The Raid

A short story by Willowfall

She bolted upright in bed at the sound. Her husband leaped out of bed and yelled
“Raiders”. He grabbed his club and raced out the door without putting on any clothes.
“Stay in!” he yelled as he pushed aside the curtain covering the entrance to the dugout
and raced out into the early dawn light.

She pulled a blanket her to cover herself with as she rose and hurried to the dugout
entrance, disregarding her husband’s order. She pulled aside the curtain to see what was
going on. Here on the Judean frontier of the Roman Empire desert raiders from across
the Jordan were a constant threat to their herds.

Pulling aside the curtain it was not raiders that met her eyes, the two hillsides that formed
the village were swarming with Roman soldiers! She looked for her husband and caught
sight of him not 50 feet down the hillside where he engaged three Roman soldiers with
his club. It was no contest as he was cut down immediately. She screamed “NO”!

Hearing her scream the three soldiers looked up and then charged up the hillside.

She ducked back into the dugout knowing the curtain was no barrier to the soldiers.

The first soldier pushed through the curtain and caught the thrown cooking pot on his
shield. The clay pot shattered on impact.

She was stunned as the soldier punched forward with his shield. She flew backward
upending the table in the middle of the room, the blanket covering her dropped to the
floor as she flew through the air. Crashing to the floor the wind was knocked out of her
and blood trickled down her throat from where the shield had caught her on the chin.

Stunned she didn’t resist as the soldiers tied her wrists in front of her and dragged her to
the still warm bed she had left moments ago. Two soldiers grabbed her ankles spreading
her legs apart. The lead soldier forced her bound wrists above her head with one hand
and guided his manhood into her with the other.

She started to come to her senses from the pain of the forced penetration. She felt the
Cinculum Militaire laying on her belly, his Lorica Segmentata pressed down on her large
breasts. The segments of his armor caught and pinched her nipples as he pounded her
sex.

She screamed and tried to struggle but was no match for her three assailants.
When he was finished he switched places with one of the men holding her legs and she
was ravished again.

And then again.

Finished with her, one of the men, grabbed her by the hair and they dragged her down the
hillside. They stopped at a boulder just short of where her husband lay dying, bent her
backwards and tied her in place with her legs spread. She screamed more and tried to
resist. One of the soldiers grabbed her jaw and forced it open shoving an iron ring in her
mouth wedging it open. The other two soldiers went over to her dying husband and
dragged him over and propped him up so he could watch what was about to happen to
his wife.

Smiling and looking into the dying man’s eyes, the soldier who forced her mouth open
grabbed her breasts as if they were handles and shoved his manhood deep into her mouth.
Laughing he pounded her throat until his bitter seed shot into her mouth. He wiped his
wet manhood on her face and stepped back to allow his friends to use her mouth.

Finished with her he walked down to talk to the dying man. Neither of them understood
the Roman soldiers who spoke the language of the Legions, Latin. They only spoke
Aramaic. But the taunting tone of the unknown language was universal. He grabbed her
husband by the hair and forced his dying eyes to watch the repeated violations of his
beloved wife.

When the soldiers were finished with her, the soldier taunting the husband pulled his
Pugio and cut off the husband’s manhood. Laughing he walked over and placed the
severed member between her breasts. The soldiers then walked away.

She turned her face away from her husband. She was humiliated, violated and could not
bring herself to look at her dying husband.

Despite his wounds he would live a couple of hours still. And during those hours he’d
watch his wife be violated more times than he could count.

The 500 Legionaries of the V Cohort of the X Legion and their 100 Syrian auxiliaries
struck the shepard’s village like an armored plated buzz saw. The couple of hundred
villagers never stood a chance.

The old and young of both sexes were immediately put to the sword. Most of the military
aged boys and men in the village met the same fate, only about a dozen were unfortunate
enough fall into the Roman’s hands alive. But the soldiers were very careful not to kill
girls and women of breeding age. Unfortunately only 30 of them survived to serve the
lustful needs of 600 men in the assault force.

That was their misfortune.

The surviving women were dragged into the dugouts that formed the village housing, or
staked out on the hillsides or tied over objects like she was tied over the boulder. Their
sex’s and ass’s and mouth’s made available to 600 men jacked up on the testosterone and
the stress of combat.

It is surprising only two of the victims died of the sexual abuse.

But again that was the survivor’s misfortune.

The dozen military aged men who survived the attack were collect by the dry wash that
separated the two hills that formed the village. The men had sharp stakes shoved up their
ass’s and then the stakes were mounted in the ground. Hanging in the sky waiting for the
slow death that impalement brought the men tried to suffer in silence but failed and their
screams and moans of agony intermingled with the screams of terror and pain and
humiliation that filled the air from their wives and daughters.

But the cohort had to move on in its mission to help suppress the Judaic revolt. This
village was only the first stop for them on the road to Jerusalem.

The herds of sheep goats and the few available donkeys collected. The village was
stripped of everything of value. Their loins satiated it was time to move on.

Time had no meaning for her, her humiliation was an unending parade of rape and
sodomy.

Her sex and mouth filled with seed to overflowing; her face and the inside of her legs
were wet and slick. Blended in with that and the thing she was most conscious of was
the warm blood from her husband’s severed member pooling between her breasts.

The abuse inflicted on her breasts was unbelievable as her assailants grabbed, twisted,
slapped, pounded, punched and bit them as they fancied. One man even whipped her
with his baldric.

It was time for the Cohort to finish the job and destroy its toys.

There was no wood in the valley and the Cohort wasn’t going to waste what timber it had
on crosses so they consigned 16 of the surviving 28 girls and women to a fire.

Piling everything that would burn and dousing it with some oil found in the village the
Romans built their pyre. They then proceeded to break arms and legs, dislocating
shoulder and hip joins of the victims consigned to the fire. Then the Romans tossed their
victims onto the fire.

It was a low fire, not hot enough to quickly consume bodies, nor did it generate a choking
smoke. The low smoldering flames licked at the immobilized victims, inflicting first
degree burns, disfiguring bodies, slowly, so slowly killing its victims.

The Romans then turned on the other 12 survivors. She was one of them.

Cut loose from the boulder that had been the altar of her agony she was dragged down the
hill by her ankles. Battered to the point of insensibility she offered no resistance.

Dragged to one of the three trees that stood in on the valley floor she had no idea of her
fate. She resisted not at all.

A group of Roman soldiers lifted her up pinning her arms to the split trunk of the tree.

The nail drove deep into the bone in her arm and she screamed in agony. The pain
brought her back to life and she struggled to resist her fate. The second blow drove the
nail through her arm and into the wood. She bucked and fought, her legs tried to tighten
around the chest of the soldier between her legs holding her ass in the air. Despite her
strength her legs made no impression against his body armor and he laughed. Her head
flung backwards in agony and her chest and belly heaved skyward as they nailed her
other arm to the tree. Her large breasts shook and flopped side to side as she fought
against her fate.

Finished nailing her arms into place the soldier let go of her ass and stepped out from
between her legs allowing her back and ass to slam into the main trunk of the tree.

They grabbed her legs wrapped then around behind the trunk and crossed her ankles. A
single nail was driven through her ankles and she was fixed to the instrument of her
death. A tree she had watched grow in the valley that she had lived her whole life in.
One she had climbed as a little girl to see if she could see her father coming home with
the family’s few sheep at the end of the day. She had been born, lived her whole life and
was now going to die with in walking distance of this tree.

As she struggled to free herself from the death grip of the nails, the Romans took another
woman and nailed her to the other side of the trunk. When it came time to fix the next
victim’s legs they wrapped those legs around hers and then nailed them into the trunk on
her side.

The struggles of the two women shook the tree as they danced and contorted in an effort
to free themselves.

The tree was also the instrument of death for two other women. But instead of being
nailed to the tree the Romans shoved sharp wooden stakes through the other two victim’s
breasts, up their sex and ass. They then hung each of them from a branch with a slow
choker rope. Their kicking and struggling added to the motion of the tree but subsided in
less than half an hour. Extremely painful but also extremely short compared to what she
was suffering.
But her executioners were not done with her by simply nailing her to the tree. One of
them grabbed a nipple and pulled it out as far as he could. He pulled out his pugio.

Seeing he intended to cut off her nipple she struggled and managed to pull it out of his
grasp. The soldiers killing her laughed and then held her in place. The soldier with the
pugio, slowly, ever so slowly cut off not only the nipple but the whole areola. Then he
made shallow cuts in her breast radiating outward. Smiling he inflicted the same damage
on her other breast. She screamed in unending agony.

But he wasn’t finished.

He put his hand between her legs, spread her lips and sliced her clit with the pugio. He
then wiped the combination of blood and seed off his weapon on her belly.

They had one more indignity to inflict on her. The branded her with the parent Legion’s
number above her breasts and the cohort number below it.

Finished with her they moved to the other side of the tree to inflict similar damage to the
other crucified victim.

The other two trees in the valley saw a similar scene played out as the last eight victims
met their fates.

Taking their loot and the herds, the Romans and the Syrians marched away toward their
next mission.

She continued to struggle to try and free herself. The brutal pain caused by pulling on the
nails was almost more than she could stand but it had to be done if she was to avoid her
fate. She pulled and screamed each time she did. Her damaged breasts flopped from side
to side and up and down as she struggled. Her battered sex obscenely pushed out with
each attempt to lift herself. A sweat broke out causing her body to shine in the mid-day
sun. During her struggles she and the woman nailed on the other side of the tree
occasionally banged heads or rubbed their backs together. Their legs constantly rubbed
against each other. Each completely oblivious to the other while suffering their own
agonies.

She was a strong and strong willed peasant girl and it had served her well during her life.
Now that strength betrayed her.

As the other victims of the Roman’s died around her, she refused to give in, to allow
herself to die. Slowly the valley became quite as the men impaled finish dying. The girls
and women tossed on the fire slowly succumbed to the burn damage caused to their
bodies and even the woman nailed on the other side of the tree died. She could feel the
other woman die, her struggles stop, her body went cold.

By mid afternoon she was all alone with her pain.

Exhausted she could struggle no more. Her limp hanging body streaked with her own
blood no one who observed the scene would have imagined she could still be alive.

Yet alive she was. The nails that pierced her body hurt more than she could stand. Her
legs and arms quivered in pain from cramps. Her shoulder muscles screamed in agony
from supporting the weight of her body and her struggles.

Occasionally she found a hidden reserve of strength and she used it to try to relieve one
pain or another. But she could never stay in one position for more than a few minutes
and then she had to succumb to gravity and just hang.

Her head lolled between her shoulder. She could watch her blood and sweat dripping off
of her damaged breasts. Occasionally when she moved she could see the still, gray
colored legs of the woman nailed to the other side of the tree.

Occasionally she looked up wondering if help might be coming. Surely one of the
villages nearby would have seen the smoke in the sky. The closest one was only an hour
walk away.

What she didn’t know was that the X Legion had broken down into 10 task groups and
attacked 10 villages at the same time. Not many Judeans had died, probably less than
3,500 all told. But the legion had depopulated a section of the frontier 30 miles wide by
10 miles deep. Only those fortunate few who were away from the villages survived. And
they were hiding in the hills not willing to risk exposing themselves in daylight to the
wrath of the Romans.

So she hung and waited and suffered. She waited either for a savior or death.

And during that wait she suffered and suffered and suffered.

While her head was hanging she noticed a shadow flit by. Then another.

Slowly painfully she lifted her head. Was someone coming? Might she still survive?
What was that sound she heard?

Her vision was blurry from the loss of blood and the heat stroke the Judean sun had
inflicted on her. She was in agony not only from her injuries but also from dehydration.
Her entire body hurt. She heard the sound again and looked toward it trying hard to
focus. Then she saw the source of the sound.

The carrion bird was standing on and pecking on the body of an impaled man.

Coming out of her haze she realized the valley had many birds feasting on the gift the
Romans left for them. Squawking and fighting among themselves more birds continued
to land.
The scene of her friends and relatives being eaten aroused her. She found and used the
last reserves of her strength in one last supreme effort to escape her fate.

The tree shook with her struggles. Wounds that had scabbed over reopened. Sweat
poured off her body.

Suddenly she was done, there was nothing left. She crashed back against the tree.
Panting shallowly, her body quivering and started growing cold.

She felt her tree stop shaking and then shake again. Puzzled she struggled to look up,
slowly her head raised. Her eyes took in the scene of destruction, the dead and being
consumed bodies. Her sight stopped for a second looking up the hillside at the body of
her hours dead husband . Had they really made love just last night?

Her head continued to raise up and then loll backwards. There, there.

A large vulture had settled onto the upper branches. There were crows and other small
carrion birds spread around the branches giving the vulture a respectful distance.

The vulture was eying her, she could see it’s cold eyes staring at her trying to decide if
she was alive or not. She moved her mouth trying to say something to scare the bird
away.

Nothing came out of her dry dusty throat.

The tree shook again as the bird hopped onto a branch closer to her.

Oh Yahweh, no please not that! Don’t let me be eaten alive!

The bird moved closer. She struggled to move, to say something to scare it away.

It hopped onto the trunk her right arm was nailed to. She could see it, her head lolled
backward resting on the shoulder of the dead woman. She hadn’t the strength to move as
the terror hopped closer.

It was almost close enough to grab a finger, to test if she was alive still.

Please Yahweh, no.

The edges of her vision went from gray to black. Her vision narrowed onto the
approaching horror.

The vulture reached out opening its beak.

Her vision faded to black.

The bird grabbed a finger, there was no reaction. It tore off some flesh still no reaction.
The flock of birds, careful to give the vulture his space, descended on the four dead
bodies hanging on the tree. The only sounds heard in the valley belonged to birds
fighting for their part of the feast.

The X Legion had many hard years of fighting in front of it. The village had only been a
down payment the Jewish nation would pay for its insolence. The ironic thing is the
herders didn’t even know that the great revolt had started and even if they had they would
have wanted no part of it. Who ruled in Jerusalem was irrelevant to them as long as they
were protected against the Parthian Empire across the Syrian Heights and the great desert
beyond.

She had suffered and died for an ancient reason. Caught between the powerful and the
arrogant they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fate of the weak.