The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1648: Reactions to the Truth (Part Two)

"My lord, you can’t!" Baron Breton Stackpole shouted, slamming his hands on the table as he looked at Rhys in shock. "There are more than a hundred men here tonight... To take a lash from everyone...."

"I have some faith that I’ll survive it," Rhys said with a crooked smile on his lips as he recalled the beating he’d received from Esselk’ti when he’d asked for her help in concealing the fact that he’d met with a witch. "But I will not run from the responsibility for what I’ve done."

"Mervyn," he said, holding the whip out to a man he had long considered a friend as well as an extraordinary vassal. "Will you strike the first blow?"

"Strike what blow?" Mervyn said as he snatched the whip from his lord’s hands. "What man among us would have done better? What man among us could have stomached so much and suffered so much without breaking like a ship upon the rocks?"

Mervyn held the whip tightly in a balled-up fist as he turned to face the people sitting at the lower tables.

"Five lashes for carelessness that harms the ship," he said. "Ten for running from a fight. Twenty lashes for conspiring to mutiny, and another one for every man led astray," he said, calling out punishments for crimes considered too severe to be settled by docking a man’s pay or forcing him to toil at the ship’s dirtiest work.

"A hundred lashes?" Mervyn said as he let half the whip uncoil from his hand. "For protecting your daughter and shielding all of us from the fury of the Church if they came to know the truth?"

-CRACK!-

Mervyn struck ruthlessly with the whip, not at his bare-chested lord, but at his own left forearm, wrapping the whip around his thick, meaty arm with enough force to tear through the fabric of his doublet and split the flesh beneath.

"I’ll take the blow on your behalf, Lord Rhys," Mervyn said, unwinding the whip from his arm to reveal a thin line of red that slowly stained the sleeve of his doublet. "And the next one too," he said as he passed the whip over to Baron Amren Dalais before his fingers began working at his doublet.

"I’ll take every blow that comes your way," Mervyn said firmly. "Until I can stand no more."

"Showoff," Amren grumbled as he took the whip from Mervyn’s hand. "You think I want to whip either of you? Bring me that Lothian brat, and I’ll flay the flesh from his bones for what he’s done to our Lady Ashlynn."

"But whipping you?" Amren said with a snort as he tossed the whip to Baron Domenec Hender. "I’d rather take my place beside Mervyn," he said as his fingers moved to the buttons on his doublet. "If he falls, then I’ll stand next, until I fall and someone takes my place."

"Young fools," Domenec said, picking up the whip only long enough to toss it to Cir Ricarde. "My bones are too old and brittle to take a blow from young fools like you," he said, pointing a bony finger at both the younger barons. "But don’t think I won’t tear up your sails and break your anchor chains if the two of you aren’t enough to hold up through the night!"

"I stand with you, Lord Rhys," Domenec said, thumping his chest four times in the same steady, rhythmic beat that Rhys had used earlier. "The Church will call us heretics. The king will call us traitors. But we all know who started this, and there’s nothing holy or pious about their ambitions and their greed."

"We stand with you, my Lord," Demenec said firmly. "Even if you order us to set sail for the End of the World itself, we’ll follow your lead."

"Aye!"

"We’re with you, Lord Rhys!"

"I’ll take a lash for you!"

"One ship, one crew!"

Several knights stood up, making their positions known with words or actions, thumping their chests to the beat of their hearts. Only one man dared to say anything different, and he was the youngest lord at the High Table.

"Step aside, Mervyn, let me have my blow." Baron Cir Ricarde shouted over the rising din. "I get one, and I’ll have it! Lord Rhys owes me that for thinking I’d ever turn my back on him or want to see him suffer," he said.

"Just for that?" Baron Breton Stackpole said, raising a brow at his young peer.

"Just for that," Cir replied, stepping forward and slapping the coiled whip against Rhys’s arm, striking with less force than it would take to topple a goblet of wine. "I know what you’re doing, my Lord," he added quietly. "And we respect you for it."

"But rather than see you suffer," Cir said in a voice that was loud enough to reach the lower tables. "I’d rather hear what you plan to do from here."

"Thank you," Rhys said quietly as moisture filled his eyes. Part of him had hoped that someone would take up the lash... A wounded part of his heart cried out to suffer for the things that he had done, but there would be plenty of that in the days still to come.

"Anyone?" Rhys said, taking the lash from Baron Cir and holding it up before the crowd. "If there’s a grievance in your heart, air it now and strike out before it can fester and rot into something that breaks our keel when we need our strength the most. Breton?" Rhys asked, offering the whip to the first baron to raise his voice in protest, even though he knew what the answer was likely to be.

"My answer is the same, Lord of the Black Sails," Breton Stackpole said, holding up his hand and refusing to touch the whip. "But my question is different. Does this mean it’s time to open up the Hidden Histories?" Breton asked.

"Can we share the ancient songs and command the currents and the waves the way our ancestors did?" Baron Stackpole asked. "The Witchwood Fleet still sleeps in the caves of Broken Bow Isle," he said. "Is it time for them to set sail again and take back what was always ours?"