Chapter 30: Abducted

"THEY ARE BACK AGAIN! THEY’RE IN THE LOWER WARD!"

The peaceful little market exploded into an instant, howling pandemonium.

It was not a dignified retreat.

Men knocked over fruit stalls, smashing baskets of cabbage into wet green pulp underfoot as they scrambled toward wooden cellar doors.

Mothers seized their toddlers by the wrists, dragging them screaming across the cobblestones. The butcher didn’t even grab his cleaver; he dove beneath his chopping block, wedging his bulk between two brine barrels like an overgrown rat trying to squeeze into a drainpipe.

Lucien stood dead center in the street, an intangible phantom watching the stampede. "Well, that escalated quickly. So much for the tranquil rustic tour."

Before he could take another step, the heavy wooden barriers at the end of the market street shattered into flying toothpicks.

A vanguard of armored riders burst through the dust cloud like a tidal wave of polished steel and blackened iron.

These were not the flamboyant duelists of the modern Imperial Academy with their feathered hats and delicate silver-chased rapiers.

These were some spectacular heavy cavalry in their most brutal form.

The horses were slate-grey destriers with breath that fogged like steam engines, their chests protected by iron bards spiked with rusted studs.

The riders wore full plate armor without decorative gilding, their visors closed, showing only two horizontal, lifeless slits that drank in the sunlight without reflecting a single beam.

Across their chests was stamped the crude, hammered crest of a bleeding tree wound in barbed chains.

They did not slow down or shout any warnings.

The lead stallion, a monstrous beast with froth dripping from its iron bit, plowed directly through a vegetable stall, sending timber beams and shattered crates flying twenty feet into the air.

A merchant who had tripped over his own apron tried to scramble backward on his hands and knees.

CRACK!

The destrier’s iron-shod hoof came down squarely on the man’s pelvis.

The sound was like a dry branch snapping under a wagon wheel. The rider didn’t even look down; he simply adjusted his reins with his fingers, leaning forward in the stirrups as the squad fanned out through the square with the chilling, mechanical coordination of a professional harvesting machine.

"A raid?" Lucien muttered, watching with a mixture of disgust and cinematic horror. "No... they’re not looting the iron pots. They’re ignoring the coin pouches."

A scream pierced the roar of hooves.

From the doorway of a baker’s cottage, a young woman with a white linen kerchief tied over her auburn hair had tried to sprint toward the rear alley.

She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, her apron still dusted with flour.

A rider swerved his mount with terrifying agility, the iron-armored flank of the horse slamming into the doorframe, wedging her against the plaster.

Before she could scream a second time, the knight leaned down from his high saddle, seized her by her linen collar and the waistband of her skirt with one hand, and hoisted her bodily off the ground like a sack of grain.

"LET GO! FATHER! FATHER, HELP ME!" she shrieked, kicking wildly, her wooden clogs flying into the dirt.

A middle-aged man, presumably the baker, exploded out of the doorway wielding a heavy wooden flour paddle, his face purple with rage. "NO! NOT MY DAUGHTER! MARA! LET HER—"

THWACK!

The pommel of the knight’s mace took the baker directly across the bridge of the nose.

The man collapsed backward onto his own threshold, his skull bouncing off the timber lintel with a sickening hollow thud, blood instantly coating his cheeks.

The knight did not pause to confirm the kill.

With a single heave of his bicep, he threw the flailing girl across the front of his saddlebow, pinned her spine beneath his forearm, and wheeled his mount around.

Down the street, the same atrocity was repeating itself in brutal, efficient succession.

Another rider kicked open a cellar hatch, dragging out a weeping girl no older than fifteen by her braided hair.

Two more cornered a young married woman against a stone well, ignoring the hysterical husband who was clawing at the horse’s stirrup leathers until a backhand strike from an iron gauntlet crushed his collarbone and sent him face-first into the horse trough.

They targeted only young maidens.

Unblemished, young, healthy girls.

They scooped them up like livestock, slinging them over saddle pommels or tossing them into iron-reinforced wicker panniers strapped to the sides of the rear pack-mules.

The entire sweep took less than three minutes.

It was surgical.

It had the horrific, and polished efficiency of a seasonal tax collection.

"In the name of the Sovereign of the Pale Ridge!" a herald at the rear of the cavalry shouted, his voice muffled by a conical iron helm as he unfurled a scroll stamped with black wax. "The tithe of flesh is claimed! Blessed be the hearth of the Lord! Cursed be the seed that withholds the flame!"

With a sharp whistle from the captain, the iron-clad monsters wheeled their horses, kicked their spurs into the bloody flanks of their mounts, and thundered back out through the shattered gates, leaving behind a ruined, silent street littered with crushed vegetables, moaning men, and the hysterical, desolate wailing of mothers whose arms were suddenly empty.

Lucien stood in the swirling dust, watching the gate.

"Well," he whispered, his hands curling slightly in his dressing gown pockets. "That was really unpleasant. My subconscious has truly outdone itself in the gratuitous cruelty department. Can we wake up now? The pastries are getting cold."

The dream did not end, unfortunately.

Instead, the reality around him dissolved like black ink dropped into a bucket of vinegar.

The sunlit cobblestones melted.

The screaming market square warped, the sound of horses’ hooves stretching out into a low, droning hum that rattled the base of Lucien’s skull. The air turned freezing, then stiflingly hot within the span of a single heartbeat.

When the light snapped back into focus, Lucien was standing in a place that made the ruined market look like a scenic holiday resort.