Blasphemy [Finan the Agile]

CHAPTER xix. 'Dead Men Tell No Tales'

ﾟ❁ུ۪ °ₒ 𓂂 ˚ 𓂂 ₒ ° ₒ 𓂂 ˚˖⋆

CHAPTER xix. 'Dead Men Tell No Tales'

—

Freydis trudged through the blood-stained forest floor with her sword sheathed onto her back, and saex held lightly within her anxious grasp. The battle had long swept onto ground yet to be touched when the Irish-rogue had additionally crossed its bath, and bodies littered the floor like fallen leaves admist the erstwhile autumn season. Whenever she met a long-haired carcass lying on the ground, her heart skipped a solemn beat as she checked for Myfanwy, fortunately, she had only been met with incapacitated Danes instead. The Irish-rogue was wholly unsure where she had left the Welsh woman, however, her walk back had been six minutes when it only took four minutes to initially get to Vikar. Myfanwy either betrayed her, or she was dead – Freydis doubted she had lost the woman by her own accord, for Freydis was well-taught in navigation. The Irish-rogue would often act as a representative for Linnasburgh when her elder siblings were otherwise engaged, so she would spend weeks traversing across Irland to speak with the Christian lords.

Sighing, the woman determined that finding Myfanwy amongst all of the bodies would have been a lost cause. She continued her trek, hugging her forearm to her aching ribs and lifting her food more ostentationally as her bones ached, and lost movability. As she approached the treeline, she was met more often with living bodies than the outnumbering dead ones. Warriors still wild with battle-craze observed her like hawks stalking prey, others, more disheartened, hardly looked her in the eye as they mourned their dead and held the hands of the dying. Freydis hardly noticed that her threats to Vikar had been deemed true – that the battle had been won in favor of the Saxons, and their allies.

An incessent rumbling went through Freydis' dirtied, and blood-stained ears as she searched through the sea of corpses, and mourners in search of her men. She searched for Uhtred, the infamous Dane-slayer at fault for the extravagant win of this great battle. She looked for Sihtric, the only Dane Freydis grew fond of with a gregarious soft spot for a Saxon doxy called Ealhswith. She searched for Osferth, the kind-hearted monk with a sharp-witted holy-Devil's tongue. But most importantly, she searched for her Irishman – the man of a thousand paradigms she oh-so thoroughly despised, yet found herself living within the man of a worrying crave for ale. Yet, whilst she so utterly despised most men for their overreliance on ale, she found herself craving his fruit-scented lips, despite, for so long, being unable to imagine anything as revolting as kissing another man since her encounters with Skjold.

Freydis approached a one-eyed man with a large wound adorning his jugular, and crouched ahead of her. "What is your name?" She inquired.

He looked up at her with his single, beady-eyed iris and observed the features of the woman's face, "Alfred." Said the young man, his armor glinting in the barest revelations of the sun peering through the trees.