Burn Your Village || The Last Kingdom

|| CHAPTER 9 - Blind Faith ||

|| CHAPTER 9 – Blind Faith ||

(Series 1- Episode 5)

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"Is it safe to approach?"

Signe looked up from her bloodied arm to find Leofric standing beside her. The light of the rising sun hit his back and it gilded his powerful form in gold. And just like hers, his face was covered in the blood of the fallen.

After the army had arrived, a battle with the Danes had been fought and won, but it had been no easy thing. And while the surviving enemy were rounded up, Young Odda's shouted orders coasted over wrecked tents and ruined bodies. Signe had come to the edge of the river to clean her wounds.

"Only if that's ale." She asked, nodding to the cup in his hand. Her voice cracked under the strain of exhaustion. Both physical and something more bone deep.

In one cursed night, she had resigned herself to watching Uhtred die and then to being killed alongside him instead. And while neither had happened, she felt death at her back, tapping her shoulder with the familiarity of an old friend and asking her to turn and face it.

She did not fear it, but its imminence had left her hollow.

There was so much still do, so many people to avenge. And she had almost failed them.

Even if she had died in battle, she would not have deserved to sit with Ragnar and their family in Valhalla. She would disgrace them in death, just as she disgraced them by breathing while their killers went unpunished.

"Oh, I wouldn't dare bring you water, Dane." Leofric assured with a playful pout. He moved closer and crouched down beside her, holding out the ale for her to take.

When she reached out for it, she had to do so with her left hand instead of her favoured right. She had been cut along the back of her upper arm and while it wasn't too deep, it was torture to try and move the limb. Wielding a weapon would be difficult for a while.

"Thank you." She said huskily.

She had done a poor job of cleaning her hands and as her fingers closed around the cup, she saw browning blood nestled beneath her nails.

As she drank deeply, Leofric assessed her wound. She had cut away her already ruined sleeve, leaving her arm exposed to the open air.

When his hand reached out and delicately held her arm beneath the cut, she hissed and tried to pull away, put her held her in place. She scowled at him, but he was already reaching into the nearby bucket that she had filled and lifting out the cloth inside it.

"I don't-"

"If you tell me, you don't need help, I will throw you in the river." Signe glowered at him, but he just went about wringing water from the damp cloth and bringing it to her arm. "You can't see what you're doing, it'll be a bastard to try and clean yourself."

As his tender touch ran across the hot flesh just beneath her wound, she conceded and downed the rest of the ale as he went about the task.

The stinging pain was horrendous, the only reprieve the cool droplets of water than ran down her arm from the cloth. But she gritted her teeth and bared it.

"Why aren't you with the arseling?" Leofric asked, nodding to her left.

Uhtred sat alone on the riverbank, staring out across the water.

Knowing what she would see, Signe did not look to her friend.

"He chose to be alone." Signe said, trying and failing to sound indifferent.