Imperius Ch. 04

To my wonderful and very patient returning readers: Here at last is Chapter four of Imperius. Your feedback has been enduringly helpful, and I look forward to any that you can continue to provide.

To any new readers: This is the 4th part of a series, and this installment in particular might be difficult to follow without the context of previous chapters. I suggest that you give chapter one a try before reading this one.

~ * ~

Lilah startled awake at the feeling of cold water being poured over her naked body, the sounds of a stirring Imperial encampment permeating her senses. Mairi, at Lilah's side, cried out with a whimper at the shock, her head of shining brown hair lifting off of Lilah's shoulder.

"Wake up, wake up all!" Caius, the commander in charge of wrangling the Illythian captives was calling out airily as he strode amidst the caravans. His manner was brisk and businesslike, as though rousing inattentive students. He had been in charge of them for two days since their capture, and throughout the transportation he had proven himself indisposed to temper. His response to delay or defiance was a kind of amiable intolerance, readily prepared to offer punishment, but without any particular malice.

All around them, their fellow prisoners—each one caged like an animal—were being roused in the same way, gasping and shivering in the morning chill as Imperial soldiers doused them with hoses.

The caravans used to transport them over the rolling emerald hills of Illythiel had come to a halt in an open clearing, hovering less than a meter above the ground and surrounded by war tents as far as any of them could see. There, the soldiers with hoses began their work, and the sounds around them were rising to a cacophony that the prisoners would not have slept through even without the hoses.

With the prisoners awake, a crowd of Imperial soldiers began to form outside their cages.

"Lilah, they're all staring," Mairi whispered, half-petrified by the sight of a crowd of legion soldiers watching her.

"Try to ignore them," Lilah murmured back, her own expression determinedly calm. "Don't let them see your fear."

"Pretend they're all wearing silly underwear," Antony suggested mildly from the next cage over, his Valencian accent lilting at the edges. "That's what I do."

Mairi made a small, panicked sound in response, and hid her face against Lilah's shoulder.

Mairi had taken the capture the hardest of them. There was no guile or secrecy in her nature, and throughout her several months near the war-front, she had been among the least suited to it. Her hands, warm and gentle as they were, shook at the sound of every shell strike. Lilah had done her best to look out for her. For all the good it had done.

Lilah murmured to her comfortingly, ashamed that it was all she could do and even moreso that it was as much for her own sake as it was for Mairi's. That she was burying her anger and pain beneath the shadow of someone else's.

She glanced back at Antony over Mairi's head.

He sat directly behind Lilah, his back parallel to her's, slender and urbane. His tawny, sun-kissed skin marked him as unusual amongst the mostly blonde and red-haired Illythian captives just as much as his unruffled demeanor.

He had been unusually quiet as they travelled, and Lilah was struck with such a sense of contemplation from him that she had let him be. There was no comfort she could offer him now anyway. He had defied the orders of his own country in joining the Illythian cause, though doing so had been as much of Valence's sake as Illythiel's. He had striven to stem the tide of the Imperius and prevent it coming that much closer to conquering his own country.

That he would be taken at the very moment the Imperial onslaught had begun to overwhelm their every effort, when he had been at the center of so much hope only months before was a cruelty beyond measure.

Sitting motionless across from Antony was Diarmuid, his bear-like, thickly muscled build taking up a good portion of the space, hunched as he was. He was the palest of all of them, his hair a copper flame in the gloom of the day, matched by his short beard. Though they were faint, Lilah knew the scattering of freckles across his nose by memory just as she knew that his grim silence was not a sign of temper, but of guilt. Their capture weighed heavily on his shoulder—much more heavily than he deserved, she thought, though she couldn't tell him so now.

"Did you see if Eris got away?" she asked Antony in a low murmur instead, her lips barely moving.

Lilah could barely discern the minute shake of his head. "We can only hope," he said.

Each captive was guided out of their cage amidst a tumult of attention. The soldiers seemed amused to observe them stumbling on their sore legs and trying in vain to cover their nudity with their shackled hands.

Lilah helped Mairi find her footing, her efforts complicated by the restrains. Behind her, Antony was all ease and grace, his wavy dark hair tied back and romantically windswept after two days in a cage, traveling over rolling terrain. Diarmuid looked as though he saw none of the commotion and merely gaze forward with solemn dignity.

Lilah was surprised to see the same bone-deep weariness in the soldiers' eyes that she knew in those of the regiment. These soldiers had initially been promised a brief campaign in Illythiel, where the technology was decades behind their own, the weather was temperate, and the enemy was mostly cloth makers and farmers. And where the few true soldiers among their military would value honor too highly to dedicate much time to tactics or strategy.

What they had found instead was a place where the enemy had a singular knowledge of how to use the landscape, rarely fought straight on, and introduced startling mechanical innovations to the battlefield when they did. The clockwork Goliaths the Illythian regiment employed at the front line, mechanical men that wielded astounding force and power without risking a single Illythian life in the process, were just one example. It hadn't been far into the war before the Illythian troops suddenly seemed able to command mist itself, hurling mechanisms at the legion horde that released a scentless white smoke in their midst and turned all to confusion. The short campaign they had expect stretched on, and now it had lasted longer than any other nation they had conquered, a fact that gave the Illythians a sense of grim pride.

They were lined up against a wall, and before many of the captives knew what would expected of them, they were hosed down yet again, cringing and cowering against the frigid torrent. Lilah was amongst those who tried to stand erect in the face of this humiliation and pain, but she did resort to covering her private parts against the force of the water. The effect was a Venus-like pose that drew her some notice in the crowd.

She looked up to find numerous pairs of eyes fixed on her, each glittering with lurid insinuation. One of them, she was unnerved to see, was Commander Caius himself, though his manner was more dignified than many in the crowd.

He waited, calm and genial, for the crowd to quiet before he began to saunter his way down the line, and imperial archivist and a lieutenant following at his shoulder.

Lilah lowered her eyes to the ground as they came nearer, though they stopped in front of Diarmuid first.

"Well, here is quite a figure," said Caius, taking in his height appreciatively. "A fighter?"

"His tags list him as an officer. He was found guarding an enemy medical team," said his lieutenant at his side in a guttural voice. Lilah had heard him referred to as Gracchus. He was a broad man, dark and thickly bearded, with an air of experience and scars to testify it. His eyes were deep set and vaguely animalistic enough to be intimidating, but there was a deep sense of professionalism as well, rigid yet oddly reassuring. Like Caius, Gracchus observed the captives without malice, which could not be said for most of the crowd.

Diarmund stood expressionless in the face of their scrutiny, the kindness in his grey green eyes dimmed to something stoic.

"Or failing to guard, I suppose," the archivist remarked nastily. She was a broad faced woman, with a wide chin and close-cropped black hair. Diarmuid made no reply, but Lilah could feel how precisely the words had found his rawest nerve.

"They'll be putting you into the arena, I'd wager. I can just imagine how all that moon pale skin will gleam with oil. All those highborn women will be asking for you after every fight."

"They will be disappointed," replied Diarmuid.

"Now that, my friend," said the Caius, his tone mild, "Is not something you want as much as you think."

They continued down the line, stepping in front of Antony next. From all that she had seen of the Legion thus far, the proceeding was startlingly casual. No matter how much the soldiers chose to call out taunts or mocking observations, the officers seemed inclined to be permissive.

"Your name?" Caius asked Antony, and Lilah was startled to hear him respond in a voice entirely unlike his own. Gone was the dashing Valencian Captain with the irreverent wit. Here was an unctuous, amenable man with nothing resembling the bearing of a soldier, and a thicker, darker accent than the one she knew. It sounded distinctly Navarrene to Lilah, though she doubted many of her countrymen would have placed it so quickly. Navarre was far to the south, and she had encountered a few of it's people during her brief time in Valence, but even the renowned merchant princes of the country only traveled so much, and rarely as far north as Illythiel.

"Xavier, Messire. At your service," he bowed his head, his every movement a flourish.

"You had no battle tag," Caius remarked, a guarded aspect surfacing in his usual sardonic demeanor.

"I am no soldier, Messire. A mere merchant, offering my services wherever I can in these troubled times."

"There were no wares with you."

"I had not yet acquired permission to peddle them to the soldiers...and I imagine, I will not again have the opportunity."

Lilah kept her head lowered, holding her breath in the tension of the moment. Antony was an established figure among the Illythian regiment, a foreigner who volunteered to fight their battles with them, and excelled at it. The Imperius would deem his capture a coup of the highest order, and here he was attempting to convince them it hadn't happened at all. More, he was attempting to convince them he was Navarrene, which could entitle him to Imperial citizenship. It was a high stakes gambit he played, and Lilah held her breath in the suspense of it.

"You think much of your own usefulness, Master Xavier," said Caius, "Prove it to us, and this may not be a difficult transition for you. We shall discuss this Illythian entrepreneurship of yours further, you and I."

It was Lilah's turn, and she felt hot and dizzy at the scrutiny. Nude, shackled, and surrounded by leering enemy soldiers, it was all she could do to keep her back straight, her expression calm.

The broad faced woman's eyes were as mocking with her as they had been with Diarmuid and Antony—Xavier, she corrected herself. It would be better to think in terms of his deception, for all their sakes, in case she was ever asked.

"Claremont," Caius said, drawing her war tag out of pouch in front of her, and studying it. The word "medical" was written just beneath. "It sounds more Valencian than Illythian."

"That's nothing unusual," Gracchus remarked. "Put Illythians and Valencians together, they're as likely to breed as to fight."

The woman barked out a laugh. "And here I thought it was the Skadiri the Illythians were like that with."

"It's both," he replied, still looking Lilah over, his eyes cold and hard. "Illythians act prim, but behind doors they're like rabbits, and just as timid. Valencians aristocrats and Skadiri barbarians each get their pick."

"I don't know about timid," said a soldier from the crowd, "I've fought some Illythian soldiers that were more like white leopards."

"What, hiding behind their tails?" another asked back, to a round of laughter.

"Rabbits are thrice as fierce as Illythians, anyway. I've seen one fight a cobra and come away unscathed."

"Still just like an Illythian, then. Dodging about. If the rabbit had actually needed to wrestle its way free, you know which would have won."

"This one can wrestle my cobra any time," called a different soldier to raucous amusement.

Lilah's cheeks burned. She lowered her eyes, longing desperately to disappear. The thought of Mairi beside her, doubtlessly all the more terrified to face her turn after this, was all that helped her keep her poise despite the depth of her blush. They were being provoked deliberately, tested and measured, and Lilah determined to give them no more weapons to use against her.

"I've heard of her," said Gracchus, in his growling voice, and the crowd of spectating soldiers quickly quieted, "Illythian captives talk about her from time to time. The angel on the battlefield, they call her. Some fanciful tale about wading through the thick of combat, patching wounds and searching for a lost love."

The interest in the small crowd sharpened perceptibly. Imperials notoriously relished displaying notable captives. Stories of their being showcased in their combat arena and aristocratic pleasure houses abounded. Each served as an emblem of conquest, of the might of the Imperius.

But Caius was gazing at the hologram hovering before him, as though he were prompted to recall some vague memory. "What name did you say, Gracchus?"

"Claremont, Lilah. Medical officer."

There was a pause, and a tinge of regret in Caius' voice when he spoke again. "Mark her for the Imperial household," he said, all amiable nonchalance forgotten, "And reach Consular Vero to request an audience."

~ * ~

Lilah lifted her shoulders off of the table and gazed at the tent doorway. Her entire body felt alive with the lingering ripples of her orgasm. She could still feel damp arousal between her thighs, his essence seeping from her quim. Her clothing, if you could call the sheer silk lingerie her captors had dressed her in "clothing," was torn asunder, leaving her chilled and unkempt.

Magnus had torn it away from her.

Magnus, she thought grimly, as she rose to her feet. Why had she called him by his name? What possible benefit could there be in trying to penetrate his veneer of control—Even if she could, did she expect to like what she saw underneath?

He was, admittedly, startlingly attractive. It wasn't necessarily just good looks—he had those, but she had seen men with more classical features than his—It was an energy he exuded. There was a heady undercurrent when he entered a room, crackling with willpower, and she was drawn to it in spite of his being her enemy, the conquering invader of her country, her enslaver. He who would have her dressed in metal lingerie and paraded amongst his rivals.

I should be relieved to be alone, Lilah thought ruefully. The more attention he focused on her, the greater her sense of humiliation. But however much she resented her enslavement, the day to day reality of it had been worse before Magnus had claimed her, and still was for the hundreds of Illythians who had been captured.

And Illythiel was not the only country the bound by Imperial enslavement. She walked around his desk, watching a holographic map of her country shift before her eyes.

The Imperius had been born in the heart of Drace, in the minds of philosophers with visions of utopia and the hearts of warriors with ambitions of glory. They first conquered the Gauthrien nomads that travelled the wilds betwixt Drace and Navarre. The Navarrenes, with their renowned art and commerce, had been lured by the promise of a new world of economic possibility. They had signed a concordance to accept Imperial authority without having ever lifted weapons to resist it.

D'Azure in the south, with its jungle climes and golden pyramids, resisted the influence of the Imperius for years before the eastern half conceded to its might, dividing the nation.

The world had expected Valence to be next.

Until then, the Imperial military had spread by slow and systematic degrees outward from its Dracian center, and the smaller Valencian empire nestled in the northwest of Navarre seemed certain to be next. Conquering it promised innumerable resources. Wealth, fine oils and fabrics, a horde of the world's greatest artisans and rivers of wine rendered Valence a beguiling fruit indeed, and Valence had readied its armies in expectation of the inevitable.

When the Legion had taken to the skies and swarmed over far-flung, far-northern Skadir instead, it took the world by surprise.

And it had sent Illythiel into a state of desperation. The implications were clear. The Imperius would swarm the north, the better to surround Valence on three sides.

That Illythiel would be foremost a means by which the Imperius would close in on its true goal was not lost on the Illythian leadership. They begged Valence for aid, for their armies to unite, that their two nations might stand as bastions against the threat together.

Valence declined. They needed their armies to protect their own borders. Valence offered tacit support through trade, but no overt declarations of alliance. Otherwise, Illythiel was on its own, and had been for three grueling years of war.

Still, all hope was not yet lost. For all the Imperial confidence and the plans for preemptive celebration, General Arturius still leads the rebellion with his dwindled regiment in the north, trying to turn the tide.

In the meanwhile, Lilah would have to adapt, both in her role as a slave, and in the unwanted fascination that came with it.

It was like a snare, she thought, covering her face with her hands. The more she struggled against it, the more tightly it constricted.

"Well," came a voice from the tent's entrance. Lilah turned to see Saphir, looking at her ruined clothing mournfully. "I suppose it might have been worse."

He held a small stack of fabric. She didn't move to his side or beg him to tell her she was not to be thrown back among the caravan slaves.

But she was tempted.

Lilah crossed her arms over her bare chest, more chilled than ever. Saphir took notice and, placing the pile in the war table, drew the topmost bit of cloth. A silvery cloak unfurled in his hands, and he draped it gently about her shoulders. She looked down, feeling subdued and strangely guilty.

"He left without a word," she said. "Saphir, what does the Praetor do with slaves he becomes displeased or bored with?" she asked.

Something flickered in Saphir's eyes. It might have been amusement.

~ * ~

Get ahold of yourself, Magnus told himself silently as he strode through the encampment. You still have a war to win.

It was true. As far as his men were concerned, Magnus' tactics were the first reason that the Imperial campaign in Illythiel stood on the brink of success. While some of his colleagues might disagree with this assessment, he intended to see this war out to its conclusion, and soon.

A three year campaign, nearly at its apex, and his colleagues wanted to throw a party. Worse, they had managed to convince the Legate that it was necessary, a practical move to incentivize the soldiers.

And perhaps it would do that much, Magnus allowed as he neared the slave caravans. They were floating contraptions, hovering above the ground silently, only giving off a low hum when actually in motion.

The visible cages were filled with many of the most beautiful of the Illythian captives, male and female alike. Upon being delivered to the imperial capital, most of these slaves would be groomed in luxury, their skin massaged with oil and their bodies draped with silks and gemstones. For now, a simpler preparation would do.