Life and Times of a Priestess: Ch.3: New Life In Dalos (Part 3: Rape By Soldiers : Section 1)

Part 3 : Raped By Foreign Soldiers

Section 1

    The Priestesses waited and talked.  Some of them wept, a few began to commune again.  The tension had gone as time passed.  Danella was becoming quite bored and wished for something to happen.  Worship of any sort was the last thing she felt like doing.  She decided to go outside.  Other citizens were out there.  They had not been harmed.  Two other Priestesses chose to go with her.  Sreela did not forbid it.

    Outside people stood, waiting to find out what was happening.  Danella asked a soldier of the city what was happening.  The man had been wounded in his arm and it was bandaged.  It had been treated at least.

    "They went to the centre.  There was gunfire earlier.  Did you hear it?" he said.

    "No, what were they doing?" she asked.

    "They must have been shooting someone.  I don't know.  Maybe there was resistance.  It's stopped now."  She felt a return of terror at his words but was reassured that it had stopped.

    "How is your arm?" she asked.  "When did it happen?"

    "I have had this wound for a week now.  I took some shot on the wall when they tried to breach the south side.  It's been treated.  The arm has been saved.  It went through muscle but they say I will use it again, maybe not the same as before," said the man. 

     Priestesses were often given healing roles and particularly so in war.  When she had not been mobilised for military duties in the last months she had worked with other Priestesses, helping the doctors and trained nurses in some of the many hospitals which had been set up in the city.  She had given care to many men and women, and where appropriate had sometimes communed with them.  She kissed him on the cheek in friendship.

    Another soldier walked up the road out of the centre.  "They're coming again," he shouted.  They are not on parade this time," he warned.  "I think we might all be best indoors." 

    "What are they doing?" asked Danella.

    "They seem to be checking where we are and the buildings.  Maybe they're looking for someone.  They seem less disciplined this time."  They could hear occasional shots in the distance, but not very frequent.  It did not sound like major conflict.

    Some cavalry came up the road.  Danella heard them first and saw the flashing metal on their uniforms and their big hats and blue capes, just a few of them.  They had their sabres out and seemed to be chasing some people up the road towards them.  They were shouting aggressively in their language.  No one in the Empire understood them.  A mature lady was running as fast as she could before them.  The first horseman touched her shoulder with his sabre.  It was evident to the onlookers that the horseman was trying not to kill her, for if he had been he would have dealt her a proper blow.  Nevertheless Danella believed it must draw blood.  The  woman screamed again and continued to run. 

     The cavalry trooper laughed and shouted but gave no further hot pursuit of her.  Instead his comrades gave a shout and began to chase another quarry, an Imperial soldier in his red tunic who darted into a building.  The cavalry seemed not to want to get out of their saddles, and would not yet give chase within a building.  They were having ‘fun’, Danella believed, but it was nonetheless ‘fun’ which might prove fatal to citizens and soldiers of the Empire.  They had to get indoors again.  The soldier who had warned them had disappeared up the road.  The wounded man was on his way to a doorway and the rest were retreating indoors.  Danella and the other Priestesses instinctively turned back to their dorm, which was as near as anywhere.  Back inside they felt safer but they could hear the horsemen shouting and galloping around in the street before they disappeared up the road.

    The other Priestesses who could find a view had been watching from the windows, and so needed no warning.  There was fear on all their faces.  No one knew what to expect.  They sat and waited, having enough time to distribute some precious rations between themselves, stale bread.

    There was noise outside again, banging on doors, rough Prancirian voices shouting, threatening people, laughter, the sound of a door being forced open, screams.  Everyone waited for sounds of more gunfire but it did not come.  That did not mean the Prancirians might not be using their swords, as they had already shown.  However the screaming was of shock or surprise, and possibly of being beaten, but not the screaming of people being murdered.  Danella believed they were all in for some rough treatment if the troops came to the dorm, but not murder, although no one could be sure, and all feared the worst.

    There was a knock on the door.  "Open the door!" demanded a Prancirian.  These were the first words they could understand spoken so far by the enemy.  They banged more heavily and they could hear numerous voices.  None of them wished to be the first to face their conquerors.  They knew that resistance would be foolish however. 

     High Priestess Sreela behaved with responsibility, although all authority was now abolished.  She stepped forward and opened the door to the soldiers.  They burst in with their guns, swords and knives in their hands.  A tall soldier was the first over the threshold.  He grasped Sreela and threatened her with his knife.  She did not scream, but a moment of terror passed over her face as she thought this moment might be her last.  The tall man spoke to the other soldiers.  No Priestess knew what was said, but Danella thought he was telling them these people were unarmed and that they were women.  The soldiers pressed in through the door.  Soon there were at least twenty of them inside the dorm, compared with the thirty Priestesses.

     The bolder soldiers came in and walked around surveying their captives, shouting to each other.  Some of them had been drinking the temple wines which were used in certain ceremonies and festivals.  Danella could smell it on their breath as they walked past.  These men must have been to the temple.  Perhaps that would have been one of the first places the invaders would wish to visit as a symbol of conquest.  Some smelled as if they had drunk more than was sensible.  These were some of those who shouted loudest, and they swayed as they walked, uncertain of their steps.  They touched the Priestesses as they inspected them, pinching their buttocks and pulling them around the waist, pleased with what they had found.  The Priestesses knew well the signs of sexual interest and most of them now recognised that they were to be raped, which did not mean that the threat to their lives had left them.  These conquerors were in unpredictable mood.  It seemed that they had a licence to rape and toy with the defeated population, but it was not yet clear whether they were controlled in these actions, or whether they could do what they wished with their captives. The Priestesses hoped that would not mean death or torture.