Chapter 4: How They Returned to Safety
She was dreaming, and it wasn't good. Inside an oven, or… pressed into the sand of the beach by a sun half the size of the sky, but… it was dark? Thunder rumbled continuously in her ears, and she struggled to wake.
Succeeded in opening her eyes, to darkness laced by the flickering fire of an inferno, and she was pinned. Almost she couldn't breathe in the heat, the stench of things burning that weren't meant to burn, acrid with chemical taint, metal and stone.
The weight holding her to the hard and shifting grit of a desert floor was moving, groaning, hot and heavy and human, flesh and bone, joint and muscle.
Arthur. Dammit.
She rolled with an effort and wriggled still further to get out from under him. "Pendragon! Hey – are you all right?"
He mumbled something unintelligible, bruising her legs with his knees, trying to get them under him and instead collapsing. She tried to take a deep breath and ended up coughing like a smoker with pneumonia in the dust and ash still sifting down all around them, coating skin and settling into the folds of their clothing.
"Come on," she managed. "We can't stay here. Too exposed – we just blew up a mountain, and…"
Instinct said to get as far away as fast as possible, and pretend she had nothing to do with the explosion. Mission accomplished, more or less. There might be survivors. There might be villagers coming to investigate – maybe folks from Janada, surely other Isyadi who had the good luck to be elsewhere.
This would put a neat and massive spanner in what was left of their works, she thought with satisfaction.
Balance didn't agree with her on the definition of upright, and Pendragon hadn't risen further than his knees, still curled over his head resting on bent forearms on the ground, a dim shape in the almost-full moonlight.
"Hey," she said again, keeping her feet more or less balanced and grabbing both drawstring bags from where they'd been tossed by the energy of the blast, shaking off dust and ash and bits of stone. Pack-mule be damned, they couldn't linger. "Are you all right?"
He grunted and it didn't sound like yes, and it turned into a strangled sort of whimper as he staggered upright. He didn't lift his head and he didn't take his bag from her – or ask about it – and he didn't take the lead... but she didn't dare ask again.
She felt bruises as she stretched her muscles, beginning the march back to the mountain trail they needed to cross before the plains that would take them back to Camp George – only a couple of days, going in a straight line rather than wandering with other sjuyl from village to village in the area, listening and waiting for the right gossip. This time, though, she was wearing men's boots instead of those low thin slippers.
Several times she glanced back to be sure he was still there; she couldn't hear him over her own breathing and the scratchy-grinding noises of her footsteps. Far to the right the moon rolled away to the horizon, and the sky lightened imperceptibly to the east, and she deliberately did not look back at what might remain of the fortress of Urhavi, or what condition it was in.
Nine o'clock. Not the time, the direction of the sunrise. Behind Arthur as they came to the first fallen pieces of the jutting-rock mountains.
"Guinevere."
She glanced back, startled at his use of her full name. He leaned his weight on an outcropping slightly lower than his hips, braced his boots, and let his chin dip to his chest.
"Rest is a good idea," she responded, though she was surprised he needed it already. She was thinking to find a place shaded from the desert midday sun and rest then… but they needed to find water, too, to refill the litre-and-a-half bottles they carried. There was a place she remembered from the trek in, but…
But there was blood on his neck. Dried on the collar of his jacket.
"Pendragon," she said, retracing her steps, but he didn't react. She rounded him to see the origin of the blood – and then she said something worse.
He'd been on top when they were knocked over by the blast, and his jacket was charred, torn and bloodied in half a dozen places. There was a scrape beginning to bruise up his neck and into his hair, and it had trickled blood straight down as he let his head sag. Not bad, but still.
"Sorry," he mumbled into the front of his tunic.
"You're sorry you're bleeding?" she said. Still bleeding, hours later? She dropped their two bags and began to peel his jacket off his shoulder. "Can you get this off? I'll take a look for you, and-"
"No," he interrupted tiredly, preventing her from removing the jacket by uncooperatively refusing to move. "You can't use… our drinking water, to clean it. If it needs… bandages, or… that'll take more time. Give me a minute, then… we can move again."
She hesitated, not wanting to agree, to admit that he might be right – to let the injuries go unchecked, even for a few more hours. "Can I at least see? If any of these wounds are deep, or have-"
"Bits sticking out of them?" he said. "We shoulda… taken some of the alkahol too, huh?"
She reached, unable to stop herself, fingering the gaps torn in his clothing, trying to make sure there weren't still shards of stone or slivers of wood stuck in the clotting blood.
But he pushed up, and took the lead – though it was slower going, beginning to climb the upward path – and he still didn't seem to notice that she carried both bags. At least he didn't slow his pace for more than a second as they hiked – momentary falter, then catch himself – and he ignored her trying to say anything, so she quit.
He wasn't Lancelot. This wasn't anything like the White Mountains, and fleeing Ealdor. And she didn't see that he was bleeding out from under the bottom of the jacket, anyway.
Once she looked back the way they'd come, and it wasn't quite to the place where they'd first seen Urhavi and Qauyl at the same time, but it wasn't too far, either. And the shape of the whole mountain was changed – a great hole blasted out of the middle, the wall obliterated to view from here, any fires still burning invisible in the morning sunlight. But it looked like the village should be solidly intact, which was a relief. He'd been right about that. And no one appeared to be following.
"There's water just up," she said to him as he leaned on the rock wall bordering the path again, bracing himself with one brown-dirty hand. "I'll use what we've got left to clean you up and then we can go fill the bottles."
"Mm." That was all, and he moved slow and stiff to get the jacket off. She dropped the bags to help – and then startled to see how much blood had gathered where his belt held the longer tunic tight to his body. Belt and tunic were both saturated in a wide strip. "Pendragon…" Bloody hells! came to her tongue, but was probably inappropriate.
"Yeah. I know. Sorry."
They might need to move for more water before she was done, here.
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The heat was oppressive and distracting, though its threat was more insidious than the cold of snow. Twice Arthur was certain he heard a distant skid-cart motor, and once the sharp echo of a sniper's rifle.
Just the click of a stone dislodged by Gwen's boot to drop onto a larger rock.
Bandages ripped from the sareq he'd acquired for Gwen's use pulled at bruised flesh along his ribs as he moved and breathed, though he'd declined her offer to thread a needle and stitch the tears in his skin. He could still feel them, though, lines of sharp bright pain, raw patches where flying debris had struck, scraping as it continued on its trajectory, edges ripping deeper, muscles bruised deep.
She would tell him if he veered off course. Everything was white-hot and blurry, and the path jarred his boots with its deceit of depth perception. He had to keep moving; couldn't hole up and wait for help to come to him.
Wasn't that bad anyway.
"Here," she said. "Arthur – this is a good place to stop. Let's rest here for a few hours, eat something and move on when the sun is closer to setting?"
He turned; there was shade there, where the rock of the mountain leaned over them. The ground looked so far away, he was never going to reach it unless he fell, and if he fell he was never going to get up.
"No, not on the ground," she said, as he stumbled to her. "The tent had a sheet for ground cover, remember? Sand mites, at least… But we can put up the tent tonight, later tonight when we stop again for a few hours."
"We're going to start running into refugees coming this way," he said, as she took him by the shoulders to steer him further under the overhang, where there was a jumble of fallen stones of various sizes. "What are we going to…"
"Easy," she said. "We'll avoid them as long as possible, then we'll tell them we're heading back to Camelot's military base for medical attention for you. Hopefully we'll be closer to Camp George than to Janada by then, no one will wonder why we didn't just go to the hospital."
She pressed him down to sitting, and bloody hells that hurt too because there was quite a deep gash going down the back of his left hip. The explosion was not so kind as to limit the damage to areas of skin he could be nonchalant about having tended, or scarred. His belt rubbed abominably, and his head was throbbing from whatever had ricocheted off the back of his skull.
It wasn't really cooler in the shade. He tried to relax by stiff degrees, aware that she was positioning their bags and water bottles out of the sun as well. She perched closer beside him than she had to, a pouch of dried meat fragments and fruit in her hand.
"Here," she said again, presenting him with her shoulder. "You lean on me, and I'll lean on the wall here. Just don't drool on me, yeah?"
The slope of her shoulder, under the cinnamon-colored Aravian dress, looked more inviting than his own pillowcase after a twenty-four-hour duty shift. Paradise, and more than he deserved.
" 'M more likely to bleed on you, I think," he mumbled, letting himself lean down on her. She was strong, but smaller – and just as exhausted as he was. He hoped he didn't crush her into the rock with his weight, damaged skin pulling and cracking open down his back.
Relatively clean water, but it wasn't cold enough to soothe the swelling, and it couldn't be hot enough for killing germs as it swiped blood away without a fire they didn't have time to risk. What he wouldn't give for that pilot's kit Lancelot had, their last mission – antiseptic swabs and maybe some saline and definitely that meramine. He could definitely use that about now, when they were stopped and he was supposed to sleep, because otherwise he didn't think he could…
…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
There was a patch just above her collarbone that was numb from his weight, when drowsing turned back to awareness for Gwen. She hadn't really slept, but it was enough of a respite that she wasn't going to drift away behind her eyelids for a while. He was dead out, though, completely limp against her, every breath trembling through her and his heartbeat subtle against her arm.
In another place, at another time…
What? Really? She was going to let herself think of her partner like…
Well, like what? Like a man? Like a fit, attractive, capable, daring man?... who was her partner. And also injured.
The whole time she'd been saving Lancelot, though, she hadn't once thought like this, even the night they'd shared the bed-and-breakfast suite.
Except she and Arthur had basically lived together for the last three weeks – the first fortnight in a very tiny tent, and then in a tiny one-room cave-house. He did his washing-up late, and though he stopped stripping when he reached his trousers – though he never gave one indication that he thought of her as a woman til yesterday, when he'd interrupted her spit-bath – she couldn't help stealing glances.
Shouldn't have. Harder to be solely and simply professional, afterwards.
Now she couldn't help thinking of the slopes and planes of the muscles of his back torn and bleeding and abused.
He stirred, and the pattern of his breathing changed. She tensed beneath and beside him, shrugging a little to help him pull upright and orient himself. He looked younger when he was asleep – young and vulnerable.
And she didn't like her thoughts anymore, so she scrambled to her feet and bent to retrieve their bags once again.
"How long was I out?" he rasped, blinking like he wanted to rub his eyes – but wouldn't move to do it.
"Couple hours." To shift her own feelings back where they belonged, she added, "It might have been longer, but your pillow probably reeks of sweat and body odor."
He made a sound of dissent. "You're beautiful, and you smell intoxicating."
Absolutely without sarcasm that she could detect. But he was only half-aware, and swayed as he gained his feet. Probably he meant it as a joke.
"If you think that, you're worse off than I thought," she said. "Come on, let's see how far we get before you pass out."
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Sir Geoffrey had brought the sword again. Merlin knew the old man was proud of it, and found it fascinating – maybe the privately-considered jewel of his collection. Because it was certain Geoffrey considered it his, truly, and not really the museum's, though that was where it resided.
The swatch of red velvet beneath the old weapon on the conference table in the meeting room at battalion headquarters they used was ostensibly to protect the tabletop from any dings or scrapes from the once-sharp metal, but Merlin caught the sense that Geoffrey would have done the same laying the piece anywhere.
The old man perched expectantly on the edge of a padded conference-chair, watching Merlin circumnavigate the room in a prowl, lined pad and ink-pen ready to notes, a recorder ready to capture the session exactly.
"In your own time," the old man encouraged.
Smiling at the comparison to his memories of Fort Araun and The Man, Merlin tried to ignore Geoffrey and focus on the sword.
This he had trouble with, sometimes. More so than the helmet or breastplate, or any of the smaller bits brought from the museum – tableware or jewelry or tools. There was a hum he associated with it, a low tremble of not-quite-sound that distracted and distorted and veiled. Not really a warning, necessarily, but…
He knew he wasn't ready to touch it yet. They all expected there would be circumstances of violence and death associated with it – it was a weapon, after all – and he wasn't entirely certain he could manage the flood of images, hold it to a dispassionate trickle to examine one by one, the way he usually could with the other pieces. And they weren't yet ready for that, anyway – Geoffrey's interest was primarily in the who, not yet the what for.
"Wielded by one man, you said," Geoffrey prompted, patience slipping to eagerness.
"Mostly," Merlin tempered. "Ninety-nine point nine nine percent."
He could see the warrior through a haze like a desert mirage, but nothing stood out to him as far as defining details. Chainmail and plate armor, helmet and gauntlets – but no tunic, and no shield bearing a conveniently-identifiable device. So far there hadn't been others present in the vision to compare the figure to – whether he was taller than average, or not. He didn't look short, exactly, and of course a warrior's body would be fit and muscular – true today as it was back then.
"That's unusual for a blade as well-made as this one was, to have survived so well so long," Geoffrey said, gazing at it. "We know it wasn't simply a weapon for an ordinary soldier-"
Whatever the mirage-warrior was, he wasn't ordinary; Merlin agreed with that.
"By the gold wire on the hilt, the inlay on the pommel, and the core."
"Do we know what it says?" Merlin asked absently, passing behind the empty armchair at the head of the conference table. Chairman of the board.
Geoffrey gave him a look of surprise that halted his steps. "What it says?" the historian asked, and looked at the sword again, tipping his head and squinting. "We thought the markings part of a decorative device, but… If they are words of a language, it is one that I don't recognize – and I recognize most of them."
"Huh," Merlin said, not truly interested in ancient linguistics.
The door wasn't latched, and creaked only slightly as it was pushed open – Merlin's turn to be surprised that it was Director Gaius himself.
"Good afternoon," Geoffrey said agreeably. "Will you be joining us?"
Gaius responded with a hint of distraction. "Good afternoon – no, I can't. I'm sorry, far too busy. I just stopped by to let Merlin know that Scouts Thompson and Pendragon are back in pocket."
"They're back?" Merlin said, in equal measures of relief and delight. The suffocating sensation of faraway danger threatening someone he loved had eased after that first night, til he could no longer feel it – but he hadn't known whether to be relieved at that, or more worried.
Unless it hadn't been Arthur or Gwen's danger he'd sensed…
"Not quite," Gaius corrected. "Though technically they're on soil belonging to Camelot, they're… not here yet."
"Oh," he said blankly. An embassy somewhere, maybe. The sandbox? "Are they okay?" he added without meaning to blurt the question. Gaius eyed him, and he said lamely, "They were in danger, weren't they?"
For a moment the director of Psych Ops didn't answer, and Merlin felt like, if he had windows open to a sidewalk where the old man watched, the shutters were flung wide and the curtains fluttered. You could tell that, at the distance? was written over the curve of Gaius' eyebrow.
Yeah. I could tell. From whatever distance. He held the director's gaze, letting him know that he was aware of the implications he was revealing.
"It is a dangerous job," Gaius finally said, in a mild tone. "In a dangerous part of the world. But they are both well, and should return to Fort Fuller within a few days." He paused, then added deliberately, "And then perhaps we can request your aid?"
"My aid?" Merlin repeated, before realizing. They needed his psychic ability for something – and he couldn't help thinking of a photo of a doomed night-flyer, and a map of the mountains. "Yeah," he added, apprehension drying the spit in his mouth. "Sure. Whatever you need, just let me know."
And damn Nimueh if she caught even a hint of such a thing, to question him about directly…
Gaius nodded appreciation and agreement. "Good luck with that, today," he added, gesturing at the sword before closing the door behind him.
Geoffrey gave him a hopeful smile. "Back to it? The one man who wielded it?"
Merlin sighed and began to pace the perimeter of the room, trying to focus once again on penetrating that enigmatic vibrating.
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Gwen stood under the beat of lukewarm water in the women's shower, ignoring the low murmur of other voices and absolutely relishing the spray of water across the back of her neck and her shoulders.
Her choice: eat or sleep or shower first. And because they'd carried enough food with them from Qauyl to last the trip – though she was looking forward to coffee and bacon in the mess tent - and because they were able to set the small tent and get six hours of sleep a night, not to mention dozing during the hottest hours of the day, she chose soap and water.
Lukewarm felt good in the heat. And maybe the water pressure was pathetic compared to what she was used to back in Camelot and maybe the military-issue shampoo would tangle her hair and the cake-soap would dry her skin but at the moment it was heaven, soaking and massaging bruises and sore muscles. When she got home, she was going to have a pedicure done, at one of the fancier places that also did foot-massages. Or hell, why stop there? Full-body massage, with hot rocks and oil that smelled like lemongrass…
And the satisfaction of a successful mission to soothe her to utter relaxation.
They were back, and safe – at least as safe as infantrymen Smith and Jones could be. Arthur headed back to the medics as soon as they got word to their contact-soldier who'd been keeping the rucksacks with their Smith-and-Jones uniforms. She guessed they'd have let him shower completely himself before beginning to tend the gashes on his back with their creams and maybe stitches that couldn't get wet. And she was sure they'd have someone bringing the wounded hero whatever he most liked to eat, too.
His fever had cooled the third morning, and he'd carried his own bag through the guarded gate of Camp George in company with a dozen other refugees seeking temporary medical aid and care.
"…See the new guy?" Two of the voices were moving closer, out from the changing area into the row of shower-stalls, curtained off at shoulder-height.
"New guy?" said the second voice. "What do you mean? There haven't been any transports for nearly a week."
"Well, I don't know." Carelessly. "Maybe he came in last week and I just haven't seen him til today, but it was well worth the wait. Let me tell you! Blonde and blue-eyed." Croon, and giggle, and Gwen rolled her eyes.
"And by new you mean an eighteen-year-old choker?" her friend asked derisively.
The voices lingered across the aisle from Gwen and she turned to face her showerhead rather than look at the other two women, leaving towels outside the curtains and entering adjacent stalls to pull the cord that started the shower water.
"No, not at all. Maybe he's an officer. He was with Gwaine, coming out of the medic's tent."
Gwen tensed up under the spray of her shower, feeling her toes curl into the wooden grate beneath her feet.
"Catch his name?"
"No, I didn't see that – or his rank."
"But you were close enough to see blue eyes?" Sarcastically.
"Mm. That you could see halfway across the camp – oh, that blue!"
Gwen reached out to free the cord that kept her water flowing. Lukewarm wasn't completely satisfactory, but maybe she could find someone in the changing area to loan her some skin lotion and lip balm. Rucksack space on the trip over had been dedicated to supplies of the edible kind, not amenities.
"I am a sucker for blue eyes," the first girl continued, giggling again.
"You're also a sucker for green eyes and brown eyes," her friend pointed out.
"I'll do anybody once, but this one… ooh, he was delicious! Irresistible!"
Gwen snatched her towel, wrapping it around herself and leaning to squeeze her hair dry even as she moved past the curtain, headed down the aisle toward the changing room. Both other women were shampooing, eyes shut against wayward suds and hair lathered white atop their heads.
"Well, if he was next to Gwaine when you saw him and you still noticed details enough to want him instead – I've got to see this new guy, too."
"If we can figure out how to get ourselves introduced and have it feel natural… This might not be such a boring deployment, after all!"
You forgot, didn't you? You forgot how women are with him. Because back at Fuller it was drinks at the Sunrise every Friday since Ealdor. Drinks and darts and dancing. And always in the group – sometimes with a few more or a few less, but Leon and Percival and Merlin, and Jennifer and Becca. And the week before their mission, Jennifer had mentioned the possibility of getting serious with Leon. Being exclusive and intentional, and seeing where that led.
Arthur didn't encourage that sort of attention, that she'd ever seen. Didn't keep an eye out for a pretty girl to smile at, to nod to, or engage. But he never acted surprised or uncomfortable either, when they came to him. Courteous to a fault. Generous and friendly. And she never knew if he called the numbers they wrote on napkins and slipped into his hand, to hook up on a Saturday or Sunday – or hell, even a Tuesday or Wednesday.
She shoved her way through the thin screen-door between the two sections of the women's shower-tent, letting it spring back with a bang that probably didn't interrupt the two girls' conversation.
But they'd never know, either. About how he spent the night freezing in a drafty shed to let her look after her injured boyfriend-at-the-time. They'd never read the look on his face to know how he felt to kill that boy in Urhavi, even in defense of someone else.
That made him hers, even in some small measure. Friend and partner.
Except…
She toweled off vigorously and pulled her underclothes on over damp skin – she'd be perspiring in the heat soon enough anyway. T-shirt and socks, trousers and jacket and boots. Pin her wet hair in a knot above her collar and below the back of her soft-cap.
Except he wasn't just a friend and partner, was he? He wasn't just one of the other scouts to be paired with for a mission, not if it felt like this to hear other girls gossip about him. Honestly she'd be happy to hear girls gossiping about how attractive they found Lancelot, if there was a possibility he'd be happy with one of them.
Not so with Arthur. And that was problematic – she was too close. She'd let him get too close.
And it wasn't a mistake she'd made with anyone else, either. Just him.
She tied her bootlaces with vicious jerks, tossed the towel at the laundry bin in the corner, and slammed her way out of the women's shower.
Looking automatically toward the medic's tent, she saw the two of them immediately.
Their contact – captain or not, Gwaine or not – the same as before. Maybe charming and maybe handsome, but her eyes were also drawn to Arthur.
Moving a bit stiff – probably she'd never forget the sight of those marks on his body from being too close to the blast and shielding her, that she'd touched and tended. Shaded by the brim of his own soft-cap, the uniform looking damn good on him and the boots kick-ass tough.
And his dark-haired companion made some joke, which made him toss his head back and laugh out loud, his face showing clean-shaven and almost boyish again without the beard and the dirt.
Her heart was flying out of control like pieces of the fortress, tumbling and rolling out of place and leaving the rest of it open and vulnerable.
The captain saw her, gestured, and led Arthur toward her. He was still grinning, squinting slightly against the glare of the desert sun, but when he was still five paces away, she saw something change in his expression.
Often enough she'd chosen her outfit for the Sunrise with him in mind – the other guys too, of course, but him since they sat beside each other and played billiards and darts more often than the others. Whether he'd notice the color or the cut of the shirt, an extra detail of makeup, a new way of pinning her hair, the scent she applied to her skin. The comfortable-sexy pair of heels she'd lucked out on at a second-hand place off-base.
He never seemed to, before. Sometimes he offered a nonchalant, you look nice… but so did Merlin. And Leon, sometimes, even though Jennifer was thinking they had a chance at a relationship. And maybe Arthur said it to the other girls, too.
And maybe she was sunburned and the skin on her nose was peeling and her hair tending toward frazzled because dry strands split and broke off, but he was looking at her. Down to her boots and back up to her face, and lingering in-between even though the uniform was the opposite of complimentary to a feminine figure.
Had the Aravian dress been so ugly then, or…
"You look like you feel better," the captain complimented her.
"Feels good to get your own underwear back on, right?" Arthur said, and beside him the captain smothered an expletive in amused shock at the inappropriate comment.
Except that this time, he'd done it on purpose, an intimate joke. And the sound of his voice slipped into her stomach like a spoon into batter. Stir it up, fast or slow…
"It does," she said. "But when you turn the water off, you start sweating again."
"That's true," he agreed, and his own skin was sun-pink and peeling a bit, in spite of the shade of the sareq.
Did he feel… did he think… Did he even remember telling her that she was beautiful after three weeks in the desert without proper facilities or products? That her smell was intoxicating?
"What did they say about your back?" she asked him. Of course it wasn't anything like, they might save his elbow.
"I'm on my feet," Arthur said, and with no obvious bandaging, you had to watch close to see that he wasn't hale and hearty, otherwise. "Nothing stronger than generic painkillers, and a course of antibiotics, just in case. I've been cleaned and creamed and taped up. Good as new."
"Almost," the captain interjected cheerfully.
Arthur tipped him a look of ironic agreement. "Better news is, there's a transport leaving tomorrow," he said to her. "I guess the old man made sure we're assigned seats on it. Going home."
"Damn you," the captain said, exactly as if he didn't begrudge them one day.
Gwen took a deep breath and let it out. A relief… a temporary reprieve. Once back in Camelot, there would be debriefings to endure… and decisions to make about her future.