\u201cMercy,\u201d Vaenwode pleads.<\/p>\n
He goes down on one knee. He goes down on two. He fights an appalling urge to show them his naked stomach and lowers his head to them instead.<\/p>\n
Eldri touches his shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t embarrass us,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is you or someone else; there can be no mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that moment it is complete: Vaenwode’s doom is sealed, it closes about him like a circle. He rises. \u201cThen I will beg no more,\u201d he says, because that can only be the end of it; he is wild with fear but it is no longer a fear that can be struggled with, but only a fear to be accepted and pinned wriggling within his heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMercy,\u201d Vaenwode pleads. He goes down on one knee. He goes down on two. He fights an appalling urge to show them his naked stomach and lowers his head to them instead. Eldri touches his shoulder. \u201cDon\u2019t embarrass us,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is you or someone else; there can be no mercy.\u201d In that moment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-1848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-1","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Wolf_2b_Partially_Chained.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1848"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6648,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848\/revisions\/6648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1848"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=1848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}