Burn Your Village || The Last Kingdom

|| CHAPTER 3 - Luck as God's Will ||

|| CHAPTER 3 – Luck as God's Will ||

(Series 1- Episode 2)

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Signe could feel a rift beginning to form between Uhtred and Brida, and it hurt her heart to see.

At every turn they clashed.

After their escape from Oxford, Uhtred had said he couldn't take back Bebbanburg without help and Brida had told him that he should forget it. He would not hear of it.

He had told her the two of them were no longer Danes, while she wanted him to let go of his Saxon birth right.

The conclusion Uhtred had reached was that the only people they could turn to for help was the English. Specifically to the Last Kingdom of England still standing against the Danes: Wessex.

Signe did not like the idea of going to an English king, she did not see why he would have any reason not to kill them or ultimately betray them. She did not feel at ease with the idea. But Uhtred was right, they had no one else to turn to. He may kill him for being a Dane, but Ubba wanted him dead as a traitorous English slave. And Signe was in his sights too. At least if they could make themselves useful to a king and he turned out to be an honourable one, it could be their salvation.

Both she and Brida had reluctantly agreed, Brida more resistant than Signe.

Which was why they were riding into Winchester at that very moment, hoping to speak to King Aethelred of Wessex.

As soon as they passed beneath the gates of the walled town, they forced themselves through the mass of bodies and livestock that were on the crammed streets, thatched buildings pressing in on both sides. Too many eyes to count fell upon them. Suspicious, hostile, confused.

"I do not like how they stare." Signe said, shifting in her saddle and leering back at a man who was fixated on her.

"They think you're pretty." Brida remarked.

"So that is why they stare at me also."

Signe scoffed at Uhtred's cocky words and he looked back at her, feigning hurt.

"Or they've never Danes so close. But they will." Brida met a number of gazes with a hard stare.

As they travelled deeper into the town, people became more overt with their disdain.

Signe was peering at a wooden cross, reminded of King Edmund who had been stuck with arrows because of his faith, when a small woman dragged her daughter out of their path, her eyes wide with fear as they approached.

It was odd, suddenly being around so many Saxon's and being viewed as other. Growing up she had known England was not the Dane's originally, but she had never had cause to venture into settlements of the English. It was perhaps the first time she felt like the invader's that her people were.

Uhtred stuck his tongue out at a young boy who was watching them as he perched on one of the straw rooves and Signe smiled at the child.

The innocent moment was brief though, as they headed into a square, the crowd began to boo and shout obscenities, surging forward to push them towards a set of steps that reached up to the to a wall of stone archways that led to a walkway into the palace.

Signe's horse nickered anxiously, her hoofs slamming against the earth as a number of armoured soldiers appeared through the archways, their chainmail clinking and their boots driving into the steps as they surrounded them.