Author's Note: Hello! This is my first attempt at a fan fiction....so please go easy on me!! Just a general warning, there is violence in this chapter, so if you don't like violence...then I don't know how you could have watched that movie, because it was preeeeeetty violent! Anyway, just a little heads up!
This story is set about 5 years before the movie...I might be adding some more knights into the story who will obviously be killed off before the story is finished...I have some ideas for characters, but if you have any of your own that you'd like to see in action, lemme know-I can't guarantee that I'll be putting ANY new characters in, but there is a chance I might, so I'd appreciate any ideas at all .
If you do enjoy this story, please let me know and I will continue to write chapters.....I always like a little support and some constructive criticism never hurt anyone.....so please let me know what you think! Enjoy!
Chapter One
The morning it happened dawned cold and grey-the first signs of the brutal winter to come. It was the kind of weather that made you want to stay deep within the heat of your blankets, and that made you jerk awake once you twitched your blankets away. The horses pranced in the chill of the morning, puffs of cool air dancing out from their nostrils and mouths, the leather of the saddles creaking as the animals shifted uncomfortably in a vain attempt to warm themselves. Tightening the girth of his saddle, Arthur surveyed the surrounding trees for a sign of life. Nothing moved save the occasional flutter of an owl coming back to sleep in the early morning rays of purple light. He finished with his riding preparations and rubbed his gloved hands together briskly, trying to circulate warmth into his frozen extremities while he walked back to the camp site.
His knights were sitting around the campfire in various levels of alertness. Dagonet was running a sharpening stone along the edge of his long sword, the steady sound lulling a half-slumbering Bors into an even deeper stupor. Galahad crouched next to the dying fire, his hands faced palm forward toward the glowing embers. Gawain sat behind him eating the last remains of a piece of dried meat and then picking his teeth clean with a small dagger he pulled from his belt.
"Are you ready to make way Lord?" Arthur turned to see Lancelot looking at him inquiringly. The cold of the morning cast a bluish tinge on his sharp cheekbones, giving him a pallid, somber look. He coughed suddenly and Arthur frowned.
"When did you become sick my friend?" Lancelot swallowed hard and waved away his comment.
"I'm not sick. Just a little sore after sleeping on the frozen ground." He smiled slyly, "Need a girl to warm my bed again..." He coughed again, giving him pause, and cleared his throat. "The cold must have burned my lungs while I slept," He looked up at the concern on Arthur's face and grinned. "I'll be fine!" He clapped Arthur on the back "You have more important things to worry about-I trust you haven't forgotten about the rumors?" Arthur frowned again and strode back over to his horse, followed by Lancelot.
"Indeed I haven't....but I am hoping they're no more then the usual peasant's myth." He mounted and watched as Lancelot lengthened his stirrups. His friend looked up at him as he worked.
"And if they prove to be more then just a myth?"
"Then I guess we have a problem..." Arthur turned back toward the campsite. "Dagonet! Rouse Bors! We have a long day ahead of us!" The other men laughed as Bors grumbled incoherently after being shaken roughly awake, and they all slowly moved towards their horses.
"What's the use of being up this early?" Bors groaned as he dragged his feet away from the warmth of the campfire. He groaned when he realized that his was the only horse unprepared and lifted his saddle with a grunt. "Damn peasants lie about everything....scared of their own shadows they are..." As the men mounted their horses, another rider came galloping in to the small forest enclosure that was their campsite. He pulled up in a cloud of frosted leaves and held out his arm for the hawk that swooped down from the steadily brightening sky.
"Any news Tristan? What lies ahead of us?" Arthur asked his scout who had risen before any of them to ride ahead.
"News? Yes Lord, I have news." He stroked the hawk's head and whispered a few words to it.
"Well out with it you bloody idiot..." Bors rumbled as he heaved himself onto his horse.
"It seems," Tristan continued as if he had not heard Bors at all, "that the rumors are true."
"They are?" Lancelot asked with an undertone of disbelief.
"What did you see?" Arthur enquired sharply.
"A raiding party...of Saxons." The men swore but Arthur remained silent, his face hardening into grim lines.
"How many?" He asked
"40." Tristan answered. "I believe it is just a scouting party, it's not very far inland..."
"What do we do Lord?" Galahad asked. "Do we fight them?"
"Course we fight them!" Bors scoffed. "Don't want bloody Saxons wandering around freely, do we!?"
"40 against 7?" Gawain stated the odds grimly "We couldn't win." Arthur nodded his agreement,
"We should ride back for reinforcements-"
"We might be able to win." Tristan interrupted in his normally cool tone of voice, causing them all to look at him in surprise. "They seemed young and inexperienced-enough to scare the locals, but easily beatable in battle." They all paused and thought about that for a moment, the silence finally broken by Bors's grunt of approval.
"I say we fight-get 'em out while there's still only a few of them." Arthur looked at him, and then at the rest of his men. Dagonet, Gawain and Tristan seemed content with Bors's words, the three men content to fight when fighting was needed. Galahad looked wary, but then he always disliked mass amounts of bloodshed and hated even more the fact that his own blood ties forced him to do it. Lancelot seemed disinterested in the argument, his abnormally pale face merely looked to Arthur for his decision.
"Rome has asked me-asked us-to try and maintain order in Britain." He said thoughtfully looking at his men. "In my opinion, invading Saxons will disrupt order. We will ride to where their encampment is and then decide on our next move." His men nodded and then turned their horses, spurring them on towards Hadrian's Wall.
As they rode, grey clouds rolled in; dark, thick and threatening. By the time they reached the wall a light snow began to fall. Arthur gave the order to dismount and they led their horses into a thicket of trees, nearly twenty feet from the cold stone wall that separated north from south. They looked around warily, knowing the Woads sometimes hunted close to the wall, but nothing betrayed any sign of human life. They sat in silence for a while and then finally, in the frozen stillness of the valley beyond the wall, they heard the steady thump of many feet moving at once and the Saxons marched into sight.
Tristan was right. There were many young men within the army's ranks, men who thirsted for adventure, glory and riches-all of which they could capture on the end of a sword. They were dressed in the typical Saxon fashion, using animal skins instead of armor, which not only stopped a sword blow, but kept a man warm as well. They looked formidable from a distance, but on closer inspection Arthur saw that many of the men lacked proper fighting equipment-in fact, only a few had a helmet or a shield. The men who bore these protections were obviously the commanders, and the other men who lacked them seemed confident that their sword or axe would protect them from any attack that might happen.
Arthur looked back at his men. Most seemed ready and eager for the fight, when his gaze fell upon Lancelot, his eyes widened in surprise. His friend's face was even more drawn and pale then it had been before, though now it seemed worse because of the dark circles surrounding his eyes. He was staring at the Saxon army with a grim expression on his face and Arthur saw him suppress a shudder-not so much from fear he guessed, but from the cold.
"Well?" Bors enquired softly. All the other knights turned to look at Arthur.
"We ride against them." They nodded their acceptance and rose to mount their horses. Arthur placed a hand on Lancelot's shoulder. "You're staying here." Lancelot gave him a stunned look.
"Why?"
"You're not fit." Arthur answered firmly and then watched the anger spark behind his friend's dark eyes.
"I'm fine!" He said harshly and then tried to move past Arthur to get to his horse. Arthur placed a hand upon his chest and pushed him back again.
"No, you're not."
"You need me!" Lancelot said pushing his commander's hand away. "We're already outnumbered! I'm not going to let you ride against 40 men with only five men at your side!" Arthur looked at him steadily, his mouth set in a determined line. Lancelot looked at the others who had watched the exchange with little expression on their faces. They knew Lancelot was right, that they needed all the help they could get, but who were they to speak against their commander? Lancelot looked back to Arthur and spoke more calmly. "Arthur, please, I'm fine." Arthur looked at him a moment longer and then sighed.
"Fine." Lancelot grinned and swiftly moved past Arthur to mount his horse.
"You shouldn't worry so much." He said once he was settled in his saddle. "I promise, I'm fine!"
"Let's hope you stay that way." Arthur said, mounting his own horse. He looked at his other men, all of which seemed relieved that Lancelot would still be riding with them. "Ride hard." Arthur said. "Aim for the ones who don't have a shield." And with that he charged out of the forest enclosure and onto the field where the Saxons had finished clamoring over the wall.
The battle erupted into a bloody chaos as soon as the horses broke through the trees and into the group of men. The Saxons were caught by surprise, but were quick to react to the attack. Despite their lack of proper war gear, they were still skilled with their weaponry and no sooner had the battle begun, then one of Arthur's horses was brought down. It was Galahad's mount that collapsed to the ground after having its rear hamstring cut by a blade and no sooner had the horse fell then Galahad was up, his sword drawn. The Saxons surrounded the grounded man, but he cut them back with a few swift strokes of his sword and when they proved too much, he turned to see Gawain standing beside him, his mace deep in the chest of a Saxon.
"Couldn't leave you alone down here could I?" He said to Galahad with a grin and the two men turned back-to-back, cutting through the enemy with a ferocious speed.
On the other side of the field Bors had also gotten off his horse voluntarily, preferring to fight on the ground. He was yelling an incoherent war cry, slashing at the surprised Saxons with the razor sharp blades on his knuckles. Beside him was Dagonet, who had also dismounted, and who was grimly cutting down men with a battleaxe. He turned to see a Saxon rush at Bors from behind, a sword raised high to swing down on Bors's unprotected head. He opened his mouth to yell a warning to his friend, but before the words had left his mouth, an arrow flew by him and landed with a thud in the Saxon's neck. The man stopped his charge, lifted a hand to the arrow shaft, and then collapsed on the ground. Dagonet turned to see Tristan pull another arrow from his quiver and shoot down another man. He saw Dagonet and smiled.
"Should of let him kill him..." He called and then shrugged and rode deeper into the battle, abandoning his bow and pulling out his lethal long sword.
In the middle of the fray Arthur sat atop his horse and swung down the legendary Excalibur. His red cloak was dyed darker with spattered blood and yet he still held strong and cut back the enemy with frightening speed. The Saxons grew scared of his efficiency and fled before him, seeking a more painless opponent, and in the few seconds of safety this allotted him, he looked to see how his knights were faring. And in those few seconds, he saw Lancelot fall.
Lancelot had also gotten off his horse and for the first few minutes of battle, he used his two handed swords to the fear of all who stood before him. He had just cut down a snarling beast of a man, who had lunged at him with a heavy broadsword, when suddenly the world shifted in front of him. He swayed on his feet and then stumbled back a few steps, doubling over and blinking his eyes rapidly, trying to ease the dizziness. His vision cleared for a moment and then the ground seemed to shift again, this time more violently. He dropped to one knee and felt his hands go numb, causing him to lose his grip on his swords. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and desperately tried to hold on to consciousness. Just before his world went black, he felt the cold steel tip of a sword on his throat and heard a voice growl,
"That was my brother you just sent to the Otherworld..."
And then he collapsed.
If you do enjoy this story, please let me know and I will continue to write chapters.....I always like a little support and some constructive criticism never hurt anyone.....so please let me know what you think! Enjoy!
Chapter One
The morning it happened dawned cold and grey-the first signs of the brutal winter to come. It was the kind of weather that made you want to stay deep within the heat of your blankets, and that made you jerk awake once you twitched your blankets away. The horses pranced in the chill of the morning, puffs of cool air dancing out from their nostrils and mouths, the leather of the saddles creaking as the animals shifted uncomfortably in a vain attempt to warm themselves. Tightening the girth of his saddle, Arthur surveyed the surrounding trees for a sign of life. Nothing moved save the occasional flutter of an owl coming back to sleep in the early morning rays of purple light. He finished with his riding preparations and rubbed his gloved hands together briskly, trying to circulate warmth into his frozen extremities while he walked back to the camp site.
His knights were sitting around the campfire in various levels of alertness. Dagonet was running a sharpening stone along the edge of his long sword, the steady sound lulling a half-slumbering Bors into an even deeper stupor. Galahad crouched next to the dying fire, his hands faced palm forward toward the glowing embers. Gawain sat behind him eating the last remains of a piece of dried meat and then picking his teeth clean with a small dagger he pulled from his belt.
"Are you ready to make way Lord?" Arthur turned to see Lancelot looking at him inquiringly. The cold of the morning cast a bluish tinge on his sharp cheekbones, giving him a pallid, somber look. He coughed suddenly and Arthur frowned.
"When did you become sick my friend?" Lancelot swallowed hard and waved away his comment.
"I'm not sick. Just a little sore after sleeping on the frozen ground." He smiled slyly, "Need a girl to warm my bed again..." He coughed again, giving him pause, and cleared his throat. "The cold must have burned my lungs while I slept," He looked up at the concern on Arthur's face and grinned. "I'll be fine!" He clapped Arthur on the back "You have more important things to worry about-I trust you haven't forgotten about the rumors?" Arthur frowned again and strode back over to his horse, followed by Lancelot.
"Indeed I haven't....but I am hoping they're no more then the usual peasant's myth." He mounted and watched as Lancelot lengthened his stirrups. His friend looked up at him as he worked.
"And if they prove to be more then just a myth?"
"Then I guess we have a problem..." Arthur turned back toward the campsite. "Dagonet! Rouse Bors! We have a long day ahead of us!" The other men laughed as Bors grumbled incoherently after being shaken roughly awake, and they all slowly moved towards their horses.
"What's the use of being up this early?" Bors groaned as he dragged his feet away from the warmth of the campfire. He groaned when he realized that his was the only horse unprepared and lifted his saddle with a grunt. "Damn peasants lie about everything....scared of their own shadows they are..." As the men mounted their horses, another rider came galloping in to the small forest enclosure that was their campsite. He pulled up in a cloud of frosted leaves and held out his arm for the hawk that swooped down from the steadily brightening sky.
"Any news Tristan? What lies ahead of us?" Arthur asked his scout who had risen before any of them to ride ahead.
"News? Yes Lord, I have news." He stroked the hawk's head and whispered a few words to it.
"Well out with it you bloody idiot..." Bors rumbled as he heaved himself onto his horse.
"It seems," Tristan continued as if he had not heard Bors at all, "that the rumors are true."
"They are?" Lancelot asked with an undertone of disbelief.
"What did you see?" Arthur enquired sharply.
"A raiding party...of Saxons." The men swore but Arthur remained silent, his face hardening into grim lines.
"How many?" He asked
"40." Tristan answered. "I believe it is just a scouting party, it's not very far inland..."
"What do we do Lord?" Galahad asked. "Do we fight them?"
"Course we fight them!" Bors scoffed. "Don't want bloody Saxons wandering around freely, do we!?"
"40 against 7?" Gawain stated the odds grimly "We couldn't win." Arthur nodded his agreement,
"We should ride back for reinforcements-"
"We might be able to win." Tristan interrupted in his normally cool tone of voice, causing them all to look at him in surprise. "They seemed young and inexperienced-enough to scare the locals, but easily beatable in battle." They all paused and thought about that for a moment, the silence finally broken by Bors's grunt of approval.
"I say we fight-get 'em out while there's still only a few of them." Arthur looked at him, and then at the rest of his men. Dagonet, Gawain and Tristan seemed content with Bors's words, the three men content to fight when fighting was needed. Galahad looked wary, but then he always disliked mass amounts of bloodshed and hated even more the fact that his own blood ties forced him to do it. Lancelot seemed disinterested in the argument, his abnormally pale face merely looked to Arthur for his decision.
"Rome has asked me-asked us-to try and maintain order in Britain." He said thoughtfully looking at his men. "In my opinion, invading Saxons will disrupt order. We will ride to where their encampment is and then decide on our next move." His men nodded and then turned their horses, spurring them on towards Hadrian's Wall.
As they rode, grey clouds rolled in; dark, thick and threatening. By the time they reached the wall a light snow began to fall. Arthur gave the order to dismount and they led their horses into a thicket of trees, nearly twenty feet from the cold stone wall that separated north from south. They looked around warily, knowing the Woads sometimes hunted close to the wall, but nothing betrayed any sign of human life. They sat in silence for a while and then finally, in the frozen stillness of the valley beyond the wall, they heard the steady thump of many feet moving at once and the Saxons marched into sight.
Tristan was right. There were many young men within the army's ranks, men who thirsted for adventure, glory and riches-all of which they could capture on the end of a sword. They were dressed in the typical Saxon fashion, using animal skins instead of armor, which not only stopped a sword blow, but kept a man warm as well. They looked formidable from a distance, but on closer inspection Arthur saw that many of the men lacked proper fighting equipment-in fact, only a few had a helmet or a shield. The men who bore these protections were obviously the commanders, and the other men who lacked them seemed confident that their sword or axe would protect them from any attack that might happen.
Arthur looked back at his men. Most seemed ready and eager for the fight, when his gaze fell upon Lancelot, his eyes widened in surprise. His friend's face was even more drawn and pale then it had been before, though now it seemed worse because of the dark circles surrounding his eyes. He was staring at the Saxon army with a grim expression on his face and Arthur saw him suppress a shudder-not so much from fear he guessed, but from the cold.
"Well?" Bors enquired softly. All the other knights turned to look at Arthur.
"We ride against them." They nodded their acceptance and rose to mount their horses. Arthur placed a hand on Lancelot's shoulder. "You're staying here." Lancelot gave him a stunned look.
"Why?"
"You're not fit." Arthur answered firmly and then watched the anger spark behind his friend's dark eyes.
"I'm fine!" He said harshly and then tried to move past Arthur to get to his horse. Arthur placed a hand upon his chest and pushed him back again.
"No, you're not."
"You need me!" Lancelot said pushing his commander's hand away. "We're already outnumbered! I'm not going to let you ride against 40 men with only five men at your side!" Arthur looked at him steadily, his mouth set in a determined line. Lancelot looked at the others who had watched the exchange with little expression on their faces. They knew Lancelot was right, that they needed all the help they could get, but who were they to speak against their commander? Lancelot looked back to Arthur and spoke more calmly. "Arthur, please, I'm fine." Arthur looked at him a moment longer and then sighed.
"Fine." Lancelot grinned and swiftly moved past Arthur to mount his horse.
"You shouldn't worry so much." He said once he was settled in his saddle. "I promise, I'm fine!"
"Let's hope you stay that way." Arthur said, mounting his own horse. He looked at his other men, all of which seemed relieved that Lancelot would still be riding with them. "Ride hard." Arthur said. "Aim for the ones who don't have a shield." And with that he charged out of the forest enclosure and onto the field where the Saxons had finished clamoring over the wall.
The battle erupted into a bloody chaos as soon as the horses broke through the trees and into the group of men. The Saxons were caught by surprise, but were quick to react to the attack. Despite their lack of proper war gear, they were still skilled with their weaponry and no sooner had the battle begun, then one of Arthur's horses was brought down. It was Galahad's mount that collapsed to the ground after having its rear hamstring cut by a blade and no sooner had the horse fell then Galahad was up, his sword drawn. The Saxons surrounded the grounded man, but he cut them back with a few swift strokes of his sword and when they proved too much, he turned to see Gawain standing beside him, his mace deep in the chest of a Saxon.
"Couldn't leave you alone down here could I?" He said to Galahad with a grin and the two men turned back-to-back, cutting through the enemy with a ferocious speed.
On the other side of the field Bors had also gotten off his horse voluntarily, preferring to fight on the ground. He was yelling an incoherent war cry, slashing at the surprised Saxons with the razor sharp blades on his knuckles. Beside him was Dagonet, who had also dismounted, and who was grimly cutting down men with a battleaxe. He turned to see a Saxon rush at Bors from behind, a sword raised high to swing down on Bors's unprotected head. He opened his mouth to yell a warning to his friend, but before the words had left his mouth, an arrow flew by him and landed with a thud in the Saxon's neck. The man stopped his charge, lifted a hand to the arrow shaft, and then collapsed on the ground. Dagonet turned to see Tristan pull another arrow from his quiver and shoot down another man. He saw Dagonet and smiled.
"Should of let him kill him..." He called and then shrugged and rode deeper into the battle, abandoning his bow and pulling out his lethal long sword.
In the middle of the fray Arthur sat atop his horse and swung down the legendary Excalibur. His red cloak was dyed darker with spattered blood and yet he still held strong and cut back the enemy with frightening speed. The Saxons grew scared of his efficiency and fled before him, seeking a more painless opponent, and in the few seconds of safety this allotted him, he looked to see how his knights were faring. And in those few seconds, he saw Lancelot fall.
Lancelot had also gotten off his horse and for the first few minutes of battle, he used his two handed swords to the fear of all who stood before him. He had just cut down a snarling beast of a man, who had lunged at him with a heavy broadsword, when suddenly the world shifted in front of him. He swayed on his feet and then stumbled back a few steps, doubling over and blinking his eyes rapidly, trying to ease the dizziness. His vision cleared for a moment and then the ground seemed to shift again, this time more violently. He dropped to one knee and felt his hands go numb, causing him to lose his grip on his swords. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and desperately tried to hold on to consciousness. Just before his world went black, he felt the cold steel tip of a sword on his throat and heard a voice growl,
"That was my brother you just sent to the Otherworld..."
And then he collapsed.