13. A Terrible Roar

"This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss."

- Ursula K. Le Guin

00000

The warmth of Twyford's generosity carried Merlin through the first few hours of travel that day. It was still freezing cold and the thoughts of what was coming – rushing toward him – sat heavy on the edges of his mind, but he allowed the kindness to buoy his feet and sooth his heart for as long as possible.

It couldn't last, however.

All too soon it became apparent that it was not going to be just another day on the road and Merlin's mood gradually subdued. Things were happening – there was a change in the air and posture of the soldiers around him.

Slightly before midday, their group started growing, from all directions. Herdsmen with their animals, peasants and merchants, wagons loaded down with supplies… By late afternoon Merlin was far from the last in the caravan; with people and carts and animals all trailing behind him.

And then the soldiers began arriving, appearing from different paths and roads, leading long lines of weary men who trudged with their heads down to the clank of chains, collars glinting around their throats.

Slaves. All of them.

In two days, he'll be shipped off to work… he heard Basil's voice from the night before echo though his head.

Two days. Shipped off to work. In the mines.

His breath hitched, lungs almost paralyzed as the reality sunk in that this was going to happen, and much sooner than he wanted.

As each group of slaves and soldiers joined the quickly expanding crowd, Merlin gazed at them with mixed pity and horror. All these men, torn from their lives – whether it had happened in the last week or years before didn't matter – marching to a dismal future of pain and darkness. But that wasn't the only thing that filled Merlin with fear – these slaves were so different from him. Each sad bunch that joined drove the point home to the boy with ever growing spikes of terror. They were slaves, yes, and their clothing and appearance spoke of the mistreatment and neglect they had all suffered, but they weren't thin and pale – clumsy, sickly sticks masquerading as boys. Gwen would have called them big and burly, rough and tough – and huge and often crude and scary Merlin added as he watched them, their lowered eyes dead and cold as the whips snapped through the air and at their feet, forcing them to walk on.

They were men who'd been built for hard work and endurance – if the circumstances of birth and fate had been kinder, they'd have been knights, and who knew, maybe some had been – the kind of men that ate twigs like himself for breakfast.

"That dark hole in the ground will make this trip seem like a picnic. Maybe he'll finally learn his place, right before he dies," mocked Basil's voice in his mind.

"It's the mines fer you anyway – 'at's where all slaves go. Bet you don't last a fortnight," Hab's words joined his mental anguish.

And now, looking at the ranks of captive muscle, Merlin understood.

He probably wouldn't even last the week.

"Ya know," Hab said that evening as the two boys erected tents, watching with giddy malice as Merlin's eyes kept stealing fearfully to the various groups of slaves huddled all around the huge clearing that was teeming with people. "They say sometimes it ain't the work 'at gets the scrawny 'uns, like you. The little 'uns get the 'special' jobs."

The warlock jerked his gaze back to the younger boy as his gut twisted in shock and terror.

Hab's grin grew and he shrugged. "Even slaves need a little mot'vation an' fun."

Merlin felt sick – absolutely nauseous – as he understood exactly what Hab was hinting at, and he had to clamp his lips tightly shut to keep the meager contents of his stomach from reappearing. Even then he couldn't hide the cold sweat the broke out all over, nor the trembling that seemed to have suddenly attacked all his limbs.

Hab laughed, leaned over to whisper a vile word in his ear, and then wacked him on the back with a pole as he walked away to secure the other side of the tent.

With a horror now planted inside him that went even deeper than his fear of the pyre, Merlin spent the rest of the miserable evening skittering silently about, head down and desperate not to draw attention to himself, lest his own party of soldiers remember his status as a slave and stick him with the others for the night.

He wasn't allowed to set up Arthur's cot or bring him food and he didn't dare make a fuss about it.

Tomorrow – the thought dragged him further down into a panic - tomorrow he would be gone, taken away, never see Arthur again. Would he even get the chance to say goodbye?

He breathed a small sigh of relief when his new guard allowed him to collect his blanket and then attached him to the wagon wheel as before, blessedly alone. He crawled to his spot under the cart and pulled the wool around himself as though it were a shield that would protect him from the ugly, horrible world, knowing there was no way sleep would come to him that night.

00000

It was cold. Bitter cold. All around him was a white, barren land with nothing other than the group of enemy soldiers as far as the eye could see. It was empty – of trees, of birds, of even sounds. It was as if the whole world had been whittled down to him and these men who had taken him.

He was bound to his horse as usual, but strangely, his blindfold was missing. After a week of almost constant blindness, it felt so strange to be able to see and look around, except that there wasn't anything to see – until his eyes landed on Merlin.

The boy was slogging along on foot, limping heavily.

"Faster, slave!" a soldier shouted, shoving his friend.

"Hey!" Arthur tried to protest, but no one paid him any mind.

Merlin struggled forward, his face flushed with a deep-set fever and his eyes glassy and blank from pain and illness.

They went on again, through more endless, frozen, white, nothing, until Merlin stumbled and fell down. No one stopped, the party continuing, and the boy was simply dragged across the snow by the chains attached to his wrists.

"Stop!" Arthur cried desperately, trying to force his mount to move closer but he as usual, he had no control. His hands were bound, his legs were bound, and the reins were held by someone else. "Help him, please!" he begged.

No one listened, and Merlin's exhausted body left more marks as he was towed further down the trail.

Panicking, Arthur changed tactics.

"Merlin!" he pleaded, "get up! This is no time to laze about, you have to stand! Come on, idiot, please get up!"

There was no reaction, almost as though Merlin couldn't even hear him – as if no one could hear him.

But then suddenly, the entire group halted. Merlin lay still on the ground, bloody and panting, arms outstretched above him where the chains had pulled them taunt, making no attempt to move.

One of the nameless soldiers approached.

"Pathetic," he said with disgust, toeing the unmoving boy with his boot. "So worthless."

And then Arthur watched in horror as the man drew his sword and casually drove it through the young man's gut, before pulling it out and wiping it clean of blood with the snow.

Merlin's blood.

Arthur's roar of anger and grief echoed through the empty space with enough force to split the earth – but it didn't. Nothing happened, no one heard, and Merlin was still dying.

The men dropped the chain and then they all moved forward, Arthur's horse following obediently.

"Merlin!" he yelled, twisting in the saddle to see behind him.

The servant lay as he fell in a growing pool of his own blood that spread stark red against the white snow, his cheeks wet and his mouth twisted in a scream of anguish and shock he couldn't even give voice to. Slowly, his tortured eyes raised and caught Arthur's and the prince read the plea in them in the depths of his soul.

'Please don't leave me here!'

But he had no choice – it had been taken from him days before. Merlin was left dying in the cold snow as Arthur rode away until his friend was gone, swallowed by the great, empty nothingness around him.

Arthur sat up on his cot with a gasp, wheezing as his eyes strained to see through the darkness of his tent.

A dream.

It was only a dream.

The worst yet in a string of nightmares he'd been plagued with for the last couple of nights.

Merlin was not lying in the snow somewhere, left behind to die – he couldn't be.

Arthur had to believe that – had to believe that Merlin was okay, even though he hadn't seen him for two days and his friend had been so hurt the last time he had. Just like the prince had to believe that Camelot hadn't fallen, his knights weren't slaughtered, Morgana was somewhere safe and would be found, and his father's mind would stay strong – because if he accepted the events that had been invading his dreams as real, he might as well give up for everything was already lost.

00000

The prince was cold and tense and tired as he sat on his horse the next day. The air around him was charged, full of noise and energy, and everything inside of him was screaming that something was about to happen.

He certainly hoped so.

It wasn't that he was excited to arrive at wherever they were going – to face captivity, questions and torture, the huge, yawning unknown – but he was just so amazingly sick of the endless dark, the boredom, and of traveling.

He could tell, from sounds as well as smells, that their patrol had been joined by many people and animals, straggling out behind them quite a distance. To his limited senses, it felt as if an entire village was on the move.

And they were traveling up, a rather steep climb in altitude that had held steady all morning, slowing their pace and lowering the already freezing temperatures even further.

Still haunted by his dreams, Arthur prayed that Merlin was warm enough and able to keep up and make the climb.

Onward and upward they pressed as more hours of the day passed by. Arthur knew they had to be deep within a mountain pass – it was the only explanation – which narrowed the choices of where he was being taken considerably. There were only three or four kingdoms accessed through mountains that were far enough from Camelot to justify their length of travel.

Of course, for all he knew they could have been going in circles for days just to confuse him, so his thoughts might be horribly wrong.

Sometime in the early afternoon, the ground beneath his horse began to level again, and Arthur knew they had reached the top of the pass. They rode on but just as it started to tilt the other direction, indicating they were now on the decent, the soldier controlling his horse's reins pulled them both to the side and stopped. He could hear other riders ceasing their movement around them as well as the sound of a cart or two being brought to a halt.

What was going on? It was too early to be making camp and anyone with any sense knew you didn't camp on top of a mountain if you had the option not to. His confusion was heighted as still more people and wagons and animals kept moving, pushing passed them and continuing down the trail that would take them off the mountain side.

All Arthur could figure out was that for some reason, Sir Einar's original party had stopped to let everyone else go on ahead.

It took forever for the last straggling goat to be herded by them, bleating its unhappiness as it went. Arthur – knowing by now that any attempt to ask questions would just be ignored – spent the whole hour sitting silently in his personal darkness and hoping Merlin still remained at his side.

Once the sounds of the others had faded to a distant echo, Sir Einar ordered their company forward again, but only thirty paces or so, and then everyone stopped once more.

The air around him was thick and silent, the horses shifting nervously, and Arthur felt a measure of fear settle in his gut.

Everyone was waiting for something – something big. He could sense men turning to face behind him, and he had never felt so trapped. Unable to spin his own horse, unable to see even if he could, he was forced to sit there blind, his back to whatever was about to occur.

"Now, Soldier Aram," he heard Sir Einar's voice order calmly and he instinctually stiffened – the only defense he had.

There was complete silence for a few long seconds and Arthur couldn't help thinking the entire world was holding its breath, and then he heard something that chilled him to the bone. Words – shouted in a clear voice – words of magic!

Another pregnant silence fell afterwards, hanging there for a moment while Arthur whipped his head back and forth, desperately listening for sounds of attack or danger, and then he froze as the air was rent with an ear-shattering crack!

His horse jerked, for once he was grateful he was bound to it or he would have been unseated, and then came a roar as if the loudest thunder he had ever imagined was crashing to the ground all around him!

Filled with pure fear, he huddled low over his mount that was neighing and spinning in terror and waited for whatever beast or monster had been called forth from the very depths of the mountain to consume him. The demon sound grew louder and louder until he longed for the ability to cover his ears. Arthur knew death could only be moments away, but then the noise reached its climax and he was still there – they all were still there. He felt furious wind lift his hair and whip across his face, evidence of something massive passing far too close for comfort, but they all remained as they were – very much alive.

The rumbling chaos lasted for a long time before Arthur finally noticed it was quieting. He was ashamed to admit that it took much longer for his own breathing to calm, however, and he tightened his chained hands into fists to hide the tremors that ran through them as the awful, magically-summoned creation finally faded into the background.

"What in the name of all that is holy was that? What are you all playing at?" he spat as men on horses once more rode past him, tugging his own mount and him along. He was angry – and frightened – and he couldn't keep the snarling words from shoving off his tongue. He expected to be ignored so he was shocked when he actually received an answer, albeit a cryptic one.

"Insurance, persuasion, and protection, my lord," Sir Einar's voice answered from just to his right. Arthur wrenched his head around.

"With magic?" he seethed, thoroughly tired of this whole game.

"Sometimes, nature just needs a little nudge," the older knight replied, and then Arthur heard him kick his horse forward as he trotted to the head of the patrol once more.

"Do they teach you to talk in riddles where you're from?" the prince shouted at his back, giving vent to a week's worth of rage and frustration. "Beat the ability to give a straight answer out of you in training?"

No one answered.

As usual.

With a huff, Arthur settled back into his sullen silence, dragged where they lead him through the much-hated darkness, trying not to show how his pulse was still racing slightly from the unexplained fright. He distracted himself by listening for clues – specifically the faint clank of chains that might tell him Merlin was still alive and with them, not given to others or devoured by the mountain beast that had just been set free.

00000

Merlin had to admit he'd been anything but brave as he faced the light of morning the night after Hab's awful words had pierced him to the core. He attempted to quell his shaking, but by the time he was attached to his rope for travel the looming fear of what lay at the end of this last day was so great he gave up trying.

If Basil was right, today was the day – and he'd not even managed to bid his master a stolen farewell.

He plodded up a mountain, his bruises forgotten as the torture of sick anticipation hung over his head like an executioner's ax – fated to fall, but uncertain as to when.

Were the mines in this mountain? Just around that next bend? Would he be dragged off with the other condemned men this very hour or the next?

They crested the pass and then Merlin sucked in a deep breath of anxiety when Sir Einar gestured for their party to move to the side and stop. Shaking so badly he had to lean against his mare for support, the warlock watched as the dozens that had joined them passed and continued on down the mountain. As each group of slaves was prodded by, he fully expected someone to come forward and force him to join them, but when the last stragglers had gone he somehow miraculously remained. He was still with Arthur – at least for now.

Of course maybe the small and scrawny slaves who got the 'special' jobs where brought to a different place in the mines, his unhelpful brain suggested. And just like that his trembling returned.

Sir Einar urged them forward a little more, then all the men turned and halted in their saddles, except for poor, helpless Arthur who was left facing the wrong way and unable to fix it. From the back of group – which had now become the front – Merlin felt a surge of angry indignation slide through him at the dishonor shown his prince, but he didn't have time to dwell on it as everyone suddenly seemed to be staring at him.

He gulped strongly before realizing they weren't staring at him, but rather at something above and just beyond him in the distance. With apprehension, he whirled around.

To Merlin, who was already teetering on the edge of full-blown panic, things seemed to happen rapidly after that. Sir Einar gave an order, Aram rode forward slightly and shouted a very simple breaking spell, and then the mountain seemed to tear itself asunder.

As earth-born thunder filled the air, a tsunami of snow cracked loose from the mountain and raced straight toward him, forcing an instinctual yelp of fear to try and crest his lips. The pain it sparked left him bleary for a moment – unable to think rationally and reason through the fact that the soldiers wouldn't trigger an avalanche down on their own heads so they must be mostly out of range – and he couldn't help dropping to his knees and curling in, bringing his chained hands up in a vain attempt to protect himself.

For what felt like hours the billowing snow pounded by, so close to where Merlin huddled at the end of the line that the wind it created twisted his hair and clothes into knots and left him coated in a layer of fine, white powder as he fought the agony in his brain and the terror in his chest.

Finally, it slowed to a crawl and then stopped. Merlin stayed on his knees, gasping harshly. If it had come any nearer, Aram had miscalculated even a little… The others could have run away, ridden quickly to safety, but he would have been stuck, tied to a wagon and buried in the icy flow.

Desperately, he tried to calm his breathing and control the lingering ache from the collar – to push thoughts of another extremely close brush with death from his mind. He forced his head up and gazed through squinting eyes back the way they had come through the pass.

Only it was no longer there. The trail they'd just navigated had disappeared, buried under a massive wall of snowy boulders.

The wagon moved and lurched Merlin forward without preamble, compelling him to scramble madly for his feet. He'd been so lost in his own chaotic thoughts and fears he hadn't noticed they were moving again. Once he was finally upright and no longer being dragged, he risked one last glance behind him in despair.

No one would be leaving through that direction for many months – now how would Arthur ever get home?