A/N: I will remember these damn line breaks if it kills me. I got it this time. I am oh so slowly catching up to myself with this story (remember, it is still a work in progress and I still have more to write). I'm gonna try really really hard to make sure I don't run out of chapters to post before I finish it. I've got about 25 chapters done now. Estimated maybe two or three more after that. I'm still wrestling with the idea of a sequel and if I'm really equipped to manage that right now (and if it will take me another two years like this one did...), and whether or not there will definitely be a sequel certainly factors in to how I wrap up all the threads in the end. Hmmmmmmm... Either way I'll try not to leave you in the lurch. Okay, done rambling.
**EDITED**
Most of that day was spent shut up in the council chambers, bent over maps of both kingdoms and long registers of soldiers and diagrams of various military strategies. The difference between this meeting and the endless council meetings that Merlin had endured on a daily basis since he had been crowned king was palpable, and not only because it was a war council.
The councilors were actively seeking his opinion. They were asking for his advice and looking to him to make the final decision, whereas before they had oftentimes overlooked him completely. He no longer had to fight to make his voice heard or defend his every suggestion against a group of skeptical faces. There was a respect there that had never been present before; he had gotten the feeling that, while the members of his council may have respected him as a person, they had had little confidence in his leadership skills. Perhaps he should have listed out his accomplishments sooner because his outburst over Lord Tennison's disrespect seemed to have erased the last of their doubts on the matter of his competence.
The deeds that he had cited had not seemed so remarkable to him, but Merlin guessed that, when they were all put together like that, they did sound rather impressive. Maybe he just had a bit of a skewed perspective on what was an achievement and what was not. He had come to realize that some feats that were commonplace for him seemed to be nigh on impossible for many others, like splitting his focus and performing two spells at once.
Either way, all the things he had said that he had done were enough to convince the council that he was not nearly as inexperienced as he had initially seemed. He was not, contrary to first impressions, some civilian dragged in off the street to run their kingdom into the ground. He knew what he was doing, and they were finally trusting him to do it.
The difference that trust made was staggering, and the time seemed to pass more quickly than it had ever done before as Merlin planned out the defensive strategies for his own kingdom and worked through a number of different scenarios for the coming attack on Camelot.
A few hours earlier, before this meeting had begun, Merlin had ridden out to the Perimeter with Kane and a number of Lower Priests. With the contribution of all the Priests, a host of massive grounding crystals, and a considerable boost from Merlin, they had succeeded in transforming the Perimeter into a solid Barrier.
The only way for anyone to pass through the Barrier was with the help of the select few—namely, the members of the council and some of the high ranking officers in the fighting force—who had been given the authority to open up a gap, a sort of gateway into the city. There was now at least one such person stationed along the Barrier at regular intervals that corresponded to the cardinal entrances to the city to allow for troops to be moved in and out, and in case any of the common people had gotten stuck on the wrong side when the Barrier was solidified.
There was little more that needed to be done aside from that; the city was as secure as it could possibly be, more secure than it had ever been before. Of course, there would still be a strong military presence at the edges of the city, but it was more precautionary than anything else.
The plans for Camelot were proving more difficult to hammer out, especially without direct contact with Arthur. The communication charms were only good for sending basic signals and while it was possible for Merlin to project his spirit into Camelot, that took a great deal of magic and Merlin did not want to expend that much energy when had already used a huge amount in setting up the Barrier; no matter that his magic seemed to be near to inexhaustible at times, he would rather err on the side of caution and take this time to rest and replenish his reserves before the actual fighting was to take place.
The uncertainty, the knowing that a battle was coming but not knowing when or where or how large, was taking its toll on everyone's nerves. It was all speculation at this point, hypothetical situations and guesses—educated guesses, on Merlin's part, but guesses nonetheless—as to what Morgana would do. There was really only so much that they could do to prepare without having more concrete information on hand.
Eventually Merlin had to concede that they had run through every scenario that any of them could think of and that it would do them no good to keep rehashing the same things, and he dismissed the council with a weary wave of his hand.
"Lord Ellison, may I have a word?" he called over the din of scraping chairs. Ellison nodded and waited for the room to be mostly clear before he came to Merlin's side.
"You wished to speak with me, sire?" he asked.
His use of the honorific, while not commonplace by a long shot, was not so unheard of these days. It had been well over two weeks since he had last spoken out against Merlin in council or said anything belittling about him. His attitude seemed to be changing where Merlin was concerned and Merlin could not have been more pleased with it; he had meant what he said when he told Ellison that family was important to him. He did not have nearly enough of it to be at odds with the little he did have.
"Yes, I did. You have military experience, do you not?" Merlin inquired.
"I do, sire," he said, sounding proud of that fact, but not fulsome as Merlin would have expected upon meeting him.
Merlin nodded, pleased with his answer.
"Then I wish for you to stay here," he said.
Ellison's face immediately contorted in confusion and indignation, and Merlin guessed that he probably could have prefaced that request in a way that did not sound so disparaging.
"What?" Ellison asked crossly. "You want me to stay behind because I know how to fight? That makes no sense at all!"
"Ellison, I want you to be in charge of safeguarding the kingdom in my absence," Merlin hurried to explain.
That stopped Ellison's complaints in their tracks and he gaped at Merlin for a moment, taken aback. Merlin understood his surprise; after all, the two of them had not had a good start and their relationship hadn't improved all that much since then. Not enough to warrant this, at least.
"But…why?" Ellison asked, sounding honestly perplexed.
Merlin placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Ellison, before I showed up to make my claim, the council was perfectly willing to give you the throne," he said.
He had come to this decision the night before when he had realized that in leading the fight in Camelot himself, he would be leaving Carthis without his protection. He had entertained the thought of leaving Sir Gerund behind in his place, but Gerund was too good a fighter for him to do without in a battle such as this promised to be.
Then he had remembered that, despite his rather abrasive attitude, Ellison had been qualified enough that the council had only not crowned him king immediately because Gerund had insisted that there was someone out there with a stronger claim to the throne. If there was anyone suited to act in his stead, then it would be the one who could easily have taken his place.
"They believed you to be capable of being king," Merlin said. "If they had that much trust in your ability to keep them safe, then I will as well. I need someone here that I can trust to protect my people in my absence. And I want that person to be you."
Ellison looked at him for a moment, his brow furrowed and his expression inscrutable as he searched Merlin's face. Before he had found whatever it was that he was looking for, before he had a chance to answer, a rush of heat against the sensitive skin of his inner wrist wrenched a gasp from Merlin's lips.
He immediately shook down his sleeve to see the small metal disk that was the communication charm giving off a faint white light. His heart caught in his throat and he counted—one second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds.
Some of the initial panic faded and he took a deep breath to calm his racing heart; four seconds. Arthur was not being threatened, he was not in immediate danger. He should not have felt as relieved as he did considering that a signal of that length indicated the first sighting of Morgana's force making its way towards Camelot, but he couldn't quite help it. The alarm remained, though. Their time was running out.
Merlin turned back to Ellison, who had paled a bit in understanding of what that signal meant.
"Ellison, can I trust you to—"
"Yes, of course you can," Ellison said quickly, pulling his shoulders back determinedly. "I will defend this kingdom to the death."
"Thank you."
With that, Merlin turned to search out Gerund and Sir Frederick, but Ellison called him back.
"Merlin!"
He stopped when Merlin turned back at his call, looking a bit embarrassed, as though he had not meant to say anything at all. He cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly on his feet for a moment before raising his eyes to meet Merlin's.
"Good luck, cousin," he said clearly.
A smile grew on Merlin's face, the warm feeling in his chest completely at odds with the apprehension that had taken over him as soon as the talisman had burned against his wrist, but he couldn't stop it.
"And you as well, cousin," he said, relishing in the opportunity to say it and to mean it, to know that he had family. It meant more than Merlin would have thought it would, gaining the confidence of one of the only kinsmen he had left.
Ellison smiled back, tentative and uncertain but far more genuine than anything the two had ever exchanged before. And then he bowed to Merlin, a show of respect and deference that Merlin would never have expected of him, not after how vehemently he had fought against Merlin's rule in the beginning.
Merlin nodded back, his grin threatening to take over his face entirely, before the urgency of the situation forced him to turn away and seek out the leaders of his fighting force. They had a battle to win, after all.
The courtyard was filled with blue and red cloaks, the disparate colors striking to the eye in a way that a solid mass of one or the other wouldn't have been. Merlin was once again immeasurably glad for the idea that he had had so early on in the transportation crystals, for there would have been no other way to transport so many fighters such a distance without taking a good number of them out of the fight entirely due to magical exhaustion. As it was, each commanding officer had in his possession a crystal which he had been imbuing with energy for weeks now in case of just such an occasion as this. Every person in the courtyard was perfectly well rested and ready to join in the coming battle.
For the most part, the two groups of fighters remained segregated. The knights of Camelot cast wary glances at the Carthisian force, but they no one made any move against them, for which Merlin was grateful; they could not afford for there to be dissent in the ranks, not now with Morgana and her men on the horizon. His own men—and women; it had been quite entertaining to see the reactions of the Camelot knights upon discovering that there were women fighting for Carthis—were guarded as well, with the knowledge that the knights of Camelot had spent their entire lives hunting down their kind like animals.
It was all very tense and uncomfortable, but not openly hostile. Merlin spent a good long while going around and speaking to his men individually, assuring them that, yes, they had been welcomed there by the King and, no, there would not be any measures taken against them because of their magic.
The Knights of the Round Table had been a godsend. Since the four of them had known about Merlin's magic for two months now and had had all that time to come to terms with the possibility of magic's beneficence, they had no qualms about approaching the fighters from Carthis and engaging them in conversations about tactics or previous battles or magic itself or even just daily life in Carthis. Their boldness, and the tentative but friendly way in which the Carthisian fighters responded to their inquiries, was helping to break the ice between the two groups.
It also helped that there was no way for Camelot's knights to tell the difference between the knights of Carthis and the mages, between who had magic and who did not. There was no difference in the armour or the cloaks that they wore, and each and every one of them had a sword at his or her hip.
Knowing that some were magic and some were not but not being able to distinguish between them went against much of what those in Camelot had believed; namely, that sorcerers were a different breed, that they were not like normal people. They looked perfectly normal now, exactly like their secular comrades.
Merlin stayed in the courtyard for a while, speaking one on one with his fighters and helping to organize them into the proper rank and file. Mordred was there, running back and forth between Sir Gerund and Sir Leon and coordinating the mages with the soldiers that would be guarding their backs while they set up their defensive spells along the perimeter of the castle; these soldiers had been chosen specifically by Leon, open-minded enough to be trusted not to stab the sorcerers in the back while they were caught up in their spell-casting.
Merlin had caught sight of Arthur briefly, looking down on them from the place on the battlements that Merlin had always secretly thought of as his brooding spot, but the next time that he had looked up, Arthur had been gone. Now, Merlin left his troops in the capable and much more experienced hands of Sir Gerund and Sir Frederick and went in search of his friend.
His first stop was the council chambers, but Arthur was not among the men clustered around the map on the table as he had expected him to be. Merlin slipped out of the room again without anyone noticing that he had been there, not wanting to get drawn into more discussions and distracted from his search. He headed for the throne room next, thinking that Arthur might have moved on to another one of his favorite thinking spots.
Merlin was glad that there were few guards running about the place, all of them occupied with the preparations for battle; they undoubtedly would have felt the need to escort him around and keep an eye on him under the pretense of protection, and he just wasn't in the mood for that. He did pass by a few servants whom he had worked with for years. They skirted around him, heads down, and did not acknowledge Merlin's attempts at a greeting.
The throne room was empty when Merlin reached it, no Arthur leaning against the column by the window and looking out over the courtyard as he was so wont to do when he was preoccupied with his thoughts. Merlin sighed—of course Arthur would be hard to find now of all times—and made it halfway back out of the door when an idea struck him. He turned back and peered around the room, intrigued by the possibility that had occurred to him.
With a wave of his hand, he said, "Gebodaþ mè þæs ofercymes Morgane." A golden light shimmered in the doorway before fading away to nothing, leaving no evidence that any spell had been cast. Satisfied with his work, he nodded and turned in the direction of the only other place that he could think for Arthur to be. As soon as he was within hearing distance of Arthur's chambers, he could make out the clattering of armour and the murmur of voices.
"It's fine, George. No, just…Will you just—I'll do it myself, George," Arthur said, sounding positively irate.
"But, sire—"
"I will do it myself," Arthur repeated.
Merlin could practically hear George's put-upon sigh, though George was far too well trained to ever make such an audible noise of displeasure with his master.
"If that will be all, sire," he said, ever so politely.
"Yes, George, that will be all."
"As you wish, sire. Your sword and your cloak, sire, have been left upo—"
"Go, George."
Merlin had to stifle his laugh behind his hand as George came scurrying out of the room and off down the corridor with his metaphorical tail between his legs. Merlin heard more clanking of metal against metal and soft cursing as Arthur attempted to get himself into his armour without assistance, a feat Merlin knew to be almost impossible without the use of magic.
Merlin let himself into Arthur's chambers the way he always had—completely unannounced—and leaned against a bedpost to watch Arthur struggle with the armour, unaware of his presence. After a moment of silent amusement, he composed his face into the most innocent expression he could possibly manage.
"So, I take it you and George are getting along well?" he asked lightly.
Arthur answered without missing a beat, apparently not the least bit surprised to find that Merlin was in his chambers.
"If that man calls me 'sire' one more damn time, I'm going to bloody well hit him," he swore, reaching around his back in a clumsy attempt to buckle on his own chest plate.
Merlin rolled his eyes and moved forward to bat his hand out of the way.
"You were always complaining that I wasn't respectful enough," Merlin said, fastening the plate into place.
"That was just for the sake of berating you," Arthur said. "I didn't actually want you to be respectful all the time. That much respect is incredibly annoying."
"I'll keep that in mind," Merlin chuckled.
They became quiet then, falling easily into the routine that they had kept for so many years. Merlin's fingers were nimble and quick on the various buckles and straps, tightening them to exactly the right fit without any thought at all. Two months of absence had done nothing to erase eleven years' worth of habit.
The familiarity of it was a comfort to them both after all the upheavals and drastic changes of the previous months and neither one felt the need to break the companionable silence.
As Merlin worked his way around to fastening on Arthur's vambraces, he caught sight of the communication charm he had tied around Arthur's wrist the day before. He ran his thumb along the smooth metal disk, feeling the dips and grooves of the runes carved into its surface and the thrum of the magic contained within it.
"You truly don't…I mean, you're really…alright with this?" he asked hesitantly, not raising his eyes from Arthur's vambraces. He did not specify what it was that he was asking about, but Arthur did not need him to.
"Yes," he said simply. "I think I am."
"You think?" Merlin asked, glancing up at him.
Arthur took his time before he answered, weighing the question in his mind.
"I'm still getting used to it, honestly," he said eventually. "But I do not fear magic, not like I did before. I have had two months since you left to think on it all. And I have done a lot of thinking, and a lot of reading, and even more listening."
He pulled his wrist out of Merlin's grip and waited until Merlin had no choice but to meet his gaze.
"After everything that I have learned, everything that Gaius has told me…" He shook his head, apparently at a loss to describe what he was feeling. "I can no longer believe that magic is evil. Not when there are people like you."
Arthur was looking at him like he had hung the moon in the sky, like he was everything that was good and right in the world, and it made Merlin's stomach clench uncomfortably because it simply wasn't true.
"I am no saint, Arthur," he whispered. "I have done my share of bad things."
"Haven't we all?" Arthur asked.
Merlin shook his head. It wasn't the same, it just wasn't. The things that he had done, the lives that had been lost because of him, were enough to make him sick if he allowed himself to stop and think about it. He still awoke in a cold sweat from dreams of seeing Morgana's horrified face, of feeling her gasping for breath in his arms as his poison did its work. He could still hear the screams of the people who had been struck down by Kilgharrah's flames and the snap of Agravaine's neck against the stone floor of the tunnel in which Merlin had ended his life.
Merlin didn't realize that he had ducked his head in shame until he felt Arthur's hand on his shoulder, but he could not bring himself to lift it again.
"I know you to be a good man, Merlin," Arthur said, the gentleness of his tone nearly bringing tears to Merlin's eyes. "Probably the best I have ever known. But even the best of men make mistakes. And I have no doubt that all of yours were made with the purest of intentions."
Merlin swallowed hard around the lump in his throat, trying to blink away the sting in his eyes; he did not want to cry in front of Arthur again, not over something like this. What was done was done, and there would never be any way of reversing the harm he had caused. The only thing for him to do was to accept it, and to try to atone for his crimes by doing as much good as he possibly could.
"I only ever wanted to keep you safe," he said. It was a weak defense, but it was all that he had. Arthur's wellbeing had always been his first priority.
Arthur chuckled a bit.
"Well, I think you did a pretty good job of it, don't you?" he asked, gesturing to himself. He was alive and well, not missing any important bits. He was still sane and relatively happy. A small smile made its way onto Merlin's face.
"Yeah, I guess I did alright," he allowed.
Arthur opened his mouth to say something else, perhaps to jibe Merlin for being overly emotional again, but his next words were drowned out by the sudden clang of the alarm bells. They stood frozen for a moment, too shocked by the abruptness of the brazen warning to comprehend what it meant; Morgana had started her charge. The attack had begun.
Arthur snatched up his sword from the table and belted it around his waist. He turned to Merlin and held out his arm, his face set in determination. Merlin grasped it.
"If we fight, we fight together," Arthur said.
"Always," Merlin swore.