The moss man was charred and smoke drifted from his red, raw skin.
He had no less than a dozen arrows in him, and yet still he kicked and spat.
The dogs bit at him, tearing open the flesh on his legs as the men brayed
with laughter.
Peter’s knees gave way and he stumbled against a fallen tree, his fingers
digging into the rotting bark as he slid to the ground.
He wanted to stop
them, do anything to stop them, but couldn’t move, couldn’t do more than
stare on in utter horror.
A huge fellow with a thick black beard and long knife walked up to
Goll.
Goll stared at the blade with wide, terrified eyes.
The bearded man grabbed Goll by the hair and jerked his head back. He
first cut off Goll’s left ear, then the right. As the moss man struggled, the
men laughed and the dogs
ran around in tight circles, howling.
The man jabbed the blade into the moss man’s stomach. Goll screamed
and twitched spastically as the man sawed his gullet open. The man slid the
blade into a loop of intestine and pulled it partially out of the wound, then
whistled to the dogs. The dogs snatched the loop and pulled Goll’s
intestines out onto the dirt in wet, rolling coils,
tugging and fighting over
them as the moss man wailed.
Peter watched, stone-faced, unable to move or cry, to hardly even blink.
He watched. He missed nothing.
After too long, much too long,
Goll stopped wailing, his head sagged
forward, and he was still.
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