Who is rushing to the maiden's aid?

Katharina peeked through the slits in her closed helmet. She could see the unfortunate girl chained to a black pole. There was a dark chasm in the rocky slope behind it, which was the entrance to the dragon's lair. She got there on time, thank God. It would have been devastating to have to inform the distraught parents that their daughter had died because she had been late.

Katharina had left her homeland searching for new challenges, and she soon realized that a dark threat lay over this land. People looked around more often than necessary, as if they had something to hide as they walked along the dusty roads. She had attempted several times to determine what was bothering the people. Unsuccessfully.

Katharina began to realize what she had only subconsciously noticed up to that point: she didn't see any adolescent girls anywhere on her journey, and young women only stepped onto the street in their husbands' arms. Katharina tried many times to figure out why people were acting strangely, but nobody wanted to tell her. Until the day ...

Until the day when a woman rushed out of the entranceway of a modest dwelling, uttering a shrill and agitated scream, and lowered herself to her knees in front of Katharina's stallion, wringing her hands in utter despair. She immediately retrained her horse and dismounted, removing the woman from the dust. It was hard for her to understand the crying and mumbling. Her husband, who had rushed over, was able to answer her questions.

The couple's daughter, a girl who had only recently crossed the threshold of adulthood, had been taken away by soldiers and was to be sacrificed to a dragon. The parents were **** and hopeless until they recognized the glowing flame on Katharina's shield, the emblem of the Order of Knights, well known in the south, which supported the poor, the weak and the oppressed.

Katharina promised to save the girl as soon as she understood what had happened. This would not have required the father's insistent pleas, delivered in a heavy southern accent, or the mother's hot tears. After all, she had sworn to protect the weak and fight evil wherever she saw it.