Finan the Agile Fanfic: Shadowkin LAST KINGDOM Fanfiction COMPLETE

Chapter 71: After Brunanburh and Epilogue

Brunanburh, 27th October 937

A man staggered forward and fell into the mud. Beside him, another knelt, nursing his head in his hands.

Around them, though a victory for Aethelstan, though a defeat for the Northern Alliance, men, covered in muck and filth and mud, rain running over bodies that were not joining in the dying screams, as if the heavens wanted to wash away the shame of the day.

Finan beag, some way off, was also kneeling, fending off sporadic lunges from Saxons, before scooping up the older man, his brother of sorts, before sinking back down in the mud, cradling Cellach mac Constantine Ui Alpin.

88888888

Osthryth was standing still, as the battlefield emptied of life. On the horizon, illumunated by the setting sun, square sails were retreating.

A man staggered towards Osthryth, his battle-mind upon him, tore towards her, his axe raised, his feet bogged down in the mud. She didn't see him, lost as she was in her thoughts, fatigue on her limbs, pain in her shoulder. It was beginning to ache now.

Osthryth did not see when someone despached him, for she was making her way, wearily, for the man on the floor. Beside him, not too far away, she glanced the face of Cellach, Constantine's and Mairi's son. She had not been able to save him as she had saved his father.

She looked back to Domnall, then spoke to her son, who looked up to Osthryth, his arm shaking from the effort of holding a shield.

"Where is...Constantine?"

"He...he has fled, Mhathair, with Anlaf. They have...gone."

Osthryth knelt to her son and squeezed at his shoulder, tapping it in a vague way of someone who felt they had to take charge despire being in shock. Domnall was not crying out in pain as he lay dying. His banner, carried in heart, carried in spirit, once adorning the stone which Domhnall had brought from Tara, part of the Lia Fail to sit on the boundary between Dal Riata and Pictland, bore no hint of white on the cloth now, as fingers clutched the flag as those on the flag clasped the cross of Christ.

But she did not go to her dower-husband immediately: there was someone else who she needed to be beside first.

88888888

"I knew you could not resist." Finan stood over her as she knelt beside Domnall. Osthryth began to cry. Evan after everything he knew she had been through, Finan had never known her to cry. She knelt beside Uhtred, whose eyes did not look as if they were looking at her. Or anyone.

"You are not the brother I wamted you to be," Osthryth began, pushing Finan away as she held his face, "But you are my brother, my big brother, who I saw outside Bebbanburg, who swore to take it back."

Uhtred closed his eyes, and then opened them, looking to Finan, then back to Osthryth. His breathing seemed to have steadied, even though it was steadily slower.

"So you, fought?"

"I fought," Osthryth confirmed.

"Am I dying?"

"You've recovered from worse," Finan replied, when Osthryth said nothing. "This?" He glanced to the stomach wound, "Is nothing but a scratch." He moved so Osthryth would not see. It was death; it could be nothing else.

"Anlaf is gone," Osthryth told him, "Constantine too. And Cellach." The facts were coming out evenly, stoically, though her eyes could not contain the tears that were re-forming behind her yees.

"Cellach," he repeated, and Osthryth wondered whether her brother was remembering the time he had taken the boy as hostage to the surety of Constantine not invading Northumbria, or Bebbanburg lands, at least. He had kept that promise, Osthryth told herself.