ELEVEN

Waking with the dawn was in fashion, apparently. Though it was one thing to find oneself waking on a dusty floor covered by a blanket of moth-frass and the odd fibre. To wake and find yourself tied to the central pole of the Prince's tent in the main enemy encampment was another thing altogether. It was justifiably dreadful in terms of personal safety, at the very least. Gwaine preferred to think of it as intensely inconvenient. Sometimes it helped to look at dreadful life situations in that way.

Shaking the accumulated fuzz from his head and wincing at the stab of pain behind his left eye, he glanced about in search of guards and such. It would seem that he was alone for the time being. The world could be fair when the fancy took it, after all. Curious, Gwaine wriggled his wrists, testing the ropes keeping them bound around the pole at his back to find them coarse, damp, and unpleasant against his skin. Also rather tight, and secure. Most knots could be loosened if bothered enough, and in the right way. Having spent an inordinate amount of time tied up in his short life, Gwaine fancied himself something of an expert. His knowledge of knots was wide and varied, and by the feel of it, included those currently keeping him there. He began working at the ones he could feel with his fingertips. Time was of the essence. Judging by the amount and colour of the light filtering through the tent's canvas walls it was already dawn. The others would be wondering where he was. He did not want Leon asking awkward questions if he could avoid it.

Quite how long he worried at them he could not be sure, but the knots would not give. Irritated, he thumped his head back against the pole and huffed out a bitter chuckle. Oh, this was just fine. Captured and trussed up without the accolade of it even being by the enemy. Not really. The others waking to find him missing and Lot's men and a dragon hanging around would be the currant on the bun. The situation could only really get worse if Gaheris were to suddenly brandish Merlin and or Arthur at him. That, or somehow letting slip that he had been smashed about the head with, and therefore defeated by a book. Something that none of the others (es-pec-ially Percy) would learn of while there was still breath in his body.

Provided they didn't get eaten by the dragon first.

Gwaine stared into space, automatically bothering at the knots again, meandering off into his thoughts with a slight crease of his forehead. Wasn't Arthur supposed to have killed off the last dragon? It was one of those stories he told whilst in his cups – one of the ones that had Merlin break out his petulant housewife face – that he had bravely 'laid waste' to the great dragon. That phrase had always given Gwaine the chuckles. It was something he related to inanimate objects rather than living things. Most people laid waste to villages, or crops. Arthur 'laid waste' to animals, apparently.

Still. Arthur. Great dragon. Dealing fatal blows. If the princess was supposed to have killed the last dragon as he insisted, then he'd done a pretty poor job of it going on what he'd seen last night. And after all the trouble they went to in order to make an omelette of that egg too...

Gwaine straightened with a jump, snapped from his thoughts as the tent flap was thrust aside and Gaheris breezed in. The bastard didn't have the good grace not to look smug, either. He always had done smug particularly well.

Gaheris continued past him without so much as a glance to halt at the table and begin picking thoughtlessly at the impressive spread laid thereon. After a little while of denuding stems of their grapes, he turned his head to look at his captive with one raised eyebrow.

"Gwaine, Gwaine, Gwaine. What are we going to do with you, little brother?"

"Loosening these rather fetching ropes would be something."

That rose a smile from the prince. "That'd be foolish, and I'm no fool."

"A matter of opinion."

"Coming from the captive."

Gwaine pursed his lips, considered, and gave a nod. "S'pose that's fair."

Gaheris returned the nod, and took up his goblet to drink. "I knew you'd turn up again, Gwaine. Really didn't expect you back so soon, though."

Gwaine managed a grin. "What can I say? I missed all of you."

"So much so you burst into Clarissant's tent while she was in her night clothes?" Gaheris popped a grape in his gob and leant back against the table that he fully faced Gwaine, chewing thoughtfully. "That's a bit strange, even for you."

"In all fairness, I didn't know it was her tent."

"Then to be laid out by Gareth of all people? For the sake of your manhood, I'd just tell everyone it was Clare, to be complete honest with you."

"It'd be more believable." With another wince, Gwaine shifted. His buttocks were turning numb on the cold grass. Must have been out for a while...

"What's the matter?" Gaheris demanded around a grin, "got ants in your drawers?" When Gwaine did not reply, he popped another grape in his mouth and folded his arms over his chest. "D'you remember, little brother," he began, tone reminiscent, gaze distant, "when I actually put ants down your drawers?"

"I remember," Gwaine returned casually, still shifting as he began work on his knots again. "They were red. Red ones bite."

"Hm." Gaheris chuckled to himself, "you squirmed for ages."

"Ant bites'll do that to you."

The prince said nothing to that. He appraised his brother silently, a small frown coming to replace the smug smile as his predominant expression. "We did have some fun, though, didn't we, Gwaine?"

The knight stilled in his struggles, something in his brother's tone sparking his interest. "One of us did."

"Come now," Gaheris waved a dismissive hand, "you enjoyed our little adventures."

"Y'tied me to a tree and left me there." Gwaine reminded him, flicking his hair back from his face to instantly regret the throbbing pain it settled in the back of his skull, "said bears would come."

"Childish fun. There weren't any bears in the woods around the old castle."

"Still, you're a bastard for doing it."

"Was funny."

Gwaine paused, glancing up at Gaheris through the fall of his hair. His fingers quickened in their wriggling, gauging his brother's subtle change in expression as he forced a whistle through his teeth. "The old man didn't think so."

A cloud seemed to descend on Gaheris; his stance, and expression becoming rigid, as though morphing into stone. "No. No he didn't." His eyes fell on Gwaine, something dark in them that put the younger man on edge. "Tanned my hide himself. Knocked me about then banged me up in the dungeons, in with the thieves and dissenters. All because you screamed and wailed like an infant."

Despite the spike of discomfort in his gut at the change in his brother's expression, Gwaine steeled himself and pushed. He looked Gaheris dead in the eye, lifted his chin as he spoke, "I was six summers. You were twelve."

"And you followed me everywhere, like some lovelorn pup." Gaheris turned his nose up in disgust at the memory, looking for all the world as though he wanted to spit at Gwaine's feet.

With him distracted so, Gwaine worked harder at the knots. If he got one hand loose now, and Gaheris realised, he wouldn't try and prevent him – he'd step back and let him free himself, and take up his sword. Gwaine found himself tempted to meet him in that, should he have a sword of his own. Skill for skill, he knew himself to be the better swordsman. Something that Gaheris had always been bitter about. Another thing of many. Dear older brother was not quite the easy going individual he appeared on the outside. He was easily irked, quick to anger, and jealous. So, so jealous. He took after their father in that. Gwaine knew himself to have been blessed with his father's temper also, though he had always had a much better handle on it than Gaheris. People told him he was laid back, and that was generally true. Also something that he was very glad of at this moment in time, else he'd likely be free already and the two of them would be at one another's throats, not to stop 'til they'd throttled each other.

He kept his own anger in check (in regards to their childhood interactions he had long ago let any real ill feelings go) in favour of focusing on freeing himself to bolt. The subject of their shared childhood was useful for holding Gaheris' attention. The angrier he was, the more careless. When it came to enraging Gaheris, Gwaine knew himself to be a master in the art.

"What do you expect from a child torn from his mother and taken to a strange place where every face belongs to a stranger? Some frightening bear of a bloke claiming to be my father and telling me that you're my brother and will look after me? What would any child do?"

Gaheris snarled in response, his lip curling, "everywhere I went you were there, trotting along on my heels, watching me with those bloody eyes of yours. Like you wanted something but would never ask for it. Drove me insane! If I said anything you'd cry and I'd get my arse whacked and tossed in the dungeons. You want to know something, little brother?" He gripped the table behind him, leaning forward and lowering his voice in a conspiratorial manner, "I despised you." The words veritably dripped acid.

Gwaine shrugged a shoulder carelessly, cocking his head in a manner he knew Gaheris found irritating. "I know that."

Gaheris bristled. "Until you turned up, everything was well. Then you came along, the illegitimate, doe-eyed... product of that whore from Cork, and everything changed. I am the heir, Gwaine," he thumbed himself in the chest viciously, "I am the first born. I am the first in line. Unlike you, I am not a bastard. I am the heir. You are not even the spare. You, are nothing."

Again, Gwaine shrugged. "And? Some of the best people I know are bastards." So they were. Marriage carried little weight among the peasantry. Those who did marry were free to move on after seven years*. What point was there in it without lands to one's name, or alliances to cement? Given the choice, he would rather be a bastard peasant than a prince any day. There was more worth in one peasant than all of the nobility as far as he was concerned.

The errant thought of a particular manservant with a wonderful, sunny grin popped into his mind's eye, closely followed by a scowling King Arthur and hurt Sir Leon, both demanding he re-evaluate his previous mental statement. Most of the nobility. MOST.

His words twisted a sneer from his brother. "You are nothing, Gwaine. You turned up just the same as Gareth and Clare, but wouldn't fade quietly into the furniture like them. He into his books and her into her gender. Oh no. Gwaine had to kick and scream and cry and fight anybody who wouldn't give him his way and let him go back to his precious mam. That made the old man notice you, care about you. He had you brought to him, same as the others because you were his. A possession. You made him give a damn about you, y'disgusting little ferret. Y'had fight in you, and that made him like you. More than that, you end up the bloody favourite!"

"Ah," Gwaine couldn't help but grin, "that's it, then? All coming out now."

"Shut your mouth!" Gaheris almost roared, snatching an apple from the table and clenching it in his fist. "D'you have any idea how hard you made it for me? With your prissy little tantrums and loose lips? You still don't know when to keep quiet." He strode across the tent, yanked Gwaine's head back by his forelock and stuffed the apple in his mouth, like a roast pig.

Satisfied at the scowl he won in return, Gaheris tossed his head and sent a smirk down at his brother, his smugness returning full force. "I thought I'd finally got rid of you that first time. Who did you think let that simpering wench of a mother of yours into the castle that night? How do you think a sobbing woman and child escaped there undetected? You know how paranoid the old man is." Wistful, he shook his head, "I never did expect him to go looking for you. Certainly not to actually find you. Over the water, up in Caerleon of all places."

Thoughtful, Gaheris crouched that he was level with his brother, reaching out a hand to ruffle his hair affectionately, "I didn't have to hep you get out the next time, did I? Or the time after that. You were big enough and stupid enough to get yourself away by then. You know – and tell no one this, Gwaine, else I'll hit you - I actually started looking up to you. The crying stopped, and when you could do things for yourself, you were less of a pest. I almost came to forgive you."

His face darkened once more. Without warning he straightened and struck out at Gwaine's shin with his foot. "Then you had to turn up on Morcades and the whole grim cycle started again. You couldn't stay away, could you? All that running, never staying in one place and for what? To run straight to our gates again. You're a bloody idiot."

With a slight flourish, Gaheris turned on his heel and returned to the table to take up his lean once more. He picked up another apple, hefting it in his hand a moment before taking a bite. "Y'know, little brother," he said around a mouthful, "believe me or not if you want, but this time I'm actually glad to see you. Tried being civil, but that's never going to work between us. So right now I've a couple of my men preparing you a horse. They're going to take you up to the castle and turn you over as a knight of Camelot."

Behind the apple, Gwaine snorted, indignant. He scowled up at Gaheris, scowling harder when the Prince cracked a grin, and shook his head.

"Despite everything, I do love you, Gwaine. Don't like you, but do love you. But the old man raised me to be a ruthless bastard, and a ruthless bastard I'll be." He levelled the apple at Gwaine as though it were a weapon, "and stop toying with those there ropes. That's a double constrictor knot with a strangle underneath which... I see you've already managed. Well done. However," he dumped the apple back on the table and crossed to crouch behind the pole and slap Gwaine's almost free hand aside to add another knot, "that's another constrictor you've earned. I seem to recall that's the one you always had most trouble with."

Behind them, the tent flap parted that two soldiers may enter, their eyes falling on Gwaine.

Gaheris rose from his work, halfway through the new knot, and made for the table to take up his apple to finish. He cocked an eye at the two men, casual in all outward appearance except for the steady tic of his left brow, something Gwaine spotted immediately and couldn't help but feel proud for having made such an impression. "Take him, but be careful. Tie those knots back the same as they are, else he'll get loose. He's a slippery bugger."

The soldiers inclined their heads, and moved forward to collect their prisoner.

Gaheris followed the three of them to the entrance of the tent, watching as Gwaine was dragged by his upper arms to the four waiting horses and bundled up on one, his knees lashed to the saddle to prevent 'accidents' as instructed prior to his collection.

As the small party moved out, Gaheris called after them: "Give the old man my love!"

Gwaine glanced back at him, unable to retort due to the apple. His eyes met those of Clarrissant and Gareth as they watched him pass from the entrance of her tent. She lowered her eyes and folded her arms around herself, her twin brother's hands resting on her shoulders. Gareth looked guilty, and sent Gwaine an apologetic look. The rogue knight gave them a sly wink in return, losing sight of them soon after as his horse cantered from the camp after the others on a lead reign.

Despite his action, Gwaine's heart sank in his chest. This is not how he had hoped that his little excursion would end...

It was quiet. Too quiet.

His boots whispered through the bracken, making only the faintest of rustles with each soft footfall. Lurking at the back of his mind, the certainty that with every step there would come a loud hiss as his foot came down on a wayward adder, but that never happened.

Adders aside, there seemed to be no animals to be seen. That was never a good sign. Birdsong stood for safety, and a lack of pungent enemies downwind. Silence stood for danger.

Arthur had kept an ear on his surroundings since setting foot in the woods. Every little rustle, shift and tweet was a sign. Until recently, things had remained pretty consistent. Now, however: No birdsong. No movement. No nothing. He stuck close to the thickest of the trees, moving between the oaks and the low-hanging cover of the hazel boughs overgrowing the thick carpet of brake.

From what he had memorised of the land, the bandit camp was located less than half a league from the village. There were probably more camps by now, judging by how quickly word could spread about even the most mundane of events. Throw money into the mix and the speed would increase exponentially beyond what even the greatest thinkers of the time had managed to conceive of as yet.

If luck would have it, he'd find Merlin bound up in the camp they had already 'visited', all neatly packaged and awaiting rescue. If not, he would have to browse elsewhere until he came across his servant. Knowing Merlin, he would be in the very last one Arthur checked.

The King rolled his eyes at the thought.

He followed the path by which he and Merlin had come through the woods on their initial mad dash to safety, ensuring that he kept well out of the ditch leading up the hill alongside the tall forest of bracken. Quite how he was going to negotiate the steep dirt hill they had slid down remained to be seen.

He had passed the trail leading to 'the cave' a little while previous. Whether it be the caves in which Merlin had temporarily gotten everyone lost during their last visit to Ealdor, or a separate location entirely, Arthur was unsure. If it were of any tactical advantage, then it would be held by one denomination of enemy or another by now. The bandits that had chased him knew of it at least. To him it would always be synonymous with being stuffed in a disused badger sett.

Ducking behind a large and sprawling old oak at the very top of the bracken patch, he positioned himself that he could get a good view of the dirt hill. It looked to be quite a well-used means of travel, judging by how worn it was. Before venturing any closer, he wanted to ensure that no one was keeping a watch on it.

The woods in general remained eerily silent. The hollow feeling, so unnatural as it was to hear only the wind carding gently through the leaves without the interlude of animal life sent a chill down Arthur's spine. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, beginning to stare...

There was no movement in the trees. No clear disturbance to the shrubs and low-growing flora. Nothing that revealed any very recent passage by creatures larger than a badger. This whole scenario was, however, no longer just about two men running from their lives from some bandits and a patrol. This was him, a trespassing King, stuck in the centre of a full scale campaign against him. A full scale campaign, in which his manservant had decided to wander off and get lost.

The campaign thing in mind, it was not unlikely that somebody had bivouaced in the shrubs and thick ground cover around the hill as a means of keeping a constant watch on it. One couldn't afford to take any chances.

… Was this how a deer felt when being stalked by a hunting party?

Mentally, Arthur shook his head.

That was Merlin talking. One couldn't attribute people things to animals. That way madness lay. No deer would be thinking about the accomplished hunters tracking their every move with enviable grace and skill. They would be too busy thinking about deer things, like edible undergrowth, and jumping high, and rutting, And one-upping sheep with their capability of eating yew berries*. Not the mortal danger they were in -

A crack echoed through the trees.

Arthur froze against the oak, automatically pressed flat against its rough bark.

Another crack... and another, drawing closer.

Very slowly, moving by degrees, his hand moved towards the hilt of his sword.

Over to his right, the tall bracken swayed slightly, pushed aside by something moving through it in careful, deliberate forward motion. Somebody trying to move undetected without the formal instruction or experience to quite manage it.

For a fleeting moment, hope fluttered in Arthur's chest that it may be Merlin. That the dolt had somehow dallied about the forest all night and managed to remain undetected. Somehow.

That hope was quashed pretty quickly, by Arthur himself.

It was not Merlin. He had been dragged on so many hunting trips and suicide missions over the years that he now had a working knowledge of how to move undetected, even if his natural and structural disadvantages still sometimes got the better of him.

An image of his servant flouncing the length of Guinevere's solar with a book balanced on his head flashed briefly across Arthur's mind's eye. He had looked so studious, and Guinevere's applause was so enthusiastic that Arthur had not the heart to tease Merlin for taking deportment lessons from the Queen. It wasn't the strangest thing he had ever walked in on in his wife's rooms, and was certainly one of the most useful. His breakfasts, and his meals in general had been of a higher food content, and lower ratio of broken pottery and fluff to nutrition of late. Merlin was better at food conveyance than he had been, and currently not approaching his King's position through the tall crop of bracken dangerously close by.

Arthur cursed Merlin for distracting him, and refocused on the situation at hand. He closed his fingers around the grip of his sword to slowly, almost silently, pull it from its scabbard.

The rustling ceased. Light footfalls sent Arthur shifting a little way around the great oak to tuck himself out of sight into a cleft in the trunk.

The steps halted where he had stood moments ago. So close that he could hear the quiet breaths of someone who had recently exerted themselves. They had yet to recover, and lack of change in rhythm meant that they were unaware of his presence. Pity for them.

Arthur sprang, whirling from his hiding place around in an arc to snatch a hold of the interloper's arm and force them back against the tree, his blade inches from their throat.

The blue eyes staring back at him wide with surprise, fear, and outright, rampant defiance were so familiar he found himself stumbling back and dropping his sword to his side and almost the ground before the rest of the person even registered.

"Hunith," he uttered dumbly.

The woman in front of him stared back, surprised, but no longer fearful.

"Arthur," she acknowledged, part relieved, part belligerent in such a perfect echo of her son that Arthur's heart almost skipped a beat and turned its attention back to worrying about Merlin while his head dealt with the articulating side of things.

"Are you alright?"

Uncertainly, Hunith nodded her head. She did not move from the tree, Arthur noticed. "I'm well. A little surprised, but no worse for wear."

"... I thought you were a bandit," Arthur explained lamely, finding himself shifting uncomfortably beneath her assessing stare.

"I had no idea what you were."

No. He supposed she didn't. He could have been anything in these woods at present. Without distance, he was lucky enough to have recognised her.

She looked no different from the neck up, but the rest of her was unrecognisable as Hunith. Merlin's mother was all simple woollen dresses, and soft shawls that tickled one's cheek and smelled faintly of yeast when she held you. At present she was dressed like a man, probably in Merlin's clothing, though their condition was better than anything that Merlin routinely wore, and she was apparently wielding her broom as a weapon.

Either that, or her housework extended to sweeping the surrounding woodlands. While he had learnt after so many years of exposure to Merlin not to discount anything by merit of its being a bit strange, or even altogether unlikely, somehow he doubted that having a good clean was her purpose here.

Besides, he'd seen this woman wield a broom in a battle situation, and was not afraid to admit (if only to himself, and not by way of audible sound) that it was a rather terrifying spectacle.

So he drew himself up, and regarded her in what he hoped to be an authoritative manner. "What are you doing?"

Apparently Hunith did not recognise his authority as she stepped away from the tree and looked up at him with the same belligerence as she had when she thought him an attacker. "You came in here looking for Merlin," she jiggled her broom lightly, as a knight offering his sword, "I've come to help."

Arthur opened his mouth the speak, shushed when she held up her hand, "He is my son."

"He is my manservant -"

"I am his mother." Hunith shook her head. "I cannot sit by and do nothing while he is in danger. I have always done my best to protect him. He may be grown, but I am not going to stop now."

Arthur drew a breath, unconvinced that she could be swayed before he even begun. "It's too dangerous. These woods are crawling with bandits and Lot's men."

"Arthur." Hunith regarded him with a warm, fond smile. "I appreciate your efforts, but I am not going home. I travelled to Camelot to seek assistance, and fought Kanen and his raiders for the sake of my village. I would face every bandit and every soldier for my son. Do not tell me to go home, because I will not."

He wanted to argue. Taking her along would be unwise, dangerous, and simply ill-advised. She was not a warrior, not a hunter. She was a farmer, he thought.. Lethal with a broom, granted, but in a pitched battle, she would be a hindrance more than a help.

She was looking at him the way that Merlin did when he intended to be mule-headedly stubborn. As much as he may think that he had won when he argued blue in the face with stubborn Merlin, his persistent servant would turn up anyway, or cross paths with him later, doing exactly whatever it was he had been forbidden from doing in the first.

This frighteningly determined woman had raised Merlin, so had to be able to out-stubborn him to have done so successfully. If Merlin didn't do as he was told by a King, what chance did that self-same King have against Merlin's mother?

Maybe he should take up head-spike whittling? It might make people listen to him less grudgingly. Threatening Merlin with boiling oil had never been conducive to promoting good behaviour, even when shown that his master did, in actual fact, have a vat of boiling oil, albeit empty at the time.

… It really hadn't been his favourite eighth birthday present. That accolade had gone to the wooden spinning top thing with bells on that Gaius had given him. Especially when he realised that it could use the Latin vocab book he had received from Geoffrey as a jump and still keep on spinning.

Still, even at eight summers he had known enough to show the most vocal appreciation for the instrument of gruesome murder his father had gifted him. Which now sat in the royal garden, full of pansies Guinevere had planted inside. His father would never know. Nor would Uther ever be aware that the spinning top lived safely wrapped up in an old sock in the top of his wardrobe, or that, on occasion, when he was feeling particularly sad and low, he would lovingly unwrap it and jump Geoffrey's vocab book again.

No. He didn't whittle head-spikes. He was a grown man who played with his favourite toy when supposedly engaged in deep, Kingly introspection.

… And was currently debating embarking on a dangerous rescue mission with his best friend's mother.

Because only a best friend would think that his spinning top was a bit great and join in playing with it.

… At some point he really had to put serious thought into the way he arrived at conclusions. There had to be a shorter route available.

No. He was decided. There was no way he could possibly take Hunith with him.

She was staring at him defiantly. It was … unsettling. It made his feet shuffle.

All of a sudden he really wished that he had his knights with him.

* According to something History Buff Husband told me.

*True fact, bro.

Apologies for the B word, but it is one that Gwaine uses. This has been finished for over a week. Had a problem with the internet connection that utterly refused to abate until now, so got this up at the first opportunity! I just really wanted to do Hunith and Arthur. She doesn't seem the type to sit by when her baby's in danger. Will be back to Merlin next chapter :D

Also, went away for the weekend and visited Cosmeston Medieval Village, or Ealdor as perhaps we all know it better. It's tiny! And an awesome place set in a country park with two lakes to its name. Highly recommend going! It's brill. Also somehow ended up hopping the border into England and this time visiting Goodrich Castle (AKA Morgause's fortress of emotional doom), Dunraven bay (back in Wales), where Arthur and Merlin spend a lovely afternoon drinking poison in front of an old man, and Cannop Ponds and found the stream where the vilia healed Merlin, and his spear fishing rocks, which is just down the road from Speech House lake (Lake of Avalon). Wasn't supposed to turn into a locations tour as originally we were in the Brecon Beacons looking for Pwll Y Wrach where they used to drown witches (in what was a rather industrial manner, chillingly enough). It's a very haunting place, with visible ruins from the days that it was 'adjusted' with walls and a channel to change the water level for more effective drowning, but still very naturally beautiful. All in all it was a lovely weekend. Must do it again soon.