Page 125 of Sands of Sirocco
With a grunt, Osborne rose to his feet, pistol in one hand, kurbash in the other.He stalked closer to Noah.“Yes.And I was left instead to watch those men die of starvation.To see us abandoned by the weak, pathetic representatives of the insipid Crown.To march across the deserts at the end of a whip.”Osborne brushed the coiled whip against Noah’s cheek.
Noah stiffened.
And Osborne blames me.
“I imagined you out there, drinking your tea and getting fat while I wasted away on mule meat and stale biscuits so hard that when the Turkish officers gave them to us, almost a hundred men died overnight from eating them.”Osborne leaned down, sniffing Noah’s hair, the barrel of the gun digging into Noah’s neck.The action was strange and intimate, igniting his nerves.Osborne squatted to Noah’s eye level.
“And after rotting away in prison for a year, whom should I meet but a German officer who hated you as much as I do.”
Fisher.
“You met Fisher after he escaped to the German side last May?”
“Fate, it seems, brought us together.When the British wanted to arrange a prisoner exchange, Fisher arranged to have me be part of it.And it was easy from there.I came back a hero.”He set the kurbash down, then tugged at the laces of Noah’s boots.
Noah pulled his feet back reflexively.“What are you doing?”
Without answering, Osborne pulled off one boot, then the other.“Have you ever felt the kiss of the kurbash, Benson?It’s quite a thing to watch.To see the very life beaten from a man.Observe them reduced from a living, fully formed being to a bloody lump of clay.”
As Osborne exposed Noah’s bare feet to the air, he couldn’t help the gooseflesh that broke out on his arms, the shiver that ran down his spine.Whatever Osborne had planned, he imagined it involved a maximum amount of pain.“If I’m found that way tonight, you won’t have much leverage to convince Lady Virginia or Mrs.Hanover to negotiate with you.Give you those precious concession papers.”
Though he’d hated to tell Osborne about Ginger’s offer, he hadn’t had much choice.Osborne needed a reason to keep him alive.His attempt to capture Sarah had shown just how badly he, or Stephen, wanted the concession paperwork.
He hoped Ginger would stay away, even if he knew she wouldn’t.
Maybe this was what Lord Helton meant.About love driving people to do the irrational.
“Don’t worry.Your injuries won’t be visible.Besides which, if you think those women will have much room for negotiation this evening, you’re underestimating me.There’s only one way in here.”Osborne went back to his bag and grabbed rope.Kneeling once again before Noah, he tied Noah’s ankles together.He waved the pistol at Noah.“Now, onto your stomach.”
A sense of caution pounded through his body as Noah did what Osborne asked.He was thoroughly depleted, his brain exhausted.“What about the women?”Noah asked, closing his eyes.He doubted Osborne intended to let him live.“What will become of them?”
Osborne sneered.“Fisher wants your whore unharmed.She’s an English rose—spoilt, I’ll admit.There’s nothing more reprehensible than women who choose to throw themselves at your kind.How Fisher could still want to marry her after you seduced her is beyond my comprehension, but who am I to deny him his chosen wife?”
The thought of Stephen near Ginger made him ill.Noah’s diaphragm ached as he struggled to breathe.Osborne bent his knees back and used another rope to bind his legs in that position by attaching the rope to his bound hands—a hog-tie position.
Osborne had stopped speaking to him and removed his uniform jacket.Noah turned his cheek, breathing into the dust.A rock poked into his cheek.His fingers were already numb with the strain of being tied behind his back.
Osborne unrolled the kurbash.“There was a German officer in one camp I was in.He introduced me to this method of discipline.”Before Noah could imagine what that might mean, Osborne struck Noah with the whip, hard, across the soles of his feet.
Pain exploded through Noah, his body jerking with the limited motion allowed by his position.Noah grunted, squeezing his eyes shut.He’d experienced various beatings, been shot, broken bones.
Nothing had ever hurt so much.
Spots flashed in his eyes as the whip cut through the air again, whistling before it snapped once more against his feet.
The agony of it was blinding, and a scream curled in his throat and hung in his mouth.He didn’t want to give Osborne the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.Of seeing him broken.With his chest to the ground, he felt suffocated, dizzy.
Another strike.
Good God … how will I survive this?He focused on the ground beside him.It wasn’t enough to distract from the torment, the searing pain that ripped up his nerves.
Whistle … snap.
The rhythm of the whip was like a song, a cadence to the torture.He prayed, letting his mind drop further inward, away from Osborne’s teeth bared in concentration.Away from the kurbash.
In the throes of agony, Noah thought of Neal.
His brother had been a few years younger than him.A better person in every way.Kinder.More generous.Beloved by everyone.
