The cool air of Zarmal worsened Spock's trembling. He tried to stay steady, even as his thin frame occasionally shook with the cold.
The guards holding his arms were uncaring in their handling of him. Their tight grip left large finger-shaped bruises on his shoulders.
Once again, his hands were bound. But this time, they were bound by the same anti-telepathic metal cuffs that had been used on him by Babuk. The long chain connected to his handcuffs was wound around the whipping post and connected to a collar that he was forced to wear on his neck.
The metal ring sat heavily at the base of his throat. While it wasn't suffocating him yet, it was uncomfortably tight and did not allow him to move his head much. His legs were spread apart to an uncomfortable extent with a spreader bar that was locked in place by ankle-cuffs.
Spock felt horribly exposed and vulnerable. Apprehension and fear thudded through his heart.
"I will not scream. I am Vulcan. I will not scream. I am Vulcan," Spock chanted under his breath.
But he couldn't hold his gasp in, when suddenly the flimsy robe was ripped from his back.
In a final act of indignity, one of the guards roughly pulled off his loincloth as well.
"Pain is a thing of the mind. The body is not the katra," he repeated frantically, trying his hardest to steel himself for what was inevitably about to happen to him.
A moment later, he heard the sharp swish of something moving quickly through the air. And his world exploded in pain.
XXXXX
"Father, what is going to happen to Spock?" Ishok asked desolately.
Gurokh did not like distressing his child. And he had hoped to spare him this unpleasant spectacle for at least another day. But Spock's insubordination to his son could not have been allowed to go unpunished. And if that meant that the young heir's education had to begin early, so be it.
"He is to be whipped for disobeying the future Dafar of Zarmal," he told his son. "Disobeyed? Father, he did not disobey me. I don't understand," the young prince retorted.
Gurokh had known his compassionate son would fight against this arrangement. But there was no other way for him to learn.
"Look my son, the Vulcan is your slave. He must obey you. For that matter, even this planet's free men and women must obey you without question," he said. "Besides, he is not your friend or your equal. He is a whipping boy for now. At this moment, he is being punished for refusing to be your companion. And he will also be punished for your refusal to obey my decision of having him punished. Do you understand?" he asked his son, feeling like a demon from the deepest depths of hell.
"Yes father. I do not wish to see him hurt more," the prince said, his voice choked with emotion.
He looked away as another lash laid Spock's flesh open. The nausea bubbling in his throat threatened to rise. He turned around to avoid the savagery taking place before him. But Gurokh stopped him.
"You cannot turn away son. Someday you will have to order these punishments yourself. You must watch without losing your lunch. For every time you flinch, look away, retch, or worse, vomit, he will be given an extra lash. Watch. And find the strength to control your compassion towards the slave," Gurokh said to his son, turning back to Spock.
Ishok forced himself to take deep breaths. He forced himself to tune out and muffle the sickening sounds of the beating. But he wasn't entirely successful as he wasn't sure of how long this would go on for.
"Father, how long will Spock be beaten?" he asked.
"As long as it takes for him to lose consciousness," he said, not looking away from the sight.
XXXXX
Spock had never known such pain. The first lash drew blood. Spock's mouth opened involuntarily to scream. At the last moment, he managed to force his throat to not make a noise. His broken hands jerked frantically in a bid to escape their bonds, but that further jarred the injury on his back.
Before he had time to recover, he was hit again, this time directly over the heart, where a healing bruise from Stonn's beating lay.
Spock hissed in pain. He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
Another lash came down on him, slicing through his lower back and halfway across his buttocks.
More tears leaked out from his clenched eyes and his lips trembled with the effort of staying tightly pressed.
When the fourth lash came down, Spock cried out in agony. His voice sounded foreign to his ears.
"Please.. Please..." He was unable to form a coherent sentence, because another lash came down, followed by two more in quick succession, making him howl like a wounded animal.
Spock lost count of how many times he was hit. He tried to take his mind away from the pain in a number of ways. He tried to recall the exact properties of all the elements in the Periodic Table. He tried to recite Vulcan poetry backwards. He tried to go over multiplication tables. But he was unable to focus for too long.
It was as if they would feel him spacing out, and hit him with renewed vigor. Green blood ran down his legs in numerous rivulets. Sweat covered his brow and soaked his hair.
He did not feel himself slipping away. And with a savage hit just above his liver, merciful blackness claimed him.
XXXXX
One hundred and twenty-three. That was the number of stripes that had been laid on Spock's body.
Like a statue, Ishok had forced himself to stay quiet throughout Spock's torture. He had watched and felt every single whiplash. And like a coward, he had been unable to do anything.
He had sighed with relief inside, when Spock had passed out. And his father had been proud.
But now, in the privacy of his room, he allowed himself to vomit and break down. He wept like a baby, hurting so badly for Spock, that he felt as if he would never be whole again.
And he wondered where the Vulcan child was now.
The guards had picked him up unceremoniously and taken him away. There had been so much blood. Surely no one could survive such a beating without assistance.
"I need to see if he's alright," Ishok muttered to himself. He knew the palace well enough, to know that Spock would be in one of the spare servant rooms.
Without wasting time, he walked out of his room, worried deeply about Spock and hoping to give the younger boy some comfort after his ordeal.
XXXXX
Ishok arrived at the servants' area in record time. As the prince and the future Dafar, he was easily able to find out the whereabouts of the new whipping boy.
But when he reached Spock's room, his elation at finding the Vulcan changed into uncertainty. He wasn't sure he'd be able to bear the sight of the younger boy's injuries.
"I wasn't beaten. Spock was. I need to do this for him," he told himself. But his resolve shattered when he actually saw him.
Spock lay in a jumbled heap on the bed. A cheap healing salve had hastily been applied to his cuts but Ishok knew it was nearly not enough treatment for these injuries.
On closer inspection, he saw that the Vulcan's back looked almost entirely green. There were only a few slivers of pale flesh where an expanse of smooth skin had been before the beating.
And the damage went down to his upper thighs. No wonder Spock was still unconscious. Such a beating would have brought grown men to their knees. And Spock was only a child.
Ishok felt his eyes well up. He so desperately wanted to apologize for his father's cruelty. But there was nothing he could say or do to change what had happened.
He noticed that Spock's hands were still bound and positioned awkwardly under his chin. He remembered how the Vulcan had been unable to feed himself easily at lunch.
Seeing the hands more minutely, the prince realized that the younger boy's hands were broken most horrifically.
With great care and gentleness, he straightened his arms and positioned the hands away from his prone body, trying his best to ensure that the Vulcan's fingers wouldn't get damaged any further.
And then he sat down on the bed and cradled the injured boy's head in his lap, grateful that he had already bid his father farewell for the night and wouldn't be missed until the next morning.