Yesteryear

Clamour

The thin scream of a woman awoke Wooyoung. Within a second, he sat straight as an arrow in his bed and looked around in a panic.

His memories took a moment to catch up with his befuddled mind. Once his gaze had swept to Yeosang, spread out with wild hair on the pillow next to him, he remembered his arrival in Nottingham. He hadn't got too drunk last night, so his mind instantly jumped back to the matters at hand when he scrambled out of bed. The fearful neighs of horses and yelling of men outside had him step over Yeosang to open the window on the other side of the man's bed.

For a fracture of a second, Wooyoung got to peer outside onto the street. The marketplace was in mayhem and people, as well as chickens, ran around without a goal. The woman on the stand opposite Ada's house had got captured by a sinister-looking man in a cloak who trapped her arms to her stomach. As she screamed for help and twisted her body, her terror got swallowed by that of the general panic. Men ran from the dark-clothed group that chased them around and startled the horses.

Wooyoung wanted to grasp the situation to figure out what was going on, but an arrow whizzing past his ear interrupted him. The fletching ripped a shallow scratch into his cheek. With a thud, it embedded itself in the wall behind him as he ripped his head down. With hasty fingers, he closed the window before he rocked Yeosang awake.

"Wake up! We're under attack! They are robbers!"

Another shove at Yeosang had the man blink his eyes open finally. Relieved, Wooyoung sat back, but his body remained taut as a feather. Ready to jump, he strained his ears to the noises downstairs. Some men must have entered the house they were in already. Wooyoung believed to hear Ada screaming and cursing at their existence. Wood crashed, but it didn't sound like a fight just yet.

Yeosang jerked fully awake when the direness of the situation finally reached his brain. When he hissed at Wooyoung to take refuge in the closet, Wooyoung sprung to his feet faster than he had ever been before. He ducked into the closet cluttered with Yeosang's clothes, books, and cleaning utensils. As he pulled the doors shut in front of him, he saw Yeosang slither under the bed on his stomach.

They were not a second too early. The moment Wooyoung held his breath and retreated into the darkness of the closet with his hands pressed to his lips, the room's door flew open. Its bang against the wall made him flinch, but he knocked nothing over.

"I'm telling you to leave it be! Only some lonely scholars live under my roof! Nobody with enough money worth to steal would ever even as much as glance at them!"

With thin breaths, Wooyoung listened to Ada complain. She must have followed the bandits into the room. As long as she lamented, she was healthy.

"We just shot an arrow at a boy up here," a gruff male voice replied. When they spotted said arrow embedded in the wall, Ada gasped in offence.

"More for me to fix! Why do you people make life for those of us who already have so little extra hard?"

Heavy steps thumped through the room. They closed in on Wooyoung and he forced back his terrified squeaks. His heart hammered in his chest and he could barely breathe, but he allowed no gasp to escape his lips.

"My men saw a wayfarer with one of your residents last night. He looked too well kept to belong to the lowlives of the city."

"I'm telling you-"

Wooyoung didn't hear the rest of Ada's sentence when the doors in front of him got ripped open. With terrified eyes, he stared up at the tall man. Beard stubble shadowed his chin and cheeks. His dark eyes were vicious, like those of a snake under his hood. Wooyoung's gaze flinched between his triumphant look and the knife on the man's belt.