Read The Deed of Paksenarrion for Free Online Page A

sleeve.
    Her breathing had just begun to ease again, when she thought she heard a sound. She froze. What now? The sound grew louder, but still so muffled by stone walls and thick door that she could not define it. Rhythmic—was it steps? Was the long night already over? She saw a gleam of light above the heavy door; it brightened. Something clinked against the door; it grated open, letting in a flood of yellow torchlight. Paks blinked against it, as the torchbearer set his light in a holder just inside the cell door. Then he pulled the door closed, and turned to face her, leaning on the wall under the torch. It was Stammel: but a Stammel so forbidding that Paks dared not say a word, but stared at him in silence. After a long pause, during which he looked her up and down, he sighed and shook his head.
    “I thought you had more sense, Paks,” he said heavily. “Whatever he said, you shouldn’t have hit him. Surely you—”
    “It wasn’t what he said, sir—it was what he did—"  
    “The story is that he asked you to bed him, and teased you when you wouldn’t. And then you jumped him, and—”
    “No, sir! That’s not—”
    “Paksenarrion, this is serious. You’ll be lucky if you aren’t turned out tinisi turin— you know what that is, sheepfarmer’s daughter—” Paks nodded, remembering the old term for a clean-shorn lamb, also used for running off undesirables shaved and naked. “Lies won’t help.”
    “But, sir—”
    “Let me finish. If what he says is true, the best you can hope for—the very best—is three months with the quarriers, and one more chance with a new recruit unit, since I haven’t taught you what you should know. If you say he’s lying, you’ll have to convince us that a veteran of five campaign seasons, a man with a good reputation in the Company, would be so stupid in the first place, and lie about it in the second. Why should we believe you? I’ve known you—what? Nine weeks? Ten? I’ve known him nearly six years. Now if your story is true, and if you can prove it some way, tell me. I’ll tell the captain tomorrow, and we’ll see. If not, just be quiet, and pray the captain will count your bruises into your punishment.”
    “Yes, sir.” Paks glanced up at Stammel’s stern face. It was even worse than she’d thought, if Stammel thought she could be lying.
    “Well? Which is it to be?”
    Paks looked down at her bruised hands. “Sir, he asked me to come to the back of the room—he didn’t say why, but he was a corporal, so I went. And then he took my arm—” she faltered and her right arm quivered. “And tried to get me to bed him. And I said no, and he wouldn’t let go, but went on—” She glanced at Stammel again. His expression did not change; her eyes dropped. “He said he was sure I wasn’t a virgin, not with my looks, and that I must’ve bedded—someone—to be a file leader—”
    “Say that again! He said what?”
    “That I must have—earned that position—on my back, he said.”
    “Did he say with whom?” asked Stammel, his voice grimmer than before.
    “No, sir.”
    Stammel grunted. “Go on, then.”
    “I—I was angry—about that—”
    “So you hit him.”
    “No, sir.” Paks shook her head for emphasis, but the nausea took her again, and she heaved repeatedly into the bucket. Finally she looked up, trembling with the aftermath. “I didn’t hit him, but I did get angry because that’s not how I got it, and I started to—to say bad things—” She heaved again. “—that I learned from my cousin,” she finished.
    “Drink this,” said Stammel, handing her a flask. “If you’re going to heave so much, you need something down, ban or no.”
    Paks swallowed the cold water gratefully. “Then, sir, he was angry for what I said—”
    “It couldn’t have been that bad—what did you say?”
    “Pargsli spakin i tokko—”
    “D’you know what that means, girl?”
    “No—my cousin said it was bad.”
    A flicker of amusement