PART FIVE - FORWARD
nearing death, one sees death no more and stares forward
So the day has come, Arthur thinks, gritting his teeth as he folds the letter back into the envelope. Merlin – odd, gentle Merlin who loves poetry – what are they doing sending him to the front? I'm not afraid to die, Merlin writes, and it makes Arthur furious, because what the hell kind of thing is that to say? Like he's given up before he's even there?
Out on the airstrip a plane comes in for landing, and even if it's wobbling it seems intact. Arthur takes it for a good omen, aware that he is clutching at straws.
The first time he visited Merlin's rooms at Cambridge he had looked at Adonais and Merlin had said: "If someone dies, someone you really, deeply love..."
Arthur scrunches up the envelope in his hand. God, Merlin, stay alive. But he knows the odds; he's seen too much of the churned-up fields and destroyed woods, the unchanging lines of the trenches to have much hope. If he ever sees Merlin again, it will be nothing short of a bloody miracle.
He gnaws on a thumbnail, looks up at the ceiling. He is no believer in miracles.
xxx
It's like a dream, like one of his nightmares that he won't wake up from. There's a sense of unreality like a wall of glass separating Merlin from the world, and yet this is more real than anything. They're in full uniform. The sun is hot on their faces and Merlin's collar itches and chafes. People are grinning and waving, posing for the camera. Merlin hates having this moment documented.
Training is over and they are waiting to be shipped off to Belgium.
Will comes over and throws an arm around Merlin's shoulders, tilts their heads together and squints at the photographer, cocky and incongruously relaxed. Merlin's cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth and Will's from between his fingers; Will smiles a fraction, and if this is the last ever photograph of them, at least they'll look good in it. Almost like they're up to the task that lies before them, Merlin thinks, and perhaps they are. Perhaps dying is easy.
There are four boys from Ealdor in their group, including Merlin and Will. Will says that if the war continues, this will have to change. People from the same village can't be grouped together and sent to the front like this; there will be places in Britain wiped of entire generations of men. He is probably right – Will is right surprisingly often – but just now Merlin is glad of this method of conscription. It feels absurdly good to have someone he knows at his side.
Merlin hates ships, hates water travel. He vomits his way across the Channel and climbs into the lorry shaky and pale. Around him people are drunk, smoking, singing like they're on a field trip for grownups, and Merlin actually dozes for a while, jostled between Will and the boy on his other side.
It's the silence of the men that wakes him up. They're passing a machine gun emplacement and there's no longer any room for pretending. They're here. It's real.
No training could have prepared them for this, Merlin thinks. They feel the frontline trenches like a gigantic, live electric wire, an enormous pulsing machine primed on death, its heartbeat reverberating in their bodies.
Deposited in their section of trench, Merlin holds on to the wall and closes his eyes. The earth itself is groaning and twisting in agony, its surface pitted and destroyed by shells, soaked with blood. The very fabric of nature is being ripped apart, making Merlin nauseous with the pain.
He will need to shut things out, not notice more than is absolutely necessary.
When he looks up, his field of vision is framed by sandbags, wood supports and coils of barbed wire. Will comes over and puts a hand on Merlin's shoulder. He doesn't say anything.
As darkness falls, searchlights begin to sweep the sky, crisscrossing it relentlessly. An aircraft caught in the beam will be helpless. Merlin shudders. He's been so far removed from Arthur's reality, and now that he sees it, he is afraid.
It begins to rain, like an ineffectual whisper to soothe the world.
xxx
They're running through the mud in chaos. Shells impact around them, sending up fountains of wet dirt. The dry staccato of machine gun fire is loud in their ears and adrenaline bitter in their mouths. Merlin's magic wraps and curls itself around him like a protective cocoon. Beside him, Will is slipping and falling, shouting without words, and while Merlin stretches out his magic to protect him, the boy on his other side is hit.
When it's over, more than a third of them are dead. Merlin is shaking where he sits, listening to the groans and the panicked calls for stretcher bearers. The rain is drumming on his helmet. He is alive.
xxx
The long stretches of inactivity are almost worse than being under attack. Merlin has two books in his pack; a collection of Shelley's poems and his notebook. He tries to write to his mother but can't think of anything in his current life that he can tell her other than the fact that they get enough food, and an eighth of a pint of rum in the mornings to warm them up. He tries to write to Arthur but the words come out jumbled, sounding flat. They don't describe the torpor or the chaos, noise or vigil, or how he sleeps on his feet cradling his rifle, his cheek pressed to the wall. The pages of the notebook are so damp the tip of his pen keeps catching. He doesn't send those letters.
xxx
Is it not strange, Arthur writes, how small, insignificant details suddenly feel meaningful to us? You write about wildflowers below the parapet; I have watched swallows nest under the roof. Now that the nest is empty, I have the oddest sense of loss.
No, when I think about it, it is not strange at all. We are in an extreme situation and these things remind us of life as it could be, should be. As it will be again.
Closing his eyes, Merlin leans his head against the wall. As life could be, as it should be. They took so much for granted before the war. The world of abstraction and theory that they were free to inhabit, a world where other things would take second place to intellect and ideas... At Cambridge, Merlin painted to understand his dreams and express his magic. His paintings made it visible to others but known only to himself. Here, he can put his magic to actual use as long as it goes unobserved. Here in the trenches where everything is reduced to the crass, physical reality of survival and defence, of bodily functions and basic needs, even his magic is used in a practical way.
For the men in the trenches, he thinks, there are no broader views. Their world stretches no further than the loops of barbed wire and those flowers below the parapet, and for most of them, the future does not reach beyond tomorrow.
xxx
The first time Merlin meets an enemy soldier face to face, it's a young boy appearing suddenly out of the artillery smoke with his bayonet ready. When its point slips, deflected by Merlin's shield of magic, the boy's eyes widen and he takes a step back, leaving himself open for attack. They stare at each other for an endless second and Merlin can't bring himself to kill him, can't. He knocks the boy out with magic and erases the last few minutes from his mind, stumbling away with his stomach churning, staggering under the guilt of what he has done and what he hasn't.
xxx
It's been raining incessantly for weeks. Everything is wet and filthy; clothes, skin, tobacco. Everything tastes like the ground. They live in a sea of mud with dirty faces and matted hair, live for their next cigarette or their next meal, enjoying it intensely in the moment because chances are it's their last.
xxx
On a still, misty evening, they hear faint song. It takes them a moment to realise it's coming from the trenches on the other side. There's a minute of quiet where the only thing heard is the voices rising from the enemy trenches - no aircraft engines, no guns, no shells, only stillness and distant song.
"I wish it could be over," Will mutters when he can't stand the wistful voices any longer. "Those blokes, they don't want this any more than we do. Can't you do something, Merlin? Can't you use your - "
"Shh," Merlin hisses, glancing around. "Don't you think I would have if I could? This is enormous, Will; it's too huge for me. But if you want to know, I've saved your sorry arse more than once. Don't make me regret it."
Will looks at him like he wants to say something, but offers Merlin a cigarette instead. Merlin accepts it as an apology.
xxx
They're elated to be alive after the latest barrage, escaping with injuries that are ignorable in comparison to what they see around them. Their laughter holds just a tinge of hysteria. One of the new recruits, Gilli, has a broken thumb; his hand is bruising and swelling up.
"Some battle wound, Gilli," Will says between hoots of mirth. "Own up now - you weren't even out there, were you? You just slipped on your way to the latrines."
Gilli's ears turn red and it's good to laugh, good to break a cigarette in two and feel it under your fingers, good to share it with friends.
xxx
Crouching below the breastwork of heaped sandbags, Merlin remembers another war, a vast plain where battles were fought with swords and shields, lances and armour, a war where his own magic was used as a weapon to create terror and destruction.
He presses his fists to his eyes, remembering the force and fury of his magic as it was then, back when he could end a war. But those wars didn't have this scope. Now, he can sense every cog and wheel of the immense war machine as it moves laboriously, inexorably forward like a gigantic creature, a dragon breathing fire and death. Guns and cavalry horses, fighter planes and desperate men, zeppelins and observation balloons, the trenches running like sick veins through the destroyed landscape... Merlin feels it all, the suffering, the fear and pain, the hatred and the many, many acts of kindness and courage. And he feels shame for his weakened magic, the small-scale work that he is reduced to. He can remove memories, lessen pain, stop the men around him being plagued by lice and trench foot, but he can't obliterate the cause of the suffering.
He remembers asking Gaius if this is punishment for something he has done or failed to do; if it's a curse. Whatever he did, he thinks, this mud-filled hell must atone for it.
xxx
Arthur hates the infrequency of Merlin's letters, hates the constant fear that Merlin is dead and Arthur doesn't know. He hasn't heard anything for weeks. But Mrs Emrys would write him, he tells himself, and he can always write to her if his letters don't reach Merlin and that's why there's no news. Perhaps Merlin thinks Arthur is dead.
He is more afraid for Merlin's life than for his own. So far he's been miraculously lucky, escaping enemy fire apart for a few cuts and grazes and some minor damage to the plane, and his long stretch of ground staff duty has done him good. He has to survive to find out. He must find Merlin again.
It can't go on forever, he thinks. There aren't enough men.
xxx
Will is grimacing on the stretcher, clutching at his side and trying not to groan. Blood seeps through his fingers; the fabric of his jacket is dark with it.
"You're strong, you'll be fine," Merlin assures him, and there's a flicker of a brave smile on Will's face.
"God, am I glad to be out of here," he says, gasping a little, "and not have to look at your ugly mug every morning. Think of all the... all the pretty nurses... at the clearing station."
Merlin squeezes his hand, relieving Will of some of the pain, sucking it into himself and coating it with magic like a grain of sand inside an oyster. When Will is lifted into the ambulance Merlin turns away, ashamed of the surge of loneliness and self-pity, trying to push it down. Will is going to be well, he'll be sent home, but Merlin's war seems never-ending.
xxx
Merlin comes to hate the decision-makers, the planners, the ones who send all these men to be killed and to kill other men who only want to live their lives, pursue their own interests. Love, have children, grow old – and then die, and not from a bayonet between the ribs.
xxx
The wind rushes and screams in Arthur's ears, adrenaline pounds in his veins and leaves a bitter taste at the back of his throat. The wounded earth is twisting and turning under his wingtip, partially obscured by a veil of smoke from artillery fire. Flashes from gun batteries light up along the trenches that snake through the torn landscape.
Arthur knows better than anyone how vulnerable they are up here in the sky, how defenceless and utterly visible. All they have is their machine gun and the skill of the pilot.
And Arthur is skilled, he has a staggering amount of hours in the air, but he doesn't feel heroic at all; he is angry and frightened and tired. The average life expectancy of a fighter pilot on the front is 93 flying hours and he has far more than that. He is well aware of living on overtime, and today is the day his luck runs out.
The second they're hit, he knows.
There's a dry, sharp noise followed by a sickening sound of tearing metal and a groan from the gunner, and their own gun goes abruptly silent.
"Corbin!" Arthur shouts into the whistling wind. "Corbin, are you hit?"
He makes a steep turn to get them out of range, take them behind the lines before they have to come down, trying to twist his neck to get a visual of the gunner and assess the damage on the plane.
"Corbin!" he shouts again.
But Corbin is beyond hearing, beyond everything where he's slumped to the side with half his face bloody. And as Arthur looks behind, he knows that Corbin might be the lucky one. They're on fire, every pilot's nightmare, the one thing that frightens them most.
Pendragon and Corbin, hardened veterans with a legendary number of successful flights - this is where it ends. Nothing can be done for either of them now.
So this is what it's like to stare at inevitability, Arthur thinks. This is what it's like to die.
Oddly, an image of Merlin at Cambridge comes before him, of Merlin smiling under the mortarboard that makes his ears look ridiculous, and Arthur laughs on a sob.
Well, Merlin, I suppose the miracle didn't happen.
xxx
When the sound of the whistle pierces the air, the men charge up from the trenches like insects rushing into fire. The new recruit next to Merlin is white-faced and wild-eyed with fear.
"Don't go at the whistle," Merlin has told him repeatedly, but the boy has forgotten every instruction and starts up over the top in sheer terror. Merlin holds him back with a firm grip at the back of his belt. "Don't go at the whistle!" he bellows again through the noise. "Get your head down, you idiot! Listen to the machine guns!"
There's the cough of them now, and when it's followed by the whiz of shells, Merlin is crawling forward with dirt in his mouth and mud squelching between his fingers. The ground is vibrating, groaning with the assault. Merlin pulls the terrified recruit down with him into a shell hole and presses his head down. The boy is shaking, pale under the grime.
"Stay down," Merlin bawls in his ear, "stay down until I tell you."
Shrapnel flies through the air, dirt clatters on their helmets. Merlin's chin is pressed into soft mud and somewhere in front of them a dying horse is screaming. The boy groans. "I can't stand it," his lips form, "I can't stand it."
Merlin closes his eyes and the screaming stops. His magic writhes in revulsion, hates being used to kill.
And then there is a different image pushing at the inferno around them, trying to wedge itself into Merlin's mind. Merlin gasps and blinks as his vision fills with it, an image from another kind of hell. He is lifted away from shells and mud to cold air rushing around him, whipping at his face and whistling in his ears; he is hurtling from the skies in an aircraft with wobbling wings and screaming wires. Next to him is a dead man with his head lolling and his hands still on the gun – and there's Arthur.
They've been hit. The plane is on fire.
Merlin's head is clearing. He is still pressed into the mud with his hand on the terrified boy's head and the ground shaking with explosions, but his mind is alive with Arthur. He can feel Arthur now, the desperation and will to live, the fight to survive. But he feels Arthur's resignation, too, because there is only one way this can end.
Merlin can't allow it. He can't let Arthur die. They are destined to be together, they are intended to make things change. Arthur's life is not meant to be cut off here and now, not if Merlin can stop it – and he can. His magic can.
Closing his eyes, he lets the world fade away around him as he focuses his magic, summoning up every strand of it until it's hot and alive, pure energy whipping through his body and mind. The power of it exhilarates him. He has never felt it like this, and still it's so profoundly familiar it fills him with triumph, with joy. It rises in him like a roar, terrifying in its force, a dam breaking free of its confines.
Merlin no longer has a body, he is made of magic alone, a fierce being rushing through the sky to Arthur, who needs him.
There is sweat on Arthur's face and panic in his eyes as fire licks along the fuselage and reaches the gunner's clothes. The stench of oil and burning fabric is thick in the air; the plane is about to be devoured by fire.
Merlin stalls. He can extinguish the flames, but the craft will be too damaged to carry its crew back behind the lines – he must do something different. When he tries to feel the structure of the plane it isn't obvious to him; he can't feel it like he felt Arthur's Dragonfly, and that makes it hard for him to command.
The solution lies in the problem. The plane can't carry Arthur, the fire can't carry the plane, but there is something else Merlin can do with the fire, something that will heed his voice and fly through the air...
Merlin calls the flames. He calls them and they answer him; they roar and twist as he transforms them. With burning eyes he shapes them into a huge, scaly creature, the creature that his father could command and that shows itself in Merlin's dreams, the creature whose ancient voice speaks to Merlin's blood. It's made of heat and beauty, of flame and force and beating wings. Above the din Merlin's voice rises clear and strong, demanding, and the dragon, born of the fire and of Merlin's will, bows its terrible head and obeys the command.
Take him, return him to safety.
Merlin watches the enormous wings envelope the frail vehicle, the scaly body coiling itself around it to protect it with fire, not consume. He watches the magical beast of his creation carry its precious cargo into the distance.
Return him to safety. Don't let him die.
xxx
When Merlin comes back to himself, dizzy with the transition from skies and air to the mud and clamour of no man's land, he is alone in the shellhole. It's half filled with water and his uniform is soaked and heavy; the rain is coming down in torrents. He rubs a dirty hand across his face and looks around for the recruit. The boy is lying on his back some twenty yards away with his feet in a puddle, staring up at the sky with open, unseeing eyes. Rain is streaming down his face, washing the blood away.
With smarting eyes, coughing from smoke, Merlin hoists himself out of the hole to crawl back towards safety. His mouth is dry and his lips gritty; he is shaking with guilt and exhaustion. If he hadn't been so intent on saving Arthur he could have made the recruit duck his head and stay put; he saved the life of one man only to have the death of another on his conscience. The selfishness of his priorities makes him feel sick, but leaving Arthur was never an option, will never be an option.
And Arthur is alive. The glow of him is steady at the edge of Merlin's mind.
Back in the trench bunker he sits on the floor, drying out the clothes next to his skin with magic but leaving trousers and jacket wet, or someone will notice. He leans his head against the cold wall, succumbing to the heaviness of his limbs. The warm golden light of his magic is nearly extinguished, mere embers in the darkness of his mind as sleep takes him.
It's only minutes before he is wakened again, not by noise or another attack, but by a tremor touching his magic, a sense of something imminent, an edge of threat cutting through his fatigue.
He sits up straight and listens, stumbles out into the trench looking up in confusion. But the danger is not coming from the sky; it's coming from the earth itself. Merlin can feel it slipping; masses of it set in motion... The wood supports around him begin to creak and groan in protest.
A mudslide. The trench is going to collapse.
Sluggish with exhaustion, Merlin presses his back against the retaining wall, stretching his arms out like a soaring bird and gathering up the remains of his frayed, used-up magic to keep the trench intact. The masses of earth press and push against his magic, wanting only to level themselves out, to fill the man-made hollows and spaces and heal their own wounds. From further on along the trench, someone shouts Mudslide! and chaos ensues. Merlin stays where he is, closes his eyes and opens his mouth to the rain, drained of power, focusing every scrap of it he has left.
He holds the wall until the lorries arrive to pick them up. The last thing he remembers is half climbing, half being dragged inside, out of the rain, before darkness takes him.
xxx
Merlin kneels in the field beside Arthur, his king, with his fingers pressed to the wound that cannot be healed, feeling the stench of death mingle with the sweetness of crushed grass. There is a thin trail of blood from the corner of Arthur's mouth and Merlin leans down to kiss the pale lips, whispering "We will meet again," because they have talked about this before and he wants to remind Arthur how it will be, what they will become, that this is not the end.
"Yes," Arthur manages through his pain, and his hand crushes Merlin's. "Yes. But we will not remember."
And the light is gone from his eyes and Merlin bends his head, his own eyes hot and dry as his forehead touches the King's pauldron.