War Prize

Author's note: This is the first of a three chapter story. All three chapters are about this same length. All parts are complete and will be submitted quickly (unless something weird happens).

This is the first NonCon story I've written, and I'm grateful for any feedback readers want to give. Though, I would ask that you read all chapters before sending any.

Many thanks to RustyOzNail, HotCappucino and SimonDoom for their critiques and help with editing.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Belle

@~~@~~@

Chapter 1

She is recaptured

She ran headlong through the woods.

Her feet pounding in boots two sizes too big. Her heart pounding in a chest suddenly two sizes too small. She gasped for air and her ribs hurt. Her long dress was caked in mud, wet and sticking to her legs. She had pulled up the skirts, but couldn't run while holding them. Eventually enough muck stuck to the hem that the fabric clung to her thighs and she could run freely.

So she ran. She ran almost mindlessly. She didn't know how long she had been running. She only knew she had to keep running.

In her head, the words on a loop, pacing her stride, 'They're behind you. They're behind you. They're behind you.'

She sucked in air and her ribs screamed at her. She wanted to stop. She needed to stop. To slow down. She kept running. 'You've gotta run. You've gotta run. You've gotta run.'

'They're behind you. Gotta run. They're behind you gotta run. They'rebehindyougottarun.'

Her foot landed hard, her ankle twisting. She fell face first into the dirt. Her momentum made her skid in the wet leaves. When she stopped moving, she couldn't breathe. Her gorge and her panic rose. She pounded the ground with a fist.

'Get up. Get up. Get up. Getupgetupgetupgetup.'

She flopped onto her back, her body refusing what her mind knew it needed to do. She settled for attempting to control her breathing, moving her chest slowly, fully; willing her heart to stop thumping so loudly in her ears. She held her breath. She listened. She froze and listened.

Was that a gunshot?

Was that a footstep?

She exhaled finally, compelled to. She heard the baying of one of the search hounds.

Her body relented and she was on her feet. She stepped and her ankle screamed at her. Her knee buckled. She fell into a tree. She leaned on it, breathing slowly. She froze and listened. Silence. But for the rustle of the leaves far over her head in the canopy. Silence. Not even birds. Not insects. Just wind.

She turned, leaning her back on the tree, peering back in the direction she had run from.

'You need to hide,' she thought. She realized she needed whatever time she could steal. She realized her running would make noise. Her running was leaving a trail. Her running was dangerous. She took a deep breath, and was calm enough to survey her surroundings. She looked up at the tree she was leaning on and it might have offered cover, but she couldn't have climbed it quickly.

She looked around, stepped away from the tree, peered into the further depths of the forest. Another tentative step elicited a milder complaint from her ankle. Her knee held. She kept walking gingerly. She spied what might be the entrance to a cave. Then she saw the other tree. It was larger, much larger than most. Its trunk was split at the bottom, and seemed to be hollowed out.

The cave, or the hollow tree. Hollow tree? Cave?

She weighed her options. She heard the dog baying again.

'You need to hide,' she thought again. 'You have to decide.'

She decided. She walked toward the cave not caring if she left a trail. She got to the small entrance and peered in. She left a handprint in the mud caked at the side, but partially obscured by hanging foliage. She stood, to one side, where the mud was not quite so thick at the entrance. She thought about the dog. What could she do to distract the dog, to draw it off? She heard a bark.

She glanced behind her. She froze and listened again. She hiked up her skirts and pulled off her panties, ripping the thin worn fabric at the seams, sodden with her sweat and the mud that splattered as she ran. She squeezed the fabric around one of the branches of the bush near the cave. Then she picked up a small rock, wrapped the panties around it and threw them, as hard and as far as she could, into the cave.

She breathed again. Now to hide. She thought about taking off the boots, but quickly decided that would take too long, and risk injuring her feet. She moved toward the tree. Much more carefully, stepping gingerly, as lightly as she could, planting her feet on the piles of leaves, away from her own muddy tracks. She gathered her skirts tightly to her, wrapped the hem around her forearm. She got to the tree, suddenly wondering if she'd really have enough room to secret herself, and what would she do if there wasn't.

She ducked into the split and there was more than enough room. She gauged the angle of the light and slipped to the side of the opening. She cowered in the deepest shadows. She drew herself in, keeping her skirts gathered, wrapping that arm around her waist. She covered her mouth with her other hand.

'You cannot cry. You cannot cry. You cannot cry.'

She breathed in and out slowly. She fought the impulse to hold her breath. She fought the nearly overwhelming desire to scream. She couldn't fight the tremor that rattled her bones and made her teeth chatter.

When the tremor passed, she leaned against the tree's structure. She realized she didn't know the word for, didn't know if there was a word for, the wood inside a hollow tree. What did you call the inside of bark? The fact that she had a moment to wonder such a thing startled her.

She heard the baying dog. Much closer. She heard rustling closer to the ground. She heard steady movement. Now she would know if her scheme had worked. She clamped her hand over her mouth. She shut her eyes so she could hear better. She counted heartbeats to keep herself from crying.

She heard them clearly now. They were moving quickly through the woods. They didn't have to worry about leaving a trail. How she hated them. How she hated these arrogant invaders who were once supposedly allies. How she hated what they were doing to her country; what they had done to her family. What they promised to do to her. She fought off another scream. They were there. They were feet from where she stood.

'Please. Please. Please. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.'

Did she really expect her ruse to work? Did she honestly think they'd be fooled enough to all go into the cave? Did she think she could buy enough time and space to sneak away while they were searching it? Her thoughts and her plans were irrelevant. She stood frozen, listening to the snuffling of the dog searching for her. She watched a shadow cross through the light spilling onto the ground in the tree. She watched the light return and heard the rustle of the leaves as the men moved off.

'Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. Quietquietquietquiet.'

A shadow appeared in the tree again. She heard breathing. She feared she heard her own breathing. That the invader would hear her breathing. The shadow disappeared. She stared at that spot of ground. Her every muscle tense. Her ears straining to make sense of the sounds.

The shadow reappeared. It stayed. She braced herself. A grunt, soft but distinguishable. The sound of a leaf crunching and sliding, maybe a twig snapping. Then a face. A face in the tree with her. His eyes dark and shrouded by a helmet and some sort of hood. A hand reaching for her. A large hand, in a thick glove, grabbing at her.

She screamed then. She inhaled and screamed as though the force of her air could blow him away. He flinched, reached out again and she went wild. She dropped to the ground, flailing out, kicking, cursing and spitting at him. Every time he moved, reached closer to her, she swatted at him; she grabbed; she punched. She laid back, her skirts bunched at her waist, and kicked relentlessly. He grabbed a foot and jerked her forward, out of her space, dragged her toward the opening.

She kept kicking. He kicked her. She turned, scrambled to her feet, unheeding of the pain in her ankle or the cling of her dress around her legs. He moved into her space, cursing her, spitting. She punched his chest, his face, she tried to stomp on his foot. He stepped back and raised his rifle, butt first, and cracked her forehead with it.

Startled, dizzy, eyes watering, she dropped her hands and swayed. He seized his advantage and grabbed her wrist, yanking, jerking her out into the open. As soon as she was close, he grabbed her hair, hauled her to him, and then threw her to the ground. She landed on her stomach; her air knocked from her lungs momentarily. She pushed against the ground to get up, to roll over. He stepped on her back. She felt his boot, on her spine between her shoulder blades. Felt his weight shift.

She closed her eyes, waiting for the crack of his weapon, waiting for the shot that would thankfully end her life.

"Sergeant!" a voice a few feet away commanded. "Halt. Stop."

She felt the weight on her back shifting but remaining in place. She heard more footsteps, the rustle of the leaf litter on the forest floor.

'Fuck,' she thought, angry to be denied her ultimate escape.

"Fuck," muttered the man standing on her.

The other voice came again, all sensible authority. "Sergeant, we have orders."

He was closer. She might have been able to look up and see him. She wasn't going to give any of them the satisfaction of caring. The weight moved off of her, and a hand reached down, hauling her to her feet by her hair and the back of her dress.

Upright, crowded by the invader who had pulled her from her hiding place, she glanced around. Five. Five of these men, surrounding her. Each carrying a portable arsenal of firepower and edged weapons. And the dog. The dog, restrained by a leash held loosely in the hand of one of the invaders. The dog snarling, growling, clearly balanced on his toes and ready to strike if she gave them any excuse.

The commander of the unit strode over to her, arrogance and disdain rolling off of him the same way the stink of his sweat did. He came closer, crowding her. She stood, not moving back, not looking at him. She looked through his chest, as though peering to see if there really was a heart beating in there.

She felt his fingers grip her chin and he pushed her face upward. The hate in her eyes was matched by the hate in his. But, she knew, hers was an impotent hate. The hate of the soon to be oppressed. The hate of one who knew degradation and pain were all that were left to her. She closed her eyes, denying him the chance to read her expression.

There was movement behind her, and then some hard metallic restraint was fitted over each of her forearms. The man standing behind her locked them in place and raised her arms over her head. The restraints connected together, some sort of magnetic lock, she supposed. The same technology holding her arms aloft, through some unknown control. No one held her.

Then more movement as she kept her eyes closed. Metal around her neck. Metal around her chest, a harness of some kind, solid at her back, but two open loops around her breasts. They connected together at her sternum, like some obscene bra which would only hold her flesh but not cover it. She heard a click, surmised that the harness was now also locked in place. She heard the rattling of a chain being hooked to the metal collar. She felt the slight pressure as something was hooked to the front of the harness.

Then her arms fell, the metal cuffs detaching from each other so quickly they almost hit her in the head. Her eyes flew open and she snarled at the man still in front of her. Quickly though, her arms were folded behind her, wrist to elbow, and she heard another click. Then as though that wasn't enough, something extended from the back of the harness which pushed her arms away. It threw off her balance and caused her back to bend.

She narrowed her eyes, looking around at the squad who had captured her. She leaned forward and spat on their leader's shoes. He jerked his head toward one of the other men, and that man jerked on the chain connected to her front. Rather than fall again she stepped forward. They moved off; she being led by the chain. The dog handler to her right, and the invader responsible for getting her out of the tree to her left.

Her skirts slipped down her legs, now sticking wetly to her shins. She tripped. She kicked the skirts away, but two steps later she was tripping again.

The leader halted. He turned to the invader on her left.

"Sergeant, would you mind shortening that bloody dress so we can get a move on?" he said.

"Yes, Lieutenant."

The Sergeant pulled out a long knife and sliced into the material of her skirt. He stabbed into the fabric much closer to her hip than necessary, and once he created the hole, he just ripped the fabric apart. The new, jagged, edge unevenly exposed her. One hip was partially covered, but the other hip, front and back were now bare. All of the men looked; all of them noticed her lack of underwear.

One of them whistled. One of them laughed and called her a whore.

The dog handler spoke, "So that's why Hunter took off into that damned cave."

She held up her head, she glared at the Lieutenant. He appraised her openly. She saw, at the edges of her vision, the other men reaching for their crotches, adjusting, or anticipating.

She looked up. Thought to a deity she didn't believe in, 'Just let them kill me quickly.'

She met the Lieutenant's eye, and then the eye of each of the other men. She walked under her own direction, back through the woods. The Lieutenant had the audacity to smile at her and incline his head in mock respect. They marched back to the invaders' encampment.

++~~++~~++~~++

She was ashamed at how quickly they arrived.

She'd thought she'd gotten farther away. She'd hoped her speed and her head start had opened up some space, and taken up some of their time. But she judged it less than an hour when she saw the checkpoint.

She'd stilled her expression, had hooded her eyes. She watched without moving her head. She schooled her movements, concentrating on walking fluidly. When the sentry whistled at her exposed condition and flagged down an unnecessary assistant, she didn't react. When two of the men in the squad groped her, pinching her bottom, and threatened to cut the top of her dress as well, she didn't react. When the Lieutenant called them to task and referenced their orders again, she noted it, stone-faced.

The group of them moved through the camp. At one point three of the men peeled off, leaving just the Lieutenant and the Sergeant guarding her. The Sergeant held the chain in one hand, and kept his other on his rifle. The Lieutenant trudged ahead of both of them, fidgeting with his wrist mounted tablet, seeming to scroll through some written information.

She surveyed her surroundings. This was a different section of the camp than she had been held in before. They were separating her from what was left of her people. For the first time since her escape, she wondered if the others in her cell had been punished somehow. They hadn't helped; they hadn't known what she'd planned. None of them would have thought her capable of it. She spared a brief hope that her cellmates had not been punished, or that if they had, it was a quick and painless death.

They kept walking, deeper into the encampment, past a building made not of canvas and poles, but interlinked metal arches. It curved around in an almost complete circle as the three of them followed the side of the building around to one opening. There were a few short steps, and she realized the floor was concrete, or something similar, not the hard-packed dirt and straw of her cell.

There were odd mechanical noises, a low rumbling, and a periodic creak. The Lieutenant stopped in front of a table that was set up as a desk. A man behind it stood and saluted, and the Lieutenant returned it distractedly. He swiped and tapped on his wrist tablet, and nodded in her direction.

"One for processing," the Lieutenant said.

"Whose orders?" asked the man from the desk.

"His," said the Lieutenant, tapping his tablet.

The man from the desk looked at her, surprised. "Well. Shit."

"I know. But. Orders. Right?"

The two men looked at each other and the Lieutenant shrugged. The Sergeant yanked on the chain, and she stepped forward in direct sight of the man from the table.

The man from the table picked up a larger tablet, with a handle protruding from the back, making it easier to hold. Then he picked up a cylinder about as long as her hand and as thick as a man's thumb. He tapped on the screen of the tablet, and then at one end of the other object.

The rumbling got louder, and the creak more frequent. She felt the bar that stuck out from her back retracting, and the forearm restraints disengaged from each other. As soon as her arms fell, they were pulled up, straight over her head. She looked up and saw a set of metal manacles descending from an overhead track. They locked onto the forearm restraints and pulled up, until her heels were off the ground.

The Sergeant unclipped the chain from her collar and sternum. Then the Lieutenant tapped something onto his wrist tablet, and both restraints unlocked. When the Sergeant removed them and stepped away, the man from the table whistled. The Sergeant laughed.

The man from the table pointed the cylinder at her and she saw motes of light refracting in the dust. A laser light. The man waved the light over her from fingers to feet and back up. He stepped in front of her, adjusted a setting on the laser and then used it to cut off the remnants of her dress. When the dress wouldn't fall, he and the Sergeant peeled the damp cloth off of her. Then the man knelt, adjusted the laser again, and cut off the boots.

When she was hanging there, barely balanced on her toes, and completely naked, the man readjusted the laser and walked in a slow circle around her, waving the laser up and down. She got the impression she was being measured somehow. Once the man had completed the circuit, he stopped, swiping and tapping on his tablet.

The Lieutenant coughed, and the man looked at him. "Yeah?"

"Do you have what you need, Gunny?" the Lieutenant asked, annoyed.

"Oh, yes sir. Hold on." He tapped another sequence into his tablet. The Lieutenant checked something on his wrist unit. "That should do you, sir. Just take that confirmation to dispersing, and you'll get a replacement set of restraints."

"Sure, ok."

The Lieutenant checked something else on his wrist unit. He walked toward the other man, the Gunnery Sergeant, and held up his unit.

"Gunny, don't forget this. And this." He tapped twice on his unit.

"Yes, Sir. You want me to do that now, so you can tell him you saw it?"

"This." He tapped. "Yes."

"Yes, Sir." He placed his tablet on the table and walked back to her.

She saw Gunny adjust the laser pointer again and then he stood behind her. She felt him gathering up her hair, twisting it in his free hand. Then she smelled the telltale acrid stench of burning hair. She didn't move, but inside she was screaming at them. They were cutting off her hair. Her long, thick, wavy hair. The one vanity she'd allowed herself in her old life. Cutting off one of the last symbols of her country, one of the few things that really differentiated the women of her homeland from the whores consorting with the craven barbarians who had invaded.

She'd known they did this. She'd seen others of her countrymen in the cells. The men with their heads completely shaved, the women with their hair cut short. As short as the male invaders wore theirs. The last of her hair fell from her head. She'd wondered why it hadn't already happened to her, and had allowed herself to believe she'd been spared that particular humiliation. To be so wrong infuriated her.