"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.
