Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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He said what they'd do to the Arkans who were left, Sova thought,but he didn't say where .
She'd toldzhymata she was going to see Echera-e, which was true; she would, after she d watchedthis
for a while. Until she'd seen enough to be satisfied, she decided. She found the place by the sound of
male screams.
There was a crowd there already, Alliance-motley, laughing, jeering, making the sign of asses' ears that
mocked the cupped hands at the temples, the Arkan prayer gesture, whenever one of the victims used it.
The pole and the ground between the four draft horses were already blood-soaked; ringed in with spears
on one side stood the shrinking clutch of naked men, their blond hair shorn; to the other lay the growing
red and white heap, here and there blond, or innard-colors as she'd seen before, of torn-apart corpses,
now and then settling of its own accord, as if something in it were still alive. She stayed upwind.
"Tsey're taking tseir time," said a Yeoli beside her. "Wouldn't want to wind tsose horses, no!" He burst
out laughing. "Wahtchtsis child-raper try to take tseh pain silently… each one thinkshe's gong to be the
first one to mahnage it, ha ha ha! Shit-eaters, tsey don't know whaht painis ."
Hurt, you stinking bastard, she thought.Hurt for Echera-e .
The Arkan did, and she watched, and enjoyed, for her lover, lying in the infirmary one-footed. The
sound of the man being ripped apart reminded her of when she tore the legs and wings off a chicken
carcass for the stew, but so much bigger, the shoulder-bone poping out of the socket making a crack like
a thick rotten banch breaking, but a little wetter. And he, unlike the chicken, was fighting it, the muscles in
death-throes as they tore, the mouth screaming, sometimes screaming words… When they untied the
ropes, lopped off the head, threw the body in parts onto the heap and turned to the next, she suddenly
knew one was enough to see. She walked away, feeling satisfied and sick, both at once.
They'd refused to let her in this morning when she'd come to see Echera-e, saying he wasn't well enough,
and things were too much a mess anyway, the infirmary being cleaned up and repaired. This time, though,
they said "Tai."
The healer's apprentice led her deep in.This is where they keep the worst cases , she thought, fear
growing. None of the patients here spoke to each other or shifted, or even looked bored; they just lay
utterly still, staring upwards, or with eyes closed like corpses already. Some softly moaned.
"Echera-e, bahd," the apprentice, who was Yeoli, whispered in thick Enchian. "Flux. Foot cut off also.
Probably naht die. He naht know where is, now. We let in you, 'cause he call you' name."
The youth lay as still as the others—the patient in the bed next to him, a Haian—his face yellow-pale. As
she knelt next to him, she remembered something she'd heard, that people who'd lost a limb felt its ghost,
hurting as if the flesh were still there, so they sometimes refused to believe they'd lost it.Does he know? I
better not say anything .
His lips moved, whispering in Yeoli. She leaned close to make it out. "Boru. No. Meparae….Don't
take me to the slaughterhouse, not yet, not yet !" She slipped her hand under the Haian-pristine
sheets, found his lying cold and limp, squeezed it.He's delirious; maybe he won't hear me . "Echerry.
It'sme . Shh, you're safe, no one's going to hurt you. I love you."