Finan the Agile Fanfic: Shadowkin LAST KINGDOM Fanfiction COMPLETE

Chapter 39: Finan

Late Summer 920

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The lean month was on them, the time between midsummer and harvest. Fortunately for the people living on Ceinid's land there had been no raids so far, so the population could eke out their winter stores, supplementing their diet with prosperous herring catches.

Osthryth, on her one of her daily dawn patrol of the lands noticed the lone figure riding from the north west and met him, Taghd's seax to hand, at the ridge of land north of the Tuide.

It was Aeswi. He had come with the same summons as the hapless messenger had come with a fortnight before.

"I will tell you what I have told the fool you sent, I will not go to Dunnottar," Osthryth said, stubbornly. "I have land and people who rely on me." But Aeswi's presence was not unwelcome. Indeed, she invited him back to the hall and bade Rhia, the kitchen maid, to prepare food from what they had.

"If not for Constantine, then for your son," Aeswi asked, tucking into the smoked herring and stonies, made from crushed root vegetables and baked on stones in a hot fire.

"Is he well?" Osthryth asked, at once.

"He misses you, surely," Aeswi told him. Osthryth was pacing the kitchen again, slowly, and looking out of the window. He had never seen her like that before, and wondered as to the grief she must be suffering.

"Then he can be sent here, as I asked, when Ceinid and I...when Ceinid - " Osthryth broke off, and Aeswi ignored his platter that came tumbling to the stone floor in his haste to approach her. For she was crying.

Osthryth barely cried - in fact, she could not remember the last time she had done so. But these tears were borne of guilt, of her reluctance to come to Berric, to labour here under duress with the appreciation of the love that her husband showed her mean recompense. Guilt from leaving her inexpert managing of the farmlands, which Munadd, the estate's manager and ancient friend of Ceinid, never complained about, but from what Osthryth could tell created more work for him, to do what she did best, and fight, a selfish indulgence, she knew, when her responsibilities were at Berric.

The people had, over the years she had been their, inexplicably worked their way into her heart. And if she were to leave now, when there was no lord for them to serve, what would become of them? This is what she told Aeswi, as he sat beside her and comforted her.

"I will leave, I will tell him," Aeswi told Osthryth. "But please, I beg you to reconsider. The king wishes for you to tell him of your grief."

And Osthryth watched as her friend left, over the ridge of hills that led to Melrose monastery and away to the southern banks of the Forth.

But that was not the end of it.

A week later, just as the people were preparing for the harvest, and as Osthryth rode her horse in the dawnlight on the perimeter of Ceinid's land, she heard shouts from behind her. It was Caltigar, Munadd's son, and he too was on a horse, riding with haste towards her.

"Reivers!" he shouted, not looking at Osthryth directly, but to the west, along the course of the Tuide. And he was right. A dozen or more men were riding in haste in their direction, and her farms would be the first to be hit.

Bastards. They knew exactly when to strike, when the farms were beginning to fill. No, Osthryth told herself. My people's hard work will not be what you steal.

She had no sword now, and though she had thought about replacing Buaidh, lost at the battle in which her elder brother had won Bebbanburg, it was not something she had prioritied. A mistake, a damned mistake, Osthryth told herself, although nothing could be done about it now.