Author's Note: The stories I am writing take place post-series-two of the BBC'c Merlin, and once third series starts will be relegated to AU. And yes, I did manage to get Morgana back into Camelot in "The Return", why do you ask?
XIXIXIXIX
Enemy Lines
Arthur knelt down to examine the tracks. The sobs of several of the villagers were faint around them. Merlin watched Arthur spread wide his fingers over the print which had recently been left in the mud: a giant paw—Arthur's hand barely covered the base, the toes of the track extending past his fingers, fat and foreboding. Scratches in the mud, deep cuts riven through the wet earth indicated dangerous, lethal claws.
"It's voice, my god, it's . . . voice . . ." a middle-aged woman stood next to Sir Lamorack, whose ginger brows furrowed with concern, whose red cloak flamed in contrast with the mud and the soil and the overall grime of the ravaged village. And though she stood next to Lamorack and even seemed to be answering his questions, her eyes stared off into the nowhere distance and she vaguely swayed with shock. "It's voice."
Merlin once again looked around. The village was a border town, and though Camelot barely had any business there, a few knights wandered the destruction—the walls of houses ripped out, the roofs that had come collapsing down, the rust brown stain of drying blood in various odd places, and of course, the bodies. Someone had covered many of them up with blankets or coats, but many still lay bare. The wounded—those who had managed to keep breathing—had been carried into one of the buildings still intact, and villagers scrambled in and out, carrying buckets and blankets and whatever other supplies could be mustered. But the bodies—the dead—all strewn about. What looked like arrows protruded from some of them, but Merlin knew that they were not arrows. They were the deadly poisonous stingers thrown from the tail of the terrible creature which they'd been hunting for almost a day now.
Arthur wandered over to one of the blanket-covered bodies. It was only half the size of a grown man. A child. Merlin gasped a quiet breath as Arthur squatted and lifted the corner of the blanket, folding it over and revealing the mangled face of the poor victim.
Not a child.
A man, his beard caked in blood and mud, his eyes wide and vacant.
"Ripped him in half." Both Arthur and Merlin turned and saw an older woman hidden between two barrels that were standing beside a busted door. Her back was to the wall behind her as she sat, her legs sticking out straight in front of her, her hands folded like a good little girl's. She stared at Arthur.
"Ripped him in half." Her voice was surprisingly firm. "Ripped more than a few. But he didn't just kill, he ate."
"He?" Merlin took a step closer, but she didn't take her eyes off Arthur.
"Face like a man. Almost like a man. At least, from a distance. He had a voice, too, like . . . ." She leaned her head back against the wall and lifted her gaze up to the sky. "Like a sultry paramour."
She said nothing more. Arthur took a last look at the body beside him before covering it back up. He stood.
"Lamorack," Arthur called to the red-haired knight who ran swiftly over. "Return to Camelot. Update the King—tell him I'm not going to stop until this creature is destroyed."
"Yes, sire."
"Knights of Camelot!"
Merlin and half a dozen men fell into step behind Arthur as he made his way to the village's edge where another seven were waiting with the horses. A few were sitting in their saddles, the others were standing by. Lamorack mounted one of the horses and took off through the forest.
"How will we find it?" Merlin asked.
"It's following the road—that's how it feeds—stalking travelers and attacking villages." Arthur jumped into the saddle and the knights followed suit. Merlin was the last to get on his horse, and as Arthur chided him to hurry up, Merlin took one last look at the devastated town before joining the race down the road.
The woman walked toward Camelot following a path only she could discern through the grass and trees. She wore peasant clothes and carried a small bundle slung across her back. She walked with a staff in her right hand, and as she walked the wind tore strands of black hair away from her ponytail and whipped them across her eyes. It was hard to place her age. She was not old. She was not a child. But there was a purposefulness behind her black eyes that spoke of experience—and an errand.
She stopped. The setting sun blazoned the cloudy sky various shades of pink and orange, and as she stared into the distance she might have seen the colors reflected on Camelot's white stones. But the city was buried beneath a fat mist—a giant dome of fog that had been capped over it by some mischievous force. The woman's black eyes scanned the vista before her. A voice carried on the wind. She turned her head and saw through the trees a woman standing atop a bump of a hill, watching the fog that had overrun Camelot. She wore a tight red dress, her blond hair loose and teased by the wind—her lips turned up in a half-smile, the source of her amusement known only to her.
The woman in the peasant dress leaned on her staff and watched, her black eyes swallowing everything.
Inside, Uther was antsy.
"Magic. I'd bet my life on it." He paced the throne room, watched by a wary court. Noblemen and knights lined the outer edges of the candlelit hall. Sir Lamorack, washed and rested, stood next to Gaius near the front where the agitated king looked ready to punch something.
"Sire," Gaius offered, "a fog is a relatively harmless—"
"Or cover for something sinister. I want patrols searching the city, every inch is to be guarded. Anything suspicious is to be reported immediately, and any persons involved arrested. And until this fog lifts, the city is under curfew."
Several of the guards left the room as the nobles exchanged uneasy glances. Gaius stood stoic, waiting for—
"Camelot is under attack."
Gaius nodded his head vaguely, acknowledging that Uther was probably right.
"Gaius—any insights?"
"I'm afraid not, sire. Whoever's behind this might just be trying to steal something or merely frighten the people."
"I will not be intimidated. Whoever is responsible WILL be found and punished."
Gaius stole a glance at Morgana, who had not moved from her chair by the throne. Or moved in it. She had remained seated with her hands folded, her green dress impeccable, her mouth silent. She had been watching the proceedings like a spectator, one who had no involvement in the outcome of events one way or another. She was stone, her face unreadable.
"Sire, perhaps we should send for Arthur to return."
Sir Lamorack stepped forward. "Sire, Prince Arthur seemed determined to hunt down the beast, the—"
"Manticore," Gaius said. "At least if the descriptions are accurate."
"—the carnage it's leaving in its wake—I don't think the Prince will abandon the chase just for fog."
"Though we've yet to learn the true purpose of the fog," Gaius said.
"We know the purpose of the manticore."
"And Arthur will find it and kill it," Uther said. "Gaius, discover what you can about this fog and if there's a means to fight it."
"Sire." Gaius bowed, and exited the hall muttering to himself, fight fog without using magic—great.
Arthur had finally decided to stop for the night. The forest canopy obscured the sky so the only light came from the glowing embers of the former campfire by which the Prince, strangely, seemed to be sleeping. Merlin was curled up beside him, but was clearly awake, his eyes wide and alert.
On four sides of the camp four sentries kept watch. Sir Cadoc guarded the northwest corner. Two knights lay on the ground nearby, ready to relieve him. One breathed evenly on his back, but the other tossed and turned, causing his chainmail to scratch the ground with an annoying cadence.
"Madoc, you're supposed to be sleeping," Cadoc said softly, his eyes never leaving the surrounding forest.
"I am sleeping. I'm sleeping like a baby at its mother's breast that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to worry about."
"Afraid of nightmares, Madoc?" Taran, the even-breather, wasn't sleeping either.
"Just the one we're chasing."
"You're forgetting Prince Arthur's success rate." Cadoc nodded an assent to his left, acknowledging some gesture from his fellow sentry.
"And you're forgetting that we mere mortal knights aren't always as lucky as he is," Taran said, his eyes still closed.
"Thanks, Taran—it's like the beast is dead already. . . . Aren't you a little scared?" Madoc said.
Small nocturnal creatures scampered across the forest floor unseen. An owl hooted, wings flapped, the sound of a tiny animal snatched from the ground entertained the night.
"Taran?"
"It's not relevant." He rolled over, putting his back to Madoc.
"Cadoc?"
"I'm more afraid of not stopping it."
"Well aren't you gallant."
"Get some rest," Cadoc whispered, still scanning the darkness around him.
Sir Lamorack pushed through the doors of the throne room and glanced around him hesitantly. Morning light streamed in, unimpeded by any fog. The council was milling about the central table, as were various courtiers and servants. Conversations were being whispered—people grouped in twos and threes—and yet there was a hushed jocularity that undercut the paranoia of the previous evening.
"What news?" Uther turned toward Lamorack, but did not otherwise move from the head of the table where he stood. Gaius beside him folded his hands at the question and peered at Lamorack.
"Strange news, sire. The baker in the lower town was reported missing this morning. When we checked his home he and his family were gone. But there was a dog, a rat, a sow and a foal in the house. The sow . . . seemed to . . . know its way around the kitchen?"
"Are you saying the baker and his family were transformed into animals?" Uther asked.
"Isn't it far more likely that a few animals managed to get into the empty house and simply started eating the available food?" Gaius directed the question at Lamorack.
"Well, the baker had no reason to run off unexpectedly, and as I said, the animals seem quite familiar with the house. And I'm pretty sure the dog and the sow bowed when we entered. The foal's a bit unruly though—which I suppose is to be expected."
"Expected?" The edge in Uther's voice gave Lamorack pause.
"They, um, recently had a baby."
Uther turned, his jaw clenched and his eyes perusing the space in front of him as if a quick reflex could pluck some solution from the air.
"Gaius?"
"Sire, it would be unwise to jump to conclusions at this point. I'd like to take a look at the animals myself before determining the cause of the baker's disappearance. Or if it's at all related to last night's fog."
"Of course there's a connection, how can you doubt it?"
"Healthy skepticism, sire."
"Well get me healthy answers."
"Sire," Lamorack said softly, avoiding eye contact, "there, um, there is one other thing." He looked at Gaius, then at Uther, and then continued with greater assurance. "A dark-haired woman was reported entering the baker's house early this morning."
"Did anyone recognize her?" Gaius asked.
"No. Only a few people saw her, and from a distance at that. They could only say that she had dark hair, and that she left the baker's less than a minute later."
Gaius closed his eyes.
"Get these witnesses," Uther ordered. "Round up every dark-haired woman and see if they recognize her. This witch will be found."
Lamorack bowed and left with another of the guards.
"And if the witnesses can't identify her?" Gaius was staring hard at Uther. "Or what if she was a friend of the family who reported them missing in the first place?"
"Then she will gladly step forward and clear her name." Uther glared back at Gaius. "An innocent person would hardly run away from the house of a friend."
Merlin watched Arthur contemplate the road ahead—a fork, the left branch clearly more traveled than the right one.
"If it's following the road to find more villages, it will go that way," Merlin pointed left.
Arthur, Merlin, and the dozen knights behind them took up the width of the road as they sat on their horses, looking to the left fork, then the right fork, then to the broken brambles and tree limbs and general destruction leading through the forest to the right of them. Perpendicular to the road.
"But if that was done by this creature, then we should follow it." Merlin again prodded, but Arthur remained silent.
"And where would a man-eating monster be going in the deep, dark village-less woods?" asked Sir Taran, directly behind Merlin.
"Maybe there were travelers on the road and they ran off, and the creature chased them."
"Lucky for us this thing leaves unique tracks." Arthur turned and looked at Merlin, then said to Taran, "go into the woods and see if you can find any."
Taran and Sir Cadoc jumped off their horses and headed into the woods.
"Go see if there's anything along the left fork," Arthur said to two other knights. "You," he pointed, "right fork."
The four knights set their horses to the road and separated at the fork.
"Make sure to check along the side of the road as well," Arthur shouted. One knight from each pair jumped off his horse and started looking through the underbrush. Merlin looked back and forth, and glanced to the right where Taran and Cadoc had disappeared. The remaining knights patted their horses and looked around, wary.
"Sire!" Sir Cadoc's voice sounded through the forest.
Arthur jumped off his horse and ran into the woods. Merlin dismounted as well and followed, leading both his and Arthur's horses. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sir Rigel signal to the knights on the road ahead.
When Merlin reached Arthur, he was bowing over the crouching Taran, who was pointing to the faint traces of the track on the ground.
"But why would it be going this way?" Cadoc stood next to them, looking at Arthur. "There're no traces of blood or any footprints of men—it doesn't make any sense."
"You don't have to understand it, Cadoc," Arthur said. "We just have to kill it."
The rest of the knights approached, some leading their horses, some still mounted. Arthur crept forward and touched a small tree limb that had been bent in half. He spotted another print slightly ahead of that, and pushed further forward still. Cadoc and Taran also examined the ground and brush for the creature's path, as Merlin and the other knights followed carefully behind.
Two days passed. Arthur's band traveled north and east. They hunted what they could and slept poorly. They traveled through forests and valleys, but never caught up to the creature they sought. Villages they passed were decimated, farms abandoned—or at least, Merlin hoped they had merely been abandoned, but the looks exchanged among the men told another version of events. Always, they were just behind the beast.
Do you think it's intelligent? Merlin asked once.
Are you saying it's tricking us? Madoc turned abruptly, causing Taran behind him to trip.
It's not tricking us. Arthur smacked Merlin on the back of the head.
Maybe it is, Sir Cadoc had said. We have no allies this far east. We've been traversing one unfriendly territory to the next. If we're caught, we'll be lucky to get ransomed.
We won't be ambushed by enemy soldiers—everyone wants to see this thing dead. Arthur picked up his pace, determined, his eyes locked on the tracks before them. The creature had not once failed to leave a trail.
Two days passed. Every dark-haired woman that could be found had been paraded in front of the witnesses—the witnesses who saw her outside the baker's the first night, and the witnesses who claimed to have seen her around the tavern where the keeper had vanished into a thin rabbit with mottled brown fur. There was no way to tell if the second witnesses had seen the same woman as the first, if it had been a different woman altogether, or if a rumor had been born from steeping panic.
Gaius had approached Morgana after his visit to the tavern where the skittish rabbit had tried to serve him ale. I guess he was just trying to prove his identity, he told her.
So you believe this mist is transforming people then?
It's getting hard not to draw that conclusion, and unfortunately I see no reason to believe that it's going to stop. He had convinced her to walk with him, and they had passed the procession of dark-haired women. Gaius had made sure that as he and Morgana walked by, her back was to the witnesses.
Nothing. No reaction from the witnesses, who had simply continued to stare at each successive woman the guards put in front of them.
Morgana and Gaius had moved on. The only reaction from her was when she finally asked why he had wanted her to walk with him.
Oh, well—I was hoping I might borrow Gwen. Merlin usually helps me with these sorts of things, but—well. If you can spare her, that is.
Of course, anything to help.
She had seemed genuinely concerned.
The aging Sir Malick and his family had turned into chickens. The knight, a tired rooster; a tired hen, his wife; and three younger hens, his daughters—they were all clucking about the suite. His son, a knight himself, was unharmed, but stared agape at the animals that were his family.
"Do we suspect fowl play," a knight whispered, only to be elbowed by Sir Lamorack and slapped by another of the five knights waiting inside the doorway.
"Where were you last night?" Gaius asked as he crouched on the floor, tilting his head at the chickens while Gwen stood beside him, her hands folded. Uther stood at the window, his eyes on the ground, his fingers curling around the hilt of his sword. Sir Malick's son just kept staring at the chickens. Another knight answered for him.
"We were patrolling the main gate."
"Is it relevant?" Uther turned his gaze to Gaius.
"I'm trying to figure out if this enchantment targets blood relations or living spaces. It seems to transform whoever happens to be in a chosen place." Gaius stood up.
"The fog picks a random room in the city and turns everybody inside it into animals?" Sir Lamorack asked glancing out of the corner of his eye at Sir Malick's son, who was still staring at his family. Of chickens. "Why only one room?"
"The fog is cover," Uther said, "it's the witch who's doing this. Clearly she needs to be present to perform her sorcery. Redouble your efforts. Find her."
Sir Lamorack and the other knights bowed their heads and left the room, one of them gently leading Sir Malick's son while whispering, c'mon, it'll be alright.
"Sire, we're going to need a better description than 'dark hair'," Gaius said.
"And how do we get that—ask the chickens?"
"Why not?" The voice came from the doorway. Gaius, Uther and Gwen turned to see a graceful raven-haired woman wearing servant's clothes and staring at them through black eyes.
Uther gasped. Gaius stuttered something quietly to himself. Gwen looked from Uther to Gaius to the woman to Gaius, who finally said,
"W-why not ask the chickens?"
"They're not chickens. That's correct isn't it—you believe that the family living here was just physically transformed? So they're still people, even if they don't look like it at the moment." The woman addressed all three of them. Uther was ashen, Gaius shaken. Gwen gazed from one to the other, and no one responded to the dark-haired woman in the doorway. Uther didn't even call for the guards.
"So," the woman continued, "all you have to do is designate one side of the room 'yes'," she pointed to the opposite wall with a window in it, "and the other side 'no'," she pointed to the wall next to her, "and ask yes-or-no questions."
Gaius made a noise. "Ask what kind—"
Gwen touched his arm—she was staring at the window wall. Gaius looked. Uther looked. All five chickens were pressed against the wall, staring back at Gaius and their King.
"I'm surprised this didn't occur to you earlier," the woman said to Gaius.
"Yes—no—it didn't." Gaius turned and paused, sizing her up. "I'm sorry, what was your name?"
The woman smiled broadly. "You'll also be interested in the button on the table."
Gwen moved to the table and picked up a tiny gold button with an ornate design carved into it. The woman's black eyes studied Gwen as she rolled the button between her fingers.
"You are a seamstress."
Gwen looked at her. Gaius watched the exchange as Uther began to regain his composure. Gwen nodded. "Yes."
"Then you'll know what to look for." The woman tilted her chin up and said boldly toward the opposite wall, "you'll need to move back to the middle of the room once you've answered the question, to avoid confusion."
Gaius, Uther and Gwen watched as the chickens stepped neatly to the center of the room where they huddled as a group, each tiny eye awaiting the next question.
"She's gone," Uther said, looking at the doorway. But he didn't move.
"Did you recognize her?" Gaius said to the chickens. Each one made its way to the doorway wall.
Gaius sighed. The chickens moved back.
"Are you lying out of fear?" Uther said.
The chickens moved to the doorway wall. Uther clenched his jaw.
"Sire, she did just help us—a strange thing to do if she's behind it." Gaius bore his gaze at Uther, who had started pacing, clenching and unclenching his fists. Uther glared at Gaius before bursting from the room.
"Guards!"
Gaius watched after Uther silently. He turned around, half lost in thought, and saw Gwen still standing there, waiting. He smiled weakly at her—"well, let's see if we can't glean any new information."