Ooooh...you are seriously going to eviscerate me at the end of this chapter.
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Bedivere didn't look at the tree. Why should he? He knew what was there. One of the sick people, the people he hadn't known enough to save.
The woodsman had said he had to do it. If some of the sicker people had been buried in the ground, it could infect the ground and water around it. Bedivere had believed him. It had been smart, he'd thought, but sad and scary.
Now, though, he knew that the woodsman had been lying. It wasn't smart. It was just sad and scary.
Lose yourself up in the sky
Rope will make you dance up high
Bedivere closed his eyes.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. He had liked some of the sick people. The poet, and the fine lady, and the night boy. They had been nice. If he had known they weren't really sick, if he had been smarter, stronger, better...
But now they were dead, which meant they weren't coming back. And now the scarf man was with them. What did they say his name was? Merlin?
Merlin was the name of a bird. Bedivere tried very hard not to think of birds in trees.
The horses were stopped. They were snorting. Bedivere couldn't really blame them. Deeper in, it got scary, even if you were a horse. There weren't animals in the Rotting Trees except for crows and ravens. And bugs.
But they really did need to go forward. The woodsman buried most of the sick people, but not all. He didn't bury any of the animals he caught. Most of the things rotting in the trees were animals.
Most.
Bedivere pulled up any courage he could find, and said, "We need to walk now."
All the Knights looked at him. The prince was still staring at the skeleton with a face that looked so twisted up and complicated Bedivere knew he wouldn't be able to know what it was in a million years.
Something in the Knight's faces made him say, again, "He buries most of them."
Their faces changed so quickly he wasn't sure if his words had been good or bad.
The dark-straw-haired Knight coughed and looked at the prince. He didn't move, so the Knight took some deep breaths and got off the horse, nodding at the other Knights.
Sir Gwaine helped him down, but Bedivere yelped when his stupid twisted foot said hello again. He'd forgotten about that. Without a word, Sir Gwaine picked him up like he was a long sack of grain. Bedivere flushed, but he knew his stupid foot made it so he couldn't walk.
Stupid tall horse.
Sir Gwaine looked at the prince and said, "Arthur."
Slowly, the prince turned to look at them. He seemed surprised to see them on the ground.
The dark-skinned Knight said gently, "We have to walk from here."
It took a couple seconds, but the prince nodded, then got off his horse.
They started walking.
As they went in deeper, there were more skeletons. Deers and rabbits and raccoons and squirrels and a lot more. There were ones that weren't hung up as long, too, ones that were still being picked at by the crows and still looked like they were moving with all the bugs in them.
There were three more people.
Soon, Bedivere saw the spot he knew. It meant the clearing was just ahead, the place where the woodsman buried most of the people.
"It's ahead," he whispered, "it's just right ahead."
The Knights stopped.
"There's bushes," he went on, "Some bushes that way, and we can hide and see." he pointed to the left.
Carefully, they circled around to the bushes, thick and leafy, an crept forward, Bedivere still being held by Sir Gwaine. He noticed none of the grown-ups were breathing.
They looked out of the bushes and saw.
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This is not happening.
It was the only possible explanation. This was not real because this was not happening.
He was not seeing a clearing filled with low mounds of bare earth.
He was not seeing a small man leaning against a tree of skeletons.
But most of all, Arthur was not seeing Merlin, lying still, so shatteringly still, eyes open and staring at nothing.
He had known. He had known, yet knowing wasn't the same as believing.
Wasn't the same as seeing.
Wasn't the same as understanding.
He had never realized how inadequate simply knowing was.
Then Merlin twitched.
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Leon prayed to all the gods in existence he hadn't just imagined that.
Merlin had moved. Merlin had moved. It shouldn't have been possible, and his eyes were still blank and staring, but Leon prayed anyhow.
Then his eyes darted to the side.
Leon caught his breath and looked to his companions, to confirm he wasn't going crazy. Elyan was dumbfounded, a look of surprise edging over his features. Gwaine was all but reeling, and a slow smile was spreading on his face. Arthur was crouching, stock-still, and something Leon had only on rare occasion seen was showing.
Arthur was vulnerable.
"Alive," Gwaine breathed, hardly more than a whisper, "he's alive."
Leon turned his head away and felt a grin overtaking him as he looked back at the clearing.
He's alive.
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Elyan didn't know what to say.
It was unbelievably fortunate to find Merlin alive. From the reactions he saw from the corner of his eye, he knew Gwaine was only kept from leaping up and down in excitement by the presence of the small man in the clearing, Leon was grinning as if realizing the sun was going to rise again tomorrow, and Arthur seemed to be in some sort of shock.
Elyan felt a smile of his own creep over him. While he hadn't, comparatively, known Merlin that long, the young man was a bit like Elyan imagined a little brother would be. It was enhanced by the closeness of him and Guinevere.
Truth be told, Elyan had been saddened when Merlin had been presumed dead, but he had feared far more what his sister's reaction would be. Elyan could admit to himself, however painful it was, that Merlin had been a better brother to Guinevere than he had been, even if he was trying to make up for that deficiency now.
Now, though, he felt the smile grow wider as he contemplated his sister's reaction to Merlin, safe and sound, back at Camelot, where he would soon be.
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Gwaine honestly wasn't aware of holding the little kitchen boy in his arms, or of the rotting odor still woven in the trees, or of anything at all, really.
Merlin was alive. He was less than ten yards away, he was breathing, he was conscious, and he was alive.
Only tenuous self-control kept Gwaine from leaping to his feet, running over, skewering the woodsman in less time than it took to blink and giving Merlin a bone-crushing hug (he'd noticed nobody ever even thanked Merlin, least of all the princess, which was thoroughly exasperating; especially considering some of the events that had recently come to light).
Except the woodsman was a lot closer to Merlin than Gwaine was, and even with the element of surprise they couldn't be sure they wouldn't put Merlin in danger through that course of action.
So, they would have to strategize.
Gwaine had always loathed strategizing.
Still, if it would get Merlin back in one piece and not strung up as a demented birdfeeder, he would consider it in a favorable light.
Merlin's eyes flickered again.
"You're bloody creepy, you know that?"
In an instant, any and all distractions were wiped away as Gwaine zeroed in on the woodsman eyeing Merlin.
The small man glared at Merlin's prone body with something bordering on wariness mixed with fear. "Creepy."
Merlin displayed absolutely no reaction whatsoever.
For the first time, Gwaine realized his friend was on a sled-like contraption, his head slightly elevated. His eyes, which had seemed blank and deathlike before they had seen him move, leading them to assume he was dead, actually were blank and deathlike, holding no comprehension to what was before him. Gwaine wasn't sure if Merlin was even seeing anything.
The hairs on Gwaine's neck rose up.
There was something wrong. There was something very wrong.
The others seemed to sense it as well, and he felt them tense beside him.
Glaring for a moment longer, the woodsman shook his head. "I -"
He paused, appearing to remember something. He took a few steps back from Merlin, then said, "I hope you're insane in there."
WHAT?
Instant, electrifying rage tore through Gwaine, the sheer strength of it shocking the tiny, remaining rational part of his mind.
Merlin wasn't okay. Merlin could be insane. He should have seen it, should have noticed the moment he laid eyes on him, should have killed the helminth woodsman the second he saw him because he hurt Merlin.
"That's..." Bedivere's whisper make him automatically look down. There was puzzlement mixed with shock on his face. "That bracelet thingy, it's..."
Gwaine looked back and saw some sort of silver cuff around Merlin's right wrist. He glanced to the others to confirm, and saw the same steely determination in their faces. Arthur in particular was staring at the woodsman with a face that made his earlier interrogation of Agravaine seem downright benevolent.
"But...but that's for -" Bedivere's stunned voice was still quiet, but not quiet enough.
The woodsman whipped his head around to stare at the bushes, pulling out a hunting knife from his belt. He was half-crouched, in a classic defense pose.
Chancing a quick glance to Arthur, Gwaine knew that their advantage of surprise was shot. With eye-blurring speed, Arthur drew his sword and crashed through the bushes.
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Bedivere suddenly found his world flipped around and had the breath punched out of him. Trying to find the sky again, he wondered what just happened.
Oh. He was on the ground. Again. Sir Gwaine had dropped him.
A least it wasn't that high.
But thoughts still whirled around and around in his head, so fast he couldn't catch them before they flew away again. They were bouncing and laughing as he tried to follow them, but he was too little to get them.
The scarf man has the silver bracelet on.
The woodsman put it on him.
The silver bracelet is for sorcerers.
Bedivere twisted around just in time to see the Knights reach his p - the woodsman.
Something twisted the woodsman's face, and Bedivere realized what it was, from when he had been living in the cabin and saw that look only a few times.
The woodsman knew something nobody else did.
Time seemed to slow, and Bedivere saw every single detail like it was being scratched into his skull.
The woodsman shouted something, and pushed out his hand.
And the Knights went flying across the clearing as his papa's eyes flashed gold.