Alia cowered with the other girls in the dark room in which they had been imprisoned, listening to the sounds of their city being sacked. The Horn invaders had come swiftly in numbers far greater than anticipated, quickly overwhelming the undersized Imperial garrison that had been left to defend Neu Vania. The main Imperial army was far to the north, where the Horn were expected. Alia knew little of military matters, but she understood that the generals, including her father, had made a dire miscalculation.
She didn't know how long it had taken the Horn to slaughter the garrison and force their way inside, because when she awoke they were already pillaging and burning the small town. Neu Vania had been built as an Imperial outpost on the great Thale River. It was meant to become a prosperous fishing and agricultural center, or so Alia's father had told her when he brought her, her younger sister Enia, and her mother to Neu Vania last year. She spent a miserable year far from the capital and her friends, watching boring farmers and fishermen. Her father had promised her a trip back to the capital for her eighteenth birthday, but when her birthday arrived, he was far from Neu Vania, waging war against the savage Horn tribes who had spilled into the Empire from the north.
Alia had been furious and desolate, weeping on her mother's breast at her father's cruel neglect. Her mother, Lady Donnia, had soothed her patiently while trying to explain, quite reasonably, that an invading army took precedence over a birthday trip. But even Lady Donnia had not imagined what awaited them the following week. The Horn were not supposed to be here, this far south!
Alia didn't know what any of this signified, except that she and all the other girls of marriageable age in Neu Vania had been separated from the men, older women, and children and shoved by rough Horn warriors into a storeroom, where they huddled together, terrified, amidst bags of produce and grain, listening to fires crackling and men screaming outside. Alia wrapped her arms around herself and wept. She had made no friends among the other girls. She was too pretty, too highborn, too arrogant, and the other girls had kept their distance from General Anval's daughter. Now she regretted her standoffishness, as other girls clung to each other for comfort. Alia didn't know where her mother or Allia had been taken.
It was nearly dawn when the door finally opened and a Horn warrior, clad in mail and a pointed helmet, barked at them in rough Imperial: "On your feet! Line up and file out the door single file! Don't talk and don't give us any trouble, or you'll regret it sooner than later."
The girls obeyed, for the most part. Most, like Alia, were dressed in their nightclothes. A few, the lowborn girls, still wore rough working clothes, and Lisha Olvia, one of the few Imperials with pretensions to being as highborn as Alia, was wearing a flowing silky gown; she must have been hosting when the Horn's nighttime assault commenced.
Lisha, as she pushed herself forward past the other girls, addressed the Horn soldier. "Sir," she said, "I realize you have us in our power, but --"
Whatever she had meant to say, her words were cut off by the Horn man's fist thrust directly into her abdomen, in the space between her breastbone and her stomach. All the breath went out of her in an instant, and she choked and gasped, unable to breathe, as she sank to the ground.
"I said no talking!" said the Horn soldier.
The other girls, terrified, filed past Lisha on her knees, doubled over and still fighting for breath. Alia paused next to the girl, and the Horn man raised his fist threateningly. Alia cast her eyes downward and followed the other girls out.
They were led to the river, where a troop of Horn cavalry wearing their mail armor and helmets had gathered with their horses. They hooted and whistled as the female captives were marched to the banks of the Thale. Alia and the others exchanged terrified looks. Were they going to be drowned? They had heard such terrible stories about the savagery of the Horn.
A Horn soldier who was taller than the rest, wearing glittering armor and carrying a much shinier helmet under one arm, paraded slowly before them, along the narrow strip of dirt between them and the river. He inspected each of them with an appraising gaze, and Alia shuddered when his eyes fell on her. The look he gave them was similar to how she'd seen the butcher eyeing a sheep or a cow before carving it up for their table. He was handsome, with dark hair and tanned skin, and in the early dawn light didn't seem nearly as savage and monstrous as the tales of Horn depicted them.
He looked past Alia's shoulder as she heard the sounds of sobbing and stumbling behind her. The Horn soldier from back in the storeroom was prodding Lisha before him with the point of his sword. Lisha staggered to a halt next to Alia, stopping herself just before she stumbled into the river, and looked up with terror at the Horn commander. Tears ran down her face, and Alia felt sorry for her despite herself.
"You will learn to obey, and speedily," said the man in front of them. His Imperial was flawless. He looked around at the girls, nearly twenty in all. "You are war prizes, possessions of the House of the Crimson Hawk. You are not slaves, for slave conveys a dignity of purpose that you do not possess. Possessions you are, and as possessions you will be treated."
He looked right and left, from Alia to the girls at the far end of the row opposite her.
"Disrobe," he said.
The girls stared at him in shock and dismay. Several of them started to protest, and immediately one of the Horn cavalrymen who had walked up behind them slapped them on the backs of their heads. One girl was struck hard enough to make her dizzy, and she too almost stumbled into the river before the girl next to her caught her and pulled her back.
"You will learn not to wait for commands to be repeated," said the man in glittering armor who seemed to be the commander of this troop.
The girls began to obey, some slowly, some with businesslike casualness, pulling their night robes up over their bodies or unfastening the ties behind them to shrug off their clothes. Alia, slowly and shyly, pulled her robe up, hesitating when it reached her bare privates, and then seeing the commander's scowling gaze fall upon her, pulled it up higher, revealing her soft, dark pubic hair, her flat belly, and her firm round breasts which her mother said were even more beautiful than hers had been at Alia's age. Lady Donnia's breasts were said to have been legendary when she was a girl, and even now men's eyes followed her admiringly as she walked proudly alongside her husband. Thinking of her mother made Alia's eyes sting with tears, and she hastily finished the business of pulling her nightgown up over her head and, having been given no other instructions, cast it to the ground as the other girls had.
Lisha was still clutching her fancy gown in both hands but had not yet disrobed. She looked pleadingly at the commander, and said, "Please, sir..."
He nodded at the man behind her, who grabbed her arms. Lisha cried out in pain as her arms were twisted behind her body. The commander drew his sword and put the point to Lisha's throat. She gulped and her cries became a frightened whimper. For a moment, Alia thought the Horn soldier would thrust the point of his sword into Lisha's throat. Instead, he drew it down the length of her body, expertly slicing through the thin fabric without cutting her skin. Where the stays binding her breasts and the smallclothes wrapped around her thighs were revealed, he made another motion with the tip of his sword and cut through them as well, all without leaving a mark on Lisha. In a few seconds, the girl was naked, her body revealed beneath the morning rays of the sun with the remains of her gown hanging in tatters off of her.
"It is well that you have a body that was worth the effort to uncover it," said the Horn commander. "For that reason only, I won't make an example of you yet."
Lisha shuddered. Alia had to admit that Lisha was indeed a beautiful girl. Her breasts were not as large as Alia's, but they were firm and perky, the size and shape of fresh apples, with tiny pink nipples, unlike Alia's dark, soft rosy aureoles. Lisha's long blonde hair was matched by the blonde fuzz at the juncture of her thighs, where Alia's hair, both on her head and between her legs, was dark and silky.
The two of them were unquestioningly the most beautiful girls here. The others, mostly farmgirls or townsmen's daughters, had figures that ranged from thin and bony to squat and fleshy. Their breasts, all presented to the Horn soldiers, were mostly full and young though some of the heavier girls were already beginning to sag. They regarded their captors with expressions of sullen resentment, fear, or blank acceptance.
The Horn commander said, "Which of you are virgins?"
The girls all looked at each other, and all raised their hands.
The Horn cavalry soldiers laughed and spoke to each other in their crude language. The commander smiled thinly. "We will find out who is lying." He walked over to Alia. "Are you a virgin?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," Alia said, blushing.
