Jess woke in the middle of the night as Guinevere slipped out of the cart, and although she was tempted to stay where she was, she sighed heavily and climbed out of her cloak and down onto the cold ground.
"Guinevere," she called softly, causing the young girl to turn in shock. "Where are you going?"
She looked down at the ground. "Merlin… my father… I have to talk to Arthur,"
Jess smiled at her and raised an eyebrow. "Just talk to him? In the middle of the night are you sure he won't think it's something else?"
Guinevere laughed. "At least that way he'll end up listening eventually,"
Jess nodded. "Don't get into any trouble,"
Guinevere smiled at her and slipped off into the darkness seeking Arthur.
Jess rubbed her hands on her now cold arms and decided to go for a quick once-over of the campsite and maybe talk to whoever was on watch at the moment – unless it was Arthur, in which case she would probably have to find someone else and tell them to take his post.
Everything was quiet, even the Romans haven drunk themselves into insensibility by now, and she saw Dagonet sleeping soundly next to Lucan, the little boy wrapped up in the big man's surcoat. She also passed Eunyphore and Maechises, miraculously sleeping, wrapped up in Galahad's cloak, and he where he had fallen asleep watching them.
She walked further on into the camp and saw Gawain, snoring against a tree, and Tristan, who she surmised was on watch, standing and looking out at the empty forest.
"There are Wodes out there," he said, pointing randomly at something in a couple of trees – she couldn't see anything – and looking at her questioningly.
"They just want to talk to Arthur, I think," Jess said, thinking about Guinevere. "I'd let them go. If they wanted to kill any of us they'd have done it already."
Tristan nodded. "I'll tell Lancelot. He's on watch."
She looked at him incredulously. "If he's on watch, what are you doing up?"
He shrugged. "What are you doing?"
She shrugged as well. "I caught Guinevere sneaking out to go and see Arthur,"
He nodded. "I'm just standing."
"Scythians!" she muttered to herself quietly as she followed along behind him to where Lancelot was sitting with a vantage point to the whole camp.
By the time she reached Lancelot, Tristan had already said everything and moved off, and the hungry look Lancelot gave her made her skin tingle and her stomach twitch.
She sat down beside him. "See anything interesting?"
He shrugged and pointed to where she could see Guinevere leading Arthur out into the forest. "Not much else has happened, though,"
She nodded. "How far away are the Saxons, do you know?"
He sighed. "They're camped a day's march on their part away, Tristan says. There's a huge frozen river up ahead in the pass; if we don't hurry they could cut us off there. Our objective is to get onto the river so that they can't cross either."
"And that's where we'll fight it out?" Jess asked, thinking about the movie.
Lancelot shrugged again. "Or they could offer terms,"
She laughed. "Or surrender,"
He laughed as well, and she turned to face him, not realising that they would be so close.
He leaned in to kiss her, but as soon as his lips touched hers she saw something white slip stealthily out of the cart where she had been sleeping before and she held him off to get a good look at it. She recognised that blonde hair.
"Ytria," she said softly, hauling a stricken-looking Lancelot to his feet and dragging him with her.
"Where exactly are we going?" he asked, sounding hurt.
"The Saxon girl is out there somewhere in the camp, Lancelot," she said, stopping so that they were standing close. "Not only that, practically everyone is wearing weapons and she knows how to use them, I can just tell."
He nodded reluctantly and detached himself from her. "I'll search this side of the camp, you do that one,"
She nodded, but when she turned away she nearly cried with the effort it had taken her to withstand those gorgeous brown eyes, and she felt bad for doing that to him, but she knew that Ytria was a potential threat to anyone sleeping in the camp.
She found the young, blonde girl silently unsheathing Galahad's sword, although thankfully she didn't use it on anyone in the vicinity just yet. Jess followed her to the edge of the camp and then watched her sit down on her knees and place the sword at her heart.
"Watch yourself with that knife, Ytria," she said softly. "That's sharp, you know,"
The Saxon girl began to cry and dropped the sword, which Jess then retrieved and sheathed, having picked up the empty scabbard from off Galahad's weapons as she passed them.
"You don't understand," Ytria said, tears running down her cheeks.
Jess nodded and pulled the girl to her feet, wrapping her cloak around her and escorting her back to the cart. "You're not going to do yourself any good by killing yourself, I know that,"
She dropped Galahad's sword by his sleeping form again and caught Lancelot's eye from across the camp as she hauled the young Saxon girl back into the cart. He didn't look too happy.
She looked at Ytria, who had that crazed, "just release me from this world" look on her face, and decided that she was more likely to kill herself. Much as she would have liked it to be otherwise, Jess concluded that the business with Lancelot could be resolved tomorrow, whereas Ytria mightn't have a tomorrow, judging by the state she was in.
"Have you ever known what it's like to want to kill yourself?" she asked, throwing the cloak off her shoulders.
Jess laughed and sat back against the inside of the cart. "You feel like there's no way out except upwards. You feel like you could disappear and no one would care. By the time you've reached 'suicidal' you're too blind to see anything that's going on. You hate yourself for burdening people with your presence."
Ytria looked at her in shock and she laughed again, mirthlessly. "My mother killed herself after my father died, and for all I know my little brother may have done the same thing. My mother left a note."
"What happened to your brother?" Ytria asked quietly.
She shrugged. "He ran away. He'd be twelve this year, I think… if he's still alive."
Ytria tucked her knees in under her chin and sighed. "Are you married?"
Jess snorted derisively. "Me? No."
Ytria looked at her again. "But you're older than me,"
Jess nodded. "It's a religious thing, what with me being a gildatore,"
Ytria sighed. "I am… was married, before, in Saxony. But then I was stolen in one of the Roman raids."
"What raids?" Jess asked, confused.
"Honorius," Ytria said, as if stating the obvious. "He was raiding Saxon shores and stealing grain and horses and women. That's why the Saxons are invading."
Jess opened her mouth and then shut it again. Then she leapt to her feet and dragged Ytria out of the cart, hoping that Guinevere and Arthur were finished whatever it was they were doing out in the forest. She found Arthur, thankfully alone, leaning against a tree. When she called his name he sighed and then looked up at her questioningly.
"Did you know that Honorius had been raiding Saxon lands?" she asked him. "Ytria says that that's why they're invading; in revenge for all their stolen grain and horses and women."
Arthur's reaction was exactly the same as hers had been, only he leapt to his feet and grabbed his sword instead of the Saxon girl. "I'll kill him,"
She put a calming hand on his arm. "At least wait until we get back to the Wall, Arthur. When we've got our discharges, you can tell Germanius about everything and have the bastard tried for treason."
Arthur glared at her hotly for a second and then sat back down, swearing to himself. "Can't we just pretend he was killed in a battle?" he asked plaintively.
Jess laughed and shook her head. "We need Alecto alive to get our discharges and he's bound to tell the truth. So you'd just be digging our hole deeper, Arthur."
He sighed and made a face. "Well, thanks for that, anyway. You've made me, if it's at all possible, even less proud to be a Roman."
"Everything will sort itself out, Arthur," she said, and then dragged the Saxon girl back to the caravan.
"What was your husband like?" Jess asked, wrapping her cloak around herself in the chilly wind.
Ytria sighed. "He was brave, and he was kinder than most of the men in our village. He was kinder than his father, anyway; he was the chief's son. My father was honoured when the chief approached him to ask if his son could marry me."
"How old were you?"
"I was fourteen," Ytria said, shivering slightly in the wind and ignoring Jess's gesture at the bearskin rug. "He was nineteen,"
"That's a bit early to get married, isn't it?" Jess asked, frowning. "For him, I mean."
Ytria nodded. "His father didn't think much of him, so he decided that he should try to produce an heir as soon as possible."
Jess laughed. "Why couldn't the father just have another kid?"
Ytria shook her head. "Saxon law states that only the first son can inherit anything. That law was laid down by our Gods, and not even the chief can counter that."
"How long ago was it that you got married?" Jess asked.
"Ten months," the girl said, and Jess shook her head. She was only fifteen!
My God, the Romans are messed up, she thought to herself. What kind of lunatics would steal a young girl married to the Saxon chief's son? No wonder they're being attacked by 'barbarians from every corner'. They keep stealing their children.
"What was his name?"
Ytria picked up the thick rug and wrapped it around herself finally, and then smiled slightly, remembering. "Cynric,"
-------------------
Jess woke the next morning to the sound of Dagonet yelling, and then hurriedly scrambled out of her cloak, grabbing her swords as she went. As an afterthought, though, when she noticed Guinevere still sleeping soundly, she also picked up her longbow and a single, black-feathered arrow.
She saw Honorius holding a knife to the young Lucan's neck and clenched her jaw in anger. Without even thinking, she walked into the clearing, raised the bow, sighted along the shaft and shot the fat Roman man in his considerable stomach. She handed Dagonet her Sarmatian sword and drew the Scytho-Median one, turning constantly in the centre of the circle, watching for the Roman soldiers to move. Lucan ran to Dagonet's leg and clung to him and one of the soldiers moved to attack them both, but Jess, acting on a command that was not her own, ducked in and slashed the man across the chest with her long, sabre-like sword.
Bors, Gawain and Tristan came loping into the clearing, swords drawn, on their horses, and Lancelot walked in with both of his swords over his shoulders.
"Is there a problem here?"
Jess glared at them all. "You either join us, or you join them," she said, motioning at Honorius and the other soldier.
The main Roman looked at the others helplessly and threw his sword on the ground. Jols came in and took their swords and they stood, looking embarrassed, to one side as Arthur came in.
He gave her a petulant look, like a child having its favourite toy taken away. "You said we weren't allowed to kill him,"
Jess laughed. "Arthur, you're somewhat older than thirty and have a Saxon army on your doorstep. Now is not the time to start acting like a child."
Tristan nodded, throwing a crossbow down onto the ground from one of the Saxon scouts he, Gawain and Bors had dispatched that morning.
"Armour-piercing," Gawain noted. "They're getting close, and they know it."
Arthur nodded. "Let's get moving,"
-------------------
At about midday they reached the frozen river. They all stood on the edge and winced as the ice groaned and creaked even when they stood still. Jess, knowing what was coming, changed into her armour and cursed the inventor of electrum, slinging all of her various weapons over her shoulders.
All the people in the coloumn that rode with them got fearfully out of the carts and spread out over the whole width of the river, trying not to put all of their weight in one place. The knights and Jessamine advanced cautiously across the frozen surface, waving the people behind them forward about twenty steps every time they checked that it was secure.
Saxon war drums broke through the frozen, silent air and all of their horses began to panic, rearing and plunging on the already unstable ice.
"Get back!" Bors shouted at the peasants and various others. "Get off the ice, or we're all done for!"
They stood on the edge of the river closest to the direction they had come from, the eight of them, holding their bows and waiting grimly as Jols set out about five dozen arrows in front of each of them. They were concentrating so hard on their impending doom that they didn't even notice all of the girls that they had rescued from Honorius turn up behind them, and Guinevere and Cimmeria take up their bows and join their line, until Jols started laying out arrows for them as well.
Jess was standing between Lancelot and Gawain, and, casting a glance at Gawain to make sure he wasn't listening too hard, she edged toward Lancelot. "Listen, Lancelot, about last night-"
He shook his head angrily. "I don't want to hear it, Jessamine,"
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, turning back to the approaching Saxon army.
He was silent for a while. "You look scared," he said finally, looking guilty.
She shrugged. "I don't like ice,"
He laughed unwillingly. "And there I was thinking that you might actually be human."
They were interrupted by the appearance of the Saxons across the other side of the river, and Jess sighed inwardly and steeled herself for the coming battle.
"You are afraid," Lancelot said softly, watching her face.
She nodded. "I don't want to die here on this godforsaken spit of land,"
"You won't," he said, keeping his eyes on the Saxons as they assembled on the other side of the river.
Ytria, her eyes wide, walked out in front of them, and then turned to look back at Jessamine.
"Get back, girl," Gawain said, horrified, but Ytria just ignored him.
"That's my husband," she said to Jess.
Jess looked at the frail young girl and then at the ice, and nodded slowly. "Go home, Ytria. Go home."
"What are you doing?" Lancelot hissed at her. "They'll think we kidnapped her, and then we'll never get out of this."
"I don't think so, Lancelot," she said, watching as Ytria tremblingly crossed the ice, zigzagging to avoid the thinner patches.
The Saxon man that she recognised as the chief's son from the movie was watching wide-eyed as Ytria crossed over to them and then knelt before him, sobbing into her hands. He then pulled her to her feet and hugged her, and then said something in her ear before she cast one last look back at Jess and then started to walk around the Saxon army. Cynric looked straight at Jess for a long moment, and then called one of his archers forward, to test how close their army could get to the knights before they would come under fire.
The Saxon archer's arrow fell some seventy metres short, and Arthur snorted derisively and waved Tristan, Dagonet and Bors forward.
"They seem to be waiting for an invitation,"
The three men raised their bows and pointed them at the sky, bending them back as far as they could go.
"We're far out of range," Guinevere said, appearing at Arthur's elbow, but he just looked at her as if to say, "Oh, yeah? Watch this,"
They loosed together, Tristan firing two arrows at the same time for added leverage and power, and the four arrows whistled through the mist that was forming above them from their breath and landed in three of the Saxon front line.
Cynric glared at them and then waved his men forward. The knights, Jessamine, Arthur, Guinevere and Cimmeria all raised their bows, and the strongest three – Tristan, Bors and Dagonet – fired a couple of arrows into the flanks of the approaching army, trying to get them to cluster together on the ice so that there would be so much weight in one place the river surface would give way.
The others all joined in as the dwindling Saxons came into their respective ranges, adjusting the aim of their bows gradually as the army got closer. Jess was in shock at her archery ability; she'd done it once before on Year 8 camp and been terrible at it, but now she could fire aimlessly and still hit someone.
The clustering Saxon army started to get a bit nervous as the ice creaked under them, and tried to spread out, but Cynric shouted at them to get back into formation and they did so fearfully. They kept walking across the ice.
"It isn't going to break," Lancelot said, horrified, and they all dropped their bows and got out what swords they had with them in order to fight hand-to-hand.
Jess kept waiting for Dagonet to run forward with his axe, but he didn't.
All bets are off, she thought glumly, as she watched the Saxons finally get within their archers' range. Now they were actually going to have to fight it out.
-------------------
Kelermes watched the approaching Saxon army with contempt. What a useless bunch of barbarians, she thought to herself. Then she noticed, through Jess's eyes, the heavy battleaxe lying with Dagonet's discarded bow, and grinned.
--------------------
Jess felt herself shoved aside by something, and turned to see who had pushed her, without noticing that her body had moved off on her. She looked down at her feet, and then at her hands, and then at her body, which had just grabbed Dagonet's axe and sprinted into the midground between the Saxons and the rest of the knights, swinging the axe high above her head and slamming it into the ice.
She felt better about being – as it were – disembodied when she got to watch Lancelot scream "Get back here!" worriedly in person, but it was still a really weird sensation. Then she noticed Cimmeria and Guinevere grab a big, round shield and run forward with it to shield her body from the Saxon archers, standing in front of her.
Another two or three swings, and Guinevere and Cimmeria would be swimming, Jess knew, because whatever was using her body didn't look like it was about to give up on annihilating the Saxons just for the sake of two girls' lives. She looked at Arthur's face and then made up her mind. She ran across the ice and then stopped, trying to figure out how to get back into her body.
She opted for the same strategy whatever was in there at the moment had used and took a bit of a run up before shoving hard on her own back. The heavy thud of the metal-laden black-haired vampire-looking woman that catapulted out of her body was enough to nearly break the ice itself, and Jess suddenly found herself holding an incredibly heavy axe very high over her head.
"Get out of the way!" she screamed at Guinevere and Cimmeria, and the girls took one look at her face and dashed off to where the knights were standing.
She summoned all of her rather disappointing strength and hurled the axe at the ice. It broke through with a sickening crunching sound, and she was so exhausted from swinging the axe once that she stumbled back just in time to escape the cracking river. The clustered flanks of the Saxons all sank into the ice, and the whole army backed away, but there were still a few arrows in the air from their last round of fire.
Standing up just at the wrong moment, Jess caught three of these, one in her left shoulder, one in the stomach and one in the right thigh, and the speed of their combined impacts carried her stumbling backwards before someone grabbed her and swung her into their arms, carrying her back behind the danger zone of the rapidly disintegrating ice.
Lancelot, who she discovered was the one who had carried her, set her on the ground and she immediately tried to walk over to her bow, but found that she couldn't put any weight on her right leg. Lancelot grabbed her, concerned, but she shook him off and then limped determinedly over to her bow, picked it up, and fired spitefully at the only remaining archer in the Saxon army.
It spiraled straight across the expanse of water and the archer went down. She saw Cynric incline his head at her, and turned away, whistling for Bartatua.
Arthur looked at her concernedly. "We need to get as far away from here as possible, Jessamine,"
She nodded. "That's why we're going to start riding now."
Bartatua came over and she silently cursed whoever had decided you mounted with your left leg instead of your right. She held tightly onto the pommel of the saddle with her right hand so as to not let her right leg collapse under her when she put all of her weight on it and then, using the same arm and her left leg in the stirrup as leverage, swung awkwardly into the saddle, having to use all of her many years of ballet to allow her to turn her right leg out far enough that the arrow didn't poke into the saddle.
Wincing anyway, she wrapped her left arm around her stomach and held the reins only in her right hand, sitting impatiently as the others mounted up as well. Cimmeria ended up riding pillion with Tristan, and Arthur took Guinevere in front of him on Palagius, while Galahad looked after Eunyphore and Maechises and Dagonet had Lucan riding with him.
She took one last look back at the Saxons and saw Cynric hugging Ytria again, and smiled slightly, thinking that at least one good thing had come out of all this.
-------------------
By sundown, Jess was so sore she had gone numb in several places that she actually needed for riding, so she kept nearly falling off onto Lancelot and Gawain, who rode on either side of her the whole way.
After about Lancelot's tenth near miss of catching her, he shook his head and exchanged an exasperated look with Gawain. "Arthur, we really need to stop,"
The knights in front of them looked at the dull, painful expression on Jess's face and then decided rather abruptly it was probably time to camp for the night.
She sat Bartatua for a minute or so before wearily, painstakingly swinging her right leg over the front of the saddle so that she didn't scrape what was left of the arrow (she had broken some of it off to make riding easier) on anything. She then sat and looked in horror at the long drop to the ground before Lancelot came over and held his arms up to her.
She sighed and then let him lift her down, and when her leg collapsed under her again he lifted her into his arms and carried her over to a bedroll – which she assumed vaguely was his – where he lay her down and disappeared for a short amount of time which in her pain was stretched out to about fifteen minutes. He came back holding a wineskin and handed it to her. She sniffed it suspiciously but her sense of smell was nearly completely atrophied with all the pain.
"It's water," he said, quietly, and she sighed gratefully and drank some of it.1
He took hold of the shoulder plate of her armour that had nearly stopped the arrow from hitting her and moved it sideways a little bit, stopping as she moaned in pain. "I need to get a look at the wound,"
She nodded and clenched her fists and jaw as he moved it again, this time gasping as he took hold of the arrow.
"It has to come out," he said, but in a tone of voice that was asking her permission.
She took a deep breath and then nodded. "Just do it,"
He waved at Cimmeria, who came over holding some material that had been torn into strips and a bowl of water that had been warmed on the fire. Jess looked up and saw Arthur being tended by Guinevere for an arrow wound in the neck and grinned at Lancelot, who nodded conspiratorially back, and then, while she was distracted, pulled a good two inches of the arrow out.
The arrowhead hurt the most to pull out and she bit her lip so hard as he did the first one that she was bleeding from there, too. Once it was out, he showed her the length of the bloodstain on the shaft of the arrow to indicate how far it had been inside of her. He then poured some of the warm water over her arm, causing it to sting, and wrapped one of the strips of cloth around it as a bandage, doing three to stem all of the bleeding.
"Can you move your arm?" he asked her, and she gave it an experimental wave.
"It hurts," she said, wincing.
He nodded. "But at least the arrow hasn't torn any of your muscles,"
She snorted. "What muscles?"
He laughed, and then looked at the arrow in her stomach. "This one will hurt more."
She sighed. "Oh, wonderful,"
He nodded sympathetically. "I'll have to go slow with this one, too, so as not to risk damaging any of your internal organs when I pull it out."
He broke the top twenty or so centimetres off it and then maneuvered her leather shirt over the jagged stump of the arrow shaft, pulling the shirt off the arrow. He then painstakingly pulled the bloodstained arrow out of her, taking care not to rip anything inside her stomach. Afterwards he struggled to get the bandage round her whole abdomen with the top on, so she sat up uncomfortably, reached around with her right hand and undid the strings, pulling the top off over her head.
By the time Lancelot had gotten those bandages on, Arthur had been looked after, and came over to kneel beside Lancelot.
"How is she?" he asked, concerned.
Jess laughed. "I think I'll live."
He nodded. "Are you hungry?"
She made a face. "I may be later,"
He smiled at her. "I'll make you something and keep it in the coals so it stays hot."
"Thank you," she said, and then winced as she lay back down.
Lancelot was looking uncomfortably at the arrow in her thigh, and she realised that he had to pull her leather pants off the shaft like he had done with the one in her stomach. She sat up again and undid her belt clumsily from her numb left fingers and lay it to one side, and then slid the leather pants down over her hips so that there was enough slack to pull them off the blue-feathered arrow2.
It was the most painful of all three of them, and Jess suspected that the arrowhead might have been scraping against her thighbone. Whatever the cause, though, she started to cry while he was pulling it out and she could hardly breathe even when it was gone and Lancelot was just pouring warm water over the wound. That injury also duly bandaged, she sat up stiffly and then couldn't manage to pull her pants back over the arrow wound.
"I'll go and get your dress," Lancelot said, standing up and moving away.
She slid her freezing leather boots off and laid them next to her belt, hoping that he would bring her calfskin boots as well. "Bloody hell,"
He reappeared, holding the dress, just as she was easing out of the long, clammy leather pants, and handed her the warm blue garment. "I brought your other boots, too,"
She smiled her thanks at him and then struggled into everything, eventually having to get Lancelot to hand her the black cloak that was still attached to her shoulder plates.
She lay back on the bedroll and then realised that it was his, sitting up again. "I should probably move,"
He shook his head and stopped her from standing up. "It's alright. Just stay there. Do you want any of that food?"
She shook her head weakly, feeling too tired to eat anything. "I don't think so,"
He nodded and put his hand on her forehead, evidently feeling for a fever. "I'll tell Arthur,"
He walked towards the campfire where all of the knights and various others were eating in silence. "She's not hungry," he said, looking back over his shoulder at her.
"Is she okay?" Guinevere asked anxiously.
Lancelot nodded wearily. "But it's a hard day's ride back to the Wall tomorrow which she won't be able to make riding by herself."
Arthur nodded thoughtfully. "She can ride with you, then,"
Lancelot nodded again. "She doesn't have a fever, so I think it's just a reaction to the pain. The arrow in her leg was right alongside her thighbone."
"Did they damage any of her muscles?" Arthur asked.
Lancelot shook his head. "Thankfully, it doesn't look like they did. She can still move everything, anyway. I was just wondering if I could borrow another cloak for her because it looks like it's going to be fairly cold tonight."
Arthur nodded and handed him his long red one. "She needs it more than I do,"
"How is it?" Lancelot asked, motioning at Arthur's neck.
Arthur shrugged. "I'll survive,"
"You sound like a Scythian, Arthur," Bors said, and they all laughed.
When Lancelot went back to check on Jessamine about two minutes later, she was asleep, so he laid the red cloak over her gently and then walked back to the campfire.
1 You can guess what she was afraid it would be.
2 Hooray for underwear!