Collared

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.

"Are you sure?" he said. "If you lie to me, you will regret it."

Alia shook her head. She wasn't lying, and repeated, "I am a virgin. Please, sir--"

He cuffed her, though it wasn't very hard. She was quite certain he could have struck her much harder. Still, it shocked her and for a moment her ears rang. "Answer only the questions you are asked," he said.

Then he reached between her legs, and to Alia's shock and horror, she felt one, then two fingers prying open her slit and thrusting inside. She gasped, and would have stepped back except she feared she'd have stumbled and fallen. His eyes held hers, and there was another implicit threat there, so she stood where she was, terrified, as she was violated in a manner she had never before this moment imagined. She had heard of physicians testing girls whose purity was in doubt, but never had she thought she would be put to such a test, and certainly not by a callous-fingered Horn warrior!

One finger curled and touched a spot just inside her that made her gasp, while the other slid deeper into her. She was very conscious of all the other girls, and the Horn soldiers, watching as she meekly submitted to having her most private parts brazenly violated in plain sight, but something told her not to make a squeak of protest.

One finger prodded and explored, deep inside her, and Alia felt her cheeks glowing with shame. Worse, the other finger, the one touching that special part of her, was still rubbing against it and she felt it swelling and rising to meet the Horn soldier's touch, and her entire body was responding. Her nipples were hardening, and her breath was coming quicker, and all this was also plainly evident to all who watched.

"You touch yourself here, don't you?" said the Horn.

Alia thought about the nights her fingers had furtively found their way down to her nether regions and discovered that special spot, and the thrill and shame she had experienced when she realized what it could do. Sometimes she had brought herself to what she called her "last breath" with her younger sister sleeping beside her, knowing how wrong this was and yet unable to help herself. It felt as if all those nights were now written on her face, laid bare not just for this vile Horn warrior but for Lisha and all the other girls watching. They would all know her shame, her secret, slatternly habits. Somehow that seemed worse even than being fingered by this man in front of them, but she understood his warning about being quick to obey, so she said, "Yes, sir."

He laughed. It was neither a kind nor an unkind laugh. "I understand among Imperials that's considered quite scandalous. So you must be a shameless whore, isn't that right?"

Tears stung her eyes again, and her cheeks flamed scarlet, but not knowing how else to answer, Alia bowed her head and said, "Yes, sir."

"Then you're the first virgin whore I ever met," he said. The Horn all laughed. He withdrew his fingers, and it was all Alia could do not to sag and collapse to her knees. He turned and strode down the line of naked girls, looking them over again. "Anyone else want to reconsider their answers? Still insisting every one of you is a virgin? Go on. Anyone who's not a virgin, raise your hand."

More exchanges of glances. Then, two of the lowborn girls, one a not-unattractive redhead with a round bottom and a fleshy belly, the other a hard, lumpy girl with her skin darkened by working in the fields, raised their hands.

And so did Lisha, much to Alia's shock. Sniffling, her pale face red, Lisha kept her eyes on the ground as she held up her hand.

The Horn commander nodded. "Good, that's more like it. The odds of twenty Imperial girls all being virgins are about the same as snow falling from the summer sky." The other Horn laughed at this too. "Some of you are still lying, and you'll find out the price for lying to your owners." The girls looked nervously at the ground, but no one else raised their hands.

The Horn walked back over to Lisha. "How many men have you had?" he asked her bluntly.

Lisha was close to breaking into sobs. In a choked voice, she said, "J-just one, s-sir. He and I, we met--"

He slapped her, a little harder than he'd slapped Alia. Lisha cried out and almost fell down. She swayed on her feet and rubbed at her face.

"I didn't ask for the story of your life, you silly Imperial slut," he said. "Answer what you're asked, no more, no less. Did he take you in the ass?"

Lisha stared at him in shock. Alia, too, was so shocked by the abrupt question she barely understood what Lisha had just been asked.

After a silence of no more than a second, the Horn man walloped Lisha hard across the face. This time she did fall down, and began crying.

"Did he take you in the ass?" he repeated, as casually as if he were asking what she had had for breakfast.

Lisha shook her head. "N-no, sir," she said, through choked sobs.

"How about your mouth? Did he use that pretty little mouth of yours?"

Lisha looked up at him with wide eyes. "No," she whispered. She looked as if she wasn't even sure what that meant. Alia wasn't either. Did men do that? Did women?

The Horn commander turned slowly, to appraise all the captive girls again.

"Who here has had a dick in her mouth?" he asked aloud.

Almost all the girls gasped and turned red. The commander folded his arms and waited expectantly.

The redhead and the lumpy dark girl exchanged glances. Then, both of them raised their hands, the redhead shyly, with her head bowed forward, so her hair almost covered her face, which was now nearly as red as her hair, and the dark-skinned girl almost defiantly.

The commander walked over to them and said, "Excellent. You can show these other sluts how it's done." He reached for his belt with the hand that wasn't holding his sword and unfastened it, and in a movement that seemed as smooth and practiced as drawing a sword, he lowered his waistband and drew a swollen penis out of his pants. Alia couldn't help staring at it. She had never seen a man's member before, only livestock. She didn't know how to judge a man's size, but his seemed less impressive than she had imagined, though it was also only semi-erect.

"Both of you," he said, snapping his fingers at them, "get over here. Let's see a double performance." The other Horn were now laughing and clapping their hands.

"Hell'a no!" said the dark-skinned girl with the defiant expression. She glowered at him with hatred. "Ah may not be able t' keep ye bastards from holdin' me down and doin' what you like t' me, but I tell ya now anyt'in you stick in me mouth I'll bit off." She spat on the ground.

"Is that so?" asked the Horn man, still holding his swollen member.

"'Tis so," said the girl. She spat again.

He smiled and took his hand away from his member, which he allowed to hang loosely as he walked over to her. Despite herself, she shrank away from him in fear, although she raised her chin defiantly. Alia couldn't help but admire the stupid lowborn peasant's bravery.

The commander grabbed her and spun her around to face the rest of them. Then, from behind her, he raised his sword and drew its blade sharply across her throat, beneath her still upturned chin.

Her eyes bulged and she made a startled choking, gasping sound, and then blood sprayed from the gash in her neck. She stood there for a moment and the girls closest to her screamed as blood sprayed wetly onto them, except for the redhead, who seemed frozen in shock. Then, just as she was to collapse, the Horn commander seized her under one arm and spun about, hurling her into the river.

The squat, dark girl hit the water with a splash and turned over and over in the current. Her arms and legs spasmed and twitched for a few seconds, as her blood reddened the water, and then she sank facefirst and her body, mostly submerged, drifted away, carried by the river.

The girls stared in shock. Some just stood there, hands at their sides, eyes wide, while others put their hands to their mouths. A couple turned away and wept. Alia's eyes darted from the receding body of the lowborn girl to the Horn commander, who stood there with his bloody sword at his side and his mostly flaccid penis still hanging out of his pants. Next to him, the chubby redheaded girl had barely moved. Droplets of blood had spattered her from her cheeks to her belly and thighs, but still she stood there. With rather the expression of a dumb cow who'd just seen her companion be slaughtered, Alia thought unkindly.

The Horn commander said, "Possessions do not talk back. Possessions are put to whatever use their owners wish. I hope I won't have to teach too many more lessons like that."

A collective shudder went through all the girls.

He turned back to the redhead. "I suppose you'll have to do this by yourself," he said. "Get on your knees."

Blinking, she sank onto her knees. Now a few fat tears appeared, and rolled down her soft, round cheeks, but she didn't make a sound. The Horn commander had his member in his hand again, and was tugging at it gently. He stepped closer to her and looked at the other girls. "Make no mistake, you will learn to do this as well, and you'll do it often."

The other Horn cheered. Alia saw several of them were clutching their own groins.

"What's your name, whore?" the commander asked the redheaded girl.

"Fia," she said, looking at the thick member he was holding in front of her face. It had swollen and become quite a bit larger.

"Fia, show your fellow whores how to use your whore mouth," he said.

Fia opened her mouth and leaned forward to put her lips around the dark purple head protruding from between his fingers. He took his hand off his member and looked down at her as she took the rest of it into her mouth and knelt there, without lifting her hands from her plump thighs. Her head moved slightly, bobbing back and forth, and she made soft sucking sounds.

The Horn commander shook his head, while the other Horn made crude comments. Most were in Horn, but some of the things they said in Imperial made Alia both ashamed and apprehensive, as they criticized Fia's performance. Alia was wrestling with the idea of having to put a man's member in her own mouth. She knew very little about relations between men and women, and the idea that they might do more things to her than simply rape her -- which was also something she only barely understood -- sickened and frightened her. She looked away across the horizon for a moment, as if hoping that her father would suddenly arrive, at the head of an Imperial army to save her. But there was no salvation, only a burning town and an army of Horn warriors.