His nose and cheek bleeding, Valerius tried to push himself up, but before he could regain his feet, his father brought the whip down across his back. The boy dropped instantly.
Still, his father beat him.
Valerius covered his head as the blows rained down on his little body.
"Get up," his father snarled after he'd delivered twenty lashes.
Valerius was crying so hard he couldn't speak.
His father kicked him in the ribs. "Up, damn you, or I'll give you twenty more."
Tabitha had no idea how he managed it, but somehow Valerius pushed himself to his feet, where he shook and trembled. His clothes were tattered, his face covered in dirt and blood.
His father seized him by the throat and shoved him back against a rough wall so that his ravaged back was scraped by it.
She cringed in sympathetic pain, trying to imagine how a child so young could stand there and not collapse.
"You will stand here until nightfall and if you so much as bend your knees to rest them, I will see you beaten every day until you learn to stomach your pain. Do you understand me?"
The boy Valerius nodded.
"Markus?" his father shouted.
Another boy who closely resembled Valerius came running out of the house. It was obvious he was a few years older. "Yes, Father?"
"Watch your brother; if he sits down or moves, you come for me."
Markus smiled as if his father had just given him a present. "I will, sir."
Their father turned and left them. And as soon as he was out of sight, Markus turned to laugh at Valerius. "Poor little Val," he said tauntingly. "I wonder what Father will do to you if you fall down." Markus struck him in the stomach.
Valerius groaned at the pain, but didn't move from the wall.
That only made Markus angrier. Growling at Valerius, he began striking him. Valerius fought back, but it was no use. In no time, Markus had him on the ground again.
"Father!" Markus cried, running for the door where their father had vanished. "He fell down!"
Tabitha turned away, afraid of what additional punishment Valerius's father had heaped on him. She'd already seen his back firsthand. Had run her hands over those scars that he bore with grace and dignity.
He must truly hate his father, and yet he never spoke a word against any of them. Valerius merely went on with his life, quietly suffering and keeping all the painful memories to himself.
He was remarkable to her.
The screen went black.
"It changes nothing," Zarek said, curling his lip. "So he was beaten, too. I notice you didn't correct the fact that he was torturing-"
"A Greek soldier whose army had marched on a Roman village," Ash said, interrupting him. "Every woman and child there had been locked inside Minerva's temple before they burned it to the ground. Valerius was after the army to stop them before they killed any more innocents."
Zarek scoffed. "They weren't all innocent."
"No," Tabitha said, her throat tight. "But he was a general during a time when things were violent."
"Yes," Ash said quietly. "And he did what he had to do."
Zarek snorted. "Yeah, right. Valerius spent his entire human lifetime trying to please his father, trying to make that animal proud."
Ash refuted that as well. "And when you were children, he was so afraid of your father that he stuttered every time he was in his presence."