On and on, to the tenth and final lash.
Gasping for breath, his face, hair, and naked torso streaming with sweat, Habrunt held his hands low in the tall grass, and made sure that no one saw when he took a small leather pouch from the left side of his belt, swollen with animal blood, pinched it's contents upwards and drew the end of the whip through it several times to coat it. Then he also dipped the heads of a handful of long severed wheat stalks in the blood pouch and shook it over Si'Wren, spattering her skin liberally with the blood.
Then he knelt down in the tall grass so low as to be completely out of view from anyone watching, stooping close beside Si'Wren.
Still in shock, Si'Wren watched as he scooped up a handful of small pebbles and cupped his hand carefully as he poured them into the pouch. Without a word to her, he noosed the pouch and knotted it tightly so that it's contents might not chance to escape.
Then he rose to full stature and he stood over her, his face expressionless as he coiled the bloody whip and held it in a red-stained fist. Without so much as a backward glance at her, he turned on his heel and marched down the slope to the stream, where he cast the pouch far into the middle of the peaceful beaver pond. It hit with a small splash and sank. Because the pond was on the far side of the hill from the others and blocked them from view, none saw what he did.
Then, finished, Habrunt turned and marched off to make his regular rounds.
Up on the top of the hill, Si'Wren lay motionless in the grass, utterly bewildered.
Each time Habrunt had cracked the whip at her she had cringed involuntarily, only to hear as it banged harmlessly above her and spent it's fearsome energy upon the air before falling uselessly across her prostrate and quivering body.
After her first bloodcurdling scream, she had lain silent and only trembled uncontrollably each time at it's evil, snakelike touch, fearing that he had simply missed, and that surely the next delivery, or the next, should not fail to find it's mark. Of a truth, she was covered with the rain of fallen grain stems, cut by the whip as by the sharpest scythe, and her eardrums still rang from the deafening bang of the whip-crack so close to her head, but there was not a single scratch on her.
As soon as Habrunt had gone, Geth himself came scurrying as quickly as his bent frame could carry him up the opposite slope of the hill, with a group of field hands following fearfully behind him.