Lady Luck| Finan The Agile| The Last Kingdom

SIXTEEN

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A month later...

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"You are fools," I quipped shortly, dabbing at the side of Finan's lip with what remained of my once pale yellow dress, "blatant idiots."

Finan smiled weakly, his cheeks slightly more sunk in after thirty days of scarce food and battle outside the gates of Winchester.

"Do not smile at me," I pressed the silk fabric in deeper, an annoyed grimace on my face, "this was mindless, foolish, ridiculous, absolutely—"

"Thank you," Finan cut me off quietly, "for tendin' to us."

I huffed softly, dropping my hand to my lap, the silk rag stained with blood and dirt, "Well what else was I supposed to do? You can hardly look after yourselves."

"You could have gone back to Aegelesburg," Osferth murmured from my left, laid down on a thin layer of cloth that was meant to be his bed.

"And what good would that have been?" I snapped shortly, raising my hand to the pot of water I had placed on a tree stump, wetting the rag again. "Aegelesburg is good for feasting and sewing. At least here, I am useful," I wrung the rag out so excess water, darkened by blood, dripped back into the pot, "how ever little use I may have."

"Hey," Finan tapped my knee with his fingers gently, "you have been very useful here. A lot of these men would be dead if not for you." He motioned for me to look around the tent with his chin, but I did not.

"It does not take skill to tear a dress and soak it in water," I sniffed shortly, turning back to Finan with the wet rag.

I had taken on the role of a nurse of a kind. I tended to the wounds of Edward's men, either cleaning them or trying, with shaky hands, to sew back together their skin. I had only saved a few, and it was pure luck that those who lived had not succumbed to infection.

Most by now knew that I was a last hope for dying men. For the most part, to be brought to me in the large tent Edward had provided was a death sentence. Most men chose to die outside the tent rather than inside it, writhing in pain and covered in sweat.

"You are too hard of yourself," Finan whispered, accepting the rag from my hand and moving it to his cheek where a thin cut tainted his skin.

I said nothing, standing up easily and walking between the men who lay on the ground trying to sleep. 

There had been another unsuccessful attack, and Edward's men littered the ground outside of the gate, arrows sticking out of their bodies.

I had feared death so fiercely before I had come here. I had turned up my nose at killing and battles and imagined myself to be above those things.

But now, staring out at the ramparts in the early morning light, the outlines of the rotting dead looking back at me, I knew it had been only a fantasy to have wished to avoid it all. I knew I had been a fool to think that coming here would not change anything for me.

I had killed men now, so many of them I had lost count. I used Sihtric's dagger to cut so many throats because I knew I could not save any of them, and a week of suffering was a worse fate. Uhtred had told me what I was doing was known as mercy killing, but I never once felt merciful while doing it. Not when the men stared up at me with wide eyes and prayers on their lips. Prayers I could not answer.