Porion flushed angrily, but bowed to Korin and said nothing more.
“If Master Porion won’t speak, then I will!” Caliel cried angrily. “Before these witnesses, I say that you are unjust. Hang me if you must, but in your heart, you know I was acting on your behalf. You say you are punishing treachery, but I say you are rewarding it.” He cast a scornful look at the wizard. “If you hang these two boys, who have done nothing but serve you loyally, then let this company witness your justice and see it for the evil it is! You have forgotten who your true friends are,” he finished angrily, “but even if you kill me, I will not stop being yours.”
For just a moment Lutha thought Korin might relent. A hint of pain crossed his face, but only for an instant.
“Let the lesser infractions be punished first,” he ordered. “Companions, see to your duty.”
Alben and Urmanis avoided his eyes as they stepped forward and roughly stripped off Lutha’s shirt. Garol and Mago took charge of Barieus and did the same.
A feeling of unreality settled over him as they were led back toward the stone building that housed the cells. There, large iron rings were set high on the wall. Soldiers were already busy, fixing short lengths of rope through them.
Lutha held his head up and looked straight ahead, refusing to give any show of fear. From the corner of his eye, the massed ranks of silent warriors were nothing more than a dark, ominous blur.
He’d witnessed floggings enough to know that twenty lashes was a serious sentence, but the threat of it paled beside the proof that all their years of loyalty and friendship meant nothing to Korin. Not if they could be wiped away so brutally, on nothing more than the word of a wizard.
The other Companions strung them up, binding their hands to the rings with their faces pressed to the rough wall. The rings were so high that Lutha’s feet scarcely touched the ground. It felt like his arms were being pulled from their sockets.
He turned his head, looking at Barieus. He had his lips pressed grimly together, but his eyes were wide with fear.
“Courage,” Lutha whispered. “Don’t let them hear you cry out. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”
He heard movement behind him, and what sounded like a collective intake of breath. A burly, shirtless man with a cloth mask obscuring his face stepped close and showed them the knotted cat they would be punished with. A dozen or more long lengths of cord were fixed to a long wooden handle.
Lutha nodded and looked away. Gripping the iron ring, he braced for the first blow.
It was worse than he could have imagined. Nothing he’d experienced on the practice field or in combat compared to that first brutal stripe. It stole the breath from his lungs and burned like fire. He felt a trickle of blood under his shoulder blade, tracking down his side like a falling tear.
Barieus took the next stroke and Lutha heard his strangled grunt of pain.
The man wielding the cat was well versed in the art. He carefully distributed the stripes, marking them evenly down both sides of their backs and crosshatching the welts, so that every new strike hit already torn skin to cause more pain.
Lutha managed the first few well enough, but by the time the first ten had been meted out he had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. Barieus cried out at each stroke now, but to the boy’s credit, he was not weeping or begging. Blood blossomed bright and metallic across Lutha’s tongue as he bit his lip and forced himself to silently count down the last few strokes.
When it was over at last, someone cut the rope securing his hands to the ring, leaving his wrists bound together. Lutha’s legs betrayed him and he ended up in a trembling heap in the dirt. Barieus collapsed, too, but was up almost at once. He bent down, holding his bound hands out to Lutha. His face was streaked with tears and blood was running down his sides, but his voice was steady as he said, loud enough for all to hear, “Let me help you up, my lord.”
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 w
as 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.
The Mother’s voice pulled him on until he reached a lowlander’s road. It shone pale in the moonlight and he paused at the edge of it as if it were a swift river that would carry him away if he stepped too carelessly into it. His witch marks tingled and itched again and his eyes closed, but his feet moved. He let them, trusting in Mother Shek’met, whose pale, comforting face looked down on him from the clear night sky. Her light was like cool springwater, soothing his aching legs and parched lips.
He walked on the road for a long time, the dusty packed earth strange under his feet. No deer had walked here, only horses, and their marks gave him nothing. He walked until something hard pressed into the arch of his foot, making him stumble.
He stooped down, surprised by the glint of gold in the hoofprint he’d just stepped in. It was a ring. He’d seen such ornaments on the hands of lowlanders before. This one was damaged, bent in on itself and flattened.
Perhaps a horse stepped on it, he thought. As he turned the bit of metal over in his hand, he saw that part of it was made to look like a bird.
Lhel appeared ahead of him in the road, waving for him to follow. Hurry, she whispered on the night breeze. Hurry, or you will be too late.
In the distance the road divided like a river around a rock. One way went along the cliffs to the east. The other way was narrower, and headed toward the dark shape of a forest. Lhel gestured in that direction and he was glad. It would be good to be among trees again.
Chapter 25
Caliel and Barieus fell silent as the night dragged on.
Lutha didn’t know if they were asleep or not and didn’t have the heart to disturb them.
Pain was a good distraction, or perhaps he really was brave, for he couldn’t muster much fear. Perhaps that would come later, when he was climbing the gibbet? He tried to picture his own head on a pike, beside those already rotting on the battlements, but felt nothing but a numb disinterest. When he imagined the others dead, though, especially Barieus, it broke his heart.
He had no idea how close dawn was when he heard a laugh and the murmur of voices, then a soft thud against the door. He lay very still, like a rabbit frozen in front of a fox.
A moment later he heard the grating of the door bar. Fear found him then, as the door swung open with a small creak of hinges.
It was still dark outside and the guards had no torches. Lutha could make out nothing more than the indistinct outline of a smallish figure standing there.
“Who is it?” Lutha demanded, throat so dry he could scarcely get the words out.
“A friend.” Lutha didn’t recognize the whispered voice, but it sounded like a young man. “Get up, all of you. Hurry!”
Lutha struggled painfully to his knees. There was a faint rattle, then the sudden brightness of a small, shuttered lantern. A fair-haired young man stood holding it, and a bundle of clothing.
“Hurry, put this on,” he urged, shaking out his bundle and handing them each a shirt and plain cloak. He looked down at Caliel and gasped. Caliel hadn’t stirred. His back was black with dried blood and raw wounds.
“Who are you? Why are you doing this?” Lutha whispered, gingerly pulling on the shirt.
“A friend of the queen’s,” the young man replied impatiently. “She’d be very unhappy if you died. Please, hurry before someone comes.”
“Caliel, wake up,” Lutha urged softly, shaking him by the foot.
Caliel groaned. Barely conscious, he was too weak and disoriented to stand by himself. With the stranger’s help, Lutha and Barieus got him on his feet. His skin was hot and dry, and he let out another ragged groan when the stranger draped the cloak around him. “What—What’s happening?”
“I’m getting you out of here before Korin hangs three more good men,” the stranger told him. He shuttered the lantern again and opened the door a crack to peer out. “Clear. Go now. The guard is about to change.”
“No, can’t!” Caliel muttered, confused. “Won’t desert—”
Lutha tightened his grip around him. “Please, Cal, don’t fight us. We’re helping you.”
Between the three of them they managed to get him out the door. The yard lay in shadow, the torch by the door extinguished, but Lutha could make out two prone forms on the ground. He wondered how this slight young man had overpowered them, and if one of them was the man who’d spoken kindly to him before. He hoped not.
Keeping to the shadows and avoiding the guards stationed at the main gate, they made it to a small postern gate on the west side of the wall. Another guard lay dead or unconscious there.
“There was no way to get horses for you, so you’ll have to get him away on foot as well as you can. Take the path along the cliffs and stay clear of the encampments. If you hear anyone coming after you, you can hide—or jump.”
Lutha was less shocked by the advice than he might have been a few days ago. “At least tell me your name.”
The fellow hesitated, and then whispered, “I’m Eyoli. Please tell Tamír that I’m still here, and will get word out as soon as I can. Go on now, hurry! Steal horses if you can find them, but get from here before the sun comes up.”
With that, Eyoli all but shoved them through the postern and closed the door after them before Lutha thought to thank him.
The outer walls reached almost to the cliffs. A narrow strip of grassy, uneven land lay below, and in the starlight a well-worn goat path showed in a pale line, winding away between the rocks and hummocks. Not far away lay the outer watch fires of the southern encampment. Lutha squinted around in the darkness, praying they didn’t meet anyone on this trail so late at night. They were in no shape to run or fight.
They had to all but carry Caliel—not an easy task. He wasn’t heavy, but he was taller than either of them and half-dead on his feet. Lutha could feel the warmth of blood soaking through the cloak under his arm and running down his own back as the effort pulled the lash cuts open again. By sheer determination, they managed it; but Lutha scarcely dared breathe, expecting an outcry from above or the angry hiss of arrows.
But luck was with them, it seemed. They got away from the keep and met no one on the trail. Carefully skirting the outlying tents, they followed it for a mile or so, resting often as their strength threatened to give out and Caliel drifted in and out of consciousness. When they were past the last of the pickets, they cut across to the road leading into the small forest in the distance.