Battles, Bonds, and Burning Bridges

They stayed at the druid camp for three and a half days, having contact with only Freya, occasionally Jean, and another man the two times Freya wasn't available to bring them a meal. The replacement didn't talk much, but Freya actually seemed to make an effort to stay and talk to them for hours after mealtimes. Gwaine claimed that, judging by what he'd seen coming in, there weren't many people their age in the camp, so she was probably enjoying it while it lasted.

Though when Arthur said she talked to them for hours he should really have said she talked to Merlin for hours, with Gwaine occasionally joining in and Arthur only adding to the discourse when Gwaine said something particularly stupid.

The three days passed in a haze of cooling temperatures, flapping canvas, and recovering muscles. God, they were going to get so sore when they got back on the road. At least Gwaine's ankle, which he'd stepped on weirdly in the campfire melee, had time to stop throbbing, and Merlin's ankles were no longer a complete mess from stepping on tussocks and rocks he couldn't see. Arthur's various cuts and bruises that he hadn't noticed in the fight scabbed over or faded. They managed to get a bandage on the cut on Merlin's neck, which was nearly invisible after a few hours (and that made Arthur very uneasy, but maybe not as much as it would have a month ago).

Finally, unexpectedly, the druids replaced Gwaine's sheath without any of them even asking. These people just gave and gave without expecting anything in return! Arthur didn't trust it at all. That just wasn't how the world worked, and certainly wasn't how magicians worked. Magicians were crafty and manipulative by nature since they spent so much time unnaturally manipulating the world around them. Jean would probably spring some surprise price on them while they were leaving. Freya was on a campaign to earn their trust. Arthur would not betray his forefathers by forgetting their wisdom. He'd already forgotten once, though momentarily, that Merlin was the asset. He'd actually forgotten that Merlin had magic, and it almost got them all killed and doomed Camelot. He could not afford to forget again.

But god, these people just seemed so nice.

~o8o~

It was around noon on the fourth day. Gwaine had just come back from boiling water at the wide, rushing river within earshot of their tent. He was settling back onto the ground cross-legged when Merlin broke the silence. "Hey, Gwaine? What does Freya look like? And–and Jean, too, of course."

Gwaine stretched, seemingly bored, but Arthur saw him side-eye Merlin mischievously. "Uh, black hair a little past her shoulders, skinny, always wears a hooded cloak in some shade of purple or green. Brown eyes. Her nose is straight but kinda has a knob on the end–right, Victor?" (Arthur grunted affirmation). "I'd tell you about Jean, but I don't think you're really interested in him. Just imagine a cold, slimy fish but muscular and middle-aged."

Merlin considered, tracing a path in the dirt with one finger. "Huh. I imagined her as a brunette."

Now Arthur scooted to the middle of the tent and joined the conversation–he'd actually been curious about this. "Wait, so you imagine what people look like? How do you decide?"

"Um, based on your voice, and I guess on personality. Freya's voice is really pretty. Sort of husky and high? Did you notice that? And she has sort of an odd accent on some words that's nice. And she's really nice, and funny. I kind of tend to think of all nice people as brunettes. I can't really imagine faces, so there's sort of a blob."

Gwaine grinned and bumped him on the shoulder. "Sounds like you're infatuated with this girl." Arthur caught Merlin's quick wince and the way he ever-so-casually lifted a hand to guard his upper arm where the witch-bind was surrounded by blisters, swollen and raw. Arthur's hand drifted, again, to his sheath as his chest panged with another one of those crazy impulses that had been hitting him with increasing frequency. But no, even if he could give up the key without betraying his country, it was far too late. Merlin would abandon him, now that the company of Gwaine gave him another option for a guide. He just couldn't do it.

Gwaine apparently noticed the reaction, too, because a pitying look crossed his face and he leaned back on his elbows, away from the other boy. Merlin started to reply with good-natured antipathy, "Gwaine, you can shove–"

And then the screaming started.

All three of them tore out of the tent so fast that Merlin actually caught a foot on the canvas under the flap and sprawled face-first on the ground. Arthur backtracked to grab his arm impatiently, and then they continued sprinting through the puffs of dirt kicked up by the robed people running in all directions around them. Arthur barely dodged a man carrying what looked like a miniature tree in a pot (was it...glowing?) and a woman who seemed to be juggling globules of water in the air above her hands. They took a shortcut through a copse of trees and came out in the main camp clearing, which as it turned out had only been about 25 meters from their own clearing. Here, however, the soil was less chalky and more of a reddish color, like glowing coals. Artur distantly noticed the tight spiral of tents surrounding a massive fire pit and the way that trees actually sprang up here and there throughout the clearing, some of their branches actually incorporated into the tents' support systems. Their dark green canopies and the wine-tinted earth turned what would be a bright, hot clearing into a cool, shady space speckled with the shadows of leaves. The dark outlines of curling branches writhed on the ground like thick snakes. There were lines strung above everything from which dangled colorful pendants, baubles, paper lanterns, and other things Arthur couldn't even begin to identify. As they dodged brown tents and raced toward the sounds of a fight, Arthur spotted Jean standing close to the fire pit in a hurricane of sound and motion, issuing orders to the other druids.

He spotted them at the same time and immediately waved off a dark-skinned man in an orange robe. The shifting leaf-shadows on his face made its quick changes seem more fluid than normal. "We have been breached on the south side!" he shouted as they ran toward him. When they got close enough to speak normally, he explained in a hurried mishmosh of words, "Esseti guards. Latest reports say at least 30, maybe more–overwhelming numbers. Well-trained, well-armed. They must have used sorcery to detect and penetrate our border." He licked his lips and leaned in closer, eyes flickering from tree to tree behind them. "My...with a few exceptions, my people are not warriors." His fear was almost tangible, like Merlin's. "You could run, now. We will run as soon as we have our most important belongings stowed. However, if you could stay and aid us in the fight for time? It would be, well–appreciated."

Gwaine, standing to Arthur's right, made eye contact over his shoulder. There was no request in his eyes this time.

The druids had given so much–not that that mattered. He flung that thought at the back of his skull. But Gwaine had been an extremely useful ally.

"Fine. Merlin, stay here. We'll be back in a few minutes."

~o8o~

Merlin waited on the southern edge of the camp, where he could best hear the battle raging, and panicked quietly. Gods, when not being able to see wasn't terrifying it was just so damned frustrating. He couldn't be the one to read shipping manifests and royal decrees to his friends and their parents in the village anymore. He couldn't picture what this new girl, who he really liked and might even like, actually looked like. He didn't know what any of his companions looked like. He pictured Gwaine as a bit like a travelling minstrel he'd seen when he was young. Arthur he had trouble imagining. He was probably some chisel-jawed heroic-looking bastard. Then again, he was a bit of a snake, so maybe the long greasy hair route was more accurate. Cold eyes—that, he could picture.

But taciturn cold fish or not, he did things. How had Merlin contributed to his own rescue? He could barely cook or sew, leaving him feeling useless and lazy every night at camp. He couldn't even walk without help anymore without risking smashing into a tree. He couldn't leave Arthur even though he knew he wasn't being told everything or really anything.

(Though part of him had to stop and consider if he wanted to leave. Some selfish, idealistic part kept mumbling whenever he thought of it about whether it would really be so bad to join some big crusade, take down someone he hated and who was hurting so many people. And another, darker part in the shadows behind that whispered stories of what happened to people who couldn't do things everybody else could do: they were a burden on their families until their families left or died, and then they wandered to a city and ended up on cold stone streets, begging in the filth, and then one day they weren't on that corner anymore. No one noticed.)

When they'd come for him in the night last year, surrounding the shack where he lived with his mother and Gaius, torches blazing, he hadn't done anything. Hadn't been able to reach for that lightning that had crackled inside of him the day he'd knocked down the old man's tree. He hadn't wanted to hurt any of these people who'd so recently been his neighbors, his mother's friends. He had done nothing as the blacksmith's sons dragged him across the dirt and out the front door by his ankles, just watched his mother and Gaius with wide, empty eyes as the women whom his mother sang rowdy folk songs with in the fields held them bodily back from coming to his aid. He'd almost burned that night. Maybe it would've been better if he had, if the soldiers on horseback hadn't arrived in a flurry of long legs and clods of earth and spirited him away, filling him for a few painfully ironic moments with hope. (He'd hurt a lot more people now than he would have if he'd struggled then.)

Anyway, now, when his friends and the people who had helped him so much needed him, he again couldn't. Do. Anything. The animal part of his brain was terrified, sure, but it always was these days. On a deeper, soul level Merlin was just so tired of being scared. He was tired of only seeing in nightmares and flashbacks. He was tired of never fully knowing who he could trust or who was even there. He wasn't terrified, not this time. He was just exhausted and frustrated . . .

. . . and angry.

~o8o~

Arthur ducked another swing and came up with a knife under the chain mail on a stomach, then barely had time to whirl and block a stab to the back of his neck. This fight was much faster and much deadlier than the scuffle at the campsite had been. He was getting irrationally angry and frustrated in this fight in which his side seemed to make no headway. There were just so many, and they kept popping up out of thin air at the border to replace their felled comrades. Dodge, stab, stab, block, cut, block, stab, roll, block, block, block, block, throat, leg, pommel punch. He was swinging harder than usual, and he knew it was tiring him out, but the burning coal deep within his chest spurred him on. A glance to the right as he backed up to give himself breathing room showed that Gwaine had fallen into the same sort of rhythm. Gwaine was visibly bleeding from a half dozen cuts, but at least he was being more successful at keeping fighters at a distance than in their last two fights. Wow, he really is capable of learning. The druids were surprisingly effective even with their motley collection of magical weapons–it turned out the potted tree was a weapon, who knew–and all around them soldiers fell to bright lights and vines bursting out of the ground or occasionally just keeled over with panicked looks visible through their partially-open helmets. There were more armored bodies on the ground than robed ones, but there were also many more armored people in the clearing. Arthur hoped Jean would give the signal to stop sooner rather than later.

Then there was no time for thinking about anything other than not taking a sword to the jaw or leg or throat or stomach or arm. He ducked, swung, stabbed, ducked–

–and suddenly lost his footing when the lights went out.

The clearing was almost pitch black. Very dimly he could see the light clay-like dirt they'd kicked up drifting silently at knee height like the cloud layer at a genie's floating castle. A few motes of dust were stained a faint silver, though he couldn't see the source of the light. The same silvery sheen picked out singular scales and links in the armor of the men around him. He backed up quickly toward the main campsite to be out of range when the disoriented soldiers regained their presence of mind. Very dimly through the trees he could see that the colorful lanterns above the druid tents were somehow lit, casting a soft, warm rainbow glow over tent poles and revealing the vague impression of gnarled branches. The red soil sparkled like a galaxy soaked in blood. There was a figure standing beneath one of the trees.

Arthur felt a weird, queasy feeling in his stomach, and then he realized when he went to shift his stance that his feet were no longer touching solid ground. He kicked and fought, but he couldn't stop himself from continuing to rise slowly upward. A chorus of rough shouts and tear-filled curses echoed around the area, so he assumed this wasn't only happening to him. A familiar smell reached his nose, one he'd come across recently, just a few days ago–burning flesh. That was it.

The chainmail under his jerkin started to squeeze.

Something slashed lightning-quick across his leg, and he cried out involuntarily. The other yells grew louder, more panicked. The soldiers, he realized. This isn't their sorcerer. It's friendly. So why am I...?

His dagger and sword started to pull, worming their way out of his sweaty hands. He tried to grip them tighter, but the force jerking them away was inhumanly strong. He blacked out for a second as the chainmail got unbearably tight, cutting off his air supply, and then gasped back into consciousness as he felt the links along his ribs snapping. His hands were now empty.

The sunlight came back, and Arthur was dropped without ceremony back to earth.

It took him a moment to register the scene before him. All of the soldiers lay in various crumpled positions around the battleground. He could see their chests rising and falling, but they were unconscious except for a scattered few who were letting out muffled groans. Pieces of metal twisted into tortured shapes covered the ground in an artificial, glistening leaf litter. Weapons were still flying through the air, but this time they made short trips directly to the hands of druids who were busily cleaning up the area. Arthur felt around him for his own blades. Gone. He slid a hand into each of his sheaths. Those knives were also gone, and his chest armor was a mess dangling in pieces from his shoulders under the tunic. He felt naked without any protection.

He slowly stood up and walked with a few of the druids, who had finished their quick tidying mission, to where they were gathering in a circle at the edge of the copse of trees separating this clearing from the red-soiled one. Leaning heavily against a tree was–Merlin? But what about the–

The witch-bind. His sheaths were empty. Where is the witch-bind key?

Arthur frantically raked the ground with his eyes, then dropped to his knees to shuffle along and comb it more thoroughly, ignoring the dull pain when metal fragments ground into the flesh under his kneecaps. He had to find it, where was it?!

He came up short at a pair of booted feet under yellow robes. Springing to his feet, he found himself inches from the man, who held a very familiar key accusingly under his nose. "Looking for this?" The druid wrinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes. "It reeks of void. Just like him." He indicated Merlin with a sideways nod.

Crap. Crap.

He wanted to snatch the key out of the man's hand, but Jean would still talk. Could he quickly kill Jean without anyone noticing? No, he didn't have any weapons, so he couldn't do it fast enough. Could he deny that it was his? Maybe, but his first guilty reaction had probably given it all away, and anyway Merlin would know what it was and where it came from.

In the end all he could do was trail through the dust clouds after Jean, who carried the key in front of him like he was bearing a crucifix down the aisle.

As they got closer he could make out what Merlin was saying to his five or six admirers. "I mean, that disarmament spell is pretty much the only actually useful one I know." Arthur interpreted "actually useful" to mean "not horribly lethal." "I couldn't really tell who was who, though, so I just targeted anyone wearing cold iron. Ar–Victor and Gwaine are going to be pissed off when they wake up." Despite his lighthearted tone Merlin's smile looked more like a grimace, and he was leaning heavily against the rough bark of a tree while one hand clutched his opposite shoulder tightly, over the witch-bind. The smell of burnt flesh got stronger the closer Arthur came. Oh, god.

Arthur felt dazed at this point. He wasn't in his body but was watching from above as it walked on leaden feet through the thick, heavy odor of burnt person. He almost didn't believe this was really happening. He'd failed. He'd let down Camelot. He'd let down his father. He was probably dead.

Jean pushed his way into the group, stunning the others into silence. He looked at the key and then the witch-bind, and Arthur could tell from his ever-shifting face at what moment he noticed the matching filigree on both. He placed the key delicately in Merlin's gesturing hand. "I believe this is yours."

Merlin fingered it for a moment, and Arthur felt confusion radiate off of him, followed by recognition and then an immense jumble of things: relief, joy, horror, more bewilderment. He laughed once, softly, the sound full of disbelief. Slowly, he switched it between his hands and brought it slowly up to the keyhole. It fit on the second prod and turned smoothly. Arthur felt something snap in his chest as the witch-bind clattered to the ground.

Gwaine chose that moment to swagger up and break the moment of silence even birds seemed to be observing. "What happ–oh, Merlin! How the blazes did you get that off?"

Merlin's voice was very quiet. It still carried a bit of sick, bitter amusement, and Arthur realized with a jolt that he could no longer feel Merlin's emotions. "Victor had it on him the whole time."

Gwaine froze, warring emotions twisting his features into complex knots, and then his face went blank. He leaned into Arthur's personal space, solid as a pillar, face now unreadable except for the cold fury evident in his flaring nostrils. He stood still for a moment, maintaining eye contact, then drew back one fist leopard-quick and punched Arthur full-force in the jaw. Arthur, unprepared, went down in the scorched dirt, cheek throbbing. His mouth was suddenly very dry. The battleground was full of the dead and the living, but everyone might as well have been dead, because the standing druids simply looked on with accusing eyes. No one moved to help him up. He scrambled to his feet unaided, and Gwaine walked away without looking back.

Merlin, however, turned toward him. And the weird thing was, even though Arthur couldn't feel the other kid's emotions anymore, even though the eyes were the windows to the soul and Merlin didn't have any, Arthur could tell exactly what Merlin was feeling at that moment.

Betrayal. Like a red-hot rope around your neck. It didn't feel good.

Merlin bumped into Arthur's shoulder as he passed him. It could have been accidental. The guy couldn't see; it was most likely accidental.

Arthur didn't think it was accidental.

Merlin stalked off in the direction of Gwaine's voice calling from the edge of the clearing.