Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin (I wish I would!)
A/N: I did my best to avoid language mistakes but as my native tongue is German there may still be many to be found. Please accept my most humble apology in advance!
As to the plot of this story: After I wrote 'Abandoned' – my first fanfiction ever – as a mostly "Arthur-centred" piece, I wanted to write a story that focuses more on Merlin and on magic. The result is, as I fear, less tragic and dramatic than "Abandoned", but then it is also more "canon" than my first story.
Warning: I've been told that this story consists of "gruesome bad metaphors and empty talk". Please tell me your (honest!) opinion. Please review!
For those who read my message that presently I have no spare time whatsoever to complete this story as I have much more pressing things to do. I just couldn't resist! Seems as if I'm hooked to writing this stuff!
8. The storm begins
Almost two months had passed since Merlin had become the unofficial Pendragon Court Magician. He still couldn't believe he was alive, in Camelot and using magic, all at the same time. His frantic attempts to find any unnatural surveillance in or around the stronghold had left him exhausted. He hadn't felt anything at all, let alone anything that could compare with the Searcher that had passed him by in Vayatanu's sacred forest.
He followed the King's wishes to the letter, although he despised himself for it. When he didn't use a cover spell to move around, eavesdropping at people talking, visiting taverns to look for strangers who might have slipped through the travel ban, he lived hidden away in Arthur's room. Only Gaius sometimes visited him in the nights, when nobody was around. Slowly, but surely this became somewhat oppressive, to say the least; especially as no Arthur was around.
Merlin missed the royal prat more than he would ever care to admit. It somehow created an unlikely bond between him and Uther. Every time the King entered the room to meet with his 'Court Magician' his eyes, wandered around for the split of a second, as if he were expecting against all odds to see his son. If that happened, Merlin's heart inevitably went out to the man and all the sour remarks at the King keeping him virtually prisoner died away on his lips, unspoken.
The Court had become used to the King visiting his absent son's room quite regularly in the evenings and the wise heads nodded sagely and sadly at the new habit. Everybody thought that the King silently mourned his son there. Uther had refused to mention Arthur ever since Leon had brought the message that the young man had been abducted, obviously by magical means. The King's stubborn silence robbed courtiers and servants of any opportunity to openly mourn the Prince themselves but at the same time it assured them of the father being convinced that his son was lost. Why else should there be no search party, no messengers riding to other castles for news? Surely the King could not be so enraged at his son's betrayal - if one could call the freeing of the young manservant a betrayal - that he didn't care any more what had become of Arthur?
So the Court of Camelot was under a spell of gloom while the preparations for the expected 'famine' went along according to plan, much to King Uther's secret relief. Actually he was grateful for his people's misguided mourning as it offered a perfect excuse for his, at times, peculiar behaviour. Even his more than normal snappiness was forgiven because everybody thought it to be caused by Arthur's absence in these times of trouble. The harvest continued to pour in and slowly the storage rooms were filled to the roof. The castle made ready for a siege without anyone realizing it. Some knights and other military officers began to wonder what might be the real plan behind these measures but, so far, they wondered in private.
One evening Merlin had asked whether an open battle in the field might be a better solution, but Uther had seen no benefit in that. He couldn't force Marcus of Mercia to engage in open battle but, regarding the landscape in question, the Mercians could easily evade a meeting with the Pendragon forces and attack Camelot Castle while it was divested of its troops. At the same time, a preventive strike at Arengarde was impossible. King Marcus could easily hold out in his castle while the Pendragon forces would suffer from a prolonged siege. Nobody knew what magic powers the Mercians would be able to employ but it was probable that they would grow stronger over time. Therefore Uther stuck to his original decision to make an as strong as possible stand in Camelot, to defend the coffin of the Dark Power's other half. All strength would be invested in getting through to the Dark Power's human vessel and kill him. Hopefully this would immobilize the first half, so that Merlin could contain it again. Gaius searched the forbidden books day and night for a possibility to do this. The final idea, once the Dark Power would be immobilized, was that Merlin would persuade the Druids to further safeguard both coffins and to finally destroy them, so that no human being could ever again be tempted to use them.
Alone in his room at night the Pendragon could hardly believe that his Kingdom and his life had come to rely exclusively on a servant boy's ability to use forbidden magic in the very core of Camelot. Deep inside his heart the proud, self-reliant King began to feel torturing remorse at the memories of what he had done when Merlin's magic had first been discovered. Arthur had been devastated that his slip of the tongue should have brought his friend - and the boy was his son's friend as Uther realized only now - to the scaffold. He had pleaded with his father, begged him as he had never done before. The King cringed at the memory of what he had said to his son. Words like treason, disinheritance and disowning reverberated in Uther's head, but now they were almost too shameful to be remembered. As were the orders he had given to a disgusted Sir Leon as to how his son was to be brought back to Camelot. Merlin had been right. He had ordered his knights to drag his only child back home like a captured animal to the cage. Now he couldn't for the life of him remember what he had actually thought he was doing.
Due to the fruitless, exhausting brooding, the message of Mercian forces crossing the border to Camelot didn't cause only dread and anticipation but also a peculiar kind of relief. The dices were rolling now and the time for brooding was over.
While the enemy's forces overran the outlying villages and abandoned settlements Uther called the last outstanding forces from the barons to Camelot and indeed they came. As Uther had resigned to long before he couldn't take full command of them as they were accompanied by the barons who 'owned' them. The nobles and their families didn't want to be outside the strongest walls in the country when the foreign army attacked. Besides, with the Pendragon army concentrated in the capital, the attackers wouldn't be able to pass Camelot Castle without laying siege to it, which would force them to postpone their march towards other parts of the realm. Now Merlin could daily see for himself how right Uther had been when he had told the magician about the nobles' attitude towards the peasants who camped outside the castle walls.
The day came on which the lower town was cut off from the inner town and the Castle itself by closed drawbridges, boarded up gates and barricades. All battlements were manned, hot pitch was ready and virtually every person the castle could at least hope to maintain for a while was stuffed inside the stronghold. The peasants and the people in the lower town were left to fend for themselves as best they could, which meant, they didn't stand a chance. The Mercian army had arrived at the outskirts of Camelot itself!
Uther confronted the appalled Crown Council with Merlin's presence and informed them brusquely of the magician's role in the military defence and possible counter attacks in the upcoming battles. That the enemy also had magical support – and a gruesome one at that – he kept to himself. The Council Members were still stupefied with the unexpected development when the King dissolved the Council for the time of the military crisis.
The officers and knights had fewer qualms to content themselves with a magician being at the side of the most magic-hating King in all Albion. Although King Alined hadn't dared to join 'King Marcus' openly in the field he had lent him money at an outraging rate of interest and Mercia had hired mercenaries. Many mercenaries. Mercia's forces now outnumbered Camelot's troops almost two to one. At these odds any help was welcome.
It couldn't be said that the Mercians lost any time over their assault against the lower town and its wretched inhabitants. The being that posed as King Marcus feasted on victims taken at random, people who wouldn't be missed, at least not by the Mercians.
Merlin felt the unholy creature relish in the bloodshed. He re-lived the vision the Searcher had cursed him with in Vayatanu over and over again. The screams, the fire and destructions he had seen in his mind became a horrible reality. Again and again he begged the King for permission to at least try to use his abilities to defend the lower town and the outlying peasant camps. Alas, Merlin had been imprudent enough to inform the Pendragon about the relativity of his own physical and mental endurance to the magical power he could muster. Uther, with his quick strategist mind, at once realized what this meant: His magician could be defeated and finally killed even without the creature's magical resistance, by sheer exhaustion. So, again and again the King refused to give permission to interfere. His last resort should not show himself to the creature until it was absolutely inevitable. It was a miracle anyway that the creature so far seemed not to know that a magician was in the besieged castle, and a strong one, at that.
Military logic had taken over the rule of Camelot and Merlin, finding it as hateful as incontestable, settled for its demands, albeit with utter reluctance.
As if it had read his opponent's thoughts the creature refrained from using its own magical powers to support the Mercian forces. After three days, when some of the enemy soldiers had been foolish enough to disperse throughout the lower town looting, raping and, fortunately, drinking, Uther ordered one sortie after another and for a while the losses which could be inflicted on the Mercians satisfyingly outnumbered the losses Camelot's troops had to suffer. The moment the Mercians brought in reinforcements Uther ordered his own forces to retreat. As long as the creature withheld its magical powers there was hope that the Mercian losses would even out their superior numbers further once they tried to storm the strong and well-defended fortifications. Naturally this would only work if the storm began before Camelot's provisions ran out. "Starved soldiers make bad defenders" became Uther's mantra.
It became obvious that the creature didn't know much about strategy. What for? When it had first been called into being the Kings and leaders of Camelot and Mercia had, together with Cornelius Sigan, ordered it around as had been befitting to their plans. Later it had had its sneaking technique and the element of surprise as well as the unendurable horror it could create. Besides, it hadn't been cut in two halves then. Naturally it could feed on the talents and intelligence of its human vessel but, other than with Sigan's brilliant mind, there wasn't much to feed on in young Marcus.
Therefore the creature fell victim to its own impatience. Against the advice of all 'his' officers and councillors 'King Marcus' ordered the storm on Camelot's perfectly intact fortifications within seven days from the first attack on the lower town. The Mercian losses were appaling (from the Mercian perspective) as well as very encouraging (from Camelot's perspective) during the first few days of the attacks. As the creature didn't differentiate between its own troops and the defending forces it gave a damn but then the so far advantageous impatience turned against the Pendragon stronghold.
'King Marcus' decided to crush the offending resistance once and for all. The creature's desire for a reunion with its second half was no longer controllable. Only two weeks after the initial attacks, the being began its magical assault against the fortifications in great confidence. However, it was in for a surprise.
As soon as it tried to shake the battlements' and walls' foundations it met a resisting will. It was outraged as it realized that the stronghold harboured a magician who had somehow escaped the attention of its Searchers.
Inside Camelot Merlin concentrated all his strength on conjuring up and maintaining the most powerful protective spell Gaius had been able to find in the ancient books he had saved when Uther had destroyed the retreats of the Old Religion. The magical war had begun in earnest.
True enough; the human vessel was still vulnerable to a physical attack. But unfortunately the creature wasn't foolish enough to expose itself. For all the grand plans Uther had made – 'King Marcus' stayed well behind the lines of 'his' own troops. With the Mercian army still outnumbering the Camelot forces, not even the most desperate sortie would stand a chance to come that far. The creature was hopelessly out of reach!
Feeling the spell draining power from him, slowly but as sure as death, Merlin knew that there was no hope that his endurance would outlast the creature's unnatural strength. He had lost the desperate fight right from the start. Step by step his ability to protect the fortifications would fail him. One by one the walls would fall. In the end the creature would be free to let its troops lose on the refugees and the defenceless remainder of the castle inhabitants. Meanwhile it would reunite with its other half. Subsequently, all hell would break lose.
For all he was worth the young magician fought on. Not even he himself knew why he should fight so hard only to slow down the inevitable.