Onira

The tale of Sarpea of Onira is one of the epic poems of the eastern frontier. Like many, it seems written to justify the Empire's conquest. Sarpea, a senator's daughter, was seized by a Palaic chieftain and carried to his citadel here. When the imperial armies appeared before its walls years later to rescue her, she begged them to retreat for the sake of her infant son, whom her fearsome husband had threatened to hurl from the walls instead of allowing him to be captured and raised by his mother's people. The legions withdrew, so the story says, but the boy grew into a warrior who joined the Empire and slew his father. It is now the center of a horse-breeding industry on the eastern plains.