Strongest of the Warlocks: Chapter Five: Of Druids and Bandits
AN: Alternative title for the chapter: Just how much trouble can Merlin get up to on her own?
"This was a terrible idea," Merlin said with utter surety, binding the lavender together into bushels to be dried upon their return to Camelot. "It would've been better for me to have gone alone, that way at least one person with medical knowledge would still be in the palace!"
"But you would not know the best places to find these herbs," Gaius replied with a chortle as Merlin placed the lavender gingerly in one of the bags they had brought.
"I dunno," Merlin grumbled, "I'm pretty sure you can find all these on the White Mountains."
As it so happened, Gaius' herb stores were greatly depleted, so he took this as the best opportunity to show her where the best places to find the herbs in Camelot were located, so that she would be able to do this trip alone at a later date. However, in doing so, Camelot was left without either her or him, so they could only hope that no one come down with a sudden ailment or injury for the next hour or so (really, it was however long it took Merlin to mark down the locations on her map –a bit crudely sketched, to be redrawn at a later date).
"Is that where you went to gather herbs when you lived in Ealdor?" Gaius inquired as he straightened up, feeling his age as back ached from his weight.
"Sometimes," Merlin conceded, "but usually I went into the Forest of Ascetir, since the White Mountains are a few days walk from Ealdor. Iseldir took me there a few times when I was a little girl and showed me what each herb could do…that's what really made me want to be a physician, and Ealdor needed someone like that, so it worked out well."
Gaius hummed softly in agreement. "Yes, the White Mountains has perhaps an overabundance of medicinal herbs, no doubt owing to the fact that many are used in magical poultices. But most prefer to pass around the mountains than go over them."
"Because of the rumors of sorcerers and creatures of the Old Religion that roam the lands?" Merlin asked, rolling her eyes and deepening her voice just enough before bursting into giggles. "Or so everyone believes."
"They are not wrong," Gaius said with a soft chuckle. "But those that live there do not take kindly to those who intrude upon their solitude."
"As they should," Merlin said with a snort. "But if everyone knows that sorcerers live there, why hasn't Uther exterminated them all?"
Gaius paused securing his thyme in one of the bags they had brought. "There are many things Uther knows better than to attempt," Gaius admitted slowly, "and I'm sure he knew it would be safer to allow the sorcerers to disappear to nearly the outskirts of Camelot where hardly any breathe a word of magic than allow them to remain within the walls of the castle."
Merlin pursed her lips, but she opted not to speak of the matter. Thinking about all the crimes that Uther had done against her people tended to make her sick to her stomach. Admittedly, traveling to Camelot had first terrified her when her mother had suggested it and she had at first thought it to be some sort of punishment for a crime she was thought to have committed. She had thought if she met the King's eyes that he would see right through her and know instantly of what she was.
He was the monster under the bed that Merlin feared more than anything else in the world, and she had been so stunned that whenever he looked upon her he didn't realize that she had magic.
"Now, come and let me show you where we can find some thistle," Gaius said, crooking his fingers towards her in a 'come hither' gesture and Merlin replied by complying with a good natured roll of her eyes.
"How did you run so low on herbs?" Merlin demanded as she followed after him to a small patch that was growing thickly in a small grove. "How long have you been putting off this trip, Gaius?"
Gaius coughed uncomfortably in a manner similar to those who wished to draw attention away from themselves. "Well…my life is very busy at the castle."
Thus bringing them back to Merlin's point to start with: Why hadn't he just stayed in the castle in case he was needed, while Merlin went into the forest to look for herbs? But who was she to argue with him? She ended up just sighing in exasperation at his words.
"So, what else do we need?" Merlin asked as she bound the herb together in a flurry of fingers that resulted in her nearly knotting her fingers in the binding.
"That, I believe, my dear girl, is all for now," he said with a soft chuckle as Merlin marked the spot on her map.
"Good, because its nearly midday and I'm starving and Arthur's up to who knows what, probably half-dressed, seeing as he doesn't have much skill in that department," Merlin grumbled more to herself as she stood only for the ground underneath her boots to become unsteady and breakaway, sending her tumbling down the ravine.
"Merlin! Merlin, are you alright?" Gaius called after her as she groaned, rubbing at her head as she stood.
"Fine," she grunted, "it's only a bit of damage to my head." Her sarcasm was duly noted. "Go on without me," she called up. "It's going to take me a short while to get back up."
"Are you sure?" Gaius asked in concern. "I can wait."
"Don't bother," Merlin snorted. "I won't be that long."
And then Gaius' face disappeared from view, leaving Merlin behind in the wilderness.
It became quickly apparent that Merlin couldn't just walk up the way she fell down; it was much too steep at a nearly vertical angle.
Merlin rolled her shoulders, working out the kinks that had appeared only after her short fall as she massaged a hand into her side where her sword had caused an indent in her skin.
"Ah…I am luckless!" she declared to the trees as she straightened up. "Why couldn't I have fallen down a shorter hill or something?"
But there was no changing the fact that Merlin be able to climb back up unless aided by magic, and trees had eyes and ears in Camelot, so Merlin knew better than to practice her skills out in the open. She was just going to have to walk around and see if it leveled out into a more manageable incline that wouldn't have Merlin hanging off of it.
She tugged on the end of her plait in irritation before striding off to find a way around when her foot connected with something metallic. Merlin paused to stoop and lift something circular from the ground, smoothing away the mud that had been caked on with a careful hand.
Her eyes widened and she twisted around violently, searching for someone in midst of the trees, but there was no one there. She recognized the workmanship of the medallion, of course, since she was the one who had made it, for a young Druid boy named Caedmon.
"Caedmon?" she called the name out into the trees, but she received no answer. The boy wouldn't have parted from it willingly, it was his most prized possession.
A fear pooled in her stomach. Had he been kidnapped?
"Merlin! Merlin!"
The dark-haired girl barely had time to catch him as he flung himself towards her, a bright smile on his face as he hugged her, now tall enough to be level with her stomach, but he was still only nine years old.
Caedmon had golden-brown curls that framed his sun-darkened cheeks and nearly hid his deep brown eyes.
"Caedmon, did you run all the way here to see me?" Merlin asked with laughter making her eyes dance and the boy bobbed his head in agreement.
"Merlin, when you're a master, can I be your apprentice?" he asked her, moving back and forth on his foot, making his excitement obvious and telling Merlin just how dearly he wanted to know the answer to his question.
"Well…magic is still outlawed," Merlin said with an expression of contemplation that was greatly exaggerated.
"But if magic wasn't outlawed? Please, Merlin!" Caedmon begged.
"Well, then!" Merlin laughed, kneeling in the grass before him so that her face was slightly above his. "If magic wasn't outlawed, I rather think I'd enjoy having you as my apprentice."
"Really?" Caedmon positively beamed.
"Really," Merlin said with a smile, ruffling his hair affectionately as she did so, and it was a mark of how exceptionally pleased Caedmon was that he didn't bat her hand away as he usually did (he was getting to that age where he felt such actions were childish, but Merlin generally ignored him on the matter, delighting in embarrassing him). "Oh! I almost forgot! I made you something."
She removed her hand from the top of his head –something that relieved him as he wrinkled his nose at her, making her snigger– to search through the bag hanging from her shoulder that usually held herbs and withdraw something and hold it out to him.
"Here you are," she said, "I was experimenting on a bit of metal a few days ago and accidentally made a medallion and thought you might like it."
Caedmon turned it over in his hands, admiring the patterns carved into the metal with a lotus blossom at the center, the symbol for rebirth. Though the design included a flower, it could hardly be viewed as feminine.
"It's beautiful," he admitted after a long inspection that made Merlin smirk. "It's really for me?" he asked in a small voice.
Merlin stood, rolling her eyes as she did so. "Who else am I supposed to use my magic for? Come on, future apprentice, let's get you back to your mum before she paddles both of our behinds with a spoon."
Caedmon tried to smother his giggles as he took her hand, his other one holding tightly to his new gift.
Merlin took a calming breath, but it didn't really help her much; she was still worried out of her mind. She pressed a hand to her forehead, murmuring out spells faster than most could be said properly said, searching for a spell that might help her find him, but in the end, she didn't even need one.
"Is there not a tracking spell?" Merlin inquired, looking up from Gaius' grimoire to give the older man a flat stare.
He lifted his eyes from a particularly ancient text, spectacles perched lopsidedly on his nose as he looked through them to meet her eyes. "There is not a spell in particular," he conceded, "however, one may force their eyes ahead, so to speak, but it does not require an incantation as many do."
"But as you grow more powerful, don't you have to use incantations less?" Merlin queried.
"That is true as well."
"There are too many bloody rules for this," Merlin grumbled to herself, making her guardian chuckle softly as he went back to his reading.
Merlin's eyes flared gold as she pushed her awareness out, away from her, gripping the medallion in her hand tightly to ground her as she searched for him. It was an unnerving experience, if you asked Merlin, one she wasn't planning on repeating any time soon, unless she had no other choice.
Though, on the upside, she did find what she was looking for, but when she pulled back into the present her knees buckled, and she very nearly fell over. And then she was simply cupping her forehead with a cool hand for a few moments, waiting of her headache to subside as she mentally promised to not use the spell for a few months at least (though, Merlin had to be glad that it wasn't the kind of spell that depleted the life of the user the more often they used them; she tended to stay very far away from spells of that nature).
Merlin scowled darkly as she removed her hand from her forehead to instead rest against the hilt of her blade.
"Never charge into a battle you can avoid."
"Easy for you to say," Merlin grumbled, parrying his strike with one of her own, becoming uncomfortably aware of just how close he was to her. They were nearly chest to chest, and his was bare. The heat flooded her face and she hoped against hope that Percival wouldn't notice, but that was a foolish idea, as the man was perhaps one of the most perceptible people she had ever met in her sixteen years. "You're big enough that you can take people down with your bare hands!"
Percival smiled, using a well placed twist of his sword to disarm her and then whip her around with a startled squeak so that his blade was to her throat and he was behind her.
Merlin tried very hard not to become even more flustered, but it wasn't working too well.
"It's better to distract your opponent," he added, his smile widening until it was very nearly a smirk, "that way, taking them down is a simple matter."
Merlin swallowed thickly as he stepped away, dropping his sword. "Distraction, right, got it…wait, was that what you were doing?"
He only laughed as Merlin's face flushed a bright crimson.
It was better to be sneaky, that was what Percival had taught her, thus Merlin crept quietly along in the direction that Caedmon had been taken and it was almost a shock that Merlin hadn't been able to tell before, when one considered just how thick the scent of magic was in the air. Most couldn't smell it or feel it, but Merlin was different. She was special, or at least that was what Iseldir believed. She saw good in others when they couldn't see it themselves, she healed regardless of status or money, she looked at magic and saw the beauty it could create and not the destruction it had caused. To her, magic was life, not death, and that was what made her unique.
And Merlin saw the goodness and the innocence that shone inside Caedmon and she wanted to preserve it, but that was a nearly impossible thing in the world they lived in. And by the gods, when she found the men who took him, she would make them regret the day they had entered into this miserable world.
Merlin stepped carefully through the forest, in the direction of male voices and a flickering fire. Merlin ducked behind a nearby tree to gaze into the gathering.
It was made up of at least four men and one bound boy. Caedmon's hair was tousled and tangled and his lip was bloody with a purpling bruise marring the skin over his cheekbone. Merlin glared at the men. Slave-traders, she supposed, but they usually stayed within Cenred's kingdom (and the only reason Merlin knew this was that, being the incredibly luckless person that she was, she had nearly wandered into a similar encampment while chasing a butterfly, only being pulled away by her mother at nearly the last moment). And what would anyone want with Druids? Most tended to stay very far away from then, given most were known sorcerers.
"Did you have to damage the goods?" one of the men complained. He was easily the eldest of the lot with dark ratty hair and a small braid that hung from the side of his head.
The blonde one scoffed as Caedmon glared up at him, his lips pulled into a tight line (Merlin suspected that the only reason he wasn't gagged had something to do with the bruise on his cheek. "Oh, please, so what if he's a little roughed up? They'll still pay good money for him."
"Can't imagine who'd want a little Druid boy, if you ask me," one of the brunettes said with a shrug, "but money's money."
"Here, here," the other two agreed.
Merlin's eyes narrowed. Wait…where was the fourth one? She realized her mistake a second too late as a figure came behind her, the cool metal of the dagger pressing against her jugular.
"Bad move, darling," a voice breathed in her ear and Merlin had to strain not to shiver in revulsion as the man behind her gripped her, pulling her away from the tree and towards the group of men and their prisoner, taking her blade from her while he was at it.
"Lookit what I found, gents," he crowed, keeping the sharp edge of the knife pressing into her neck, "a little rabbit eavesdropping on private conversations."
Merlin ignored the men briefly to meet Caedmon's eyes, as the lad had sat up suddenly as she had been dragged into view. His eyes, though wide and fearful, now held a flicker of relief. Merlin would find a way out of this, no problem.
And then she gazed at the men in pure contempt as they shamelessly leered at her. She couldn't quite understand why, there were far more beautiful women in this world than her, but she doubted that mattered to these simpletons. When she would sometimes look up and catch Percival gazing at her, it was different, mostly because he didn't look at her as though she was a piece of meat.
"A little girl playing hero," the blonde chuckled. "What's your name, beautiful?"
"None of your damn business," Merlin sneered, her voice as condescending as she could manage.
"Smart mouth, I like it," the brunette added, licking his lips. "Who gets her first?"
Merlin's blood boiled. Who gets her first? No one was getting her, period! And she was going to personally stab each one of them, whether their injuries led to their deaths was not her concern. This was a pretty callous attitude considering how Merlin didn't really care much for unnecessary violence, but currently she was quite beyond caring.
"I'll rupture your spleen for that comment," Merlin promised, feeling the weight of the knife that she had hidden in the sash bound tightly to her waist against her stomach, her fingers twitching to grab it.
"Feisty," the first one leered. "Even better."
Merlin didn't have much time, so she moved fast, jerking herself away from her captor, punching him in the throat as she ripped the knife free from her sash with the other, throwing it with zero precision whatsoever towards the brunette that liked her smart mouth (Merlin tried not to shiver in disgust as she thought about it), and it lodged in his abdomen and Merlin hoped it was embedded in his spleen, because that would make her life remarkably simpler.
Her captor stumbled back, completely winded, allowing Merlin to wrench her blade from his grip with a glare. "This is mine, you bastard," she seethed as she gave him a slice to the side for good measure before moving on to the last two who appeared to be much larger than she had originally thought.
"Can't take us both, lass," the blonde chuckled only to pause as she smirked.
"Oh, please," she said with more than a little bit of scorn towards the men, "I once bested a man in swordplay who would make the two of you together look like an average sized man, but I only need to hit one of you."
"Hit one—?Ah!" The dark-haired one cried out suddenly as Merlin pulled the knife from the man it had downed moments before to lodge it painfully in his shoulder before slicing across the blonde's chest. And then she pulled the knife swiftly out, earning a second cry, cleaning it and her blade on the grass before coming to Caedmon's side, and cutting through his bindings.
He wrapped his arms tightly around her neck, whispering "I'm sorry," repeatedly into her ear as she lifted him up and into her arms, determined to take him as far away from his would-be kidnappers as she could possibly take him.
"Sh, it's alright," she murmured into his hair, "you're safe Caedmon."
He was heavier than she remembered, but that was to be expected, as he was indeed a growing lad, and it didn't help that her hands were shaking slightly from the attack (hers and theirs). The idea of being viewed as something to sexually exploit simply because she was a female that wasn't ugly and was hardly plain and was in the forest at what could be considered at the wrong place and wrong time, it terrified Merlin more than she was willing to admit (and she was willing to admit a lot).
"I knew you'd come," he whispered into her shoulder, but Merlin heard it all the same and she tightened her grip on the boy.
"Of course I'd come!" she laughed shakily. "I'm making a long term investment with you, Caedmon! One day you're going to be the apprentice people wish they could be!"
His shoulders shook slightly, but Merlin knew that it wasn't from crying but restraining the giggles that were threatening to burst from his lips.
It was only when they had gained a good bit of distance between them and the encampment that Merlin allowed Caedmon to walk on his own.
"Come on," she hummed softly, "let's get you back to your mum before she worries that pretty head of hers right off."
Caedmon gaped at her and Merlin snorted.
"No, that can't really happen," she promised. "I'm sure if it could've happened we would know by now."
"Maybe," Caedmon mumbled before jumping slightly as Merlin dangled his medallion before his eyes. He grasped it eagerly, a smile blooming on his lips.
"Try not to lose it this time around," she warned and he nodded quickly. She grinned. "Good lad."
AN: So, this is you lot's Christmas present, or as much of one as you're going to get, so I hope you all have enjoyed it! Caedmon will be making a reappearance later on in the series (though I don't think you'll see much of him until Series 3). He is based off of a character that wasn't actually given a name, so I had to go trudging through old Celtic names when I came across 'Caedmon' which supposedly means 'wise warrior' and I liked it, so it's his name.
A very Merry Christmas to all of you!
AND PLEASE REVIEW!
