Lynn Flewelling - The Oracle's Queen

It gave Lutha the strength he needed. They turned and stood shoulder to shoulder, facing Korin, and Lutha realized that any love he’d felt for him was dead.

Guardsmen pulled them aside roughly and made them stand and watch from close range as Caliel was stretched against the wall. Everyone heard his sharp hiss of pain as his arms were pulled over his head, straining his broken ribs.

How will he stand it? Twenty strokes had left Lutha limp and weak, his back a throbbing mess. Fifty strokes could strip the flesh from a man’s bones, perhaps even kill him, and Caliel was already badly hurt.

Caliel was taller, with longer arms. He gripped the iron ring easily and braced his feet, head bowed. And it began again.

Caliel shuddered under the first few stripes. After ten strokes he was bleeding. After twenty, he was shaking visibly. Each stroke of the cat opened bloody lines across his skin, and after several complete passes over his back the skin was raw and streaming blood.

Perhaps Niryn had secretly instructed the man with the whip not to ruin Cal for the hanging, for he did not open him to the bone, but after the thirty-ninth lash Caliel fainted. Men came forward with buckets of seawater. The cold and the sting of the salt brought Caliel around. He writhed against the wall, biting back a cry, and the punishment proceeded to its conclusion. Caliel bore the rest in the same stubborn silence. When they cut him down he fell insensible to the ground, bleeding into the dirt.

“The king’s justice has been served,” Porion announced heavily. “Take them back to their cell. Tomorrow, they shall be hanged. Let the king’s justice be done.”

Every warrior around the yard struck their sword hilt or bow to his chest. The sharp clatter of obedience went through Lutha’s belly like a knife thrust.

He and Barieus managed to make it back to the cell on their feet, but Caliel was roughly dragged by the arms and dropped facedown in the straw. Lutha fell to his knees beside him, fighting back tears of pain and betrayal.

“Sakor’s Flame, he’ll bleed to death!” he gasped, looking down helplessly at the bloody mess the cat had made of Caliel’s back. “Tell the king he needs a healer, please!”

“Not much point,” one of their gaolers muttered.

“Shut up, you!” the other one snapped. “I’ll ask, Lord Lutha, though I don’t know what he’ll allow. Maker’s Mercy be with you all, whatever happens.”

Lutha looked up in surprise at this kindness. The man wore the red hawk insignia, but his eyes were filled with a mix of pity and disgust. He sent the other man away to ask for a healer but lingered a moment.

“It’s not my place to say anything, my lord,” he whispered, “but all three of you did yourselves proud out there. And—” He paused and stole a nervous glance at the door. “And there’s them that don’t hold with the king’s idea of justice. Maker’s Mercy be with you all.” He stood and hurried out. Lutha heard the heavy bar fall into place.

No healer came. Working painfully with their bound hands, Lutha and Barieus managed to tear strips from the legs of their breeches and laid them across the worst wounds on Caliel’s back to staunch the bleeding. Lutha’s own back burned every time he moved, but he didn’t stop until they’d done what little they could for Caliel.

It was too painful to sit with their backs to the wall, so they stretched out on either side of Caliel, trying to sleep.

Lutha was just slipping into a fitful doze when he felt a foot nudge his own.

“You were brave,” Caliel rasped.

“Not half as brave as you,” Lutha replied. “By the Four, Cal, you spoke your mind and you never cried out, not once!”

“Really? I—I don’t recall much of it.” He mustered a rusty chuckle. “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about the scars, eh?”

“I guess not.” Lutha rested his head on his arm. “Are you frightened?”

“No, and you shouldn’t be, either. We’ll walk up to Bilairy’s gate together, with our heads up. I’m just sorry I got you both into this. Can you forgive me?”

“Nothing to forgive,” Barieus whispered. “All any of us tried to do was our duty. Fuck Korin if he’d rather listen to Old Fox Beard.”

It hurt to laugh, but it felt good, too. “Yeah, fuck him!” Lutha gasped. Raising his voice, he yelled hoarsely, “You hear that, Korin? Fuck you, for not knowing how to treat those who loved you! You can just go to—”

“That’s enough,” Caliel croaked. “Both of you, that’s no way to be remembered. It’s not—I don’t think this is all Korin’s fault.”

“How can you still say that?” Barieus hissed bitterly. “He’s going to hang us tomorrow. Are you saying you still care about him?”

“I wasn’t lying out there,” Caliel replied softly. “I should have killed Niryn when I had the chance. I’d rather have hanged for that than die like this. At least that would have done some good. This will be a damn useless death.”

Nalia had watched in horrified fascination as Lord Lutha and his squire were strung up, but after the first few lashes she’d run from the sight and vomited into the basin. Tomara held her until she was finished, then helped her to bed.

“Close the doors!” Nalia begged, pulling the pillows around her ears. She could still hear the sounds of the whip and the cries that drifted up.

Tomara closed the balcony door and all the shutters, then returned to sponge Nalia’s temples with rosewater. “Poor dear, you shouldn’t see such things. You’re too tender for such sights.”

“Those were the king’s Companions!” Nalia gasped. “Why would he do such a thing?”

“There, there. You mustn’t spare any tears for traitors, my dove,” Tomara soothed. “If that’s the worst that happens to them, then King Korin is a more merciful ruler than his grandmother or father ever were. Queen Agnalain would have had them drawn and quartered.”

“Then it’s true?” Korin’s friends had turned against him. She could still almost feel sorry for him, knowing how deeply such betrayal cut, but it frightened her to see what he was capable of. “Tomara, go down among the guards and see what you can learn.”

All too pleased to be sent gossiping again, Tomara hurried off.

Nalia lay back among the pillows, anxious for news. When Tomara did not immediately return, curiosity won out and she went to the window overlooking the courtyard again, and cracked the shutters open.

Lord Caliel hung there now. His back was already bloody and the man wielding the whip was still beating him. At once repelled and fascinated, Nalia began to count the strokes. She reached thirty-one before the flogging was done.

As she watched, Nalia had a revelation. If this was how Korin served his dearest friend, what might he do to her if he ever discovered how, deep in her heart, she now loathed him?

Mahti had walked all night and all day without stopping. He chewed dried snakeroot berries and sang softly under his breath, a tuneless chant that kept fatigue and hunger at bay. By the time he stopped he could see the huge water of his vision shining in the distance, the Sunrise Sea. He stopped, gazing at it in wonder. In the days before the coming of the pale-skinned lowlanders, before his people had been driven back to become mountain dwellers, the Retha’noi had traveled between the two seas and worshipped the Mother. There were sacred places on this lost coast. He wondered if anyone was left to tend them.

He ate a little of the food he’d taken from a house he’d passed, slept for a while in the shelter of an abandoned shed, then walked on, drawn by the shimmer of the sea.

There were no forests here to protect him, only open fields and the scattered houses of lowlanders. In the darkness he saw clusters of light in the distance that marked a town and kept well away from that place.