Chapter Text
“Your responsibilities now are to Lord Capon. It's time you learned how to behave in the presence of nobility ”.
— Hanush of Leipa, KCD1
Part I: Presage
Henry hated everything about Hans Capon.
He hated his insufferable smugness, his jeering superiority— his stupid punchable smirk.
Hated his need to assert his position at every possible moment.
The idea of being forced to dutifully serve in quiet submission under such a spoiled brat grated against every nerve in Henry’s body.
Last night, when ordered by the Rattay bailiff to close the Traders Tavern, Henry had jumped at the chance to show the full measure of his contempt with his fists. Every bruising punch he'd landed to that smug lordling's perfect face had been catharsis— at least until the regent of Rattay himself, Lord Hanush of Leipa, had dragged Henry off his nephew.
Capon’s punishment— if it even constituted one— had been to forgo the leisures of a hunting trip and accompany his uncle to a land dispute, yet even for that Capon had been sour and pouting. Henry had watched him ride out through Rattay that morning in tow of his uncle, as grave as if going to the gallows.
Henry’s punishment was to be executed now, on this gloomy, grey-skied afternoon, and he doubted he'd be afforded as much grace.
It had been a surprise to Henry that the Lord of Rattay would take it upon himself personally to see to the discipline of someone as inconsequential as Henry. He’d assumed at first, with a dreading knot in his stomach, that such attention equated to the seriousness of his crime. Lord Hanush, however— though characteristically stern— so far hadn’t been unpleasant.
They were now at Merjohed, to the west of Rattay, where Hanush’s sizable stud farm was situated. The lord strode ahead, leading the way through the stables in long, brisk strides that were a challenge to match. He was an unusually tall and robust man, even for a noble. He towered over the peasants and stable hands, a more-than-six-foot giant with a solid girthiness to match. Even though Henry had been among the taller men in Skalitz, he hardly had to duck through doors like Hanush.
Hanush led the way past the smithy, dashing Henry’s hopes of his blacksmithing being put to use, though admittedly his punishment had always seemed more likely to be some manner of unfavourable and back-breaking manual labour. The likeliest suspects comprised shovelling horse shit, mucking out stables, and digging latrines—his favourite.
Still, anything that wasn’t a flogging was a lucky miss for having put hands on a noble. Even if it was one as universally loathed as the heir to Rattay.
Henry followed Lord Hanush out to a vast grazing paddock. Men’s shouts broke out amidst a primal, squealing roar, pulling Henry’s attention to an unsaddled horse that reared and kicked his front legs. The beast wrenched the leading ropes from the hands of his trainers before bolting, all but trampling a man beneath his hooves.
Pausing to watch, Hanush snorted in amusement, the corner of his mouth curling up.
‘That one’s been giving us trouble from the start,' he said to Henry. 'He's a proud beast, and a beautiful one at that.’
Even to Henry’s eyes, the animal was undoubtedly a cut above the rest. He gleamed a glossy gold even in the grey afternoon, tossing his silken mane in fury while stamping a hoof and steaming from the nostrils at the sheer insolence of his handlers.
Hanush gave a low, fond laugh.
‘He reminds me of my nephew,’ he noted, voicing what Henry had only just been thinking. ‘His is a fierce and independent spirit. It's almost a shame to have to break him.'
Henry parsed those words over again in his head, a half-formed feeling catching in his brain just for a moment.
He was sure Hanush was talking about the horse.
‘Come now, lad,’ Hanush instructed, leading off again across the marshy grass away from the stables and out beyond the penned-in paddocks.
Here, the ground sloped down and then dipped into a sudden valley that was overgrown with undershrub spilling from the line of trees of a looming, overgrown forest. Between the pines and birches was a dilapidated barn, almost smothered with ivy.
It looked like it had long fallen out of use; the forest slowly creeping forward and consuming.
Henry looked around. There was no other obvious landmark in sight— no indication of why they were here.
He stopped walking.
‘Sir?’ he asked.
Hanush didn't answer. The man simply strode on ahead, bashing through the shrubbery unfazed towards the barn. At its side door, he reached down under his brocade surcoat and produced a ring of keys, hung on a golden chain.
Some sort of storage cache, then , Henry clued, as Hanush unlocked the door. A secret stockpile of arms secondary to the Rattay armoury, perhaps, he hoped. Weapons that needed oiling and sharpening?
‘Well?’ Hanush said, taking stock of Henry still rooted to one spot. ‘Come on, lad, I don't have all day.’
From what little Henry had seen of his new lord, he was a man who was quick to a temper and unwise to displease. Henry bowed his head, feeling foolish and coming quickly as bid, passing into the dark barn.
Hanush pulled the door closed behind them, slamming out the daylight.
Henry squinted in the dark, eyes taking time to adjust as his boots crunched over small, littered bones of owl prey. Beams of light filtered down through holes in the roof, illuminating an air thick with sifting dust. There was some storage in here— crates, kegs, and furniture draped with dusty linen sheets.
A sudden noise overhead made Henry drop, shielding his head.
Hanush laughed.
‘Afraid of pigeons, are you, boy?’
The flap of bird wings faded up through the roof, along with a little of Henry's dignity. Hanush gave Henry a hearty thump on his back and sent him staggering forward a few paces.
Henry laughed at himself then too, rubbing the back of his prickling neck and trying to downplay his unease.
It was hard to pin down exactly why, but he felt on edge in this place. It was an oppressive kind of quiet here. Not even birds sang out in the forest, as if this small valley could warp sound around it; some kind of tiny pocket of world that stood outside of time.
'You said you needed my assistance with something, Sir?' Henry broached, impatient to get to the task and get it over with, still searching for some context clue that would click this uneasy moment back into some perfectly ordinary, droll affair.
'Yes,' Hanush confirmed.
The lord was unrushed as he shrugged off his brocade surcoat and hung it up. Without it, the nobleman blended into the darkness in his dark leather jerkin, black shirt, and dark breeches.
Henry’s hope of an answered question dwindled away in the steadily lengthening silence as Hanush turned and studied him— his eyes taking their measure for too long.
Henry looked away and swallowed thickly.
Alone, in this dark with only Lord Hanush of Leipa, Henry was starting to wonder if somehow he’d been led too many steps outside of normality; a blythe sheep following its farmer to the slaughter, trusting and oblivious to its master's plans.
Henry didn't move— didn't change his expression or stance— but he mentally mapped the way back to the stables—
And how Hanush stood between him and the door.
The silence yawned, Hanush still studying Henry.
Grasping, Henry wondered if he was being waited on to plead his case. Trained as a good repenting Christian, his confession bubbled up out of him under the pressure.
'About the fight last night in the tavern—' Henry offered. 'I apologize again, Sire. You were right, I was out of line. I shouldn’t have antagonized Sir Hans.'
The Lord of Rattay nodded, thoughtful as he took a slow turn of the floor, coming to lean against a timber column where he assessed Henry again with that calm, unhurried regard.
'I like that about you, Henry,’ he said eventually. ‘You take accountability. A man has to take accountability for his wrongdoings.’
Hanush reached down and took hold of an old linen tarp draped over old furniture beside him, and ripped the sheet away.
‘Wouldn't you agree, Nephew?’
Henry grew instantly cold.
Even in the low light, it was impossible to rationalise anything other than the impossible he beheld: A semi-conscious man, bound to a chair at the wrists and ankles, gagged.
Hans Capon.
*