Winter Mountain
"I believe slaughtering every last Huscarl is an excessive measure."
Such was the counsel Alred, the chief butler, had offered his new lord.
"Alred."
But the young lord answered only in a voice thick with rage.
"Are you defending the scum who had a hand in my lord father's death?"
Kael regarded their gruesome ends as nothing less than what they deserved.
"A vassal who betrays his sovereign must face judgment. That is only right."
Faced with such unyielding resolve, the chief butler could only bow his head.
In truth, Alred held no fondness for the Huscarls either. He had simply looked the other way, knowing full well how formidable a force they commanded.
Alred was one of the very few who knew the truth of his former lord's final moments. Yet he had never spoken of it to the madam.
She was already trembling like a pitiful lamb — how much more would she suffer if she learned of that as well?
Better to keep silent than to burden her with knowledge she was better off without.
"I understand. It seems this old man has spoken out of turn, mistaking meddling for counsel."
And if the new lord meant to purge them in the name of avenging his father, there was no grounds on which to stop him.
"I shall gather every soldier save the outer garrison. No fewer than three thousand men — they will be of great help in eliminating the Huscarls."
All he could do was support her treasure with everything he had, and pray for his safe return. A battle of this scale might well drive the territory to the brink of ruin — but better that than the lady of the house losing her son.
A selfish old man. A twisted loyalty that cared only for the crimson-haired woman who was his true mistress, and for her precious ones. The welfare of the common folk meant nothing to this ruthless elder.
"Thank you, Alred."
And yet it was precisely for this that the young lord offered him his gratitude. He knew how dearly the old butler held him and the rest of the ruling family.
How much time had passed?
Perhaps not even a few dozen minutes. The process by which three hundred Huscarls became corpses had been remarkably efficient.
Every organ required to sustain a human life lay scattered without mercy. It was a scene of such horror that even a veteran of many battlefields would have grimaced.
But the white-haired beast merely gazed upon the flowers of blood blooming in every direction with perfect calm. If it had nothing to do with his mother, killing a living thing stirred nothing in him at all.
Kael knew this about himself. For all his outward pretenses, he and his emotionally rich younger sister were fundamentally different creatures.
The son could only pity the mother who had given birth to a beast.
Hoo — warm breath rose as smoke, drifting across the winter mountain. It was not that the man was weary from so little effort. He was merely turning over the memory of building a snowman with two women in his childhood.
He tilted his head back and let the red snowflakes beginning to fall meet his face. Only now did bloodstains begin to gather on his clean forehead and the tip of his nose.
Looking at the man's immaculate face, one might have thought him devoid of feeling — yet his heart was far from at ease.
The crimson-haired corpse crushed beneath his feet.
And the Huscarls who had become one vast flower of death.
They had all been people of Bayorn — people the crimson-haired woman had loved.
But the son hoped his mother would shed no tears over the deaths of such trash.
What excuse should he offer?
That was a matter to discuss with the loyal old butler.
And he hoped that even if she learned the truth, she would not hate him too much.
The principal reason he had wiped out the Huscarls was that they had harassed his mother — but the sacrilege of harming his mother's man had compounded their sentence.
Had they committed only the former crime, Baron Doston alone would have paid with his life.
Alred will have a fit when I get back.
Ignoring the old butler's request to take three thousand soldiers with him was a little awkward. From Alred's perspective, knowing nothing of the new lord's true capabilities, he had simply been trying to show every possible consideration.
Still, unlike these traitors, those soldiers were his mother's true people, were they not? So long as they committed no conspicuous insolence, they deserved to be cherished as much as possible.
I don't understand why Mother holds them so dear. To ordinary nobles, commoners are nothing more than expendable resources.
Despite being a sovereign himself, Kael did not understand the value of the people.
He simply followed her will because she treasured them.
His refusal to lay a hand on the father he so despised had been an extension of the same principle. Everything the crimson-haired woman held dear was something Kael found difficult to disregard.
Like a boy who doesn't understand why the girl he likes cherishes a doll — yet still gifts her one and never touches it. It was a feeling that simple.
Of course, had the Grand Ducal House that ruled the North not intervened, he might not have endured even that, and might one day have committed patricide. In that sense, the outcome had been fortunate.
More than anything, his father's murder had taken place while he was away on his journey. There had been no chance to stop it.
If I had been in Bayorn territory…
Would he have prevented it? Or would he simply have looked the other way?
It was a meaningless speculation about something that never happened. Still, the thought that his mother wept for a man other than himself left a bitter taste. So the former was more likely.
His cheerful mother had been lovely.
His broken mother had been lovely too.
But those feelings should have originated from him alone — from this man.
Returning to a parent-child relationship was already impossible, and even that was fine. If the way back was sealed, one need only press forward. There was no need for regret.
The only thing he truly regretted was the loss of his other half — Piel.
Lucas.
The Hero with those bizarre cheat-like abilities was a comrade he longed to see almost as much as his sister.
Given the man's womanizing ways, the outcome was obvious. Even in the thick of battle, he would have harassed and humiliated Kael's only blood relative.
In that case, Hero or not, it made no difference. The price for that would be paid, no matter who he was.
The barbarian of House Bayorn would never let live a man who had laid hands on his family.
Crunch.
Gripping his twin axes, the man turned his steps toward the far side of the field of corpses.
His forehead burned hotter than the hands that held his weapons. He ached to see the crimson-haired girl. How wonderful it would be if mother and son could comfort each other — she for the loneliness of losing a daughter, he for the grief of losing a sister.
And if they did so with not a thread of clothing between them, that would be perfection itself. He wanted to drive his hips into the woman's fragrant, musky sex, to bury his face in breasts that overflowed with the scent of tangerines.
Just imagining it was paradise enough to bring a smile to his lips. He wanted to run to her that instant, to bite and chew her soft flesh.
But he would have to endure for now. He had not yet been granted that right.
The man walked the snow-laden path wherever his mind led him. The advance of a beast faithful only to bloodlust and lust could not be stopped even by snowdrifts piled to the thigh.
Kael thought: When was the last time he had shared a bed with his mother? It had been months at the very least, and the impulse was growing harder and harder to restrain.
He had believed that ravaging the woman he so desperately craved a few times would ease the madness — yet with each passing day, it only swelled larger.
Kael smiled bitterly at himself.
To still be unable to leave his parents' embrace at this age — just as Mother said, he was nothing more than an oversized child.
But what could he do?
He loved her so much it was driving him mad.
"……."
Kael lifted his head and caught the scent drifting through the air. With every step, the faint fragrance of tangerines grew thicker.
Strange. Even if he had drawn near the castle gates, to catch his mother's body scent from this far away…
"Kael—!"
The woman's voice, thick with unshed tears, rang out — and in an instant the world around him brightened. The fever raging through the man's mind cooled, if only for a moment.
He raised his blood-soaked face and looked at the scene unfolding before him. What filled his vision once more was a single carriage, emblazoned with a white bear.
Tap.
The crimson-haired woman stumbled down the carriage steps in a fit of panic. Confronted with her son's face covered in blood, she seemed utterly stunned.
The noble great lady kicked off her shoes and walked the snowfield like a madwoman. With no barbarian blood in her veins, her tiny bare feet flushed red the moment they pressed into the snow.
What was so lovable about that?
What was so precious about that?
What was so painful about that?
The man she was wading barefoot through the snow toward was nothing more than the rapist who had violated her, a beast who had forsaken the laws of heaven.
A hot emotion surged up somewhere in the murderer's chest.
A strange sensation of tightness around his heart. And then a small body — softer and warmer than anything else — flung itself desperately into the man's arms.
"Wh-where did you go? How did you get so hurt? Hic— Mother can't live without you—!"
A tiny voice, mixed with the wind, sobbed. Yet the affection filling her voice came through with perfect clarity.
The man cried out in silence.
Ah.
That is your problem.
That unreachable purity that remains unsullied no matter how thoroughly filthy men trample it.
The thought that he had wounded this fragile, tiny woman with his selfish love made his chest feel ready to burst — but he forced himself to swallow the feeling down.
He had committed the sin long ago. To entertain such tender emotions now was meaningless.
And to protect the crimson-haired woman, an incompetent crybaby was far less useful than…
"…I'm sorry."
A murderer stripped of feeling.