Authors Note: This is my first King Arthur fic. And only my second fanfic on here. I don't know if this is any good. But I would really love to know if you think it is. This is a test I guess. Depending on the response and how many reviews/alerts I get, I may or may not continue this story. So please let me know what you think! I'm like tinkerbell! I need applause to live!

Chapter 1 The beginning…sort of.

If you only knew what I've been through. If you had seen the things I've seen and felt the things I've felt, perhaps you wouldn't judge so harshly. At the age of seven, I watched in agonized silence as Britons murdered my father before my eyes. Not a death of glory and battle, like the stories he would tell at night under the stars, but one of brutality. Death for the sake of killing. They forced me to watch, to hear the screams, my father begging to die long before his wish was granted. Me they tied, like a hog for butcher, and lay just feet from the man I had almost worshipped in my earliest years. I watched his life slip away as hour after hour passed, silent tears leaking from my eyes. By the time the sun rose, it's rays shone on a scene of hatred and destruction, blood and pain and death.
It was then that I knew that I was born for this life. It was then, in the new morning sun, that my decision was made.

"We were months away from the last village before it finally got out, before the Roman guards noticed there was something off."
"And still weeks more before the commander figured out what it was!" Lancelot added, laughing heartily at the memory of the Roman leader's discomfort.

Galahad smiled widely, glancing at the knight sitting against the wall, smirking, and drinking from a pitcher, before continuing his story. "He came storming out of his tent one night, yelling for us all to line up. He was seething. We could all see it, and we knew one of us was getting a beating to remember. After all the boys were lined up, he instructed us to drop our pants. We all thought he was insane, but we did it anyway. Except one." Here he grinned and took a drink of his ale as Vanora's children yelled for him to continue.

At that moment Gawain sat down next to Galahad and said, "I was standing next to him. I remember whispering for him to drop his pants, but he just looked at me angrily and took a step away from me. The commander stepped up to him and insisted that he remove his pants and the boy just looked up at him and said, "Why? You want to compare lengths?" At that Bors burst out laughing and Vanora grabbed a few of the youngest and pulled them away with a word about "such things in little ones minds."

"The commander, furious by this time, backhanded the boy so hard that he fell over. Then he pulled the boy's pants down for everyone to see...that it wasn't a boy at all." The children screamed with laughter.

"We were all in such shock as the commander grabbed the girl's arm and hauled her into his tent, we just stood there half naked in the dark until one of the guards finally told us to pull up our pants and go to bed." Galahad finished.

"But what about the girl?" Asked Gilly.

"Well, we could hear the commander shouting at her. But he was so angry I don't know if even she could make out what he was saying. There were sounds of things crashing around in his tent, and then she came stumbling out like she'd been shoved. She was limping and had a hand on her face as she made her way to her bed."

Lancelot piped in, "But she was smiling. The man had beaten her nearly senseless, and she was smiling as she limped to bed."

Galahad continued, "The next day, when we all went down to the stream to get water for the morning, there she was with a cloth in her hand dabbing at a cut just under her eye. The left side of her face was black and blue, her eye swollen nearly shut. And she just grinned at us all like an idiot."

"Was it Agravaine who helped her?" Galahad looked askance at Gawain.

"Bedivere."

All eyes turned to the knight sitting against the wall.

"It was Bedivere who helped me." With a grin, she added, "The rest of you were too chicken to come near me after you found out I was a girl. Though I still don't see why, I had already seen everything there was to see."

At that she stood and walked over to where the children were watching in awe as the story unfolded. The look on her face became very serious as she leaned down, resting her fists on the table and looming over the kids sitting on the other side. "And that, my darlings, is how I tricked the Romans into making a girl a knight. Now. It's time for you to go to bed."

The children groaned as one and began begging for more stories. But with a hand held up to stop them, and a shake of her head, they quieted and shuffled off to bed. "I will never understand why that story is so entertaining to you all." She sighed as she sat down with one leg on each side of the bench that Galahad and Gawain were sitting on.

"Because it's bloody funny!" laughed Bors. "You were the first one of us to make the Romans regret this damn contract!"

"It could also be because it was the first story to be had among us. Up to then we had no adventures, no stories, not together at least." Gawain put in, "Does it bother you that we like that story?"

She smiled at Gawain and replied, "No, I suppose it doesn't bother me. It's the only part of that month of my life that I care to remember. I was so relieved that we were far enough away from the villages that they couldn't just take me back. That's why I was always "grinning like an idiot", as you put it Galahad. The next days and weeks were hell though. I had a heck of a time convincing the commander that I was to be a knight and not a bed-friend for him or the other guards. I was lucky."

"Lucky we all liked you enough to put up a fight when he had beaten it out of YOU." Bors quipped. Storane just smiled and raised and eyebrow at him.

"It's not as if I haven't said thank you a thousand times over to each of you...in different ways."

They all smiled at that. Just then Tristram walked in to the tavern. "Arthur wants to see you Bors."

"Huh. I wonder what's going on," he mumbled as he lumbered off to meet Arthur.

Galahad looked at Tristram. "Want to take part in a little challenge, Tristram?"

Tristram just raised an eyebrow.

"Daggers." Was Galahad's reply.

"You been practicing?"

Galahad chuckled as he stood up and walked over to his usual throwing position. Storane stood to follow him over, watching and sipping ale from the pitcher in her right hand.

Galahad took careful aim and flung his hand out, sending the dagger straight into the eye of the target. But before it had even stopped quivering from the hit Tristram's knife landed with a thud in the very center of the hilt of Galahad's dagger. Galahad grimaced at Tristram's display and was about to say something when another thud was heard. Both men turned to look at the target and found that there was now a third dagger, this one sticking out from the hilt of Tristram's knife in the same way as his was from Galahad's. The three knives swayed from the force of the hit as everyone looked at them. Then all heads turned to look at Story, taking a drink of her ale, standing a few feet behind Galahad and to the left. She grinned at everyone and did a little bow. Sauntering forward, she winked at Tristram as she walked past him and grabbed her dagger, pulling it from the other two.

"I'm going to bed." She glanced over at Gawain. "Gawain, may I have a word with you before you retire for the night?" And with that, she moved off in the direction of her room, hips swaying.

Gawain took one last drink of his ale and smiled as he followed her out.