Thanks to L J Groundwater, Stahlfan125, Demus, Shauna, deb-sampson, Shattered Desire, Goody (I thought Tristan looked the oldest; although I thought he was the most attractive too!), sf, GaBo0 (Tristan had dark hair and a hawk), disassociated, Jemuil and Squallsgurlygurl.

Warning: Rape- it's not exactly graphic but it's there. If anyone wants to read the aftermath of the rape only, I advise they skip this chapter.

Chapter Three

It was dusk before he was summoned.

The guards that delivered him to Cerdic smelt vile. In actual fact, the whole bloody camp stank. There were warriors everywhere: warriors dressed in filthy rags and carrying huge, clumsy, ill-balanced axes and swords that looked more like butcher's cleaving blades. The guards that led him towards a tent, the only tent in sight, wrenched his arms (already bound behind him) so far behind his back that Lancelot feared his shoulders would snap.

Inside the tent, which itself was filthy, stood a huge man with long tatters of fair hair hanging past his shoulders. He had an appearance of power that made it clear from the first that this was the great Cerdic, famed for his brutality.

"You're Arthur?" demanded the Saxon warlord.

And this was Lancelot's moment of triumph that would make all the pain and the humiliation and his ultimate death worthwhile. It felt good and for a moment the fear in his heart was forgotten. "No," he said, grinning insanely.

A vein throbbed in the Saxon's temple. Anger radiated from him: pure, simple anger. Dangerous anger. "And who exactly do I have the honour to meet?"

"Lancelot."

He was still grinning as Cerdic's huge fist slammed into his chest. And as the second followed and then the third.

He stopped grinning after that.

"Bring Cynric to me," Cerdic said, once Lancelot lay before him, retching painfully on the ground.

His hands were still bound behind his back; bound so tightly that he had long since ceased to feel them. He was back in the cloth-covered baggage cart.

Back in his prison.

Lancelot forced himself to take an inventory of all his injuries: the head wound that had first knocked him unconscious, the bruising covering his entire body and the burns on his wrists from the rope that bound his hands. Lancelot considered each wound. His head felt like it had been cloven in two with a blunt axe and he felt vaguely dizzy but he had the nasty suspicion that the blow to the head would not kill him. It was unlikely too that the bruising would send him to his death: nobody died of bruising alone. And the rope burns round his wrists were rendered rather pathetic in comparison with the other things he had suffered.

There was the other wound, of course, but he didn't like to think of that. He felt dirty enough without thinking of it.

Lancelot was hungry and thirsty. He could probably stand the hunger cramps if only someone would give him a mouthful of water. He did not care how foul, how brackish, that water was- anything had to be better than the filthy taste in his mouth: the taste of Cynric.

Lancelot shuddered. He was trembling uncontrollably; his muscles ached after hours of being tensed. He tried breathing deeply. In. Out. In. Out. He needed to relax in order to formulate an escape plan. He desperately tried to will himself calm but nothing could soothe the frantic trembling of his heart.

He was a brave knight, reduced to a frightened child as he lay in the dark: cold, alone and oh-so-dirty.

And in the end, he could not keep his thoughts from what had happened scarcely three hours since: what had happened when Cynric, son of Cerdic, had come to him

It had been pitch black in the cart and Lancelot had first been alerted to the presence of another by the creaking of timber.

And the heavy breathing, of course.

"You meant to humiliate me?" Cynric had whispered in his ear, his breath had been hot and foul.

Lancelot had not said a word.

"You'll regret it," Cynric had whispered. "Once I've finished with you, you'll beg me to let you die."

Lancelot had not made a noise, even as Cynric had run his tongue down his neck; sank teeth into his throat.

"You're nothing, you know that?" Cynric had forced a stale kiss on him: just one horrible, mean kiss.

Lancelot had remained silent and Cynric had started laughing. "You're nothing but Arthur's little whore, are you?" He slapped Lancelot once across his face.

Cynric's laughter was cold and strong but Lancelot made not a sound as he was forced onto his front; his face pressed hard against the floorboards of the cart so that he had involuntarily bitten down on his tongue and blood had filled his mouth.

Then there was cold air on his buttocks and-

Pain filled the world and mingled with the blood in his mouth.

He could not think.

He could scarcely breath.

Pain before his eyes, in his mouth, deep inside him now. He did not even whimper.

Then it was over.

"Arthur's whore," Cynric had whispered once more before he left Lancelot, beaten, bruised and now raped so the blood ran down the back of his legs.

And he must have passed out because he could remember no more.

Lancelot's body gave a violent shudder but absurdly enough he almost felt better for having recalled his pain. Arthur had once said that only once a person had suffered could they expect salvation; eternal life came at a price. Of course, he hadn't believed a word of it.

It was natural enough that in the darkest time of his life, his thoughts should turn to Arthur. He often though about him but never before had his memories seemed so out of place. Arthur belonged to the clean and the good. He was champion to the weak; a knight who fought for an ideology that would never exist. He fought for the Rome of his dreams, a place of learning and beauty and justice. His memory did not belong in this stinking filthy camp.

And there was another thing: Arthur would never have been raped.

Lancelot knew this fact as well as he knew that Arthur would never have considered it. Capture had always been a possibility for the leader; torture as well. Death was a near certainty.

But not this.

Raped. The word haunted him.

Lancelot remembered the time when Woads had ambushed the band of knights, three winters since. That day was etched clearly on his memory as the day his world had nearly crumbled. An arrow had pierced Arthur's shoulder and brought his friend to the ground. In that one moment Lancelot's heart had forgotten to beat.

The archer had died at the hand of one of his twin swords.

And Arthur had hauled himself off the ground to fight, his teeth gritted against the pain, until his sword had fallen from his nerveless hands. The knights' seeing their leaders defiance, had won the fight. That evening Lancelot had used a hunting knife to cut the arrow from where it had lodged itself, deep in Arthur's right shoulder. Arthur's blood had flowed freely down his naked arm and mingled with Lancelot's own, weeping crimson tears from a dozen cuts and scratches from his own desperate fight.

"Joined by blood now, friend," Arthur had gasped, giving Lancelot a lopsided grin even as his eyes watered with the pain.

The cuts and scratches had long since healed over and an angry scar marked Arthur's shoulder but still a trace of Arthur's blood had mingled with his own.

Quite how he managed to fall asleep, Lancelot never knew. But he did sleep, deeply and for several hours.

That night he dreamed he was dead.

Someone was shaking him roughly and shouting. Lancelot clung onto his death-dream for as long as possible but in the end he was awake and in the land of the living. "Get up, you poxed bastard!" screamed the guard who was shaking him. Lancelot groaned and the guard hauled him out of the baggage cart, threw him onto the muddy ground and kicked him once before pulling him to his feet. The Saxon camp was lit by the half-light of a grey dawn.

"Cynric wants to see you," growled the guard. He was at least six feet tall and his flaxen-coloured beard was long and bushy. There were smears of dirt across his hollow cheeks but Lancelot had long since forgotten the meaning of cleanliness.

The night before he had dreamed he was dead and that morning he had little interest in life.

The Saxon guard dragged him to a campfire where Cynric sat with eleven warriors, all of them in various states of drunkenness. A hog was roasting on a spit above the fire. "Well, look if it isn't Arthur's little whore!" Some of the warriors jeered, while others cheered. Some looked puzzled as if they didn't know what to expect.

Lancelot had a feeling he knew what was coming but he didn't really care. He no longer had any hope of escaping from the Saxon camp and a man without hope has little to lose and little to live for.

And besides, what price was pain and humiliation and eventual death in exchange for Arthur's life?

"Pretty thing, isn't he?" shouted Cynric and his men laughed.

Lancelot looked at Cynric and at the grimy Saxon warriors and saw his own fate reflected in their eyes. A last spark of defiance started in him. "You're not men," he said. "You're dogs." He tried to spit but his mouth was too dry.

"Here that, lads?" demanded Cynric. "Let's teach the little whelp some manners!"

There was a chorus of 'Aye' and suddenly grinning, leering, drunken, ugly Saxons surrounded Lancelot. The he was knocked to the ground and the first warrior was over him, on him, in him, even as the others cheered in a drink-fuelled frenzy.

One after another they took him and soon Lancelot ceased to think and to feel.

After so much pain there is only numbness.

They threw him into the baggage cart and left him, satisfied that he would not have the strength to move. They were right. He lay perfectly still in the position he had landed in: on his back with his bound arms lying beneath them.

Ten hours passed and Lancelot did not move; he simply waited for sleep or death or Cynric- whichever should come first.

And in the end, none of them came.

As night fell, the camp grew louder. Women shrieked and giggled, men yelled insults from campfire to campfire and after a time, the insults turned into brawls. One young warrior was stabbed and another lost an ear in a drunken knife fight.

And Lancelot did not move.

Eventually he heard a choking gasp from close outside the cart and the faint creaking of timbers heralded the presence of another.

"Lancelot?"

The voice was quiet and low and certainly didn't belong to Cynric. In fact, it didn't sound Saxon. "Who?" he whispered back. It was hard to say anything at all with his throat as dry as it was.

The creaking of boards sounded again, though not so loudly as it had with Cynric the night before, and a hand reached out for him. The man smelt of earth and evergreens- rather like nature itself- and Lancelot knew whom it was even before the man identified himself.

"Tristan."

This is a dream, thought Lancelot, even as he hoped it wasn't.

For a moment he wondered if Tristan was in fact the angel of death. He chuckled to himself at the thought, though the chuckle was a harsh rasping noise and contained neither warmth nor humour.

"I'm either dreaming or else I'm dead," he murmured.

"You may well be, but I assure you I'm neither," Tristan said.

At any rate, the hands untying Lancelot's bonds were real. After releasing him, they drifted to his forehead and crept along his hairline, easing away his dirty matted hair from the crusts of blood on his head wound. The touch was gentle, tender even, and Lancelot shivered. He had been captured and now he was to be freed. The flame of hope burned bright in the place of his despair. "Thank you," he whispered, as tears wet the corners of his eyes.

Tristan, in typical fashion, did not say another word.

Tbc...

I'm all out of faith. This is how I feel.
I'm cold and I am shamed, lying naked on the floor.

...You're a little late, I'm already torn.

-'Torn', Natalie Imbruglia