Finan the Agile Fanfic: Shadowkin LAST KINGDOM Fanfiction COMPLETE

Chapter 64: Benedetta

Ceastre, October 937

It wasn't Aelfkin.

The warrior who had been butchered may once have looked like the younger version of the boy Osthryth had raised to battle all those decades ago. But here, now, this man was not Aelfkin, commander of King Aethelstan's Mercian guard.

As the injured men were brought into the courtyard, Osthryth followed, to a room near the armoury, where priests cried out to one another that they were needed, and more hurried.

Not that they could do very much, Osthryth was convinced, and she watched as the first man who looked so like Aelfkin, was put on his side, his shaking form causing blood to well and seep across the woollen blanket on which he had been placed.

More were arriving, and a shudder came across Osthryth. This was no war, no aim to garner treaty, it was intended by the coaliton of Cymric and Gaelish leaders and kings that this was to be genocide, the eradication of a nation - of the Anglish and Saxon nation that was being called Englaland - an elimination of anyone with the blood of Hengist and Horsa, of the Jutes and the Geats and the Frisians. To free up land for the Norse who would have done this, more land in Dal Riata, she supposed, and Northumbria, the prize.

"It's like St. Jerome's cannibals all over again," Osthryth heard one priest say, as she lingered by the door, unable to look at the butchery, unable to move away.

"What? said the other, clearly confused.

"St. Jerome," began the first priest, seemingly oblivious to his horrendous task in front of him - there could be no chance the once-warrior would recover. "He wrote back to his brother in Rome of the Picts and Scoti, Attacotti and Gaels , who were ranging wild and causing great devastations!"

"I have never heard of the Attacotti," scoffed the first second, as the first plunged his hands into water where steam rose from the surface, before siezing the poor man's left lung and maneouvring it back into the chest cavity.

"Oh, they come from far beyond the northern Roman wall, to the east, south of the lands of the Picts," the first priest said, moving the heart so the second could be repositioned. It was for death, Osthryth realied now, even though she could see that the man was clearly alive, and shuddered every time the priest touched his internal organs.

"And they are cannibals?" the second priest asked, looking at the warrior, doubtfully. "Did they want these men's organs for "taigeis"?"

"They were, in St. Jerome's day," the first laughed, lightly, as if listening to an amusing anecdote and not positioning the circulatory system back into the Anglish warrior. It didn't last long, though, after looking back to the near-corpse.

"It was before we came to these shores," he told the man wistfully, and it was the first time Osthryth thought that she has head a Saxon actually verbalise their origins. All knew it; Bede had written of it of course, but all now knew that this war was not about land or gold or assets, this was to wipe a people out, out of a country, at least, drive them back into the eastern sea, as she had heard King Hywel say all too clearly. And, all too clearly everryone, even Cynddylan, the most likely of them all to turn on them all for his own gain, of Aberffrau and the crown of Gwynedd, had agreed to this aim.

"The Attacotti," mused the first man. But while Osthryth was interested in the name of a people - a Britons, she reasoned - that she had never heard of before, the more pressing matter in her head was the dozen or so warriors, soldiers, who were being brought in, as unfortuate as the first man, brutalised and battered.

Osthryth went to the chapel again, as yet more injured were brought in, and she thought about this place, the metallic smell of blood mingled with the stench of incence made her feel sick. She was in Mercia, at least. Mercia was in her heart - she had fought so long, so many years in the country and may yet still have been there far longer than the deferred Wergild for the death of Eardwulf - exchanged for years of service - if it had not been for Constantine pulling on her soul to return to Alba -