Birth of a Legend
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It was a day painted in shades of grey. Tall, thin trees with bark the colour of granite wet by the rain created stark silhouettes against the pale grey sky. Watery snow covered the ground, and what few patches of earth showed were mires of mud and trampled, defeated yellow grass. Everything was melting and runny and dull. Everything dripped. It was not the seemingly sort of day for a legend to be born.
Through this dreary landscape a lone man trudged, on his way home from visiting his mother. With head bent low in exhaustion, poor clothes upon his back, and not even an ailing donkey for a steed, he did not look the best prospect for bandits, but it had been a long winter filled with endless snowstorms and the spring promised floods. Therefore, any lonely traveller was ripe for the plucking, and the men hiding amongst the still slumbering trees stirred themselves, for this was the first person they'd seen on the road all day. Creeping slowly but steadily, they circled around the man on the road.
"Good day to you, traveller!" the leader, a burly giant of man with hair the colour of wet sand, greeted his prey.
The man looked up and quickly took in the scene. Wariness sparked in his blue eyes, but not fear. "Good day to you, sir," he answered with a rise of one dark eyebrow. "And how may I help you this fine afternoon?"
A smug smile spread across the face of the bandit chief, and several others chuckled. "Why, we would ask a favour, my good man." He strode closer, but his victim-to-be did not flinch. However, in his arrogant assumption of superiority of numbers, the bandit did not heed this observation. "We are but poor family men, and as such, require men like your good self to…donate…what you can in the interests of good will."
A side of the young man's mouth quirked up. "Wasn't it a toll for safe passage you were charging but a fortnight ago?"
For less than a heartbeat the bandit's brow furrowed, but his victim's amused demeanor did not register in his mind and the predatory grin did not leave his face. "Ah, well, but that lead to some confusion with the King as to who had authority for such matters. And being the peace-loving men that we are, we went along with His Majesty's views."
"No doubt with the incentive provided by His Majesty's knights' swords held to your throats."
The bandit shrugged. "None can say that the King is not a persuasive man. So now we merely ask for honest donations."
"Such as? As you can see, I am hardly a rich man myself."
"Oh, I'm certain you have something to offer. Those boots for a start. They would do well for my oldest boy."
"So, my boots are all you ask?"
"I dunno, Cedric," a rangy-looking red hair leered from behind. "I think that there haversack might be holding something worthwhile."
"Now there's a point, Ralf," the leader agreed. Looming even closer to the spindly young man, he shook his head. "I'm afraid, kind sir, we might be wanting all of it." He took ahold of the man's tunic and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers. "This don't look like much, but it's fairly new, I'm guessing, and of sturdy enough material. Might be we want that and all."
"So, I'm to 'donate' everything, even the clothes off my back?" the young man asked dryly.
"Do it peaceful-like and we might be persuaded to let you keep your small clothes and let you off with naught more than a few bruises."
"That is a generous offer! How could I ever say no?"
The bandits looked at each other and smiled; this one was actually going to try and fight.
"However, I do feel I should warn you: I'm not really in the mood to be returning to court in my altogether. The prat gloats enough as it without my giving him such juicy fodder." With that, he reached up a hand to lower his hood.
Prat? Who calls King Arthur a prat? The lead bandit worried, the first threads of alarm snaking along his limbs. Seeing several of his men drop their scythes and picks and run off at high speed only increased his panic. The King's Sorcerer! The great wizard Merlin, that's who! he realized as he involuntarily stumbled backwards. No, no, no, no, no!
The last thing he remembered was a flash of gold.
-x-
Merlin, the King, and the King's closest knights rode up to a bizarre scene. Vacant-eyed bandits clogged the road. Some stumbled around in circles, as if drunk. One was playing listlessly in the mud, while another was simply sitting in the snow, but it was the burly blonde man passionately hugging a tree that was making it difficult for the King not to laugh out loud.
Gwaine wasn't bothering to show any such restraint. Bent weakly over his saddle, laughing almost to the point of weeping, he asked, "Merlin, mate, what in the world did you do to them?"
Merlin shrugged, finding it very hard to keep from chuckling himself, and said, "I may have taken their will away."
"And by 'may have' you mean 'patently did'," the King commented dryly.
"Yes, yes, fine."
"Does that mean they'll simply follow us back to Camelot if we ask them too?" Leon asked, mouth twitching uncharacteristically.
"Should do," Merlin told him.
Percival, who was shaking silently atop his grey courser, asked, "Are you sure they're in a fit state for that, Merlin? That one yonder seems to be dribbling quite a bit. Has he got enough sense to even remember how to walk?"
"Well, I admit it might take some patience on our part to herd them to the all the way to the dungeons."
The King rolled his eyes. "Just like you to create more work, idiot."
"By that I take it you mean, 'Thank you, Merlin, for freeing my road from the bandits who were preventing honest merchants coming to my kingdom and thereby affecting commerce, not to mention making it unsafe for my people to travel.' Is that it, your Cabbage-headedness?"
"If it makes you feel better about yourself, you half-witted harebrain. Now get this rabble on its feet."
"Clotpole," the all-powerful sorcerer muttered.
"What was that?"
"Oh, your will be done, Sire!" Merlin mocked with a bow and exaggerated genuflection. Addressing the slack-jawed bandits, he shouted, "Oi! You lot! Get to your feet!"
All the bandits obeyed except for the one involved with the birch tree. After some – increasingly impatient - cajoling and guiding he finally fell in line with the others. "What's up with that one, mate?" Elyan asked Merlin as they started off.
"I really don't know. Something about this spell causes the susceptible to develop bizarre and highly questionable attachments to trees."
Arthur frowned at him. "You sound like you've used this spell before."
"Nope, nope, never did!" Merlin exclaimed hurriedly and spurred his horse forward so that the King couldn't see his face.
-x-
Many years later, a young boy asked his grandfather as they sat in front of the hearth, "But Granddad, why did you go to the castle when you knew the King would throw you in the dungeons?"
"Don't rightly know, my boy. I just felt I had to do it because the man with the bird's name told me to."
"Man with the bird's name?"
The old man screwed up his face, trying to search his memory. "What was it again? Sparrow? Martin? Robin? Robin! That's it! Robin! Robin with the hood!"
"But why turn yourself in just because this Robin with the hood bloke said so?"
"Because he told us he were King of the Bandits and there ain't naught for it but to do wot your King tells you."