I Have Been Here Many Times Before
Dagonet's POV
I had taken care of him since we had first met on that long journey to Britain. He had been a rotund boy, blond hair flopping in his eyes, smudges of dirt seemingly magnetically attracted to him. We were the same age, he and I, though he tended to act much younger, fitting in better with the younger boys then I ever would.
It only seemed fitting that I should be the one who took care of him afterwards. When he did grow angry no one else braved the storm. Perhaps it was just that I was the only one of a size to compare to him.
I stood by, more then slightly amused, the first time he grew drunk. I watched him tell the dirtiest jokes he knew, watched him grope at passing women though he was still so young, smiled indulgently as he drank himself into a stupor. It was the first time I had to half carry, half drag him to the barracks. It was hardly the last.
Each morning he would clutch his head and swear that he would never ever drink again. Each night he was back at the tavern, spending what little wages we received on more alcohol.
I couldn't blame him for drinking like he did. We had shared a room for the majority of our service to Rome, I knew what type of dreams he had. The killing would never disappear after the battle was won. That man, that bull of a man, returned to the whimpering child he was after our first battle. Scared, bloodied with both his and other blood, wishing to all the Gods imaginable that he was back at home in his family's drafty hut.
Some things never leave you.
Some nights he would whisper the names of those we had lost, usually his childhood friend from his village. Bedivere had fallen to the Woads so long ago, our third battle to be exact. An inexperienced lad who longed to return to Sarmatia and farm. He had been captured by the rebels. We had found him tortured, half-dead, staring emptily at the sky. Though we had healed him, he had gone insane, eventually taking his own life. Bedivere haunted every knight's dreams from time to time, but none so much as Bors.
When he was unconscious he dreamed of nothing. His fingers stopped twitching, his breathing was heavier.
Bors, being who he was, had gotten drunk again. Vanora, exasperated with him as always, had locked him out of their small hut. It had fallen on me once again to drag Bors back to the barracks, to the room he had once shared with me.
He had an arm slung over my shoulder, causing him to walk lopsidedly down the road as he was much shorter then I.
"Dag..." I was concentrating more on keeping my footing then on his drunken ramblings. "Dag, you know I love you, dont'cha?"
"I know, Bors."
