A flaming branch acting as a torch was all the light that the officers in the Saxon army and their chief and his son had to see by as they sat listening to Taris, a scrawny-looking native Briton who had appeared near their army pleading clemency in order to help the Saxons in their invasion of Britannia.
Mildly suspicious but approving of such traitorous and underhanded values in a human being, Cerdic had warily let him into the council with his map, which he now had spread over a roughly-hewn log table. He pointed at where their troops were camped at the moment and then moved his hand across the map to Hadrian's Wall.
"We are seven days march north of the great Wall, if we camp at night."1
Cynric raised an eyebrow. "We won't camp," he said contemptuously.
Taris looked at him and then at Cerdic, who was looking at Cynric with an amused expression. "What troops are stationed there?" he asked, curiously.
Taris shrugged. "Light Roman infantry."
He hesitated for a second, and Cerdic nodded imperceptibly at one of his men-at-arms, who moved ever so slightly closer to the traitor and tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. None of this was lost on the sweating Taris, who began to look nervous. "And possibly Sarmatian knights," he said hurriedly. "They're led by a Roman general, Arthur."
Cynric made a face. "Arthur. Who is this, Arthur?"
The pronunciation of his name was strange and foreign to the Saxons, and Taris could see several of the officers rolling the name over on their tongues, grappling with the softer 'th' sound and the soft vowel-unvoiced-stop finish to his name.
Well, he thought nervously. At least I've got their attention now.
"A Roman general. He was sent here from Rome to defend the southern half of Britannia from the Wodes of the north."
Cerdic nodded speculatively, and then nodded again at his man-at-arms, who unsheathed his sword, grabbed Taris by the hair and put the sword at his throat.
"You're a traitor to your own people," Cerdic said pleasantly as Taris froze with fear. "How do we know we can trust you?"
"P-please," Taris gabbled, indicating the map. "There's an estate. Three days to the north of the wall. A high-ranking Roman family lives there. Look, it's on the map!"
Cynric inspected the map, and although the writing was unfamiliar to him, there was a smudge that looked sort of like a house on the map where the Briton was indicating.
"Honorius' Estate," Taris said helpfully, watching Cynric struggle with the letters.
The Saxon raised his head and glared at him, and then looked at his father and nodded. "Their ransom could pay for the entire campaign."
Cerdic nodded thoughtfully and then waved his hand at the man-at-arms, who dropped Taris, sheathed his sword and stepped back. Cerdic stepped forward to look at the map and Cynric pointed at the estate. The Saxon chief nodded again and then looked at his son. "Once we reach this point," he said, pointing to a mountain range above the estate, "take your men and grab the family. Then meet us at the great wall."
Cynric nodded and then Cerdic turned to all of the rest of them. "Dismissed,"
Everyone dispersed and walked away, including Cerdic and his son, leaving Taris standing lonely in the centre, near the fire. He sighed and sat down with his back to the table, debating far too late the wisdom of his actions.
The next morning, Jess was woken by a rather rough shake on the shoulder from Tristan, whose bedroll she discovered quite quickly she was sharing. She groaned as the headache hit her and then debated far too late the wisdom of her actions last night. She sighed. There was nothing to drink in this bloody world – the koumiss tasted like crap and the wine was way too strong.
She rolled out of the bedroll and got dressed quicker than she ever had in her life before, and then stood, again obediently, as Tristan did up the strings on her top. She did notice that he wasn't as good at it as Arthur, and made a mental note to ask someone to redo them (out of Tristan's earshot of course) when he pulled them so tight she nearly couldn't breathe.
Unfortunately, Lancelot appeared in the corner of the clearing from looking after his horse Api at the exact moment that she was gasping in pain. Aside from glaring briefly at Tristan, though, he seemed completely nonchalant, and as if he hadn't even noticed the pain she was in. As soon as Tristan had cinched her waist in to the point where it had a diameter of about ten centimeters, he walked off, and then Lancelot turned to face her.
"Help me," she said weakly, having given up scrabbling desperately at her back in an attempt to find the strings.
He shook his head at her and then came over and after a brief moments confused picking at the complex and intriguing knot Tristan had evidently tied, he released the strings, and she took a huge breath of air.
He laughed at her and then did them up again, this time at a more manageable diameter, and then picked up her swords and handed them to her.
"Thanks," she said, slinging them each over her shoulders, and then picking up her quiver, which she also slung onto her back.
He shrugged, and bent down and picked up her gauntlets, holding them out for her to slide her arms into. "It's every knight's duty to answer the call of a damsel in distress," he said, grinning.
She glared at him for a moment, and then shook her head, laughing helplessly. "One day, someone will be able to think of a comeback to you, Lancelot, and then you will probably die of shock."
He laughed again. "Possibly,"
They rode out again, and as they did Jess reveled in the feeling of the wind in her hair, the feeling of being one with Bartatua, the feeling of flying over the rough and broken ground that as a normal human she would have had to walk over.
Now that she had ridden Bartatua for nearly two whole days, he had learned to respond instantly to the slightest commands; he would change stride and turn at the merest suggestion of a twitch at the reins, or the smallest change of position in her hips or upper torso, and he lengthened or shortened his stride based on her position in the saddle.2
The country started to get hilly at around midday, and they had to slow to a trot to avoid completely killing their horses. They stopped for a break at what looked like some kind of abandoned stone circle, and all of the knights started to get wary, keeping their hands close to their sword hilts and setting guards to watch every direction.
"This is one of the Wodes' sacred places," Arthur said to her, retying the knot on his horse's saddle that held his sword on.
She looked at him in puzzlement and then looked at the decrepit, nature-overridden stones that surrounded him, and then remembered that the Wodes, as a branch of the Celts, revered the nature.
"They call it Stonehenge," he continued.
Jess' jaw dropped. Stonehenge? She was actually standing at the Stonehenge? Inside it? Looking around at the view, she realised that there had been something familiar about it. She would have recognised it immediately but there were no caps on the standing stones, and even then she felt dumb for not noticing.
She shook her head and then turned away, until she noticed, briefly, the gleam of the sun on something metal inside a tree to the north, where Tristan was watching. He turned and exchanged a glance with her, and she nodded and turned to Arthur. "They're here,"
He nodded. "We're going to have to move out again. Thankfully the land levels out from here on."
"Let's move out," she heard Bors say to Gawain and Galahad, and they all turned warily and rode out at a dangerous pace, hoping to lose their Wode trackers, even though Tristan told them comfortingly that they had no chance of escaping them.
By nighttime their horses were seriously labouring, again with the puzzling exception of Bartatua, but they kept riding, entering a forest that evidently led towards the estate. They galloped through the undergrowth, the leaves from the trees above them blocking out the light of the moon in some places, and Jessamine suddenly realised just exactly what forest they were going into.
She looked around them warily, and Bartatua picked up on her nervousness, pricking his ears forward and flaring his nostrils to sniff at the air around them. About two kilometres into the forest he stopped, planting his feet stubbornly in the ground and beginning, she could tell by the way his heart thumped against his ribcage, to panic. Argimpasa also slid to a halt, backing off and raising up on her hind legs to escape whatever was ahead of them.
"Wodes," Tristan said, licking his lips nervously. "Tracking us. They're everywhere."
They assembled in a small round clearing, and Jess thought as they circled nervously that it was like cattle in a stockyard; they would bolt at the first sign of trouble. Arthur ventured cautiously towards one of the passages leading out of the clearing, but before she could tell him to stop the Wodes emerged and started shooting the first known form of barbed wire out of pretty much every tree she could see.
She had thought, watching the movie, that it was probably the least scary and threatening battle scene she had ever seen, but, sitting on Bartatua's back in the middle of that hardly lit clearing, the knight's around her mere outlines in the darkness, the only sound the whistling of the Wodes arrows, the knowledge that the Wodes weren't trying to kill them disappeared to be absorbed by blind panic.
The horses milled and whinnied, and it wasn't until someone – she couldn't even distinguish who it was in the frenzy – shouted "Down here!" that anyone did much more than try to save their own necks.
They galloped madly down a track behind Arthur, skidding to a terrifyingly close halt as the barbed wire snapped across in front of Arthur's horse Palagius there as well. Dagonet ducked under a real arrow aimed at his head, the whistling sound of the loosely-fletched feathers its only give-away in the darkness. Variously, they galloped in other directions, and all that she could tell was that she was somewhere behind Gawain until he wheeled dangerously close to her at the appearance of snarling Wode foot soldiers. Bartatua's feet dug deep ruts in the earth as he slid to stop himself from being impaled on their spears.
Eventually, after they had all been chased back to the central clearing, she reflected, breathing hard, that it had all been pointless, seeing as she knew what was going to happen, but she came to the horrifying conclusion that, with her there, technically, all bets were off. She couldn't really be assured anymore that any of them would survive, so she would have to look out for all of them, not just the three that she knew had dates with the grim Reaper.
They collected their wits and managed to nudge themselves into some semblance of bravado, but really, it was the most demoralising thing that could ever possibly be done to an army. They unsheathed their swords and tried to glare at the Wodes, but their relief when the entire army vanished mysteriously into the night forest was evident, even despite Dagonet's cursing.
"Why wouldn't they attack?" Galahad asked wearily.
"Because Merlin doesn't want us dead," Arthur said, looking around at the undergrowth. "Let's get out of here and set up camp."
Merlin sat with his councilors around their sacred fire, a fierce debate raging back and forth.
"We should have killed them, Merlin," one of them insisted.
Merlin shook his head. "There may be a use for Artorius and his knights,"
Another councilor spat on the ground and glared at Merlin. "Never! They are our enemy!"
Merlin shook his head again, reflecting sadly on what centuries of oppression had done to their previously relatively peaceful people. "The Saxons are our enemy. We need Arthur's help if we are going to save our country."
And may the Gods have mercy on my soul, he thought sadly, that I ask help of a Roman.
The rain poured in sheets from the sky, and, even sheltered as they were up against the wide-spreading trees of the forest, the rain was driven almost horizontally into their faces. After a while it wore off into just the normal British downpour, and Jess thought vaguely that if she ever got home again the lack of water would shock her. Only, Tristan, calmly sharpening his sword, was unaffected by all the rain.
"Oh, I hate this bloody island!" Gawain shouted at the rain, the Gods and them, collectively. "If it's not raining, it's snowing."
"If it's not snowing, it's foggy," Galahad added morosely.
"And that's the summer," Lancelot put in, shaking his head.
"The rain is good," Bors said, thinking. "It washes all the blood away."
They were all silent for a while, and Jess knew that Bors didn't just mean the blood from all the men they had killed over the years. He also meant that the rain was so depressing by itself that it helped them forget the loss of their kinsmen, here on this island. Just thinking about it made her angry. They shouldn't even have been here in the first place, she thought angrily, clenching her jaw, but it was far too late now. That had all been sealed centuries ago with Imperial Prince Claudius of Rome and a young girl called Sarmatia.
She had been a slave in Rome for years before she ran away to the east; to the Danubian valley, where she had met a race of people called the Sauromatae, who had no real leader and mostly lived in clans. They were also heading towards a clash with the Romans, because the Danubian valley was Roman territory, and they were starting, in Roman eyes, an incursion.
So the emperor sent his young son – of around the same age as Sarmatia, funnily enough – with some of the Empire's army, to quash the Sarmatian threat. Sarmatia heard of the threatened Roman invasion and desperately tried to mobilise all the clans into uniting under one ruler to fight back, but they had bickered amongst themselves over who would lead them until someone had suggested that she be their leader.
They met the Romans on the battlefield and eventually a stalemate was called, and the Sauromataeans, after careful consultation with all of the chiefs, agreed to send their sons – just one generation, mind you – to fight with the Roman army.
As the Imperial prince was taken around all of the clans to recruit the said boys, he and Sarmatia had fallen in love and struck up a liaison, the end result of which was his abdication and his abolishment of the treaty. In return, his father had the Roman soldiers with him kill everyone in his camp, including him and Sarmatia, slaughtering sleeping Sauromataean soldiers by the hundreds.
From then on, the Romans called the Sauromatae the Sarmatians, and the name stuck, probably because it was easier to pronounce. A new treaty had also been forced on the Sarmatians, one that bound every boy and his sons unto the ending of the empire to their army.
She was brought out of her reverie by Gawain laughing.
"I'm going for a piss," Bors said, standing up and moving away, and she realised with a slight twinge of disappointment that she had just missed one of the knights' funniest moments together.
They didn't have much to eat that night; mostly soggy bread and a bit of dried meat left over from the night before. They had also, unfortunately, drunk all of the wine, so there was only koumiss left.
She sighed, and vowed to sleep in her own bed that night.
Later, when they were all asleep, Gilioneron stepped through his nifty little portal thingy and landed right where they were all sleeping. A few of the knights stirred, feeling the close proximity to their God, but they were mostly too drunk to notice. He walked over to where Gawain and Jess were sharing the same bedroll and shook his head at them.
Kelermes, he said in her mind, resonating the thought at a subconscious level so as not to wake Jessamine.
There was no answer, but he knew she was there, he could feel her presence.
What do you do here? he asked, firmer this time, adding undertones of "tell me or I'll torture you".
She laughed, from somewhere deep inside Jess's mind, and an image rose in Gilioneron's mind of death. Dying. Specifically, the death of the knights who lay sleeping around him, and Arthur most of all. He pulled his mind away from hers, shaking his head, and was about to command her to leave Jess's body when he realised that he didn't actually have any power over her, as she was now, inside the object of another world.
Lancelot stirred behind him and started to get up, and he cast a furious look at the sleeping Jessamine before slowly fading back into the night and returning to his world.
It was up to Jessamine, now, and all they could do was hope that she was strong enough to take on the challenge.
Have courage, girl, he thought to himself, you're going to need it.
1 I fiddled with the distances somewhat, because realistically England isn't that small. I understand that they had to shorten everything for the movie so that they could fit everything in, but really, on the rough terrain of Dark Ages Britain with, say, one thousand troops, it would take more than three days to get to Hadrian's Wall from where they landed, south of Scotland. Sorry if this annoys anyone.
2 This is actually something that horses can be taught to do; forward means go, gallop, get faster, and back in the saddle means, whoa, look out, there's a cliff edge there.