Arthur's cry pierced Merlin's mind like a dagger to the eye. He dropped to his knees, his patient forgotten.
"Merlin?" Gaius started to kneel beside him, but Merlin waved him off.
"It's Arthur. Something's wrong." He pulled himself to his feet and sent a wave of magic across Bedivere's leg to help heal the broken bone. They'd set and bandaged it. There was nothing else Merlin could do now that the other healers couldn't. "I've got to find Arthur."
He spun away from Gaius's restraining hand, doing his best to ignore the worry plainly written on the old physician's face. Gaius had questions, he knew, but Merlin didn't have any answers. Wouldn't have any answers until he found Arthur.
Assuming he wasn't too late.
Merlin sprinted out of the healers' tent, cutting between the soldiers that formed the defenses around the wounded. A few tried to stop him, but he brushed past them like he was made of smoke and flung himself into the midst of the fighting. He ducked the sword swipe aimed at his head, throwing the soldier backward with a word.
He couldn't see who fired the crossbow bolt at him, but he dodged it all the same, stupidly halting in the midst of the battle to seek out the light that was Arthur. He found him ringed about by Rheged's soldiers, facing a dark figure Merlin felt like he'd seen somewhere before, if only in a dream.
Arthur was on his knees, his light flickering. The dark figure lifted something- a sword?- high above his head and prepared to bring it down, fast and hard. Merlin reached out and shoved the figure away, before he could land the killing stroke. Arthur's light steadied, and Merlin could breathe again.
"Merlin!" A hand landed on his shoulder, startling him out of the trance he'd fallen into. He looked up to find Elyan staring back at him, something between anger and fear burning in his eyes. "What are you doing?"
"Arthur," Merlin breathed, as though that answered everything.
Elyan opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and grabbed Merlin's arm. "Stay with me, then, for God's sake!"
He pulled his arm out of Elyan's grasp, but followed along. Leon's voice, faint and muted by the mists came from ahead. "To the king!" Merlin stumbled, then found his footing and sprinted ahead of Elyan, prompting another curse from the knight. He ignored it and kept running.
Arthur was surrounded by a mess of fighting, and even though more red-cloaked men were coming, there weren't enough of them to push Rheged's men back.
So Merlin cleared the field for them, pushing back at their enemies with the pent-up rage and terror and hate borne of being so terribly close to losing Arthur. The men of Rheged fell, nearly to a one. Some were dead, some merely staggered, and an eerie silence fell over the field as Merlin's cry ended, and he stood alone on the battlefield, breathless.
He looked for Arthur then, found him dazed and bleeding, supported by Leon and then Lancelot as well as the knights fell back into the trees.
"Merlin?" Elyan's voice was tentative. He reached out and touched the warlock on the arm.
"I'm fine," Merlin said, though he tasted blood in his mouth. "Go see to Arthur. I'll see to the rest of this."
Whatever it was that Elyan saw in his eyes, he didn't question Merlin's intentions. But he didn't leave. "Whatever it is you're doing, Merlin, I'm not going to leave you here alone. Even you need someone to watch your back."
Merlin's lips twitched into a faint smile. "Fine, then." He turned and looked back to the emptying battlefield, raising one hand to the mists and stretching the other toward the earth at his feet, calling to water in the valley to come to him and rise up as a mist. The ground beneath him dried as the water rose out of it, hardening and then cracking as though it were the depth of a long drought. The effect spread in an ever-widening ring around Merlin, while the mists grew and grew until it seemed a solid mass, opaque and impenetrable.
There was a lone shape visible- the dark figure who had nearly killed Arthur. He stood still for a moment, staring back at Merlin. Then he turned away, his deep laughter rumbling through the mists until he disappeared.
