The Whipping of the Rogue

Hey all! I just wrote the first very short chapter to a story I thought of starting today! It's set in the D&D world, and it features a rogue as the main character. Tell me what you think. =^^=

PS!! I originally wrote the story in the present-tense, but I couldn't keep it up for long. It was really cool though!! It had a Twilight Zone kind of ring to it...

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Chapter One

In which we are introduced to our protagonist.

The crack of a whip rang through the biting spring air, followed by a low moan. A man of about 20 knelt in the half frozen mud, his thin wrists secured in the wooden stocks. He gritted his teeth this time, his eyelids squeezed tightly shut, as he felt the whip lash across his cold back. Blood welled, beginning to stream down lean flesh. Four more followed, each more agonizing then the last. Then it stopped and he was unshackled and hauled up. The guards handed him his shirt, cloak, and light leather armor. His wounds smarted at the air, though he didn’t dare put on his clothing just yet. Every movement caused his wounds to twinge horribly and stretch and bleed even more. Before he could quite get his balance, he was pushed aside and forced to walk away down the road, each step jarring his ragged flesh, tears welling unbidden and unwanted, threatening to drown his vision. With no one to help him, he sat down near the bottom of a mossy wall to patch himself up. He reminisced at having no herbs with which to heal himself as he clumsily tied bandages around his torso. Stealing some flitted briefly into his mind, but the idea was almost immediately pushed away. Stealing was what got himself into this mess in the first place, and he wasn’t in any shape to get away with it anyway. Besides, he didn’t like stealing herbs. Sure, he was fine with pickpocketing people in the marketplace who looked like they could afford it (They were asking for it anyway, dressing like that), but stealing someones medicine bordered on very different territory. So he cleaned himself up as much as he could, donned his clothing, and moved to find a relatively sheltered area where he laid down, wincing at the pain of movement. “I guess one never really gets used to being whipped. I'll have to find a healer in the morning. If I make it. At least they didn’t throw offal this time.” He had a moment to think gratefully before he closed his eyes and exhaustion took hold.

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Ehh? What did you think? I really like it, though I'm not that great with dialogue tags yet. I'm gettin there though! =D

ALSO, I'm not really quite sure what they'd do about turning him loose. Just shoving him back onto the streets seems kinda silly, although this is the middle ages and I'm sure they didn't have very much time to dally in the 'proper' punishment of thieves. That being said, getting wounds was a potential death-sentence in those days (what with their lack of sanitation), so maybe it would be more efficient to just kill wrongdoers? Then they wouldn't have to go through the trouble of finding the bodies and disposing of them before they became major health-hazards. ...Meih. I guess it doesn't really matter that much. Just so long as it kinda sticks with what we know of the Medieval times, and works with the story, it shouldn't be a problem. Besides, D&D isn't even true to our records of the Middle Ages, so what the heck am I so worried about? XD

I hope you enjoyed this!! =}

-Rahel Sewell