Now we are home
I'm sorry for the delay. Personal stuff I don't want to bore you with got in the way. Anyway, I'm back now.
I simply put this chapter up without reading it through thoroughly, so please excuse any mistakes I might have overlooked. I will proof-read tomorrow.
Chapter Three
"Kill or cure!"
Gweir's voice was very grave, the steep furrow between his brows speaking of his apprehension as he looked down upon Tristan, who lay listless and shivering on the narrow bed. Arthur and Lancelot stood next to him, the latter still leaning against the wall for support. Gweir had yelled at him harshly for not staying in bed, but no power on this earth could have kept the knight away from the bedside of an ailing brother, especially if it was this grave.
"It's not his wounds that are killing him", Gweir explained upon Arthur's questioning look. "They are healing. See?" He pulled back the blanket to reveal Tristan's torso, the pale flesh littered with scars, some new, some old. He was thin, thinner than he should be, but the wounds he had received during the furious battle with the Saxons were indeed mending.
"His body cannot continue burning like this," Gweir went on and covered the knight up again, "so we must cast out the fever. To do this, the body has to be cooled with icy water and then wrapped tightly in wool to break the fever. It might work, but it is very hard on the heart. Only the strongest men survive it. Hence the name: kill or cure."
Arthur and Lancelot exchanged a brief look, before the commander nodded at the healer.
"Try it, then. We have no choice but to count on Tristan's stubbornness to keep him alive."
Gweir nodded and ushered them from the room. Arthur, seeing how Lancelot was still unstable on his own, tried to offer him a hand, but the furious glare he received stopped him before he could finish the gesture.
OooOooO
It was as if Britain had decided to show itself from its most unwelcoming side ever. Rain poured from the heavens, pounded onto the roofs of the Badon fortress and turned the streets into muddy rivers, lighting flashed across the sky, illuminating the clouds of pewter gray, and the following thunder shook the earth.
The fortress lay still, all sounds dimmed by the raging storm, all movements restricted to the indoors. The cold, clammy air reached with sticky fingers for the windows, the sharp gusts of wind rattled the shutters and doors and mercilessly whipped the branches of trees against the walls.
Lancelot sat upright in bed, knees drawn up and his hands folded on top of the blanket. He stared out through the narrow window at the gale that was beating down onto the land, ignoring the droplets of icy rain that were frequently hurled through the window and refusing to acknowledge the creeping cold that not even the blanket could fully combat.
His mouth was set in a thin, disapproving line, his dark eyes gleamed with suppressed anger. And for once, it was directed at the man standing in the corner, his oldest friend, his commander, for whom he had risked his life more than a thousand times over the past years.
"I thought you would understand", Arthur said, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence.
Lancelot shot him a glare and huffed angrily.
"That's the worst thing about it. You did not just think I'd understand, you just assumed my cooperation! How could you, Arthur? How?"
Arthur met his eyes evenly.
"You always hated risking your life for Rome..." he began slowly, "and I understood that. But now, this... We can make this our home. We can reclaim the land we have bled for over the last fifteen years and make it ours, we can make it better, the way Rome should have been, but never was! Don't you see?"
His eyes shone with barely suppressed emotion. Lancelot, on the other hand, felt sick.
"You self-righteous bastard!" he growled, making Arthur's head snap back as if he had slapped him. "Is that all you think about? Your home? Your dreams? What about your promises to get us home? What about our dreams?"
The commander bristled slightly, his brow furrowing.
"You are the only one who sees it that way, Lance. Why, even Galahad believes in this, believes in me! I would have thought that you, as my best friend, would, too."
Lancelot's eyes narrowed and he felt his fists clench and unclench on the blanket.
"Perhaps I will", he conceded after a moment of heavy silence, "but not right now. Right now, it makes me sick to look at you, so please get out!"
Arthur hesitated, visibly reluctant to depart on such an unfriendly note, but his knight was not in the mood for more explanations. He was furious, thank you very much, and he intended to stay furious until the emotion had run its course and he could think about it rationally again.
"Out!" he yelled, as Arthur opened his mouth to argue further, and Lancelot felt a sharp pain stab though his chest, making him hiss in pain.
OooOooO
Marian had done her best to avoid Lancelot over the past few days, ever since he had woken up. Too fresh was the memory of everything she had told him while he was unconscious and she was afraid he might have understood more than he let on. Her excuses, why she refused to bring him his food or change his bandages, making her father do it instead, had been flimsy at best, but Gweir had not pressed her for the reason and she was grateful.
Rhian might have noticed otherwise, but her sister was unusally quiet as well, her eyes constantly on the door to Tristan's room whenever she felt unnoticed, fear and worry clouding her pretty features.
Marian was perhaps the only one in whom her sister had ever confided, the only one who knew how desperately Rhian loved the elusive scout and how much it had hurt her to leave when she did, marrying a man she merely liked, not loved. Still, Marian had been younger then, more naïve, and had not fully understood why her sister did not fight harder for the man she supposedly loved. Now she understood, though, that it would destroy Rhian if Tristan died.
She sighed, as she felt the weight of all that sorrow and sadness press down onto her slender shoulders. Sleep had been hard to come by over the course of the past few days. The entire fortress was on edge. The picts who had stayed after the battle had already proven to be better allies than many had expected, quicker to put aside misgivings than those who had lived so long under Roman rule.
And it was amazing how much faith they had in Arthur, she thought idly, while she was rolling new bandages. In her mind, she tried to picture the upcoming wedding between the future king and the beautiful young Pict. The smile, that was tugging at her lips, felt almost foreign on her face.
Sighing once more, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
Her brief moment of peace was interrupted when she heard Lancelot's yell from behind the closed door. Immediately, she dropped the bandage onto the table, gathered her skirts and ran.
It was healer's instinct, perhaps, that overrode her hesitation to ever face him again and made her pull open the door without knocking first.
OooOooO
On any other day, Lancelot would have had a hearty laugh at the way Marian's expression turned from righteous indignation to pale-faced shock as she burst into the room to berate whomever it was that was upsetting her patient, only to find that it was Arthur himself. On this occasion, however, he found himself lacking the necessary humor. If anything, her arrival made him angrier still.
The girl regained her composure remarkably quickly, considering both men were glaring at her with varying degrees of annoyance. She squared her shoulders and clasped her thin hands firmly in front of her before turning her gaze to Arthur.
"Mylord..." The tone of her voice hovered exactly on the edge between respectful and reprimanding. "...Sir Lancelot should not overexert himself yet. And that includes shouting. Might I suggest leaving whatever it was you were discussing to a later date?"
Arthur nodded slightly, his expression carefully blank, and left the room without another word. The silence he left behind was as choking as the smoke from a tar-fed fire.
Marian cleared her throat, suddenly self-conscious once more. The room really was tiny, and she felt as if the heat from the knight's body, now once more close to her, must surely burn her if she got any closer.
Lancelot did not look at her, even as she went over to the window, cast a brief look outside into the raging storm and closed the shutters.
Only then did she turn back towards Lancelot, finally noticing the way his lips were trembling slightly, and reached out to place her fingertips gently on his cheek.
He pulled back at once, as though startled by the fact that she was still in the room, and stared at her, his black eyes unfathomable, like twin pools of liquid night.
"You're freezing..." she whispered.
Later, he would not be able to tell what made him do it. Marian was not the sort of voluptuous wanton he normally spent his nights with, she was too thin, frail, like a young bird. Her eyes were too big, her body did nothing to entice the male fantasy.
And yet... she was there, warm and real, and -while not beautiful- distinctly female. The scent of medicinal herbs clung to her, her hair looked soft in the dim light and her eyes were fixed upon him, filled with flattering adoration. Dimly he recalled what she had whispered to him while she had thought him unconscious, remembered how her tentative touches had become innocent caresses, how she had sunk her fingers into his hair... Perhaps that was it, or perhaps he simply hungered for a woman in order to force the image of her from his mind...
Either way, he could not really tell. He simply grasped her hand as she made to pull it away from his skin and pressed his lips to her palm. She gasped slightly, her eyes widening even further, but she did not resist as he got up and laid one hand gently on her neck.
There was something in her eyes, an unconscious pleading for him to spare her, perhaps, a kind of fear he could not put a name to.
He ignored it, slung his free arm around her narrow waist, bent his head down and kissed her.
She tensed, went utterly still for the span of a heartbeat, before her arms closed around his neck and her mouth opened beneath his.
His tongue swept past her lips and he pressed her tighter to his body as the kiss became more insistent. She moaned against his lips, a helpless little sound, but made no move to pull away, following him obediently as he steered her backwards and down onto the bed. Only then did he break the kiss, ignoring the pain in his chest as his hand trailed down her body to gather the hem of her skirt... and also ignoring the voice in the back of his head that was screaming at him This is wrong! This is wrong! This is wrong!
...to be continued...
