The Second Night

The dead grass crunched under Merlin's feet as he ran. On the crest of the hill he could make out the East Paddock, and behind its fences the shape of several horses against the sunset sky – but of the two stable boys, there was no sign. One, at least, had walked the animals to pasture as the afternoon waned; the other was able to go freely about his own business, without the watchful eye of Guillam to interfere with his plans.

Merlin had forced himself to walk, as he passed through the long evening shadows of the servants' yard – past the kitchen garden with its showers of fresh green herbs, past the chicken coops and the rain barrels that closed down into avenues towards the outer gate. He walked until he was out through the servants' gate, and onto the dirt trail that led to the stable yard . . . and then, he ran.

The warmth that had curled itself like a vine inside him only grew hotter as he ran. You're quite the little miracle, Merlin. He cares about you more than he ever cared for Roland Tanner. And he wants to impress you more than he ever did his father.

The shadows were lengthening as Merlin tore first into one outbuilding, and then to another. In the hay barn he saw again the paraphernalia of a tanner's work – the bottles of stale beer and the chipped oak bark ready for the final washing – but of the boy himself, there was no sign. He found only Rhys' blanket and a spare change of clothes, flung carelessly into the hay where he had made his bed. The boy who plied his family trade in the secrecy of a dust-moted barn was nowhere to be seen.

In the tack room, Merlin stumbled upon an abandoned bridle laid neatly out for repair. Guillam had left everything in order at the end of Thursday's work, ready to be picked up anew on Friday morning . . . and when Merlin saw this, he felt something in his stomach bite with sharp, poison-shot teeth. It was only further evidence that the stableman was telling the truth – and suddenly Merlin felt sick with guilt at his own small pleasure in Arthur's sacrifice. The prince had not hesitated to protect his friend, even at the cost of his own skin . . . but now Merlin saw this new evidence of Guillam's innocence and was struck, once again, with the utter unfairness of it all.

He deserved your protection as much as I did, Arthur. More, even. After all – he never lied to you.

§

The stalls were standing empty, all the horses taken to pasture in the East Paddock. Even with Amra gone, Merlin could still feel the residue of the dark magic that had hobbled her injured leg; it was greasy, and clung to his own aura like used lamp-oil. Shadows fell slightly awry across the hay-trodden floor, and as Merlin crept inside, that sense of wrongness only began to grow. The clotted remainder of dark magic thickened the air into soup; the living reek of horse-flesh and the dead aroma of hay had lost all its sense of comfort.

That was when Merlin spotted the foot.

It was protruding from one of the furthest stalls, clothed in the worn brown boot of a peasant boy. In a trance Merlin advanced across the stable towards the foot; in a hum of unease he pushed through the blackened air towards the fallen boy. It was like wading uphill through tar.

Owen was lying on his side in the empty stall, his head showing a bump the size of an over-large damson. Merlin dropped to his knees beside the stablehand, and turned his head to better observe the wound on his temple: then peeled open each of the boy's eyelids, to examine his pupils for signs of a concussion. He was so absorbed in his work that he did not hear the soft tread of feet behind him; he was already so suffocated by the black magic in the air that he did not feel the increasing stretch and strain of it, crunching closed around him like a fist. But he heard the clink! as a cold metal chain snagged across his throat, and he felt the sudden submergence of his own magic as the chain pulled back tight.

"You think I didn't smell the magic on you, Merlin?" came an unfamiliar voice at his ear. A voice that must be, but did not sound even remotely like, Rhys. "It's a little trick I learned – one that you should really have taken the time to master yourself. Oh well, not to worry; it's not like you'll have a chance to use it, now."

Merlin's hands instinctively reached to clutch at the chain across his throat; but it only jerked tighter, and cut off his air before his fingers could so much as touch it.

"Nah-uh," said Rhys. "No touching. And no kicking, either, if you know what's good for you. I'd hate to have to cut anything off before I killed you."

Merlin gasped around the garrotte at his throat, and found he could just dredge up enough air, inch by painful inch, to speak. "So it was you. You spelled Lady Morgana's horse. You put Guillam in that enchanted sleep. And I'm willing to bet that . . . that you are responsible for the heatwave over Camelot, too."

"And you are the one who's been trying to break it. I knew somebody was destroying my spells, sniffing around after me like a hog after truffles – I just never thought it would be an untrained sympathiser like you. I mean, a member of the Pendragon household, with magic? It's really too disgusting to think about."

"Don't think about it, then," Merlin wheezed – and was rewarded with a harsh tug on the chain that made his back arch against the solid body behind him.

"There's that smart mouth of yours again, Merlin. The one that your master seems to value so highly in you. It wouldn't surprise me if you did more than talk back to him with that mouth, after all, he cares enough about you to save you from his father. Not everyone is so lucky."

It was so very close to Merlin's own thoughts that for a moment he wondered if he might be physically sick. His airways were squeezed to half their usual capacity, and it hurt every time he tried to draw breath; but still, his bile rose at the likeness of their conclusions. And in the very back of his mind, where the lack of air was already taking hold, an indignant voice said: Hey! Does everyone think I'm sleeping with the prat?

"So this . . . this is about Roland," Merlin wheezed. "I know what happened, Rhys. I know he died because . . . because Uther put him in a cage, just like Arthur. But it wasn't Arthur's fault, he . . . he tried to speak up for your brother. His father wouldn't listen. I'm sure he did . . . everything he could."

"Such faith in your master, Merlin, it would really be quite touching if it wasn't so sad. You truly believe he tried to save my brother, do you? Well, let's go and ask him. Let's see if, this time, he tells a different story."

§

As apprentice to the court physician, Merlin had attended more than one amputation since arriving in Camelot. The lower town had its own barber surgeon, and so there had only been five in all his time at court – but those five were not something Merlin was ever likely to forget. He had been tempted to use his magic in caring for the sick, many times – but never so forcefully as when the muscle parted and slick white bone came into view. He might have saved those cankered limbs, with his magic. But the thing which had struck him the most about those five was not the blood or the screams, nor even the squeal of the saw as it caught against living bone – no, it was the way those patients had described the aftermath of the ordeal.

It's like it's still there, they had insisted, to a man. Sometimes at night I'll feel an itch, and I've reached to scratch it before I even remember the leg is gone. A phantom leg, a hand that tingled in cold weather though the arm now ended at the wrist; they made their presence felt, even months after they had been consigned to the dirt.

So when Rhys hooked that chain across his throat and Merlin had felt its enchantment snap closed around him, he had finally understood what those five patients had meant. His magic was gone, and yet not gone; amputated, but still very much there. It itched like an absent foot, and made its presence known even if it no longer responded to his commands.

Bad analogy, Merlin, he scolded himself, despite its unnaturally vivid insistence. Your magic isn't gone, it's not been cut away and buried in a wooden box like Old Man Evan's leg. It's just suppressed, that's all. It's just asleep.

But even so, it itched.

He had not been surprised when Rhys began to march him towards the main square, and he had not been surprised to find the way free of stragglers as night began to fall. King Uther's edict against aiding the prisoner had had the effect of an unofficial curfew; most had held to their chambers, or found a safer route to the tavern than through the main square. The cobbled grounds through which they passed were cooling with shadow, and silent as an open grave. But if Merlin was unsurprised by the lack of people, then he was shaken to the core by what awaited them in the courtyard itself.

Arthur was still, now, curled on his side like a child in the womb. The gold of his hair was moon-bright against the coming dark, and the bandages glowed only a shade or two whiter than his skin. But it was his face that punched all the air from Merlin's body, and locked his lungs down tight in his chest. Even in sleep, the pain sunk furrows into Arthur's smooth young brow; his skin was flushed, and blotched with red like the skin of a ripening apple.

He's sick, thought Merlin, and felt his stomach fall away into silence. Not just hurt, but actually sick. Maybe . . . maybe even dying.

As if the thought alone had conjured it, Merlin was hit full-force with the stench of that evident sickness. It was sharp and yellow, and stung his nostrils as they fought to take in what little air they could. He couldn't be sure in the gathering twilight, but he thought he could make out splashes of bile in a far corner of Arthur's cage.

"Arthur Pendragon!" Rhys' voice bellowed at his ear. And to Merlin's inexpressible relief, he saw Arthur's eyes fly open.

§

Arthur had never been an easy riser, but this time it felt as if he were jerked up out of sleep like a fish on an angler's line. Like a fish he thrashed, half-rolling onto his back before his wounds flared hot against the cobblestones; then for a moment he could only lay, and watch the last embers of sunset smouldering behind the distant rooftops.

He had thought the coming of night would bring an end to the hot roar of agony in his head; but his skull still felt two sizes too small, and every tiny movement brought a fresh surge of nausea crashing down over him like a wave. He had been sick before, feverish before – but this was a kind of torture he had never even known existed.

"Arthur Pendragon!" It was not a shout, but was nevertheless strong enough that it carried clearly across the square to where Arthur lay. Not a voice he knew, but one he couldn't possibly hope to ignore. With a stab of nausea and a sloshing sensation in his head, Arthur rocked himself carefully over onto his belly . . . and then froze, as he saw the unfamiliar speaker for the first time.

It was the stableboy, the portly one who kept all his brains in his hands. He was glaring over the shoulder of a young man much taller than himself . . . and those stumpy red hands now stretched a gleaming chain across the bigger boy's throat, arching him backwards like a bow. The hostage tried to grimace an apology in Arthur's direction; and that was just like him, wasn't it, to find the would-be assassin by getting himself captured—

It was just like Merlin, to take a simple investigation and turn it into a crisis.

"Who—who are you?" Arthur demanded, in a voice he barely recognised as his own.

"Doesn't even recognise one of his own stablehands. Just like a Pendragon. I don't know why I'm even surprised."

"I know who you've been pretending to be. I asked who you are."

"Surely you know, my lord? Your servant figured it out right enough. But then, I'd always heard he was the brains of the outfit."

Arthur swallowed. Shadows streamed over the cobblestones of the square, and the two figures were becoming lost to the fading light; but even half-blind, the nagging sense that this boy was somehow familiar refused to leave him be. "Let Merlin go," he said. "He's just a servant. He has nothing to do with this."

"Oh, Arthur, you buffoon. Your servant has everything to do with this. This really is going to be harder than I thought, if you need every little detail explaining to you. I'll give you a clue: you and old Guillam aren't the first people your father has had thrown into that cage. There was a boy, wasn't there? Just a stablehand, like me. Just a simple peasant who was stupid enough to make friends with a prince. And if you haven't guessed who I am by now, Your Highness, then this heatwave really must have cooked what little brain you had to begin with."

No. It couldn't be. But: "You're Roland's brother," Arthur said.

"Name's Rhys. Rhys Tanner. And you're the little shit that killed my brother." The boy glared at him over Merlin's shoulder with eyes like polished brown glass. Arthur had never known, until today, that brown eyes could ever be so cold. "What's the matter, my lord? Cat got your tongue?(1)"

"Funny. So tell me, Rhys Tanner: did you pay someone to write your villain speeches for you? You should ask Merlin, he's handy with a quill and a scrap of parchment or two. It couldn't possibly be worse than the drivel you've been spouting so far."

"That's why you keep him around, is it? To write your speeches for you? That way you can pretend to the people that you're not the selfish, self-absorbed little brat we both know you really are."

Arthur swallowed back his nausea, and dragged in air that only seemed to scour his lungs like sand. "Among other things. He likes to hide it well, but . . . believe it or not Merlin does have his uses."

"So I hear. And that's why I can't just let him go, as much as I might like to. You see, I made the attempt on the Lady Morgana's life because it's obvious the king loves her more than anything – even you, Your Highness, much as it pains me to tell you that. And maybe it didn't quite go to plan, but there's always tomorrow. Or the next day. But for the longest time, Arthur, I had no idea who it was that you loved best. I couldn't very well take your father; he has to survive to live with his loss, just as you do. And if there's a woman in your life, then I have to admit you've kept her very well hidden. But then I began to hear the talk in the tavern, about some peasant boy who never leaves your side. One you've even risked your life for, on more than one occasion. You needn't bother denying it, Pendragon, not after what you did – we both know he's the one you couldn't bear to lose."

Merlin had tensed under his captor's hands; and although his face was impassive his eyes were bright, alert. He was hearing this. Damn this stableboy, damn the both of them, because Merlin was hearing this and now Arthur would never know a moment's peace as long as he lived. "I imagine you were ready to start getting the drinks in, when my father sentenced Merlin to this cage. Such . . . such perfect symmetry, if he were to die in here as your brother did. You can't buy irony like that."

"Can't you? Tell me, Arthur, did you think this heatwave, and this cage – did you think any of it – was really just a coincidence? I fear for this kingdom, I really do, with an imbecile like you as its future king."

"So you cast a spell on us. You enchanted my father, you made him resurrect this hellhole of a cage just for the sake of symmetry."

"No. I doubt any human sorcerer could do that, not even the great Emrys himself – but I can do little things that work almost as well. An image here, a dream there . . . even an animal messenger, if need be. But if you're somehow clinging to the belief that your father was under my control when he put you here, then I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you, sire. The sad truth is that he did that all by himself."

The barbs kept coming, but oddly Arthur felt nothing as they struck. He found he didn't care what this boy thought of him, or how many taunts were being flung his way; he was past caring for much beyond the darkness in his head, and the sight of Merlin strung up by the throat between the traitor's clever hands. Even the suggestion that this Tanner boy was a sorcerer did little to penetrate the well of shock around him. Though Merlin had floated the idea, Arthur had to admit that he had been loathe to entertain it. The possibility of a sorcerer actually working here, living here, under the very noses of those life-sworn to defend against their kind . . . it did not bear thinking about. Yet here was that very sorcerer, standing before him in the guise of a simple peasant boy.

"So you planned to . . . to put Merlin in this cage, and see to it he died of the same heat sickness that killed your brother. No doubt you . . . you knew that the idiot would sacrifice himself to save Guillam. You even went so far as to, to orchestrate your own heatwave and somehow plant the idea in my father's mind. But there was something you didn't plan for . . . wasn't there, Rhys? All those years, plotting your revenge – and yet you never even saw me coming."

Rhys let out a roar that peeled his lips back from his teeth like those of a snarling hound. In a fit of rage he kicked out Merlin's legs from under him, and dropped him to his knees with a crack of bone on cobblestone. "And why should I, you scum-sucking dung beetle? What reason have you ever given me to think you capable of something like this? You might have confessed to Merlin's crime to save him, Arthur, but you wouldn't confess to your own to save my brother!"

"I know," said Arthur – and then bit back a moan as he levered himself up first to his elbows, and then to his knees. His head swam; his back pulled under the stiffened weals, and let down a thin trickle of blood as he moved. But he stood. Somehow, and against all expectation, Arthur Pendragon stood swaying on his own two feet. "I know that what I did to your brother was unforgivable – and I have known it, from the moment he died. It was my idea, to leave the city that day. It was I who, who wandered too far after game and made us lose our way. Roland, he . . . he knew that nothing scared me more than the thought of disappointing my father, and so he volunteered to take the blame in my place. He was a true friend." And there he stopped for a moment, letting his forehead fall forward against the upright bars. "I should never have let him—but I was a child. I was afraid, of my father's rejection, of . . . of what he might do when he found out. I know that's no excuse . . . but it's the only one I have."

The confession rang in the darkening square, twelve years and a boy's lifetime too late. But if Arthur were honest, then it was not for Roland that he made it now. He was speaking, not to the boy with the flashing copper eyes, or the one who was no longer there to listen . . . but to the one who knelt quiescent under a length of metal chain, and was a braver man than Arthur could ever hope to be.

"Do you really think an apology is enough to save your precious servant, Pendragon?" Rhys spat. "Did you expect me to cry, and tell you that I forgive you, just because you finally admitted to being a spineless coward like all the rest of your kind? A life for a life, Arthur. And a loss for a loss."

At last Arthur let himself look directly at Merlin, already knowing what he would see on his servant's guileless young face. Disgust. Merlin would know, now; he would know that the perfect prince he served had never existed outside of his own ridiculously faithful mind. But a glance at the boy made Arthur's heart first catch and then race in his chest; there was trepidation in Merlin's eyes, perhaps, but there was no more than that. There was only a quiet trust that momentarily robbed Arthur of even the ability to speak.

"I'll tell you what I think," said Arthur, and was startled at how strong and sure his voice sounded. "I think that you, Rhys Tanner, have forgotten who I am."

"Is that so? And just who are you, mighty prince? Are you a sorcerer, that you think you can win against me? You're caged like a cur, like the dog you are, and there's nothing you can do but stand there and watch your manservant die."

"You called me 'Pendragon', sorcerer, and I know you meant it as an insult. Perhaps . . . perhaps that's just what it is. But for better or worse I am my father's son, and Pendragons can't afford the luxury of friends. Roland, God rest his soul . . . he helped me learn that lesson when all my father's warnings could not." Arthur swallowed; darkness sucked at the edges of the world and wanted nothing more than to take him with it. But it could not. It must not. For Merlin. "There is no-one you can take from me that will ever compare with your brother's loss, because I have no-one. Merlin amuses me, that much is true . . . but at the end of the day, he's still just a servant. Just a peasant, one of thousands in this kingdom and certainly nothing special. At least if you kill him here and now, I will have all the excuse I need to see you hanged by dawn."

Silence, in the darkening arches of the drawbridge. Silence, in the shadowed doorways and open windows of the citadel walls. It stretched between them like a noose to a runaway horse . . . then snapped tight, binding the one to the other.

"No," said Rhys, at last. "No, you protected this one, you gave your own skin for this wretch of a boy! No prince would do that for a mere servant. I've seen you, Arthur, I know how you are with him. You can't pretend to me that there's nothing between you."

"I show Merlin favour because it provokes my father, nothing more. And as for what I did . . . well, perhaps I needed to know. I needed to know just how far the king was willing to go, against his own son. You haven't been in Camelot long, Rhys; perhaps you can be forgiven for not understanding our ways. But any drunkard in the tavern will tell you that this isn't the first time I've openly defied him. And any one of them could tell you how often Merlin has been in the stocks, just for getting on my nerves."

Believe it, you leather-headed piece of scum, he thought, as if he might press the idea from his own head and into the thick skull of the sorcerer before him. It's true enough, in every detail save one.

But whether Rhys would have believed him or not, Arthur was never to find out . . . because at that moment, they were disturbed by a shout from across the darkening square.

§

Merlin felt the impact before he even registered that he had fallen. There was a whoosh of air around him, and a lurch as his heart slammed up into his mouth; then stone, smashing into his temple with an unforgiving thunk! Unconsciousness swooned upward to swallow him, and Merlin fell thankfully into darkness without a murmur of dissent.

But only for a moment. He had barely started to sink when light began to replace the dark; flashes of sight and sound strobed across his mind like clouds across the moon. He saw fading shadows, thrown forward by the dying sun: heard scuffles, but not a single human voice. For a moment he could only blink, and wait for those flashes of light to crowd out the dark – but already his eyes were slipping closed again. Already, he was cocooned by silence.

But even in his stupor, Merlin was struck with the feeling that there was something he should remember: something that trembled on the very edge of his consciousness, and that tingled and itched like the spectre of a severed limb.

Your magic isn't gone. It's not been cut away and buried in a wooden box like Old Man Evan's leg.

Merlin's eyes flew open – and if anyone had been looking his way in that moment, they would have seen those eyes ignite with fired gold.

It had been Darius, who startled Rhys from whatever spell Arthur had woven about him – and it was a spell, of that Merlin had no doubt. Arthur did not have a drop of indigenous magic in his veins, but Merlin had come to recognise a long time ago that the prince had a magic all his own. It was a magic that made all eyes turn to him whenever he entered a room: a magic that could bend reality by the force of his will alone. He was the Once and Future King, and even Rhys' radical fire dwindled in the face of his greater flame.

Perhaps it was foolish of Merlin, to believe that the prince's own sorcery could somehow subjugate the boy. Rhys was too twisted by hate, too set in his own reality, to ever bend for Arthur's. But they were never to know if the young sorcerer could have been reached . . . because at that moment, Darius had chosen to notice what was going on right under his nose.

After that, several things happened at once. Rhys had spun towards the new voice, putting his back to Arthur in a moment of unguarded surprise; Merlin had felt the enchanted chain at his throat shake loose as Rhys' body was yanked backwards; and then he found himself thrown end-over-end into the palace steps, coming to a halt only when his head bounced off the chiselled stone.

For precious moments, consciousness had come and gone. Light, sound, sickness . . . all of it had carouselled through his head, until at last Merlin had forced himself to open his eyes.

Rhys had been wrestled backward by a thick chain about his throat. His face was purpled with congestion, and he clawed at his throat with scrabbling, scratching fingers . . . but already Merlin could see the dying of the light in his copper eyes. Where Merlin's vision fired with ever longer fits of intellection, the sorcerer's were only growing shorter. In every way that mattered, Rhys Tanner was already dead.

"Hierd(2)," Merlin whispered – and with one, last croak and a kick of his scuffling feet, the sorcerer fell limp in Arthur's hands. A moment later the body thumped to the ground, and for the first time Merlin could see the crude garrotte for what it was: a set of manacles, dulled with age and crusted still with Arthur's days-old blood.

"Merlin," Arthur said – and then his eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped unconscious to the ground.

§

The sound that Arthur's body made as he fell would stay with Merlin for as long as he lived. Most people, when they know they are about to swoon, have sense enough left to soften their fall – but Arthur merely dropped like a sack of stones where he stood, and did not move again. Instinctively Merlin's gaze shot to his master's chest, looking for the tell-tale rise and fall as he breathed . . . but he was too far away to see more than a pale outline against the dark.

"Get Gaius!" Merlin screamed to the startled Darius, who only blinked back at him without comprehension. "Get Gaius, and tell the king there has been an attack on his son. Go!"

For once, the swaggering weasel of a guard did as he was told. Perhaps he understood, as Merlin most certainly did, that heads would roll should Arthur not wake from his stupor this time.

As soon as the guard was out of sight behind the citadel doors, Merlin staggered to his feet. Rhys' body lay splayed against the bars of the cage on the nearer side, eyes wide to the sky as if he still did not quite believe in his own death; on the other side lay Arthur, eyes mercifully closed like a child lost to sleep. One looked dead, while the other did not – but still Merlin felt his chest tighten like a thumb under the screw. The prince was just so unimaginably still.

"Arthur," he said, blankly. For a moment, Merlin's body had frozen where he stood; then he was flinging himself around the side of the cage, one corner, two, and groping blindly for the lock. "Tospringe," Merlin whispered . . . and felt the lock spring open under his hand.

Arthur lay with his back to the gate, his bandages a celestial blue under the growing shadows of dusk. Though only the faintest streaks of apricot still stained the sky, Merlin could make out fresh spots of blood in the white; they spread like spattered ink through the linen, and from the bandages' lowest edge a thread of scarlet trailed down Arthur's waist towards the ground. He had re-opened his wounds, and the ghosts of those marks on Merlin's own back began to throb in silent sympathy.

"Arthur," Merlin said again. Still, there was no sign of life. Merlin fell to his knees at his master's back, and with trembling hands reached out to press fingertips to the space below his ear; then he held an open palm to Arthur's mouth, and sagged in relief to find both pulse and breath intact. But the prince's heartbeat was rapid and rough; his skin was hot to the touch, and dry as day-old bread. He had long since ceased to sweat, and even in the gloom Merlin could see the unhealthy flush of blood in his cheeks.

Merlin was no fool. As Gaius' assistant, he knew better than most the prognosis of such severe heat sickness. He had seen men, women, and children succumb to its effects more than once throughout this interminable heat wave, though usually the very old or the very young. Arthur may be in the prime of his youth, and physically stronger than most . . . but he had been two days, now, with no food and very little water. He had gone without proper rest or shade, and though his wounds were not infected they must still have caused him considerable pain. Looking at him now, and feeling the heat that smouldered just below his skin, Merlin felt the edges of the world begin to draw together like the sides of a wound as it was stitched.

"Arthur? You have to wake up, you colossal knucklehead. I need to see what kind of damage you've gone and done to yourself, and if you think I'm heaving your enormous bulk upright with my skinny arms . . . well, you can just think again, is all. Rise and shine, sire. Upsy-daisy."

Gently Merlin slipped his left hand under Arthur's head and lifted it from the ground; his right he slid around to Arthur's chest, feeling out the place where his heart galloped ceaselessly in his ribs. The weight of the prince's lolling head and the breathing warmth of his skin were so real, so wonderfully alive . . . and suddenly Merlin felt tears pressing against the back of his eyes. Arthur was alive.

But barely.

"I'm sorry," he gasped, though he no longer knew what it was that he was sorry for. "Arthur, I'm so sorry. I know you don't want to hear it . . . but you can't stop me this time, you prat. I can say what I want and you can't stop me, because you're too busy being unconscious." Again, Merlin thought, and the sound that crammed its way up his throat was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Arthur was unconscious again, and no doubt just a little more of his common sense had been knocked out somewhere along the way. He may be the finest warrior in all the five kingdoms . . . but Arthur Pendragon still got himself knocked out more often than anyone Merlin had ever met.

"This isn't you, sire. No, the Arthur I know – the imperious twat that makes me muck out his stables even when it isn't my job – he wouldn't let a bit of sun beat him. No, he . . . he'd give me that sneer, the one that makes me want to slap it right off his supercilious face, then tell me to go stand in a doorway for a bit and stop being such a bloody girl. I swear he'd impose his will on the weather itself, if he decided it was getting on his nerves."

Unthinkingly Merlin let his fingers twine in the twilight-grey hair; it was dulled with dirt now, more brown oil-skin than living, golden fur. It already felt dead in his unbelieving hands. "You shouldn't have done this, Arthur. Not for me. Never for me."

And at that, Arthur stirred. It wasn't much: just a roll of the heavy head in Merlin's hand, and that curl of the lip over crooked teeth that was so quintessentially Arthur. His prince could sneer for all of Albion, and Merlin had never been so pleased to see it as he was just then. "Don't be so stupid, Merlin. Whoever gave you the idea that I would do something this daft for you?"

Merlin felt a laugh come hiccuping out of his throat and a heat come rushing to his eyes; and he could only shake his head and let the tears stream over his foolish grin, and say: "No-one. No-one's saying that, sire. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't dare."

But Arthur had fallen limp after this one brief waking, and did not stir again. He lay sleeping in Merlin's arms, deadweight but very much alive; and now, finally, Merlin let himself cry. He hunched over Arthur's body, watching as spots of damp appeared on the ethereally white linen; and that was when he felt the first drops of rain strike his upturned neck, and saw the first dark spatters appearing on the cobbled ground around them.

NOTES:

1) There are several possible origins of the phrase "Cat got your tongue?", but one commonly held belief is that it came from the practice of flogging sailors on British Naval ships. An insolent or disobedient sailor would be quite literally beaten into submission with a cat o' nine tails, and no doubt learn to hold their tongue in future.

2) Hierd is apparently 'tighten' in Old English. I have no idea if I've used the correct form or tense, I just got it off an online dictionary. Oh, well. Can't be good at everything!

A NOTE ON SURNAMES: Although there didn't seem to be a good place to attach a footnote in the text, I thought I should explain Merlin's thought processes for those who might be confused. Today we have surnames passed down to us by our parents, but once upon a time surnames did not, strictly speaking, exist. People were known by one name, and sometimes a title or the name of their profession was added to differentiate them from others of the same name. They might be known as 'John the baker', 'Richard the smith', etc. Pendragon is technically not a surname, but a title given to the highest authority in the land, as it directly translates as 'great leader'.

When Merlin first encounters Rhys in this story, we find the boy making leather from cowhide. A professional curer of cowhide for the production of leather was known as a 'tanner' – and so when Merlin learns that Roland's full name was Roland Tanner, he makes the logical connection to Rhys. The rest falls into place from there.