Paks--28

POV cuts over to the guy Paks and company went out to rescue: Caliam "Cal" Halveric. He's captured, bound, and taunted into cursing at his captors, who threaten to both geld him and kill his sons. His daughters are not brought up--one of the very, very few benefits of a sexist society, I guess. Your daughters get a better chance to run--but he does take the time to worry about them. So there is that. He gets beaten into a pulp, basically, and shoved into a very small box.

He takes a moment, while in the box, to think about Paks's Duke, whose full name is Keri Phelan, and who served his father as a squire. Apparently the Duke is very, very, very scarred up from some kind of childhood abuse, and Cal's dad told him very firmly not to ever ask Keri where those scars came from, or to complain about them.

He gets dragged out of the box by rescuers, who confirm that the Honeycat's agents made good on their threat to geld him. You know, I really would not want to be that moron right now. There's stupid, and then there's stupid, and this kind of ranks up there as Darwin Award level stupidity.

We hang with Cal through the rescue, his companions and saviors mostly unidentified, until we get to the Duke's tent. Cal is mortified, now that his life is pretty much secured, that he's been gelded. The text is not clear exactly how much the Honeycat's people took, but given how ashamed he seemed to be I'm gonna go with "all of it". He also spends a lot of time figuring that he'll never get to command again, once word gets out that he's been "unmanned".

His dad shows up--and for the record, both he and the Duke look like they want to kill several things--and sets those fears at rest pretty damn well:

"Ask Aesil M'dierra if she ever needed balls to run a company--ask with a mile's head start, and the best horse in my stable--you might make it home."

Yep. Can't really say that balls count when a quarter of your best troops and allies never had any. Dad then promises to give Cal "That bastard's balls on toast" if Cal doesn't get there first.  Then both the Duke and Daddy Halvaric order the surgeons, clerics and mages to get Cal on his feet and functional today. Probably because the longer Cal thinks about what he just went through, the harder it is going to be for him to keep going. They protest, but neither the Duke or Daddy are having any.

Finally, Cal is left alone to eat and get dressed.

I would not want to be the Honeycat right now. End of chapter.