Village

Village - Intro

Coast of Denmark 985 A.D. 

The sweet smell of baked fish and fresh bread filled the small cottage. They ate in comfortable silence, the only sound – the soft lapping of the sea, muffled by the dense night. Asger tore off a chunk of bread and watched the hypnotic flames spend their ephemeral seconds whipping snake-like tongues at the open hearth. Ebba sat back in her chair and held her belly, smiling. She was satiated. Asger reached a hand over and rubbed her swollen midsection. It would be their first.

He slid his hand down to the crease of her leg and smiled a mischievous smile. She returned the smile. He leaned over to kiss her and the door exploded open, the small iron lock ripped from the shattered wood.

Asger jumped to his feet, trying to take in what was happening. Ebba moved back as quickly as someone with child could, her every muscle tensing in fear. Asger reached for the knife on the table. A large man, naked from the waist up, blasted by Asger and fell face first next to the wall. The room was not large and Asger was on the man before he could rise to his feet. He grabbed the man's throat with his massive hands and hauled him to the wall, pressing him against the timber and placing the knife at the man's belly. His head swirled quickly to take in Ebba's position. The door was empty, but he was expecting men to file through at any moment. The sea people's raids had slacked off in the past few seasons, but it was not unheard of on this side of the coast for small cottages like his to be raided by seafarers to the north.

"Weapons woman! Weapons! The door!"

Ebba moved to her right and grabbed a cleaver-like butcher knife. Asger knew she could fight if necessary, and would do so to the death to protect the child. But he could see the terror in her eyes. The stories they had heard of what happened to the women the sea people took.

Asger spun his instant aggression back around to the man.

"Who's with you! How many!"

But the man was not paying him attention. He was focusing on the doorway and the one hinge that it now clung to, hanging slightly askew. The man was pale-white and more frightened than Ebba.

Asger looked down at the ice on the man's beard and bare chest. He looked like he had swam the sea, ice caked everywhere, shaking uncontrollably from the cold, his pale face holding his sunken and terror-filled eyes.

"Answer! Answer! Now, or die!"

Asger did not recognize the man as being from his village. He didn't want to kill a man who was not going to harm him, but he didn't have the luxury of trying to figure this out if more men were about to overtake them. His fist tensed around the knife.

"Asger!" Ebba yelled behind him.

He turned, expecting a fight. Ebba had moved to close the door. She stood with the cracked, wooden door in one hand and the cleaver in the other. The man at knife-point started to whimper like a beaten dog.

Standing outside the doorway was a small girl. She was dressed in a small gown, dirty with mud. Asger looked back at the man. The man was crying. Tears rolled down his face. His body was limp with fear. He was mumbling something to Asger that was not in his tongue. Asger let the man's throat slide from his grip, as he watched the door from the corner of his eye. If the man moved toward him or Ebba, he would kill him immediately. He glance fleetingly at her belly, a curve of life nestled underneath the cloth.

Ebba looked down at the girl. Hair ragged. Cuts on her face. Mud caked everywhere.

"Poor thing," Ebba said. She put a hand out towards the girl, as if to assure the young one that she was alright now.

The man screamed and made for Ebba. Asger's hand came fast and solid. The knife entered the man's chest, the force behind the blow sweeping the man's feet from under him. There was a loud thud on the dirt floor. Asger followed the man with his arm, kneeling slightly and withdrawing his knife quickly and with as much force as he had used to place it. The man choked on blood as Asger spun to face the door.

He glanced at Ebba, who had screamed when the man came for her. She was silent now, her hand covering her mouth. The little girl had not moved a muscle.

Asger's senses were heightened, his adrenaline pumping. He listened outside for footsteps. Nothing. He looked past the girl, out to the sea, and scanned for firelight on the water. Nothing. Once again, there was no sound save the lapping of the waves on the beach below.

He looked at the girl. Like the man, something was not right with her. He knew that running around outside with no covering on a night like tonight would result in a quick death. So where did these people come from? He had been speaking another tongue.

The girl was carefully watching the dying man. Her face was a blank. No emotion. The man managed to slide his arm around and, spitting blood from the corner of his mouth, point to the girl. But no, he wasn't pointing to the girl. To the bottom of the door. The man's eyes glazed over as death took him.

The firelight from the open hearth cast a dim light through the doorway. Shadows danced around the girl as her gown undulated in the chilly sea breeze.

Ebba moved away from the door. She had been staring intently at the girl. Now she motioned to the girl as she was backing away. She was saying something. Asger's mind was still racing, assessing the threats that might still be lurking beyond the shadows in the doorway. His main supply of weapons were outside. This was where their food was, the sheep, and the boat; he couldn't let them take the boat. Ebba repeated herself louder when she saw Asger wasn't hearing her. Asger stared briefly at Ebba through a frenzied haze of muddled thoughts.

"- not dirt. It's not dirt," Ebba was repeating.

Ebba continued backing away. Asger took a second to study the unmoving girl, this time from head to toe. The first thing he noticed was the lack of expression. Had the man done something to her? Her eyes looked funny somehow. Then her dirty gown. Then her bare feet. No one's bare feet could last more than a rock's throw out there, but here stood a girl with no cover on her feet.

As he stood there, it came to him. He looked down at his knife, still dripping with the dead man's blood. He looked back at the girl.

It's not dirt.

And it wasn't. The firelight swept across her small frame and Asger could see that it was not mud she was caked in, but blood. He instinctively moved back a step. He could see now that her eyes were not just cloaked in shadow. Shadow was their color. The color of night. A slight reflection in them, a circle of eclipsed moonlight around the outer edges.

"Hand me the spikes woman."

Asger's tone was even and calm. He could hear Ebba shuffling through the chest behind him but he did not turn from the girl. He understood what the man was trying to tell him now, but he didn't have time for regret. The man was telling him not to let her in. If only he could have understood.

"Here. Here!" groaned Ebba, her tremulous voice behind him.

He reached behind him and grabbed the spikes and hammer in his left hand. Using his right foot, he slammed the heavy wooden door against the opening. The girl, still standing motionless in the snow, was now hidden behind the door. It was crooked and didn't fit perfectly, but that was fine. He used his massive arms to slam the door back in place and then dropped his knife, working quickly, and hammered the spikes through the edges of the door and into the timber. When he was finished, he got seven more spikes and hammered them in place.

Asger and Ebba stayed awake the entire night to keep the fire burning. They listened in silence for sounds outside. There were none.

Only the lapping of the waves on the rocks and sand.