AN: Happy Halloween guys! Have a quick update before either giving candy or getting candy or sitting in your house with the lights off to hide from the monsters running rampant in the streets. Speaking of Halloween though - I definitely want to do a Merlin fic or a oneshot or something in the future based around Samhain and some superstitious/supernatural things. I've got the fuel - so be on the lookout for that in the early November weeks ;)
And wow you guys definitely pulled through in the follower count aspect - buuuut reviews are worth a thousand follows as they say. Thank you though for all that has already been given! Thank youuu
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin!
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The people of Ealdor were a wary people, many of which reminded Arthur of the thin dogs he had seen sometimes on the sides of streets in other cities far worse off than Camelot. The people would glare or snap at Arthur, Leon, Percival, and Aredian as they passed, or instead they would simply hurry by with their eyes averted and heads ducked. The cage that Aredian toted behind him certainly wasn't helping the situation, and was likely inspiring hostility and fear in the hearts of those that saw the Camelot group travelling through the village on horseback.
Arthur steered his horse, as the lead of the line, as best he could through the few people that walked the main dirt road and the often times empty cars stationed to the sides. There truly weren't many people, perhaps a little under one hundred that all lived within the conglomeration of run down huts and mud they called a village.
"Hello there," Arthur called to a woman who had attempted to duck past their group. Her hair was the color of mud and held back by a worn piece of cloth tied off just behind her ears. She was thin and young, but looked upon Arthur with angry eyes. "Where's the tavern in this little village?" Arthur asked, not looking at the woman, instead looking with squinted eyes at the buildings ahead of him, as if one of them might suddenly loom up and present itself to be a tavern.
The woman snorted, hitched the bundle she held higher into her arms, and answered bitterly, "There ain't no tavern in Ealdor. Yu'll go to the next town and get yer drink yerself from there or yu'll make it yerself jus like ev'rybody else."
Then, she ducked her head again and hurried away, leaving three rather stunned knights and one amused witchfinder upon their horses in the middle of the road.
"It seems, sire," Aredian said, "That these people aren't very open to travelers or newcomers." He scanned the people with sharp eyes, as if each and every one of them was a criminal, and Arthur detested that outlook. Though these people were not of Camelot, they should not have had to be glared and ordered into answering questions or submitting.
So Arthur, upon spotting a pole sticking up in the ground, dismounted his horse. He led Hengroen over to the poll and tied the reins there, knowing that it was not an actual station to tie off horses, but needing to improvise for the moment. Leon and Pellinore dismounted in turn behind Arthur, following his example but finding no other polls to tie their horses to.
"We'll go just down the road, sire." Pellinore informed Arthur, to which Arthur nodded as the two knights led their horses through the dirt. Aredian, with his large clattering cage, remained next to Arthur, and the man dismounted easily without even sparing a glance to see if there was any place near to tie his ride to. He merely kicked down a bar of metal on the cage to lock the wheels into place, and that was it. The large metal structure held the horse in place near to the poll Arthur had tied Hengroen to, and with a quick check of his horse, Arthur could see the beast was fidgeting warily at the proximity. He honestly couldn't blame the animal.
Pellinore and Leon were just walking back towards Arthur and Aredian when a yell cut through the air. The rather sleepy, while simultaneously tense, atmosphere that Ealdor had given off to the Camelot knights was suddenly brushed aside in favor of panic, as one man followed by a few others wrenched his way down the street towards them. He was an elderly man, with a hunched back and angry, squinted eyes. His right, wrinkled hand was gripped like a claw around the forearm of a middle-aged woman, as the old man practically dragged her forward to throw her at Arthur's feet.
For a moment, Arthur merely blinked in shock. He had seen things like this happen before, when a guard, knight, or citizen would drag a criminal into the courtroom and toss the accused down at Uther's feet. Often times, it was when someone was accusing another of being a sorcerer, usually young women or small children, who crouched before Arthur's father with tears streaming down their faces as they were sentenced to death without proof or trial. Arthur had had to sit beside his father on more than one of these occasions, but he had never had someone thrown at his feet in such a way.
"The moment I heard that Camelot soldiers were in town, I went and got 'er for you your lordships." The old man said, spittle flying from between his rotten teeth and dry lips. The woman he had thrown to the ground was slowly gathering herself, pushing her long black hair back beneath the rag over her head and wrapping her arms around herself. The small crowd that had gathered so suddenly tittered and whispered as they watched the scene, most of them likely just as confused as Arthur was in that moment.
"What are you talking about, what has this poor woman done?" Arthur asked, gesturing to the woman, trying to ignore the sneer on Aredian's face that he could see from the corner of his eye. No doubt the man who stood just behind him had been the one to throw sorcerers - be them true sorcerers or not - to the floor before a king many a time, and he was likely enjoying the tense bubble that was growing around them all and slowly suffocating them.
The old man blinked, before curling a finger at the woman who still crouched with her head bowed, "Consorted with those Dragonlords, she did. Last time Camelot soldiers came they weren't able to bring justice to her, cause of those nasty monsters swarming in their camp nearby. But now that they ain't around-"
Arthur cut the man off with a sharp gesture of his hand, and glanced down at the top of the woman's head. "Is what he says true?" He asked, not daring to believe that it was this easy to find a connection, to find the information they were seeking. "Did you consort with the Dragonlords before they launched their attack upon Camelot?"
At that a rippled gasp came up from the crowd. Being a lonely little border town just inside Cenred's territory, the people of Ealdor hadn't heard of the massive attack that had been launched upon Camelot which the Dragonlords had fled from. To hear now, from Camelot knights themselves no less, that the men and dragons that had been camping so very near to them had tried to destroy a kingdom was likely a nasty shock.
The woman, face still tilted towards the ground, slowly nodded. "Yes… Yes I did, sir." She admitted, though her tone was reluctant. The other people of Ealdor, much like the old man that had betrayed her, had likely seen her interacting with the Dragonlords on more than one occasion. To stay silent or to deny the fact was futile.
"Why?" Arthur asked. Though their group had traveled to Ealdor to ask about the credibility of the shaking hill, the fact that someone who had been in contact with the Dragonlords was still here was a stroke of luck. "Why did you help them?" He just wanted to understand.
The woman did not answer this, and the old man behind her reached forward to jerk her roughly with his withered old hand. Arthur stopped him with a quick motion once again, and the old man backed away with a gross sneer upon his lips. Leon and Pellinore eyed him harshly until he had stepped out of the circle cleared around the woman and the Camelot knights. Arthur waited until the woman straightened herself again, and then decided to ask a different question, "Did you know the Dragonlord named Balinor?"
The woman startled so suddenly that Leon jerked forward, hand upon the hilt of his sword and ready to protect his prince. She stared up at Arthur with wide blue eyes, blinking and looking as if she could not find the right words to respond. It was all the confirmation that Arthur needed, and immediately all sympathy for the woman dragged through the village and thrown to the ground before him drained away.
"Balinor is dead." He said coldly as the woman continued to blink and bite at her lips.
"Sire-" Pellinore whispered, his tone somewhat shocked at Arthur's tone. He had known the prince to be rather a bit of a bully sometimes, but Arthur had never gone so far as to deliberately be cold and cruel to someone simply to get a reaction. That was something that was more characteristic of Uther, or the more rich of the knights that felt as if they did not need to uphold the code. Arthur glanced at his knight with sharp eyes, but was cut off as a cry came from the woman still crouching on the floor.
She had brought both her hands up and pressed them to her mouth, an action that to Arthur, for some odd reason, felt vaguely familiar. "No- no, please, tell me he isn't-" She babbled as tears began to run down her face, slowly at first, but soon gaining speed.
Arthur's face was a mask of indifference, "He was a traitor to the crown and launched a failed attack to take Camelot. Why would you even hold onto the hope that he would have lived?"
She shook her head and shut her eyes, bowing her head back towards the ground again. The crowd around them was whispering again, the name Balinor flying through the air in tones that made it sound like a curse. It occurred to Arthur then that still didn't know the woman's name, but her reaction to the death of a sorcerer - someone who should have been feared and hated for their disgusting, corruptive magic - was shocking to him.
"What is your name?" Arthur asked.
The woman looked as if she wanted the ground to swallow her up, and she did not look Arthur in the eye as she responded, "H-hunith."
"You seem very distraught over the death of a criminal, Hunith." Arthur said, hearing an approving noise from Aredian behind him. The sound made him shiver, and he did his best to ignore the fact that his actions were being approved by a man feared by many and loved by none. "What was your connection to him?"
Hunith's tears did not slow, and she shook her head, strands of black hair falling around her face as she shut her blue eyes to the world. "No- no-"
Arthur frowned, and asked again, "What was your connection to him?" The crowd was picking up volume, watching the informal interrogation as if it were a tournament or spectator sport. Arthur swallowed against the dryness in his throat, and did not meet the disapproving eyes of his knights that still stood on either side of him. They needed answers, they needed to find the Great Dragon and Balinor's son, and if this woman had answers, then Arthur would grill her in front of her entire village until the dawn of the next day if that was what it took. "Answer me."
"He, he was-" She broke off into a small choked sound, and shook her head again, and that was when her connection to Balinor was made clear.
For there to be a son, there must also be a mother to that son. Uther had mentioned Balinor's wife back in the dungeon as well, when he had been trying to intimidate the lord into divulging the location of the Great Dragon. A wife likely met on the run, while planning for a war. The camp made close to Ealdor, on a plane that certainly wasn't the biggest they could have chosen for their dragons, simply to stay near to her. The other Dragonlords likely had wives and families as well, but those that had managed to flee the battle would have likely taken their families with them. Balinor had left his wife - Hunith - behind in her home village to wait for him, thinking that the threat of the Dragonlord's protection over her would be enough to keep the villagers from turning her over to Camelot. Balinor had thought he would have been able to return to her. Yet he hadn't, and here Arthur was in his stead, hunting down his family and offering them execution and imprisonment rather than a safe life far away from Camelot and the failed attempts to fight back.
"You were his wife." Arthur whispered the realization out loud, his voice not loud enough to carry to the crowd, but loud enough that Hunith let out another choked off sob of a sound.
Aredian amended that for the crowd, speaking up for the first time since the old man had brought Hunith before them, "The wife of a sorcerer - and a Dragonlord no less - is as good as a sorceress herself." He said in a tone that sounded only slightly as if he were apologetic, but it was obviously fake. Hunith's gaze shot to the black hatted man, and then to the cage that remained stationary in the street behind him. Her face paled, and made as if to move backwards - away - but the ring of the crowd pressing closer and Leon's hand on the hilt of his sword stopped her.
"W-we…" Hunith breathed before stopping herself, swallowing, and then speaking again more strongly, "We are under Cenred's rule, there is n-no punishment for sorcery here."
Just like how there was no punishment for sorcery in Camelot, but that didn't stop the unofficial laws from taking precedence and bringing many corrupted magic users to justice. It was a useless argument on Hunith's part.
Arthur glared down at her, watched as Hunith hunched and wilted, and said with a tone of finality, "Yes, but Balinor attacked Camelot. And now," Hunith's breathing picked up as Arthur's tone changed. Arthur didn't care as he spoke, barely feeling like himself, "now, we would like to know where his son and the Great Dragon are."
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