Iker has been looking for trouble. No way to impress some noble with his fighting skills if there’s no fight. He barges past a servant, into the conversation. 

“I know, right? Halflings, kobolds, and I hear they have some sort of druid?”

He refrains from making a face because it's beneath his dignity to visibly react, but he definitely wants to.

"Halflings have the good sense to be neither seen nor heard, and don't interrupt important matters. Orcs like you that try and grasp above their station are far less tolerable."

In other words, I'm busy with something that actually matters so if you grovel convincingly enough I might let you off lightly rather than waste my time.

“Oh? Pamphlet I read says those little guys are done being quiet, going to start eating you lot now.”

He looks whoever this noble is up and down. “Looks like it’d take maybe three of them? I’d watch out.”

Right, he gave them a chance. He turns towards his seneschal, who is thankfully already prepared with a whip.

"Thirty lashes, my lord count?"

"Make it forty, with the state of this country I imagine some of the others could do with an example."

Iker snarls at him. “You and what army?”

This guy doesn’t look like an officer or a cleric of asmodeus iomedae. So probably not the army that can actually get him for insubordination.

"One hardly needs an army to put down the rabble. Out of respect for the archmage, I'll leave you alive, but you'll find that's the limit of my mercy."

It's something of a humiliation for a count to need to take up arms himself against an uppity peasant, but he had left most of his entourage behind at his lodgings so as to have respectfully fewer than the archdukes without obliging them to fill up the convention hall, and it's far more humiliating to leave such a slight unanswered. He draws his great-grandfather's lightning blade from its sheath, the longsword sparking in the afternoon sunlight.

“Out of respect for the archmages, I’ll leave enough of you to raise dead. I’ve heard happens to people their healer brings back; hope you end up a bugbear.”

Iker was looking for a fight and now he has one. He also is… lacking steel to back up his words. The army took his nice demon-killing sword, and his secondary sword is at home. Moloch declare a forced march!

Swiftly backing away. “Hey, did your old man never teach you ‘name a time and place’?!”

Looks like the savage hadn't realized he was speaking with a real noble after all. The Conde de Acevado advances.

"One duels gentlemen, though I suppose you wouldn't understand the difference."

Iker knows the difference between someone who names a time and place to fight and someone who runs down a guy before he can get his weapon. He’ll wait until he has a weapon before insulting the man further, though. 

He turns a corner and makes it into the main hall. “Hey! Someone hand me a sword!”

And the Conde pursues, haranguing the orc with the back of his blade whenever he gets close enough. It won't draw blood and make a mess of the floor with filth, but it'll make things last longer and the lightning still hurts like a bitch which is fine by him. He'll also drop a few lines insulting their cowardice and actions, so that all the commoners know what they're getting an abject lesson in not doing.

Nope. 

The Conde cannot move. The Conde no longer has his sword. The Conde is struck dumb with terror, which may or may not be magical in nature. 

"What. Did. I. Just. Say."

If this were some normal wizardry, the Conde de Acevedo might perhaps be able to fight it off, though the odds are not particularly in his favor. Against an archmage he has about as much chance as a leaf in a hurricane.

He takes a moment to reply despite his indignation, on account of both the utter terror.”

”He knew full well I wasn’t going to kill him despite his provocations.”

It’s meant to sound indignant and justified but rather lacks both qualities; the most you can say is that his voice does not actually quaver.

The lightning-sword sure didn’t feel nonlethal. Iker isn’t saying that, though. Throwing the other guy in front of the bullette when a superior breaks up the fight is a coward’s move, and basically the same as admitting that you were losing the fight. Which Iker wasn’t. As soon as someone handed him a sword things would have turned around so fast. 

Iker stands up straight, smooths his uniform slightly, and doesn’t say anything. It’s almost like he didn’t just run in shouting for a sword. If the archmage isn’t being terrifying at him specifically, best to keep it that way.