Chapter Five
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
"You shouldn't be out here, Gwaine."
"You keep saying things like that, Elen. And yet, here I am!" Gwaine paused mid-stride and bowed mockingly. "Seriously, sis, I'm okay."
Two weeks after the "boar incident", he had finally convinced Elen that he was well enough to go on a scouting and supply mission, and that such a journey was necessary. They had food stashed, of course, but more would surely be needed, along with additional warm clothing and blankets; temperatures continued to veer below freezing and most of their traps kept coming up empty. Elen had insisted that she should come along because she could use her magic in an emergency, and Hayden had pointed out that despite months of their living there, he still knew the surrounding area far better than they did.
So at dawn that morning, they had left the kids with most of their meager store of weapons...and all three dogs...and struck out over the cold, quiet landscape towards the nearest village, about half a day's walk or more away. They saw no one, just wildlife, some distant wandering farm animals, and more and more evidence of the earthquakes.
Along the way, Gwaine had taken a misstep into a grass-covered fissure and pulled the still-healing scar on his side; he'd made the mistake of not keeping quiet about it, hence Elen's comment.
She rolled her eyes at his flippant response. "I wish Mother were here. She would've fixed you up by now and I wouldn't have to worry."
"You did just fine," Gwaine assured her. Then, grinning, he added, "I mean, you killed it instantly and saved my life, first of all."
He saw her suppressing a smile as she said, "Well, someone always has to save your sorry…"
"Shit!" Hayden's voice reached them from up ahead, where he had stopped on the crest of a low hill.
"What's going on?" Elen called, hurrying to him with Gwaine close behind. Reaching the top, they too halted, staring in horror.
The village hadn't been much more than a few streets, a couple shops, and a church. But it had been their closest link to civilization...a link that had now vanished almost entirely into a massive sinkhole edged by the charred remains of a few buildings.
"What in the hell…" Elen breathed after a long silence. "When…"
"Sometime in the last few months, I expect," Gwaine said numbly. If it were just burnt buildings, that would be one thing...But a sinkhole right under a village? Either some one-off thing, or what happened to the cities is happening to smaller towns, too…Maybe the earth itself was just trying to murder all groups of humans. Doesn't bode well for us, then…
"I don't think we're going to find anything here," Hayden said, voice rough. "There's a patch of forest we can shelter in tonight, maybe a few hours' walk. It's on the way to the next village."
None of them spoke much for the length of that journey, and that night while keeping watch, Gwaine could swear he heard distant screeches that sounded like no animal that should exist in 21 st century Britain.
Gripping his dagger, he thought back to a different campsite in a very different time.
"You can turn back if you want."
"Heh. I'm not scared of pheasants."
He almost laughed, then sobered thinking, Merlin, where the hell are you?
Neither Elen nor Gwaine could get more than a word or two out of Hayden the next morning, even around noon, when they found an empty farmhouse with some usable supplies...mostly canned goods, blankets, and clothing...tucked away in various corners. It hadn't been empty for too long, however, judging by the freshness of the short row of crude graves in the moldering garden.
I wonder where the person who dug them went. There were no unburied bodies anywhere on the premises.
The next village, as small as the last, was not swallowed by a sinkhole, but something about the echoing streets filled with empty vehicles and rubbish yet devoid of all life made Gwaine even more uneasy.
"We shouldn't stay here tonight," he said after yet another mostly-fruitless raid on a shop.
"Where else are we going to stay?" Elen demanded, gesturing up at the clouded afternoon sky. "It's either going to rain or snow soon, and after nearly freezing to death last night, I'll take a haunted house over sleeping outside!"
"Well, I'll take the outdoors over..."
"Be quiet!" Hayden hissed sharply.
They both fell silent, startled, and in the following quiet Gwaine heard what the former wyvern tamer must have. Footsteps. Damn it.
They hardly had time to brace themselves before the street was lined with about fifteen raggedly-dressed, masked figures, all carrying some combination of knives, spiked bats, and hunting firearms.
The ubiquitous bandits of every era, no doubt. Automatically backing up into the others, Gwaine muttered, "Believe me now, Elen ?"
"Shut it."
"Drop any weapons you have!" one of the strangers shouted. A necklace of several dozen small, everyday keys jangled around his neck as he hefted his shotgun. "Do it now or you're dead!"
"I don't suppose you'd want to bargain for anything?" Gwaine shot back.
The man leered at the only woman in the area and said, "Not anything I think you'd want to bargain with. Now drop your weapons and anything else you've got!"
So much for that. Glancing towards Elen, Gwaine said, "Can you handle them?"
He heard guffaws from a couple of the closest bandits, but more clearly heard his sister's low, "You two handle the stranglers." She then took a step forward, facing the man with the key necklace, and said, "" W áce ierlic. "
He went flying, and then the next man yelling and raising his gun, then the next. Gwaine yanked out his dagger and charged to the nearest bandit, whose main weapon was a chain-wrapped cricket bat. It was sheer muscle memory to bring him down, just as it was with the next man who came roaring at him with a butcher knife.
Bodies and weapons seemed to stop flying suddenly, and they stood in the middle of the aftermath, catching their breaths. Elen looked exhilarated, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright, though her expression shifted into concern in a few moments. "Hayden! You're hurt!"
The blond man glanced down at his right arm, where blood dripped out of a narrow horizontal cut. "It's a scratch, Elen."
"At least let me tie it up," she said, already at his side. "You always did leave your dominant arm unguarded in a fight."
He grinned fleetingly and said, "I used to have wyverns to watch my every side. It didn't matter so much."
Gwaine snorted and began making his way through the bodies, part of him feeling nauseous as he flipped corpses and examined weapons. Garth's never killed a person in his life. I'm pretty sure Gwaine killed too many.
But then, he'd lived in a very different time.
Shaking that off, he called to the others. "This lot probably has a lair somewhere in town."
"And a stash of supplies." Elen walked over to join him, looking a little pleased. "We could get back to the kids sooner than expected with a better haul."
"Yeah." Gwaine smiled tightly. "I'm sure they're okay, though. They're smart."
"They'd better be," Hayden said. "Let's find that lair and get out of here."
The "lair" turned out to be a fortified circle of portable sheds, shipping containers, and dead vehicles just outside of town. Sifting through the empty liquor bottles and heaps of stinking refuse wasn't pleasant, but it yielded good results.
"So we've got alcohol, more canned and dried food, some weapons…" Knives were abundant, though the three avoided any of the firearms, opting to toss the ammunition they found instead. We wouldn't have a clue how to use them. "Makes you wonder how many people these bandits had to do away with to get their hands on this much stuff…"
"I'd rather not think about it, Gwaine," Elen said with a scowl. "I'd rather think about how we're going to carry as much as possible back home." She stiffened. "Did you hear that?"
Gwaine stood still and listened for a minute. Then... Thump. "Yeah, I heard that."
"It's coming from one of the shipping containers," Hayden said, pointing to the rusty orange structure. "That one that's padlocked."
"We'll see about that," Gwaine said, hefting a crowbar he'd spotted earlier. "Elen, keep a spell or two ready, huh?"
"Way ahead of you."
A few strong blows and the lock gave way; it took a minute for Gwaine to get the stiff latch moving and haul the heavy door open. The sound of something scrambling around inside sent him reaching for his knife again.
"Whoever you are, come out of there now!" Elen shouted.
"Hopefully it's just a friendly prisoner of the local highwaymen…" Gwaine said under his breath as he joined the other two, standing back from the container.
A few more noises, and a haggard figure emerged from the darkness into the twilight, a broad-shouldered, bearded figure who looked strangely like…
"Leon?" Gwaine exclaimed.
Blinking confusedly, the former knight let out a disbelieving laugh. " Gwaine? "