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

village owe tribute and support to men of Bayan! You!” he pointed his cudgel at Roslaw. “Food for my men and horses! Bread, meat, wine! Now!”
    Terrified, Roslaw ran for his hut. “Borys, some feed for their horses. Hurry!”
    Javor heard a yell, rough laughter and girls’ screams. One of the Avars had dismounted and was pulling two young women by the hair toward his fellows. With a shock, Javor realized they were Grat and Elli. Stupidly, they had hidden behind a haystack to watch what was going on, and the rider had caught them. The girls struggled and cried uselessly. The rider brought them to his leader.
    Krajan dismounted and grabbed Elli by the chin. His mouth twisted into a horrible smile.
    “ Elli!” Javor yelled and lunged toward them, but his father, Swat, caught him from behind, pinning his arms and pushing him to the ground.
    “ No, Javor! They’ll kill you!” Javor managed to break free in time to see the girls’ mothers run out, screaming. Another raider stepped in front of them and savagely hit them with a heavy club. All the other villagers groaned, but no one had the courage to move. The women tried to get up, but the Avar hit Grat’s mother on the head again. She fell into the dust and did not move. Elli’s mother backed away on hands and knees, crying.
    Roslaw and some other men ran up with bags of food. “No, please, leave the girls alone! Take the food, take it all, but leave our daughters!”
    Krajan backhanded Roslaw savagely. The warrior’s heavy leather and steel gauntlet made a sickening crushing sound as it connected with the headman’s face, and Roslaw slumped into the dirt, bleeding from the nose and mouth.
    Mladen, Elli’s father, sprang forward with a scythe, screaming “Everyone together! We outnumber them!” Faster than anyone could see, another raider drew a sword and slashed down. The scythe clattered to the hard ground, Mladen’s severed hand still gripping it. The Avars cheered and laughed; Mladen fell to his knees, gasping and staring in disbelief at the empty space at the end of his arm. Blood spurted over and over again onto the ground, splashing Elli and Grat until the Avar thrust his sword into Mladen’s neck, then kicked his body down. Elli’s mother shrieked. The village men cried out, but still no one dared move.
    Krajan, the leader, looked down from his horse. “We take these,” he declared flatly. His men packed the food into their saddlebags; two of them tied the girls’ hands in front of them, then loaded them, crying but complacent, onto the backs of their horses. Laughing, the Avars rode down the hill and into the forest.
     
    “ We can’t save them.” Hrech’s insistent tone brought Javor back to the moment. He realized they were both still in their dress clothes, bright white now stained with mud and sweat and grass. “Even if you do catch up to them, you can’t fight them,” Hrech said. “There are at least 10 of them, all of them heavily armed. And they know how to fight and they don’t hesitate to kill anyone.”
    “ I can’t just do nothing,” Javor said, his voice hoarse. He swatted absent-mindedly at a fly near his face. “I have to try to get them back. No one else is doing anything.”
    Hrech nodded, remembering how the village women had come out of their huts to join their men as the Avars rode away. Only when the thundering sound of hoof beats had faded into the distance, when the raiders were surely gone,  did the women begin to wail and the men to cry. 
    Elli’s mother helped Grat’s mother to her feet. She turned to scream at Roslaw, the headman. “Do something!” Blood smeared the dirt on her face from where the Avar had knocked her down. “They’ve killed my husband! They’ll kill my daughter! They’ll rape her! Get them back!”
    “ What can we do?” Roslaw protested. He held one hand over his eye and his own blood seeped between his fingers.
    “ We can all go after them!” said one man.
    “ They’ve