He talked levelly, completely disconnected from what he'd done. Even some of his own men – the newer ones – looked shocked at the casual brutalness. They were brutal men in their own right – everyone in the courtyard truly was. They'd all done terrible things. That was what it meant to be a warrior. But there seemed to be an implicit understanding amongst them, that somehow, the beautiful and the noble, they were out of reach. They couldn't be stained by the sins of the mortals.
Even women, and children, they occasionally escaped that bar, even amongst raiders. But it was rank that seemed to scare them. Rank that seemed to be a God-given gift. It felt dangerous to treat a human with rank as carelessly as you would with some peasant that no one would remember the death of.
