Training grounds, sometime just before sunset. Rolling in the weathered grass with an old friend, as she has countless times before. Showboating, wrestling, one arrogant youth against the other in a battle for bragging rights.
He thinks he has the upper hand. She bucks against him, throwing him off balance and jabbing his stomach with her knee. In a moment, she has him pinned to the ground. Chests heaving, Osythe grins, her face hovering over her sparring partner’s.
”You’re going to let a woman beat you, Ósmund?” she taunts.
He laughs, filling his fist with her dark curls. She is pulled down in an instant and they collide. She closes her eyes and sinks down against him—only a friend, loyal unto death. This is just another game to be won, and she will not surrender easily.
She closes her eyes, without realising, drinking in the memory. But when they open the world is consumed by flame, and she is alone in the wreckage.
A face flashes, charred and bloodied, leaning against a doorway. Then another, falling limp from a burning window. A hand grabs her shoulder.
”Shield-sister,” his voice whispers.
She turns to face him, and the grip loosens. The face of an Uruk-hai morphs in his place and when he snarls, he looks just like her latest kill. An Eorling blade sprouts between her ribs, but when she parts her lips to scream, all that escapes is a wealish cry.
Osythe’s eyes fly open, pulse racing. She sits up in her bedroll, hugs her knees to her chest. Her left hand reaches out, searching for her seax in the dark. Her fingers find it’s rich hilt, cradle it. She imagines it was forged of moth wings. Osythe turns it over, again and again, through all the small hours of the night.
“I swear to you,” the words hover in the air, no louder than a breath of wind. “Unto death, I will avenge us all.”
