Disclaimer: I do not own King Arthur, the legend or the movie.
I tried to stick with the movie, but obviously there are going to be some differences.
Please read and review! I have more written, but the more you review, the faster I'll put it up. And if nobody reviews, well, I'll just stop putting up new chapters.
They had taken her captive. They had killed everyone around her, her friends, her family, but had decided to let her live. How she wished they had just let her die.
They took her back to Rome, paraded her in front of the Pope as a sort of trophy for the victories in Britain.
"This is what they call a Woad," one soldier would say and make her show her tattoos. Sometimes they would even put the blue war paint she had been wearing when they first captured her to make it more "realistic".
They made her cook, clean, and do laundry for them. Luckily, none of them ever touched her. Apparently it was considered unholy.
Kyla was forced to serve one in particular, Bishop Germanius. He was supposedly a man of God. If this was what God was like, then she wanted nothing to do with Him.
She was also forced to travel with them, most of the time in chains because she kept trying to run away. They were returning to her homeland, and yet she was powerless to live in it. A slave. She would kill them all if she got the chance, and the Roman soldiers she was traveling with knew it.
They considered her a pagan. She could hear the Bishop murmuring about her to his secretary, Horton. How they were going to convert her, break her, make her like them. That would never happen.
Kyla, still just a young woman but with a fierce heart, had not been with them long before she realized where they were going: Hadrian's Wall. Arthur Castus and his knights from Sarmatia lived there. She hated those knights. They had been killing her people for years. But she hated the Romans more, and so she often thought of the reprieve their company would give and possibly even a chance to escape…should the Bishop feel compelled to release her chains long enough.
They were within a day's journey of the Wall, traveling slowly. The Roman soldiers plodded lazily along on their horses. A carriage was rocking back and forth for the Bishop, although it did not hold the Bishop today. He had opted to ride. It held some other poor, insignificant fool who had only seen the opportunity to lie down and sleep.
She knew they would attack today. They probably thought she was dead, so this would not be an attempt to retrieve her, but the Woads hated any Roman caravan, suspicious of its carriers.
Kyla was therefore in good spirits this day, which none of the Romans understood. She knew she would be free once again after slaving for them for almost a year.
Has it really been that long? Kyla asked herself. But she knew it was. To be back in Britain was marvelous…the trees, the grass, the fresh scent. This was home. Her home.
Suddenly an arrow flew out of a tree. It struck a Roman soldier squarely in the chest. He fell with a thud. And it began. Woads dressed in blue war paint leapt from their hiding places all around the small caravan.
Kyla, bound by chains, crouched and waited for her opportunity. From her position, she looked up and saw a formation of seven riders coming from the hill.
The knights and their Roman commander. Why were they here?
The Woads are winning the battle; the soldiers outnumbered. More Woads kept flowing out of the woods. One of Kyla's comrades came up to her, a great smile on his face when he recognized her.
"Toren!"
"Kyla! We thought you were dead!"
Kyla shook her head, tears flowing down her face to see her good friend.
"Let's get you out of these chains," Toren said. With two quick drops of his sword, her freedom was almost in sight. Then an arrow came whirring by her head. Kyla stared in shock and horror as her friend's face went blank and he fell lifeless to the ground. She turned, rage building inside her, to see the knights had arrived.
Arrows began to flow freely from the knights. Her people were falling everywhere around her. Kyla held back screams of anger, hatred, fear, and once again crouched near the ground to avoid being hit. She picked up Toren's fallen sword for defense.
One of the knights had dismounted his horse near her and was fighting with two swords. He was a good fighter, she noted, but so was she. However, now was not the time. She must escape. The fighting, though still rather intense, was dying down. The Woads were now losing the battle, and the knights were picking them off one by one.
She must make her move now. Kyla shot out from her position, making a straight line for the woods. The sword was too heavy for her to carry while running like this, so she dropped it and grabbed her skirts with both hands. Her heart began to dance as she got closer and closer…
Suddenly a horseman pulled up right in front of her, almost making Kyla fall from the abrupt halt. It was the Bishop. He smacked her from atop his horse.
"You insolent pagan! What were you trying to do? Get me and my men all killed? Did you tell these people to attack?"
Kyla looked angrily back up at him, her face stinging from the blow. "How could I tell them to attack when I have been in chains with you the whole time?"
This only made him angrier, however, and he hit her again, harder. She fell to the ground from the force. The Bishop pulled his sword and was holding it towards her when somebody stepped in.
"Is this a lady I see you beating?"
Kyla looked up to see the dark knight that had been fighting near her. Blood stained his face, and one of his reddened swords was pointed at the Bishop. The blood of her people.
"This woman is hardly worth protecting, young knight," Bishop Germanius responded. "You do not know her the way I do."
"I know that my mother told me never to hit a girl," the knight replied.
Another man was now approaching. From his gait, she could tell he was a man of importance, intelligence. This must be Arthur.
"What is going on here?" Arthur asked angrily. Recognition crossed his face as he looked at the Bishop. "Bishop Germanius."
The dark knight looked between the Bishop and Arthur, confused. "Is the Bishop not in the carriage?"
They all looked over to see the soldiers dragging out a dead body from the carriage.
"Your military skills are still of use to you," Arthur said with a hint of a smile. "Your device worked."
"Ancient tricks for an ancient dog," Bishop Germanius answered.
"This man, whoever he is, was about to kill a young woman," the dark knight interjected.
"Kill? No, hardly. She was trying to escape again. She is…uh, one of them," the Bishop said.
"Why was she traveling with you?" Arthur asked.
Bishop Germanius laughed for a second, then realized Arthur was serious. "She is a pagan. I was trying to convert her."
"By making her wear chains?" the dark knight asked, noticing the remains of the iron cuffs on her wrists and ankles.
Kyla had scurried to her feet by then, standing a few feet off, her arms wrapped tightly around her.
"She kept trying to run away, like now. I had to restrain her."
"So she is your slave?" Arthur asked.
"No…" the Bishop answered, trying to play off his disdain for this conversation.
"Yes," Kyla interjected. She glared at the Roman priest. The Bishop gave her a harsh look.
Arthur seemed at a loss for words. After several moments, he simply said, "We should return to the wall." As he walked away, however, he ordered one of the guards to take the iron cuffs of Kyla.
She stared after him in amazement. This was the Roman and leader of the knights, a man she had hated for many years, fought against for several, and he was showing her compassion. She began to wonder if maybe she was wrong about Arthur and his knights.
As soon as the iron cuffs were off, she wrapped a hand around her wrist. They had been extremely tight and she had been wearing them for over two days straight at that point. It felt good to finally have them off.
The dark knight rode up to her on his horse, which had remounted as they made their way to leave.
"You should thank me, you know," he said, a smug smile on his face.
"For what?" Kyla asked.
"For saving your life."
"You most certainly did not save my life. I can take care of myself." With that, Kyla turned on her heel and started walking with the carriage. The dark knight sighed heavily and cursed himself silently for being his normal idiotic self.