The prisoner was a small, slightly built man but he fought like a cornered weasel. The cell door banged open and the dark forms of two warders and a struggling captive were framed for an instant against the torchlight from the corridor beyond. Sick with dread, he pulled himself into the deeper shadow of the corner.Īs the footsteps came closer a highly pitched voice suddenly burst out, shouting and cursing over the sounds of a scuffle. Moonlight slanted in through the window now, pooling in the straw beside him. The familiar tread of boots jerked him awake sometime later. Clinging to this bitter comfort, he drifted into a fitful doze. His only remaining hope now was that they would finish him off quickly death loomed like a welcome release from the hours of pain, the endless stream of questions that he didn’t understand and couldn’t answer. And no matter how many times he’d screamed out the truth, he couldn’t seem to convince his captors that he’d wandered onto Asengai’s remote freeholding seeking nothing more than the pelts of spotted cats. Instead, they’d beaten him skillfully and dunked him until he thought he was drowned. Now he wept for them, too, and for the horror of their death.Īs the tears subsided, he wondered again why he’d been spared, why Lord Asengai repeatedly told the torturers, “Don’t mark the boy too badly.” So they hadn’t seared him with red-hot irons or cut off his ears or opened his skin with knotted whips as they had with the others. Alec had never met either of them before his capture but they had treated him kindly. They’d hanged the miller yesterday and the one called Danker had died under torture. It scratched painfully against the welts and bruises that bloomed across his bare skin, but it was better than nothing and all he had.

Still weeping, the boy burrowed deeper into the sour straw. Chained again in his corner of the drafty cell, Alec turned his face to the rough stone wall and sobbed until his chest ached.Īn icy mountain wind sighed through the grating overhead, carrying with it the sweet scent of snow to come. Asengai’s torturers were regular in their habits-they always left off at sunset.

Luck in the shadows by lynn flewelling