Chapter 6

I was so relieved when the dark forest finally opened up again and I could see some daylight. We rode into a large valley with a little village right in the middle of it. I figured that this was the village of the family we were to rescue.

Lancelot rode past me and trotted his horse to ride next to Arthur. He didn't even glance at me as he rode by. I made a mental note to have a talk with him later.

I was at the very back of the group and as I rode up to the village and its large gates, which had been closed just as Arthur rode up, I heard Arthur ask for an Alecto. A boy around my age looked down at us from the large wall surrounding the village.

"I am Alecto," he said.

Apparently this was the son of the 'leader' of the village and also the person we were to rescue. Alecto's father, Marius, wasn't too keen about the idea of leaving the village and immediately refused. None of the knights would get their discharge papers if they didn't bring the family back. Arthur made that clear to Marius, whom eventually gave in to the idea of leaving the village.

I got off of Rhaebus and looked around the outskirts of the village. Many villagers, who had abandoned their work in the surrounding fields, were staring at us in awe. Alecto's father irritably barked at them to get back to work, and some of the village guards shoved the villagers away from us.

"Who is this man, what is his punishment for? Answer me!" I heard Arthur yell. I turned around and was shocked at the scene in front of me:

An old man was tied to three wooden poles that were stuck in the ground at an angle and all touched at the top. It was a sort of tent without the cloth, and the man was tied in the middle with his hands above his head. The man looked to be in his seventies and wore nothing but a small cloth. He was dirty and bloody from being whipped on his back, and I thought that he was dead.

I gave my horses' reins to Galahad and walked over to where Arthur was standing.

"Help this man!" Arthur was yelling at the villagers just as I got there.

I knelt down next to the old man and made sure he was still alive. None of the villagers seemed to want to come near the old man. I put one of his arms over my shoulder and tried to stand up. He was too heavy for me to carry by myself, a woman noticed this and put down the clothes she had been folding and walked over to me. She put his other arm over her shoulder and we both got up. We dragged him towards the gate.

We were only to rescue the family, but Arthur just couldn't leave these defenseless people at the hands of the Saxons. So all the knights, except for Lancelot, were helping the villagers pack.

The woman and I were struggling to carry the old man. We walked towards Lancelot and he didn't even glance at us, he just sat on his horse staring at the ground into nothingness.

As we were walking past Lancelot I looked up at him and, panting from the workout I was getting, said, "It must be a lot easier for you to ignore me, than to help me."

He stared at the ground for a moment longer, and then made the tiniest glance towards me. After that he turned his horse and galloped away to join Arthur.

I was so mad and confused that I forgot about the task at hand and almost dropped the poor, old man. I pulled myself together and with all my strength helped carry the man through the gates and into a cottage inside the village. There the wife of Marius was waiting for us with a bucket of warm water. We put the man on a bed and Marius' wife said she would tend to his wounds and dismissed me and the village woman.

I walked around the outskirts of the village looking for a small pond or something of that sort. I found a small watering trough and washed the dirt and blood off of me the best I could. I had just rinsed my face when I spotted a small, gloomy-looking cabin that seemed to be going into the wall surrounding the village.

I slowly made my way over to it. I was right in front of it and could have sworn that I heard a distant scream come from behind the door just seconds before. I pulled the door open and was about to step into the darkness of the cabin when an elderly man jumped out of the cabin and grabbed me by my shoulders.

He pushed me away from the door of the cabin and started shaking me ferociously and yelling things like, "…You have disrupted this holy sanctuary!...You are the devil's child!...You have come to awaken evil spirits!..."

The man looked like an evil spirit, if I may say so. He had white hair and was completely bald in random places on his head, he was missing more than half of his teeth and one of his eyes was bulging out of his head. I was terrified and disgusted. He had the smell of death to him and the look of it too.

He threw me on the ground and started sprinkling 'holy water' on me and was chanting hysterically. He then grabbed my shoulders again and pulled me to my feet, I was under too much shock to fight back to any of this. He started shaking me and yelling, "I will shake this evil spirit out of you! Holy father, bring your glory upon this spawn of Satan and free her of this curse!"

This man was going crazy; he was shaking me very hard and yelling horrible things about me at the top of his lungs. My vision was getting blurry. Suddenly I saw a dark figure run towards us, and the next second I was lying on the ground. I shook my head to regain proper sight and keep my consciousness. I looked at what had happened and I saw Lancelot on top of the crazy man beating him with his fists.

The man had been knocked out cold, but Lancelot still kept beating him. Bors jumped off his horse and pulled Lancelot off of the man. Lancelot was breathing hard and sweat was pouring down his forehead.

I got up slowly, my legs still shaking slightly. Lancelot shot me an accusing look, roughly broke free of Bors' grasp and quickly walked away. I was very confused at that moment. Not so much by the crazy mans' weird behavior, but by the way Lancelot was acting. He had looked at me as if it was my fault that he had beaten up the elderly man. And it may have been, but I didn't ask him to help me!

Arthur was running towards me, "Julia, are you alright?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Just a little shaken, that's all," I replied.

He took my face in his hands and examined my eyes and face closely, to make sure no harm had been done. I had a couple of scrapes, but that was it.

I gently pushed him away and said, "I am fine, I promise. I am not so sure about Lancelot, though."

"Oh, he's fine. I've known him for a long time and this isn't the first time that he has secluded himself after a fight," Arthur said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"Well I better go and thank him," I said walking in the same direction Lancelot had gone.

I spotted him standing by the water trough I had washed my face in earlier. He was staring at his reflection in the water. I walked over to him and when I stood next to him he quickly leaned down and splashed water on his face, trying to avoid eye contact.

I cleared my throat and said, "I wanted to thank you for helping me back there, I…"

"It was nothing; I would have done it for anyone," he interrupted me with a cold tone in his voice.

(Authors Note: Alright, I want all my readers to understand why the line 'I would have done it for anyone' hurts Julia so much. If you can remember in Chapter 4 Julia is trying to convince Lancelot to go on this mission and he says that he will do it for her (and Arthur), now all of a sudden it's as if Julia is nothing to Lancelot, he would have helped anyone in her situation, and that might be true, but it's still very hurtful the way Lancelot tells Julia this.)

I was very hurt by the way Lancelot was talking to me. I liked it better when he ignored me completely. Now he treated me as if I had some sort of disease he didn't want to get. I didn't understand this man at all. How can a person change so suddenly, was it all because of that stupid kiss I didn't give him! I couldn't take it anymore I just had to find out why he was acting the way he was.

I tried to keep my temper under control and quietly asked, "Did I do something wrong, because you're sure acting like it?"

He didn't answer. He just started at his reflection in the water trough.

"See? This is what I am talking about, you act as if I'm not even there; you act as though you don't want me around!" My temper was getting the better of me.

"That's not true," he said quietly.

"Yes, yes it is true! Look at yourself! Even now, you care more about staring into a dirty water trough than listening to me!"

"That's not true," he said a little louder this time.

"Oh, Lancelot, I am sick of this! Just tell me what I did or what I didn't do that upset you so much! Or even better, just tell me that you don't give a damn about me or my feelings!" I was yelling at him now. Angry tears were stinging at the corners of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.

I could tell my words finally hit something in Lancelot's mind because he looked away from the water trough and finally made eye contact with me.

He looked angry and hurt and said to me in a loud voice, "That's not true that I don't want you around! What is true is that I care a damn of a lot about you and your feelings! In fact that is the reason I am acting this way around you! Don't you get it, Julia! I don't want you to get hurt! You have no idea how hard it is for me to distance myself from you, and now you're trying to make it even harder!"

I felt touched, shocked, angry, relieved, and hundreds of other emotions after Lancelot told me this. It all seemed to make sense now. I was angry at myself for not figuring it out, and then again I was still angry at him. I couldn't reply anything to that. We stood there and looked at each other for the longest time. I was going over what he told me in my head, and while I was thinking about it and looking at him, a tear escaped from my eye.

Lancelot's voice was soft and quiet this time, "Oh, Julia, no, please…don't cry…" He moved his hand towards my face to wipe away the tear, but I stepped back and wiped it away myself.

I stood up a little straighter and said in a strong voice, "No, Lancelot, it's fine. You're right; this is the right thing to do. This is the best way for neither of us to get hurt."

With that I walked away. If distance from Lancelot was supposed to keep me from getting hurt, it wasn't working. The farther I walked away from him the more I wanted to scream, because of the intense pain I felt inside my heart.

Authors Note: Alright, I decided to end it here. I didn't want to leave Julia in the dark too long about why Lancelot was acting like an a. Now that their feelings are out in the open we can finally get to the REAL romance…he he. I know all of you want to see Julia and Lancelot together, but trust me on this one, the longer I keep this 'passion-gap' between the two, the more beautiful it will be when the two are finally together. I won't keep them apart for too much longer, so bear with me. The next chapter will hold quite a bit. Firstly Guinevere will come into the picture, she is a Woad, and all of you know what Julia thinks about Woads. That will be interesting. And Arthur has a secret to tell Julia that will make her very angry with him. While Julia and Arthur have this little conflict going on, guess who will be there to comfort Julia?

Ok I just wanted to give you guys a little 'sneak-peek' of the next chapter which I still have to write and will come out shortly if you guys keep reviewing the way you are! XOXO