Chapter 11: Of the High King

After Father's return, the meetings discussing the Saxon threat changed. Father took over the planning of the battle with a firm authority that showed how many times he had done this before. Riders had gone out to the different kingdoms and armies already allied with us to tell them King Arthur had come back and would be leading them into battle, and Uncle Merlin visited the few remaining kingdoms, mostly on traveling on Aithusa to save time, and secured final alliances. Father, meanwhile, used the information Uncle Merlin brought about the Saxon camp from spying on Aithusa to make battle plans, figuring out how the armies allied with us would attack Landin's army and how the sorcerers we had on our side would be most strategically placed.

This brought up the question one afternoon of where Uncle Merlin would be.

"I'll not be standing on a hill flashing lightning this time," he told Father fiercely, and there was that look of sharp pain like shattered glass in his eyes that he gets around the bad time of year. "I'll be right by your side, defending you. I'm not going to let you fall again, Arthur, not if there is anything I can do to prevent it!" There was a strange sort of defiance in his voice.

I couldn't read Father as well as I could Uncle Merlin yet, but even I could tell that his eyes and voice were very gentle as he said, "Of course you're not. Where else would you be, anyhow?"

Everything had changed that third month, not just the way Father took over leading all the meetings about the war. Camelot's army was planning to be ready to leave the citadel to head to Caerleon's border two weeks before the month would be done, and the army as well as its suppliers and dozens of healers and physicians were building up in the city, preparing for the march. Everyone was ridiculously busy: Uncle Merlin was away building up alliances and spying as often as he was in Camelot; Father was absorbed in planning how the battle would go; and Mother was coordinating all the arrivals in Camelot and planning the coming departure. All the knights were busy too, of course. It left us with very little time to spend together, and left me feeling very useless. Father, Mother, and I ate breakfast together every day no matter what, though, and as I slowly got to know my father, Camelot began to feel like home in a way I had never known it to before.

"I shall hate to leave this place and go to war so soon," Father commented as we rose from breakfast five days before we were to leave Camelot.

He looked at me and Mother as he finished his sentence, making it clear that he hated to leave us more than the place. Mother stepped toward him with a small smile.

"I shall go with you, Arthur," she told him steadily.

"It's too dangerous, Guinevere," Father protested, using her full name in the way only he does.

"Arthur." Mother took his hands in hers and looked up into his eyes. "None of us knows what the outcome of this battle will be. I lost you before, and I could lose you again." Her voice shook over the words, and rather to my surprise Father's eyes filled with tears. I could see he wanted to protest that idea, though he didn't. "If these few weeks are to be all the time I have with you, I don't want to live the rest of my life knowing that I spent any part of them away from your side. Besides," she added softly, reaching up to stroke his hair, "if you lose, it will only be a matter of time until I fall anyway. But you will not lose."

Father's smile was wistful. "I've missed you, Guinevere," he said, and leaned in to kiss her. I looked away, giving them their moment, knowing Father had lost the argument. But when they broke apart, I said suddenly, "Then I'm going too."

Mother turned to me and frowned sharply. "No," she said, in the exact same tone she used when I first asked if I could fly Aithusa.

"I don't want to lose these last few weeks either," I told her. "Mother, you have to let me go."

Mother's eyes were filling with tears. "But I can't watch you die," she whispered.

"Where has your faith that we'll win gone?" Father asked her, just a bit teasingly.

Mother spun on him. "You can't mean that you think he should come!" she exclaimed.

Father glanced from me to her, troubled. "I don't want him to come," he answered frankly. "But I think it would be worse if we left him behind to wait without anyone here, and all the knights are coming, Gwen. But we will defend him and you to the bitter end."

Mother choked back a sob, but after a moment she nodded. Father motioned to me, and I came forward to join them; Father put his hand on my shoulder, and Mother wrapped her arm tightly around me. We stood together as a family for a moment.

But my determination to go had really started years and years ago when Mother brought me with her to every council meeting she had, when she took me everywhere as she ran the kingdom. I had been there every step of the way for my whole life, even when I was too young to have any clue what was going on. I would not turn away from being at the front of what it meant to lead the kingdom now, even if it meant going into the jaws of death.

Essetir's army arrived in Camelot late that afternoon, and we were in the courtyard to meet them when they appeared. The Knights of the Original Round Table stood with Father, Mother, Uncle Merlin, and me. As they were some of the most powerful people in the kingdom and close friends of the royal family, it was fitting. Uncle Gwaine, of course, says that the reason he enjoys it is that everyone thinks he's dead and the looks on their faces when they realize he's not are delightful. Uncle Lancelot thinks he shouldn't take such pleasure in that, and there are times when I think Gwaine deliberately emphasizes it to provoke that reaction. Gwaine is far too fond of reactions.

King Lot of Essetir was an older man, powerfully built and with a perpetual scowl on his face, but he clasped hands with Father amicably after he managed to cover the shock that visibly crossed his face at seeing so many once-dead men standing at attention to meet him.

"We thank you for joining with us for this fight," Father said, sounding rather stuffy and official, which nearly made me laugh for some reason.

"We would have had to fight it sooner or later," Lot commented shortly. "Might as well do it by your side." He acknowledged Mother, me, and Uncle Merlin briefly before asking, "So where do we lodge for the night?"

"You will stay in the castle," Father answered. "My wife has prepared accommodations for your men. We leave for Caerleon in five days."

"We shall be ready," Lot told him.

"What sort of a king is he like?" I asked Uncle Merlin as we went back into the castle and King Lot was out of earshot.

"A strong king, but one who rules by earning the fear rather than the respect of his people," he told me. I thought that sounded a lot like Grandfather Uther.

"Not a king you want to emulate," Father told me as he came up to us; I hadn't realized he had overheard the question.

"No, you want to be a king like your father instead," Uncle Merlin retorted teasingly.

Father's lips twitched as he picked up the lighthearted tone. "Of course," he said cheerfully. "You should emulate every aspect of what I do, Amhar."

"Except how grumpy he can be in the mornings, and his habit of throwing things at defenseless servants, and –" Uncle Merlin began.

"Defenseless?" Father cut him off. "I didn't realize I was throwing things at a ridiculously powerful sorcerer!"

Merlin tensed, as he almost always did when Father referenced his magic, but Father was just grinning at him, so after a moment he grinned back. "You thought you were throwing things at a defenseless servant, at least," he retorted. "And your habit of using me as training dummy, and –"

Mother caught up with us at that moment. "Lot has brought more men with him than I thought he would," she told Father, utterly ignoring the friendly argument in progress between him and Uncle Merlin. "It's good for the war, of course, but I shall have to stretch accommodations."

"We'll find a way," Father reassured her, reaching to take her hand. When he and Mother were in the vicinity of each other, they were almost always touching each other in some small way, as if they both needed the reassurance that they were together and neither of them was dying or going away yet.

They left together to deal with Lot's men. "I wish this whole mess was over," I heard Mother say wearily as they disappeared.

I agreed heartily. We had been dealing with this threat for the last three months, and the nearer we came to actually facing it, the more difficult it became to deal with. I knew Mother was having to consider how to give all the kings and queens joining our army their own place in it without it causing any petty infighting to break out among them, not to mention the actual battle we had yet to fight.

But then I remembered that this threat had given Freya the ability to send back my father and his knights, and I couldn't regret that it had happened.

Gawant's army appeared in Camelot two days later, led by the Queen Elena and her husband. They arrived earlier in the day, and we saw them approaching from the castle walls before they reached Camelot.

"The lady Elena appears to be as excellent of a horsewoman now as she ever was," Uncle Merlin commented to Father, grinning.

I smiled too, remembering that story about the Sidhe princess Father had nearly been forced to marry.

Father groaned. "She was – an interesting person," he admitted. "Did you really cast a Sidhe out of her, Merlin?" At Uncle Merlin's inquisitive glance, he added, "I watched you telling some of this story to Amhar."

"Yes, I did," Merlin admitted. "But you were the one who made the final decision not to marry her."

"I'm not sure I would have without your advice," Father told him. "But I'm very glad I did." He turned to smile at Mother; his hand lay over hers on the wall before us. She rewarded him with a bright look and a kiss.

"This time I hope we have enough accommodations," she commented when we were headed down to the courtyard. "It's a good thing we're leaving Camelot soon, or between our armies and our allies', we'd soon have no room."

When the vanguard of Gawant's army came into our courtyard, the queen sprang off her horse lightly and without assistance. She was smiling as she came up to Father; she scarcely seemed bothered that she was faced by a king and three knights who had been dead.

"It would seem we both found the love we deserved," she said cheerfully, nodding to Mother. "But I daresay I could still beat you in a horse race."

"I shall not dare challenge you to one," Father told her, smiling. "We are most grateful for your help," he added, his voice holding more sincerity and less formality than it had the day before.

Elena waved him off. "Of course," she said. "We would have been honored to fight by your side for the sake of our old alliance, even if we were not in danger ourselves. Now may I introduce my husband, Maxwell?"

Three days afterwards, a massive company left Camelot, including our army and the armies of Essetir and Gawant and the royal families of all three kingdoms. I rode alongside Mother and Uncle Merlin; Father rode at the head of the whole company, as the High King in command, and we marched out to face the Saxons.

When we were far enough away that I could look back and see the citadel, I turned in my seat and looked back at Camelot. In spite of all the business, the worry over what lay ahead, in the last two weeks since Father's return Camelot had begun to feel like home as it never had before. We had feasted our allied kings and queen after their arrival, and as Elena and Maxwell were both cheerful conversationalists, the feast had been quite pleasant; but the last night before we left Camelot, Father, Mother and I had dined together with no one else, and the citadel where I had lived all my life had finally felt like a home to me.

I knew very well I could lose that on this campaign. We could lose to the Saxons altogether, in which case we would all die; or Father, Uncle Merlin, or any of the knights I called Uncle could fall in battle. And if even one of them fell, Camelot would never feel like home to me again.

The castle vanished behind a ridge, and I squared my shoulders and faced forward. This was no time for fear; I would have to be brave and wring every drop of joy I could out of these last days I had with the people I loved, and pray we would all come home safely. There was nothing else I could do.

In spite of the danger, there were days when our journey across Camelot felt more like a camping trip we might do for fun than a war campaign. We were traveling through areas of the kingdom I'd never seen before, and at night our Original Round Table group sat around the fire and chatted together.

Uncle Gwaine apparently shared my opinion, for he said one night, "When we all make it back to Camelot, we need to leave the castle – take a camping trip or a hunting trip or something and get away together." He nudged Father, who was rather lost in thought. "You remember how you loved hunting, right?"

Uncle Merlin groaned. "Why do you have to be so insistent on bringing up hunting?" he protested. "I'm happy without that coming back."

Father grinned at him. "The moment we get back to Camelot, we are going on a hunting trip," he announced promptly.

Gwaine smiled triumphantly; Uncle Merlin turned away with an exaggerated look of despondency.

"What was being in the Lake of Avalon like?" Uncle Leon asked one night around the campfire. He said it as if it had been on his mind for a while, but he had only now worked up the courage to ask it.

"Like being in a lake," Gwaine said, grinning.

"Hardly," Elyan retorted. "The Lady of the Lake had found a way for us to be under the water, but never wet. We could explore the lake –"

"There are some fascinating caverns under it," Gwaine interrupted him.

"And she could scry almost anywhere we wanted and show us the events there on the underside of the surface of the lake," Elyan went on, ignoring Gwaine with the effortlessness of long practice.

"Arthur would have spent all his time watching Camelot if Freya could have kept it up all day," Gwaine added unrepentantly.

That comment made me feel rather warm.

"How did Freya make this place?" Mother asked, curiously.

"I don't know the details," Lancelot told her, "but she told me when I first came there that she had some ability to see the future, and she could see that all four of us were supposed to come back. So she made a special little corner of Avalon where we could never leave the lake, but we were where we could be called back to life. Maybe it would be more accurate to say she extended the realm she inhabited to include us when we were all buried in the lake."

"Do you know how she came to inhabit that realm, anyhow?" Father asked Merlin. "We never really understood that."

Uncle Merlin shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know," he admitted quietly. "She – she promised me that she would pay me back. We both had magic, and the lake was magic; perhaps all the magic took her promise and enabled her to live in the lake."

"She was a lovely person to stay with," Elyan remarked. "Shy, but very gracious."

"And accommodating of four restless men invading her realm and turning it topsy turvy," Lancelot added, with a severe glance at Gwaine that made me laugh.

"What?" said knight retorted defensively. "I've never been all that good at waiting."

"She was incredibly forgiving, too," Father said quietly.

"She never tired of watching you, Merlin," Uncle Lancelot said softly.

Uncle Merlin shook his head sharply and scrambled to his feet. "Right," he said, his voice clipped even though it sounded rather choked. He turned away.

"What's the matter?" Mother asked him, half-rising to her knees.

"Feel free to go on discussing Freya," Merlin returned shortly, to the knights rather than Mother. "You all know her better than I did by now, I daresay," he added with a bitter, ironic smile. He took several steps away.

"I'm sorry," Uncle Lancelot said at once. "I think – I think we forgot how much she meant to you."

Merlin shrugged without turning around. "It's long in the past," he said quietly.

That wasn't very comforting to anyone, when it was quite clear that he had never forgotten it.

"At least we kept her company in the lake for a while," Gwaine commented.

He was trying to be compassionate, but he immediately got glared at by both Lancelot and Father. Uncle Merlin swung back, the shadows highlighting the anger and pain in his face.

"And what becomes of Freya now?" he demanded fiercely. "Alone now that she's fulfilled her promise to me ten times over by sending you back, unable to be part of the life she sees on the surface of her lake and unable to truly pass on?" His voice shook.

"I asked her what would happen," Father answered, his voice gentle though he looked very uncomfortable. "She told me that when she looked ahead for herself, there was an end to her being Lady of the Lake; she saw a blank coming and couldn't tell what it was."

"So she will properly pass on, and then I can't even imagine that she can hear my words when I speak to the lake," Merlin said shortly, old grief clear in his eyes. He spun and walked away from us. This time everyone had the sense not to try stopping him.

There was a tense, uncomfortable silence when he had vanished into the darkness. I was thinking that never till that moment had I known just how much he loved Freya, just how much her loss still hurt. I could understand why he had almost never spoken of her over the years.

After a moment, Father got up and quietly followed Uncle Merlin into the night.

When we came to the border between Camelot and Caerleon, we met Queen Annis and her army. Annis was an older queen by now, with keen eyes; she gave me the sense that she would be someone worthy of being followed and that her favor would be well worth winning.

"Queen Annis," Father said, dismounting to greet her.

"Arthur," she returned, smiling a bit as they clasped hands. "I am glad you are returned for this fight."

"I am glad I came back to fight it," he answered, "and for your willingness to ally with us."

She made a derisive noise in her throat. "These Saxons may claim they want to attack Camelot first, but on whose border do they congregate?" she retorted. "They would overrun my land first. I thank you and your sorcerer" – this with a glance at Uncle Merlin – "for allying the kingdoms. None of us would have a chance on our own."

"Queen Annis would be a leader to emulate, wouldn't she?" I asked Uncle Merlin later.

"She is a strong, respected ruler," he told me. "But you could stand to have a little more compassion for servants than she." He seemed more amused than annoyed as he said this, however.

When the royals interacted briefly before settling to their tents that night, I noticed that Queen Annis was cold toward Lot, but she greeted Elena with warmth, almost like a mother with a daughter. I didn't think it was a coincidence at all that the tents of Essetir and Caerleon were spaced far apart.

As we traveled across Caerleon over the next several days, we met up with the rest of our allies and their armies. Nemeth was the first, led by Queen Mithian and her husband. The queen greeted Mother, me, and Uncle Merlin along with Father as she dismounted.

"Thank you for helping us," Father told her sincerely.

"Certainly," she said. "I am glad you called us together." She was very sweet to be with; she promptly offered to help Mother with the endless arrangements that came with running a camp that large, and they became quite friendly as they worked together.

She was very frosty, however, to King Odin, who joined us two days later. He was an older man, and his greeting with Father was reserved on both sides. I felt as though if we didn't have a common enemy, there would be much more tension between them, which was unsurprising, given what I had been told of their past.

"You give us the best chance we have to fight Landin, and he's not threatening idly," Odin said when Father coolly thanked him for coming. "Otherwise I'd be nowhere near this company."

Mother placed his tent very far away from both ours and Mithian's.

The last army to join with ours came from Deorham, and was led by a shifty-eyed king, Alinor, whom I didn't trust at all.

"Only eager to please," he said to Father's thanks. "Pleasure to be here. Wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

"I don't trust him," I said to Uncle Merlin, safely out of Alinor's earshot.

"Being the son of Alined can't have been good for becoming a trustworthy man," he observed. "But his kingdom lies in Albion, and we can use all the help we can get."

"Is his army worth it?" I asked, frowning.

"He wouldn't dare turn on us, with so many of our loyal allies here," Uncle Merlin said confidently. "Besides, he has a dragon hanging over his head if he puts a toe out of line."

That made me remember that Deorham had been one of the places Uncle Merlin had flown on Aithusa, and I laughed in spite of myself at the image of Alinor cringing in terror at the white dragon landing on his towers without regard for their roofs.

Aithusa herself joined us later that evening. Uncle Merlin didn't really want to bring her into the battle unless he had to, but she was there, ready in case we needed her.

We reached the borders of Caerleon three days before the third month ended. One gentle slope below us, the vast army of Saxons sprawled over a wide valley floor. Father looked down at them with grim determination in his eyes.

"They will regret ever threatening Camelot," he said steadily.

We made our own sprawling camp at the top of the slope, seven kingdoms brought together in alliance against a common foe, and prepared ourselves.

In three days, war would be joined.

A/N: A huge thanks for this chapter goes to versaphile, who has a map of England in the time of "Merlin" on Archive of Our Own; I used this map extensively for figuring out where the armies of the different kingdoms would meet. I didn't follow the map exactly - mostly I flipped Caerleon and Essetir's locations because of how I'd already envisioned things happening - but it was very useful. Huge thanks also to AMJJ, who directed me to find this map; I'd never have discovered it otherwise!

Next chapter on Saturday - "For the Love of Albion."