Chapter 1: If I Should Die Before I Wake
Summary:
It had been three days since Gawain had wakened on a preternatural bed of Green in the dirt, alone among the burned ruins of the Man Blood encampment.
Chapter Text
It had been three days since Gawain had wakened on a preternatural bed of Green in the dirt, alone among the burned ruins of the Man Blood encampment.
His last memory before opening restored emerald eyes and gasping pain-free breath into lungs no longer filled with blood or the smoke of his own charred flesh, had been pain. Anguish - both body and soul - so consuming it had burned away reason and language and hope for anything but the imminent release of swiftly approaching death. In the final fiery climax of agony, as blackness unfolded across the vision of his remaining eye like the spreading wings of a delivering dark angel, his final thought flew unbidden to the Fey Monk and in that final singular instant he was taken by an irrational overwhelming gratitude for the mercy of the Ash Man's blade at last delivering him from the unendurable suffering...- And in the next moment it was gone. Strapped into the torturer's chair, his vision had darkened with inescapable finality, his entire being consumed in a totality of torment, yet in the next instant both unmarred eyes were blinking up with brilliant clarity at the stars from where his healed body had been laid out on the ground. Though his mind recalled the unbearable anguish with vivid certainty, not a trace or so much as a twinge of pain echoed in his body. No remnant of the wounds he knew he'd sustained - not even the Monk's piercing blow which felled him, taking his legs and eventually his life - nor a single scar remained to confirm that the horror of his mind's remembrance had in fact happened at all. Were it not for the bloody tatters of what rags remained of his threadbare undertunic and long-braies, he might almost be able to convince himself it had all been some manner of sorcerous hallucination or fevered delusion. Almost.
But the bloodied and burned cloth of his destroyed underclothes suggested that whatever unexplained Hidden miracle had been worked upon his restored body, his memories were not the ravages of an afflicted mind. Though no evidence remained on his limbs, it had happened. And if the recollected torture had in fact happened, that also meant that-
"PERCIVAL!" he shouted with desperate urgency, abruptly rolling to his bare feet in sudden realization. Memory crashed down on him all at once like a tidal wave, stealing his breath, of the boy clawing and scratching at his captors until a red-frocked friar's beefy fist to the face finally stunned the child into submission as they dragged the little one from the tent.
"Percy! Squirrel!"
Staggering through rubble and burn-blackened corpses, he barely caught himself from tripping as his naked foot caught on something firm and fleshy. Looking down, he blinked slowly in recognition at the sightless eyes staring up at him from the severed tonsured head. He swallowed, trapped for a moment in Carden's dead gaze. The world seemed paused and he looked within himself for some expected sense of vengeance or vindication or satisfaction at the sight, but was surprised to find the visage of his most reviled foe's rotting face brought only a snort of disgusted disdain. With a final blink of acknowledgement, his bare foot brushed forward to kick the obstruction from his path with irreverence and indifference before returning to his interrupted quest.
"Percival! PERCY!"
Digging frantically through the charred remains of collapsed – Pendragon? - pavilions for any sign of the boy, he struggled to force down the memory...of the pleas he'd at last offered up to the red-robed clerics as they'd hauled the dazed child out of his sight. How he'd finally surrendered to them the begging they'd so tirelessly worked those past hours to wring from him, imploring them in Squirrel's absence to spare the child. Unable to conceal his desperation to keep the boy from harm, despite his crumbling warrior's logic - darkly aware, as it was buried beneath this new devastating fear - warning him his protests and pleas were only condemning Percival further, confirming the boy's suffering to be the most effective weapon to wield against him. The Black Brother had merely laughed generously and chided that they'd only be able to trust words from his lying tongue once he'd watched them first remove the boy's; but Salt had assured that they wouldn't wait idle, that he'd test the limberness of Gawain's own until their small new prisoner rejoined them. When in the interim his fevered failing body had taken an unanticipated abrupt turn for the worse under the renewed onslaught of the monk's ministrations, signaling the imminence of the Ash Man's gut wound finally laying its claim on, he salvaged an improbable glimmer of hope. If he died before Squirrel was brought back before him, with him would die the usefulness of torturing the boy as leverage. His last desperate hope that upon his own death the Brothers would recognize the futility of the Fey child's torture and spare the boy at least this agony, he prayed with what little remained of his fracturing fevered mind that the Hidden would hasten that end. Though that final deliverance had burned mercilessly through him and incinerated the last vestiges of his mortal endurance, the Hidden had answered his prayer...
With a grunt of irritation, he shook his head as if to physically dislodge the memory, renewing his search through the encampment with increased urgency. He dug through the ruined tents and torched bodies - for any sign of the tenacious little one - with such singularity of focus that he lost track of whether minutes or hours passed. Eventually, with an audible growl, he hurled an upended brazier from the fetid forms of a Paladin and two Pendragon soldiers, frustration mounting as he was forced to acknowledge he'd awakened in the WRONG CAMP!
Ceridwen's Cunt!
It was becoming rapidly undeniable that his body had been moved post-mortem; of course there was no sign of Percy here! But stopping his search before he found the boy was NOT an option! Snarling at the wasted futility of having been scouring the wrong bloody location, he knew he needed to somehow make his way back to whether remained of the Red Brothers' barracks where Squirrel had initially been captured and attempt to track from there. Tugging at his sweat-stiff hair with a groan of frustration, he realized he had frankly no recollection - through the pain and intermittent consciousness of the ride between his fight in the woods with the Monk and his delivery to "cook" in Salt's Kitchen - where in the Christian HELL the Paladin camp was in relation to his current position! Belanus' FUCKING BALLS!!!
Cooling his thoughts enough to at least recognize, however, that he would not get very far in bare feet and bloodied kecks, he shifted his focus briefly back to the bodies littering the ground. He didn't allow himself to think about the fact that the charred debris around him had crumbled obediently to ash in his grip, but had been completely cool to the touch. He didn't allow himself to reflect on the fact that the cloying smoke stench which permeated the burned canvas tent-walls no longer lingered in the crisp air. Above all, he didn't allow himself to contemplate the fact that Man Blood bodies at his feet were subtly but undeniably beginning to bloat with rot. Setting about salvaging a serviceable pair of boots and breeches from among the dead, he began - with irate muttered curses gradually gaining in volume - to scavenge the soldiers' corpses.
..And that is how The Widow found him, Morgana's familiar once Man Blood eyes widening in a mix of wonder and fear as she'd lifted her ethereal black veil with shocked incomprehension...
It had been three days since Gawain had wakened on a preternatural bed of Green. Three days since the Sister-turned-ShadowLady had retrieved him from the site of the miraculous deathbed on which he'd been reborn, spiriting him back to his People. Three days that he'd been leading search party after search party canvassing for any clue as to the whereabouts of the missing Percival, or for the - likewise suspiciously vanished, it would seem - Weeping Monk.
Three sleepless searching days, and still there was no sign of Squirrel.
Chapter 2: Even the Lost Ones
Summary:
...he was already burning...
Notes:
I need to point to the "unreliable narrator" tag & heavily stress that although the actions taken in this chapter can be construed as reasonable - relative to the context of the circumstances - to a point, the character's thought-process addressing them is a deeply distorted one.
*The Latin prayer passages recited by Lancelot below were intrinsic in reflecting his state of mind; a complete translation of the selected verses in linked at the end of the chapter*
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It had been three days since the Weeping Monk chose his own Damnation over the defilement of one more Fey child.
He'd assumed the infernal flames would wait until after he was dead to begin licking him with hellfire. But the fever and poison increasingly burning through his body suggested to him they were staking their indisputable claim early. Then again, he'd knowingly accepted in that moment three days ago that his choice to save the boy at the cost of his own soul would mean his inevitable death. Perhaps it was not the hellfire that was early, but him that was late for his rendezvous with Damnation.
But for three days, he'd been determined that until he saw the child to safety, Hell would need to suffer his delayed arrival just a little longer. The Beggars' Coast - his last known whereabouts for the Fey refugees, if they'd managed to survive the Ice King's ambush but had somehow failed to board King Uther's ships - would typically only have been a two day ride at most from the encampment. But he and the Fey child in his charge were both fugitives, himself a very recognizable one; keeping to the woods and skirting silently around Man Blood search parties - Paladin and Royal patrols alike, not to mention his injuries, slowed them down to crawl in order to avoid detection. Even without having broken for camp until now, their slow pace and frequent back-tracking had them only halfway to the coast, with likely another few days of the same in order to evade capture until reaching their destination.
If he lived that long. He knew full well he was a dead man walking.
He'd had no illusions he'd live beyond delivering Percival back to his People, fully expecting they'd execute him for his crimes against them. If his failing breathing and the putrefaction taking hold in his blood didn't rob them of their rightful vengeance. A prospect which was rapidly becoming more likely.
From his spot on the ground by the trees at the edge of the tiny clearing they were sheltering in, he cast a glance to his right to where the boy crouched over a pile of kindling, confirming the child's attention was absorbed in starting them a small fire. Ducking his head under and out the unlaced left side of his surcoat despite the lance of pain that washed through his fractured collarbone at the motion, he eased open the unbuckled front of his heavy quilted jerkin, having already discarded his hairshirt the first night of their exodus. Silently cursing the fevered shaking of his right hand, he carefully pulled back the saturated linen strapped over his torn left flank and frowned in resignation. The black of his clothing hid the growing stain and the heavy buckskin of his surcoat blessedly kept the boy seated in front of him from feeling the wetness soaking through the gambeson beneath. But the sopping crimson of the formerly cream-colored muslin field-dressing exposed the damning truth of the damage the Trinity's likely-poisoned spiked iron flail had wrought, truth he'd just as soon keep from the eyes of the nearby child who'd already had to see so much blood.
It wasn't that he'd previously ignored the threat the persistent sanguine weeping created. It was just that his efforts thus far to arrest it had all proved fruitless. One point of Church doctrine he'd admittedly had a - privately - slightly more tolerant interpretation of than Father had often been the Paladin's edict of all manner of herbistry as witchcraft. Observing the holy ministering to the afflicted by the devoted of the Benedictine abbeys he'd spent much of his youth traveling between, he'd been in silent agreement with those cloistered servants of Heaven that while certainly only God - not man - had the power to heal the body, the Lord in His Holy wisdom and mercy would surely not have imbued certain plants with such miraculous medicinal properties if He had not intended they be used for the working of such blessings in His Name. Like many career soldiers, it was his habit to keep a small spool of catgut and a few wide triangles of linen among his meager worldly possessions, tucked beside his palm-sized psalter in the safety of his saddlebag; secreted securely below it - concealed by the pouch containing his whetstone, strop and blade oil - was his illicit stash of dried Soldier's Woundwort (Yarrow), tincture of Salix Alba (White Willow) bark, Salvia (Sage) leaf, Hilbah (Fenugreek) seed and Symphytum (Comfrey) powder. But neither packing the wound with powdered Yarrow on the first night nor softening its flowers into a pasty poultice the second had yielded any of the hoped for clotting; still the wound wept, the blood leaking continuously taking on an oily and faintly fetid odor.
Mounted and moving, the concern was less pressing, but at three days bearing the burden of both his and the Sky child's weight with only brief pauses to relieve themselves and futilely rebandage his oozing side away from prying eyes, even Goliath's stalwart strength had its limits. The Monk was no stranger to sleeping in the saddle and keeping the child's insignificant weight secure against his own chest when he'd drowsed intermittently at their lulling pace had proven to come surprisingly instinctively, but no matter how miraculous a steed the horse sometimes seemed to be, pressing further without giving the courser much needed rest would doubtless result in riding the faithful creature to death. And the dire damning truth was that if he couldn't staunch the blood which had persisted in sluggishly but steadily weeping from his ripped open side for the past three days, the wolves it would draw if they camped for more than a few hours would likely cut the quest for the Fey refugees short for man, boy and beast alike. It would be a more merciful death than he himself likely deserved, far quicker at least than the growing rattle inside his chest or the festering abscessing beginning to spread from the edges of the jagged wound. But he had not ransomed his own life and soul in exchange for the boy's only to see the child ripped apart at his side instead. Goliath could - if saddled only with the child's meager weight - likely outrun such a threat even in the horse's weary state. But he knew that as long as he himself yet lived, his equine companion - brave and loyal to a fault - would sooner stand and fall in defense of his master than abandon the soldier who'd reared him from a foal. There was no Wolf-Blood Witch here with her Devil's Tooth to ward off a hungry pack scenting such vulnerable prey and at this point the child had more strength to fend off predators than he did. But camping for the night - sitting ducks though it made them - was no longer optional, it was obligatory. Which made the already dying Monk's persistent bleeding a deadly liability to them all.
Tipping his head against the tree at his back, he closed his eyes against the pulsing throb at the base of his skull and breathed through his mouth against a dizzying wave of nausea. Licking cracked lips, he rested that way - eyes still clamped shut - for several long minutes before drawing his long dagger soundlessly from the sheath tucked into his right boot by feel and laying it silently across his outstretched legs.
Opening his eyes and indulging in a moment of gazing aimlessly at the sparse winter treetops overhead and the stars beyond them, he blinked against the spinning in his head. He had a fleeting foolish thought that he wished he could hold onto that sight for eternity and swallowed against a sudden childish lump of selfish saddened self-recrimination lodged in his throat, that he'd taken so little time in his 24 years to appreciate how wide and all-encompassing it was; how small and insignificant he and his troubles seemed in comparison was a curious comfort that he dearly wished he'd allowed himself more of while he'd had time left to do so. He knew his eternal destination to be far from a celestial one and the loss of those wasted opportunities to appreciate the Sky above and the Earth below left a sudden bitter resentment in his mouth.
Lowering his gaze to the bed of late autumn ash leaves beneath his thighs in silent contemplation, he slowly released the dagger's pommel. Oh-so-hesitantly, he lowered his hand toward the fallen foliage, oddly drawn to the kaleidoscopic pale green and gold and even subtlest threads of purple of their varied palette. Brushing tentative trembling fingers across their veiny surface, he forcefully fought the conditioned compulsion to pull away - fearing revelation of his true nature or damning his soul by surrendering to his base demon-born instinct hardly mattered anymore - and instead buried his hand deeper into the earthy offering, fevered eyes wide in trepidation. Fiercely forcing down his innate fear of detection - determined that since he was already damned he would at least once give in to the temptation of his hellspawn nature and earn his waiting place in the Pit - he surrendered finally to this infernal pagan sin he'd so long denied himself in the futile quest to redeem his damned soul. Staring in rapt fascination at the vibrant whorl of colors that began to paint his sallow skin, he swallowed against the knot in his throat as it grew inexplicably tighter and a stinging crept from it to burn behind his eyes, biting down hard on the strangely choked sound that tried to emerge on his next shuddered exhale. The autumn hues climbing his wrist to disappear beneath his cuff brought a strange tingle of warmth in their wake, akin to a caress, but one which somehow imbued his flesh with its gentle touch from within . It seemed almost a living thing in and of itself, somehow possessed of its own softly seeking purpose, as if imparting some alien intent of tenderness as the embrace of the plant-born patina - now hidden by the gambeson's sleeve but felt nonetheless - wrapped slowly but steadily further up his arm. With the sensation came a subtle pleasantly loamy scent; combined, both filled him with an utterly foreign sense of "wholeness" and an ache of wanting for something - some loss his memory shied away from - which he could not name.
Why, why had he denied himself the comfort of the Green's soothing kiss until it was too late?!
'Satan, the Father of Lies, and his followers seduce the Faithful to Sin with beautiful illusion,' Father's voice echoed encroachingly in his memory, 'but never forget that such beauty is the most wicked of infernal deception, crafted to disguise their true demonic nature and tempt the Righteous away from the Salvation of God's Grace.'
A disjointed curiosity danced across his fevered thoughts, wondering which - "Monk" or "Ashman" - was truly the Demon and which was the disguise. Because oh , the surreal loveliness of the patina painting his skin was almost Divine in its beauty and the peaceful tenderness of the Green's embrace - not only on, but in his flesh - was a blissful balm as close as he could imagine to what it must be like to be touched by His Grace. With an uncharacteristic flash of defiance, he wondered if perhaps a far briefer life would have been worth the eternal hellfire to follow if that abridged mortal existence had been filled with this feeling. Would he have have eagerly succumbed to the temptation of damnation if it had meant that before the end, he'd been allowed to surrender to this sense of something nearing completion in his own skin, instead of the past 16 years disguised as a Man Blood in skin that felt like an ill-fitting costume - skin that only felt like his when he tried to strip it bloody from his bones with the lash? Inexplicably, he desperately wished he could share this dying revelation with the Green Knight, that the other man had been right; he had not belonged in the world of the Paladins, in the world of humans .
Oh God , the Green Knight.
The Green Knight whom, despite the Monk's orders, he'd frantically struck a panicked death blow - delayed though it was - out of fear and anger at the other man witnessing his secret shame. The Green Knight who, because of him , had - anything but the infernal self-serving animal Father espoused him to be - martyred himself in agony to protect his people and their secrets, even the secret of a sworn enemy. The Green Knight who, even when dying, had shown more mercy or compassion to his murderer than 16 years of his adopted Father's "love".
The Green Knight...whose face had twisted in shock and disgust as he'd witnessed the transformation of the Monk's flesh, the revelation of Lancelot's true nature apparently a repulsive abhorrent sight even to the Fey's princely noble savior.
It was the memory of that look on the Green Knight's face, the horrified realization that even among other Fey he was obviously an abomination, that had him snatching his arm back abruptly from the dirt in distraught alarm. The recognition that, though it had been a child's desperate delusion to fool himself he could belong in the world of Man Bloods, it seemed he was anathema even to other Fey , made him feel momentary like a cornered animal. He bared his teeth in a silent hiss at the few stray leaves still caught between his fingers before crushing them in the clench of a bitter defeated fist.
The withdraw of the Green's tranquil palliative warmth left in its absence a renewed and redoubled awareness of his broken body. Ruthlessly amplified were the night's growing winter chill, the fevered tremors in his body, the sticky wet heat slicking the skin of his flank, the searing ground-glass burn spiking spear-like through his ribs with every wheezed inhale, the pulsing fiery throbs of pain splitting his skull and scalding his side. The freshly damp tracks down cheeks that had been chapped and dry minutes ago; so absorbed had he been in the transformation of his skin at the touch of the leaves that he'd failed to notice the fall of his tears. A pathetic childish lapse of awareness that was unforgivable.
What did it matter anymore that there was no place in the world for a monster such as he was, among humans or his own kind, when Hell had a place reserved for him already and was growing impatient for his arrival? If the Devil was the only one who wanted him, so be it; once he ensured the child's safety in what few ways were left to him in his sorry state, Hell was welcome to him.
Aggravated with himself for his weakness and wallowing, he roughly swiped the back of his still clenched fist below his eyes with a harsh finality before peering down at his abdomen. Tugging the gambeson gingerly back over his exposed chest to ensure the mangled and bloody flesh was once again hidden from view, he draped his lamed left arm in such a way as to obscure the worst of the wet stain blackening the dark grey fabric of aketon. At last he cast a glance over his right shoulder to check progress on the fire and was relieved to confirm that they boy's back was still to him. His eyes narrowed slightly as he noted the little one's choppy stiff over-hurried movements where he crouched feeding fresh kindling into the heart of the tiny blaze to build it a healthy bed of coals, but smelled neither the fear nor revulsion from the pint-sized Fey that he was certain would be present had Lancelot's true nature been observed; warily, he decided it must just be the child's rush to warm himself against the cold night air. Dropping the now pulverized leaves from his fist, he shifted his grip to the dagger's hilt, tightening it briefly to steel his resolve before slipping the blade into his left sleeve. He had to take three short shallow before his voice would cooperate enough to work its way past his lips.
"Percival," he rasped out as steadily as he could manage, not missing the way the boy froze like a spooked deer before warily pivoting - still crouched - to face him. Odd . He still sensed no fear, but the child's overly-wide eyes projected an air of forced innocence that conveyed a distinct impression of awkward embarrassment, as if caught out doing something he shouldn't. Perhaps he anticipated some form of chastisement over the manner in which he completed his task?
"You’ve built a very good-...fire, Percival," he assured in a labored whisper, hoping to assuage the boy's nerves, "you did very-...well. Thank you."
The scowl that met his praise was curiously comforting in the ease with which it utterly displaced any hint of the previous anxiety as the child bounced to his feet, crossing his arms over chest with a irritated huff.
"You know I don't like that name," the boy snarked and the Ash Fey bit down on a grin at the familiar sass, fighting to keep his face neutral as he raised an unimpressed eyebrow.
"And you know, Percival , I will-...not address you as an animal," he countered, the conversation by now having become habit between them more than anything else.
"Oi!" the boy protested indignantly as he began listing off on his fingers his arguments in defense of his preferred moniker, "Squirrels are awesome animals. They're fast , and they're stealthy , and they can climb anything . And... and a squirrel is smart enough to plan ahead and store food for the winter, and-"
"-is a rodent ," Lancelot interrupted, smirking, "with a brain no bigger than my-" his own reply was cut short with a rattling cough that felt as if it was ripping him apart from the inside.
God's teeth! It was as if his ribs were splintering into shards and slicing through him like jagged barbed arrowheads with each rough hack of his lungs; he could feel his side dampen further as his muscles strained to hold his chest together. It seemed to go on forever, blackening his vision with the pain, and when his breathing finally settled back into a more bearable crackling wheeze, he knew the painful reminder - that the time for delaying what needed to be done to protect the child was at an end - could no longer be ignored.
When his vision cleared, he could make shape of the boy out in the light of the small fire, face white as a ghost and fear-stink wafting so overpoweringly from him now that the Ash Fey could almost mistake it for his own. He tried to smile reassuringly, but knew the brittle upturn of his lips likely offered little comfort.
"Squirrel?" he offered, heart tugging oddly to see that instead of pleasing the little one, the child's eyes watered at his concession to the nickname, "It's alright. I'm alright," he whispered weakly. "I just need-...could you bring me-...the water-skin?"
Scrambling to heed the request, the boy nearly tripped over his own feet in his hurry to comply, barely even skidding to a stop beside Goliath as he snatched the sack from the waiting horse's saddlebag and rushed to the crouch by the soldier's uninjured right side. Nodding his thanks, he gratefully accepted the leather pouch and squeezed the last few drops down his parched throat. He'd known when he'd requested the skin that it was nearly empty, of course; that had been the entire point.
"That's the last of the water," the boy apologized sullenly, "but you've hardly drank a thing."
He could smell the guilt emanating from the child for having slaked his own thirst and - bag still in hand - patted his knee in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.
"S'alright," he assured quietly, nodding in the direction where the sun had set. "Three miles or so, to-...the West, there is a stream-...where you can refill it."
The child peered nervously at the Ash Fey's injured left side, chewing anxiously at his lip. If Lancelot weren't so certain that the growing bloodstain hidden by his arm was concealed in shadow, he'd almost mistake the look for suspicious concern, but it must be fear of Paladins that had him so hesitant to venture into the woods alone.
"Don't worry," he pressed before the little one could voice an objection, "I promise, there are no Man Bloods-...this far from the road, else-...I would hear them," he assured. "But take the bow from-...my saddle, just in case. If you run into any-...predators in the wood, be quick-...and quiet, and scale the tallest tree-...just like the Squirrel you claim to be, then-...whistle sharply, twice. Yes?"
"But, you don't have your sword anymore," Squirrel protested, eyes narrowing and flitting back in the direction of Lancelot's left side with a wary frown. "If I take the bow ," he challenged, arms crossing stubbornly over his upturned knees, "who will protect you from predators?"
"Goliath will keep me safe," Lancelot promised, this time his smile considerably more sincere genuine. He was pleased to see the child's faith in the steed's prowess made a slight dent in his hesitation, but a final nudge was required. Face going serious, he caught the boy's gaze with his own and held it steady for a beat.
"I need your help, Squirrel," he whispered, soft but entirely sincere. "Please. Can you do this for me?"
He was unsure what caused unshed tears to well in the wide moss-green eyes at his plea, but the young Sky Fey nodded in fierce determination nonetheless.
"Quickly, then, before it gets-...too dark to see your way back," he pressed the water-skin into tiny hands and nodded toward the horse as reminder to arm himself, "swift and silent. Remember, if there's trouble, two-...sharp whistles, yes?"
Darting to Goliath's saddle to retrieve the bow and heading quiet as a cat for the trees in the indicated westerly direction, Squirrel was nearly at the boundary of the fire's glow when he stopped. Back still toward Lancelot, he swiped a small grubby fist under his nose with a wet sniffle.
"Sounds stupid when you say it," he complained, dejected, to the Ash Man's helpless confusion. "Squirrel," he clarified with a backward glance, something indecipherable in the young voice, "you sound bloody stupid when you call me that. So maybe, just, call me something else so you sound like less of an idiot, I s'pose."
Lancelot, thoroughly bemused, could only shrug his good shoulder in response, as if to invite further instruction.
"I guess, I dunno, you'd probably sound less stupid if you just called me something boring and normal, like...Percy? Maybe?" he ventured, staring down at the ground, awkward and uncertain.
Nodding slowly, the Ash Man felt his own eyes dampen slightly and swallowed, whispering softly in agreement with a small smile. "As you wish...Percy."
The child's answer nod was swift and final as if it settled something unspoken between them. Without another word, Percy shrugged the bow across his back, gripped the waterskin tightly and took off into the night.
Lancelot waited several long minutes, eyes on the distant darkness and ears tuned, not for the absence of impressively silent footfalls but for the subtle gradual resumption of quiet nighttime wildlife activity to confirm Percival had in fact continued past and not lingered nearby. Dropping his head back once more to rest against the tree behind him, he swallowed hard and let out a shaky breath of relief.
He knew he needed to be quick; he did not want the boy to bear the burden of witnessing what was to come.
Clicking his tongue quietly twice against the roof of his mouth, he closed his eyes and allowed himself a moment to relish the soothing familiarity of soft approaching hoof-falls against the earth until a warm equine nose nuzzled carefully at his jaw, huffing gently against the side of his neck. Eyes still closed, he reached up to tenderly stroke the downy muzzle of his steadfast companion, allowing himself a few minutes to be comforted by the faithful creature while he gathered his energy and will to do what must be done. Opening his eyes at last, he gave the steed a final caress beneath its proud cheek and reached purposefully for the bridle. Ears flicking in displeasure, the courser tossed his long head once as if in disagreement and nosed oh-so-carefully at the soldier's chest in clear worry, but a single tug at the bridle and a locked gaze stilled the fretting beast, though he did quietly nicker once in distressed argument.
"Goliath," Lancelot hushed him sternly, "none of that. You are a war horse, not-...a wet nurse," he chastised with an indulgent grin. "Clucking over me like-...a mother hen-...does not suit you. I must act-...with or without your help, but-...this will be easier for me-... with you at my side, my friend."
The courser quietly grumbled out a final petulant snort of protest, but with an affectionately hesitant nudge of his nose against the soldier's throat he compliantly relaxed his tense posture into one of ready - albeit reluctant - obedience.
"There's my brave boy," he praised quietly, brushing his own cheek soothingly against the familiar soft fur of the silken-black jawline. He readjusted his grip on the bridle and made to leverage himself upright, but was thwarted by a gentle stomp of refusal from the steed. Before Lancelot could ready another argument, however, the horse gingerly bent his forelegs, extending his neck to lower his proud head, insistently nudging at the man's armpit and fitting his long lean snout against his master's uninjured right flank. More delicately than should be possible, the beast fitted his teeth to bite securely at the empty sword-harness still belting the surcoat around the soldier's slim waist. Scratching fondly as he went, Lancelot obediently hooked his arm over the support of the outstretched neck and grasped lightly to the midnight mane. "There's my brilliant-...beautiful boy," he whispered gratefully, eyes misting at the tenderness of the gesture.
Once the pair were situated to the stallion's satisfaction, as if by some unspoken signal man and beast slowly rose smoothly as one, horse carefully bearing his master's weight to standing and mindful to maintain his toothy grip on the sword belt until convinced the soldier's legs were stable beneath him. Even then, though he released his bite from the leather, he insistently kept his steadying neck and lowered head lodged securely beneath the arm slung across them, intent on supporting the man as a makeshift crutch and patiently waiting to be instructed where they were going. The meaning was universally clear, regardless of species, requiring no translation. Make no mistake, his injured charge might have coerced him - under duress and against good judgment - to permit this ill-advised "walking", but his master waking anywhere alone was in no uncertain terms absolutely out of the question. With a sniffled brittle laughand an affectionate squeeze to the noble neck beside him, Lancelot nudged gently in the direction of the fire and the two made their way slowly into the center of the small clearing.
Once they reached the humble blaze, he stood for a minute or so and allowed himself to appreciate its warmth, inhaling the scent of wood smoke and patting gently at the snout against his side for permission to stand independently. Once free of his faithful crutch, he prodded the horse forward a step so that he could reach into the saddlebag without twisting his torso, fishing about for the last clean scrap of linen wrapped around his catgut suture kit and the spare threadbare grey under-tunic tucked in the bottom, draping both across the horse's saddle. One-handed, he unclasped his heavy woolen cloak and the sword-harness belting the buckskin surcoat - still hung loosely by just his right shoulder - about his hips. Gingerly shrugging the bulky weight of both to the dirt at his feet and toeing them out of the way with his boot earned him an imperiously reproachful snort of haughty disapproval from his four-legged companion, for shamefully neglecting the care of his possessions in such a disgraceful manner. He couldn't resist an unbidden grin and playful shove to the snout in retaliation, budging the stubborn stalwart steed not an inch.
Knowing well that the clock was ticking, however, as he wouldn't put it past the Fey child to push himself at a full-fledged run the 3-plus miles each way to the stream and back, he quickly sobered and set about his task. Sliding the dagger out of his sleeve, he cut a square the length of his hand from the linen strip laid over the courser's back and clutched it in his weak left fist. Gripping the saddlebag for balance, he slowly sank to kneel upon the dirt and urged the horse to carefully settle on the ground beside him within easy reach.
First he had to get rid off the copious fresh blood, knowing if he allowed it to linger much longer and draw predators to the camp, this entire course of action would be utterly wasted. Shivering, he reached into his open jerkin and gingerly pulled away the soaked bandage within, tossing it into small blaze. The blood saturating the fabric sizzled and hissed, boiling ominously like Druid black magic as the cloth caught and burned. Once it was nothing more than cinder, he steeled his nerve like a man marching to the gallows. Lowering the gambeson from his shoulders and down his arms, he nearly choked on a wheezing gasp, almost doubling over at the full force of the Winter chill against his fevered skin. Dragging in several short shallow breaths, he slid the linen jacket off past his wrists; once he'd used a dry section of it to sop up most of the excess wet blood from his now-naked side, before he permitted himself to second-guess, he fed the well-worn aketon - like the bandage before it - to the fire. Now fully committed as he watched the flames lick their way through the quilted cloth, he swallowed thickly with a sense of finality and slid the long dagger blade into the glowing coals at the base of small blaze.
And then...knelt back on his booted heels in a position of penitence more familiar to him even than the feel of a sword in his hand, the fine continuous trembling of his form from either cold or fever or exhaustion fading into an almost meditative background noise like the cilice or the hypnotic repetitive rhythm of the falling lash...he waited.
Unbidden, before he even truly registered the words that whispered over them, his lips began to move in penitent prayer.
"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini-...quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere:" he murmured softly into the still night, "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem-...orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum." A curious calm settled over him, as it often did when he prayed to the Virgin Mother, an abstract sense of comfort and compassion from which he - having no recollection of his own mother - had frequently sought private solace in his youth. And much like the child he barely recalled being - he realized, swallowing hard - he was afraid. Of death. Of the loss of Father's love and direction, the only guiding compass he had ever known. Of the waiting Damnation his defiance of Father's dictum would soon bring. Of failing in his final task of protecting Percy, having condemned himself for naught. Closing his eyes and bowing his head, he reached out now for that comfort and compassion, child-like and beseeching, to one last time assure him. "Sancta Maria, oro pro nobis...Sancta Dei Génetrix, oro pro nobis...Sancta Virgo virginum, oro pro nobis." Unsure if he had ever felt so small, so lost and unsure, he whispered his unworthy plea in the only words he knew, heedless of the silent tears slipping from between his closed lids to cling to his lashes. "Pater de cælis, Deus, miserére nobis...Fili, Redémptor mundi, Deus-... miserére nobis. Fili Dei-...Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi-....parce nobis, Dómine…Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi-...exaudi nos, Dómine...Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi-...miserére nobis."
However, the floodgates of the scriptures long beaten and branded and bled into him at the foot of the cross, once opened, refused to be shut. Servile supplication tumbled over trembling lips - beyond his control to silence - a litany longing for mercy which he knew he had abdicated any right to request.
"Deus, cui próprium est-...miseréri semper et párcere...súscipe deprecatiónem nostram...ut nos, et omnes fámulos tuos-...quos delictórum caténa constringit-...miserátio tuæ pietátis cleménter absólvat…...Exáuldi, quaésumus, Dómine-...súpplicum preces, et confiténtium-...tibi parce peccátis...ut páriter nobis indulgéntiam-...tribuas benignus et pacem…...Ineffábilem nobis, Dómine-...misericórdiam tuam clémenter osténde...ut simul nos et a peccátis-...ómnibus éxuas, et a pœnis-...quas pro his merémur, eripias……Deus, qui culpa offénderis-...pœniténtia placáris...preces pópuli tui supplicántis-...propitius réspice, et flagélla tuæ iracúndiæ-...quæ pro peccátis nostris merémur, avérte."
The tears were flowing freely now, but the familiar script of self-abasement continuing to spill from him - almost trance-like now - no longer felt his own, felt like reliving someone else's words in his mouth and experiencing the sensations of the moment through someone else's body. Felt like it was not dirt below his knees, but cold damp stone against the backs of naked thighs, felt like splintered wood scraping raw against the backs of arms that seemed far too short, felt like old stiff leather biting bloody into abraded frail too-slender wrists. Felt like his tongue was repeating an ever-looping memory of the flesh absent his mind's consent.
"Humiliavit semetipsum Dominus noster-...Iesus Christus, factus oboediens-...sque ad mortem...mortem autem crucis...et ego vilissimus terrae vermiculus...ego pulvis et cinis-...ego peccatorum maximus, qui millies-...infernum merui...non vereor me animo efferre?"
The corrupting serpent deep within his core, nesting low beneath his belly like a cancer he could not cure himself of, stirred and writhed it's displeasure, rebelling against the self-debasement issuing from him as if his mouth was merely puppet to some phantom evocation.
"Propitius esto mihi, Domine...agnosco et detestor -...exsecrabilem arrogantiam meam," he croaked, helpless, even as the serpent hissed sibilant words-that-were-not-words.
'NO' (no, not "no", Lancelot realized with curious detachment, "know") 'KNOW', the serpent urged, an adamant cacophony in his head, 'SEE'.
"Ne, obsecro, cum superbo-...Lucifero eiusque adseculis in-...gehennae barathrum me deturbes," he gasped, the words dragging out of him involuntarily like the bloody living roots the dark-skinned Sister had dragged from Odo's gagging mouth at Yvoire Abbey.
'SEE! KNOW! SEE THEIR LIES!' the serpent commanded, furious and implacable. 'KNOW! SEE!' For once, however, it was not the poisoning of his Faith that he feared, but a bone-deep terror of facing whatever sight the serpent was so desperate to show him. 'SEE!' it demanded, 'REMEMBER!' -but he could not bear to look!
Impatient and unappeased, the writhing becoming a thrashing that twisted and rolled his stomach as he gagged through the words that followed, "convertere et eripe animam meam...adiuva me et salvum me-...fac propter misericordiam tuam-"
Unrelenting in the insistence to be acknowledged - to be heeded - the incorporeal thing twisted and knotted within his core seemed almost to force its way up from his belly into his throat itself, finally cutting off the frenetic litany of Latin on a sickening wretch.
Eyes flashing open as he heaved, choking on his gagging as his lungs revolted with a terrifying rattle and the lurching of his stomach seemed to rip him in two where his wound tore him open, he half expected to see black bile pouring from his panting lips, but outward evidence of the sickness within was oddly absent. He knelt, shuddering weakly and gasping brokenly, inexplicably filled with a twisted feeble gratitude to the dark serpent inside him for bringing such an abrupt end to the unnaturally compulsive flood of pœniténtia, even as he huddled awaiting further painful expression of its displeasure. Strangely, though, as quickly as it had come, the violently sick sensation which had clawed its way up his gullet withdrew to settle once again into its familiar squirming nest below his navel, leaving him feeling oddly purged. Gasping short and shallow through labored crackling breaths, though he could still hear the continuous churning of the serpentine Voices' disquieted whispers, his mind felt once again his own. Blinking the residue of his errant tears from his clouded vision, he registered the apparently ongoing sound of Goliath's anxious snorting beside him, nickering his undisguised distress at his master's unsettling outburst. But before Lancelot could move to sooth the worry of the fretting creature, his eyes lit upon the fire in front of them and held. Nesting in its center, like a malevolent burning beacon - some ominous glaive of darklight - the dagger's blade glowed dully. Waiting.
Swallowing heavily against his growing foreboding, the fallen Ash Fey knew it was time.
Do you have the will, my Son, to do what must be done?
...yes, Father .
The words, when next they came again, were of his own choosing this time, quiet and calm, committed in purpose.
"Quoniam iniquitatem meam-...ego cognosco: et peccatum-...meum contra me est semper."
He would not ask for absolution. Not because he was unrepentant of his sins, but because he knew in heart and spirit that he could never wipe out the stain of his wrongs. Knew he did not deserve to . Even if God himself forgave the suffering he'd wrought - no matter that much of it had been in the mislead belief that Monk's bloody sins had been acts of loving service to His Name - Lancelot would not grant himself such absolution. His mortal blow to the Green Knight had not been an act of devotion to Save the Sky Fey's soul by delivering him to God, it had been a murderous strike motivated by self-serving fear and fury; no matter how pure of intent he'd been deceived into believing his other atrocities to be, the shame of that sin could never be washed clean.
"Auditui meo dabis gaudium-...et laetitiam: et exsultabunt ossa humiliata...Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis-...et omnes iniquitates meas dele... Cor mundum crea in me, Deus-...et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis...Ne proiicias me a facie tua...et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a me."
But if there had ever been any truth to God's Love, he held hope that perhaps in His mercy that stain may not forever blacken the light of those he'd tried to save. If He bestowed the loving kindness to at least not condemn Percy for the taint of Lancelot's crimes, the solace of that small measure of His Grace would be all the comfort he required to gladly face his duly deserved damnation.
"Redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui-...et spiritu principali confirma me."
If there was any merciful compassion to have been sought in Him, Lancelot prayed He might grant His wayward servant the strength needed to face and fulfill his final commitment to safeguarding the life of the child.
Drawing his shoulders up, straight and steadfast, fortified and determined, he reached out a trembling hand toward the leather-wrapped pommel...and froze.
'...rememberknowseeremembersee…'
A dizziness began to swim through his skull and sweat rose on his flesh despite the cold air as he stared - wide eyed and paralyzed with a fear he didn't not understand - at the dull dark red glow of the steel where it rested in the heart of the flames. He was not afraid of pain , it was the oldest most constant companion he could recall, so what unnamed child-like terror was it that trapped his outstretched shaking hand hovering in the air? What phantom fought his own will over his body from within, struggling to restrain him from this final act? As if bound and held taut by some intangible manifestation of the Wolf-Blood Witch's vines, or the incoherent impression of disavowed memories of ropes stretching him in sacrifice upon a rack ( upon an altar ) someplace dark that he dare not ever look?
'...knowseerememberprotectsee-', restlessly, the hissed voices slid over each other silky-smooth in their scathing discontent.
He could not let it stay his hand!
'...PROTECTseedarkangelclaíomhsolaisdarkprotectorSEErememberprotect-' the slithering voices began to rise in agitation.
It had to be done, to protect the boy!
Breaking in helpless desperation with a quiet sob, he forced a final litany out through trembling lips, "Quoniam si voluisses sacrificium, dedissem utique," he whimpered, voice cracking as the spell which held him immobile shattered. Forcing his nearly useless left arm to press the small linen scrap in its fingers against the dripping dampness of his ripped open side, he surged his right hand to the fire. Grasping the dagger's hilt, quick like the strike of a viper, he gritted his teeth against the frantic writhing of the snake in his belly, drowning out its escalating clamoring hisses of warning and Goliath's rising whickers and neighs of alarm as he choked out, "holocaustis non delectaberis."
Withdrawing the linen from his shredded flesh, before he could hesitate further, he pressed the burning blade - hard and deep - to the wound.
The world spun, his mouth opened unbidden in a wordless cry, but he could draw no breath to give it voice. It burned - not as ordinary fire and not just at the wound, but acid running through his veins, the molten depths of the Pit itself eating their way to his very core - oh God it burned! He wanted - he needed - to scream, but all that passed his lips was ashes and embers, screams that were not his own echoing through his memories to drown out his cries as his nose filled with the stench of burning flesh - whether his own or the countless blazing bodies "cleansed" upon the cross, he knew not. Dimly, some part of him was half-aware of Goliath stomping frantic circles of distress around his kneeling form, braying urgent and distraught; he distantly knew he should sooth the steed, should withdraw the blade from where it still seared ever-deeper into his skin. But it was as if his conscious will had become detached from his body - displaced entirely by the encompassing pain - and he found he could not move . The arm that tried to withdraw the blade from his side, the hand that fought in vain to release its grip upon the hilt, would obey no command.
It was as if the only act his body was capable of performing now was to burn.
"What have you done?! " a shrill, terrified voice shrieked close behind his left shoulder. Too close. Far far too close. Panic loosened his fist from the hilt and the dagger tumbled into the dirt. The voice continued in a horrified pitch, but both it and Goliath's distraught whinnies seemed to swiftly be growing alarmingly further and further away - despite tiny hands scrabbling desperately against his back and arm - as black began to rapidly swarm in from both sides of his vision. "That was not the plan," he barely made out Percy's wailed sob and his own heart shattered irreparably at his failure - even now - to protect the child from this, "You stupid bloody id -" but the rest of the boy's cry was lost to darkness as the ground rose up frightening fast to meet him.
It had been three days since the Weeping Monk chose his own Damnation over the defilement of one more Fey child. And though his mortal form was clinging onto borrowed time against his date with Death, he was already burning.
Notes:
*Refer to this Tumblr post for an English translation of all selected Latin passages with accompanying annotations about their selection*
I feel compelled to stress, because of personal family events that occurred during the writing of this chapter, what an unhealthy mental & emotional state the character is in.
If you are ever experiencing thoughts of worthlessness or self-harm, such as are felt by Lancelot in this chapter, I'm begging you to PLEASE reach out to someone. If you don't feel "worthy" of doing so for yourself, then please reach out for the sake of the people you love & who love you. There are those out there who can help.
Suicide Crisis Hotlines & Resources vary by Region & Country, but here are a couple resources for the US & UK:United States
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
800-273-8255United Kingdom
Support Services Resources from the NHS
Chapter 3: No Rest For The Wicked
Summary:
It had been three days since Gawain had awakened. But It had been six days since Gawain had died.
Notes:
Permit me a moment to sing the praises of my invaluable enabler & beta Kay. She's not only selflessly thrown herself upon the sword of salvaging my stream-of-consciousness descriptions into something remotely resembling "proper grammar", but her own growing body of works are an inspiration & a gift to the fandom. (She also co-signs my occasionally disconcerting plot ideas, which remains to be seen as to whether she is "using her power for good" or "for evil", but at least I'm not in this crazy fic-verse alone 😂)
Inspiration for the haircut mentioned in this chapter is credited & in homage to the fantastic work "Scents & Sensibility" by the incomparable SuperLizard. Read it. Read everything by this author. It's an absolute treasure.
For several of the place names the characters reference, I used their historical names rather than modern ones, or what they're called in own regional language rather than English, so I've added a little cheat below.
(please let me know if I missed any)
Quick Geographical Translation Key
Súlvað Firth = Solway Firth, Scotland
Armorica = Brittany
Breizh = Brittany
Cernyw = Cornwall
Pennwydh = Penwith, Cornwall
Lanwethinoc = Padstow, Cornwall
Goen Bren = Bodmin Moor, Cornwall
Saljūqiyān-i Rûm = Turko-Persian Muslim Anatolia (circa 1070s-1308)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It had been three days since Gawain had awakened on a preternatural bed of Green in the dirt, alone among the burned ruins of the Man Blood encampment.
And in those three days, he had yet to return to sleep for so much as a second.
"I am fine ," he grunted indignantly from where he leaned his weary weight against the apothecary hutch - generously donated by one of the Red Spear's Man Blood raider vessels - in the rear corner of the healers' tent.
"You are not fine!" hissed the livid redhead, arms crossed furiously and pressing defiantly into his personal space as if - a full head shorter than him and 7 years his junior - she could intimidate him into compliance by proximity alone. "You're barely keeping yourself upright!"
Frowning irritably, he leveled her with a well-worn scowl that had been known to make better men brown their braies, determined to stare the pocket-sized mother-hen down.
Which should have proved a laughably easy feat against a 16 year old he'd known since she was in nappies, no matter how much she'd outgrown the monkey-eared, buck-toothed, wire-haired, pug-nosed image he recalled of her as a child. But he grudgingly acknowledged - after around forty-five tense seconds of the stand-off dragged by to no avail - that the involuntary drooping of his purpling lids likely rather dampened its effect. Shoulders slumping dejectedly, he crossed his own arms before him in what was - in no way whatsoever - absolutely not a sulk.
"Pym," he sighed softly, fight draining out of him under the force of the immovable object that was her implacable stare, "I am fine" he placated beseechingly.
"Fine until you fall over from exhaustion , you mean?!" she demanded, unswayed, shoving at his broad chest with her tiny hand and easily tipping his much sturdier weight precariously backwards to prove her point. "You'll be sodding useless in this condition is what you'll be if you don't bloody well get some sleep !"
And Hidden help him, if his childhood friend's tiny tenacity had been directed at anyone else under any other circumstances, then her impressive audacity wrapped in such an unlikely little package would have had him positively beaming with pride at what a formidable woman she was growing into. As it was, being on the receiving end of her newfound assertiveness was disconcerting in a way that made him unnervingly want to flee - if it weren't for the fact that retreating from an enemy half his size would be embarrassingly unmanly.
He did, however, use the momentum of her push to dodge sideways around her and away from the cabinet she'd cornered him against. Pacing out of her reach to the small scribe's desk - another generous acquisition furnished by Her Spear-ship and crew - stationed by the tent's curtained entryway. Pacing back again, he prowled agitated back and forth like a tiger in a trap.
"There's no time to sleep!" he snapped in frustration. "Every hour I'm not out there looking is one hour closer to the Man Bloods turning their eye back our way!"
It was mere luck that they hadn't done so already.
The Pendragon regent had no particular personal nor political vendetta against the Fey, but - his frankly dizzying surrogate-Daddy issues with Merlin aside - Uther had no real sentimental attachment to them either. As of yet, they had no cause to suspect that he'd revoke their amnesty or safe passage - nor his tolerance of the Red Spear's ships on his shore - seeming to have adopted something of a 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' stance regarding the Ice Princess' rebellion against her father. But with no formal alliance that he was obligated to honor, he couldn't be relied upon for direct asylum, aid or protection either. They'd been fortunate thus far that Uther's forces had been keeping Cumber too busy to retaliate for the deathly defeat of his daughter and war-chief Dagmar along with her half-brother and second-in-command. That the Vatican and Paladins were also still regrouping from the death of Father Carden and their Monk's rumored bloodthirsty mutiny was also a fortunate blessing, but fortune could be fickle. The longer that they so flagrantly remained camped here at Heysham, with their position such public knowledge, the greater risk that their enemies would be unable to resist the temptation that their vulnerability as "ducks in a barrel" - as Arthur liked to describe them - offered.
The small half-moon beach was passably defensible with the Red Spear's modest five vessel fleet, but the Ice King's ambush had shown with devastating clarity how deathly vulnerable the sandy shore was to assault from archers situated on the flanking cliffs above. While the sea caves might have provided some protection to retreat to, they proved their own strategic risk; no alternate entry access that a besieging enemy could exploit, however, likewise meant no other exit to escape through, potentially trapping any who sheltered within.
If they had either twice the boats or double the battle ready fighters and provisions to last, they might have had half a chance at securing the camp comfortably from most comers for quite some time. But with the young Pendragon king having withdrawn his ships and his soldiers to harass the Dun Lach Keep that Cumber had seized as his base from which retake control of Súlvað Firth , the refugees and raiders simply didn't have enough able-bodied fighters to hope to hold both sea and land against potential attack.
Fully manning the Red Spear's longships at the ready in case of a water assault on the small harbor left only a sparse handful competent to scout and patrol the overhead cliffs but not enough capable to defend. Whereas dedicating enough raiders to teaming with their Fey fighters to secure a round-the-clock defensive position on the cliffs against possible inland assault would leave the Spear's small fleet operating on skeleton crews. And then they would be hard pressed to keep the harbor from being overrun by invading ships from her father.
Then one had to factor in their woefully undersupplied state. Most able bowmen were tasked to scout patrols guarding the cliffs and could not be spared to hunt. The raiders' provisions, however, were not nearly enough to sustain both the Northerners and the more than a hundred surviving Fey who still sheltered on the beach for any significant length of time.
Their current location was simply not a tenable one for much longer, and they all knew it. It was only the necessity of treating the wounded, laying to rest the dead - Man Blood and Fey alike - in accordance with their respective customs, which had justified not relocating the camp already. That, and awaiting the return of the small party of Northmen - due back sometime before dusk tomorrow - dispatched to resupply the dwindling food and medicine stores.
" No one is saying that the rest of us would stop looking while you take a nap, you git ! Or do you think you're so important that the world stops revolving whenever you close your eyes, Ser Manly-Man Hero?!" she demanded, arms flailing in exasperation so spectacularly she nearly clobbered herself in the head - ah , there was the familiar gawky tangle of gangly uncoordinated limbs he remembered from when she was little - before huffing forcefully through her nose to collect herself.
She scrunched her face up in some convoluted manner, that for an utterly incongruous moment he imagined probably very much resembled the one he likely wore at the mill while trying to resist the urge to scruff Percival like a cat and turn the boy over his knee for endangering himself. She finally settled her hands on her hips where they posed less risk of her doing herself grievous bodily harm as she struggled for a calmer tone.
"You aren't the only one who loves Squirrel, you know. We all want him back safe. Just…let someone else relieve you of leading the search," she tried to reason with him, "just for a few hours at least. Just so you can get some rest and start over fresh."
"There is no one else!" he insisted, dragging his hand through his hair in frustration - or trying to anyway. He was still unaccustomed to the newly short-shorn style he'd adopted under the pretense of 'appearing as little like the infamous Green Knight as possible while out searching amongst humans'. In truth, he had done it because no matter how he'd scrubbed with soapwort or rosemary tea or even lye soap, he'd been unable to rid himself of the stink of his own charred flesh which had seeped into his shoulder-length locks like a stain. He grimaced and scratched irritably at his scalp.
"The Man Blood townspeople are too wary of the foreign raiders to trust them with any information and the Cumber's put a price on the Red Spear's royal head. The Vatican's got bounties out on Kaze, Arthur and his sister with their unmistakable faces posted alongside their missing Monk's in every village from here to Sussex. And the villagers are afraid to even be seen speaking to anyone who's noticeably Fey. I'm the only one who passes for human well enough for those who are afraid but sympathetic to open up to that - with the Paladin's still believing me dead - no one is looking for! It has to be me."
"No one is looking for me ," she countered, "I'm far too unremarkable for anyone to bother noticing asking questions in the human towns. And an orphaned girl seeking word of the whereabouts of her missing 'brother' is every bit as persuasive a plea as a father searching for his stolen 'son'. More, even!"
"You're needed here in camp, convalescing the injured still recovering from their wounds," he rejected, "and that carrot color your hair's faded to in my years away draws as much attention as a beacon torch on the Hill of Tara!"
"Oh, puh-lease, Ginger Knight, it's hardly much brighter than yours ¹ and I can stuff it up under a wimple!" she argued with an unimpressed eye-roll. "And I have on good authority I'm a 'shit healer'; Polly can survive without my fumbling for a day. Besides, you may be the big boss of the Fey Guard, but y'know, I don't take orders from-"
" No , dammit! I will not risk losing you too!" he broke off her argument with a hoarse bark, slamming his fist down against the little scribe's desk forcefully enough to crack its top and stun her into slack-jawed silence.
Time almost seemed to stop as they both froze with matching wide-eyed expressions of shock at the violence of his outburst. Looking down at the split knuckles of his clenched fist, he opened it slowly and seemed to crumple in on himself where he stood.
"You don't-" he murmured hollowly, licking his lips and staring numbly at the blood slowly rising against the backs of his fingers, "When the Guard realized where they were headed, we-" he shook his head, gaze still locked on his bloody hand.
"We thought they couldn't possibly navigate a path through the Iron Wood without a guide, we meant to cut them off before they reached the village. But we were wrong, I was wrong, we were too late and bodies were already burning, and...we were only five strong, so we thought if we could scatter them and bait them into the trees pursuing us, it would give the rest of you a chance to flee...I saw Nimue break free and disappear into the forest when we let loose our arrows, but everything was chaos once our bow-fire started drawing them our way and I lost sight of her...at first, Josse and Tenjen and Kipp and Grim and Eesa were the only ones we found that had managed to escaped. They went to search the Iron Wood for more survivors while Kaze, Bergerum and I doubled back to the village check for anyone might yet live, but everyone there was already-...and-...I could not find you anywhere among the dead, but the corpses on the crosses were unrecognizable and Carden has this perverse fondness for burning women and I thought-" He tried in vain with a forced cough to cover the way the rising lump in his throat strangled the painful words, swallowing roughly before he again found his voice. "I should have come home sooner. I should have kept searching for you. I should have-" refusing to meet her eyes, he cleared his throat. "I am sorry...that I failed you all...that I failed you."
*~*~*
Pym felt the ground crumble beneath her bit by bit with each word that passed his lips, falling out from under her the same way it had when Dof had pressed the Sigurd medallion back to her with bloody hands.
It had never crossed her mind that it had been Gawain and his people firing on the Paladins from the trees that day in Dewdenn. He and Kaze had never said anything and, oh gods, Hidden help her, she'd been...she'd been so relieved to have him back, but...she'd been so angry at him these last few days, too; acting like he was the only one who held Squirrel dear and wanted him found when she and Nimue were the one who'd helped raise him, and Gawain was the one who'd left them all behind and never looked back.
She'd been so furiously frustrated with his stubbornness in running himself into the ground like he was the only one capable or courageous enough for the quest. Had been silently so resentful at what she'd thought was his self-important need to be the noble 'Green Knight' - Great Defender of the Fey and valiant rescuer of damsels in distress and kittens caught up trees - while the fate of his own estranged home and family back in the massacre at Dewdenn had seemed a sorry afterthought.
These past few days, past few months , she'd never realized. Hadn't realized he had come back for them; hadn't realized he and his people had been the only reason any of them - few as they were - had managed to escape the Paladins alive amidst the pandemonium from their rain of barbed arrows; hadn't realized that his silence surrounding the destruction of their once-shared home had been - far from the indifference she'd unfairly assumed it to be - him bearing the weight alone. The weight of his helplessness to prevent the slaughter of all he'd known from his youth, as he assigned himself sole blame and burden.
A sickness filled the pit of her stomach as she wondered how - even with all the years he'd been away - she could possibly ever have looked at the man before her and so unjustly judged the boy she'd once known.
The battle hardened soldier, years of wars in distant kingdoms seeming to have aged him - as if time outside their Fey village had moved differently - far beyond his 23 summers, was admittedly a stranger to her. The coppery locks and chartreuse eyes were the only immediately apparent resemblance to the fresh-faced youth who'd left Dewdenn and everyone in it behind nine years ago with barely a goodbye. But stranger though this "Green Knight" may be, he was perhaps the last that remained to her of her Clan, all she had left of anything resembling family, and she'd spent the past three days trying to reconcile the man before her with her memories of the boy from their childhood.
The dauntless long-limbed 12 year old who would tirelessly carry 5 year old Nimue on his shoulders while she recovered from her unnatural mauling, her tiny fists clenched into the light auburn curls at his crown as if they were handlebars. Who'd spent months boldly bearing his foster-sister with him wherever he went throughout the village, refusing to let the elders or Jonah hide her away in the dark like a dirty secret. The cherubic-faced teen who would indulgently grin and come to 7 year old Pym's rescue when her mother would grow fed up and exasperated with the snarls in her then dark-auburn over-long hair, fingers yanking painfully through knots in an effort to break them free while threatening to chop the entire tangled birds' nest off and hide the whole Medusa-esque mess under a caul like the Man Bloods did to their women. Who, after carefully combing through the strands with his own long nimble fingers and once again walking her through plaiting it herself with her shorter plumper ones to spare it from her mother's wrath, would invariably loop said braid round the nearest branch with a smirk when she'd try to chase after the older boy to join in his adventures or teasingly wrap the rope of her hair round her mouth like a gag to muffle her inane childish rambling.
Now, her heart breaking at seeing the young warrior before her looking so defeated, she held to her those memories of the way the teasing nature of the boy he had once been had always seemed to break her free of her melancholy.
Sniffling wetly, she threw him a watery grin. "S'wotcha get for teaching me to hide so bloody well," she chided, startling a laugh from him as his damp eyes finally raised to meet hers. "Besides, if you had found me, my miraculous ability to make new friends and win over Viking Warrior Princesses wouldn't have so spectacularly saved our collective asses from Cumber. So, really, I should thank you for letting me be the hero for a change."
She took the snorted guffaw that escaped him as her opening to walk slowly toward him with the caution one might approach a wounded animal. She couldn't really tell if the way his shoulders continued to shake silently was from laughter or tears, and she honestly wasn't sure he could tell either.
Nudging him half-heartedly in the shin with the toe of her boot, she opened her arms. The unspoken demand of the gesture was as much a request to be comforted as it was an offer of comfort, one which he thankfully granted as her pulled her tiny frame into the secure embrace of his much broader one.
They'd hugged, of course, when Morgana had materialized with him in the center camp three nights early, relieved to find the other living and whole, but it wasn't the same as this. This was the way he'd used to hold her as a child of 6 when Josse had made fun of her baby buck-teeth. This was the way she'd climbed into the inconsolable 13 year old's lap when he'd been unable to save the gravely malnourished fox kits he'd found orphaned in the Iron Wood after a nearby farmer's hound had killed their nursing mother. The protective circle of strength his arms forged seemed to ground and calm them both somewhat in a way she hadn't felt since finding Nimue in Gramaire. In the spirit of that marginally relaxed familiarity, she pointedly "dried" her damp eyes and snotty nose against the fabric of his loose-fitting tunic. She did so with an admittedly childish mew, drawing a genuine chuckle from him this time as he buried his face in the crown of her hair with a playful tug at her braid.
Sighing against the top of her head, he didn't release her; when he spoke again his words were soft against her scalp, but they blessedly lacked the broken hollowness of his earlier confession.
"When Josse and Tenjen and the others didn't return but we found Percival the following dawn, he told us the Weeping Monk's purpose in capturing him was as bait to draw out bigger game, then cut him loose uninjured from the line when his usefulness was at an end." The admission was quite, his mumbles were as much a vibration against her scalp as they were sound. "Letting them search the woods for survivors instead of looking myself, I sent them right into his snare and to their deaths." Nosing into her hair, he sighed, a sound both apologetic and beseeching. "I gave you up for lost once. Please, Pymmacundrie. You cannot ask me to chance losing you again."
She flung her head back hard enough to clack his lip and teeth smartly against the top of her skull and balked at him in the surprise of hearing her given name. She couldn't recall the last time she'd heard anyone speak it in full aloud - or if she'd ever heard anyone speak it, for that matter. Even her own mother couldn't pronounce the wordy mouthful, and presumably the woman had been the one to choose the Welsh-sounding atrocity.
To his credit, Gawain didn't so much as flinch as she rubbed at her sore head. Lip plumping slightly, he merely blinked down at her, exhausted and earmest.
The desperately weary figure before her bore so much resemblance to the 14 year old she last remembered him as, it made her heart twist in her chest. Gone was the towering Knight, replaced by the man-child who - after great big Gullayad's tiny wife Nella had nearly died in the difficult delivery of their son, saved only by young Gawain's discovery of a plant in the Iron Wood which relaxed her contracting muscles enough allow the baby to pass from her body without needing to be cut free by the healers - had found himself shunned by Gustave the Healer instead of praised.
The embarrassed Elder, bitter that a mere child's knowledge of herbistry outmatched his own learning, had rallied the Elders' council - backed by Gawain's own foster-father Jonah of all people - to veto Lenore's petition that the Healer grant the boy an apprenticeship, slanderously citing Gawain's unfitness due to his scandalously questionable paternity and his mother's desertion of both her people and her progeny. Gone was the confident young hero, replaced by a shamed youth who, despite Lenore's unrestrained and heartfelt pride at him saving the lives of both mother and child, had thereafter grown strangely serious and distant, finally confiding to confused little Nimue and Pym - bouncing Gullayad's squirming infant on his hip while the 19 year old huntsman waited patiently to chaperone the two despondent girls back home - that he needed to be more than what he would ever be allowed to in their tiny village. That as long as he remained in his estranged mother's home and the shadow of her shame, all he would ever be was the prodigal Gwyar's abandoned cast-off and Lenore's fosterling. That if he was ever to discover who he could be, become his own man, that he would only ever be permitted to aspire to his true potential somewhere that he could be anonymous far away from Dewdenn's narrow minds and long memories.
His cheeks were rough with thick stubble now and his exhausted eyes rimmed with crows feet. The look, though, that he'd worn almost a decade ago that day on the docks in Hawksbridge as he cradled the comforting weight of the tiny life he'd midwifed into the world, was the same look he wore now. Holding to the infant while it tugged at the curiously unfamiliar ring strung on a leather thong at the hollow of his throat and gummed contentedly at his ginger hair - both a cherished charge he loathed to leave behind and the very reason he knew that he had to go in order to grow into the man this little miracle of a baby had shown him he could become - that look that was helplessly adrift to be leaving behind the only home he'd ever known but utterly unshakeable in his determination to make his own place in the world was a perfect reflection of the one he wore now. Desperately undeterred in his singular focus, he'd not stop until he found that same stolen child or keeled over in pursuit.
Rubbing with a final wince at her stinging head, she reached up both small hands, cupping his face gently and sweeping her thumbs soothingly along the sunken bags beneath his eyes where they starkly contrasted against his sallow cheekbones.
"M'not going anywhere, you overprotective oaf," she promised just as quietly. "And we'll find Squirrel and we'll get him back, we will . But G'wain," she plead beseechingly, "you haven't slept in days and if you keep going like this, you'll make some stupid shit mistake like tripping over your stupid shit feet and impaling yourself on your stupid shit sword," she yelped at his tug of retribution to her plait for the insult to his grace and poise, "and it'll be the shittest rescue ever if you wind up dead before you manage to find him." Yanking her beleaguered braid free of his grip, she thwapped him with it in a retaliatory swing to the side of his head.
*~*~*
Trying to dodge the braid that whipped at his face like the rope darts he'd seen in the Far East, he utterly failed to deflect in time, efficiently illustrating her point. Awkwardly slapping at the air, he let out an indignant squawk at the surprisingly powerful sting of the hair flicking against his ear.
Scowling down at her as she stubbornly crossed her arms once more, he realized their little squabble had come full circle round to her once more trying to bully him into his bed for a few hours. Right back where they'd started.
Only this time he wasn't cornered and was enticingly much nearer an escape route. The faint sounds of a tussle far down the beach even offered him a very tempting excuse to beg his retreat and quell whatever stirring unrest was brewing. Only, no , strategic withdrawal at this point would be tantamount to conceding defeat and he still had some soldier's pride left despite his exhaustion. Granted, not much at the moment with his ear still smarting as if Lenore's own ghost had come and twisted it like he was 8 years old again saying discourteous things about his errant absentee birth mother, but some.
"Taliesin's taint, girl, string blades at the end of that menace and it could cut a man's throat," he grumbled, pausing warily to rub at his sore earlobe as if afraid Lenore's ghost really would manifest and scold him for his language.
Huffing wearily, he folded his arms once again, unconsciously mirroring her obstinate stance, and propped a hip to balance against the now-damaged desk by the tent's opening. Bringing up a hand to pinch sleepily at the bridge of his nose against the tension headache that had taken up residence between his eyes, he furrowed his brow in contemplation.
"Maybe I'm thinking along the wrong lines about it in terms of 'rescue' as opposed to...retrieval?" he pondered aloud.
Pym scrunched her face up in confusion, then impatiently swung her arms about in silent demand that he continue. Sighing, he shrugged; perhaps the half-formed pondering in the back of his sleep-deprived brain could benefit from the input of a more rested mind.
"Right, well," he continued, scratching at the overgrown stubble beneath his chin. "The Monk's been reported dispatching men and women alike - both Fey and our human sympathizers - with such cold efficiency that his survivors say he seemed almost indifferent to the task. He practically toyed with Arthur like a cat playing with a mouse before snapping its neck when the game grows boring. I watched him gut Bergerum alive like dressing a deer with such casual taunting that he even sounded like Carden and he didn't hesitate to try to burn a dozen others alive inside the mill just to flush me out at Moycraig. And yet..."
Clenching his fist briefly, he frowned and shook his head, the memory of the Ash Man's incongruously vulnerable uncertainty and apprehension gnawing at his thoughts. Gawain's own unsettling suspicion from what he'd observed of not only the Grey Paladin's clandestine Fey nature, but - once he'd moved past his own shock and disgust at the betrayal to their People - the other man's youth , paired with the way Carden had greeted the young Monk not as a commander would a returning soldier but almost as a father would a welcome a prodigal son, it was nagging at him now as it had in the tent, with a sickening twist in his belly and whispered hint of intangible thoughts just outside his grasp.
He didn't know why he still kept the truth of the Monk's Ash heritage to himself, only that at the thought of divulging the other man's secret - not even offered up at the Paladins' blades and brands - something in the memory of the Ash Man's teeth bared in cornered fear before he struck out with his deadly blade stilled Gawain's tongue even now.
"At the Paladin camp, the Weeping Monk almost seemed…" he paused, frowning as he struggled for the words to articulate their strained encounter in Salt's 'Kitchen' without allowing himself to be pulled into memories of the torture that came before and after. "He slaughters without hesitation, and yet...he seemed so agitated in his adamant denial that he doesn't harm children."
"The Paladins have slaughtered scores of children!" Pym argued with a disgusted scoff.
Gawain nodded in agreement, clenching and unclenching his fist. He swallowed roughly against the memory of all the tiny burned and broken bodies he'd seen the past few years - even before recent droughts and resultant famines had allowed Carden and the Christ Church to grow so bold and blatant - in Syria and Anatolia and Byzantium and Francia and Armorica and now here at home in Britannia. He'd seen so many bodies - young and old, Fey and Jew and Saracen alike - he sometimes wondered if the death he'd witnessed in the near-decade since leaving Dewdenn as a boy may outweigh the number of the living he'd known.
Blinking away the morbid thought that he wasn't quite sure he could handle getting an answer to, he frowned briefly over his shoulder as the distant commotion outside the tent gained in volume. But he reminded himself that Kaze knew where to find him if he was needed; turning back to Pym, he asked the question that had been bothering him, the thing he'd dismissed as pure luck or the Hidden's small mercy as their numbers had begun to swell back at Nemos but that had increasingly nagged at him for the last three days since his return.
"Have you noticed anything...curious about the camp?" he enquired, needing to know if he was imagining things. At her frown of confusion, he clarified, "Anything odd about the...proportions among the refugees?"
He'd tried discussing his observation with Kaze and Arthur the previous night, before leading yet another unsuccessful scouting party on a wider patrol to search the further towns and roads and woods for signs of the missing boy, and though sympathetic, his trusted fellow Fey Guard told him he sought too hard to see blessings in curses and his unlikely new Man Blood compatriot had likewise ultimately dismissed it as projecting his desperate hope for Percival's safety onto the bigger picture. And maybe they were right; he'd long value his shield-mate's practical perspective on matters where he tended toward viewing them through a reactionary emotional lens and he'd learned the hard and bloody way not to discount Arthur's input. But Pym was more newly arrived among the refugees than the human sell-sword, a fresher set of eyes, and Gawain wanted - needed - the opinion from his oldest friend before he could let it go.
Seeing her nose scrunch, he watched the mental gears start to turn as she reflected on the demographics of the refugees she'd joined at Gramaire.
"Blended families?" she ventured tentatively, furrowing her brow at his encouraging nod. "It's not half-lings, though," she thought aloud, "there's a Faun couple with full-blood Tusk children, and a Storm Crafter widow raising a small Snake boy and a Plog youngling? I saw a Cliff Walker with a Moon Wing daughter's cocoon strung across the mouth of their cavern and I know she's not the mother because I don't think they can even-" she awkwardly made a lewd hand gesture as she blushed, "- you know ."
Her eyes widened in realization. "Children make up nearly a third of the survivors in the camp, but they didn't escape with their families! They're all orphans?"
"Most," Gawain nodded. "At first, back at Nemos, the little ones were either cared for by whatever survivors remained of their own tribe, or all tended together in one large mixed group by a handful of minders who shared watch of them. But looking around at what's emerged now, since you were ambushed trying to reach the boats, it seems the clans are putting aside their old blood feuds and the younglings are being taken in to foster by whoever has the heart and the means."
"But they're all so young ," Pym noted. "Some are just toddlers, even babies . How in the name of the Hidden did so many manage to escape the massacres on their own?!"
Raising an eyebrow, he smiled bitterly with a shrug.
"Back when the killings here in Britannia first started a few years ago - before the human panic over food shortages gained Carden the Man Blood mob support to conduct his genocide out in the open - it was quiet destruction of 'outsider' settlements of clans. Outsider because of their "otherness" - they were so shunned and shunning of both Man Bloods and rival tribes alike that if one didn't know they were there to start with none would even know they'd been expunged."
Pym nodded mutely, remembering eavesdropping with Nimue outside the window of the Healer's hut where the village council frequently met. How they'd listened in with morbid fascination as Lenore had argued with the other Elders over snippets of gossip from a merchant here or a traveler there, the first hushed rumors two winters ago, out of Cernyw to the southwest of Dorset.
How Gustave had scoffed at the ridiculousness of whispered stories from Morvah, of Cliff Walkers along the Pennwydh Coast being plucked somehow from the unscalable heights of their towering granite sea walls, cast down to the jagged rocks and churning waters below. How Lucien had joined him in laughing off the absurd tall tales of Plog 'Knockers' being roasted in their warrens and tunnels and mines near Madron by the fiery breath of an awakened dragon. How six moons later, rumors of Mórgwerin and Mórsarf vanishing from their rivers and marshes near Lanwethinoc and Goen Bren could no longer be so easily dismissed as fiction. Instead, they were met with unsettling aspersions that the vanished uncivilized Snake Folk had doubtless done something to incite the wrath of the backwards southwestern Man Bloods.
That such things could never happen in their own more enlightened and cultured region.
"Frankly, no one did notice their loss at first," Gawain admitted uncomfortably, "until we began getting word in Byzantium from contacts in Breizh and Cernyw of displaced Fey young found wandering alone on the far outskirts."
"What in Arawn's name were you doing in Byzantium?" Pym interrupted in quiet confusion. She knew next to nothing about where and what he'd been up to since boarding The Brass Shield almost a decade ago, or why the Desert Kingdoms had been his destination, but the idea of him involving himself at the center of the humans' Roman Empire seemed alien to her.
"Knowledge of science and healing in the East - even among their Man Bloods - is so far beyond anything we know here," he explained with a small smile, wistful and almost sad as he thought back to a time when he'd been more hopeful and idealistic in his aspirations. "I was studying among the Parī and Si'lat djinn clans in the lands of the Saljūqiyān-i Rûm when the Vatican declared its 'Holy War' on the Saracens of Palestine, trapping not just every non-Christian Man Blood but every Fey between the Rhine and the Levant in their warpath. As more and more displaced and wounded noncombatants began to seek asylum, my teachers and I went to Nicaea to aid the relief effort. Their sultan allowed us to set up tent hospitals within the city's walls and a refugee camp inside the Yenişehir Kapı southern gate and granted sanctuary for us to evacuate the Byzantine Fey and Jews fleeing the slaughter of Carden's marching mob. Smuggling refugees across the Bosporus from Constantinople, that's when I saw - truly - for the first time the horrors and depravity Man Bloods have the capacity for, what atrocities they'll inflict, not just to us but to their own kind. " He swallowed roughly and shook himself free from the memory. "When our fighters helped Kilij and the Turks wipe out Carden's 'People's Crusade' marching on Nicaea at Civetot, we thought the worst was over and started to help the refugees rebuild in Anatolia. But when reports and rumors began to reach us of stray survivors from mysteriously wiped out settlements here in Britannia, we realized then that Carden himself must have survived and crawled home to rebuild. And so Kaze and Firdiuinn and I followed."
Pym's fought the shudder that tried to creep up her spine. A chilling understanding began to grow, of just how old and deep and personal this vendetta was, between Gawain and the now-dead Paladin priest.
"G'wain? You know you didn't bring Carden down on us, don't you?" she prodded gently. "He didn't target Dewdenn because of you. Or Nimue. We were just...next on the list," she muttered lamely as he scoffed with a bitter nod of agreement. Both were quietly unsure if it made it better or worse that the slaughter of all they'd known and loved had meant nothing to the mad priest, had simply been because they'd existed and were there . "And he is dead this time. You and Morgana both said."
"Yet his legacy of hate lives on," Gawain sighed, "with Percival tangled firmly in its net. And that is my fault, for letting him leave Gramaire with me in the first place . If I hadn't caved to him tagging along, he'd be safe here with you now."
"Oh, come off it! You know he'd just have followed you anyway," she countered. "He's a right slippery little shit that way, in case you hadn't learned yet. Besides, who's to say if he'd stayed with us, Cumber's goon squad wouldn't have cut him down on the beach?"
"But-"
"No 'but'!" she snapped authoritatively. "We know sod all about what might have happened if we'd done things different." Reaching unconsciously for Dof's Sigurd talisman beneath her shift, she swallowed against the ever-present 'what if' that always plagued her memories of his kind eyes and boyish smile. "All we have to work with is what to do about Squirrel now . And right now , you need to finish explaining what daft inspiration struck your sleep deprived skull about the children so that the one of us in the room with two brain cells remaining to rub together like twigs can figure out how we get him back ."
Gawain blink at her, slack-jawed at her outburst, for several long minutes until she began to fidget under his stare.
"When," he mused quietly at length, "did you get so bloody smart?"
"An enchanted wren dropped a magical crap on my head," she snarked sarcastically, "took weeks to wash the smell of bird-shit and smart-ass out of my hair, but I've been cursed to be the wisest idiot in the room ever since." Rolling her eyes and blushing with embarrassment, she stomped her tiny booted foot impatiently for emphasis. "Now would you focus !"
Smothering a grin, he nodded. She was right, they needed to stay on track.
"D'y'know how we even first knew the Weeping Monk existed?" he asked, growing serious once again when she shook her head. "In the beginning, the only survivors in Cernyw were children. Many too in shock to speak of how they'd survived or what had become of their clans. But those who could talk of what they'd seen all seemed to tell of the same boogeyman, calling him 'He Who Cries', 'The Weeping One', 'The Crying Killer'. All describing a silent grey-garbed man-shaped demon, eyes and cheeks etched with ink-black tears, Carden's Crusader Cross adorning his sword." His brow furrowed as he continued. "No such stories surrounded Carden's previous cult of zealots in Byzantium and it sounded so much like a 'monster under the bed' that at first we dismissed it as the kind of campfire ghost tale little ones tell to frighten each other in the dark. But there were too many commonalities between children who had never crossed paths to trade such tales and we grew to accept their boogeyman was no myth."
"How did so many escape him?" Pym asked, glad of their survival but shaken by the knowledge of how many young nightmares the Paladin assassin must haunt.
"Luck, we thought? Small enough to slip clear unnoticed amidst confusion and destruction? At the time we were honestly too relieved anyone had survived at all to focus on the how . Some of them may well have been chance, but a few..." he trailed off, shaking his head in consternation. "A few were unquestionably too young to have made it out alone. Even a Tusk infant - a year ago in Gwent - found 3 miles from the ruins of its village suckling goat's milk from a saturated makeshift nipple that had been fashioned from red cloth."
"You can't possibly be trying to tell me you think he rescued the children from his own bloodbath?!" she demanded incredulously.
"I don't know what to think, alright?!" he snapped, scrubbing a hand against his too-short hair in confused frustration. "Percival himself said that when he was first captured after Dewdenn, it was merely to lure out adult Fey seeking to rescue him; that when the true prey had been taken down, he was released unmolested. Some others shared similar tales of being bait to draw their hiding kin out to slaughter, then cut loose with the ominous message that he was coming for the rest of us. We thought it an intimidation tactic, but…" He blinked blearily against an exhausted wave of nausea, his sleep-deprived thoughts tripping over themselves in a disjointed clamour of indistinct whispers in his head. "What if he did deposit the Tusk babe clear of the carnage? What if the messages that he was coming were a warning , not a threat?" Falling silent, he balled up his fists, shoulders slumping dejectedly. "You think I'm mad, don't you?"
"No, I-" her hand shook as she covered her mouth, thoughts drifting back to the broken-bodied Moon Wing child that had been carried into the village a day ahead of the Paladins.
Its wings had been too singed for flight, poor tiny lungs too weak and fragile bones too brittle for it to walk. But if - as the child said- the Monk had cut them all down when they dropped from the fire in the trees, how had the frail little one escaped both his blade and the burning forest on legs that had almost certainly been broken in the fall from its nest, if not carried clear? How had it made its way to the Iron Wood at all, unable to walk or fly, if not deposited by another where the villagers of Dewdenn might find it?
"I think m'gonna sick up," she breathed weakly, meeting Gawain's eyes in feeble horror.
Face paling in concern, he stepped immediately forward but she backed away a step, feeling momentarily claustrophobic.
"No, s'alright, m'alright, just need a minute," she waved him off. She breathed in time to the tune of one of the awful bawdy raider shanties in her head to calm her panicked queasiness, heart sinking in realization.
If the Monk had been the one to deliver the injured Moon Wing child to Dewdenn's borders, that meant the Paladins' most feared killer had been at their doorstep for at least a full day and night before the massacre; why wait to attack? Even if he'd been awaiting reinforcements, he still could have taken her and Nimue down without a thought - or tried to, anyway - as they traveled unawares from the village; the road they'd taken to Hawksbridge had been the same one the child had been found near, so unless he'd returned to his Paladin brethren, he must have been close by? And if he did return to the Paladin camp after leaving the child at the edge of the forest, why bring the child to the Iron Wood at all , just to lead the red army back to butcher it a full day later instead? It didn't make sense!
Hidden help them, had he meant to give them an opportunity to flee? If the Elders had heeded warning the child's presence and warning of its clan's fate implied, if they'd evacuated the village then instead of hoping that if they ignored the danger that the danger would ignore them in turn, could they have-?
She cut off her own line of thought, clutching the Sigurd pendant tight to remind herself the futility of 'what if'. Sinking down to sit on empty cot, she looked helplessly up at the knight, suddenly feeling as lost and tired as he looked.
"Alright," she admitted meekly, "supposing for the sake of argument you haven't just taken one too many blows to the head. What does it mean and how do we use it to get Squirrel back?"
"Haven't the fucking foggiest," he conceded with an incongruous smirk. " I wasn't the one blessed by the bird-shit of brilliance ," he teased, quirking a brow as she flipped him a bird of her own.. "Thought maybe you could rub those two remaining brain cells together til inspiration sparked and tell me ?"
When her only response was to - oh so maturely - raise a second middle finger in his direction and rub the two together in a catty pantomime of firestarter twigs, he sighed in resignation.
"I don't know what to make of it yet. But...his defensiveness when I called him guilty of the deaths of little ones? Whether or not the man was lying in word with his denial - to me, to himself, who knows - I don't think that his distress at the accusation was an act."
She nodded her acceptance, but her eyes narrowed.
"There's more to this, isn't there? You know something, don't you," she accused quietly, "about why he spares children. Gawain, what aren't you telling me?"
"Nothing that is mine to tell," he muttered mulishly, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of her suspicious stare, still unable to give voice to the secret the volatile Fey Monk had gutted him for witnessing.
He frowned and rubbed calloused fingertips against his tired eyelids. He couldn't explain why the hope had taken root in him so deeply that some small semblance of his heated words had gotten through to the conflicted killer who had run him through. He'd thought for a desperate sorrowful moment, seeing the doubt in the Ash Man's eyes at his own brainwashed assurances about pain purifying Gawain's soul, that he could breach the indoctrination twisting the other Fey soldier so. But the man's pathetic parting offer of "prayer" - as if that would wash clean the poison spilling from Gawain's severed gut into his blood thanks to the grey-garbed Paladin's blade - had crushed any hope he had harbored for the Monk seeing through the bloodthirsty lie of his Man Blood Christ-Church. Even so, from the little he'd been able to observe before, well...he could think of only two things that could have triggered the Ash Man's corpse-ridden revolt the same night of Percival's capture.
Either t'was Carden's own death that had slipped the other man's leash and freed him to finally turn and bite the hand that beat him. Or being confronted so inescapably with the threat to a child - one whom he'd spared once already - had been a tipping point so soon after Gawain's accusations of his complicity had already put him so visibly off balance.
But his gut squirmed with a conviction he couldn't articulate, pulled him inexorably back again and again to the latter. So far, all signs pointed to the Ash Man having freed Percival while making good his own bloody escape. Arthur's Widow-Witch sister was unshakable in her insistence that Percy - Nimue too, for that matter, though Merlin's caginess on how that search was being conducted was something Gawain did not have space for in his mind at present - still lived. The newly empowered Shadow Lady was adamant that she would be able to sense their presence in the deathly Otherworld just as she had sensed Gawain's own removal from it. Yet all the information they'd gathered corroborated there'd been no sign of a child with Abbott Wicklow or the remaining Paladins who'd reportedly sheltered a night at a small priory in Staffordshire and another at a Benedictine abbey in Shropshire before supposedly heading for the nearest port. Meaning he'd either escaped alone, in which case he should by now have at least managed to get word to Arthur's kinfolk in Gramaire; the child was frankly too clever for his own good, but he'd proven to be damn near disconcertingly sharp-witted and left to his own would know the Lady Marion - Man Blood though she may be - his best resource for reuniting with the Fey. Leaving the most likely scenario, that the two now-fugitive Fey had fled the Paladin camp together; the only real question remained how voluntary a participant Percival was in their traveling companionship, to prevent him from contacting Arthur's aunt for safe harbor.
"I just think...if he did take Squirrel when he mutinied against his Vatican masters that night," he signed, scrubbing his hand over his face and blinking dismissively at the drying blood spotting the split knuckles, "I believe that whatever other circumstances may be compelling their company - whether willing or no - Percy himself may not be at personal risk of harm from the man."
"That is the cagiest bloody non-answer I've ever heard, and I've seen sodding Merlin dodge questions," Pym grumbled, folding her arms over her chest with a scowl. "What if he's using Squirrel as bait again?! Gawain, what if it's just another trap & he means to trade Squirrel's rescuers to the Church to buy his way back into their favor?"
"The thought had occurred," he drawled bitterly in admission, "which is precisely why I can't chance anyone else being caught in its snare. I'm not letting what happened to Josse happen again and I'm the only one who has a shot at taking the Monk in a fight."
"But isn't that all the more reason to be rested , so you're at your best?" She pressed on pleadingly. "G'wain, you couldn't handle me in a fight right now and I can't even heft a hatchet!"
"I told you," he countered quietly but firmly, "we're out of time. I've already spoken to the Red Spear. Her resupply party is due back with fresh provisions before sunset tomorrow; as soon as they return, the camp is being moved, whether Percival has been located yet or not."
"You're not coming with us?" she demanded, balking at the unacceptable thought of separating from him again, now that she finally had him back after so many years.
"I'm not leaving without him ," he corrected gently, "and I'll find you again once I have Percy with me. But right now, we are herded sheep just awaiting the wolves; the Monk doesn't need to lay a trap because everyone in Christendom already knows exactly where we are. You and the Fey cannot stay on this beach any longer; doing so practically invites the enemy to return to finish the job, and you've already lingered here nearly a week."
Because that was the crux of what truly unnerved him, what kept him from sleep - unsure that he would wake again if he did. No matter how much he hadn't allowed himself to dwell on the implications of what his senses had told him that first night - how he'd stubbornly ignored the embers that had long grown cold to the touch, the smoke having dissipated so fully from the air, the undeniable corpse-rot that had begun to set into the abandoned bodies surrounding him when he'd stirred to awareness - avoiding the truth didn't make it not so , even if he couldn't quite bring himself to speak it.
The truth that although it had been three days since he'd awakened alone in the ruined Pendragon camp, it had been six days since Percival - clawing like a cat while Gawain cried out after him helpless - had been captured by the now-decimated Man Blood Red Brothers. Six days since the Paladins' pet Weeping Monk had - according to rumors in the Man Blood towns, whispered with a fearful sign of their cross - gone feral with bloodlust or mad with some manner of infernal possession and vanished into the countryside leaving a savage massacre of Vatican clerics in his wake. Six days since Morgana and Merlin had watched the Ghost-girl infiltrator, the child Christ-Bride Iris, shoot Nimue down like game prey over the falls of the Narrows and to the rapids below.
It had been three days since Gawain had awakened. But It had been six days since Gawain had died.
Doubtless the Man Blood Church - when they eventually learned of his decidedly spry-for-a-corpse status - would likely be suitably scandalized by his unmitigated gall at "rising again on the 3rd day". Admittedly, the blasphemous irony of the affront to their Christian doctrine would - under other circumstances - probably fill him with deliciously warped amusement. If it weren't for the fact that the reality that he'd lain dead in the dirt for three full days was a thought he couldn't bring himself to look at too closely head-on. Not yet, anyway.
*~*~*
Any response Pym might have made was cut off by the escalating commotion outside, her eyes meeting Gawain's in alarm as angry cries of " string him up! " and " burn him! " filtered to their ears from the beach. Frowning in concern at the deeply disturbing words, Gawain turned and stepped toward the entryway to intervene; Pym likewise jumped to her feet in worry as a small high-pitched voice emerged from the others, growing closer, pleading frantically for a healer. No sooner had the knight pulled aside the tent's curtained doorway than he was nearly knocked over by a half-sized whirlwind of limbs colliding forcefully with his thigh, propelling clear past him into the center of the canvas infirmary.
"Please," the achingly familiar voice begged through panicked tears, "please, he needs help! He's dying!"
Pym's jaw dropped open in shock and recognition as she stared down in stunned awe at the tiny figure before her. Her eyes - widened like saucers - watered helplessly as she raised them to meet Gawain's own.
"Pym!" the figure surged forward, desperately grabbing at her sleeve trying to drag her to the door, still heedless of the form stood beside it. "Please, Pym! You have to help him, please !"
Shaken from her stupor by the sound of her name, she looked down in worry and confusion.
" Who needs help? What's happened?!"
Whatever answer she received was lost to Gawain, drowned out by the rushing roar of his own pulse in his ears as his heart tried to hammer its way out of his chest.
Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, he felt himself hit his knees on the packed earth; like kneeling in prayer, like kneeling in offering, like kneeling in gratitude.
Before he could stop himself, he'd reached forward & spun the child forcefully to face him. The boy's words cut off abruptly and the small body went rigid, paralyzed in shock and fear. Wide eyes met his own, welling with a churning whirlpool of terror and incomprehension and hope as the knight - not trusting his sight or hearing - ran trembling hands over damp round cheeks to confirm the cherished vision before him was real.
He didn't know which one of them had issued the broken sob as Gawain crushed the beloved body to his chest and Squirrel clung desperately to his neck.
Notes:
I do not apologize for Pym's obscurely terrible joke. I probably should, but Pym making an utterly idiotic 'Hanes Taliesin' joke about getting shat on by Gwion Bach at least makes me & my beta & Gawain laugh, even if no one else knows what the hell I'm talking about 😊
*For more information on Gawain as a gifted Healer & Herbalist visit this post 😊
*For more information on Gawain's estrangement from his birth mother visit this post 😏
*For more more details on Saljūqiyān-i Rûm as well as the Parī & Si'lat visit this post 😉
*For more details on the correlation between Father Carden's Paladins & the historical "People's Crusade" visit this post 😪
Chapter 4: Miserere, Domine, gemituum, miserere lacrimarum eius (Have compassion, O Lord, on his tears)
Summary:
The Weeping Monk had died six days ago, gasped his last breath in the shaking but sure "Yes, Father" he'd affirmed when asked if he had the will to do what was necessary. Had died with an unshakable certainty he'd never before held for anything else in his conflicted cursed existence that trading his life for the Fey child — no matter how damned in the eyes of his Father — was the necessary sacrifice in the eyes of any God worthy of his servitude.
But for three days now, Lancelot too had been dying, piece by piece, limb by limb, organ by organ. Tenuous grasp on consciousness once again slipping from his weak grip, he knew...
They weren't going to make it.
Notes:
Sincerest apologies for the unforgivably long hiatus! Real life kinda got away from me for a bit there & even though the next chapter has been finished for about 6 months, this chapter was fighting me tooth & nail 🙄 I sorta sprung it on my beloved long-suffering beta at the least convenient time, so I do reserve the right to go back & edit any "oopsies" out of existence & conveniently disavow any recollection of having erred 😜 But the upside is that the next 2 chapters are pretty much finished & mostly just need some final editing; so pending real life interfering, both should be up within the next week.
Because of my long absence since the last update, I recommend re-reading Chapters 2 & 3 to refresh yourself before reading this chapter & strongly suggest doing so before reading the next two chapters 😇
But a quick recap pertinent to this one is that three days into their journey to Beggars Coast to find Squirrel's people, Lancelot — gravely injured from his fight with the Trinity Guard — cauterized an already badly infected wound that wouldn't stop bleeding. The procedure did not go well & he was in an exceptionally sorry state when Squirrel discovered him.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It had been six days since Lancelot forfeited his life for the boy's, knowing — despite the young one's protests — that when their arduous journey to find Percival's people reached its end he would end with it. But it had been three days since he'd begun fighting a losing battle in his every waking moment — of which there were fewer and fewer — against praying for that end to hasten.
The branding blade, glowing like "God's Fingers", had done its work well – heated iron not so much sealing the wound at his flank as cooking the flow of blood from his ruined flesh like charred meat. It had never been intended to prolong his own life, after all, but to prolong the boy's by ceasing the draw of predators to the scent of an easy meal carried on the wind by the ceaseless bleeding. In that, it had succeeded admirably. The worsening sickness corrupting his flesh filled it even now with the stench of rotted carcass, too tainted to eat. But though the cauterizing blade had been removed, the burn of the branding iron had remained. Not merely remained, but gradually increased, heartbeat by heartbeat, hour by hour. With every unsteady pulse, the ferrous fire scorched its way inexorably through his veins like rivulets of lava as the now-trapped poison began to eat its way deeper into his body with singular focus.
When a frantic and horrified Percival had discovered him mid-procedure, incoherent and half-catatonic from the infernal agony and terrifying indecipherable waves of 'NOTmemoriesNOcantlookCANTpleasenoPLEA-' which held him trapped in their torturous clawed grip, it had marked a stark reversal in their dynamic that had persisted ever since. Once past the shell-shock of the moment, the Fey boy had stepped into the role of rescuer with a stoic determination and competent ingenuity that far belied his youth.
He'd taken advantage of Lancelot’s dead faint to wash the mangled wound, apply a fresh poultice of Yarrow scavenged from the surrounding woods, redress it with the remaining length of bandage dangling precariously from a distressed Goliath's saddle and even wrestle his unconscious captor-turned-charge into the spare tunic which had fallen to the dirt. When Lancelot finally stirred from half a night of delirious fever dreams, he found himself curiously pillowed on a roughly piled bed of fallen ash leaves, his sick-sweat soaked body pressed between the warm forms of the child and the courser to protect him from the winter wind. But though he woke once again coherent, it was immediately apparent his physical condition had worsened considerably in the night and would continue to rapidly deteriorate.
Too scrupulously stubborn to concede the obvious hopelessness of Lancelot’s declining health — or perhaps too afraid to continue on alone — Percival had unequivocally refused his felled travelling companion's demand that boy and beast leave him behind. Instead he'd merely reprimanded sharply "A knight of the Fey is as enduring as the Great River" — whatever that meant — before ensuring beyond doubt that Lancelot couldn't take the matter into his own hands. To remove any possibility of the soldier following through on his pleading offer to commit one final damning mortal sin on the boy's behalf and free Goliath — who would never leave his master's side while he still drew breath — he'd promptly set about stripping the dying assassin meticulously of every remaining hidden weapon. Peppering his task with a furiously hissed string of "not the plan" and creative combinations of angrily muttered vulgarities that would scandalize even the most deviant of men, he'd finally stood and folded his arms in satisfaction. Narrowing his eyes down at Lancelot with an air of authority that would have done even the boy's precious Green Knight proud, Percival had informed him in no uncertain terms that they would continue for the coast together or not at all. A stance on which both Sky youth and steed seemed in adamant agreement.
There had been nothing to be done for his broken bleeding lung, struggling breaths growing wetter and more crushing by the day. But the rest of his failing body's cascading mutinies Percy tackled with the same defiant ferocity he'd shown to Father at the Paladin camp.
When Lancelot’s previously merely useless left arm now proved to be utterly immovable, even the slightest attempt to raise it sending acidic agony blazing through his veins where poison and infection had begun to branch from his wound in livid purpling lines toward his armpit and across his increasingly bruise-blackened chest, Percival had been undaunted. Chatting compliments about the fine quality of the weave on the Monk's grey woolen cloak, he had merrily cut a thick sturdy strip from its bottom edge and bound the arm securely to Lancelot's rattling breast to immobilize it.
When attempts to haul himself into the saddle with his functioning right arm proved equally beyond his broken body's swiftly flagging capabilities, the strain of his weight pulling across the shredded muscles of his torso blacking him out beneath an excruciating wave that ripped an unwitting scream from his cracked throat, still the boy would not yield. As if the Fey child and the courser silently conspired, Goliath had placidly and patiently lowered himself to the ground without so much as a word or nudge of prompting. Teasing snarkily that he'd seen still-damp foals born with more grace, Percival had helped Lancelot balance as he straddled weak and shaking legs across the noble beast's broad back to mount.
When even that feeble strength eventually fled him, legs grown too weak to continue holding himself centered in the saddle, Percival remained undeterred as he efficiently secured Lancelot's booted feet into the stirrups with sturdy rope-like vines he snuggly wound up his calves to bind him stable to their straps. In a rare show of quiet tact, the boy had made no comment on the trembling shudder the man failed to suppress at the chilling memory the tethers evoked, of Brother Odo — cocooned above him — entangled and impaled by the Wolf Blood Witch's web of roots.
For reasons wholly unfathomable to Lancelot, Percy was desperate not to watch his former tormentor and enemy die. And so Lancelot’s one remaining quest, his one remaining prayer — to whomever, whatever would listen, Above or Below — was to not subject the boy he had already so unforgivably wronged to the further cruelty of witnessing that inevitable death alone in the wilderness. But as much as he wanted to obey, as much as prayed for the strength to hold on just a little a bit longer and spare the child the sight of what was fast approaching, it was becoming rapidly undeniable that in this final quest he would — once again — prove himself an unworthy failure, breaking the undeserved hope and trust placed in him.
Even the headstrong Sky youth's refusal to be defeated by endless external battles with Lancelot's failing limbs couldn't stand against the war the Ash Fey was losing inside his body. The ability to hold himself upright in the saddle for more than a few minutes at a time had long since abandoned him. He'd been laying draped along Goliath's sturdy neck — fingers tangled weakly in the silky mane — since just after being lashed into the stirrups; his labored breathing had grown untenably shallow, further worsened by his prone position. Each wheezing gasp and pant were a conscious struggle that had begun to paint his cracked lips with flecks of fresh blood whenever he lapsed his focus and a too-deep breath wracked him with choked hacking until he passed out from pain or lack of air. His body hadn't passed water in nearly two days, even before losing the ability this morning to choke down further sips from the wineskin Percival tried to press to his lips whenever climbing down from the saddle to relieve himself. He shook ceaselessly, teeth chattering even as his burning body sweated through his thin clothes despite the winter chill. Fevered dreams, dark and swirling with terrifyingly intangible delusions which filled him with an nameless overwhelming dread, claimed him with growing frequency and were becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality upon waking.
Inexplicably most unsettling, the ever feared and despised serpents in his stomach — despite a persistent slithering simmer of discontent Lancelot couldn't understand — had fallen oddly silent since the campfire. Perhaps even They were capable of mercy, judging the torments conjured by the demons of his own crumbling fever-boiling mind to be great enough without adding to them. Nonsensically, he didn't know if he felt gratitude for their strange silence or a curiously childlike sense of abandonment at their uncharacteristic quiet. An unexpected fear stirred at being left so alone in his own mind in the face of his disjointed thoughts' growing incoherence.
His body was shutting down, with or without the boy's permission and God forgive him — sorry I'm sorry PercysosorryIdisobeyedGodSORRYFatherPLEASE! — Lancelot was powerless to stop it.
The Weeping Monk had already been a dead man six days ago, before a single blow was landed against him, even before he turned his blade on Brother Salt. The Weeping Monk had gasped his dying breath in the shaking but sure "Yes, Father" he'd affirmed when asked if he had the will to do what was necessary. He had died the moment he'd committed his abominable demon-born soul to turning against the only life he could remember ever knowing, trading it to whichever Power would claim it in exchange for the life of the Fey child. It had been perhaps the first — most assuredly the last — truly righteous act he'd ever committed. Knelt before the Cross he'd known — with an unshakable certainty he'd never before had for anything else in his conflicted cursed existence — that what remained of the boy's innocence was more worthy of preservation than his own survival ten times over.
One truly righteous act could never absolve his unclean soul of a lifetime of acts rendered unrighteous by his fear or doubt or selfish desperation for survival and salvation. Still, the Weeping Monk died willingly, sure for the first time that doing so to save the Fey innocent who was damned in the eyes of his Father was the necessary sacrifice in the eyes of any God worthy of his servitude.
But for three days now, Lancelot too had been dying, piece by piece, limb by limb, organ by organ. The only part left of him to surrender the war against time and his own body was his heart. And without the Weeping Monk — who had always been the strong one, the unstoppable sword and impenetrable shield, who never faltered and never stood down and never broke — Lancelot knew his own heart to be an ill-made thing, too cowed and weak to stand and fight any longer.
Tenuous grasp on consciousness once again slipping from his weak grip, he knew.
They weren't going to make it.
Notes:
DISCLAIMER:
As a health-care professional, I somewhat feel it would be irresponsible if I neglected to say "Unless you have significant medical training, Do NOT ever do what Lancelot did in Chapter 2 or what you've seen in movies & try to cauterize your own wound, unless you're going to bleed to death otherwise."
Despite its prevalence for "wound treatment" in Medieval Europe, surface area cauterization like Lancelot performed on himself in two chapters ago increases infection risk rather than decreases it. Precision cauterization on a small surgical site to ensure sterile equipment & control bloodloss during or immediately following surgery itself (such as the arrow removal in Val & Kay's wonderful Wicked Heart) is another matter entirely & still in some ways used today (we autoclave surgical instruments just like Polly sterilized the surgical knife & electro-cauterize small internal bleeds as we operate just as she applied a focused small area internal cauterization inside the clean wound with her heated "scalpel"). But "cleansing infection from a wound with fire" doesn't work once bacteria's already present; if infection is already setting in you're only trapping the bacteria in the body. And unless someone is going to bleed out before a wound has a chance to be properly sutured or clot on its own ‐ such as in battlefield amputation - there is a 9 out of 10 chance trying to "burn a wound closed" will actually worsten your condition by creating with the surface burn a bacteria-susceptible area even larger than the original wound.
Lancelot only resorted to it because he'd exhausted all other means at his disposal to stop the bleeding which would attract predators to Percy & he did so knowing he was already dying. Now he's dying even quicker.
Seriously. Don't be this Lancelot. Just don't. I like you folx; deep tissue burns & septic shock are bad, m'kay?
Thanks for coming to my TED talk 😉
Chapter 5: Burn In The Dawn
Summary:
...Wincing weakly at the rising cries from the irate mob, he barely suppresses a shudder as shouts of 'crucify him like they crucified my daughter!' and 'burn him like he burned my wife!' reach his ringing ears...
Notes:
Not going to lie, this is a rough chapter… Please be mindful of the tags & trigger warnings…
The only consolation I can really offer is that not everything is what it seems…
The "improper grammar" in the following chapter isn't a failure to proof or edit. The often disjointed & chaotic sentence structures - beyond my norm - are an intentional stylistic decision, meant to reflect Lancelot's deteriorating thought process. I want to - from the depths of my heart - thank not only my usual beta Kay but also Val & SuperLizard for having looked over it with me to make sure it's maintained readability while still pulling the reader in to experiencing it through Lancelot's eyes. I think I briefly broke them & I know I broke me 💔
Chapter Trigger Warnings:
*Suicidal Ideation
*Discussion of Mercy Killing
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
"-ay here!" the voice filters through the churning black and red fog clouding Lancelot's mind, parting the mist of his fever dream and forcing its clawed shadows back as he cracks unfocused eyes to blink down blearily at the radiant roundness of Percy's tear-streak face. "-ing to get help!"
Hazily, he makes out the trampled white sand below the boy's feet where he stands clutching Goliath's bridle, and gradually registers the flicker of distant bonfires in the periphery of his vision as the jeers and shouts of rising voices reach his ears.
The Fey survivors. Percival's people. They've made it, Percy's home...gasping out a tiny sob of thanks, Lancelot feels his lids begin to droop, content to surrender to the waiting darkness now that he knows his charge is safe.
"-hear me?! Lancelot!" the panicked voice — sounding disjointedly far away — snaps him back to awareness and he drags his eyes back open. Heart lurching at knowing he's the cause for the fear on the young face, he tries to grasp onto his temporary lucidity with both metaphorical hands, nodding weakly.
"-to be alright!" the determined boy vows and for the first time Lancelot registers that the hand not holding Goliath's reins is clutched lightly to his lax fingers. Squeezing the tiny fist in acknowledgment, he does his best to offer a weary smile of encouragement.
As the grip on his fingers relaxes he feels his right hand placed carefully on the courser's tangled mane before Percy takes a reluctant step backwards from man and horse, giving him a lingering pleading look. It's not until Lancelot nods once more — permission to finally leave him to his fate? apology? thank you?...goodbye? — that the boy resolutely begins to turn away. Pausing for a moment, he turns back one last time and meets the Ash Man's eyes with that same implacable determination that the soldier has been so in awe of since the Paladin camp.
"You will be alright, Lancelot," he promises, almost too soft to hear, as if trying to convince himself — rather than the dying soldier — of the noble but naive lie. "I will bring back help."
And then, as he had after their strange tenuous moment of connection in the woods that fateful night before the campfire and the burning blade, Percy turns and scrambles off into the night as if Hell itself is on his heels.
Considering Lancelot's own imminent eternal destination, perhaps it is.
Watching Percival's swiftly retreating back as the approaching ring of angry Fey close in behind it, cutting the indomitably brave and determined youngling off from his sight one final time, Lancelot silently murmurs a prayer of humble gratitude. Whether he's praying to the God of Men or the Hidden of the Fey he no longer knows, but his thanks to Them is profound, that the release of Death had not freed him from his agony on the road and left the child to deal with it alone.
But now that the promise of Death is finally drawing around him — like soft black enfolding wings — with the swiftly growing crowd, he can't help a pathetic overwhelming sense of relief. Had this been what the Green Knight had felt, in Brother Salt's Kitchen? Had the mortal blow the Weeping Monk so cruelly dealt him in the woods at least offered him the promise of sweet release from the Paladin torture his murderer had delivered him to?
Perhaps he can ask him on the other side; Lancelot will be joining him in the hereafter very soon.
Letting his eyes drift shut, he turns the last of his energy to the comforting familiar warmth of Goliath's body where he's draped lax against the courser's neck, relishing what few moments together remain to them. Focusing on the gentle lull of the steed's steady breaths, Lancelot tries to steel himself against the damning demands for justice dripping from the lips of his rightful executioners. As they approach with growing finality on every side, pressing steadily closer like the tightening of a garrote, he hopes for the fortitude to give them the vengeance he owes them without begging like a coward.
Finding a moment of strangely comforting calm in the dark of his closed eyes, Lancelot waits for his Fate to claim him.
Abruptly, his body gives an agonizing lurch that blacks out his vision for several long seconds. It gags him on the scream that can't make its way past his throat closing convulsively around it.
When a semblance of peripheral awareness returns, it's to the foreign cursing of an unseen warrior woman to his right as she tries to hack her way through the ropey vines Percival had used to secure his legs into the stirrups. Trying futilely to swallow, Lancelot feels — from his left — the bob of his Adam's Apple scraping invitingly against the press of a blade's edge; he whimpers weakly to suppress a beseeching moan. The temptation to lean into the mercy the sharp steel offers is nearly overwhelming, despite knowing he hasn't the right to commute his own sentence and deny the enraged crowd of his victims the vengeance of their choosing.
As if sensing his struggle to resist ending his own suffering prematurely, the blade at his throat disappears. It moves instead to slice through the left side stirrup leathers fixing them to the saddle, rather than wrestle with the knotted vines binding him. Wrenched abruptly sideways, he's weightless and disoriented for a moment as he's dragged from the leather seat, before his fractured shoulder and burning open side collide hard against a warm solid body.
This time, the strangled scream of agony cannot be denied, as he tumbles from his captor's hold and roughly down to his knees on the sand.
It's the scream that incites Goliath to action. The courser doesn't understand that his caretaker and charge's submission is a willing one, only the pain and peril of his companion — oh God, NO dammit, he should have predicted, he should have KNOWN — and before Lancelot can wheeze out assurance to calm the beast, chaos erupts.
It happens faster than he can track — world tilting as he's shoved haphazardly to the side, a desperate fury of hooves and teeth as the war horse tries frantically to shield the soldier's broken body with his own, startled angry shouts, the sudden tang of blood in the air fresh and close — and moonlight glints in a crystalline flash along the edge of an upswung blade. Heedless of the fire the movement sends scorching through him, Lancelot's good right arm flies up to intercept before he's even aware of moving.
Knelt in supplication at the feet of the would-be executioner, he's oblivious to the burn of the blade's edge biting deep into the meat of his grip nearly to the bone, oblivious to the blood running from it to soak the sleeve of his tunic and the tears he doesn't realize are falling. His whole awareness is centered on trailing his flickering vision up the arm wielding the sword, past the torn deerskin jerkin, blood welling up where Goliath has bitten deeply into the man's shoulder.
Glaring down at him, face twisted in anger, stands the Man Blood from the woods of Moycraig. The one who mercifully delivered the Tusk captive from the Monk's own bloody torture at the mill. The one who bears the still angry scar of the Monk's blade on his chest, condemning Lancelot where it peeks out from beneath the edge of the jerkin's open collar.
The one he begs now for compassion he knows he does not deserve.
"Please, don't-" he chokes out in a rattling sob. "Don't hurt him! Please-" he gasps desperately around the blood flecking his lips with each ragged breath. "Don't-...not his-...fault-...doesn't understand!" He will not ask for clemency for himself — is a dead man walking even if it were granted — but he must beseech the Man Blood's mercy for Goliath. He cannot let them condemn the courser for his crimes, not when the steed's only true sins are his foolish blind loyalty and misplaced devotion to his murderous master.
"What the hell is going on back there, Pretty Boy?" The warrior woman's thickly accented voice demands, followed by a curse as she dodges a furious equine kick trying unsuccessfully to slip around the mount's rear.
Whether it's the undisguised confusion crossing the Man Blood's face or the distraction of the woman's words that contributes to the lessening pressure behind the sword, the lapse is the moment that Lancelot needs and he doesn't let it pass. Releasing his grip on the faltering blade, he brings his hand to Goliath's powerful shoulder and shoves with all his waning strength; mouth unable to shape the command to leave him dammit! — a low keening moan escaping in place of the words — he prays he can make the protective beast understand through flesh and touch that he must stand down. The blood slicking his palm gives him no purchase against the steed's ebony coat and he skids wetly off the horse's side, barely catching himself one-armed before the overbalanced shove can topple him face first into the dirt.
He hisses as the open wound of his palm fills with sandy grit, panting through pained wretching as the twisting of his torso proves more than his body can bear. He hasn't budged Goliath far — still between Lancelot and the bulk of the increasingly enraged crowd — but it's enough to at least push the courser clear of the Man Blood's hovering blade and past his battle maiden partner, leaving Lancelot bowed on hand and knees between the two warriors. Attention torn now between the angry mob and the two lone warriors, the horse focuses on the threat of greater numbers — stomping and snapping threateningly at the growing crowd.
Struggling against the heaving of his failing lungs, Lancelot forces his words out on labored breath, head bowed.
"I submit-...myself to-...judgement," he wheezes brokenly, eyes transfixed on the viscous black bile that begins to trickle slowly from his lips to fall upon the sand. Wincing weakly at the rising cries from the irate mob, he barely suppresses a shudder as shouts of 'crucify him like they crucified my daughter!' and 'burn him like he burned my wife!' reach his ringing ears, demands for justice sweeping through the growing gathering filling the beach. He would not deny them their vengeance, barely a fraction of the holocaust he'd helped perpetrate on their kind — on his own kind — but Percival…
Neither daring to raise his bowed head nor to withdraw the offer of his bared neck, Lancelot issues a final hopeful plea to the Man Blood he had seen show the dying Tusk warrior compassion at Moycraig.
"I beg-...only that the-...boy not-...bear witness to-...my execution," he grovels through the ground glass in his throat and lungs. "He has seen-...too much-...blood already-...because of-...my crimes," he whispers hollowly. "I would spare-...him this-...at least."
The drip-drip-drip of the putrid black liquid from within is mesmerizing, a curious relief to its appearance at last, a curious comfort to its finality — the imminent end it no doubt signals. Colored light begins to dance at the edges of his vision, dimming and brightening with a slowly pulsing tempo. The lulling flicker of the fairy lights' steady beat — paired with the captivating vision of the slowly forming bilious black puddle, merging with the blood steadily soaking the sand from his weeping palm like a sacrilegious stigmata — is nearly hypnotic.
He feels himself drifting in an eerie calm, sinking into the magnetic gory sight. It should repulse but only draws him deeper, as if floating into the vision itself on the kaleidoscopic colors' soothing cadence.
"What the fuck?!"
The woman's thick accent is furious and demanding, shock and confusion clear in her voice as she finally draws near enough to get a good look at him. She drags him upright onto his knees by the collar of his cloak, wrenching him from his peaceful daze.
Gaze finally rising to meet hers, Lancelot balks in horror at what he sees.
His heart hammers frantically as the spectre of dark beauty and terrible vengeance glares down at him with a feral fang-filled growl from the visage of a dead woman. Dead because he left her face down in the stream — pierced through her armored back by his own sword — before his ambush of the nearby Green Knight.
Has he already died, then, and Goliath with him? The angry screams surrounding him — escalating in volume as they demand their blood vengeance — are they demonic specters of his countless dead, set not to execute him but to enact his eternal torture?
He'd known he was Damned. He'd thought he'd accepted the infernal fate that awaited, could be strong enough to face his penance bravely as long as he could do one righteous thing and see Percival safely back to his People. But face to face with the pitiless ghost of one of his victims in all her punishing glory — faced with the reality that the burning cross the mob demands to hang him on will not be an end to his bodily agony but only the beginning — his composure begins to crumble.
Truly afraid for the first time, he tries to shrink back from the vengeful demon — for surely to be with him here in Hell that is what she must be, despite the way the full moon behind her casts a halo's glow around the merciless brutal beauty of her obsidian features — but her grip on the collar of his hood is unrelenting. He serves only to strangle himself against it like a dog choking itself on its own chain, the noose drawing ever tighter with each mindless thrash.
Panicking as his already cracked and bleeding throat constricts further — blackening his vision with lack of air — he scrabbles frantically at her wrist in a desperate bid to dislodge it. But his hand's coordination and strength stolen by terror and half-severed muscles, he succeeds only in painting her forearm wetly with his blood like a sacrificial offering.
As the demon stares down at the slick redness he spreads against her dark skin, her expression morphs to one of disdainful disgust and she shakes him once — roughly — with a growl.
"Be still, Monk," she warns furiously, an order that must be obeyed, "or I will make you be still!"
Like a cat paralyzed by the pressure point of its vulnerable scruff, his muscles at once go rigid and then slack — absent the consent of conscious thought — but the pressure against his throat lessens when his struggles cease. The shifting of colored light returns to swarm his vision — in alarmingly rapid flashes now — as he greedily attempts to suck in air, but his crushed lungs protest. Violent hacking nearly doubles him over with the agony of breathing fire trying to tear him apart from the inside. Only the woman's implacable hold on his hood suspends him upright on his knees, body heaving with every rebellious rattling wretch of air like a puppet dancing on a string.
When the coughing at last subsides to a cracked wet shuddering wheeze, Lancelot registers that she has raised her scimitar's curved blade and he closes his eyes, forcing himself to stillness as he awaits its strike. And waits. The jeering and cursing and calls for his blood grow louder, but still he waits and the blade does not fall. Realizing she must want him to know the fear of seeing the blow coming, he slowly opens his eyes.
And stares in utter confusion.
Rather than bringing the weapon's brutal edge to bear on him as she should, she's backed her thigh up near his shoulder and has turned the sword's point outward, waving it wardingly at the encircling throng of vengeful dead. A glance to his left confirms, from the corner of his eye, that the Man Blood has done the same. The two have closed ranks back to back, with him buffeted between them, holding off the encroaching swarm of his bloodthirsty victims.
The demons are…protecting him? Why?!
He doesn't understand, but his questions catch in his cracked throat and he can only mewl weakly with an uncomprehending whimper.
"Arthur…?" the woman growls, a tone the soldier in Lancelot recognizes as both a check-in and a warning. Hissing angrily, she darts the blade out and back faster than the eye can see, in threat and promise as the mob begins to press in closer.
"I know," the man answers in a similarly wary voice. "Kaze...we can't hold them back for long," he cautions lowly, raising his own blade in warning when a Tusk tries to break rank into the tightening ring of retribution.
The woman warrior grunts out her displeased agreement, pressing her thigh tight to Lancelot's shoulder and snapping her teeth angrily as a small but heavy object — a rock of some sort — flies from somewhere in the circle to graze sharply across his cheek. Another follows, narrowly missing its mark, then a curse from his left signals a third; soon, he knows, they'll be raining down continuously and indiscriminate in their targets. The Man Blood — Arthur? — is right; he can hear Goliath still bucking and biting behind him, but they are surrounded on all sides and delaying the inevitable is an exercise in futility. A pointless one at that, the momentary reprieve an insurmountable temptation all the more cruel and devastating for its contrast to the eternal torment it forestalls.
He can make no sense of why these two demons dressed in his victims' forms are defending him — unless to fulfill their own damned restitution — but if they stand shield over him much longer, all three will bear the punishment for his crimes. And that? That is more harrowing than his fear of the unending pain. Too many have suffered so he could save his own skin already — most of whom surround him now demanding retribution. The steadily flickering colors begin to entrance him once more as he parts his lips to say so — when his words are cut off on a pained cry with the impact of shattering glass against his broken collarbone — as the crowd grows bolder, pressing ever closer.
"Gods…" the Man Blood breathes shakily, his voice sounding almost as afraid as Lancelot feels. "Kaze...They're going to tear him apart."
Focusing all his waning strength on supporting his own weight, struggling to straighten his back where he kneels on the bloody sand, Lancelot slowly lifts his head.
"Let-...them," he wheezes softly.
The words are barely a whisper, but he can feel the sudden tensing of the muscles pressed tight to both sides and he knows his hushed voice has been heard above the screams.
"It is-...my penance," he rasps hollowly, blinking against tears he's only just begun to notice falling. "It is-...their right-...to punish me-...in kind for-...my crimes… I cannot-...restore the-...lives I stole but-...I owe them-...this justice."
Risking taking her gaze off of the seething enraged mass surrounding them, the woman slowly turns her head, and for the first time, Lancelot looks up to meet her eyes without fear. Her face is nearly grey with horror, even beneath the ethereal ebony of her fierce cheeks. Glance flickering between him and the furious clamoring crush of his victims closing in, she shifts her gaze over his shoulder to the Man Blood behind him — her expression oddly lost and imploring in a way that makes him ache for her. After a moment, she nods mutely and turns her body to him fully. A flash of what could almost be pity crossed her features before she schools them to determined obsidian. Hand sliding from his hood to grasp his uninjured shoulder with startling care, she meets his unwavering gaze once more.
"What is your name, Monk?" she asks, and for once the address sounds gentle rather than derisive.
"Lancelot," he whispers reverently, enthralled by the way the shifting colors play tricks with the light to craft the illusion of tears welling in her amber eyes.
"Lancelot," she repeats, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly as he feels the tip of her blade come to rest — soft and sweet — between his ribs. The tender promise in her once merciless — now unmistakably tear misted — eyes overwhelms him with confused emotions he cannot name. He hiccups like a lost and frightened child — not understanding how she could possibly seek to comfort him after the things he's done, how she could possibly weep for him.
"Close your eyes, Lancelot," she croons soothingly with a soft smile and a nod of encouragement — the way he imagines his mother might have once hushed him back to sleep after a nightmare, if he could recall his mother's voice. The cries and curses of the crowd fade into so much background noise, even as they escalate in violence and volume. The blade poised to pierce his heart holds steady and sure in the warrior's skilled grip despite the jostle of bodies pressing against her back.
Swallowing thickly, he holds her honeyed gaze a moment more before nodding in acquiescence and allowing his lids to drift gently shut.
"Born in the dawn," he breathes out softly, the first pain free words to pass his lips in six days, a sense of peace washing over him, "to pass in-"
Notes:
...I can't even think of anything to say in my defense that won't get me crucified like the mob wants to do to Lancelot…
Just remember, if you guys kill me for this chapter now, you won't find out what happens next?
LurrAntsanot on Chapter 1 Tue 10 Nov 2020 01:30PM UTC
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Saighin on Chapter 1 Fri 13 Nov 2020 06:13AM UTC
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Saighin on Chapter 1 Fri 13 Nov 2020 06:19AM UTC
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LurrAntsanot on Chapter 1 Sat 14 Nov 2020 08:46PM UTC
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SuperLizard on Chapter 1 Thu 19 Nov 2020 01:25PM UTC
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Saighin on Chapter 1 Fri 20 Nov 2020 11:49PM UTC
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LurrAntsanot on Chapter 2 Mon 07 Dec 2020 06:38PM UTC
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Saighin on Chapter 2 Mon 07 Dec 2020 11:06PM UTC
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LurrAntsanot on Chapter 2 Sun 13 Dec 2020 11:15PM UTC
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lucrethia on Chapter 2 Thu 10 Dec 2020 12:08PM UTC
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Saighin on Chapter 2 Sun 13 Dec 2020 05:34AM UTC
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lucrethia on Chapter 2 Sun 13 Dec 2020 08:55AM UTC
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lucrethia on Chapter 3 Sat 16 Jan 2021 11:08AM UTC
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Saighin on Chapter 3 Sat 16 Jan 2021 10:15PM UTC
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Moonsteralilly on Chapter 3 Sat 16 Jan 2021 11:28AM UTC
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Lancewain (Guest) on Chapter 4 Sat 24 Jul 2021 02:03PM UTC
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Mel (Guest) on Chapter 4 Mon 26 Jul 2021 02:33PM UTC
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Mel (Guest) on Chapter 5 Mon 02 Aug 2021 05:34PM UTC
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Lancewain (Guest) on Chapter 5 Thu 09 Sep 2021 01:43PM UTC
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menolikee on Chapter 5 Sun 10 Oct 2021 01:15AM UTC
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SolarColt6 (Guest) on Chapter 5 Sun 06 Mar 2022 06:05PM UTC
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VioletAstrid on Chapter 5 Sun 14 Jul 2024 04:39AM UTC
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