Snapping Spines

There is a line in my edited draft for “Harvest of Blood“, the first chapter of Boudica and The Butcher, that has nagged me as too overused; plus, it was added as a placeholder.

That section reads:

The medic gasped at his revelation, which struck her speechless. She looked at the young, injured rebel soldier lying on the ground, her condition a testament to his barbarism. As much as the medic feared his earlier words, the word ‘commander’ struck her like a hard slap. She had not seen any insignia of rank on his blood covered uniform, but now she began to understand he was no simple soldier. She tried to refocus her mind on the injured girl as this new thought was too horrible.

“Who are…you?” she stammered.

A faint smile intruded upon his stern face. “My mother called me…well that isn’t relevant. My men call me General, or Sir. You have probably called me…”

Her shriek of despair interrupted him. Her posture collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Fear blackened her vision. The dark shadow of her worst nightmares stood over her with her life in his hands.

I decided to change the puppet string sentence to “She collapsed as if her spine had been snapped.” The setting is a brutal civil war after all so snapping spines seems more appropriate.

I like that revealing his name was cut off and not said until the end of the second chapter.