belt. Still, Tanzy could not move. She needed to, desperately, but she could not. For she knew where the kick was going, and could do nothing but take it or scream out her surrender. As the fighter she was, she took it, knowing that she was destroyed, and feeling the point of the blonde's heel drive with terrible force into the same flesh that had just taken the punch. Katsun-Ruy! The female attack - Kristl had deprived her of her being as a woman. In the moment of striking she had ended every female desire of the Aikido queen except for one - to know this awful kind of penetration again. The aching legs splayed, opening herself for what she knew must come again - that electrifying punch.
Before it came, two others struck her breasts. She leant into them knowing they would come. Pain all but blew her mind, sweat leaping from every pore as glandular tissue burst against her ribcage - but that was nothing beside what had to come. Still she did not move, waiting, excruciated to the edge of consciousness, waiting for that final blow.
It was a left-hand punch, the knuckles even more penetrative than the right she had taken before. No penile thrust had ever given her such thrill, such agonizing stimulation, such a pleasure of torture as that single, terrible, blow. It could have been a red-hot iron bar driving into her being. Every nerve in her body exploded into fierce and passionate torment. Sweat drenched her as she stood in that orgasm of hell, her loins closing unbidden about the excruciating shaft that Kristl had thrust into her.
Still, she did not fall, or make any move to defend herself. Racked by an orgasm of such rending power, she threw back her head and screamed out her impassioned torture, while the blonde Swede, her braids swishing about her shoulders, removed her left and drove it deep into the black belt's underbelly. But still she did not fall. She leaned forward, consciously offering her breasts to Kristl's fists. The offer was accepted, and Tanzy screamed again, and orgasmed again, ecstasy born of agony.
Then, as Kristl, knowing her opponent was finished, stepped away, Tanzy took one agonized shuffle forward, and fell to her side, knees to her belly, her whole lower half jerking in the awful rhythm of her hell, before she slipped under the curtain of pain and down into the void.
Even there the hot agony of her loins followed her, and she knew her fate. Her voice gobbling insanely, she croaked out. "Oh Christ! She's ruined me."
Meantime, Kristl straightened to the rest position and bowed, unaware, it seemed, of the degree of carnage she had wrought. Her ten opponents, conspicuous by their grotesque and pained positions as much by their absence of clothing, were propped against the wall. Except Sally and Tanzy. Sally was still being worked on fifteen minutes after her fight had ended. Tanzy lay where she had fallen writhing out of her orgasmic agony. Within her, the flames of passion were being transformed into the holocaust of agony, an agony so bad now that the passion had begun to wane that it was taking four of the bearer women to hold her down.
A little flushed, a little bruised, Kristl Christiansen, on the completion of a two hour combat, stood quite relaxed and fiddling with the braid ribbons, undoing them ready for the shower. Solomon nodded to May Ng who led her away.
Then he turned to the assistance of the crippled Tanzy, who lay moaning in the centre of the combat area, trying to regain her will to rise.
Her belly seemed to be locked into a cycle of convulsions. Her tanga had been either driven or sucked into her - just a little showed free, the string stretched downwards to breaking point. Agnes had left her place by the wall, and was using her experience of injuries to try to stop Tanzy's lascivious-looking writhing. A fist in her belly below the navel, the other hand on the battered bush, she was using her weight to force Tanzy's loins to stay flat against the floor. Slowly, she was succeeding in stilling the convulsions.
"Ambulance?" asked one of the younger girls, seeming more hardened to the spectacle than her many horrified elders.
"No! Christ no! Just hold her down. She's in shock."
It took Solomon less than a moment to realize from the euphoric look in her eyes that it was not shock that she was in, but passion. He had seen that look often enough in a woman's eyes, and these gyrations. The women, it appeared, hadn't. He was mildly surprised that there was not at least one knowledgeable lesbian amongst them - lest it was Agnes. At least she knew what to do.
It took several minutes before Tanzy lay still, and Agnes drew the bloodied tanga from her body. She lay flat, arms wide, eyes closed. bruised breasts heaving, exhausted, weak, but it was not the fight that had exhausted her. Tanzy could put in an hour's combat any time against equal opposition. This was something different.
Her eyes opened, blazing agony. The passion had gone. Solomon smiled tightly to himself. Agony and ecstasy - those two related things. She had known the latter. She now came into the former. Holocaust had replaced flames, and the refining fire was gone. Tanzy Green, he knew, was finished as a fighter. Never again would she seek victory. Combat she would seek, but defeat in this manner would be all she craved. There were many who might give it her. Today she was coming back to reality. One day in the future she might not. How much torment, he wondered, had it taken to do this to a dedicated fighter? How close to her limit had she been ten minutes ago? Only she would know that. There would be no normal release for this Aikido black belt ever again. She had scaled a height of experience given only to the very few to gain - and he had found an instrument of destruction which he could never let go again - The Swedish Karateka.
For today it was enough. The image of Silver Island came to his mind. He must see this woman fight again, and not next time against a woman. Kristl Christiansen must face a man - a very desperate man. Or else Meiling Chung. He smiled again, and glanced at Tanzy Green. Might what Kristl's power had done to her be seen again. And against a man. `Oh God!' he thought, `the poor bastard!!'
And couldn't wait!
(C) Ajax 10/1987
Notes:
[1] fasces = the bundle of rods with or without axe borne by Roman magistrates of high rank.
[Katsun-Ruy] = Ajax named this style of karate Katsun-Ruy, but I believe it is currently transliterated from the Japanese as Kitsune-Ryu. I leave it as it written. (Agraf, 2021)
