Burn Your Village || The Last Kingdom

|| CHAPTER 4 - The Devil Moves Your Tongue ||

|| CHAPTER 4 – The Devil Moves Your Tongue ||

(Series 1 - Episode 3)

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While Signe had not to been of a mind to pull the dagger from her boot when they had first been captured, she certainly was now.

She would have been perfectly content to stay in the cages that had hung above the courtyard. The leering, and jeers of passing Saxons didn't bother her. A nasty look did her no harm.

But not long after they had been left displayed in the open air, they had been taken down and moved in a dank and dismal cell beneath the earth. The walls were slick with condensation that seeped into everything; their clothes, the hay scattered on the earth, even her skin. The small amount of light they received from the poor excuse for a window, only served to produce shadows that taunted them as the sun outside shifted beyond their view.

There was no telling how long they had been down there, but Signe felt like she was going mad and losing her senses entirely.

Her heartbeat was brutal against her chest, setting such a pace she feared it would splinter her ribs and burst out of her body. She was feeling a fear that she didn't experience even when a blade slashed towards her. It was as though her mind was telling her body that she was being chased.

Being confined was the greatest torment that could be inflicted upon her. Not only because being out in the open air and sleeping beneath the stars was her greatest joy, but because it reminded her of when Kjartan would lock her in the darkness, often for days on end after a beating. Too many times to count she had been left tied up; bruised and with blood crusted skin, to go hungry until his rage with her had subsided. There were a few times she was sure she would have died had Brida and Uhtred not snuck in to help her, to give her sustenance and kind words. After one particularly horrific ordeal, she'd had to talk Brida down from hiding behind the door and waiting for Kjartan to return so she could 'cut out his eyes.'

And they were being subjected to this confinement despite the fact they had giving the King counsel. Advice that would save countless lives and bring them victory.

It was a sobering reality.

She had been too distracted by the odd, yet enticing nature of Alfred; been too hopeful that there would be honour among Saxons. The path they were on was the only one that pointed Uhtred in the direction of his birth right and of revenge against Kjartan, but it was a path she resented travelling down.

Uhtred's word was clearly not trusted. He was seen as a Saxon by Danes and as a Dane by Saxon's.

And no matter what the three of them did, they would always been soulless heathens, She could see that now. Alfred had said as much to her.

'Blasphemous thoughts that could only come from one with no soul...'

Moving forward she would not trust a single word any of them said.

All she was doing as she sat in the corner of the cell, her shaking hands curled into fists, was castigating herself for letting her guard down.

Uhtred and Brida—knowing how much the confinement was affecting her—had tried to help, but their word's glanced off her like a sword off a shield. So, as she tormented herself, Uhtred was laid down in a narrow pallet on the hay and Brida paced.

Echoey footsteps against stone and the insulting rattle of the guard's keys, preceded the voice of Beocca as he appeared at the barred door, Uhtred rising from the ground as soon as he did. Signe stayed where she was but lifted her head.