Chapter Two: Not a Woad, not Stupid either

Lancelot halted his horse next to Arthur's.

"We're moving too slow," he told him. "Those girls aren't going to make it and neither is the boy. The family we can protect but we're wasting our time with all these people."

"We're not leaving them," Arthur replied adamantly. Lancelot shook his head, wind blasting round him.

"If the Saxons find us we will have to fight." he told him.

"Then save your anger for them." Arthur replied. Lancelot looked at him, realisation dawning.

"Is this Rome's quest, or Arthur's?" Arthur looked at him, frowning, then looked away. Lancelot, irritated by Arthur's silence, turned his horse sharply round and cantered away.

Dagonet and the Roman woman were tending to the young Woad boy. Dagonet looked up as Arthur entered.

"Arthur!" he exclaimed.

"How is he?" Arthur asked. Dagonet looked down at his ward.

"He burns…Brave boy." Arthur moved round the group and went into the back of the wagon where the two girls were. The one Lancelot had found seemed to be asleep, though Arthur couldn't be sure. The other one, however, was staring at him with a vicious look. Arthur kneeled beside her. She shifted backwards, wary of him. Arthur took her hand which she was holding to her chest and took off the bands of fabric covering it. His face contorted a little when he saw her hand, broken and bruised.

"Some of your fingers are out of place," he told her. "I have to push them back." The girl seemed to understand him. "If I don't do this, there's a chance you may never be able to use them again." She sat up and braced herself for the pain. As the fingers cracked back into place, she let out a cry of pain, then another as the final joint went back into place. Behind them, the other girl opened her eyes suddenly. She hadn't been asleep after all, though they couldn't see her. She smiled a little seeing Guinevere's pained face. Arthur put an arm round the girl, unsure of what else to do. He was about to go once she had got over the shock, when she grabbed his armour and gazed into his eyes.

"He tortured me…with machines." Arthur listened with a passive face. The girl leaned her head against his breastplate and continued. "…And made me tell him things that I didn't know to begin with." She began crawling her way up his chest, looking deep into his eyes. "And then, I heard your voice in the dark…I'm Guinevere. You're Arthur, of the knights of the Great War?" Arthur, passive look still there, answered.

"I am."

"The famous Briton who kills his own people," Guinevere observed, then her eyes flickered, and she fell out of consciousness. Arthur gently laid her back onto the mound of blankets and turned to see the girl Lancelot had saved staring at him from behind ice-blue eyes and a mass of dirty ash-blonde hair that fell down over her shoulders and most of her chest in large ringlets.

"And who are you?" he asked her. The girl was matching Arthur's passive face glance for glance.

"My name is Iseult," she replied after a time in a purring voice. Arthur was a little taken aback. She looked younger than Guinevere, yet her voice sounded much older. Arthur inclined his head towards Guinevere as he addressed Iseult.

"Are you of the Woad tribe?" he asked her. Iseult snorted and smiled, shaking her head.

"No, no, I'm not Woad," she answered. Arthur was intrigued, but he knew the girl would be tired and he didn't want to press her unnecessarily. He nodded towards her left hand, un-bandaged but broken like Guinevere's.

"Are you injured?" he enquired. Iseult looked at her hand and the out-of-place fingers.

"They did this because I'm left-handed…The Devil's child, never mind the fact I'm Pagan." She looked up at Arthur and smiled, a little sourly, Arthur observed. "I'm fine, thank-you," she told him before cracking her own fingers into place without an inkling of discomfort showing on her face. Arthur looked at her, a little unnerved, before leaving the wagon.

Later, Arthur and Lancelot were riding side by side. Lancelot looked behind him to the wagon where Guinevere and Iseult were leaning, looking out across the wilderness. Arthur caught him looking at them and Lancelot kicked his horse forwards. As Arthur held back his horse so the wagon came alongside him, Iseult shut her eyes and listened to the conversation between Arthur and Guinevere. She hadn't figured things out in her mind yet, she didn't want to be talked to just yet, but her eyes flicked open as Guinevere asked of Arthur,

"Where do you belong?" Iseult's eyes welled up with tears suddenly, remembering, but luckily Guinevere and Arthur were more interested in each other. Arthur looked back at Guinevere.

"How's your hand?" he asked. Guinevere smiled a coquettish smile.

"I'll live, I promise you." Iseult smiled, the tears fast disappearing, and shook her head.

The convoy stopped, and Arthur and Lancelot rode up to the front.

"We'll sleep here. Take shelter in those trees," Arthur said, pointing towards a wood far ahead. "Tristan." he added. Tristan looked at his hawk.

"You want to go out again? Yeah," and he let her fly off into the blizzard. All the knights rode off to do their duties, apart from Lancelot, who stayed looking out over the snow-covered valley, his back to the wagon where Guinevere was looking out as well. She spoke up.

"It is a beautiful country, is it not?" Guinevere asked him. Lancelot looked round, wondering if it was he who was being addressed. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"If you say so," he replied.

"And where do you come from that compares?" she questioned again, then answered it herself as Lancelot wheeled his horse around to face her. "The Black Sea?" Lancelot didn't answer. Guinevere carried on pushing. "This is Heaven for me." Lancelot finally answered.

"I don't believe in Heaven…I've been living in this Hell." He smiled and leaned forwards. "But if you represent what Heaven is, then take me there." A chuckle broke the moment that had just been created. Lancelot cocked his head and moved his horse forwards a few paces to see the girl he had found in the prison grinning away while she was leaning against the opposite side of the wagon to Guinevere.

"Is there something you find amusing?" he asked her. The girl looked up at him with no fear at all. Not the defiance that Guinevere showed, but pure courage. She raised an eyebrow and looked him up and down from underneath the pile of furs she was under.

"Just the way you talk. I've heard many men talk the way you do…and most of them Roman." Lancelot glared at her. Iseult ignored it and stared straight into his eyes with her cold blue ones, which began to unnerve him. "But perhaps there's something else in that head of yours, something less cold," she told him, sighing a little, her breath freezing as a cloud. Lancelot's face didn't change. Iseult broke her gaze and smiled to herself, snuggling more under her furs. Guinevere gave her an indiscernible look. Lancelot looked up as water of varying forms fell on his face. He relished the feeling for a moment, then looked back to the girls.

"Rain and snow together…A bad Omen," he told them, flashing his eyes dangerously