Kingdom Come

XV. Haunted

Stood there and watched you walk away

From everything we had

But I still mean every word I said to you

Something keeps me holding on to nothing

Come on, come on, don't leave me like this

Jaehaera and the others continued on. Killing the danes around them, and every muscle in her body cried for her to stop. The only thing pressing her forward was the adrenaline coursing through her veins. Their circle that they had once had became more of an oval at best. Rickon and Uhtred raised their heads in horror once they heard more shouts and yells coming from the wood. Jaehaere had killed another dane and almost cried from exhaustion, they couldn't last anymore she thought. Then they recognized the men on horses.

    It was Steapa and Edward. Jaehaera's heart pumped more adrenaline through her at the sight and she swept the leg from under a dane and stabbed him in the throat. "Edward!" she heard her father shout to his men. "Edward and his army!"

He and his men kept coming from the wood, attacking the danes that threatened to destroy her and her father's men. "Stand!" Haesten shouted to his warriors. "Every man is to stand!" A few of his men began to run for their lives. Jaehaera saw Edward cut off the head of a man as he rode toward the heart of the battle.

Finan and Uhtred caught sight of Skade. "She's why we're here, Lord," Finan reminded her father. "Take her." Together Finan and her father started toward Haesten and Skade.

Across the battlefield, Rickon, Sihtric, and Jaehaera put the fear of the gods into the danes around them. The danes watched in fear as the girl and her boys gain a wave of fury with Edward's army now with them. Jaehaera twisted the sword from the Dane's hand like her father and used it to kill the dane. She now had two swords. Jaehaera tossed it to Rickon, as he worked better with two, she had seen it once before.

She heard her father yell, and she lifted her head in fright. Jaehaera saw him looking around the battlefield for Haesten and Skade, but they were nowhere to be found. This had all been for nothing, she thought with fury. She roared in anger as she also decapitated a man, and he and his head fell to the muddied ground that had once been white with snow. Now the battlefield lay covered in mud and blood.

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Jaehaera stood with her father as a few of the men gathered the prisoners from the now-finished battle. "Lord," Sihtric's voice called and Jaehaera turned at once. "It is Osferth." Jaehaera's heart fell a thousand feet as she rushed to Sihtric. He leads them to the baby monk, his hand firmly in hers.

When they got to the tent he lay in, she saw him clutching his cross in his hand as he coughed. She moved beside Finan and began to look for where he had been wounded. She batted Finan's hands away as they blocked her own. "Shh, shh," She comforted him as he grunted in pain. He lay with blood on his head, but it didn't seem to be his own. "You are alive," she told him, "maybe your God has been looking over you, yes?" she smiled at him and he returned it painfully. The men watched as she tended to his wound quickly. They weren't severe, but they were bad. He would live by a miracle from the gods.

"Did you see me fighting, Lord?" he asked her father. Jaehaera smiled and wiped the blood and mud from his face gently.

"I did," her father answered proudly. "It was a sight to behold." he turned to his daughter, "Jaehaera? Is he going to be alright?"