Forest Mage

The seven judges stood as one, and then filed out of the room to consider their verdict. I sat, sweat rolling down my face and back from the pain in my ankles, and waited. The spectators shifted, murmured, and then, as the wait continued, began to openly converse with one another. Clara Gorling spoke furiously to her husband. Captain Thayer sat silently and stared at me. I met his gaze briefly and then looked aside. The genuine suffering in his face moved me. He believed me guilty of the horrific crime. I found I could not resent his hatred of me. How would I have felt in his place? That thought put a new face on what was happening to me. I glanced about the courtroom. The eyes that met my gaze were avid with hatred, yes, but fear and horror were what sparked that hate. I lowered my eyes before it.



When the judges filed back in, the courtroom quieted immediately. I knew by the looks on their faces that I was condemned. As one by one they spoke the word “Guilty,” I hung my head.



When they announced my execution by hanging, it was anticlimactic. I’d hang. My execution would bring a measure of healing to a town traumatized by my imagined misdeeds. And my death would free Epiny of her bargain with the magic. I took a breath and accepted my fate. I thought my ordeal was over.



But then one of the civilian judges stood. He smiled as he announced that the justices of the town of Gettys had decided that justice would be best served if the victims most wronged by my misdeeds were allowed to determine my punishment for my crimes against the citizens of Gettys Town. I stared at him in consternation. I’d already been condemned to hang. What punishment could they wreak on me beyond that?



Clara Gorling stood. Her husband and Captain Thayer rose to flank her. She was well prepared for her moment. She unfolded a small sheet of paper and read her statement from it.



“I speak for the women of Gettys. I do not ask this just for my poor dear cousin, but for all the women who live in Gettys.” Her hand crept up to clasp the brass whistle that hung on its chain around her neck. “Gettys is a rough town. It is a difficult place for any woman to live, yet we do our best. We strive to make homes for our husbands and our children. We are willing to face the privations of living in such an isolated place. We know our duties as cavalla wives. And our husbands and loved ones try to protect us. Recently, the women of Gettys have banded together to try to protect ourselves. We have tried to bring the gentler virtues to this rough place, to make our homes havens of civilization and culture.



“Yet despite all our efforts, a monster has roamed free among us, raping, murdering, and—” she choked for an instant, but forced herself to go on, “dishonoring our dead. I ask that the honorable judges imagine the terror that the women in Gettys have endured. Hanging, my friends, is too good for this creature. It offers him too swift an end for his misdeeds. And so we ask that before he meets his end, he receive one thousand lashes. Let any man who thinks to perpetrate such evil against defenseless woman witness what his wickedness shall bring him.”



Tears were running down her cheeks. She paused to dab at her face with her handkerchief. A profound silence held in the courtroom. Coldness spread through me. Clara Gorling took a breath to speak on, but suddenly sobbed instead. She turned abruptly to her husband and hid her face on his shoulder. The silence held an instant longer, and then gave way to cheers and applause. I heard the request spread to the crowd outside in a rippling roar of satisfaction. Then a terrible silence fell as all waited for the officer in charge to make his decision.



He commanded me to stand to receive my sentence.



I tried to. I placed my hands flat on the railing of the box before me and tried to lever myself onto my numb and swollen feet. I stood up, teetered for a horrid moment, and then crashed to the floor. A wave of hate-filled laughter greeted my mishap. “The filthy coward fainted!” someone shouted. My head was swimming with pain and humiliation. I scrabbled my hands against the floor but could not even sit up.



Two of the brawnier guards came to my box and hauled me to my feet. “My legs are numb from the irons!” I shouted at them. I don’t think anyone heard me over the commotion in the courtroom. They hauled me to my feet and held me up while the officer confirmed that the town of Gettys wished the military to honor the request of the victim’s next of kin that I receive one thousand lashes before being hanged by the neck until dead. When it was confirmed, he made it official, and then issued a lengthy apology on behalf of the cavalla that a man such as I had ever been admitted to the ranks. He deemed it a misplaced act of kindness by his worthy predecessor.



I think they judged me overcome by terror when I could not walk out of the courtroom on my own. The soldiers who dragged me from the prisoner’s box from the courtroom, through the streets, and back to my cell were not gentle. Spink walked silently beside me, his face grim. The rejoicing mob closed around us, shouting curses and making the short walk from the courtroom to the prison seem endless. My chained ankles flopped and clanked behind me, and every impact was a clout of pain as they dragged me down the steps and back to my basement cell. My captors dropped me inside my cell. The sergeant knelt to retrieve his leg irons as I sprawled on the floor. I had thought nothing could increase the pain of that stricture, but when he undid the locks and jerked the embedded metal cuffs from my swollen flesh, I roared with new agony.