The Hollow March by Chris Galford

Author:Chris Galford [Galford, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Series, Epic, Fantasy & Magic, Fiction
ISBN: 9781468029147
Published: 2011-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The whip cracked again, the snap of its barbed tail echoing through the tents, inescapable. Essa did not wince at the sound this time, though it still made her stomach churn. Things like this made death look easy. And preferable.

The sentenced man deserved all twenty lashings. In a drunken rage he had attacked two of his campmates and broken one’s arm, despite a rule of no fighting and no drinking in camp. There would soon enough be more than enough of each, the nobles said. That may have been, but it remained a law complicated by the enterprising sutlers among the camp followers.

Another crack and the man’s blood shunted to the earth, leaving spatters down his back and a gathering pool in the snow. Yet beyond a grunt with every shuddering blow, the man kept his silence. He bit down on the rag provided him and took solace in his silence. But then, he was not like her. He was built like an ox, and apparently punched like one as well.

“Fifteen, by my count. Again.”

This was not the first such sentence since their arrival. In a camp so large, it was not unexpected to see such a multitude of fights. One man had been caught pilfering chickens from a nearby coop the very day of their arrival. Another filching bread from the storehouses. That one had hit too close to home. It was essentially what Voren was doing for them. If anyone caught on, he would get the same. They should have warned him away from it from the beginning. After what he had already been through, she couldn’t stand to see him brought to that.

“Quite the shame. He was never a looker to begin with.” Rowan clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shook his head in disappointment.

Essa nodded lamely. She was further than him, further than them all, carried away by the cracks and the blood and the resonating silence that followed. The man she saw was slimmer than this, rendered somewhat gaunt by the alcohol. His face was different, his sounds, even the motions as he heard the whip rise.

Her father took each blow screaming, with his hands bound to a tree, and all the town watching. It was his own fault. She had never contested that, and nor had he, though he took it out on her. Kasimir himself had been the one to deliver those blows. No one in his service, he believed, should be delegated to any other. It was only right that if his hand had raised them up, it should be his hand that cast them down. To put it in another’s hand would be dishonorable.

A soldier’s mind. A soldier’s heavy hand.

Rurik had watched then from across the yard. She had wanted to go to him, to take him by the hand and flee headlong into the woods, but she could not. Alviss and the Brickheart stood on hand, to make sure no one came too near, and she was marked by her own blood.

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