Disclaimer: Who could possibly own the wonderful and elusive King Arthur? Or Clive Owens? No one! Well, someone. But not me. Someone not-me also owns the dialogue near the end.
After reading about the Sarmatian tribes and their violent lifestyles, I wanted to give this scene a bit more... intimacy and accuracy. Enjoy!
The tavern wood is dark like Tristan's hair, gnarled as his braids, musky as the wool shirts he wears as he weaves his way through mountains and Woads and the stark vision of their bodies in his dreams.
He closes his heart to them in the way he closes it to Sarmatia. His fellow knights, his fellow weapons, reminisce on childhood's blue skies and the taste of the sea on their tongues.
But they forget Sarmatia has never been peaceful and when the time comes to scrub their skin raw with freedom, they will cross an empire that enslaved them to a home that awaits their return in need of warriors.
Sarmatians understand warfare and raiding and hardened hearts more clearly and coldly than Galahad guesses. They are a nomadic people, relying on the lean muscles of their backs and a pragmatism that reaches beyond mercy.
Tristan remembers the fierce beauty of a woman riding horseback, bone spear at the ready in her sure hand, anticipating battle.
That is Sarmatia for Tristan.
He sips at his drink and watches Gawain muse on the kind of woman he will marry while Bors insists he should make the most of it and just fuck them all.
They are fools to believe their native land is a place of salvation. They are lying to themselves on horses higher than even a Sarmatian can ride if they believe the eyes of a child could correctly capture the reality of a people they no longer understand.
He fiddles with a knife and considers the worn dart board.
His past holds nothing for him except a story he may never choose to share. A journey. A fireside tale. He keeps his words tucked safe beneath his tongue like a hidden blade.
They can talk as much as they like, but Tristan knows that even brave knights have trouble facing an opponent far more formidable than a murderous Saxon: the truth.
He knows that whether they die in these forests, on these plains, in this rain, or whether they live to touch that damned scroll proclaiming the return of something that was never supposed to be taken in the first place, they will never leave Briton.
With that thought, he stands and throws his knife and watches idly as it hits the center of Galahad's.
Dead center.
They will never leave.
"Tristan," asks Gawain incredulously, "how do you do that?"
"I aim for the middle," Tristan replies with some amusement and some resignation.
Never.