New Shores ➳ The Last Kingdom | Finan the Agile (The Northman's Daughter 1)

THE ENCOUNTER

Three men on horses waited for them some distance from the city wall. Shaylee knew as she rode through the city gate that Aidan was sitting on the horse on the far right. Her heart skipped a beat when Shaylee saw the shape of him. The strongly-built Irishman looked huge on the lanky horse, and Shaylee had to fight the sudden fear inside her. He could not harm her. She was no longer the powerless young woman she had been the last time she had faced him. Silently, she kept repeating the words, "He has no power over me anymore."

"Are you going to be okay?" she heard Finan ask quietly.

Shaylee glanced over at him briefly and nodded, "Sure. Don't worry about me. I'll be okay."

Finan looked at her sharply and then nodded. To her other side rode Sihtric, who had also heard her words. He turned to her and put on his typical grin, and said: "And if not, we'll just kill him."

Shaylee turned to him in horror. She tried to interpret his expression to see if he was joking or if he was serious. She would have guessed the first, but when she noticed the look that Finan and Sihtric exchanged, she still said, "You're not going to do that, do you understand?

Both men grumbled something incomprehensible, and Shaylee was forced to add: "I mean it! I don't need anyone to fight my battles for me. Do you understand that?"

Finan smiled spitefully: "Yeah, We get it. But I'd feel better if I could make the guy disappear from the face of the earth."

Shaylee couldn't respond to that because they were now within earshot of the mounted men, and she didn't want Aidan to know anything about their uprising. She straightened up in her saddle and stretched her chin forward.

Next to Aidan, two other men were waiting for them. Both men were huge. But the man standing on the right was probably the tallest man Shaylee had ever seen. And he sat on the most giant horse she had ever seen. It had to be; otherwise, it would undoubtedly not have been able to carry this bear of a man. Next to him, another tall man sat in the saddle. He was not a small man either, but he looked like a priest's pupil next to the giant to his right. As he stood in the middle, Shaylee assumed that he must be Holmger Carrson. She looked at him sharply. He had long brown hair and didn't really look very vicious. Or maybe that was just because he was standing next to a man who looked like he ate a newborn every morning.

Uhtred and Æthelflæd had reached the three men and made her horses stop now some distance away from them. Shaylee remained behind them. On the one hand, because that was her place, on the other hand, she was happy to stay out of sight. But she did not go unnoticed for long.

No other man had said anything yet. When Aidan drove his horse forward until he could stare at her past, Uhtred: "You?" He spat out the word and then drew his mouth to that spiteful grin that made Shaylee shiver every time: "Have you come to crawl back to me?"

Shaylee did not answer. She knew that he only wanted to get under her skin. And she would not give him the satisfaction. So she only looked him straight in the eye.

Her Uncle, however, said: "You will not talk to her. You do not even look at her." He did not move a millimetre, but his voice was threat enough.

Aidan turned to Uhtred. He was still smiling and did not seem to feel threatened. His gaze slid over Uhtred and then said again to Shaylee: "Really. You exchanged me for him?"

Finan's horse made a step forward: "Do you have problems with your ears? Do not talk to her." "Ohh, even a group. I see she was diligent. Well, you can all thank me. I broke her in well."

Shaylee felt cold rage rising in her stomach and had a hard time keeping the emotion out of her expression. She also knew that the men around her got angry. She knew that she had to calm down Finan, her uncle and his men. But she also did not talk to Aidan. She never wanted to do that again. So she addressed Uhtred instead: "Uncle. Let the Wandoughty talk. We are here to speak to the important men."

Shaylee enjoyed the angry look on Aidan's face. She knew that she had hurt his ego. She could play the game too, but she usually thought it was beneath her dignity.

Uhtred turned to her briefly and then nodded, "You're right." He turned to the man in the middle and said, "You are Holmger Carrson?"

The man nodded and replied: "And you will be Uhtred Ragnarsson or of Bebbernburg or maybe Dane-Slayer? I'm confused; so many names. Which are you currently going by?"

Uhtred did not react to this thrust but turned to Æthelflæd: "This is Lady Æthelflæd of Mercia. She is the lady of Ceaster."

Æthelflæd spoke for the first time: "And like this, I want to know what you want here? "I like this place," grinned Holmger.

"It would be even nicer without Danish ships on the shore," Father Pyrlig remarked quietly.

"Ceaster will be ours. I have the men to take it, and nothing will stop me. But I am generous. I will let you and your men go. Without bloodshed without deaths," Holmger continued.

If he had meant that his words would evoke awe. He had been wrong. Uhtred just laughed softly: "You are welcome to try and take Ceaster. But your men will drip down like raindrops on a windowpane. They will die, and so will you if you stay here."

Of course, the Dane only responded to this threat with further insults. And so it went back and forth for quite a while. Shaylee knew what it was all about. The two men wanted to make each other angry. Get them to the point where the other made a mistake, and maybe that would have happened. Eventually, Shaylee stopped listening to them. Instead, she took a closer look at the leader of the Danes.

The Dane had long brown hair that he had tied back with a leather strap. His face was dominated by a broad flat nose. His small brown button eyes looked intelligent. However, what particularly caught Shaylee's eye was the helmet he had tied to the saddle in front of him. It was a masterpiece of blacksmithing. On both sides of the helmet were ram horns. Shaylee did not want to know how heavy the helmet was. In any case, she could not imagine that it was practical for fighting.

The men still threw insults at each other and would probably have continued like this for a long time if Æthelflæd had not intervened.

" This will accomplish nothing" she straightened up in her saddle and looked at Holger majestically: "You have until tomorrow sunset to withdraw. After that, we'll drive each one of you mercilessly back into the river."

Then she turned her horse around and rode back to the city. Shaylee waited until her uncle had also turned and then followed him. As she turned her mare, she heard Aidan's voice: "I will come for you bitch."

And now she turned around to him and before she gave her horse the spurs and rode back to the city, she said to Aidan: "I will be waiting for you, arseling."

"And what will we do if the Danes do not retreat," Father Pyrlig asked when they returned to the house of Æthelflæd.

"What I said, we will force them back," Æthelflæd answered the question. Uhtred replied realistically, "We will not be able to do that."

Æthelflæd looked at him somewhat accusingly: "How can you be so sure of that?"

"Because we are too few men. We might have a chance if we had a horse for all the men, but we don't." Uhtred returned.

"So just stay within the city walls and wait for them to disappear?", Æthelflæd asked, reluctant. She was sitting on a chair with a backrest. She looked very majestic as she sat there and consulted with their advisers.

"No, because they will not. At least not before we run out of food.", Finan said and sat down on a smaller chair.

Uhtred also shook his head, "No, they will not."

"Then what's the best thing to do? We can't let them put down roots.", Shaylee asked.

"No, we can't. But we will not be able to beat them in a big battle.", Uhtred answered and said: "But we have to attack them. Over and over again. Until they have lost enough men that we can beat them in one final great battle."

Shaylee was not incredibly happy about these future prospects. But she knew that Uhtred knew precisely what to do. And Æthelflæd also seemed to see that. She sighed and turned to Father Pyrlig: "Arrange for food to be rationed if it hasn't already been done. We must be prepared to stay here longer".