Chapter 7: The Infantry

There were six of the infantry in the patrolling platoon who were ordered to clear any resistance out of a short street of small houses. Their orders were to take any men they found between the ages of fifteen and sixty to the town square as prisoners. It was not a street where they expected to find much in the way of wealth, and so they also expected little resistance. Any males they found would probably be deserters, and there wouldn't be much loot either.

They went the length of the street and counted a dozen houses, mostly of two stories, so they made sure everyone knew they were there by shooting at random through a few upper windows. Any men, they felt certain, would have vanished through the backs of the houses, taking anything worth having with them. Still, perhaps there would be some fun to be had.

Abdur, as the Sergeant in charge of the detail, had already decided where he would start and so he offered Nagib and Jalal, the two Corporals, second choice of houses. The three Riflemen in the patrol, Gadhi, Ebrahim and Bukhari, were then told which houses to check.

Watching over his men, the Sergeant, a grizzled veteran of thirty years service, despatched the three young Riflemen to their first appointed house and waited for any sign of opposition. When none came, he sent his Corporals to their chosen search areas and only then did he allow himself to stride into the largest house on the street.

In the first room of the house he was impressed by the quality of the furnishings and briefly checked for portable valuables. Clearly whoever owned this house had removed all such items to a place of safety which Abdur had a shrewd idea would be somewhere in the building. Moving through the house he found everything in good order and the ground floor deserted. There were no obvious places to search for loot, so he moved cautiously on to the upper rooms. Here again, all was well furnished and contained no obviously lootable items.

It was when he started a thorough search for possible hiding places that Abdur found the woman. She was hiding under some rugs in one corner of an upper room and was completely hidden in an abaya.

"Strip," he ordered.

The woman did not move until he drew his bayonet and waved it at her.

"Strip, or I'll cut it off," he said menacingly.

As she removed the all concealing garment, he realised that she was perhaps thirty and her breasts had begun to sag. To his disgust she was not shaved, and he remembered the rumours that it was not usually the custom in Tirfil to shave women's bodies. Although that rather put him off, he was determined to have this woman as his first reward for winning the war. Throwing her down on the rug he turned her onto her belly and dragged her hips up until her buttocks were high in the air. With no further ado he pulled his prick out of his trousers, thrust into her arse and was rewarded with a shriek of fear and pain. Past caring for anything but his own gratification, he pumped energetically into the hot and humid orifice until he came, jetting his semen deep into her rectum.

Withdrawing Abdur lifted her to her feet and demanded, "Where is everything hidden?"

"Master, we have nothing," she said.

A stinging slap to the side of her breast started her crying. A second to the other side had no more effect. He grabbed her arm and started to beat her about the buttocks with his hand but she still claimed that they had no valuables in the house.

"Right," he said and took out his bayonet again, "I'll have one of your tits as a souvenir then."

Lifting her left breast, he moved the bayonet under it and was ready to cut it off when she yelled, "In the secret hiding place by the fire downstairs."

"Show me," he ordered.

The woman went down stairs and pulled a cupboard away from the wall revealing a small hole which contained a cardboard box. Abdur pulled it out and turned it over. There was little enough there; a small ivory statuette was the only thing of real interest and he put that in his battle-dress pocket. There was also a wad of Tirfilese money, but that would be worthless to him. Nobody in the Army was paying for anything in this town and it would be of no use outside the conquered country.

Taking the money he flicked though it as though assessing how much there was, and the woman wailed at the thought of losing all their savings. Turning back to her he rolled the wad lengthways into a cylinder and thrust it into her cunt.

"There you are," he sneered, "Payment for the use of your arse, whore."

For a moment he considered taking her with him, but she wouldn't fetch much in the market in normal times, and there would be hundreds, if not thousands of women taken back to Kobekistan as slaves.