cracked lips clung to each other by caked blood and raw
strips of stinging skin, and his dry throat produced only a
short, tenuous croak.
The guard used a skeleton key to loose his shackle,
then picked up Wank’s gaunt frame by the scruff and
dragged him off to his destination. Rahsik-ba was an aging
orc chieftain and the owner of Wank’s mother, booty from
a raid years ago. He was also the half-orc’s sire.
Wank tried several times to gain his feet as he was
dragged along, but given his time in chains, under ungentle
ministrations, he knew he could not accomplish it, could
not straighten his quivering knees for even a moment.
While his spirit was willing, or so he believed, his body was
not strong enough to hold up his pants, were he wearing
any, much less his own weight.
The cavern floor tore the tops of his feet to bloody
shreds, the agony just one more drumbeat in the
cacophonous orchestra of pain thundering in endless
crescendos through his body. The song ended with a
cymbal crash as he was tossed to the ground, his skull
taking the sharpest rap of stone as his body settled again
into a puddle of seeping agony.
Wank sat, chained like his mother, in one raw
corner of Rahsik-ba’s cavern. Larger than most, it sat
among the hundreds of hollowed-out, stone hovels that
52