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1. “This is a good sword, baby monk,” Finan says begrudgingly, running his hand along the flat of the blade. “Must have cost you a pretty lump of silver, eh? Your allowance from Alfred?”
Osferth raises his eyebrows. “The silver was my own,” he says. “I won it off Brother Eadric playing dice.”
Finan grins. “Fairly?”
“For the most part.”
He hands the sword back to Osferth. “Now put that away,” he orders. “Try not to cut yourself.”
Osferth frowns but obediently puts it back in its sheath. “I thought you were to train me in swordskill. Lord Uhtred said—"
“—and you will be trained in swordskill,” Finan interrupts. He picks up a practice sword from the table and tosses it to him. Osferth catches it by the blunt edge of the blade and nearly drops it. “But you’ll begin with this. Wouldn’t be of much use to Lord Uhtred if I put a real blade through your belly on your first day, would it?”
Now Osferth is grinning too. He raises the practice sword and clumsily swings it a few times.
“Make no mistake, though,” Finan continues. “These blades might be blunt, but I’ll still knock you on your arse anyway. Now, are you ready for that?”
Osferth nods very seriously. “I am.”
And so Finan does.
2. It is well past midnight by the time the battle is over, Lady Aethelflaed rescued, and the Danes vanquished. Truth be told, Finan forgets all about Osferth until he nearly stumbles over him in the dark, crouching over a dead soldier and saying a prayer for his soul. The boy’s clothes are dark with blood and his hands are shaking slightly.
“If you intend to pray for all of them, you’ll be here for a few days, baby monk,” Finan tells him, though not harshly.
Osferth ignores him until he finishes his prayer: Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. Then he stands up and looks around, swaying on his feet. “His name was Cenhelm,” he remarks in a slightly bewildered voice. “He shared some of his ale with me last night.”
Finan puts a hand on his shoulder. “He died in battle as a warrior should. We’ll drink to his memory later. But you should come away now; have something to eat and warm yourself by the fire. You survived your first battle, eh? That is a worthy achievement.”
Osferth looks ill. “Is it?” he asks. “I didn’t even kill a man.”
Finan shakes his head and starts guiding him away from the battlefield. “Next time, lad,” he says. “We’ll make a true warrior out of you yet.”
3. The snow is falling yet again on the road to the Lady Aethelflaed’s estate. Their progress is slowed by the prisoners they have taken and by the wounded, and every mile or so they must stop for one reason or the other. The delays are making the men somewhat restless. They all want a warm place to sleep tonight, and something more than stale bread to eat, and a basin of water to help wash away some of the stench of the road. But it will be a little longer still.
They have put Osferth in a cart with a blanket pulled up to his neck. The blanket is Finan’s, piled on top of Osferth’s own—the poor fellow’s teeth would not stop chattering, and he had looked so cold and miserable that finally Finan could bear it no more. It would be pathetic indeed to survive battle only to freeze to death afterwards.
He tells Osferth as much during one of their many stops. Osferth opens his eyes and blinks at him slowly. “I’m trying not to do that,” he says in a weak voice. He shifts around in the cart and grimaces. “I told you before.”
“You’re a tough little bastard,” Finan says approvingly. He reaches out and ruffles his hair.
“Thank you,” Osferth murmurs.
“What, for calling you a tough little bastard?”
“No.” He closes his eyes. “Just…thank you.”
4. They are on the road to Ceaster, and the sun is bright, and the sickness is floating invisibly in the air all around them. No one is as worried about this as he is. The rest of them seem to think they can ignore it and it will go away—this invisible enemy that cannot be killed, only outrun. Better to die in a fight than choking blood, he warned Uhtred. (But of course: one can die in a fight, choking on blood.)
Sihtric and Osferth are lounging around on the ground and laughing at him. “Never seen a mighty warrior like yourself so scared,” Osferth says with a grin.
He tells both of them to piss off and he storms away. He’s not scared, he’s just, well…all right, maybe he is a little scared. But he’s not some coward. Never.
Osferth approaches him later that evening with a somewhat chastened look. “I have given offense,” he begins hesitantly. “I would ask your forgiveness. I have only the highest respect for you as a warrior and as a man.”
Finan glowers at him. “You have a strange way of showing it, boy.”
He lets the silence settle for a moment over the entire camp. Even the children look up in surprise. Then he laughs at Osferth’s aghast expression. “You should see the look on your face,” Finan says with glee, pulling him into a rough embrace. “Ah, Osferth, you know I feel the same for you. There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Irish bastard,” he hears Osferth mutter under his breath. Still, he hugs Finan back anyway.
5. Too much ale, Finan decides a little too late: Ingrith will not be pleased to find her husband-to-be and his party sick and pale on the day of their wedding from drinking the night before, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. Uhtred wisely retired earlier in the evening and Sihtric has since stumbled off to his wife’s bed, and now it is only himself and Osferth left, lying out under the stars after getting kicked out by the unamused tavernkeeper.
“This time tomorrow, you’ll be a married man,” Osferth muses sleepily. His words come out slurred. “You won’t miss the bachelor life?”
Finan shakes his head, even though the movement makes him slightly dizzy. “Every man must settle down eventually,” he says. “Well, except for you, baby monk.”
“I’m thirty,” Osferth says suddenly.
“Hmm?”
“I’m thirty years old,” he repeats. “I’ve served under Lord Uhtred for more than a decade. How long are you going to call me baby monk for?”
Finan props himself up on his elbows with a groan. None of them are as young as they used to be, that’s for sure. “Lad, you could be eighty years old, and your hair gone gray, and it would change nothing. Once a baby monk, always a baby monk.”
Osferth snorts. “How many warriors do you know who have lived to be eighty?”
None, truthfully. He eases himself down to the ground again. “I wouldn’t worry about you living to be eighty, not from the way I’ve seen these Rumcofa women act towards you. Now go to sleep.”
He hears Osferth laugh softly and turn over on his side. After a few minutes, he begins to snore.
Finan reaches out and fondly pats him on the arm. “Good night, baby monk.”
6. I’m sorry.
It’s all my fault.
7. It takes too long for him to return to Winchester—and in truth, he has been putting it off and making excuses for himself, though he knows Uhtred would have no objection to him leaving Bebbanburg for a few weeks. Not for this. And yet, if it weren’t for Ingrith, he might still be dragging his feet. But then she takes him aside one bright spring morning and says, “If it had been you instead of him, do you think he would not mourn you? Do you think he would not wish to see?”
Ingrith is clever and capable and wise, and most certainly a better woman than he deserves. She makes the journey with him, just the two of them, and he finds himself grateful for her company on the road. As they ride, he thinks how quickly the time has gone by; all those years spent traveling these same roads with Uhtred and Sihtric and Osferth, sleeping side by side on the dirt, drinking ale by the campfire. Some part of him believed it would never end. Some part of him hadn’t wanted it to end. But nothing can be for forever.
Winchester looks much as the same as how he left it. Perhaps a little bigger and noisier and smellier than before, with new buildings here and there, and few faces that he still recognizes. They make their way through the middle of the city to the graveyard on the east side. This, too, has grown from what he remembers—but that is the nature of such things. Ingrith leads him by the hand through the graves to the south edge of the field, almost to the trees. “Here,” she says finally, pointing to a simple wooden cross. “This one.”
All around them, the world is in bloom, vibrant with life—the small white flowers peeping out shyly between the graves, the birds chirping overhead, the tender green leaves on the trees. He holds Ingrith’s hand a little tighter. They stand there in silence for a long while, until at last Ingrith excuses herself to go find a room for them for the night. She plants a kiss on his cheek and tells him to come find her when he is ready, and it is all he can do to keep from weeping once she leaves. He has not wept in a long while.
He shifts his weight from side to side, kicking up the dust. He should say something to Osferth, he supposes. Something about his bravery and unswerving loyalty; how he was a good and true friend for so long. How he always believed, somehow, that Osferth would outlive him. And, finally, to ask his forgiveness, and to forgive himself in turn.
All that feels inadequate. So instead he makes the sign of the cross and murmurs a prayer for the dead, one he learned many years ago:
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him…