Amazonian Support 12

Scenes/scripts/lines from the movie aren't MINE!!!

Sarmatia smiled at Lancelot and Arthur, both of whom had flanked her to hear her answer, and replied, "We knew that you would be able to handle the fight, but we wanted to come just in case you were flanked from behind."

Arthur nodded and said as he tilted his head forward to Lancelot, "Good defensive tactic planning Sarmatia. Now, forgive me, but I must steal Lance, here, for a few minutes…"

Sarmatia glanced between her newest friends and giggled lightly at their silent communication. It still amazed and amused her to watch them in action. With just one glance Arthur could convey an entire thought to Lancelot in any respect be it an order, a friendly jab, or an all out angry fight. In addition, with an equally powerful look, Lancelot could respond to any and all of Arthur's silent commands. If Arthur's First Knight should disagree with any part of it, Lancelot's eyebrow would yell all that needed to be said and Arthur would respond accordingly.

She smiled sweetly and warmly at them and nickered her horse into a trot so she was ahead of the caravan, but behind Theaia and Tristan, whom Arthur had sent on ahead- to scout for any wandering Woads.

Lancelot, who had whipped away a good portion of the Woad blood from his hair and body after the battle had ended, still shifted uncomfortably as the blood he couldn't reach started to harden on his skin, and asked a little impatiently, "Well???"

Arthur cast a wary look around them and found himself extremely pleased to find out that they were relatively alone, but still asked in a soft tone, "Lancelot, I know you desire Sarmatia. Why haven't you taken her to your bed?"

Lancelot sighed and replied as he slumped into his saddle, "I desire her like nothing I have ever felt before, Arthur. When I look at her, I see endless possibilities. I see a bright future filled with love and family…"

Arthur tilted his head and asked oddly, as his friend slowed to a halt, "And what's wrong with that?"

Lancelot sighed again, racked a hand through his curly black hair, and answered tiredly, "Nothing it wrong with it Arthur, but she is the High Princess of the Amazon Nation. As such, she MUST be a virgin upon her wedding and coronation. In addition, the male she chooses to become intimate with will become her Amazon consort. But, he must remain by her side for the rest of his days."

He stopped for a moment to cool down from his previous rant and then continued in a softer tone, "I am LEAVING. Once we get those papers, the others and I will be gone-back home to Sarmatia, and you will travel back to Rome. As for Sarmatia and the other Amazons, they will return to their lands that lay just north of Sarmatia. Well, I guess Theaia will go with Tristan or he will go with her….I, on the other hand, I will go home as I promised my mother and sister all those years ago. I will not be able to be by her side if I am in Sarmatia."

Arthur nodded silently as he thought about what his beloved First Knight had said. It was sad, but true. As truth often is.

He also winced as Lancelot reminded him that, as of tomorrow, his dearly loved Knights will no longer be by his side.

After a few minutes of silence, in which both men brooded over how their lives would change once the other, was out of their lives, Lancelot sighed and giggled his horse's reigns.

Arthur watched with a heavy heart as his closest friend slowed as he reached Sarmatia's side.

As they neared the Wall, Arthur noticed that his Knights became more lively-Lancelot especially.

Galahad looked about and said, "I don't like him, the Roman. If he's here to give our discharge papers, why doesn't he just give them to us and leave?"

Gawain eyed his younger friend as if he was a simpleton and said pointedly, "Is this your happy face?"

Bors started to laugh a full belly laugh as Galahad's scorned looked calmed and his own laughter joined Bors'.

Gawain continued as they neared the Wall and his love, "Galahad, so you still not know the Romans? They won't scratch their arses without holding a ceremony."

Bors joined the conversation in his normal fashion, "If you want your discharge so badly, why don't you just kill him and discharge yourself?"

Galahad shook his head and said passionately, "I don't kill for pleasure…"

He eyed Tristan as he trotted up to them and ended pointedly, "…unlike some."

Tristan looked at him and said calmly, "Well, you might try it someday; you might get a taste for it."

Bors added in Tristan's favor, "It's a part of ya; it's in your blood."

Galahad shook his head and said in a vowing tone, "No, no, as of tomorrow, this was all just a bad memory."

Bors nodded in a mocking way of understanding and sighed, "Oh…"

Gawain tilted his head up and stated, "I've often wondered what going home would be like after all this. What will I do? It is different for Galahad. I've been in this life, longer than the other."

He sighed and said, "So much for home, it's not so clear in my memory."

Bors snorted and said, "Speak for yourself, its cold there, and everyone I know is dead and buried."

He shrugged and added, "Besides, I have, I think, a dozen children…"

Gawain interrupted with a roll of his eyes, "Eleven."

Bors eyed him sharply, pointed his finger at his younger brother, and added, "You listen, when the Romans leave, we'll have the run of this place. I'll be governor of me own village and Dagonet will be my personal guard an' royal arse kisser..."

He stood up slightly, turned around a bit, and added, "Won't ya Dag?"

Gawain smirked and said wistfully, "Well I do know that when I get home, I'm gonna find meself a beautiful Sarmatian woman to wed."

Bors glanced at him weirdly and echoed, "Beautiful Sarmatian woman…what do you think we left in the first place?"

Gawain gave a sharp bark as Bors mimicked the sound of a cow and asked, "And what of you Lancelot? What are your plans for home?"

Lancelot shrugged, glanced at Sarmatia's slightly tilted form, and answered with a carefully hidden pain in his voice, "If this woman of Gawain's is as beautiful as he claims, I suspect I'll be spending a lot of time at Gawain's house. His wife will welcome the company."

Gawain challenged Lancelot with a look and asked a bit miffed, "I see, and what will I be doing?"

Lancelot returned the look with a mischievous one of his own and replied, "Wondering at your good fortune that all your children look like me."

With that Bors burst out laughing and Lancelot simply smiled, where he once would have joined in on the laughter, as Gawain raised and eyebrow and asked dryly, "Is that before or afta' I hit you with my axe?"

As their laughter continued, their Amazon lovers were scowling at them.

Athena humphed and as her horse joined Gawain's, she whacked him on the back of the head and demanded, "And what am I then? I didn't do all that I have for you, for you to just drop me like some barmaid!"

Gawain's face paled as he tried to stutter out a reply-key word TRIED.

Galahad was smiling largely as Areia reached over and grabbed his hand. As she leaned over, Dagonet trotted by and said loudly, "Don't be messin' with him now lass, he doesn't need a concussion from fallin' off his horse!"

Galahad's face turned crimson as Sarmatia gripped her horses flanks with her lean, muscular, silky smooth thighs, crossed her arms, and said as Lancelot joined her and Arthur, "A Sarmatian woman, eh?"

Lancelot cleared his throat, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable, as Arthur chuckled.

Very quickly, it seemed, to Sarmatia and her Amazons, that they, the Knights, and Arthur, along with the Roman caravan-what was left of it-arrived at the Wall. After watching Bors get slapped and then kissed passionately by Vanora, the Princesses of the Amazons found themselves in the Round Table chambers where Arthur's famous table resided.

As the Knights entered and took their seats, Arthur stood up, raised his goblet, and said seriously and gravely, "Let us not forget, that we are the fortunate ones."

The Knights let a mouthful of red wine fall from their goblets to the floor and drank the rest as they relaxed and joked around with one another.

Romana, who was seated next to Dagonet and Tristan, who had Theaia, his wife on his other side, asked, "When will that Bishop get here?"

Dagonet looked at her, smiled gently and said in a deep voice, "I don't know."

Romana looked at him in shock and said in an amazed voice, "You talked to me???"

Dagonet chuckled lightly and said as he leveled a serious yet kind glance into her eyes, "I trust you and your sisters now."

Romana beamed brightly at him and placed a warm hand on his larger one. He simply twisted his wrist and intertwined their fingers together.

As the door to Arthur's wing of the Wall opened, the Bishop's servant, appeared and announced with a shell-shocked look in his eyes, "His Eminence, Bishop Nauis Germanous."

As the Bishop walked in with arms wide open in greeting, dressed in his most elaborate robes, he stopped abruptly and cleared his throat. His eyes gazed about the room and stopped only when he saw the women. The Knights, out of habit, got to their feet when someone entered the chamber. When they saw the Bishop's darkly angered eyes, each man let a hand fall to the knife they carried all the time on their person.

The Bishop's servant asked in a very loud whisper to Arthur's squire, Jols, "A Round Table? What sort of evil is this?"

Jols answered back proudly, "Arthur says: that for men to be men, they must first be equal."

Fortunately for him, the Bishop chose to ignore them and said instead, "I was to understand that there were to be more of you."

Arthur, who had watched all this with keen eyes, answered promptly, "There were, but we've been fighting here for fifteen years Bishop."

"Ah yes…"sighed the older gray hared man as he picked up a goblet and said in a toast, "Arthur and his Knights, you have served the Empire with great courage to preserve the honor of our Empire on this last outpost to our glory, Rome is most indebted; to you noble Knights and to your last days as servants to the Empire."

Lancelot's, who had looked down at the mention of the Knights who fell before their fifteen years were through, head shot up and corrected, "Day, not days."

Sarmatia and the Amazons were enraged by the Bishop's obvious display of ignoring them, and just as Areia was about to stand up and challenge him, they all felt a soothing aura sooth their rage like a healing balm upon a serious wound. They smiled-their Lady was with them and she wished them to remain calm.

Therefore, they would.

The Bishop chuckled lightly and said, "Sit, sit! The Pope has taken a personal interest in you, and he inquires after each of you. He is curious to know if you have converted to the word of our savior or…"

Arthur cut in smoothly, "They have retained the religion of their forefathers, I've never questioned that."

The Bishop nodded and said knowingly, "Of course, of course, they are Pagans. Far apart, the church has deemed as such as innocence, but you Arthur; your path to God it through Pelagius? I saw his image in your room."

Sarmatia, as she listened to Arthur's love for the man who taught him of God, felt very uncomfortable in the Bishop's presence. As he talked about Arthur's place in Rome, it was as if he was an oily muck that crawled all over her body making it shiver in revulsion. Is this a message from My Lady?

As his servant brought forth a bolted chest, the Bishop started again in a sorrowful voice, "Alas, alas, we are all players in an ever changing world…barbarians of all corners are almost at Rome's door. Because of this, Rome, and the Holy Father, has decided to remove ourselves from indefensible outposts."

With these words, he stood up and started to open the chest.

The Amazons watched with belated breath as the box opened. This is what their lovers had been waiting for, for fifteen years. Even they could not help but feel anxious about see those important papers too.

"What is to become of Briton, we cannot say, the Saxons will take it I suppose."

Arthur cut in sharply since they had only rebuilt the damages from the last battle with the smelly men from the north, "Saxons?"

The Bishop turned serious eyes to them all and said, "Yes, a massive Saxon incursion is being mounted in the north."

Lancelot shook his head said as he remembered the arrowhead the Amazons had brought to them, "Saxons only claim what they kill…."

Gawain ended as he thought of the tiny doll, "…and they only kill everything."

Galahad laughed humorlessly and said, "So, your just giving it to the Woads? I risked my lift for nothing!"

Areia placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered into his ear, "Calm down, you'll help no one if you fly into a rage."

Galahad pursed his lips, but followed what she said, much to her pleasure.

The Bishop hummed mockingly and said as he presented the open box to them all, "Gentleman, your discharge papers for safe conduct throughout the Roman Empire. But first, I must have a word with your commander."

Lancelot glanced at Arthur and saw something in his friend's eyes that he had only ever seen when he spoke of Merlin-anger and rage.

Lancelot took a step back involuntarily as Arthur said in a controlled voice, "We have no secrets."

When the Bishop slammed the chest closed, Lancelot raised his goblet and said charmingly, "Come, let us leave Roman business to the Romans."

He saluted them both, drowned his wine, offered his hand to Sarmatia and walked calmly out of the chambers. He knew the others would follow his lead.

He and Arthur had earned their trust and loyalty well.

As the large group reached the Tavern, Bors demanded that Vanora sing. When she started to protest, Galahad and the other Knights were quick to encourage her.

Sarmatia leaned in close to Lancelot and whispered, "Is she truly good?"

Lancelot smiled and said genuinely, "She has one of the sweetest voices in all of Briton I would think."

Sarmatia felt heat infuse in her cheeks as she glanced at the red hared lover of Bors quickly and said as she placed her head on his shoulder, "High praise coming from you."

As Vanora's song came to an end, Jols, who was standing near Lancelot and Sarmatia exclaimed, "Arthur!"

Galahad cried out cheerfully, "Arthur!"

Bors joined in, "RUS!!!
Lancelot didn't like Arthur's serious and dark face. He knew something was wrong. He could feel it in his gut.