Burn Your Village || The Last Kingdom

|| PROLOGUE ||

|| PROLOGUE ||

(Series 1 – Episode 1)

»»———-　　———-««

Her name was Signe Kjartansdóttir, but once she'd had another.

She had been whelped on a Saxon woman Kjartan the shipbuilder had bought as a thrall, long before he'd left Denmark for England. And even though she had died when Signe was too small to recall any details of her, she did remember the name she had given her. The one that she would call her in secret.

Cwen.

She carried it with her like a birthmark. Or a scar.

Kjartan had chosen Signe. She was a bastard that he saw as barely better than a slave, but he would not have his child bear Saxon name. She was a worthless Dane, but a Dane, nonetheless. And despite it being almost all she'd ever known, the sound of her Dane name was often abrasive to her; sometimes it did not fall right from people's tongues.

Which only made it more enraging when her half-brother Sven shouted it when he was beckoning her to come to him.

She was not scared of her brother; he was a snivelling idiot so being fearful of him would have been akin to being afraid of a mouse. But she was scared of her father. So when Sven shouted for her, her heart always ratcheted in her chest, afraid he had discovered something and told Kjartan, which would lead to another beating.

Sven had a habit of catching her doing things she'd been told not to.

She could only thank the gods that her sword training with young Ragnar had remained a secret.

The Earl's son knew- as most did- how Kjartan treated his daughter, and while he wouldn't intervene with how a man dealt with his child, he had told Signe he would teach her to fight, to show her she was still strong.

She was going to grow into a great warrior and join him in battle.

"Signe!"

Birds fled from the nearby trees as her brother screeched at her, twigs snapping and leaves rustling as he appeared through the thicket with trouble dancing in his eyes.

"What are you doing with a real sword? You do not know how to use it." She spat at him.

"You're going to help me trap Brida, Thyra and Uhtred."

"No, I'm not." She scowled at him. She tried to shove him away but he grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise.

"Yes, you are."

In response, Signe kicked his groin and yanked her arm free, darting away to warn the others.

She didn't get far before he had tackled her to the damp earth. There was a slash of heat as a rock scraped against her temple and as she spluttered, she inhaled the detritus of the forest floor. Her mouth was open to spit out the dirt so when Sven grabbed the back of her head and pushed it back to the ground, she bit into the the mud.

"You're so useless Signe! Father should have left you in the woods to die when your mother did."

Bile mixed with dirt and saliva in the back of her throat, and she reared back, her head slamming into his nose. He cried out and stumbled away from her and she used the opportunity to scramble to her feet and run to where she knew the others would be playing.