Beneath the Forsaken City Read Free Page A

before calling out, “Eoghan, one question. How did youknow Conor needed your help when the first report reached Ard Dhaimhin only the day after you left?”
    “I wish I were able to give you a reasonable explanation,” Eoghan said, avoiding Liam’s eyes. Then, despite the fact that he was already in enough trouble, he let himself out before the Ceannaire could ask any more questions.

    Word spread quickly after the morning horns, and the assembled brotherhood moved en masse to the amphitheater used for devotions. Eoghan didn’t need to ask about the procedure for his punishment. In his lifetime at Ard Dhaimhin, he had seen a handful of floggings, and the memories were enough to twist his stomach into knots.
    When he arrived, two massive posts had been set into deep holes, ropes hanging from rings set into their tops. Eoghan slowly descended the stairs to where Master Liam and the nine Conclave members awaited him, glad he had skipped the morning meal. Surely even battle could not be as nerve-wracking as the realization he would soon be completely at another’s mercy. When he approached, the men stepped back into a line before him, and the hum of voices in the amphitheater hushed.
    Master Liam moved forward. “Brother Eoghan, you have admitted to breaking the laws of the Fíréin brotherhood by leaving the city without permission. You have been sentenced to twenty-five lashes with the whip. Do you wish to say anything in your defense?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Very well, then.” Master Liam withdrew a handful of straws and leveled them in his fist. “The Conclave will draw to determine who will carry out the sentence.”
    One by one, the nine members drew straws. When Brother Daigh, the oldest of the Conclave, drew the shortest one, Eoghan’s heart sank. Daigh was not the strongest of the men, but he was the sternest. He would not let pity stay his hand.
    Liam glanced at the lanky, blond-haired warrior beside him. “Brother Riordan, restrain Brother Eoghan.”
    Regret crossed the man’s face. After Liam, this brother had played the biggest role in Eoghan’s upbringing. He also happened to be Conor’s father, a fact of which few knew and even fewer spoke.
    “Remove your shirt,” Riordan said.
    Eoghan pulled off the linen tunic and tossed it aside, keeping his expression blank.
    Riordan buckled leather straps around Eoghan’s wrists and then threaded the ropes through the ring on each.
    “I tried to speak with Master Liam,” he murmured.
    “I knew what I was doing. Your son is safe. And by now, I would think you have a daughter as well.”
    Relief and pleasure mingled with pain in the older man’s face. He placed a green willow rod between Eoghan’s teeth. “Comdiu protect you.”
    The ropes pulled through the rings, stretching Eoghan’s arms out in a vee above his head, rendering him powerless, vulnerable. A frisson of fear scurried through him as Brother Daigh approached with a five-tailed cord whip in hand. At least it wasn’t leather like those they used on brothers who purposely harmed one another. This whip was meant to inflict pain, not to maim.
    Eoghan steeled himself for the first lash, but even so, it stole his breath. Fiery pain seared across his back and rippled through his nerve endings. He clenched the willow rod between his teeth.
    It was worse than he had imagined. But he would be silent.He would not show weakness. He braced himself for the second lash while the moments ticked by, each one an agony of anticipation. Only when the sting had faded to a manageable level did the whip crack again and pain seared him once more.
    It took Daigh nearly twenty minutes to deliver the requisite twenty-five strokes, pausing between each to let the pain abate before he started again. Eoghan’s determination to remain silent disintegrated somewhere around number six, when he could no longer stifle his cries. By the end, his body was slicked with sweat or blood, and he sagged in his restraints until