Chapter 370: Beneath Throne Mountain, Part 3
Once Luca had dealt with both squires, one of his Enginseers found a group of civilians huddled under a tree, nearly paralyzed with fear, and began questioning them.
"Freeholders, what's happened here? Why were the royal Knights hunting you down? And what did that Knight mean by 'slaves'? Our world has no slaves, only free farmers. What in the Emperor's name is going on?"
The farmer being questioned answered, trembling.
"My... my lord! His Majesty has gone mad! He's... he's pledged himself to the Dark Gods!"
The words landed like a thunderclap. Everyone present froze, and Luca, still seated in his Knight, charged over and bellowed.
"WHAT?! That's impossible! Frales might be difficult, might be unreasonable, but he would never fall to Chaos!"
The farmer, terrified by the Knight suit looming over him, could barely speak. It took the Enginseer a good while to calm him down enough to continue.
"M-my lord. Since His Majesty Frales took the throne, he's raised taxes and started conscripting from every village he can reach. Any village with young men of fighting age has had them taken by force, and it's left the fields untended, no one left to work the land."
The Enginseer pressed further. "Why is His Majesty conscripting so heavily? Is it to counter the Chaos warlords?"
The farmer shook his head.
"No, my lord. We don't really know what it's for. But some of the young men who managed to flee down from Throne Mountain said His Majesty has gone insane. He organizes them into groups of eight hundred and eighty-eight, and forces them to fight another group with no quarrel between them, to the death. Only one side is allowed to survive. Anyone who flees, anyone who shows fear, gets executed on the spot."
Kian understood immediately what this meant. This so-called King Frales had almost certainly pledged himself to Chaos, and had turned the whole thing into a killing game.
Khorne's sacred number was eight, and his forces were organized in multiples of eight. The new King was almost certainly culling for daemon-worthy champions, forcing the strong to rise by grinding the weak against each other.
By this point, the farmer had broken down sobbing.
"Millions of young men, dragged up that mountain, forced to kill each other for no reason at all! The dead have their heads cut off and hung on the castle walls, their bodies dumped at the foot of the mountain like garbage. The pile of headless corpses down there is already the size of a hill! And still His Majesty isn't satisfied. He wants more dead. He's declared every freeholder a slave now. Slaves aren't allowed to leave their assigned village, anyone who does is executed on sight. Once he'd trapped us in place, he started sending soldiers village by village, dragging us up the mountain to kill each other. We couldn't survive it anymore. That's why we ran."
Luca's fury had gone past containing. His voice came low and hard over the vox.
"How could this happen. Frales, all that talk of honor, and this is what it comes to? What of the other lords? The other Houses? Have they all fallen too?"
The farmer answered, "Many lords spoke out against His Majesty. But His Majesty demanded honor duels with every one of them, and killed every single challenger himself. The lords who remained decided to lead us away from Throne Mountain, to find somewhere safe. Right now, several lords from the Knight Houses are holding the line at the Golden River with their war engines, covering the crossing. His Majesty's army is engaging them there as we speak."
The Golden River was a major waterway at the foot of Throne Mountain, five hundred meters wide.
It was an artificial canal, its banks lined with extensive irrigation works.
Fed by that irrigation, the crops along its banks grew thick and rich. Come harvest season, both banks turned gold beneath a sea of wheat, which was how the river had earned its name.
Population density along the Golden River was also extremely high, sitting right at the foot of Throne Mountain, essentially the capital region. More than ten million people lived there.
Except now, with the High King fallen to Chaos and culling the able-bodied for slaughter, there was no telling how much of that population still remained.
The farmer, well-spoken and clear-headed despite everything, laid the whole situation out plainly.
He explained that right now, close to a million civilians, unable to endure any more of the King's killing, had chosen to flee Throne Mountain, and their only viable route out was the Golden Bridge.
A massive bridge, roughly thirty meters wide, with a load-bearing structure strong enough to support dozens of Knight suits crossing at once.
Right now, a million refugees were packed at the bridgehead, waiting to cross, desperate for any chance at survival.
A handful of Knight Houses still loyal to the old order had brought their retinues to the bridge to cover the evacuation.
Meanwhile the Chaos-fallen High King, at the head of his own daemon-touched army, was trying to slaughter every last one of them.
Kian didn't even need to think hard about it. This guy was obviously building toward some monstrous 8,888,888-strong tower of skulls, gearing up for a sacrifice on a scale that dwarfed anything they'd seen yet.
He looked over at Luca. This was the moment that would decide everything.
Kian had already pieced together who Luca really was. The complete lack of deference in how he spoke of the High King, combined with how respectfully the two squire pilots had addressed him earlier, all but confirmed it. This "boy" was some kind of exiled prince.
Whatever had driven him away from the court, he'd set out as a Freeblade to put distance between himself and it. And now, having circled the whole planet and finally come home, he'd discovered his brother, or whoever now sat the throne, had fallen to Chaos and was committing atrocities on an almost unimaginable scale. No wonder the man looked ready to break.
Sure enough, the next instant, Luca let out a furious roar.
"FRALES!! You absolute FOOL!! I spared your life once, and it was NOT so you could betray the Imperium, betray your own people!!"
He spun around and bellowed to the army behind him.
"With me, now! We ride for the Golden Bridge! Evacuate those civilians and hold the line against his army!!"
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