When Gwaine began trying to claw out his eyes, the knights tied him to a tree.
They stand in a tense semicircle around him now, expressions varying degrees of worried and horrified. Mordred's eyes shine with tears, flashing between the older knight and the tracks in the snow. Arthur and Leon's eyes, though less obviously creased with worry, travel the same path. Percival stands next to his friend, hand on his shoulder, face rent with worry and grief when faced with his friend's turmoil.
Just a few minutes ago, Gwaine had been standing too still. Wind still brushed his hair and played with his cloak, but his face stayed bent into that mask of horror. His eyes stayed far away.
He had been like that for a long time, after his whispered and desolate protests died out.
Then his hands had lifted toward his face, and Arthur had barked out orders, and Gwaine's friends had to keep him from clawing his own eyes out.
Thus the tree and the rope.
"You should go," Percival says finally, breaking the tense quiet that had settled over Gwaine's hiccuping sobs and slurred protests.
"Sorry?" Arthur asks, furrowing his brows at Percival.
"Go after Merlin," Percival explains.
Elyan nods. "Percival will look after Gwaine. We should go after Merlin."
Arthur glances at the tracks in the snow, then back at his knights. Gwaine moans against the trunk of the tree. Behind them, Merlin's footprints disappear between the trees, clear as the crystalline light of dawn filling the air between them.
Illuminating Merlin's path.
"Gwaine–" Arthur begins, but Percival shakes his head.
"Arthur," Percival says, his voice sad and tight, "we all know where Merlin went. If Achlys left the two of them here…"
"It went after Merlin," Elyan finishes. "Drew him away."
"Our best shot at finding Achlys and ending this is following Merlin," Percival says. He glances back toward Gwaine, who bangs his head against the tree hard enough that every knight present winces.
Percival digs into a bag slung across the back of a horse and brings out a thin blanket. He leaves it folded and stuffs it behind Gwaine's head.
"Percival," Arthur says, voice low. "We know what comes next."
Words come unbidden to Arthur's mind. Leon's waking warning of a death in the lower town, so inexplicable that Gaius and Merlin both had been called to witness. Merlin's gasping, 'Arthur,' at finding the king in his chambers as it lay in shambles around him. Heda's testimony that her husband has said, 'Please,' before the spot of blood appeared. Gretel's wordless screaming, bloody eye sockets staring at nothing, her begging before her chest was ripped open before their eyes. Gabriel's message, painted in half-dried blood on the stone wall of his house.
Please.
They had all had visions and screamed, then stood still, then…
Then they had all said please.
And something had torn them apart.
Gwaine is still reeling from the visions. But bit by bit, limb by limb, the knight grows quieter before them. He is alone, in whatever hell he witnesses, though he is surrounded by friends.
Though living and breathing, they may as well be ghosts in the wastes of Gwaine's despair.
Arthur wonders briefly whether it had been this way for all of them. Whether Heda had felt this indecisive and lost and sorrowful and torn.
Percival looks seriously at Arthur, taking in his words. Then he cuts a length of rope away from where it dangles between Gwaine's hands, securing them together and away from his face. The brawny knight takes the rope and forces it between Gwaine's lips, tying it at the back of his head.
"If he can't beg for it," Percival replies in a steady voice, "he can't die."
Arthur blinks once, then twice.
"You think they were begging for death?"
Timothy's wrists, Henry's plea, Gretel's eyes, Gabriel's message.
Percival's gaze is sharp and serious as the edge of a blade when he replies, "I think you should go after Merlin."
Arthur breaks into a run.