The Crusaders

The Crusaders 2

Before they carried out the plan that night, Nabel couldn't hold it anymore. She knew she had to open up her feelings for Prince Davi to Gizza before the time of the attack, not minding the gravity of what her action would be but didn't know how to go about it. Yet she didn't want him dead: to her, a good prince as Davi shouldn't be harmed let alone killed.

"No, he shouldn't be killed, he can't die" she said aloud to herself, shaking her head in disagreement over her lovely prince to be dead with other men.

She summoned courage and approached her dear friend, Gizza, to tell her about her secret feelings for the prince as why he should be spared.

Gizza was sitting down quietly meditating on the plans to attack, using her grandmother's dead to put a seal on it, assuring herself inwardly that truly all men deserved to die, when Nabel got to her and revealed her heart desires. When she finished, Gizza got up and gave her a thunderous slap on her face, which made her fall on the ground.

"How dare you speak of love for the men folk?" Gizza angrily queried.

"I don't mean love for them, I rather speak of one man, one good man that has refused to leave my mind. I speak of no other person but the crown prince of Arika, prince Davi. He is exceptional, let's spare his life" Nabel said, while using her right palm to rob off the hot pain on her jaw as a result of Gizza's slap.

"This night , we're going to risk our lives to begin the deadly crusade of ending the entire existence of the male folk for our sake, our peace of mind, our safety so on and you're here thinking about mere feelings. Don't be weak, Nabel. I demand that you remember the oath you took, the promise you made to me. You pledged your allegiance, remember? You will stick by my side on this cause" She said, with a mix of authority and friendship. Nabel, just nodded pitifully, got up, dusted her cloths and walked to a corner and sat down without saying a word.

Gizza shook her head, walked up to her and stretched out her hand to help her back to her feet.

"I'm sorry for hitting you, friend" she said. "The rest of the women are ready for this war. I need you by my side to carry out the attack. I need your full concentration" She said.

She looked at Nabel for a while and asked, "You love him so much, don't you? Nabel nodded again and looked away. In her heart, she had lost her softhearted friend, she thought. To her, Gizza had become a beast. This wasn't the innocent friend she shared beautiful memories with back then in Mobi. The innocence, the kindness, the soft heartiness. She shook her head again.

"Then when we storm the palace of Arika, the Prince will be the first to die" Gizza said and left but Nabel remained seated there, sobbing silently.

As her request wasn't granted, Nabel sneaked out from the site that night and headed straight to the palace of Arika. No one noticed her absence, not even Gizza until they were fully prepared to attack the guards at the site

"Where is Nabel?" Gizza asked one of the women.

"She is not here" answered one of them who was looking more determined than Gizza herself. Her name was Zina and was really talented in combat fighting. Gizza looked at her for sometime and said, "Nabel has betrayed us, kill her on sight " she commanded and they all acknowledged .

Thus, they advanced to the site to carry out their plan. The guards were taken unaware as most of them were sleeping and the other few were playing games as they felt they were in max control of the site, "what can women do?". So they never expected the deadly attack that came to them that early morning, that violent knock on the door of their peace and the dragged out of their peace of mind to the mud...

That night, their screams became a dirge to the wind and their blood formed a red ocean. Gizza was killing the guards with a lot of hatred in her heart while Zina was a dancer with sword, dancing through the middle of enemies as her sword kept taking the head of any guard she came across. The rest of the ladies also used their weapons well. Soon the guards all laid dead that night. And as quiet as a mice, they all crept away, and headed to the palace of Arika.

*************

As Gizza and her troops headed to the palace of Arika her mind was filled with so many memories, memories of how her parents died and how her grand mother whom she loved even more than her parents died. She sniffed and kept running, with the desire to butcher swelling up in her stomach. She remembered a story her mother narrated to her one night and had wanted on several occasions to remove the story from her mind but all to no avail. Firstly the story her mother told her was not a true life story yet Gizza had pictured reality into it and had allowed the story to determine how she felt most of the times. The story had it of how men became more powerful than women and why women had been subjected under the leadership and authority of men.

The story of Cheche was a popular story in the village of Mobi but to Gizza it was a worst story. The story had it that the god of creation got tired of having only gods around him and he rose one morning and asked his fellow gods that it was time for them to create humans. The other gods did not understand his words and so they asked, "What is a human?" the god of creation had laughed heartily and then told them that while he was sleeping he saw something, something he had never seen and that thing said her name was a woman. The god of destiny had asked her what her mission was and what she wanted from him and the woman had asked him to make her exist. "I want to exist" the woman had said.

When the god of destiny had finished with the story of what he saw the other gods signed heavily and one of them began, "Then do so god of destiny, create this woman and we will be happy to see her exist"

The god of destiny was happy with their response and so he decided to create the woman.

There was a man called Cheche (Then man hadn't existed) who decided to go to the god of destiny to plead with him to create him before the woman. When he appeared to the god of destiny he had made the same request the woman made and had asked the god of destiny to create him first. The god of destiny had told him how he had accepted to create the woman who first came to him first before making any further creation but the man said that the woman had given her permission. The god of destiny wasn't satisfied with that and so he asked him to go and get the woman's hair as proof of her consent. Cheche went back to the creation world and made the woman fall in love with him and while she was sleeping on his arms he plucked her hair and went back to the god of destiny with it.

When the god of destiny saw him with the hair he said, "Behold here is the person that must come first. Any other creation after him will be under him, including the woman who had first came to me"

He gave the man the authority and created him first. When the woman woke up she could not find her lover and she decided to go to the god of creation to remind him of the promise he made to her; the promise to create her, to make her exist. When she reached the aboard of the god of creation she was shocked to meet Cheche comfortably seated with the god of destiny and dinning with him. She realised that he had been created but this didn't make her angry. She only begged the god of creation to create her too so she could be with her lover in the land of the living. The god of destiny pleased with her kind heart after realising that Cheche cheated her decided to create her and made a promise to create more humans through her. The woman was happy and she joined her lover, Cheche in the world of the living. They were both happy.

When Gizza's mother had finished telling her this story she expected Gizza to smile and be happy with the story's happy ending but Gizza hissed and said, "Men are deceivers. It is obvious he never truly loved her for if he did he would not have deceived her. Her mother had tapped her on the shoulder teasingly and reminded her that that was just a story and that it never happened.

Gizza refused to believe that the story never happened and each time she found herself seated where the story was being told she would stand up and leave.

Another version of the story that really aggravated Gizza the most was the one her grandmother told her. She had told her that the woman fell in love with Cheche and willingly gave him her hair after he lied to her about what he wanted to do with it and when the woman found out she had been deceived and requested to be created too Cheche told the god of destiny that he would like to have two women existing with him but the god of destiny had refused and had made the promise to give the woman the honor of bringing forth his other creations from the creation world to the land of the living.

In Gizza's mind as they made their way to the palace she was detested with the man's polygamous nature and swore never to allow a man lay his hands on her. This hatred in her heart for men did not start the day her grandmother was rapped rather it started the day she first heard the story and she had wondered why the people of Mobi enjoyed telling that particular story. She hated the fact too that most people that told the story were women and they had no regret when telling the story, instead they enjoyed it as they told it and the women present would clap after the story had ended. Gizza had told her mother after she had finished telling her the story that the story did not make any sense to her. At first when her hatred for the story started showing her father cautioned her and warned her against allowing irrelevant things get at her that much. She waved off this memory and had to believe she was right to allow the story determine how she felt when she witnessed her father hitting her mother. That day she was peeping through the window and was seeing how he was beating her with no atom of hesitation. Gizza had cried that day and what baffled her was how her mother denied being beaten when she asked her. Her mother had sent her on an errand before the beating and so she thought she did not witness it. She did not go on the errand immediately she was sent because she forgot something and had returned to collect it when she started hearing the argument between her father and her mother before the beating.

As Gizza and her fellow slaves made their way to the palace of Arika she tried so hard to remove these memories from her head.

*************

When Nabel sneaked out of the site that early morning, she had run to the palace of Arika to alert the Prince and hence win his heart to love her in return and they would elope to a far away land, get married and have beautiful kids. She had quite figured out everything. To her, it's better to choose a good prince over a friend she couldn't attest for her character anymore. It's better to go and have a peaceful life with the one she loved.

So when she got to the palace of Arika, in other to make her way in, she captured a maid who came out to draw water outside the palace gate and made her unconscious. She went on to quickly removed her uniform and wore it to disguise herself. Thus it helped her to enter the palace but she didn't know where on Earth she would look for Prince Davi. So she devised a plan to enable her to know where the Prince was. She then deceived one of the guards who leaked to her that the prince was in the cell. She knew that to visit the cell was another big risk but she was determined to rescue the innocent young man whom she had come to love very much and she thought of a way do that.

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Gizza and her troops crept into the camp outside the palace of Arika. They knew that to destroy the Army at the camp should be the first so as achieve their desired victory. Hence they first seized the machine of fire balls by silently beheading the guards positioned on the machines toward the camp and lightened the balls. The lightening of the heavy balls made soldiers at the camp to react . They sounded the alarm bell but it was too late, Gizza and her horde released the fire balls and they poured heavy fire on the tents of soldiers, burning them all to the ground. The screaming of the soldiers reached to the palace of Arika and the king as well as the queen woke up immediately. They looked through the window and were shocked to see the camp was burning.

**************

Nabel, who was still inside, under disguise, knew that Gizza and her squad had arrived and she hastened her steps to locate the cell. No one could notice her, no one even cared about the cell or who was going in because of the fire burning the camp. Everyone in the palace was scampering for safety. Inside the cell, prince Davi could hear commotion all over and was wondering what it could be but resigned to fate since he was under lock and key.

Meanwhile, Gizza and Zina with over fifty brave women headed to the palace of Arika while the remaining women stayed back to destroy the camp entirely and finish off the wounded soldiers who laid half dead screaming for help.

In the palace of Arika, the gate keepers who saw dark shadows approaching tried to stop the invasion but were all bounded and killed. The palace experienced a m******e of guards as well as male and female servants were butchered mercilessly like animals as blood gushed out in mass.