Chapter 11
Lenasia stared ahead for a moment, toward the front so far away she could barely make it out. Prisoners and laborers, soldiers and merchants, prostitutes, and carts loaded with food and weapons stretching in a long line.
Further ahead than that, the knights in silver armor would be marching in perfect ranks. Lenasia had seen them with her own eyes as they stormed in, trampled the palace, and soaked it in blood. And at the very front, that man would be there. The thickest scent of blood, the eyes of a beast. The black-haired man who sat upon a black horse in a guise that feigned nobility.
The vast distance between him and herself struck her anew. Surely there had been beautiful women much closer, willing to throw themselves into his arms. So why had he taken her, so wretched and powerless?
A weak, bitter laugh was just about to slip out when Lenasia’s body tilted sideways.
“Huh?”
Her legs had never given out like this before, but in an instant, all the strength drained from them. She collapsed to the ground, helpless, and the prisoners tied ahead of her on the rope stumbled and hurled curses.
“What the hell, you b***h!”
The prisoner column came to a halt, and an overseer in a Taringian army uniform came running over. He was a different man from the one the day before. He raised his voice in fury.
“Get up right now, you Aitalosian w***e! If you keep us from making our march time, I’ll have your neck, you hear me!”
“Nnh…”
Crack. The whip in his hand lashed across Lenasia’s thigh, and she screamed and collapsed again.
The overseer was thoroughly irritated. He was already annoyed that his shift rotation had landed him with watching these worthless Aitalosian slaves, and now some shabby wench was holding things up on top of it.
‘Huh?’
He stepped closer to strike Lena once more as she trembled and struggled to rise, but then he spotted something that piqued his interest.
A whitish fluid was trickling down between the wench’s legs. It took no thought at all to guess what it was. The overseer held back his whip and let out a short laugh.
“So you really were a w***e after all?”
“…Ngh.”
He grabbed Lena by the hair and yanked. Now that he looked, while everyone else was caked in filth and reeked of grime, this s**t’s hair was clean and soft.
She had not drawn the eye, covered in rags as she was, but once he swept the hair aside, her face was startlingly beautiful, enough to make his eyes go wide. He licked his lips without realizing it. His appetite had stirred on its own.
Let’s see. The overseer pieced together the clues before him. This wench was an Aitalosian prisoner, and she was pretty. From the s***n still seeping down her legs, she had clearly been in some man’s arms just this morning. And for all that, she did not even have proper clothes, let alone undergarments.
‘I see.’
So the wench had been spreading her legs for their soldiers to save her own skin. The men starving for women would never have left a face like this alone. Plenty of them must have already had their taste.
“The bastards. They kept quiet about this and passed her around among themselves?”
“…That is not. I.”
Lenasia did not know how to go on, and she closed her mouth again. He seemed to have misunderstood something, but was it wrong to call her a w***e who had spread her legs for the emperor and begged for her life?
As Lena hesitated, the overseer untied her rope, seized her by the wrist, and dragged her off to the rear.
“Wh-What are you doing!”
“Shut up and follow! The rest of you keep moving forward. Anyone looks away, you’re dead!”
He shoved the resisting Lenasia down onto the grass where the great army had passed. Now that he looked, the b*****s inside her loose rags were astonishingly full. Thinking he had struck a windfall, he yanked up the hem of her skirt.
But just as he was about to pull down his trousers, the overseer took a blow to the back of the head that cracked loud and sent him tumbling. Lena, who had been thrashing with all her strength, gasped for breath and lifted her gaze. The emperor stood there. In his hand was the sheath he had struck his own soldier with, and beside him, his black horse panted and frothed at the mouth as if it had galloped at full speed.
“What is this disgrace?”
The emperor’s voice was livid. Lenasia barely propped herself up from the ground and looked at him weakly. So this was what she was reduced to, denied not just the dignity of royalty but any human decency, trampled like an insect. Was this not exactly what he had wanted her to be?
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