Let Them Tremble by Wolf Epley

Author:Wolf Epley [Epley, Wolf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gearspin Press
Published: 2024-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

When Gallieya woke again, someone was changing her bandages. It hurt, but she refused to look, refused to ask about her injuries. She didn’t want to know, really know, how bad it was. After they finished and left her cell without a word, she expected to be alone. But another person was outside the bars, and it wasn’t the Peacekeeper from earlier.

“Stand up, time to go.” A Betkavin accent, and a woman. Gallieya squinted the figure into focus. The Guard captain, Minoska. The indignities never ceased.

“I’m not sure I can walk.” The pain in her leg came through sharp at the wounds and achy everywhere else after barely moving for…she couldn’t place how long she’d been here. Two days? Three? Just thinking about standing made her nauseous.

“Well, you’ll just have to muddle through. I’m not helping you,” Minoska said coolly. “Come on, we’re on a schedule.” This was it then, Gallieya thought. They go to the trouble to change the bandages for what? To be clean and fresh on the gallows? She pushed herself to her feet, swallowing a moan as she balanced mostly on her left foot. The bed looked more inviting. Why make it easier for them? Igran wouldn’t have done that.

“Where are you taking me?”

The captain folded her arms, the angle of her head making it clear no answer was coming. “Hurry up.”

Gallieya sat back down with a wheeze of pain. “I can’t.”

“You can.”

“OK then. I won’t.”

“You will.” Minoska stomped into the open cell and poked Gallieya, hard, on the bandage wrapped around her injured right hand.

Gallieya squealed, pulling her hand into her abdomen and hunching over it protectively.

“Do I need to work on your eye next?” the captain asked.

Gallieya clutched her arm, furious. “No! I’ll walk!” Groaning to her feet again, she shuffled out of the cell and to the door. The underground hall, the room beyond, the whole building, brought back no memories. They must’ve brought her while she was under morphine. The stairs up presented a new, agonizing challenge, which she managed very slowly, to much huffing and sighing from Minoska behind her. At the top, two more Guards waited, one with wrist bindings. They roughly fastened them over the bandages and led Gallieya with a hand on her back through the wood-paneled labyrinth of the provincial government building.

At the end of one hall, a window permitted the dull light of a cloudy morning. The last morning she’d ever see. The reality surfaced tears, which she blinked away before her captors noticed. Out the front doors of the office, the Guards helped Gallieya down the long set of granite steps to the circular gravel drive and a waiting open-topped automobile. Her nose caught the sweet, free scent of oak trees mixed with the vehicle exhaust.

Gallieya realized she had no idea where executions were performed now. In her childhood, they used Temple Square in the Old Town Archis for the proximity to immolation ovens after the deed was done. But it had been a generation since there was a public execution in Archis.

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