14th October 1066
Senlac Hill, near Hastings

England's king is dead and- as such- England's war is lost.

And the nation himself is lost, too, lost: to say he stumbles on the toes of broken feet on broken legs across the field of broken men and men who almost are. They'll get there soon enough, he thinks, holding onto that certainty that strikes him at the end of a war- it's worse than nothing, but it's all the certainty he's got (and that scares him more than anything).

He dodges a toppling horse and the white foam it sprays as it dies and remembers the noises Harold made when he fell.

The realisation, England decides, had hit his king a split-second after the arrow did- and he didn't have time to grasp the handle because by then he was nigh-on horizontal and his arms were more occupied in breaking his fall. Not that it did any good: instinct is stubborn.

And England had leaped off the horse he was clinging to and ran knowing it was finished, but he'd skidded over a patch of something on the ground in time to hear Harold choking and his fingers twitching and curling and twitching and the blood in his mouth and the liquid where his eye was torn and bubbling-

For the briefest, wildest moment he'd thought of Rome relaxing in the hot springs at Bath.

England has had many kings and England has seen many kings die, and he cared little for Harold; the death of the man is not his concern. England is made of broken bones and bloody footprints, and his soldiers grow spines and lie like stuck pigs: food for the crows, not the court.

He's been running downhill but more than that he doesn't know- his panic and his actions echo his army, maybe, except that he doesn't think he can damage himself any more than they have done; fools, he thinks it as a mantra, those fools, those God-damned fools, those, God damn but can he blame them? Untrained unprepared unseasoned hardly fit to be called soldiers least of all English soldiers. It's no wonder they broke the shield wall. It's no wonder they fell to such an easy trap.

England hasn't seen France yet.

England doesn't want to see France because that will solidify it.

Not that now he isn't putting off what he knows must come, what he knows must come from the screams and the squelch and slap of flesh on sodden wet ground (bog and blood), what he knows must come from his dead king and his dead knights and his dead boys, and what he knows is very little, now.

And the fae have gone. He thinks wherever they are, they're laughing.

Something flies over his head and he looks up but it's just a scavenger-bird, another one, bringing its family in hordes behind it to join in the feast of flesh like a conquering army. Its feet and beak are already stained red; England envies it. What will William eat tonight?

He doesn't have time to think on that because he walks into matted fetlocks and falls over backwards- he was already looking up and now his vision is mostly clouds and crows flying like arrows and the tops of horses and tall angry men with iron nose-guards and there a bright smile-

"I found you!" calls France, and it's not as if England had tried to hide.

But he struggles to his feet and it is a struggle, all of him feels like it's been taken apart and put back together wrong, and he can see the whites of France's eyes, France's narrowed eyes even from where he's sitting forward on the saddle of his horse, gripping the reigns in one hand- he's wearing gauntlets and a chain-mail tunic but no helmet, and smiling wide and bright and hideously beautiful.

England says nothing, bites his lip, and watches.

It is only when metal hands snare him by the hood of his cape, pull and lift and brush the exposed skin of his neck and make him shiver and contort, that he starts to struggle because he- because he can't not, and his toes are three feet off the ground and filthy, dripping; he writhes in the grasp of someone strong and unimportant and thinks history will honour me but history will not remember him.

And he cries out that France is a coward and why doesn't he come and tie England up himself?

France's smile is twisted: "I shan't dirty my hands with you yet."

"Go home, then!" England spits, kicks back and it hurts when his feet collide with solid metal breastplate and it hurts when France giggles. The rope pulled tight around his wrists and ankles doesn't hurt yet but he feels it building up, predicts the raw skin that sundown will bring and almost sobs at what is yet to come.

Behind him his army is rotting or surrendering and across the dead and the fields and the woods the fae-who-are-not-his are laughing.

"Go home," England moans again. His head lolls back with nothing to support it and his feet are bleeding and France is too high, too high for him to make out, because with his neck bent back like this all he can see is sky.

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