C2 Chapter 2

The other northerling looked at Brenn with a confused look and raised his sword to him. ”What are you doing, Ragnir?”

Brenn's hand went to the sword at his waist and the sword wasn't there. He imagined it laying on the ground where he had seen the brown spider.

Another tall northerling ran up behind the first one and kicked in the door. Brenn heard screams from within the house and moved to see them. There was a mother with her face behind a scarf. She held two small children behind her. There was a large kitchen knife in her hand. The second northerling went to them and the mother lashed out with her knife.

Brenn punched the soldier who stood outside the house, and the soldier staggered back and tripped so that he landed on his ass and dropped his sword. Brenn took the sword and went into the house where the second soldier was tearing away at the woman's dress. Brenn didn't remember the action, only the sound of a blade tearing through pork and then a thud as a heavy body hit the ground.

A pair of large hands wrapped around his neck from behind and squeezed. Brenn tried gasping for air but couldn't, and the hands wrenched him backward. He fell and the sword he held skidded across the worn wood floor of the small house. The other soldier picked it up and came at Brenn, but the mother jumped on the man's back and plunged her kitchen knife into his neck. He fell on Brenn with all the weight of a full-grown steer.

The woman helped move the body off of Brenn and then helped Brenn stand.

”Thank you,” Brenn said.

”We owe you our lives,” said the woman. ”You speak Kalaea.”

Brenn nodded. ”I need to get you somewhere safe.”

Then a trumpet sounded three long blasts and Brenn went outside and looked to the southeast. There on a low rise was Kammun's Soduqir army—all two thousand soldiers. In front of the army was the prophet himself mounted on a black horse and covered in black robes and a black hood that concealed his face.

Another horn sounded, this one low and long, blown from the lips of Andreas Rygg.

”Ranks!” shouted the captain. ”Fall back and bresten your berths!”

The hum of the raid shifted in weight and steadiness as the northerlings stepped away from their bloody work and rushed outside the village boundary, leaving behind bleeding bodies and piles of loot.

Brenn stayed behind and leaned against the wall of the small house. Another brown spider—perhaps the same one—crawled beside his face into a small hole in the dried mud and disappeared. Brenn peeked around the house to watch the armies face one another. He bit his lip.

A memory seized him and he shut his eyes as his legs gave out and he slumped into the dirt. In his mind he traveled to a place far away and long ago. The place was filled with smoke and debris. He was trying to walk but his knee was broken and he couldn't help but step on bodies wherever he went, and somewhere in the dark a small voice cried out, Brenn, don't leave me.

Tlamuq led the northerling charge, striding faster than any man from either army, scowling at the Soduqir before him. In his left hand was a small iron shield and in his right as a long ash spear with a spear tip.

Within the Soduqir army, Katheer Alzia stood upon a large boulder with his tall shield. His fellow soldiers rushed onward below him. Katheer spied the dark Tlamuq and the growing distance between him and the pale northerlings. Katheer lifted his longbow made from the horns of a wild goat and knocked a long arrow. He sent a short prayer to God that he would hit his mark, then drew. He pulled the bowstring to his chest so that the steel arrowhead touched the bow at his fingers. He released, the bow groaned, the arrow soared.

The arrow drove against Tlamuq's thick leather belt and ricocheted to his right after snapping in half. Tlamuq stopped to look down and saw a small cut below his navel seeping with a few drops of blood. He wiped it away with a finger and turned to see that the northerlings stared at him in horror, having seen him come so close to death. Tlamuq held up a bloody finger and laughed, and the others laughed as well.

The northerlings gripped their spears and clashed them against their shields and with the clamor they shouted at the prophet's army. Their uproar and their stampeding shook the ground as the footsteps of Gemgar, and the Soduqir army advanced as the sand trembled beneath them. Then the trembling became a thundering as the two armies closed together.

The prophet rode in front of his army with head and face disguised behind a black hood. The stallion he sat astride whinnied and chomped at its bit and the prophet plled at the reins to still it. He held up his right arm and the soldiers behind him drew their weapons.

Ulfhrem shouted his own order before the prophet had the honor of making the first move. ”Kill every last one of those sand-loving cheedheads!” he screamed, and the northerlings charged on. Then the prophet gave the signal, and the Soduqir met the northerlings in the middle.

As the armies rushed to the coming onslaught, Brenn came back to the present moment and found his sword on the ground. As he fastened the belt around his waist he watched the prophet. The hooded man observed the battle but didn't fight, not yet. Brenn's sword vibrated as it always did, but being so close to the prophet now the sword seemed alive and anxious to be used. A feeling within him told him to be ashamed for not joining his countrymen in battle, but he pressed it down within himself and went back to the woman with the two children.

Dust rose among the thousands of pounding feet and the air filled with screams on both sides. The armies met in the middle like two waves crashing at sea.

They heard the battle from within the house. Umi tried to keep singing, but her voice broke, and she could make little more than a whisper. Farod held his younger sister's hand tightly, and Ameena felt the flutter of her mother's heart as she leaned against her chest. The battle seemed to have left the inner village, but the fighting was still close enough so that they could hear the harsh words of the tall men as they cut down the holy army. The sounds of war mixed with itself until no sound could be known from another and the noise became the loud hum of a swarm of bees.

Baba yelled outside the house. ”Go! I'll kill you! Don't—”

There was a sound like a knife through pork, a thud like a sack of wheat flour dropping to the ground, harsh foreign words, and a laugh. Then silence. Umi choked, put her hands on her children's mouths, and held them like vices until Ameena squirmed and struggled to breathe. Umi held her still.

The door flew open with a crack of shattered wood and landed in the house. Dusty light flooded the place, and Ameena squinted in the sunlight. A large pale man stood in the doorway. Every muscle on his large frame pulsed with strength. His legs and arms were cedar trunks. Piercing blue eyes looked down on the family with hunger, and the tall man stepped over Baba's body as it leaked blood from the hole in its abdomen.

Umi screamed, ”Get away!” and jumped to her feet, jerking her children up with her.

The tall man only smiled. His broad chest was covered in dirty metal armor, and he undid the straps as he approached. The chest plate fell to the floor with a loud thump.

Umi shoved her children away and took hold of Farod's knife, and the tall man rushed to her and grabbed her by the wrist. He laughed through his braided beard and pulled her close to him.

Farod yelled, ”Leave her alone!” and ran at the man and kicked and beat at him with small ten-year-old fists. The tall man laughed harder and slapped Farod across the face with the back of his large white hand. Farod fell, his bottom lip bleeding, his nose broken. He didn't move as he lay in a limp crumple on the floor.

”Under the bed,” Umi said. The tall man had both her hands in one of his, and she grimaced in pain at the slightest movement. ”Under the bed, Ameena.”

Ameena obeyed and crawled beneath the large bed, now toppled over beside the door, making a small triangle of space. There were clumps of dust and a spider's web there with its maker sitting in the center. Ameena didn't think to scream because of it. She watched the large booted feet from beneath the bed shuffle on the wood floor, then jumped an inch as Umi screamed.

The doorway darkened for a moment, and Ameena saw two more feet enter, just as large as the others. They wore the same boots and trousers as the tall man hurting her mother, and they spoke in the tall men's language. Ameena covered her ears and closed her eyes.

There was a thump, and the floor shook as one of the tall men fell. Ameena opened her eyes. A tall man lay on the floor, staring at her with blank eyes, his throat open, and oozing red blood. His lips parted as if he were speaking, and then they stopped moving forever.

Umi wept. The second tall man helped her to her feet and brought her a chair to sit on.

”It's fine now,” the man said in Kalaea. ”You're okay. Everything is okay. And your son will be fine. Look, the man is dead, he can't hurt you.”

The good tall man's arm was bleeding where the other man had cut him below the shoulder. A sword lay bloody on the floor. Ameena heard it hum softly, like a bumblebee.

The man patted Umi's shaking hands and moved to pick up Farod. In the man's massive arms and against his giant frame, Farod was an infant. ”Follow me,” the man said.

Umi held her arms out for Farod, but the man shook his head.

”I'll carry him. We need to get you somewhere safe. Trust me.”

Umi nodded and grabbed Ameena's hands, pulling her from beneath the bed, and scooped her up altogether. The tall man carried Farod through the door with Umi following.

”Cover her eyes,” said the man, and Umi did so.

”Where are you taking us?” she asked.

Ameena focused on her mother's breathing and the bubum-bubum-bubum of her heart.

”Just outside the village.”

Captain Idar Bell launched his long spear and it struck through the helmet of Ayyid Almina. The spearpoint tore through the metal and into the bone and onward to the brain, and Ayyid fell as the light left him. He was the first casualty of the Battle of Isaf.

Aslak Tandberg watched Ayyid die and ran after him to claim the abandoned curved sword, but Abdul Lateef, a friend of Ayyid, saw Aslak pulling the sword from Ayyid's dead hand. Aslak bent down and his backplate rose to expose a bit of bare waist, and Abdul threw his spear and it landed in the small of Aslak's back, driving through until it emerged from his belly. Aslak fell over Ayyid and in less than a second the two dead men were swarmed by more looting soldiers.