A/N: Bit more timely with the update? Writer's Block might finally be going to leave me alone! Touch wood…

Thank you so much Druid Archer, Gwilwillith, Girl In the Library Corner, brandibuckeye, alien.94, Ghost of the old age, BooBoo33 and DraggonflyMaiden for your reviews!

And thank you as always to princesspomegranate who did a wonderful job BETA-ing :D

Hope you enjoy this chapter…

. : Chapter 8 : Children No Longer : .

We rode on for several more relatively uneventful days. The weather was semi-kind to us, but the travelling could be seen obviously taking its toll. I was reminded again that we were but children, no matter what the Romans were sending us to face.

Things were very calm within our group now, or as calm as things could be with Bors in the vicinity. He and a young boy called Percival, who was somewhere around my age, with shaggy light brown hair and mischievous blue eyes that almost seemed to laugh on their own, argued constantly. Or rather, Percival harassed the daylights out of Bors, and the stupid git took the bait every time.

I wasn't very fond of Bors. I pointed out to Dag that he'd probably end up giving our position away one day, and getting us all killed. And if they didn't hear him- a feat they'd have to be deaf to achieve- they'd smell him. Mention bathing and you'd just about fall off your horse in shock at how fast Bors could actually move.

Dag said I was being ridiculous, of course.

We'd become fairly attached to Gawain and his two, small shadows. Gareth had even stopped being scared of me. Little Galahad was still a bit timid, but he was like that with everyone. He was very shy, but if you stirred him up, as Bors found out, he had quite the temper.

I'd learnt the names of most of the others and we seemed to divide among ourselves the groups we would be cast in for our posts. As Kay had predicted, the Romans had chosen to keep to the pattern. We were going off to where our fathers' had served.

Kay was very level headed, like Dag, and between the two of them they seemed to be able to keep all thirty-six of us under control. Almost.

There was Lamorak, one of the cheekiest boys I had ever come across. He trod on very thin ice most of the time, but seemed to get a kick out of it. I suppose he would be what Caelan would call 'handsome', with short, messy dark hair and matching dark eyes. I just thought he was probably a bit suicidal.

Again, Dag reminded me to keep my opinions to myself.

The one who had reassured me that night at the fire was called Lionel. He was quite quiet, but not in a scary, threatening way like Tristan was. At about fifteen summers, he got along with everyone and was very…supportive, I suppose would be what you could call it. He always smiled and had something to say that made everyone brighter.

Another, Bedivere, was around Gawain's age at my guess. He had black hair, bright green eyes, a mouth that never closed, and an air of trouble. He and Percival seemed to get along rather well and I knew he was half the brains behind all the carry-on with Bors. I hadn't been the only one to notice that he was clever; very clever.

Agravaine, the other of Kay's life-long friends, was stocky and wore a permanent scowl. He was tall, dark brown hair and light, hazel eyes. Kay said his mood was just his way of coping, and that he was actually very nice. All I know is that I wouldn't want to be hit by him, that's for sure.

Geraint was another of the too-young's. He was the same age as Gareth; and if he wasn't stuck to Lionel's side then he was cautiously venturing over to us to sit beside Gareth and Galahad. He had the strangest grey-shaded eyes, like clouds on a bleak day. Being the only one taken from his village, Geraint had known no one in the beginning. He was shy, but once you got him smiling, he was really very talkative.

Erec was the only other blonde apart from the brothers. He was mayhap fourteen summers and seemed lively most of the time. All I really knew about him was that he had a fear of spiders, and, when faced with one, screamed like a girl.

Sissy.

Dag reprimanded me for that, too.

There were others who I knew by name but not well enough to judge their personality. There was Mouse- whose real name no one seemed to know-, Yvain, Mordred, Gaheris, Ector and Cador. More too, but I hadn't really had anything to do with them yet.

We were fast approaching the last village. I could see the smoke rising up from the fires, and the few scattered huts. We were close enough now that I could make out the shapes of each person and animal.

My heart squeezed at being so close to my people again, even though I did not know these. There were fathers there, mothers. Like mine, dreading this moment when they would have to sacrifice their sons to an uncertain future.

The Roman captain had us wait further back as he went forth to collect the sons, of which there was only one, it seemed.

He might've been a year or so older than me, with a head of unruly dark curls and surprisingly calm hazel-brown eyes.

A man, who I guessed was his father, led him out on a stocky black stallion. A horse bred for war.

Tama let out a long sigh, and I stroked his neck soothingly, murmuring under my breath, "Hush, my boy."

I heard the old knight tell his son the story of the knights re-born as great horses, and felt a pang as I remembered Uncle telling us that story. I looked across at Dag to see him staring at his reins. He remembered too.

"Lancelot! Lancelot!" a little girl cried, running out of one of the huts up to the boy.

She stretched up and handed him something, then fell against the side of the man.

A sister, I thought, and instantly remembered my own. I missed them already.

"Do not fear," the boy, Lancelot, said steadily. "I will return."

You hope, I added in thought, and glanced around at the sullen faces. As do we all. But we won't all be seeing our little sister's again.

His father said nothing, but nodded slightly and glanced at his crying wife as their son rode over to us.

"How long shall we be gone?" he asked.

His voice held an amount of strength that I hadn't expected. Even Kay and Dag did not speak so firmly to the Romans.

"Fifteen years," answered the Captain.

Then he added snidely, "Not including the months it will take to get to your post."

I glared at the back of his silly-looking helmet. Months was plenty of time for these pompous Roman pansies to get lost in the mountains...

"Behave," Dag whispered to me.

I sniffed at him, "I didn' do anything."

"You were thinking it."

"…Was not."

"Liar."

"Never said I wasn't."

"Would you pair be quiet?" Kay asked, amused.

I stuck my tongue out at him, feeling childish. Dag rolled his eyes at me. The Captain wheeled his horse around with a final glare and set off. Just as we were about to follow, the old knight shouted.

"Lancelot!"

His son looked back over his shoulder.

"RUS!"

I remembered this being the Sarmatian's war cry, though Papa and Uncle had never had us shouting it.

The rest of his village joined in, and then so did we.

It was a message. Remember who you are. We are Sarmatian.

oOo

Lancelot kept mostly to himself. He didn't try to insert himself into any of our splintered little groups and instead rode quietly at the back, several strides behind the last of us.

So Dag, being the mother hen that he was, decided that this needed to change immediately.

"What if he'd rather be alone?" I pointed out quietly at the fire a night later.

My brother was preparing himself to go and speak to the younger boy, who was currently wrapped up in his cloak and saddle cloth under a tree next to his horse.

Dag looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

"Loneliness is a terrible thing, Little Warrior. If we reach out to him now, he will turn to us in his own time."

"You're more and more like your mother every day," I grumbled, kicking a stone into the fire. "Soon I'll be calling you Auntie. And don't call me that!"

He just grinned and strolled over to Lancelot.

I watched as he crouched down in front of the boy and began talking. I was too far away to hear what was said, but in the end, Dag managed to coax a smile and slight nod from him. When he sat back down next to me, he looked quite pleased with himself.

"How did it go, then?" Gawain demanded. He was suspicious of Lancelot, just as he had been suspicious of us. "What'd he say?"

"He thanked me for the offer to join us but said he just wanted to be by himself for a while," Dag replied. "See? I told you."

I grunted, "Dunno why you're gloating, he's not here. And I told you he would've wanted to be alone."

"Yes, yes," he brushed my soft comments off without taking any notice of them. "He'll just need a bit of time to adjust, but he knows now that he will be welcomed when he is ready."

Gawain and I grumbled to ourselves. We weren't savage yet, it wasn't like he'd get eaten if he approached us without a formal invitation. Gawain'd probably glare at him a bit and I'd probably do my best to avoid him, but that was expected.

"Time," Dag said again, poking the pair of rabbits Tristan had dropped at my feet earlier.

I had panicked for a while that this meant he knew, but then I'd watched him do the same thing to Bedivere and Erec, so had relaxed and taken the kills to Dag. It wasn't like I was going to cook the things.

"Didn' you find it odd that Lancelot took it so well?" Gawain said not long later around a mouthful of slightly-pink meat. "He didn't even look angry when he spoke to the Captain."

"Maybe it's a good thing," Dag replied, using a dagger to carve up the rest of the meat and handing it out to the little ones. "Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll be a sensible one instead of hot-head like the rest of you."

I threw a bone at him, "I am not hot-headed!"

He tossed the bone into the fire, eyes alight with amusement, "Of course you're not."

oOo

Dag's hopes of having everyone all together were fulfilled two days later. And, of course, he sided up to us.

"Lancelot," my brother greeted him with a reassuring smile. "That's Gawain, his brother Gareth, their cousin Galahad, and this is my cousin, Rogue."

Lancelot raised his eyebrows at me, but, to my surprise, said nothing about my name. He nodded to us.

"Do you know how long until we reach the shore?" Lancelot asked.

His voice held the same, steady calmness as the last time I'd heard it.

"Just over a week, I think," Gawain replied, he was gauging the boy carefully, his tone a bit shorter then it normally was. "Kay or Tristan could probably tell you exactly."

At Lancelot's blank look, Dag pointed out both older boys.

"Kay is the oldest of us, and speaks to the Romans the most. Tristan's a scout."

The boy nodded his understanding.

"How long have you been here?"

I rolled my eyes skywards. Not this again. Thank the gods he is the last.

As they prattled on with the conversation only I seemed to tire of, I turned my attention to our surroundings. We were travelling at an easy pace through sparse woods. We could've gone at twice the speed, but only one of our Roman escorts/guards had completed this venture before. There obviously can't be any trees in Rome, if its soldiers were in danger of getting disoriented in them, and thus getting lost.

Unfortunately, they'd made Tristan and Kay lead us. So there would be very little delay.

It was peaceful, even with the soft voices of the boys, steps and snorts of the horses. Which is why I was so surprised when a shout broke the apparent calm.

"Ambush!"

I whipped my head towards the voice's owner, Tristan, just in time to see the men drop from the trees.

My heart froze. We were being attack already? Who were these men? Not… not Sarmatians?

"Rogue!" Dag's deep, vibrating voice snapped me from my panic. "Move!"

Right. Sitting still would be a bad idea, Mali. I told myself even as I swung down from my saddle, wrapped my small hand around the hilt of my most precious possession, and drew the blade from its sheath.

"Get the youngest in the centre!" Kay roared over the noise.

The older of us had also drawn weapons, some I had not even noticed before, and were fighting back at different levels.

My breath caught in my throat as a raider's blade caught Agravaine's arm, and blood shot upwards to spray across the wielder. The boy let out a choked cry of pain and pressed his free hand over the wound.

The raider raised his blade again- then dropped it, and slumped to his knees as blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

Tristan appeared behind the dead man. He yanked out his bloody blade, nodded to Agravaine and then jumped back into the chaos.

I stared. Dead. He'd just…

The tell-tale whistle of steal cutting through air registered in my brain just in time. I whipped around and raised my sword to block the blow aimed to lop off my head.

The man on the end of the other blade blinked his murky brown eyes in surprise. It only lasted a second though, because then he gave me a grin that sent a shiver down my spine, and swung again.

I parried each of his blows, trying desperately to figure out how to get the upper hand. My mind was blank of all my years of teachings. I don't even know how I knew how to move like I was… It just happened. My body did the work my brain could not.

I know what to do, I realised with a jolt. And just like that, the haze that had been hanging over me lifted. I became acutely aware of everything, just like Papa had taught me.

"See everything, even what cannot be seen."

His words rang clear in my ears, like he was standing next to me.

"What can you see, daughter?"

The raider was strong, but uncoordinated. He repeated blows even after I had blocked them instead of trying another place. He gripped his sword with both hands.

"It is unethical to hold a sword with both hands. It limits your movement, see? Makes it look awkward and clumsy. Swordsmanship is light and graceful."

It was either too heavy or he had sustained an injury to his normal sword arm. He would not fight like that by instinct, I felt sure. No one would. And he put most of his weight on his left leg, signalling a weakness in the right…

I changed from defence to offence, using my slighter size and speed to my advantage and moving between his blows to change our roles. He could not continue to attack me without having his guts spilled on his boots.

I attacked the right side with short, sharp, repeated blows. I could not match his force, but I could be quicker.

I moved on the tips of my toes, like dancing. I ducked when he swung his sword in a wide horizontal arch and, with the opening he had given me, brought my blade upwards.

His howls of pain echoed in my ears as warm, sticky liquid splattered over my face, my clothes, and ran down the length of the blade to cover my hands.

"Go for the joints. It takes effort to slice though bone, and it wears your blade down. The easiest way to sever a limb is to take it from the joint."

His right arm, and sword, lay on the ground at our feet while blood poured out of where the limb had once been attached. He had collapsed to his knees, babbling words I could not even understand.

"Never be cruel, Mali. Never leave a man alive if he will suffer."

With a swift movement, I plunged my sword with all my strength into his chest; his heart, until the point broke the skin on the other side. And I waited two of my heartbeats, before pulling it back out.

I had to jump backwards as his eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped forwards simply to avoid being squashed.

Everything faded into the background for a moment. It all drifted away as I stared, not moving, not breathing, at the lifeless body before me.

I had done this. I had killed.

Everything seemed to move much slower as I turned my head to survey my surroundings. The Romans were fighting- shockingly enough. The older boys, too. The younger ones had been herded into the centre; they were huddled together, watching with giant, rounded eyes.

And then… I narrowed my eyes at that which was out of place with the scene. A raider was swinging his sword as little Galahad, impressively, managed to duck and roll away from each deadly blow… Until he tripped over an exposed tree root…

I took off running, dodging around other fighters as the tall, slender raider, with his back to me, raised his gleaming blade. Without thinking, I dropped to my knees and slid between the man and terrified child, raising my sword horizontally and resting the flat of the blade in one palm as I held tight to the hilt with the other, and blocked the blow.

The downwards force sent painful jars through my arms and seemed to vibrate all the way to my toes.

Shock was written clean across the raiders face, and before he could think, I whipped my blade across the front of his legs, making large gashes that immediately flowed red.

When his grip loosed on his weapon as his focus switched to the pain, I knocked it from his grasp completely. Rising to my feet, I swung my blade along his shoulders. His head landed with a thump on the damp, blood-stained earth, rolled twice, and stopped.

I just stood still again. The truth tried to reach me, but I wasn't quite accepting it. I didn't think it would be like… this.

My breaths were heavy. My lungs ached for more air, but I couldn't seem to get enough… I don't know how much time passed, but the next thing I became truly aware of was the small, thin arms wrapping themselves around my waist.

Panic flooded my brain for a moment, but when I twisted around to see little Galahad staring up at me, tears streaking down his grubby face, I relaxed.

"T-thank y-you," he babbled, then buried his head in my stomach.

I blinked and looked around. Fighting continued, but the raiders were outnumbered now, and more of the boys had gone to the group in the centre.

"Come, Galahad. Back to the others," I said gently, putting my left hand on his arm to try and move him.

I couldn't walk with him hanging onto me like this. He looked up at me with big, watery eyes, lip wobbling in the threat of more tears.

"You s-stay with m-me?"

The request had shocked me, as had the way that he was looking at me like he was afraid I'd say no…

"Yes. I'll stay with you; come on."

He let go of my waist and instead latched hold of my left arm, sniffling.

It was a bit difficult to walk with him so close, but I said nothing. He was so young and so scared. It wasn't fair. I took him as far around lifeless raider bodies and continuing fights as I could, bringing him back to the relative safety of the others.

Strength in numbers, I thought as I nodded to Lionel, Ector and Cador, who were circling the group of youngsters like hawks. Already we work as a team…

Papa and Uncle had said that that was important…

"You alright?" Lionel asked me as Gareth pounced on his little cousin and attempted to drag him into the middle, berating him all the while.

I nodded and answered, "Yes. Anyone else hurt?"

Agravaine was sitting on the ground, a blood-stained cloth pressed to his upper arm.

"He's the worst. Think Dagonet will be able to tend to him?"

I nodded again. Dag probably wouldn't let the boy out of his sight. Speaking of which…

"Where is Dag?"

Lionel pointed across the clearing to where the last of the raiders had either been slain or had run. Dag was hauling Bors up off the ground. Both appeared to be fine.

"You fight well," Cador said to me.

He was tall and lean, with brown eyes and short, curly brown hair.

"I watched you kill those two bastards. You did good."

I nodded, clenching my fists in hopes it'd hide how much my hands were shaking. I hadn't been watching them. I had no idea who fought well.

"Another quiet one, eh?" he said, grinning a little. He was maybe fifteen. "That's alright, better then bein' like Bors. I was afraid after we met him that all Roxolani were like that."

I scrunched up my nose, "Definitely not."

He chuckled, and then became serious as he asked, "Who taught you to fight like that?"

"My Papa."

"Rogue!"

Anything Cador might've had to say was swallowed when Dag swooped in on us and started lifting my arms and inspecting me for injury.

"Are you alright?"

I nodded.

"Why are you so covered in blood then?"

I shrugged.

"S'not mine. I'm fine, brother. Are you?"

He watched me for a long moment before nodding slowly.

"Aye, I'm fine."

I smiled at him and clasped his forearm.

"Good… good. I think Agravaine needs your help, then."

He looked confused for a moment, but when his eyes landed on poor Agravaine, he was already off to fetch his healer's kit, muttering to himself about salves and herbs.

I smiled as I watched him go, before looking around at the rest of the boys as they slowly came back together. Re-grouping and trying to relax. Wiping blood off of faces and weapons.

I looked down at the bright red glistening on my own blade. It was pretty when it caught the sun, like a precious stone. But it was not a precious stone; and I couldn't get the image of those pain-filled brown eyes out of my head...

I wiped the blood off on the grass and whistled for Tama. He came trotting over to me and I kissed and stroked his nose before sliding my sword back into its sheath, pausing for a moment to read the words so carefully engraved in it.

Dark Warrior.

"It pains me to think of you as haunted and cold, especially when you are so full of light and love. Please, please don't let that become your fate, my darling."

It was my Mama's fearful words that I heard then. Looking down at my stained, shaking hands, I clenched them as tears stung the corners of my eyes.

I am strong. I must be strong!

But we were children, no longer.

A/N: Longer chapter…the ending flowed well once I got it going-pity it couldn't all be like that :P Hope you enjoyed it anyway.

Please don't forget to review!

~Meg xx