TRANSCRIPT:
MORCAI: You gels all right, yeh? Not hurt, are we?
MAHD: Mahd and Feeby perfect now, Tom!
FEEBY: Tom is clever and helps us! Mahd and Feeby love Tom!
MORCAI: Ahh, my beauties! S’what I’m here for, yeh?
LORD DELL: Well done, indeed.
MORCAI: Fuck me! How’d you just -
DELL: Not used to having people surprise you?
MAHD: Sweet lord Dell!
FEEBY: Good lord Dell! Yay!
DELL: Hello Mahd, Feeby. It seems that our friend here has more than earned the trust we put in him, eh?
MAHD: Tom is cute! He fuck good!
FEEBY: And he kill good! We love Tom!
DELL: Heh. Seemingly against your own protestations, you continue to make friends.
MORCAI: Eh - it’s my curse, yeh?
DELL: And enemies.
MORCAI: Funny thing - they don’t really look “woodsy,” yeh? Not quite dressed for it, yeh?
DELL: I agree.
MORCAI: And that’s a dirty great hole, there. Either it was there all along, or -
DELL: Or they had help. And yes, they did.
ERLIK: My lord … mercy. Please.
18 thoughts on “Surprise, Surprise – Page 1093”
Salisria
Erlik ought to be happy that JED decided it’s be more effective to the results rather than the action of his torture. Or maybe not once Lord Dell gets through with him. Speaking of which it wasn’t just Tom that Lord Dell surprised. Few if any of us expected him to appear so soon. Good work!
jd
I for one was taken completely unawares too. (Admittedly it may have been for similar reasons as Morcai’s.)
Karyl
Morcai has his moments doesn’t he? good thing he’s with friends!
Just_IDD
Let me fix that for you…
Good thing he is with fiends!
dennis
when somebody hangs on their arms like that with no stepstone for their legs, they will suffocate within the hour, with wounds (depends) sometimes within 15 minutes.. somebody did not listen to crucification problems in their religion-history class…
other than that. go tom. i hate poachers.
Jack_Simth
We can’t quite see the bottom of his feet… he *might* be standing on a stub of branch, have an arrow going through his leg and firmly into the tree, or something else he could use as leverage. Or he may simply not have been up there quite long enough to suffocate yet.
But yes, that’s why the centurions were running around breaking legs. To speed up the process so they wouldn’t have convicts hanging around during an important festival.
3Xp4t
Crucifixion can take several days. There is more than one way to crucify someone. Someone with talent and experience can make it last for a very long time if they also know how to “rest” the victim periodically. Even by Biblical accounts, Jesus was on the cross for a number of hours, and toward the end was speared in the side. It’s argued if that was to “poke” him and see if he was still alive, or a mercy kill at the end of the day. Other accounts from the ages argue it probably was a common mercy kill for many victims when they had been on a cross all day and the sun was setting.
The method of hanging someone by their arms the way it is depicted here is similar. Medieval torture chambers employed this method a lot because it causes immense pain and can be controlled to torment the victim for days and weeks.
Your point is that the stress position of the arms causes trauma and stress across and throughout the chest that paralyzes the ability of the lungs to draw breath. Which it does. But, also other trauma and fatigue to the muscles. The health and fitness of the individual (including injuries from torture, etc.) are also factors.
A recent study explored the “myth” of Vlad the Impaler. There’s enough evidence to suggest that something did indeed happen along those lines, and the form of impaling that seems to have been most likely is also, by definition, a form of crucifixion. Properly impaled, medical evidence suggests that most healthy humans will last about three days, dying from infection and dehydration. Obviously that method doesn’t stress the arms & chest like classic crucifixion but, the point being, the human body can take quite a while to expire. Per example, in Indonesia where that earthquake and tsunami hit last week, they just dug a survivor out from under a building about 12 hours ago … slightly over a week after being buried under concrete blocks and pinned in place all this time. There are numerous other similar examples from modern disasters in recent decades.
The MacNut
As I suspected, the girls don’t give a rat’s arse about was gets done to the guy who tried to kill them, they’re just happy that Tom saved them. A poster commented on the previous page that they thought the girls might take exception to Tom torturing the guy, but I figured differently. I wanted to see the next page to be sure though.
jd.
Ah, so the “plot hole” (totally intended) is addressed.
I initially thought Erlik knew Lord Dell, but maybe he just picked up on his lordship upon hearing the girls. But Lord Dell seems to imply that he had a trap set for Mahd and Feeby, mainly to test Morcai’s morality. Unless he is telling Erlik to talk about who sent him, who helped him and so on.
I’m only slightly impressed by Dell sneaking up on Morcai since the latter is rather thoroughly distracted by the girls. Also, interestingly pedestrian attire he has here. I’m certain it has significance (we’re talking Tethik’s uncle after all).
And Morcai’s “It’s my curse” is excellent, I love it!
(My only gripe with the page is the use of torture and the notion that it could be useful to gather information.)
Hypertrophobic
I don’t think Erlik is asking for mercy and offering to do anything because of the torture. It’s because he knows Lord Dell really doesn’t take kindly to poachers and assassins on his lands and is also the final arbiter of crimes on his lands. Morcai was an unknown for him; Lord Dell is not.
EmmaC
… This part of the wood has a lot of animations. Seems that there are a lot of people around.
First : Feeb and Mahd, then the bad guys, then Tom, then Lord Dell….
Lora
The girls look very happy with their Tom. I wonder what Erlik will reveal in return for mercy?
TMI Fairy
Always fear the cute ones …
Jean
…I just feel like pointing out that the Hanging Idiot’s arm positioning means both of his shoulders are completely dislocated, as his hands were brought up behind his back to that position, and not from up in front of his face.
The fact that he’s conscious again–because that much pain would make anyone pass out repeatedly–probably means quite a bit of time has passed…
Just_IDD
We know that Morcai was only allowed to go visit the girls on instruction. As a result Lord Dell sent him out there probably suspecting what he would find but mostly to check on the girls. We don’t know if he was told what might have been the problem. Think of Morcai as a game warden. Suspecting what he would find Lord Dell followed. If you think about it in the timeline Lord Dell was probably 2 hours behind Morcai. Heck, because of their process, Lord Dell could have given the note with the rhyme to Morcai through another person without specifying anything other than it having a rhyme on it for Morcai to know what it was for. If some third-party got their hands on the message they would be trying to decrypt the rhyme when it wasn’t anything to be decrypted.
If the bad guys have been less Yacky and more acty. The girls would have been dead. Seriously giving instructions to your minion in the field that should have been given at the base before you leave. Talk about micromanagement.
Ladyofthemasque
The exception comes when, if your mission is to be kept secret from others, you don’t want to tell your minions while they’re still in town with you, or in a place where they can pass by others, because they could signal what they know to any watchers before or as they leave town…
…though that doesn’t mean you can’t stop short of the actual target and mention it then, when you’re too close to the target for anyone to have the time to get ready to intervene.
Rrolf
Morcai reminds me of Mike “Kildar” Harmon from John Ringo’s Paladin of Shadows book series. Not a nice man by any measure, can be violent and sadistic, stealthy and deadly, has particular sexual preferences, but at the same time does what he believes is right and commands serious loyalty from the people around.
“Protection of the Innocent, Courage in Battle, Loyalty to the King.”
pwbritt
The method used here, with arms behind the back and raised is called “strappado”
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