The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) Read Free Page A

they pass to pray to their spirits for protection, help, sanity for his friend. “You know, we keep going east. East is bad luck, Javor,” he puffs as they start up a slope.
    Javor ignores that, too. At the crest of a ridge, he looks around, sees something that his friend cannot, continues at his same obsessive pace.
    “ You realize,” his friend says, trying hard to keep up, “that we fall farther behind them with every step we take. They’re on horses.” Still no response, so he reaches out and grabs Javor’s arm, forcing him to stop.
    The blonde turns and looks at his friend without recognizing him. “Javor, we’re chasing mounted warriors,” the dark boy repeats. “We’ll never catch up.”
    Javor blinks and looks uncomfortable. He seems to realize where he is, comes out of the trance he can put himself into.
    “ We’ve been chasing them for hours, and we have no more hope now of ever catching up to them than we ever did. Let’s go back home.”
    “ Home?” Javor says it like he has never heard the word before. “No. We have to get the girls back, Hrech.”
    Javor looks at Hrech, his best friend—his only friend—but what he sees is the morning in the village, all the villagers in their best, whitest clothes, the men in their embroidered vests, women in embroidered aprons and garlands of flowers, all standing in a circle around the oak tree on top of the holy hill.
    He remembers how Vorona, the shaman, led the villagers in the hymn to Zaria, the heavenly bride of the sun, to pull the sun over the horizon. They lifted freshly-cut maple branches and sang to the kupalo , the spirits who came out of the forest at the end of winter to spend the summer under the growing grain. The sun rose; Javor saw Elli wearing flowers in her hair, dancing with the other marriageable girls in a separate circle around Grat, the popular girl who had been chosen to be kupailo . The kupailo girl threw out wreaths of flowers; the girls who caught them would be married by fall. The kupailo was supposed to be the most beautiful, but Javor thought Elli was prettier than Grat.
    Javor watched intently, hoping and at the same time dreading that Elli would catch a wreath. Before she could, they heard a rapid drumming noise. Someone yelled “horsemen!”
    Down the hill, in front of a cloud of dust, mounted men rode fast toward the village. Javor counted: five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Immediately, the villagers dropped their maple branches and ran for their homes—there was no time to get to the holody , the wooden stockade around the low hill. Riders were invariably soldiers, and that meant trouble.
    The women hid in their huts while the men gathered in the centre of the village. The riders reined in hard enough to make their horses rear. They were all armoured and helmeted, with long black hair and beards. They all wore leather armour reinforced with iron strips and studs. Each had a shield on his back, straps over each shoulder, a sword at his side and a small battle-axe on his saddle.
    The leader was a large man. In their armour, his shoulders looked to Javor to be wider than any he had ever seen, and his bare forearms rippled with muscle. He bore a horrible scar across his nose. He barked “Who  headman here is?” in a strong, strange accent.
    Roslaw stepped forward. “We are a peaceful village, sir. We want no trouble.”
    The rider stared at him. “I Krajan am, Lord of this region in the name of King Bayan,” he barked. “This village owe tribute to Bayan, King of the Avars, Overlord of the Empire.”
    “ But Maurice is the Roman emperor,” said Old Oresh. The oldest man in the village, he looked up at the man on horseback, swaying a little.
    Krajan guided his horse over to Oresh. So fast Javor could hardly see it, Krajan struck Oresh with an iron bar. The old man toppled face-first into the ground and lay still. From a hut, a woman screamed.
    “ Rome dead is!” Krajan bellowed. “Bayan supreme is! This