A/N: This is an A/U, sort of closer to the actual myths, but hopefully something different. Drop me a review, if you can, and tell me how you feel! This chapter might be a bit slow, but that's just 'cause I'm just setting the scene. The action will pick up soon enough!

…..

Arthur thought he might just be the oldest squire in the five kingdoms.

He was two summers past twenty: young and strong and handy with a sword, but knighthood was just as far away now as it had been when he was ten and scrawny and couldn't even lift Sir Ector's.

It was Sir Ector's sword he polished now, his own weapon set to the side as he engaged in his task, rubbing the rag in practiced, negligent little circles up and down the blade as his thoughts drifted.

Like any man his age, he longed for adventure, danger, even, he thought with a wistful grin, romance…

He turned the blade over and ran the rag over it.

...Honor, chivalry, camaraderie, the ring of steel and the echoes of battle, sweat on his brow and a red cape belted 'round his neck…

"Slaying a dragon then, are we?"

Arthur smiled, a lopsided little grin, but didn't turn. At some point in his fancy he'd brought the sword to his hand, and he brandished it in fanciful thrusts and parries.

"Close." Arthur's grin grew. "An imp. Vexing little thing; lazy, never on time…Maybe you've seen it? Sometimes it disguises itself as a stable boy, pasty, wide-eyed, messy hair, ah," And then he did turn, giving Merlin's messy hair a pointed look.

But Merlin just sauntered into the room, undaunted, running a carefree hand through his rumpled hair with an answering grin. "Nope, haven't seen it.

"For a second I thought you were talking about me. But then I realized you'd never refer to someone a whole head taller than you as a little thing."

Arthur waved his hand dismissively. "Headweight, Merlin"

"Better than heavyweight, I always say."

"If that was a fat joke, all I can say is worry about yourself. You certainly shouldn't talk about waistlines."

"I certainly agree; we should avoid talking about your waistline."

"Merlin?"

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

"Was that an order? Pulling rank, are we? Squire outranks stable boy, is it?"

Arthur grinned despite himself. "I believe so."

Merlin dropped into an exaggerated bow. "Forgive me, oh my lord squire," And then he dropped down into a cross-legged seat next to Arthur, picking up Arthur's discarded blade and a polish rag.

"Where were you, then?" Arthur asked amiably, returning his own rag to Sir Ector's blade.

Merlin ducked his head, "Tavern."

Arthur guffawed, "What, again?"

Merlin scratched his ear ruefully, then deftly avoided the question. "You've disappointed me, Sir Squire," he confessed. "I expected a lightweight joke at the very least."

But Arthur was not to be had. "Don't be stupid; you don't even drink."

Merlin nodded, and made to say something, but Arthur raised his voice-"Oh, but you've underestimated me," and his eyes glittered with hidden knowledge. "I have greater plans for this conversation. I have a secret weapon, a maneuver that will take me to the higher ground-"

"So you admit you're on the lower ground?" Merlin pressed the opening with a mischievous smile, dipping his rag into the bucket of polish.

Arthur shook his head, and let him have the small victory, his grin twisting with amusement. He paused, then, and with relish, laid out his trump card- "Was that serving girl Freya on duty again?"

Merlin dropped the rag in surprise and lifted his head to meet Arthur's gaze, his face, and even, Arthur noted with glee, his ears, rapidly flushing with color. And then he groaned and buried his head in his hands, "Hell. Caught on to that, did you?"

Arthur laughed out loud, smiling broadly. He scooted over and nudged Merlin, none-too-gently, in the ribs with his elbow. "So, go on then, did you talk to her?"

Merlin shook his head, still buried in his hands.

"Why not?" Arthur demanded. "As your lord squire I do hereby give your courtship my blessing."

Merlin lifted his head from his knees, face suddenly serious, and Arthur let his grin fall, unconsciously shifting into a more serious posture as well.

"It's not that simple." Merlin hesitated- "Arthur, what I came here to tell you-"

"Look alive boys!" A boisterous voice cut into the room, followed by the jovial form and face of Sir Ector himself, Arthur's foster father and the knight of Camelot under whom he'd served the kingdom's longest squirehood. "What, gossiping like old hens? Ah, sword polishing, far more dignified, I think. Carry on then, don't mind me. I was just popping in to let you know, Arthur, I'll be heading down into town now to meet up with Kai and some war buddies. I might not make it back for dinner, so you boys can take the evening off and head to the tavern or whatever it is boys your age do now for fun. Tell Elaine, too," he said, referring to the cook. He winked then, in an amiable, fatherly sort of way, and made to exit.

"Wait, Sir, your sword-" Arthur stood, offering it. "I'm almost finished polishing it-"

But Sir Ector waved him off complacently. "I won't need it, son. Long past are the days I needed it. As if anyone," he laughed, a belly-shaking laugh, "would dare attack a couple of veteran Camelot knights, aged or no. Nah, you finish polishing it. I'll be reunited with Bethel in the morning, how's it?"(He'd named his sword Bethel, after his late wife). "See you soon, son." And he ruffled Arthur's hair fondly, "My, you'll be a great knight yet, see if I don't make you."

And both of them ignored the obvious, gaping hole in his assertion- They weren't related by blood; Arthur was a common orphan, no ties to or proof of nobility- there was no way Sir Ector could make him a knight.

Then Sir Ector turned to Merlin- "Last day, eh lad?"

"Tomorrow," Merlin muttered, studiously avoiding Arthur's gaze.

Arthur gazed in between them, uncomprehending.

"Well make it count then," Ector nodded sagely. "Can't say I won't miss you 'round here. Well then, I wish you all the best of fortunes." He extended a hand, which Merlin, ducking his head again, shook. Then, giving both boys a hearty slap on the back, Sir Ector departed, and Arthur, reeling, turned to Merlin.

Merlin was looking down; he'd finished with Arthur's sword, a secondhand of Sir Ector's, and was working on a mace, rubbing the rag over it furiously, nervously. Arthur took a second, as his mind raced, to marvel at his friend's efficiency (and he hadn't even used magic this time!), before he sat down, tiredly, getting the distinct feeling that something he was about to hear something he didn't want to.

"Merlin," he began, hesitantly.

And then Merlin was looking up at him, blue eyes wide and guilty, "I'm sorry Arthur, I was going to tell you...That's why I didn't try to start a relationship with Freya; it wouldn't be fair, since...well, since I'm leaving." He met Arthur's eyes again, pleading. "I swear I was going to tell you, Arth-"

"When?" Arthur found himself growing angry, a desperate, gnawing, lonely sort of anger, but he quashed it down, with an effort. "Where? How long? Let's have it then, the whole story."

Merlin splayed his fingers out, as if to frame his story and give it to Arthur in a neat, perfect, impersonal little package, and Arthur, despite himself, felt stung. "Do you remember that position I applied for, last year? Physician's apprentice, in Camelot?"

Arthur thought back to last year, his best friend's growing ambition in medicine. They'd talked about going to Camelot together to pursue their respective dreams, Arthur a knight, Merlin a physician, maybe even a magical healer, but it'd just been talk, or so Arthur thought, until Merlin had come back one day and told him, eyes wide, that he'd applied for the position. And then, despite the twinge of jealousy in his chest, Arthur had congratulated him, and patted him on the back, and they'd crossed their fingers and waited. Nothing had come of it, though, and things had gradually returned to normal. They'd put the whole silly dream behind them, and Arthur had hated himself, when he saw Merlin disappointedly shrug it off, for the immense relief he felt.

"Well," Merlin continued, smiling a shaky, hopeful little smile. "Gaius, the court physician, wrote back. Said there'd been a mix-up with the mail, that he'd misplaced my letter, and that he'd be happy to have me. I'm leaving the day after tomorrow to be his apprentice." He shrugged, an exhilarated, can-you-believe-this shrug, and Arthur was struck with simultaneous pangs of genuine happiness for his friend, and also a sad finality. This was the end, then, of over a decade of friendship: Merlin moving on to bigger and better things, and Arthur again left behind.

Arthur was struck with the thought, suddenly, that he'd be a squire until he died. He grabbed Merlin's shoulder, squeezed, his smile frozen in place, "That's amazing, Merlin. I'm so happy for you."

But, he'd forgotten, Merlin knew him better. His best friend brushed his hand off his shoulder and embraced him. A solid, manly hug, Arthur decided, even though Merlin's eyes were wet. Merlin's eyes, mind.

Merlin drew back- "You're meant for great things, Arthur, never forget that."

Arthur shrugged, an uncharacteristically self-deprecating shrug.

"No," Merlin said. "I mean it. I want you to come to Camelot with me."

Arthur looked at him, checked to see if he was serious- "Are you kidding? What am I supposed to do in Camelot?"

"Be a knight!"

"You know I can't, I'm not a noble-"

"There are ways; we can forge you a crest!"

"No." Arthur said, firmly.

"Fine," Merlin threw his hands up, gesturing grandly. "Hire yourself out as a guardsman. With your credentials-squire to Sir Ector of Camelot!-who wouldn't take you? Then you can prove yourself. Catch a bandit or two or twenty. Fight with such a ferocity, such a noble, deadly grace that Uther himself, struck with awe at your swordsmanship, knights you on the spot, no questions asked."

"I-" Arthur thought about it, for a moment, genuinely considered it. Not the knight part, since it was foolish fantasy-though he did entertain the thought briefly, whimsically-but the rest of it: Camelot, with Merlin at his side. Something about it seemed right.

"Think about it, okay?" Merlin pleaded.

Arthur nodded, but he knew he wouldn't. His place was here, with Sir Ector, the man who'd taken him in as a lonely, dirty orphan all those years ago. Ector was aging, lonely, missing Lady Bethel, and Arthur owed him the world, if not at least a return of companionship.

…

"Hyah!"

Gwen ducked low over her horse's neck to avoid a low-hanging branch, clutching tightly to the reins. She chanced a glance behind her, still bent forward in her saddle.

In the blur of foliage whizzing past, she recognized the vague shapes of horsemen, heard the thundering of hooves, and she shuddered, turning back to her reins, urging her horse faster again- "Hyah!"

She looked straight ahead, guiding her horse expertly, even though she was terrified. She'd always been a superb rider…Her father used to tell a story—"Why, Gwennie, you were born in the saddle," he'd say, "Your mother was on the horse behind me, I hardly knew why she was screaming so; I turned my horse around and there you were, a tiny babe, all red from crying, just popped up there next to her, sitting on the saddle like you owned the horse."

She'd been born on the road, that much her mother had confirmed, though she suspected her father had changed some of the finer points. Yes, they'd been on the way home from…where? Pilgrimage, was it? Or the summit in Camelot? …Gwen found, her eyes welling up, that she couldn't remember.

Funny, she reflected, how insignificant details seem so significant when one can no longer recall them…

Straight ahead, just look straight ahead.

Gwen looked straight ahead, trying to gauge a path for the two of them, horse and rider, crashing through the woods… They were well away from her home Cameliard by now, and the woods were unfamiliar to her, putting her at a significant disadvantage.

Not to mention, she was in a dubious mental state at the moment, halfway between shock and horror, fueled solely by the adrenaline of her terror; she didn't even know where she was going, let alone what she would do when she got there.

She couldn't shake the image of the palace's northern turret in flames, the smoke puffing out into the sky in great black curls, her mother clutching her arm, eyes grim, her father: "Give me one thing Gwennie. Your safety. Let your old man face his fate knowing that you're alive and well."

Noble bullshit. And what could she say? She'd swallowed it all like the back-end of a donkey. An ass's ass, that's what she was. An ass's ass.

The men behind her, whoever they were (and she sincerely hoped she didn't have to find out) were gaining on her.

She spurred her horse on, again, a crazed sort of desperation lodged like a stone in the back of her parched throat, and she dared another peek backwards, and…

She was rewarded with a perfect view of the crossbow bolt as it flew, true to its master's aim, and lodged itself in her leg. Gwen hadn't even completed her little "Oh!" of surprise and pain before she was falling out of the horse, already blacking out.

An ass's ass for damn sure.

…

Arthur was finally nodding off when the shouting reached his ears. He'd spent most of the early night sword in hand, attacking trees and bushes and imaginary foes, trying to forget that his best friend was leaving town. Then he'd spent the rest of the night on his cot, fuming at the world, at Merlin, at his faceless parents, before turning over and glaring at the wall, and then at the backs of his eyelids. He'd almost hit that sweet spot to cross over into sleep when raised voices outside made him open his eyes in renewed annoyance.

At first he'd tried to ignore it, figuring it was probably just the town drunk, at it again, but eventually the noise became unbearable.

He'd just sat up when the door banged open, and then Merlin was there, his eyes huge and desolate, and whatever snappish remark had been on his tongue died on his lips, because somehow he knew that something had happened. Something enormous, unshakeable, awful, unchangeable, had happened, and nothing would ever be the same again.

And so he was almost prepared for the words that rolled off Merlin's tongue. Almost. But that didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell when Merlin said, "It's Sir Ector."

And Arthur just stared at him because he didn't know what to say, didn't want to say anything to confirm or validate what he somehow knew in that moment.

But Merlin, his eyes full of compassion and understanding, said it anyway, "Arthur, he's dead." It was like a punch in the gut.

Arthur was up and at the door in a shaking instant, and Merlin led him out, silently.

They walked about fifty paces outside the front door, and there he was, face-down in the dirt, a knife in his back. Arthur could've seen him if he'd looked out his bedroom window.

A crowd had gathered around the body, Gwaine was there, looking surprisingly sober, and Elaine, the cook and sometimes maid, crying to herself, and a scattered few others he recognized, but they all quieted and parted for him as he approached.

He stared down at the body as he walked to it, and he knew his eyes were running, but all he could feel was a cold, detached kind of numbness, a this-cannot-be-happening sort of feeling, and he bit his lip, hard, as he knelt, wanting to feel some kind of pain right then.

He felt hands on him, at his back, Merlin, probably, though he didn't check.

First things first, he flipped the wrist, checked the pulse, just to be sure, not surprised, but still devastated, to find it absent.

Then, wrapping two hands around the hilt, he unsheathed the knife from his father's body, and then, gently, carefully, turned him on his back.

Sir Ector's eyes were half-lidded and glassy in death, his face slack and sagging and somehow thinner, not the roguish, jovial thing it had been in life. Arthur mourned the loss of Ector's dimples, twitching at some secret joke, the twinkle in his eyes as he laughed, a great belly-shaking laugh.

It seemed impossible that someone so solid, so real, so alive, just moments before had simply ceased to exist, robbed of consciousness, character, presence, family, so quickly, so briefly, so unthinkingly, earth-shakingly, simply, gone.

"What happened?" Arthur asked, and his voice was raw and weak and hollow, and it hardly sounded like his own.

It was Elaine who answered, and her voice was even more fragile than his. It startled him so much that he tore his gaze away from Ector's half-lidded, unseeing eyes to meet hers, hazel, terrified.

"I was walking home," she whispered. "After I cooked dinner for you, I started reading, and I fell asleep, so it was dark out when I started home. I- there were these men," she shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself, "I think they were drunk. They were just cat-calling, jeering. I ignored them, at first, but then one of them came over. He grabbed me." She started sobbing, still clutching herself, and Arthur's eyes were riveted to her.

Arthur saw, now, that her dress was ripped, and she was missing buttons. He stripped off his shirt and rose slightly to wrap it around her. She continued to sob, but she dashed away her tears, seeming determined to tell him the story, "He pushed me against the wall, and I couldn't get him away from me, and I was so scared, and then, and then Sir was there. He was just walking by, and I was crying, and the man was on me, and Sir, he saw me, and then he tore him away from me. And, and," She bowed her head, shaking, "And then they started arguing, and the man, he pushed Sir, and Sir pushed him back and then, he yelled at him, and Sir was very angry, and then he turned to me, and asked if I was okay, and then the man just, he just," her voice broke, "I'm so sorry," she wailed, "I tried to shout a warning, but it was too late, and then he just collapsed, and I started screaming, and the man, he grabbed my throat, and I thought he was going to kill me too, and he should've, he should've, and poor Sir was just laying there on the ground, and then people started coming out—I think they heard me screaming, and the man just dropped me and then he, they, they just left. But, it was too late. I'm so sorry, Arthur, I'm so sorry-"

Arthur enveloped her in a hug, and she cried into his shoulder, whispering apologies, and Arthur just stared at the body of Sir Ector over her shoulder, watched Merlin close his eyes, arrange the limbs, watched Gwaine and some other men prepare to carry him off.

"Shh," he comforted Elaine, whispering into her wet hair, "Shh, it's not your fault, you didn't do anything wrong."

Behind them, dawn broke, timid, faint, tendrils of pink and yellow just barely escaping the horizon, and suddenly he remembered something Sir Ector had said, that afternoon, before leaving—"I'll be reunited with Bethel in the morning," he'd said, grinning.

He wasn't wrong, Arthur thought sadly. Sir Ector had been more correct than even he could have known.

Elaine drew back from Arthur, eventually, and looked up at him. "I had a moment with him, before he left," she whispered. "He told me to give you this, said it was yours, said you were more than you thought you were."

She pried his fingers out of his fist, and transferred something into his palm, before wrapping his fingers around it again. Before his fingers closed around the small, metal object, Arthur glimpsed the dragon crest of Camelot.

"Who did it?" He asked, his voice a hoarse, but commanding whisper. "Which bastard killed my father?"

She took another step away from him, hugging herself again, and he had to lean forward to hear the name that passed her lips with a shudder of fear or disgust: "Cenred."

A/N: I'm sorry sorry sorryyyyy for being the world's worst updater *cringes*

Take this as a peace offering? Tell me what you liked/ didn't! Also, okay, I know that Arthur was Sir Kai's squire instead of Ector's, but since the myths have Ector as his foster father, I thought I'd just compromise. Idk. I'll use Kai later.