The fact that Geth the Fieldmaster had not so much as looked back at them with the usual admonishment to return to work only emboldened the other slaves to follow all the faster on his heels, the sooner to see to the poor girl's condition. Most whippings were conducted with punishment in mind, something to return the violator to useful duty. But what they had witnessed from afar was the virtual destruction of a human being, and they expected to find almost a slaughtered corpse, something more akin to the remains of a wild animal attack.
When they finally arrived on Geth's heels at the top of the grassy knoll, they found Si'Wren looking about her with a dazed expression, propped up on one hand in the soft grass with which she was sprinkled, totally unscathed.
"I see blood on her, but—the maid is unharmed!" cried one man in disbelief.
"There's blood in the grass!" cried another.
"It's a miracle!" cried a woman in a quivering voice as she sank to her knees and raised her hands to the sky. "Gods be praised!"
Old Geth surveyed the scene with a sage and skeptical eye, considering all as he shook his tired old head, looking down at the mysteriously unharmed girl. She had suffered so much already. What Slavemaster Habrunt had accomplished was good enough at the fore, but—where would it lead to in the end?
But finally he threw up his hands in the air and bowed low his hoary white-haired old head, as he cried out loudly with the others, "Ahh, what a miracle is done here, for with mine own eyes did I see the cruelly flayed flesh of this poor wretched girl, and her wounds all laid open like gaping mouths and the slitted bellies of so many gutted fish!"
"Aye," cried out a stout middle-aged slave-woman, picking up on the pretense the better to seem a part of the miracle herself, although she could not have cared less if Si'Wren had lived or died. "The red flesh closed up again before my very eyes!"
Si'Wren, watching them all as if they were mad, found no difficulty in holding her peace in the face of such folly. Indeed, although she had always been upright and honest in all her dealings with others as to a fault, she could in all good conscience speak no evil thing this day, for she was sworn not even to speak anything at all for the rest of her life.
"Did you not feel the cruel whip against your flesh?" cried the stout woman to Si'Wren. Si'Wren stared at her wordlessly a moment, then nodded once, abruptly, with an expressionless, emphatic look. It was only the truth, for after every time the whip had banged above her head, it had fallen harmlessly upon her immediately afterwards.