The hirdman’s breath shuddered under the suddenly overwhelming might of his fury, stifling whatever insufficient quip was poised upon his tongue. In exchange, he cocked his free fist, his knuckles white with tension.

“Second Prince.”

Heiko found it amusing that, even while he was the one positioned as the victim in their exchange, it was himself that Seneschal Jurgen found it suitable to chastise. Fitting, even. But the Second Prince of Simo was an act of nature more than a child of humanity, and when the waves of an angry ocean swelled more and more, there was always a point at which they had no choice but to come crashing down.

That point had long since passed for the wretch that was Hugo.

In one swift and insurmountable motion, the prince pulled free the silver hairpin that held his twisted bundle of flaxen hair atop his head and plunged it into the soft, undefended skin beneath Hugo’s right ear. The hirdman released a cloddish, pitiful grunt, his expression in one fell swoop drained of all emotion, save that which was natural to prey and coward alike – panic.

“Perhaps you have been granted liberties regarding my person, you sniveling pig,” Heiko sibilated, leaning closer as the man began to gasp to draw in breath, “but that does not mean they come without a price.”

Hugo shuddered violently then, crumbling to the earth at the prince’s feet, but Heiko was not done with him.

“For your sins against me,” - the prince squatted beside the hirdman and shoved him flat on his back, so he could watch the flame of Hugo’s life flicker and dowse within his dark eyes - “you will amuse the gods with the whimpers of your suffering, and you will feed them with the iron of your blood.”

“And may they pity you, in return,” he heard the seneschal murmur, safe beyond the bounds of the battlefield, tacking on the old Simonese prayer, “voor mulda en geen ryk.”

The prince caught Seneschal Jurgen forming the Calling Motion with his hands in his peripherals, bringing his cupped fingers first to his forehead and then his chest – as if he honestly believed Hugo’s soul was worth awakening the gods from their slumber for. Even as the last remnants of his life fought free from its earthly shell, Prince Heiko felt no pity, and he was sure that the seneschal’s act of contrition was nothing more than the irreversibly ingrained habit of man who saw battle more often than he saw his own wife.

Even so, Jurgen belonged to his brother, not him.

“The Mute Laws remain mute,” Heiko found it suitable to remind as he rose to his feet once again, “so long as they are obeyed. The repercussion of insubordination is the roaring furor of the gods, delivered by their otherwise ungovernable Revenants – holy beasts who have seen to the eradication of more than one dynasty.”

Carefully, he stepped over the lifeless body and exited the border of the sacred killing ground, presenting himself a foot away from the seneschal.

“One cannot seek reprisal for a death on Reuzen Field, Seneschal Jurgen, without breaking the prime tenet of the Mute Laws.”

The seneschal was a man of his father’s generation, his hair peppered not with the silver of age, but rather with the nutmeg of his dwindling youth. He had risen to his high station under the rule of the late king, an exploit that could only be achieved by a man neither craven nor impolitic.

“Even if I were unbound by the tenets of the heavens, my lord,” Seneschal Jurgen rumbled, leaning forward to meet Heiko’s challenge with a steady pulse, “revenge would be wasted on a man like Hugo. How abject would I look in the eyes of the gods if I sought vengeance for a cretin with no more sense than a lamb wandering into a den of wolves? Or a fool following a creature born of Clan Achterecht onto Reuzen soil?”

He then turned away, stalking off towards his piebald steed.

“Come now, Prince Heiko,” he called back, gesticulating lazily. “The King of Ilyos awaits us with what is sure to be indignation. Your whimsical act of homicide has delayed us long enough.”

⚔

AN:

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