Finan the Agile Fanfic: Shadowkin LAST KINGDOM Fanfiction COMPLETE

Chapter 67: The Night Before

Brunanburh 26th October 937

"Who is there?" Candles guttered as a door opened. The king had instructed that he be left all night in the chapel to pray.

"Who?" he added, as a chink of metal sounded behind him.

"There are no guards," the voice replied. "You trust yourself to God alone?"

From his kneeling position before the altar, King Aethelstan, grandson of the great king Alfred, on the eve of the battle that had been long overdue, drew himself to his feet. He crossed to the altar and took up one of the candle standards. The tallow made a trail of stench between the altar and the nave.

"Who?" he demanded.

Osthryth. She had been flung on the back of a horse and brought away from Ceastre in the night.

"And you would prevent Aethelstan?" Bishop Oswald's question dug into her mind as Osthryth bounced up and down on the well-fed beast. It had been the key question, Osthryth knew, the only question. But she had given her nephew the only answer: that she had been a coward, and had run, run to her blood family when the prospect of their elimination fell into a heavy reality.

"No," she had told him, truthfully. "But he has the will to do it - even if he knew his limits."

Another jolt, and Osthryth felt a hand on her back. The rider - her abductor - had done a good job to keep her on the beast. Clearly someone who would prefer her to be alive and not dead, someone who had deprived her of her weapons, although though they were not at her hip Osthryth recognised the clinking of her own blades's scabbards just beyond her.

Oswald had smiled and had embraced his aunt. "You may be a Saxon born Northhumbrian, you may have grown in Alba and Eireann but your heart is Mercia."

"As is yours, thanks to Aethelred; your namesake of course."

"And had Offa not split the forces, you would not be Bishop."

It occurred to Osthryth then that it could be her nephew who had been involved in this; that Bishop Oswald, elder son of Uhtred, had arranged for her to be out of the way of this mighty battle that would come.

"I love you, Aunt," Oswald had told her. "I hope you get your wish."

"What?"

"That you find a way with father, to be at peace before he dies."

Him and Uhtred? Osthryth felt the legs of the horse underneath her slow slightly. The ground had been flat, and even now, the decrease in speed did not suggest they were going uphill. So, a plot with her nephew and Uhtred? Had the dear Bishop of Ceastre organised for them to confront one another? It was devious. And yet he was no less than Uhtred's son, and she felt angry for she remembered Oswald's next words.

"My wish is that for you and Uhtred. Can it never be resolved?"

"I cannot see it." At this, Oswald, the ultimate antithesis of his father had shaken his head sadly. Osthryth had taken his hands. He was so like Finan beag, Osthryth remembered, as the horse slowed even more, little Finan, who worked their farm in Berric and was now with Constantine. Like Oswald, young Finan was no warrior. He could handle a blade, yes, but he had little chance of walking off a battlefield. Please, God, Osthryth thought at that moment, have Constantine keep her son out of this battle.

But her son had a liking to try - he had confidence; he had forthrightness. But he had grown up coddled in Dunnottar, pampered with her money paying for his upkeep, and except for his early years beside Osthryth in the saddle, knew nothing of the privations of a warrior.