Also, and this I found highly intriguing, she stopped to pick up the thick black whip the slave-master had wielded. When we burst through into the inner tented enclosure of the army commander, Fat Lango, it was the whip which, cracking out like a striking risslaca tongue, barbed, lashed him into painful movement. He shrieked. The lash coiled and lifted and struck, and again Fat Lango shrieked.Jilian laughed.Her teeth were very white and even.The guards here were apim, slothful, over-dressed and arrogant to the point of stupidity. They did not interfere as Jilian lashed Lango.And, still, I carried the Krozair longsword scabbarded over my back.The painted and perfumed boys fled screaming from the wide pillow-strewn bed. Lango was bleeding. He tried to scramble away on all fours, like a dog, and the whip belted chunks of skin from his rump. Again Jilian laughed, drawing her arm up so that her whole body tensed, cracking the whip forward in a long raking slash that sliced all across Lango and made him shriek in agony.He fell face down, and now the whip rose and fell, rose and fell, and I saw the last of the guards run.
