The panic stricken peasant fell to his knees, both hands clasped together imploringly. His whole body began to shake jelly-like as Prince Vulkan slowly dismounted from his horse. The haughty young nobleman's handsome, yet spiteful face creased up into a vindictive frown as he advanced upon the hapless figure.

"How dare you withhold tax from the king you filthy, whingeing swine," the short-tempered prince screamed at the top of his voice. Punctuating his harsh words with a hail of withering blows from his riding quirt; lacing into the miller's face with the supple, stinging leather until the sobbing man threw himself prostrate into the dirt at the nobleman's feet.

"Mercy! Highness! Mercy!" the man begged wretchedly, "the drought has made the river all but disappear and without water the mill wheel will not turn and so I cannot earn enough to feed my family and pay the king's taxes," the miller's voice became even more wretched, "please Highness, I beg you and your gracious father to give me more time to pay."

The slender prince's narrow chest seemed to swell with an even greater volume of outrage.

"More time? more time? have you no beasts of burden with which to turn the mill wheel you indolent pig?" he roared, at the same time planting his boot into the back of the miller's neck, cruelly grinding the terrified, blubbering face into the dank earth.

"P-p-please Highness," the miller begged again, his voice quavering so much he could barely speak, "we had to slaughter our only bullock for meat and now I have only my wife and daughter to help me in the mill."

Prince Vulkan took time-out to look slowly around the small collection of tumbledown buildings and ramshackle yard. His mobile, twisting expression a cruel parody of confusion and indecision that instantly had his men smirking and nudging one another as they enjoyed their master's sinister sense of humour.