Thimbleful Thursday is a new microfic prompt site (mine!). This week’s prompt was “Add Insult to Injury” and the word limit was 300 (270-300).

This piece is 303 words, and comes after Other Soldiers, Other Fates.

Reiassan has a landing page here.

“And there we go.” The chains between his shackles locked securely to the back of the goat’s saddle. “Ready to travel.”

Hiron had, he supposed, been in worse situations. He had been a thief before he was a soldier, after all, and a beggar before he was a thief – in far-South Bithrain, what was more, where beggars who did not have the excuse of an injury or a disfigurement were looked at as something lower than the shit the goats left in the gutters.

And yet there was something absolutely humiliating about being taken as a captive by a Calenni woman. Okay, the Calenni had won the war. Okay, long before that he’d gotten slashed in the calf and ended up in their stinking prisoners’ tent. Okay, long before that he’d found himself conscripted into the army, because the good lords weren’t wasting meals nor space on thieves when they could shove a sword in their hand and send them to the front lines.

All of that put nicks in what had once been a mighty pride. But now, now – still healing from the injury to his calf – Hiron found himself in the hands of a goat-faced Calleni woman.

“You’re pretty.” She patted his shoulder. “You’ll do just fine.”

Hiron found what was left of his heart sinking. He wasn’t being picked up as some sort of field-hand, was he? He had to have misunderstood. Her field-Bitrani was awful.

“I’m sorry.” He tried Calleni – nearly as bad as her Bitrani – in hopes that something would make sense. “I’m not-”

She grinned – like a goat, argh – and patted him again. “I know what you are. Mine, now.”

Hiron slumped against his chains. As if every blow he’d suffered wasn’t enough, he was being taken as a war-bride.

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