Naura Vallka: Legenda Di 1232

The first roof collapsed before Naura understood that the bells were not warning the village anymore.

They were ringing because the bell tower itself was burning.

A beam split above her, showering the lane with sparks. Naura threw herself against the mud wall of the cooper’s house as a horse screamed somewhere beyond the smoke. The sound ended abruptly, followed by men shouting and the hard clatter of iron striking iron.

“Lio!”

Her cousin’s name tore from her throat.

No answer came.

The lane of Luruk had been clear at dawn. Traders used it to reach the ford across the Sungai Luruk, leading pack mules loaded with salt, wool, and iron tools toward the northern estates. Now carts lay overturned, shutters burned, and the packed earth was covered with ash, broken pottery, and dark patches that were too thick to be water.

Naura was twelve years old, barefoot, and carrying a kitchen knife she had taken from her aunt’s table. The blade trembled in her hand. She hated that it did.

“Naura!” her mother had shouted before the house roof caught fire. “Find Lio and go to the trees. Do not come back.”

But their home stood at the eastern end of the village, near the old well. Lio had been sleeping in the storage shed when the raiders entered. Naura had seen him run there when the first arrows came over the palisade.

She could still hear her mother coughing behind the smoke.

Naura pushed away from the wall.

A man in a quilted coat appeared at the far end of the lane. His face was wrapped in a strip of red cloth, leaving only his eyes visible. He carried a short sword and a torch. Behind him, two others dragged an old woman from a doorway. One of them struck her with the butt of a spear when she refused to release a sack of grain.

Naura crouched beside an overturned cart.

The raiders were not soldiers in a proper formation. They moved in knots, shouting over one another, taking whatever could be carried. Yet they had watched the road. They had blocked the bridge and posted men near the southern track. This was not a sudden quarrel between villagers. Someone had chosen Luruk because its merchants traveled under the protection of a distant lord whose men were nowhere to be seen.

Naura did not understand the politics. She understood that the armed men knew exactly where to stand.

She crawled through spilled barley, pressing her palms into the dirt. A horse’s hooves struck the ground on the other side of the cart. The animal’s breath came in frightened bursts. Naura kept still until the rider passed, then slipped toward the storage shed.

The shed had collapsed inward.

Its roof lay across the doorway, burning along one edge. Smoke seeped through the gaps. Naura dropped the knife into her teeth and clawed at the thatch and broken poles. The wood was hot enough to blister her fingers. She wrapped her sleeve around her hand and pulled again.

“Lio!” she whispered. “Answer me.”

Something shifted beneath the rubble.

“Naura?”

His voice was thin.

“I’m here.”

“My leg.”

She found him wedged beneath a fallen beam, one ankle twisted under a crate. Blood ran down his cheek from a cut above his eyebrow. He was eight years old and trying not to cry because their uncle had once told him that crying made a man useless.

Naura set the knife between her teeth and gripped the beam. She pulled until her shoulders burned. It did not move.

“Move it,” Lio said.

“I am.”

“Move it harder.”

She almost laughed, but the smoke caught in her throat. Naura shifted her feet, braced her back against the wall, and pushed with both legs. The beam rolled a finger’s width. Lio dragged himself free, screaming when his ankle scraped against the stones.

A shout sounded outside.

“They’re in the shed!”

Naura snatched up the knife and seized Lio by the collar.

“Can you walk?”

He nodded too quickly.

“Then walk.”

They stumbled through the rear wall, where the fire had eaten a hole into the vegetable garden. Behind the shed, the land fell toward the river. The open ground offered no cover except rows of dead cabbages and a low fence.

At the far side, three raiders were searching the gardens.

Naura pulled Lio beneath the fence. A bolt struck the soil near her hand. She bit down on a cry and dragged him toward the irrigation ditch. Mud filled her knees. Lio slipped and fell face-first.

“Get up.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“My ankle - ”

Naura looked back. Through the smoke, one of the men had seen them. He raised his crossbow.

Naura grabbed a stone and threw it at the nearest horse instead.

The animal reared. Its rider cursed and lost his grip on the reins. The crossbow bolt flew wide. Naura hauled Lio into the ditch as the horse crashed against the fence, splintering it.

They crawled along the ditch toward the riverbank. Naura’s palms were cut by gravel. Lio’s breath came in wet sobs. Behind them, the raiders shouted, but the fire had begun to spread across the gardens, and the rising smoke confused their pursuit.

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