Herric stepped forward. His blood dripped onto the throne’s steps.
He had been fourteen when they gave him that brand. A page in the Duke’s household, eager and stupid, believing that service to power was the same as service to justice. He had learned otherwise the night the Duke ordered him to hold a torch while a debtor’s hands were broken, finger by finger. Herric had dropped the torch. The Duke had smiled and said, “You’ll learn, boy. Pain is the only teacher that never lies.”
When the branded patch of skin fell to the floor with a wet slap, Herric sheathed his dagger and picked up his sword. a man rides through by stephen r donaldson.pdf
The Rider’s Reckoning
The Duke’s mark. A coiled serpent eating its own tail. Herric stepped forward
Behind him, the village of Thornwell burned. Not with the bright, cleansing fire of accident, but with the black, oily smoke of deliberate cruelty. The Duke’s men had come at dawn—not to collect taxes, not to enforce a decree, but to make an example. They had hanged the smith for refusing to shoe their horses. They had thrown the miller’s daughter into the well. And Herric, the sworn protector of Thornwell, had arrived an hour too late.
The Duke tilted his head. “I burned a village. The fact that it was yours is incidental. You swore an oath to me, Herric. You broke it when you rode away. The punishment for desertion is death. The punishment for those who harbor a deserter is—well. You saw.” A page in the Duke’s household, eager and
He was a man who had once believed in oaths. Now he believed in silence.