He brought back the whip behind him for the next stroke and rotated it
around forward again, his bulging muscles gleaming with sweat.
CRACK!! The sound echoed across the land, sending gophers, rabbits, and
other animals scurrying for their dens and holes in the ground.
CRACK!! Slave women in the fields began weeping.
Habrunt was visible to all as his tall figure towered above the waving
grass on the hilltop.
Several of the men looked away, already feeling sick to their stomachs,
while others watched with clenched jaws, remembering the way Master
Rababull himself had put out the eye of the boy who had once been a
bully, because Master Rababull's word was law.
CRACK!! An eye for an eye.
CRACK!! Back in the Master's compound, Sorpiala went on humming softly
and pleasantly to herself as she heard the distant knell of doom, and
full of gloating, she pretended to be oblivious to it's meaning in the
presence of her totally silent, fearfully listening cohorts.
CRACK!!--CRACK!!--CRACK!!...
On and on, to the tenth and final lash.
Gasping for breath, his face, hair, and naked torso streaming with
sweat, Habrunt held his hands low in the tall grass, and made sure that
no one saw when he took a small leather pouch from the left side of his
belt, swollen with animal blood, pinched it's contents upwards and drew
the end of the whip through it several times to coat it.
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