He had been fourteen when they gave him that brand. A page in the Duke’s household, eager and stupid, believing that service to power was the same as service to justice. He had learned otherwise the night the Duke ordered him to hold a torch while a debtor’s hands were broken, finger by finger. Herric had dropped the torch. The Duke had smiled and said, “You’ll learn, boy. Pain is the only teacher that never lies.”
The Duke reached for a dagger hidden beneath his cloak. Herric’s sword was faster.
The Duke’s mark. A coiled serpent eating its own tail. a man rides through by stephen r donaldson.pdf
He emerged in the dungeons. Empty, because the Duke preferred executions to imprisonment. Justice, the Duke called it. Efficiency, Herric called it. He did not call it anything aloud.
He was a man who had once believed in oaths. Now he believed in silence. He had been fourteen when they gave him that brand
He drew his dagger. The Duke’s eyes widened—not in fear, but in curiosity. Herric pressed the blade to his own forearm, just below the brand, and cut. Blood ran down his wrist, hot and red, dripping onto the marble. He cut deeper, past the skin, past the fat, until he could peel the branded flesh away from the muscle beneath.
Herric raised his left arm. He pulled back the sleeve, showing the brand. The coiled serpent. Herric had dropped the torch
The road ahead wound through the Teeth—a jagged line of granite peaks that separated the Marche from the Duke’s citadel at Cinderfell. Herric’s horse, a stubborn gray gelding named Stone, climbed without complaint. The beast understood what Herric had forgotten: that the only way forward was through.