Chapter Text
There was blood bubbling in his mouth. It ran in hot streaks down his chin as he forced the hacking laugh out of his throat. He clenches his jaw and still out it came, blood and spittle spraying through the gaps in his teeth. He laughs until he’s gasping for breath, lungs straining against his ribs.
The ground shook as the Praguers advanced onto Suchdol. He wonders if they’d let that bastard reach the fortress, or if they’d shoot the horse out from under him and butcher him in the grass. A coward’s death. He should’ve taken his chance with Erik and accepted the slaughter like a good dog, now if he survives long enough to reach Suchdol, he’ll die like a caged rat.
He can hear his laugh turn to a vicious yell, hand slipping free from his sword as he collapses forward against the painted dirt. He coughs more blood out as he gasps around his bruised ribs, feels his eyes water as he tries to find his breath. He watches them drip down into the murky mess of blood and spittle.
He’d won. He’d fucking won.
His stomach turns and he chokes on bile as it rises in his throat. He coughs and splutters as he wretches twice more. He lurches forward and rests on a forearm as he spits the burnt taste from his mouth.
Erik listens to the ragged rattle of his breaths as he stares down at the murky puddle of mud before him. You won, he tells himself, then again when his body offers only a yawning pit where his heart would be. You won . An ache so encompassing he feels hollowed out.
His eyes still water from the retching, but the hacking sob still catches him off guard as the agony of his existence settles heavily on him. He can barely catch a breath between the sobbing, and he chokes on his own spit trying to fight the tears. He shoves himself to his feet, wiping at his face with gauntlets still slick with blood. He paws at his helmet until it’s unseated from his head and hurls it away from himself with a pained shout. He kicks anything within reach: the burnt remains of a firepit, an empty pot, his helmet, his helmet again.
He shouts again, finally reaching for his sword where it still stood in the dirt. He wraps a hand around its hilt and tears off his blood-soaked padded collar and hood, throwing it into the dirt. He tries to suck in another breath as he grips the sword guard on either side of the blade. His arms ache as he lifts the weight of the sword up until he can rest the tip of it against the hollow of his throat. He kneels and can barely feel the bite of the blade over the pounding in his head, the roaring sound of blood in his ears, and the heavy thud of his heart. Even if he didn’t cut through it, he’d hit something else important.
“Fucking whoreson,” he whimpers, arms quivering in exertion as they kept the sword raised. “Do it,” he dares himself, pushing against the meagre resistance of his skin. He would have a few inches before he met muscle or bone, but he would be bleeding and weak by then.
He’d won.
“Fuck!” he shouts, shoving the sword up and away from him. His arms shake, but then every inch of him is shaking by now. He can hear the inhuman keening and snarling forced from his throat between each sob. He’d long ran out of tears, but still choked and cried like something demonic had settled in his chest, wringing his throat in its clawed hands.
He collapses to the side, gasping as he hits the dirt. He curls in on himself with a whimper, grinding his gauntlet-clad hands into his brow bone. “Ištván,” he whines, voice so torn he wouldn’t have known what he’d said if it hadn’t slipped from his own lips. “ Ištván ,” he says again, for the weak pulse of warmth it stirred beneath his skin.
He can’t count the time he spends laying there in the dirt, whispering that name to himself over and over. A fire sits in his skull, its vicious flames so large he can feel the pressure of it press against his skull. “Ištván,” he pleads.
If he had buried his sword in his chest, would they have finally been together? He knew Ištván had worshipped God, but Erik had never found any space in his soul for religion. Would the universe have taken him to Ištván? Or would he have gone somewhere akin to nowhere? Soul left to float in an incomprehensible nothing?
It’s the first thought more surface level than anger, or murder, or longing, and it makes his ears ring.
“It doesn’t fucking matter,” he ground out, scraping his fingers over his scalp like he could break the skin and let the fire inside him out at last. “It doesn’t… nothing matters,” he cries out to whatever can hear him. The birds flying overhead, scattered by the thunder of hooves; the ants crawling amongst the remains of the camp for millions of mouthfuls of food; his horse, somewhere beyond what should have been the great decider.
Instead, Erik clutches at a malformed, insignificant victory. Henry would die at the hands of some faceless mercenary lucky enough to get him on the end of their sword. He’d choke on his own blood staring into the sun instead of the hollow pits of Erik’s eyes. He’d die thinking of hundreds of different things instead of the man that had killed him.
He shoves himself to his feet and sheaths his sword. He drags his feet through the dirt as he retrieves the filthy mass of his collar and hood, stuffing it half in his belt as he moves toward where he’d kicked his helm to. He picks it up and holds it tenderly in his hands, wiping at the grit and dried blood like the muck would shift without a proper scrub.
A gift from Ištván. Like everything Erik owns. His horse, his sword, every plate in his armour, the blood running hot in his veins.
He aches from the hair at the crown of his head to the tips of his toes as he drags himself toward where he’d left Stein hitched. The stallion turns to face him as he approaches, armour clunking and grinding with each step.
He leans heavily against the horse, smearing blood and sweat over the fresh, white caparison. The horse whickers softly, a rubbery snout snuffling at his hair, the stained mess of his armour.
Where was there to go?
The question sits unanswered. Suchdol sits just down the hill, likely surrounded by the Prague forces by now. His sword hangs heavy at his hip, his heart heavier in his chest.
“No fucking point,” he muttered into Stein’s neck. He breathes in the smell of horse until he can no longer smell blood or bile. His tears had left tacky, cold tracks over his cheeks, and every swallow felt as though he’d ingested a bag of nails. I’m alive, at least, he thinks with a humourless chuckle
Ištván had tried to teach Erik how to find his way in the world- how to make room for himself in it- but he’d been the key to all of it all along. He hauls himself into the saddle even as every inch of his body screams to be left on the ground. There were plenty of people worth nothing in this Godforsaken country; Erik had just hoped never to be amongst their rank again.
He sways as he seats himself in the saddle, clutches the horn as the world around him spins. His theatrics had him dizzy and off-balance, even still. The pressure in his skull had dulled but still begged to be released; shoving at the backs of his eyes, trying to bore through at his temples. He squeezes at Stein’s flanks and swallows against the wave of nausea that washes over him at the sway of the horse under him.
Stein takes him out of the camp without need for direction. Perhaps he should let the animal decide where they’d go now, seeing as Erik could think of no destination; no place where they belonged- where they could belong.
The realisation is like a knife in the gut, the solution a moment later the twist that severs something important.
He needed to return to Trosky. He needed to see him. Needed to lay his eyes on Ištván’s final resting place so that he may know he was truly gone.
Erik had always thought Ištván made for this world; made for this time. So many weaker men let circumstance make slaves of them, would lay down and let everything wash over them, mewling and bleating with ‘why me?’
Erik’s father had been a weak man. A man set in letting circumstances make a fool of him over, and over again. A man that let life bend him over, a violent man, a pathetic man. The Hungarians that burnt his village down wouldn’t have known he was a fighter, he’d cowered at their feet until they stuck him full of holes and died on his knees.
Ištván had made circumstance his bitch, Ištván had learnt how to twist the world around him, had learnt to make it work with him. Had learnt how to make it work against others.
To think him dead was a near impossible thought to stomach. To think him killed, more so.
But then, he was always too lenient with that whoreson.
Stein nickers as they pass another rider, Erik caught the blanche in the man’s face as he took in the young man’s bloodied appearance. He pulls the horse up as they approach a crossroads. He could see Kuttenberg in the distance to one side, knew the other would lead onto the main road used for merchants and coachmen to travel to and from the Trosky region.
He squints in the direction of Suchdol, sees the glint of armour and weapons and the writhing mass of men and horses. The fortress wouldn’t surrender: they’d drag it out, make a show of it all even as their food runs out and they begin to hunger for horse, for man. It would be a long siege, and Erik had only one place to be, for now.
Erik clicks at his horse and steers it away from Suchdol and Kuttenberg. Trosky was a couple days’ ride if he stuck to the main roads, with an almost guarantee he’d encounter bandits and opportunists that would think it their lucky day to find a lone rider in the middle of nowhere.
He needed to see it for himself- where Ištván had fallen. Needed to know he was truly gone.
He wonders if anyone had bothered to bury him, or if Erik would find him a sun-baked, decaying pile of bones and be thankful to hold him in his arms once more, even as his flesh tore apart under his touch and bugs crawled from his eyes. But that wouldn’t be Ištván, because Ištván could not be killed.
He would follow the bloodied footsteps from the edge of the castle and come upon him, alive but barely, and he would remind Ištván anew of why, of all the young boys with sad eyes and fractured souls from his village, it was Erik that he chose. Erik, he’d turned into something special, something he chose to send away- to protect- even as he planned his own demise.
Because he knew if Erik had been there, he would have fought Henry until his own heart stopped. Would have tore out his throat with his teeth if he’d needed to. He would have stopped at nothing to prevent Ištván from leaving him alone in this world.
Ištván had known a life before Erik.
Erik’s life hadn’t started until the day Ištván entered it.