Battle Lines and Borderlands

Arthur was almost pathetically grateful when, three days later, they started talking to him again.

"They" not just being Merlin and Gwaine anymore but also including Freya. Jean had sent her as a guide after the battle for the druid camp. Apparently Merlin resembled some cult figure named "Emrys" in Jean's subsect of the Old Religion. Merlin was not as enthused as you would expect from a teenaged boy who'd just been told he was the Messiah; he kept making a face like he'd swallowed a rotten egg and dodging the subject whenever Freya brought it up. Gwaine teased him mercilessly about it. Arthur didn't say anything to anyone. He didn't have a right to say anything to anyone. He was lucky they'd even allowed him to come along.

Merlin was actually the one who had convinced the others to let him come and to continue following the same route, though the second part was mostly because they were closest to the Sinhasana border anyway. Merlin was also the first to tap on the wall of silence that had built between the rest of the group and Arthur with each dinner spent alone across one clearing or another with only the sound of chewing and rustling leaves, away from warm laughter and a warmer campfire. Ironically, he reached out while Gwaine was helping him redress and rebandage the horrific burn on his arm, where the sharp outline of the witch-bind could be clearly picked out in blisters, blackened skin, and half-melted flesh that didn't even look human.

Arthur was throwing more sticks on the fire and Merlin was hissing through teeth clenched so tight Arthur worried they would shatter when it happened. Merlin swiveled one ear in his direction and suddenly said in a strained but cheerful voice, "Victor, I think the fire's gonna smother if you put any more of those on."

Arthur froze for a second, then put down the rest of his handful of spiny twigs. ". . . Yeah, we'll see how you feel when you're freezing your bony ass off tonight." Merlin laughed, then sucked air in through his teeth as Gwaine hit a particularly tender blister. Gwaine glanced furtively at Arthur out of the corner of his eye, assessing.

Then Gwaine's eyes went back to his hands, and his dopey grin returned. It didn't even look fake. "Seeing as it's your turn to cook, dying of hypothermia might be preferable."

Arthur didn't know where he stood, how he'd earned this goodwill, but he was going to take advantage of it. "Says the guy who doesn't haveto cook at all."

"Hey, that was your choice, mate, not mine!"

Freya walked into the clearing carrying two dead rabbits, dangling them over her shoulder by their long, velvety ears. "What was the choice of whom?"

"Eh, it's not important. Just Victor and Gwaine being idiots."

"Oh. Not surprising." Despite her lighthearted tone, she was looking hard at Arthur as she spoke.

Merlin, of course, couldn't see this and continued despite the tension in the clearing. "At least with you here we have a 50/50 intelligence to idiocy ratio. You have no idea how I suffered when I was outnumbered."

"I cannot imagine the torment you endured."

Then Gwaine took a sip from his waterskin and Merlin declared that he definitely smelled alcohol, he was sure this time, and everything seemed to be back to normal. Except it really wasn't, and Arthur didn't think it ever could be again.

~o8o~

"How did you get the job of chaperoning us, anyway?

Freya shrugged. "I am trained to an amateur level in combat spells, and they had to pick someone on rather short notice. Jean made the choice." They were sitting at dusk around their campfire, which had not smothered due to Arthur's attentions but actually crackled large and cheerful, throwing dancing orange patterns up their necks and over heat-stung cheeks and noses. Arthur was glad he'd put in the extra effort since tonight was the first night that was edging toward being as cold as it should be in the middle of winter. Tonight, also, the sky wasn't bleeding into green or purple or orange or blue at the edge of the horizon. The whole dome was just black.

"Aren't your parents worried?"

"We lost my mother and father in the last plague. I don't remember them; Jean and the community have raised me since."

Arthur nodded. "I'm sorry." He cut his eyes left to Gwaine, now the most mysterious member of the group to him. "What about your family?"

Gwaine shrugged. "Similar schtick." He answered Arthur's suspicious glance with one of his own. "You?"

". . . They're both still around." She's in every room he enters. And he somehow manages to drag her into every single conversation.

Merlin saved him yet again by leaning forward, frowning. The firelight was playing some sort of prank with his tattoos, making them glimmer as if carved-in and inlaid with gold. "Wait, Freya, so Jean is supposed to take care of you, but he still set you this dangerous and unnecessary task. You're sixteen or seventeen, right?"

"Seventeen. And Jean does what is best for the community. It is an understandable and honorable priority." Her dispassionate voice disagreed with her brief sucked-lemon facial expression. She quickly changed the subject. "Victor, what is your family like?"

". . . They're fine."

"Christ, that's really all you have to say about the people who raised you? Bloody ungrateful," teased Gwaine, but his eyes were hard.

"Yes, Victor, I believe we would all like to know more about you." Freya's gaze was steady, challenging, and a few days before he could have brushed this off, but now the ice was a lot thinner. But god damn it, he would not let them make him feel guilty for doing his duty.

"My father and I aren't on the best terms. It's not important."

"What does that mean, though? We're curious," Gwaine pushed. Arthur looked to his right, but this time Merlin just sat and said nothing, resting his chin on his intertwined knuckles.

"Yeah, well, he seems to think his attention and approval are worth more than all the gold in his–in Kaliwat. Guards them like a dragon on its horde." Arthur swallowed the acidic ball of guilt on his tongue and added, "Should we start on the fingernails now and get it over with? Is this a conversation or an interrogation?"

Merlin snorted. "Wow, Victor. That hurts. The way my arm does. 'Cause, y'know, my arm really hurts."

There was a heavy silence for a few minutes as three sets of eyes and four faces avoided each other, turning instead toward the incongruously cheerful crackling campfire. Around them, the shadows seemed to lengthen, to drag the figures back into the impenetrable blackness that leaked out toward them, oozing between the dark trunks of the surrounding trees. Smoke wafted into the face of each seated teenager, smelling sharp and corrosive like a knife's edge or a sulfuric geyser or the end of the world, but no one shifted away.

Then Merlin apparently couldn't contain himself any longer. "Also, just so you know, dragons don't actually hoard gold. They're not sure where people get that."

The mood was shattered, and everyone stirred back to life as the shadows subsided and resumed their dance. "Oh? And how many dragons do you know, Merlin?" Freya jabbed teasingly.

The promise of mischief quirked up on one side of Merlin's smile. "Two. Well, one familiarly."

Everyone else was struck dumb. Arthur actually audibly choked. Freya was the first to recover, and she reached over to poke Merlin, who was cackling at their reaction. "Explain."

Once he calmed down enough to get a coherent sentence out, he obeyed. "Well, I'm twelve or thirteen back in Ealdor. I'm out in a field by myself one day when I hear this big whooshing sound and a lot of screaming from the village proper. So I look up, and there's this huge leathery thing with a bunch of sharp teeth swooping toward me at high speed. I know I should run, but I'm just kind of frozen, thinking, 'Bloody hell, I'm going to die.' But it lands, and in this really deep voice it tells me I'm dragonkin or some crap and dumps off this big egg and tells me to raise it, and then it flies off. I, being twelve and therefore very stupid, take this in stride and lug the egg home to ask my uncle Gaius how to hatch it, but on the way I decide to name it, because that's the first thing you do with new pets, and out pops this pure white baby dragon! Her name's Aithusa, by the way. She's lucky I got her at twelve instead of eight, because then it probably would've been Dragon-y."

Everyone took a few seconds to process this. Arthur was aware that he still appeared to be trying to swallow something very large and very gross and failing miserably. Tick, tock. Merlin looked smug.

Gwaine finally broke the silence. In a wondering voice, he got out, "Wait, 'dragonkin.' So your sister's a lizard?"

"Dragons are not lizards! They're like people, just...scalier."

"Are you certain there were not any odd mushrooms in that field?" Freya piped up.

By this point, Arthur had tuned out the others. He was reeling from the revelation and needed to think. Hadn't all of the dragons been killed off in the Great Purge? How could a human be dragonkin? And how the hell were the other two just taking this in stride?

Well, Freya he understood. She was a druid, a magic user. Gwaine was just odd. But there was another thing–he kept forgetting Freya was a magic user! He was already mad enough at himself for forgetting that Merlin was the asset during the campfire standoff. Forgetting something like that was dangerous, had almost been deadly. The problem lay in that she just acted so normal. Merlin did too for the most part, Arthur supposed, but Freya had never given off that aura of scary that he sometimes acquired. Was Arthur Pendragon, Utherson and thrice-blessed and second blood and prince of Camelot, really trusting these people? They were unnatural, inhuman, for god's sake! He just couldn't bring himself to feel that revulsion anymore; he hadn't seen them do anything to really deserve it. Yet it couldn't be possible that everything he'd ever learned was wrong. It would be arrogance to discount the wisdom of his forebears. And if his father found out...

Arthur sighed and dragged himself off of the log, turning his back to the circle and the fire to sleep. He missed Gwaine's tavern and its free-flowing mead. Arthur needed a drink.

~o8o~

The next afternoon, Gwaine muttered something to Merlin and took him aside. Arthur had been waiting for something like this, and he followed, avoiding the crunchier parts of the leaf litter and ducking behind trees when possible. He left the stew he'd been tending to simmer in their improvised fire pit. His quarry stopped in a clearing coated in orange leaves that made it look like the ground was aflame. Gwaine grabbed Merlin's elbow to stop him in his tracks, then quickly let go.

"What do you know about Victor?" Gwaine asked.

Merlin's tone turned flippant–guarded. "Well, that's not his name, for one. I don't think he had anyone fooled on that. Unforgivable grouch. Literally the most arrogant person I have ever met. Not a morning person. Terrible spy, preference for leather pants. Don't ask me how I know."

"Merlin, I know this sounds odd coming from me, but be serious. Who does he work for?"

To Merlin's credit, he didn't hesitate. The kid made alternately great and terrible decisions on where to put his trust. "Some sort of rebel faction operating from outside the country, from what I can gather. There's some sort of meetup he has to make in Sinhasana. I'm pretty sure he's trying to recruit me and is just really bad at it."

Gwaine's face was drawn in a way that didn't suit him. It looked like his facial muscles were battling against him, unaccustomed to this sort of gravity. "Can we trust him." It wasn't said like a question.

This time Merlin considered, briefly. Arthur was surprised at the brief pang of hurt he felt and shoved it down deep immediately. Why would he be hurt of all things?! He shouldn't be trusted! It was a little funny, honestly, in a bitter sort of way that brought back the sparking of vinegar in his veins.

When Merlin answered, though, it was definitive. "Yes. I know how he seems sometimes, but I don't think he wishes any of us harm. I was angry about the key, of course, still am a bit, because I thought, you know, maybe I'd earned that? But then I think back and...gods, he's probably scared." His body language closed in on itself, though he didn't actually seem to move from the crossed-arms position. Arthur could read the signs. "And, I mean, maybe I can understand that. He's...he's not wrong." He seemed to force himself not to say something next, pursing his lips and shifting at the waist not unlike someone throwing up. "You don't know what I've–anyway." His inward breath was shaky, hoarse, but when he spoke his voice was crystal-clear and stone-solid. "I owe him. Kind of a lot. I can't very well withhold something like trust after what he did for me." He was speaking very quietly, and Arthur scraped the palm of his hand on rough bark while shifting to hear. "What he did even after what I did."

Arthur thought that, logically, this should make him feel better.

Gwaine studied Merlin calculatingly for a moment. Then he abruptly switched back into Idiot Gwaine, so fast it was almost uncanny. "Well then, I guess it's settled. I'm smiling now, by the way." He clapped the smaller boy on the back. "You ready for the worst rabbit stew of your life?"

Merlin smiled back, though it looked like it took effort. Arthur wondered about the damage to his facial muscles and nerves–the burns and infection seemed to extend decently far down, and sometimes he would react a little late, just behind the joke. Maybe that was just Merlin. "You're only bitter because of the we-don't-let-you-cook thing. Gwaine, you almost poisoned us the first week after you met us."

Gwaine took him by the elbow, and they started wandering back toward camp. "Hey, it was one time! And I still think Victor was wrong about those mushrooms."

Arthur slipped away to beat them back to camp, sucking absently on his scraped hand until what little blood was there ceased to drain out into the creases in his palm.

~o8o~

The next night Freya pulled Arthur aside, to his surprise. She'd tended until then to joke with Gwaine and chat-slash-kind-of-awkwardly-flirt (maybe?) for hours with Merlin but ignore Arthur almost entirely, which he supposed made sense with the circumstances under which they'd met. This time, though, she jerked a thumb over his shoulder, her manner a lot less gentle than Gwaine's the day before. They barely got out of hearing range of the others before she stopped several meters away from him. "I don't trust you. I want you to stay away from Merlin."

Arthur snorted and raised an eyebrow. "I've been traveling with him for almost a month, and he's not dead yet. Meanwhile, you're already this invested? You've known us for less than a week."

Her gaze got even more poisonous, and she folded her arms over her chest. "Merlin seems like a good person. But that is not why I am saying this. Emrys is supposed to be the one to usher in a new age of freedom for all followers of the Old Religion."

Arthur almost laughed. "Are we talking about the same kid?" Would his father take this seriously? Probably. The man was paranoid as a boar during hunting season. (But Arthur couldn't really bring himself to believe it, so he could always just...not include it in his report. There was already a lot about this journey that didn't merit mentioning as long as he got the job done.)

"He has a destiny, and he is my responsibility now. I will not let down my people." And wasn't that hilarious.

She got closer, quickly. "You think that because most of my people tend toward pacifism, none of us can be warriors? Those with the inclination, especially those with ambitions regarding priestesshood, are taught the skills necessary to protect themselves. And others." Her voice had gone low and husky. The animals in the forest ceased rustling, like they do in the calm before the earth shakes. His hindbrain screamed unnatural, unnatural, unnatural. He remembered thinking just the other night that she wasn't scary. "Should you harm either of our companions, I will not hesitate in calling upon my mistress' favor." The last sentence was practically hissed, and Arthur felt spittle hit his face. He was frozen. He felt like a man on the edge of an abyss.

Then she started to walk away past him, and the spell was broken. At the edge of the clearing she turned, hand resting casually on the rough trunk of an aspen, to toss one last threat over her shoulder. She was smiling again, voice cheerful and flippant and slightly awkward with no trace of its previous venom.

"As our companion Gwaine would doubtless phrase it, 'Don't make me go Darach on your ass.'"

It was ironic that the very copse of trees she'd led him to was practically dripping with a certain type of moss he'd been keeping an eye out for. He looked around once, then peeled some off and rolled it up to stuff in his bag.

~o8o~

Two hours after Freya spread her cards on the table, Arthur found the first mark.

The border between Sinhasana and Essetir, two passively aggressive enemy states, wasn't exactly policed, but it was one of the best-demarcated boundaries on the continent. It was tracked through marks made in colored chalk on the white branches of birch trees near the border–yellow on the Esseti side and blue on the Sinhasan side. No one remembered when the tradition had started, but every summer the royalty would pay hundreds of peasants living in the borderlands to chalk up the bark, and inevitably every summer a pseudo-war broke out as participants (casually encouraged by their governments) tried to mark out trees in the other country's territory to expand their states one birch at a time. Owing to this state of affairs the actual border was in flux year by year, but in (even an unusually warm) winter no-one would be around.

The more heavily you marked a tree, the slower it would fade and the harder it would be to cover the markings, so whole branches close to the border were the color of curry powder or cardamom. Arthur had passed through once on a diplomatic mission at age eight, and he remembered being dazzled by the cobalts and navies and lightning blues giving way to turmeric and lemon.

The first mark, a lightning scar of curry-yellow, signaled the beginning of the end. Luckily the next night it would be Arthur's turn to cook.

~o8o~

He spooned generous helpings of mushroom soup with dried beef into his and Merlin's rough whittled wooden bowls. Then he made sure to put smaller portions in Gwaine's much more crooked bowl and Freya's intricately carved ivory one that Gwaine teased her mercilessly about ("It is not my fault that I was the only one of us who had time to adequately pack! And you do remember that I am the only one here continuously carrying my own things").

He then dropped a very small amount of the moss he'd picked up the previous night into the pot. Maggie, who'd supplied the pot in their original luggage, would've been proud of his sleight-of-hand.

He didn't talk much during dinner, even though he knew he should. Freya and Gwaine went back to the pot for seconds. Merlin, who always ate like a bird, didn't. Arthur didn't.

Everyone went to sleep before the sky was completely black. Everyone but Arthur, who didn't go to sleep at all.

~o8o~

He got up (reluctantly) at sunup, packed all of their things, and killed the campfire. Then he sat back and waited, feeling the grey-white mist soak slowly through the back of his shirt.

Merlin woke up about an hour later and rolled to his feet, infuriatingly cheerful as he was every morning. "A—Victor? You up?"

"Unfortunately. How are you so goddamned cheerful when it's this cold?"

"It's not nearly as cold as it should be, you ninny. You keep saying it's winter, but I'm not sure I believe it."

Arthur couldn't even come up with a halfhearted response and just grunted. Merlin staggered to his feet, jumped up and down a few times to get warm, and then squatted down again to feel for the edges of his bedroll and start rolling it up. "Are Freya and Gwaine here? I don't think Gwaine's ever been this quiet. Ever."

Arthur exhaled heavily and watched the plume of white breath drift away to tangle in the tree branches. "They went ahead because I wasn't sure which fork would lead the right way. We might be lost. Sorry, I swear I thought these maps were up-to-date."

Merlin considered. "That's fine, I guess. Honest mistake. But why did those two go? You and Freya are the only ones who actually know the country; I don't see the use of Gwaine on a scouting mission."

Arthur felt sick to his stomach, but he smiled. Time for a masterstroke. "I don't see the use of Gwaine in most situations. But Freya asked him to come along. Not sure why."

"Oh." The tattoos on Merlin's cheekbones seemed to stir and drift in the tattered sunlight. "Oh, that's–that's fine, I guess. So we're...waiting for them to get back?" His shoulders hunched inward a few centimeters.

"No, I know we're going basically in the right direction, so I figured we could start following and intercept them coming back if the road leads the wrong way."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's the right way, and if so I don't want to waste the time it would take them to come back. It's a calculated risk." Obviously Merlin wasn't devastated, just a bit disappointed. But still, you throw someone a little off their rhythm—especially by saying something that feeds into his insecurities—and he generally won't question whatever else you have to say. As his father liked to say, seize every advantage.

"Alright, then. Which way are we going?" Blind trust. Heh. It really wasn't funny at all.

"Road's on your left. Here, I'll show you." Merlin offered his elbow much less self-consciously than when they'd first met, and Arthur took it and started leading him out of the clearing. "Watch out, there's a huge root here. You've got to step high."

"Oh, yeah! I actually felt the life energy. I'm getting better at that!" Merlin grinned. Arthur grunted assent. They both stepped carefully over the inert form of Gwaine, who was laying across the route out of the clearing. Barely breathing, eyes open and glassy. Unseeing.