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Chapter Text

“You can’t follow me home, my father will kill you,” Arthur rather callously informs the bird. It’s been following him for a full afternoon now, ever since, well—ever since Arthur changed it into a boy. “Go on,” he tries again. “Go back into the forest, daft thing. It’s where birds belong!”

The bird does no such thing.

Arthur groans, and it bounces off of the trees. When no more echos come, and the bird is still standing there—on two feet, and wingless, mind, as though it is not a bird at all—Arthur buries his face into his hands. 

His lungs give heaving lurches in his chest, one after another. Sweat from the summer sun cools along his back, and his hair is stiff with it. He’d run long and hard today, and his knees seem to want to shake out of their skin. Above them, the leaves rustle, shades of green so rich and dark they look blue in the shadows. 

“I don’t suppose you know the way to Camelot, bird?” Arthur asks hopelessly, picking up a stick that looks remarkably like a sword. Maybe he’s going mad.

He wields the sword at the bird, heart heavy. Camelot will never welcome him home again should anyone learn of what he has done, prince or no. If he were a more dutiful son he would slay the bird right here and now—but it is of Arthur’s making, and he is too soft-hearted. It is not the bird’s fault. 

“I don’t think I do,” the bird considers, combing fruitlessly at its long, dark hair. It is ragged, and only good for cutting off; more tangles and filth than hair. “I don’t remember, if I did.”

“Bird! You can talk!” Arthur exclaims, dropping his stick.

“I can, boy!” the bird mocks, rolling its eyes.

“Well I’ve never met a bird before, how was I supposed to know?” Arthur wonders if all birds are so tempestuous or if it’s only this one. “Have you a name, then?”

“Merlin,” the bird says, which seems self-evident, once it’s been spoken.

“I suppose birds aren’t very creative,” Arthur thinks aloud, picking up the stick once more. Should any bandits return to waylay them again, he will have to defend them. Merlin’s arms are so pale and skinny it seems likely he could not lift even the stick, let alone an actual sword.

Ser Ector is to teach him—

Ser Ector is dead.  

Dead in the forest, from an arrow to the neck. The blood had been warm where it splashed Arthur’s face, and Ser Ector had been heavy from where he had fallen. Down into the bracken and taking Arthur with him, his body a shield for his charge to the last.

Arthur wipes furiously at his face with shaking hands and a stinging in his eyes. Years ago, when he’d first started riding anything taller than a pony, he had fallen. The air had been knocked clean out of his lungs, and his ribs had been a mottled green and purple for weeks—it feels much the same, now. The pressure. The ringing in his ears. This time Ser Ector will not lift him up and tell him to ‘ be brave, little prince’, though, for Ser Ector shall never again do anything.

How can Arthur ever face Kay?

“There there,” the bird makes a pitiful attempt at comfort. Its hands are cold and bony.

“I want a wash,” Arthur gasps. He wants this blood off of his face. No. He wants to turn around and run back to Ser Ector, that is what he wants. To find out it was all a cruel test. A jape, a lie. He doesn’t care what reason there is, only that there is one.

The bird looks about, cocking its head to and fro. “I think there’s a river. Come on!”

It trots on without waiting and without looking back. Arthur has no choice but to follow. Days from Camelot already, the path is long forgotten behind them, lost after their mad run from the bandits. Arthur… had never known such fear. His eyes scan the treeline, but he sees no-one following. They’d been—well, nothing like when he played knights and bandits. He’s too old for such things, now, a squire in his own right. He remembers laughing, though, and victory. 

Victory, he thinks with a scoff. Over pageboys and stableboys playing pretend. 

These bandits, though, they’d been fierce. Desperate, and unaware of their prey, for no attempt at ransom had been made. But Arthur had been desperate too, and just look at what he had done.

Magic.

And no mere hedgewitchery. Arthur had changed a bird into a boy—he’s never even heard of such a feat before. His father…well. All of Albion knows just what his father would think.

It’s a long, quiet walk, and despite Arthur’s mind overflowing with questions, he cannot muster up the energy to speak. He drops his sword into the dark brush of the forest. It’s just a stick, anyway.

“Told you,” chirps the bird. Merlin, Arthur reminds himself.

He croaks what could be an agreement, half-tripping over his own feet in order to dunk his head into the river. It’s a shock of cold water, tugging at his hair, pulling at the blood and the salt of tears and sweat, spiriting it somewhere far away. Sound is muffled, and for a moment he is not here at all. Maybe this river will carry him all the way to the sea. His shoulders hunch and his knees give way at last. On the shore of the river, among the smooth dark stones, he curls up like a bug and sobs.

Time passes, shadows moving across the water, and his wet tunic clings fast to his skin. Even in summer, the stream is cool, and the sun has all but vanished. He’s stopped shaking, which he remembers from lessons is bad, but he cannot seem to find his feet to stand. 

“Here,” Merlin says, holding out his hands. Blackberries pile within them so high that some roll through his pale fingers and catch among the riverstones. “They’re good! Sweet!”

When Arthur fails to rise and take one for himself, Merlin does the job for him, stuffing one, then two, then three past his lips—until Arthur is forced to move or choke. He chews, the startling sweetness upsetting, for he does not wish to enjoy anything ever again.

“They’re good, right?” Merlin beams at him. “Are you cold? I’ll make a fire!”

And he does so, conjuring one into being; hovering right in the air like a will-o'-the-wisp. Arthur nearly inhales the blackberries, choking roughly. “That’s magic!” he exclaims, wheezing. He wishes he hadn’t dropped his stick earlier.

“Is it?” asks Merlin. He blinks, wide blue eyes taking in the fire with bland understanding. 

Arthur swallows, the blackberries sinking like stones. “It is,” he croaks. Of course a bird wouldn’t have the teachings of a civilized man. They’ve no books in the forest, and no preceptors. No nannies or fathers. “You shouldn’t do that,” Arthur says, summoning up a bit of patience from his usually shallow well of it. Merlin is relying on him.

This is his own fault, after all. He’s given the bird a new form, and magic along with it but no greater understanding.

“Why not?” Merlin asks, wrinkling his nose. He twists his hand, and the warm light jumps around and about like a playful sprite. Golden rays cut lines through the trees, casting wild shadows that reach and stretch and strain to join in the dance. 

“It’s wicked,” Arthur says, although mostly he thinks it’s just warm.

“Isn’t,” Merlin denies with an animal’s simplicity, “look.”

Arthur’s hands are taken and held, the remaining blackberries scattering around their feet and bruising as the last of them fall. The light weaves around their hands, and nothing much happens at all. Gold as honey, or the dragon banners of his home—it doesn’t feel wicked.

“Maybe just for the night,” Arthur says, in a rare capitulation. Hollowed out, and tired of fighting, his voice is barely a whisper. It’s certainly no greater magic than Arthur has already done. They wander downriver, Merlin running ahead and back so much that Arthur is exhausted just looking at him, until they come across a massive old oak. The roots sprawl far and wide like fat, twisting snakes, with a wide enough gap for two to hide, if the two are careful.

“Goodnight, bird,” Arthur says, listening for the footfalls of bandits. He will keep the night’s watch, as is his duty.

“Goodnight, boy,” Merlin replies, yawning and lying back into the leaves and the tree bark without a care in the world.

“My name’s Arthur, not boy,” Arthur says, elbowing Merlin in a futile attempt to get him to budge over. Sleep must come to birds quickly, though, for he doesn’t so much as twitch, only lolling his head closer to Arthur. He smells of the forest, like living things.

Arthur lets his eyes close, finding a bit of comfort, just for a moment.

***

He wakes, still tucked into the safe cradle of the oak tree—but Merlin is gone.

“Bird?” Arthur calls, voice cracking. “Merlin?”

An answering call rises up from the river, and he forces himself up and out of the shelter. In the light of the morning the forest seems different, although it cannot be. The moss is soft and wet with dew, and the shadows of the trees do not seem so endlessly deep. The river bubbles, and the blood is long since washed away.

“Fish,” Merlin says, pointing to the two that are already dead on the shore. Another leaps up out of the water, unnatural, to join them.

“Stop it!” Arthur orders, watching the thing flop about. Scales shimmering in the sunlight, it is radiant and gasping, beautiful and ghastly.

Merlin turns to watch him, eyes golden—dangerous—only to fade to a deep blue once more. They look human, now. “Why?” he asks, blinking. “You’re hungry.”

“It’s,” Arthur begins, not sure. “It’s not right. Magic isn’t allowed in Camelot. It’s the law.” It’s more than that, though. He doesn’t want to watch the hopeless thing writhe about. Ravenous as he is, it still makes him feel ill. He looks away, stomach squirming and remembering red cloaks blooming across the grass like poppy flowers.

“Is this Camelot?” It could sound mocking, Arthur thinks, if it were not so very earnest. Merlin truly doesn’t know any better.

“It’s not,” Arthur sighs. “It just… doesn't seem fair to the fish. They haven’t got a chance against magic.” It’s not like they would have much of a chance against a bear, or a fishing net, either, the bleak hunger in his gut tells him. Maybe it’s different for animals than for men. The fish has stopped struggling, and thus stopped suffering. 

It makes him ache, though, with something he lacks a name for.

“But you’re hungry?” Merlin asks, looking between Arthur and the fish, confusion plain on his face. It is a long face, and a sharp one, with nothing extra for overbearing courtly ladies to pinch, even though he seems younger than Arthur himself. His stomach answers for him, growling in demand. For years now he has hunted, tracking and cleaning and skinning his own kills. Is it truly so different? 

“I am,” he admits, still somehow feeling a coil of disquiet. He doesn’t have his knife, but between the two of them they get the fish roasting—Merlin can start a fire, but doesn’t know a thing about cooking food. Arthur knows more, merely by the virtue of knowing one should cook their food.

“I suppose birds eat things raw,” he says, scattering the remains of the fish back into the water to be picked clean by other, luckier fish. Do they have souls? Arthur would not have thought a bird had a soul like a man, either, once.

“Usually,” Merlin agrees.

“The forest is very different from Camelot,” Arthur sighs, washing his hands in the river and insisting Merlin do the same. They really should do something about the rest of Merlin, but Arthur has no comb or knife, and there is nothing they can do to tend to the bird’s clothes, which are mostly tatters. In the castle they would not even be suitable for rags. 

“Magic is allowed in the forest,” Merlin says, sudden and insistent. “There aren’t any laws.” He looks over at Arthur, leaning in so closely Arthur can see every different speckle of blue in his eyes, and the gold that swims underneath it.

Despite himself, a sizzle of fear licks up Arthur’s spine.

“I suppose that’s true,” he agrees, swallowing. The fish sits heavy in his belly. He agrees somewhat for the bird’s sake, but mostly for his own. What he does to survive here does not have to stain Camelot—all will be well, and the same as it was, once they are back home. All of Arthur’s most miserable sins will be left behind in the forest to be forgotten. He cannot bring himself to consider leaving the bird behind.

Merlin relaxes, the wings of his sharp shoulders loosening.

“Come on,” Arthur says, ready to leave the river.

“Where are we going?” Merlin asks, bounding to Arthur’s side with a grin. It softens his cheeks, and his eyes do not seem so frightening when they glint with happiness instead of wild-gold.

“Home,” Arthur answers, allowing it when Merlin takes his hand and swings it between them. Were they within Camelot Arthur might be too old for such a thing, but this is the forest. 

***

They are deep enough into the wood that It is another full day and a night before they see another person at all. 

He wears a cloak of Camelot, but Arthur does not know his face, and such gives him pause. None dispatched from the castle could possibly be so close yet—if indeed they even knew of the attack at all—for Arthur’s caravan had travelled for days before the ambush. They are closer to his uncle’s lands and his mother’s birthplace of Tintagel than his father’s; not a distance even a single rider could cross so swiftly.

“Arthur,” the man calls out, familiarly. Overly so. His smile reveals his rotten teeth, and under the cloak he wears leather armour, not castle mail.

Arthur throws an arm out, stopping Merlin in his tracks when he begins to walk towards the stranger. “No, bird,” he whispers, cold with a now familiar fear. Merlin shall not become another Ser Ector. 

“Leave us alone,” he bellows to the bandit. Arthur’s heart seems to beat triple-time. He has no weapon, and Merlin is so terribly small. “Fly away,” he mutters to Merlin, shaking his grip off where he has held fast to Arthur’s shirt. He pushes Merlin hard, so that he stumbles back in betrayed shock. His eyes are wide, and heartbreakingly human. “He’s a bandit, you idiot! Go!”

Arthur looks upon Merlin, and the set of his chin, and knows he will not be heeded. Instead he tries to think very hard about the shape of Merlin, before he was a boy. Speckled feathers, all pretty blue-grey and rusty, with a squared off tail. Still tufty and soft with youth. Barely the size of a common blackbird. With every shred of willpower he can summon, Arthur tries to magic him back into a bird again, this time for good, so Merlin might live on.

He did not ask to be changed. Arthur has been selfish enough.

“Please,” he begs. A rare enough word that it is foreign on his lips—and in a blur of feathers, the boy becomes a bird once more, taking up into the canopy with an indignant screech. It is fascinating to watch; a strange twisting of the world that makes his head ache and eyes swim.

Doing magic is hard.

He is glad, although the empty space at his side makes him afraid.

“Arthur,” the man says again, no longer smiling. He watches Merlin vanish into the leaves, and makes a warding against evil with his hands. There is a wariness about him now, having seen the powerful magic, but still he takes a step forward. Leaves crunch under his feet. “Come here, lad.”

They do know who he is, Arthur finally realises. But they had sought no ransom—the only thing they had sought was to cull the entire party. Not bandits at all, he thinks, but hired mercenaries. Assassins, or enemies of his father.

Arthur slowly bends to pick up a rock, prying it up out of the dark growth and earth, keeping his eyes on the man all the while. The mercenary must figure better than to try and lure Arthur closer again, for he does not attempt it. He only comes yet another step forward, drawing a short sword from its sheath at his hip as he does.

Arthur dislikes being a coward, but he wants to live.

Like an arrow loosed from a bow, he bolts into the forest, rock clenched tightly in his hand. Legs and lungs pumping. Behind him he can hear the man bulling through the underbrush, tearing through it like wet parchment. Arthur ducks under a branch, and tries to make a path that the larger man cannot follow, weaving and leaping away from grabbing hands—but in the end it is all for naught.

A short, sharp yank pulls him backwards and up, his tunic seizing tight around his throat. All of his air leaves him in a gasp, feet dangling uselessly above the roots below.

He struggles. Battering at the closed fists, Arthur twists, hitting the man across the elbow with the rock, the only vulnerable point in reach. Again and again as he hears the man swear. Arthur feels the grip loosen, and so he kicks and kicks, until the edges of his vision go dark, spots swimming in front of his eyes, bright like Merlin’s will-o'-the-wisp.

His own hitching breaths ring in his ears, dry and faint.

And then he is let go.

Arthur falls down into the roots, so dizzy he cannot tell which way is up. Merlin’s cries are fierce, and so must be his talons—the mercenary is screaming, a horrible sound, as Merlin dives at his face, wings beating madly. Blood runs from the man’s eyes like twin rivers. His sword slashes through the air, useless for now; though even Merlin’s luck is bound to run out.

“Merlin,” Arthur rasps, barely a noise at all. He hauls himself up, wobbling like a newborn colt, and throws himself at the man’s knees, toppling them both into the brush. It’s nothing like watching a tourney, he thinks, stars spinning in his vision.

It’s a lucky shot, in the end, that Arthur manages to crack the rock over the man’s temple. He’s no eyes left to shut, but he grows still, a sputtering kind of wheeze coming from his open mouth. 

Arthur feels his grip loosen at last, the stone falling to lie side by side next to the man.  

“He’s dead,” he tells the bird, who is suddenly a boy again, even though Arthur hadn’t done anything at all. His pulse thunders in his ears with each gasping breath.

“Seems so,” Merlin agrees, wiping his bloody hands on some leaves, largely unbothered.

“There were more of them, before,” Arthur remembers, rubbing at his throat. It hurts. “He might have friends.” The sword is a slice of silver in the green, half buried among the ferns—Arthur takes it, regaining some nerve with a weapon in hand. 

Things will not be so difficult, next time. He works loose the sheathe as well, and ties it about his belt.

“What are you doing?” Merlin asks as Arthur rifles through the man’s few belongings.

“He might have an insignia, or a letter, or something.” But no, there is nothing to give him away. A little pouch of coin and a dagger in his boot, both of which Arthur takes. A leather bag, worn across his chest, that has cakes of dried flatbread, crumbled mostly to pieces even in their cloth, and a hard wedge of cheese. It unsettles him to steal from the dead, but needs must. “We should take his shirt,” Arthur thinks aloud. “Yours has more holes than shirt, and you haven’t got any shoes.”

Merlin makes a face as though he might disagree, but in the end practicality wins over and he gains a new tunic. It nearly touches his knees, and the man’s belt wraps around his waist twice over.

“Smells,” Merlin complains, raising his arm and making a face. It becomes clean as the day it was sewn with a wave of his hand and flashing eyes.

Arthur doesn’t have the heart to reprimand him—he wouldn’t like to wear the dead man’s shirt, either. He kneels to wrap the scraps of Merlin’s old rags around his feet, and tries not to look over into the brush where a hand pokes out, open and unmoving.

***

After another day and long, dark night, the trees grow thinner, the forest beginning to fade into rolling fields—and most importantly of all, a road.

“Look!” Arthur cries out, the relief crashing over him. “A road! That means there will be people, and wagons, and food–”

“Nice people, though,” Merlin hedges, hanging back amongst the trees and playing with his sleeves. They cover his hands entirely, even rolled up as they are. His matted mane of black hair falls down his back, and in their wrappings his toes curl with nerves; and Arthur feels a fool. Of course Merlin is afraid. He’s likely never even seen a village before.

“Nice people,” Arthur promises, offering his hand. Merlin takes one step towards him, slowly, as though he’s considering darting back into the forest and living out his life as a bird after all. Arthur finds that although their time together has been short, he would miss his bird terribly, and so he stretches out his hand a little further. “I’ll protect you.” 

Their fingers slot together, and even though Arthur’s feet hurt and his back hurts and his everything hurts, they go forth with a renewed spirit.

“I’ll show you my rooms when we go home,” he rambles, treasuring the soft grass and the open sky after days among the roots and the heavy canopy of the trees. “Cook will make dumplings, and cakes. Birds don’t have cakes,” he says with authority, “so you don’t know, but you’ll see. They’re my favourite when they have spices and hazelnuts on top, in autumn.”

Merlin nods along, quite happy to be pulled along, or at least not putting up a fuss about it.

“I’ve got three horses,”  Arthur says, some feeling inside making him want to show off, to prove that Camelot is finer than any forest. “There’s the training yard, and the kennels. Tournaments,” he emphasises, “and there are towers so tall you can see forever and ever.” It strikes him that even the tallest tower might not be particularly impressive, to a bird. “And there are gardens,” he says in a rush, “if you should miss your forest.”

“I want to eat cake,” Merlin demands, practically salivating. He tilts his face up into the sun with a grin that shows his dimples. Arthur’s own returning smile takes him by surprise. 

It’s still hours following the merchant road south before they come across a village. It’s a small one, barely a waypoint between the places people actually want to go to. Only a handful of farmsteads and a public house—and a cheap toll to enter in through the gates, for the upkeep. Arthur pays it with a pair of the mercenaries' copper coins, ignoring the way that Merlin hides behind him, knees practically knocking together. While he was perhaps overly brave in the forest, he seems overwhelmed to stand among so many people all at once.

“It’s alright,” Arthur assures him, dragging him towards the public house all the while. There is no market square like in the lower town beneath the citadel, only a well and a couple of old men keeping a watch on things from a bench. “Just don’t do any magic. It’s dangerous around other people.”

Merlin swallows, and nods feverishly in agreement. “Only around you,” he promises.

Which is not ideal, but better than one can hope, by Arthur's reckoning, considering Merlin has only been human for a few days.

The public house is less of a house and more of one long room, and they do not have a bath.

They are tossed out the back with the chickens and a bucket that the kindly, but brusque, matron has lent them, doing their level best to wash out Merlin’s horrible mass of hair and dirt-caked feet. Arthur only has the bandit’s sword, and Merlin refuses to let Arthur cut his hair with a sword, when he asks. After nearly an hour, with tears brimming in his eyes and hands clasped to his abused scalp, Merlin insists that Arthur keep watch.

“It’s just chickens,” Merlin whinges, frustration dripping off of every word. “Chickens don’t care about magic.”

Arthur supposes that of the two of them, Merlin is their closer cousin, and thus must know better. “Alright,” he reluctantly agrees, making sure the matron does not come to check on them. Merlin scrunches up his face with effort, and beneath his closed eyes, Arthur sees the simmering gold. Molten.

He whips his head back to the door, and doesn’t look again.

“I think it’s done,” Merlin sniffs, sounding much less tormented now that his ordeal has finally passed.

“Your hair isn’t black!” Arthur marvels. Clean, it’s dark as sable, and just as shining—as smooth as Morgana’s is, once all of the knots are out, and hanging almost halfway down his back.

“It isn’t?” Merlin draws some in front of his eyes in order to squint at it.

“You look like a girl,” Arthur informs him, since Merlin clearly has never seen a mirror. 

“What’s a girl?” Merlin asks, dropping his lock of hair to peek over at Arthur instead—but there is some sense of mischief about him that makes Arthur feel as though he is the one being teased.

“There are girl birds, shut up.”

Merlin laughs more like a crow than a hawk. The chickens scatter, and Merlin gives them chase until even he is tired, coming to sit by Arthur once more. 

He draws idly in the packed dirt as Merlin runs about, using a stick to carve out the outline of a hawk. It is clumsily done, but he is distracted, thoughts scattering every which way. “You do want to come with me, don’t you, bird?” he asks, quiet. 

Merlin answers by pressing their shoulders together, a smile on his face. 

“Do you have a mother?” Arthur realises he has been assuming Merlin was alone in the forest, all of this time.  

“Doesn’t everyone?” 

“I guess,” Arthur says, drawing another bird next to the first, a little bigger. He’s not sure if he means it to be Merlin’s mother or his own. In his locked chest, all the way back in Camelot, sits a sigil of a dove, one of the only things he has of hers. “I had a mother. She died, but I look like her. Everyone says so.”

Merlin hums, looking at the shade and shape of his own hair again for a moment, considering the soft waves of it. It has already begun to tangle again. “What colour are my eyes?” he asks, turning to the pair of drawings.

“Blue.” Arthur answers, not needing to check. 

“My mother,” Merlin says carefully, “I think I look like her, too.”

Arthur looks at the wobbly lines of the two birds in the dirt, and presses his shoulder into Merlin’s even harder, feeling a swell of guilt. “Is she waiting for you, do you think, in the forest?”

“She’s not,” Merlin says, matter of fact. “She’s dead, too.”

There is a silence, between them, for a while. It is not a horrible silence, though, just the silence that comes from understanding so well there is nothing left to say about it.

This time when they go into the public house the matron coos over them and lets them dry Merlin’s tunic out, sitting together by the kitchen fire. It smells of smoke and spices, and Arthur pays over another of their precious coins for two trenchers of bread and potage. It’s the best thing he’s ever tasted, even more than Cook’s cakes. 

They sleep on borrowed blankets in the long room, and wake to horns sounding in the distance.

There is a clatter from up the stairs, like feet hitting the ground running. “Wake up, wake up! Lord Agravaine approaches,” shouts the matron from the floor above, rousing the rest of her house. “Up, damn you!”

Arthur wipes the sleep dust from his eyes, grinning over at Merlin, who is sprawled out in a loose pile of limbs, blinking at the ceiling beams. “My uncle,” Arthur whispers, for they had not dared share with anyone, even the kindly matron, that Arthur is a prince. Not while danger lurked so near. 

Not that Merlin really understands what being a prince even means, anyway.

He rolls his head to look over, a lock of his dark hair having pulled free from his long braid in the night, now plastered to his face with drool. The bridge of his pale nose is peeling from walking under the summer sun all day with no feathers or leaves to shade him. 

He gives Arthur a sleepy, trusting smile.

“Everything will be alright now, you’ll see,” Arthur promises, feeling the full weight of the magic he has wrought, when he made Merlin. “I’ll take care of you.”

Chapter Text

Arthur had never once before laid eyes upon his uncle before this day.

In truth, he is a bit afraid to approach even now, although less so, having faced mercenaries and the deep wood. Having seen magic up close. Death.

It is only that… his uncle had never wanted much to do with Arthur, before. It is obvious why. One boy’s dead mother is another man’s dead sister—Arthur still grieves her, and that is without so much as ever knowing her at all.

Lord Agravaine must be very sorrowful, indeed.

Arthur swishes the end of his bird’s braid back and forth, restless. His uncle’s men have taken over the floor of the public house, and Merlin and he have only a corner left for themselves. Arthur does not have a name for what he feels, looking across the room.  Seeing the open-winged emblem of his mother’s house on so many people at once stirs something in his heart. In Camelot no one dares even speak of her. 

His uncle has black hair—truly black, not like Merlin’s. Although Merlin looks more like his nephew than Arthur does, still tow-headed.

There is a barrel of mead that has been opened, but the mood is sombre. They eat and drink with little laughter, and his uncle takes nothing for himself. Has word of the attack reached Tintagel already by some means Arthur cannot think of? It must have, or how else would they have known to come? Or perhaps does he seek Arthur, worrying over him and eager to meet upon the road?

It stokes a bit of hope within him. 

After Morgana had arrived, the castle had changed. It was a relief to be invited away for a summer, to leave the halls of the white citadel, no matter how he loves them. 

Arthur’s father struggled, in his losing of Gorlois and gaining of a daughter. A ward in name, but name alone. Her quarters are set where they would be should Arthur have a sister by blood and birth, she sups with them nightly, and has been given countless gifts befitting a princess. Fine dresses and furs, ribbons, jewels, and golden rings enough for ten girls, not merely one.

Arthur knows she’d rather have her father back, but that doesn’t mean she gets to take his. Yet Arthur’s father seems like he rather wants to be taken. Happy to have a daughter, whereas Arthur has never managed to convince himself that his father is happy about him at all.

Tintagel was to welcome him.

He summons up his courage, and weaves through the crowd of men, breathing the familiar scent of horses and sword oil. Merlin trails after him, holding onto the back of his shirt. The room is warm now, the night’s cool having fled from the summer heat and the press of many bodies. A dozen men at arms and then as many servants besides, and old, grey-bearded wise men.

“Uncle,” he says, voice smaller than he means it.

Agravaine’s eyes turn towards Arthur, going wide. In the dim light of the squat wooden hall they are nearly as dark as his hair, set under thick black brows. Around him sit three men, who all fall silent at the interruption. 

“My gods,” says one of them, in a querulous old voice, “but if he isn’t the very image of Her Grace.”

They natter amongst themselves, and Arthur feels Merlin’s grip on his shirt loosen. “How did you come to be here, your highness?” asks another eventually, leaning over the rough table to peer at him more closely.

“Along the way,” Arthur begins, hearing the shouts that had started up when the first arrow flew into their party as though he were still there amongst them, “we were waylaid.” Ser Ector, falling, the distant shouts and ringing of metal. “My guard… they fell, defending me.”

“Mercy on their souls,” sighs the man. He’s dressed in black, the white wings of the de Bois crest carved with care on a pin that he wears upon his chest. Even sitting he is tall. “I am Goreu,” he says, reaching out a wrinkled hand to touch Arthur’s shoulder, “ and while it would take all afternoon to explain the tangle of the family tree, I am something of a distant cousin to you, my prince.”

“Cousin,” Arthur repeats, something wanting in the word.

Goreu’s face wrinkles further when he smiles, his blue eyes sharp even clouded with age. “I would like it very much should you call me cousin,” he agrees. “Please, though. What happened then?”

“It was Merlin,” Arthur says, even as he hears Merlin practically jump in place. He shakes his head in denial, but it’s only the truth. Arthur will not tell the story in its entirety, of course, lest they both be hanged, but Merlin’s courage needs to be made plain—and that they will not be parted.  “He guided me out of the forest, and when we were attacked again he helped me then, too. We killed him… the bandit, I mean. He found us after we ran, and  tried to kill me again.”

Arthur shows off the bruising around his neck, darkened as the days went on. 

Goreu is gratifyingly upset at the sight, and even Agravine seems to stir out of his shock, his mouth opening at last, though not a single word makes its way free.

“Merlin saved my life,” Arthur insists, rocking forward and holding on to the edge of the table. “Twice!”

“A brave lad,” Agravaine says, looking to Merlin, who is once again behaving with uncommon shyness, “to have foiled such a horrible thing. You have my gratitude. Come, no need to hide. Have you parents who are missing you?”

Merlin shakes his head once more, although it is buried in Arthur’s back, and he is not sure if the men can see it. “He doesn’t,” he answers in Merlin’s place. 

All he has is Arthur. 

***

They wait together, as the men pack up and finish their plates. They have been given bread and apples to break their fast, which Arthur has already finished, while Merlin still tears little bites off of his, far slower than how he has inhaled every other meal, unnerved once more by the press of people.

“Boys,” comes Agravaine’s voice, from the doorway of the house. “Come, and we shall depart.”

They scramble to their feet, trailing after Agravaine until they are given a horse to share, for which Merlin has to be lifted up, having never ridden before. He holds fast to Arthur, head twisting every which way to look at as much as he can.

Thankfully, the longer he spends around the adults the less nervous he seems to be of them. All save Agravaine, unfortunately. For him, Merlin has yet to warm. It must be daunting, to be surrounded by creatures so large and unfamiliar—Arthur thinks he was wrong before, to assume Merlin was being less brave in the morning, when in truth he was being more so.

He is a hawk, after all, not a songbird.

Before they depart his uncle calls for parchment, scrawling a short missive and handing it off to his fastest rider with a whispered conversation.

“Where do you send him?” Arthur asks, wondering.

“To your father,” his uncle says, watching the rider go. He turns to Arthur with a smile. “To tell him of your safety, and quick return.”

 Back to Camelot, then. Not Tintagel. 

His uncle seems to think it self-evident, but if their destination is a good thing or a bad thing, Arthur has yet to decide for himself. He had wanted to see the castle in which his mother was a girl, and the vast seas that surrounded it. Wanted to be free of the citadel—his father, and Morgana—even just for a season or two, and learn more of his family.

But he has also ached for home from the instant the very first drop of blood spilled.

“Can you read?” Arthur asks Merlin, considering it for the first time as he watches the messenger grow smaller and smaller. He hadn’t thought birds could talk, either.

“I bet I could,” Merlin supposes, which Arthur thinks is enough of an answer.

Merlin is senseless, for having lived in a forest instead of in civilization, but he is quick and clever, never needing something repeated twice. Arthur could teach him. It’s his responsibility, anyway… although picturing Merlin versus Preceptor Ogier, Arthur’s most hated teacher, makes him bite down on a smile.

“I bet Goreu knows how to read,” Merlin considers. “He’s very old. He could probably teach you.”

“I know how to read,” Arthur explains through gritted teeth. Bird-brain. He should have known better than to ask. 

They make camp that evening a stone’s throw away from a slow-moving river, and Arthur wonders if it is his river. The one that runs all the way into the forest, where he had washed his sticky face clean of Ser Ector’s blood. Merlin splashes in the shallows of it, rinsing away the road dust and leaping about to make the biggest splash. 

Fields of oats roll into the distance past the water, greens growing into golds as time demands they ought.

“Are you well?” asks his uncle. He does not know how to speak to Arthur, holding a discomfort about him that he has yet to shake. Arthur doesn’t know how to speak to an uncle, either, so in this they share a commonality. “Don’t you want to play with your friend?”

“I’m too old to play,” Arthur informs him, since the man has no children of his own, and must not know as much.

“Of course,” Agravaine agrees mildly, in that way where Arthur knows he is only being humoured. A gleeful shriek rises from the river when one of the knights lifts Merlin clear out of the water, spinning him around thrice, legs kicking, before throwing him further in with a splash. “In the attack, did any of them wear colours? Some heraldry, that we might know who sent them?”

“No,” Arthur answers at once, truthfully. “They seemed ordinary bandits.” Goreu wanders closer, watching over the river. Arthur does not pretend to be the most observant of boys, but even he cannot help but notice the old man has not left Arthur in the care of his uncle alone all day.

It makes him hesitate. He likes his cousin, but he should be kind to his uncle as well, shouldn’t he? He swallows, torn, and flush with shame for it.

“Arthur!” Merlin cries out over his own laughter, having wrapped his skinny arms around the knight’s knees. “Come help me beat the giant!”

Arthur twitches in place, as if he might dash off to join them. “I thought you were too old to play?” Agravaine says, raising a dark brow.

“Pish,” scolds Goreu, “I’ve yet to meet anyone in my life too old to play. Go on, young prince, show us some giant slaying.”

Despite himself it’s not a terribly hard choice to make, baking under the sun as he is. It’s not really playing, anyhow, since Merlin needs so much minding. Arthur pulls his shirt over his head and yanks his boots off, no dithering. Goreu holds out his hands, giving him a nod. “I’ll mind your things. Go on,” he says.

Arthur goes. The water is clean, and a cool balm on his sun-reddened skin, washing away his weariness. River babbles and the hum of summer insects serenade them. The knight is half again as tall as Merlin, but he pretends to topple so that he might splash them both, shouting and acting a fool. 

Merlin, for the next hour, might as well have been born a fish, and not a bird at all. Arthur only has to shout at him to not eat a frog once.

A far cleaner and gladder Arthur is stuck by the fire to dry again, and he thinks he should be sparring with the knights now that the sun is sinking and the night’s cool is rolling over them. It is only that he enjoys sitting by a chattering, happy Merlin too much, and being told stories and given dried fruit, and treated as though everything will be alright. So he does not try, hoarding the peace for a while longer.

Arthur has no magic here. He is only himself, as he used to always be.

“You know of giants, do you? But do you know the story of Ysbaddaden?” asks Goreu, once he has shepherded them to a place in the middle of the camp to sleep. Neither of them know the tale, and so Goreu tells it. “A horrible giant,” he begins, spreading his wizened hands up and into the air above, “cruel in nature. He slayed twenty three of his brother’s twenty four sons—”

“You aren’t filling their heads with nonsense, are you?” the knight from the river teases, but his smile is bright and happy. His back is to the fire, keeping watch, lest any fresh trouble visit them.

“Caradoc,” Goreu teases back, winking at Arthur, “if you wished to have a story, you need only have sat with the boys. No need for jealousy!”

“Jealousy!” Caradoc exclaims in faux outrage, but follows along with the tale as it is told, correcting things as they come with jests and clever words, until Merlin is laughing over the popping and crackling of the fire, and even Arthur cannot help but smile.

“Was that a real story?” Merlin asks, as Goreu pulls a blanket over his skinny shoulders, like he’s still a much smaller child. Arthur isn’t jealous. 

“It can’t be,” he reasons. “Giants aren’t real.”

Goreu hums, pulling Arthur’s blanket up as well, even though no one asked him to. “I told no lies, cousin,” he claims. “I should know, for I was there.” His blue eyes glint with the light of the moon above, and his white wisps of hair are bright like a sunlit cloud with the firelight behind him. He seems to stretch into the sky, as big as a giant himself. “I had no name before I slew Ysbaddaden. But my brothers had their vengeance that day—and I earned myself the name Goreu. The Best,” he translates, flexing his arm, made thin by time. He smiles again, when he does so, and any menace he might have held as a young man is long gone, and only the smiling old man remains.

They are left to sleep, although she seems slow to find them, no matter how tired Arthur is. Merlin must be the same, for his wide, unblinking eyes stare out of his pale face. Half gold in the fire, half blue in the night.

“Tell me more about Camelot,” he whispers, and so Arthur does, until Merlin’s  eyes slip closed at last, and his breaths come in the even, slow pace of slumber.

Arthur watches him for a time, fighting his own rest, although he does not know why. Only that it is nice to feel safe, and he wishes to linger in it a while longer. He had not known how precious it was until it was taken. 

Late in the night, when the sky is black, Lord Agravaine walks by, once; and meeting Arthur’s eyes through the fire, turns away.

***

Arthur is told  he need not see the ambush site again, but in this his uncle is wrong. The offer had been kindly meant, but Arthur must.

The road his caravan had taken from Camelot passes through Gawant, and against the southern border near Mercia is where they were attacked—mercenaries pouring from the trees like a war band. It seems obvious to him now. There had been so many. Four to every man of Camelot, and as their charge was King Uther’s only son and heir, they had not travelled lightly. 

The only reason Arthur had escaped had been because of Merlin and Ser Ector.

Arthur stares unblinkingly out upon the dark stains on the grass. From atop his horse he can see them all. Shadows of men.

King Godwyn must have sent people of his own to clear the bodies—this road is trod every day. A patrol had found the aftermath of the battle, Arthur imagines, or some poor farmer. He pets his horse’s mane absently, soothing it where he cannot soothe himself.

“Are you alright?” Merlin asks, pulling on Arthur’s ankle for his attention.

“No,” he admits, not able to lie about it, not to Merlin, who does not know enough to  judge him the way another boy would. He looks up at Arthur, waiting. “The man who protected me, did you see him?” A nod. “He was Ser Ector. I had only been squiring with him for a year, but he was—” Arthur swallows against the stinging in his throat. “He was important.”

Merlin says nothing. A furrow of thought sits upon his face that is given no voice, but he squeezes his hand tight before letting Arthur go, and somehow that is enough.

His uncle stands on the highest point of the road, surveying the scene. The black barding of his horse and the flags of his bannermen tear about in the wind behind him. A summer storm is brewing, Arthur thinks, feeling as though the weather is mirroring his mood. The sky swells above them, the colour of a bruise.

Goreu lopes about the field on his long legs, a tall figure in black, having left the minding of Arthur and Merlin to a solemn and unusually silent Caradoc.

“I’m going,” Arthur says, dismounting. The forest he had found sanctuary in looms just ahead—Ser Ector had grabbed him up from under his armpits like a naughty pup, hauling him to cover. The arrow had felled him barely thirty paces into the wood.

Then, of course, Arthur had wished for help. Any help. Merlin had come—a mixed sort of help, but still not one Arthur would trade.

“Are we looking for something?” Merlin asks, stepping carefully. The field has been picked over in the days since, but there is blood, and mud, and scraps that had not been hauled away, and Merlin still hasn't any proper shoes. “Or just looking?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur answers. He only knows he needs to see it.

They wander, the adults talking in low voices amongst themselves in little groupings, hemming and hawing and tutting away as adults tend to do. 

“Merlin,” Arthur begins, doing some hemming and hawing of his own. “Do you like Goreu?” 

“Mhm,” Merlin nods.

“But not my uncle?”

“No,” Merlin says, with no rehearsed etiquette to soften it at all. He cannot even pretend to be sorry over it, Arthur thinks, because it does not occur to him that it is anything one would be sorry over.

“Well, why not?” he pries, annoyed and guilty in twin parts. He wants to like his uncle, and to trust him, but Merlin has no answer but a careless shrug. 

Picking their way forward is joyless, the grass pressed down flat, the earth wet and dark. Spots like splats of paint where the wildflowers have been trampled. “Cousin,” Arthur greets, still happy to have one. 

“Cousin,” Goreu says, managing a small smile before his face falls into something more serious. “Such a thing… the feuds of adults should never have fallen on you to bear.”

“My father has many enemies,” Arthur admits. He is a strong king, and that means making enemies.

“Yes,” Goreu says, quiet in the way that a lake is in the winter. He looks up the low sweep of the hill towards the road and the black flags of Tintagel, and clasps a hand on both Merlin and Arthur’s shoulders.

“I want to find Ser Ector,” Arthur confides, his voice very, very small. He might still be in there, just a stone’s throw from the battle, unfound and alone. Kay never even got to say goodbye.

Goreu considers them, and gives a squeeze. “Alright, lad. Alright.”

They go, Caradoc waving more men to sweep the woods ahead of them. It is no good, though. Even Ser Ector is gone, taken away to be buried or burned, either given proper deference by honorable knights or looted by corpse robbers—and Arthur will never know which. 

Only a grave-sized hollow in the brush remains.

They press on through the afternoon and into the end of dusk, on and on, all the way to the foot of the black mountains. 

***

Arthur wakes to shouting in the distance. 

“Merlin.” He shakes his bird awake. There is no clashing of metal or sounds of horses, no high-twang of bow strings. The air is heavy with rain that has yet to fall, trails of smoke from the dying fire swimming up into the sky.

“Stay here,” Caradoc orders them, sliding out of his nearby bedroll. He’s slept in his mail, but he is soft-footed when he walks into the night. 

“What’s happening?” Merlin asks, eyes round. Squirming free of his blanket, he comes to sit by Arthur, close enough that he can see the hair on the back of Merlin’s arms raise. “D’you think there’ll be another fight?”

“I don’t know.” The shouting is growing louder and louder, more and more voices joining in. He regrets his cowardice in the battle with the mercenaries, and so he steels himself, standing and fixing his stolen short sword onto his hip. It is not until they push through the crowd of milling men that they see it. 

The rider his uncle had sent away has returned, his body lashed to his horse with rope and pincushioned with arrows.

“What’s that in his mouth?” he hears one of the knights ask—but it’s Caradoc who is bold enough to check. He fishes out a tight spiral of parchment, disgust on his face as he unrolls it.

“Hengist demands his gold,” he proclaims, looking grimly around the gathered men, “as was promised.” Agravaine storms forward, snatching the parchment for himself, but Caradoc speaks the last of the note aloud regardless. “Or he will have it from Uther, earned with the name of the man who paid for his son’s head.” 

The argument that ensues is heated. Accusations are thrown. Names are named, and grievances that have been brewing for many years longer than Arthur has ever even been alive are aired. No one has any proof that such a person is in their camp at all, Agravaine argues—the horse simply returned to familiar scents, with no living rider to guide it elsewhere. 

Goreu, though, accuses Agravaine himself.

Is it true? Arthur feels numb and cold, even as the fury around him builds like a stoked fire, tempers flaring high.

“You point your finger at me?” Agravaine demands, turning and speaking to his men and inviting them to join his incredulity. “Have you proof? Or is this the ambition of a man who seeks to come one step closer to lordship over Tintagel?”

Goreu throws back his head to laugh, but it is joyless. “A question for a question, then, my lord. Which of we two swore vengeance on Uther Pendragon?”

“I’ve my quarrels with Uther, yes. Yet to accuse me of trying to kill my own kin,” Agravaine protests, “that is too far.”

“I have served you for nigh ten bloody years, do you think I cannot recognize the work of your crooked hand? No! I see what you have done, and I challenge you.” Goreu takes the glove from his own hand, throwing it to the dirt between them. Every eye in the camp seems fixed upon it. “Let the gods decree who speaks the truth!”

Is it true? Arthur wonders, over and over. He feels witless. Blind. Sick with it—but of course it’s true. 

How else would his uncle have possibly known to leave Tintagel when he had, when no living soul could have reached him to tell of the attack? Had Arthur not wondered that himself? It was no coincidence, Arthur had just… hoped.  

Arthur is a fool.

Agravaine looks around his men—yet none voice protest. There may not be enough evidence to judge a powerful lord, but there are enough doubts that many would be glad to have an honest answer through arms. “A champion, then,” he says, at length, “for my fighting years have left me.”

“What fighting years?” Goreu jeers. “When I was your age I was still campaigning for your honourable father. Up to my belly in the blood of his enemies—” he turns his face from Agravaine, and calls for a sword. “Armael would not have stood for this.” Agravaine stiffens at the insult, at last struck true. “Come, and name your champion.”

It turns out Arthur’s uncle is canny and vicious both. “Ser Caradoc,” he calls, ignoring Merlin’s shouting in protest.

“To Camelot,” Arthur begs instead, lunging forwards. He is caught by one of the other knights before he can make it more than a few steps. “Let my father judge—”

“The challenge is issued,” his uncle insists. He does not even spare a look. He doesn’t care at all. “The gods will do the judging.” 

He doesn’t care at all. Arthur screams, straining against the arms that hold him back, in frustration, in fury—in hurt.

The sky splits. Lightning cracks across the air like a whip, and the thunderclap, when it comes, rattles their teeth in their heads. Many faces turn up to the heavens, yet Arthur finds himself searching for Merlin, who is looking back, eyes like smouldering coals.

“Gods,” repeats one of the wise men, his shoulders pulled up near his ears. “It is ordained then.”

At this, even Agravaine shows a sliver of fear.

Caradoc is both young and strong, but the greater cruelty being done is in the depth of Goreu’s fondness for him. Even with only a few days, Arthur can see the older man dotes on his favourites like a grandsire, blood or no. 

“You swore your oaths to me,” Agravaine insists, when Caradoc hesitates, trying to melt back into the crowd. 

Other voices join in—some urging a peace until the dawn, or a cease entirely, some calling out for justice.

It doesn’t seem much like justice, to Arthur, watching them slowly circle one another. Goreu is tall, and had been a warrior as a younger man, but the teeth of age have eaten his muscles and made him brittle. Caradoc is in chainmail, has twice the breadth, and every other advantage besides. But the look upon his face is one of a child. Raindrops plink against his armour, and the wind begins to howl.

“Merlin,” Arthur demands hoarsely, wrenching himself free at last. He is not even certain what he is asking for—something just out of reach. He’d give anything to have this stop. Magic or no. How easily desperation makes him forget all of his father’s lessons once again, but he cannot care, not now. The first clashing of swords sounds out, and his ears ring with it. “Merlin!” 

He barrels into Arthur’s side, nearly sending them both into the mud. “What do we do?” he shouts. The fighting has begun in earnest.

“I don’t know!” Arthur answers over the storm. He feels as though Merlin’s heart is beating within his own chest, the two overlapping as one, lightning licking through his limbs. Magic. It must be. He wants this to stop. He sees Goreu fall, sees Caradoc recoil in horror, dropping his sword with a cry. “Anything!” 

As if summoned, another crack of lightning scores the sky, blisteringly hot. It strikes not the air or even the peak of the mountain, but instead Lord Agravaine. So fierce a thing that the echoes of it sending men toppling head over feet. Snapping lashes of blinding white and blue pour across the ground like spilled water, the horses screaming and rearing in fear.

When Arthur has managed to force his eyes open once more, his uncle lays on the mud, clutching his chest and twitching. Staring up into the storm. No one can seem to move away from him fast enough—but Merlin has already dashed towards Caradoc and Goreu, dragging a stunned Arthur along with him. Had he done that, or Merlin? He’s not sure he can tell the difference. 

Spots dance in front of his eyes, and he thinks of the fish flopping by the river.

“Get up,” Arthur says, grabbing Goreu and trying to tug him to his feet. Magic, he thinks, fumbling for that otherly feeling he has no name for, but had just had within his grasp. It slithers farther and farther away the more he panics. “Cousin.”

“Your highness.” Caradoc is gentle, when he reaches out. He kneels down right there in the mud. “Arthur,” he tries again, ignoring the fists that beat uselessly on his mail, “I’m so sorry—”

“He’s dead?” Merlin asks, leaning over for a sad look. He’d liked Goreu, but there is no greater pain upon his face, no true understanding of the permanence of it. Just like the man in the forest, Merlin doesn’t seem to mind death much at all. 

In this moment he seems much more of an animal than a boy, and Arthur hates him for it.

It isn’t fair. It’s a useless sort of thought. Nothing about any of this is fair. Agravaine’s breaths are rattling on behind them, but Goreu has no breath at all. Ser Ector, all of the many knights. Near a dozen good men dead, and for what? 

“I—” Caradoc says, but nothing more.

“Wake him up!” Arthur shouts, whirling towards Merlin. Surely magic is good for this much?

“I’ll try, if you want me to,” Merlin agrees, wrinkling his nose in deep thought.

Arthur looks about, caught in Caradoc’s arms as he is—the rest of their company is far, having fled from the lightning strike, or have gone to their lord. They lift him to sitting, Arthur’s uncle blinking dazedly, arms limp. No one is watching, but Arthur finds he does not care.

“Do it,” he demands. 

The harder he wishes for it to work the more he can feel it again, that strange rise of something. The change in the air, the earth. A feeling that, until Merlin, he had never known—it’s like opening a pair of eyes he’d never been aware of or hearing a song when silence was all he’d ever had. He has a strange double-vision, looking down at Goreu and seeing him as Merlin sees him; empty and dim.

Light flows through everything else. Roiling slowly, pulsing with vivid, golden life. The grass, the worms. Vibrating and humming. It’s easy, then, to shuffle the lights around—Agravaine’s will do, Arthur thinks. Or is it Merlin? They are one and the same, though, united in agreement; and so the pulses of light that weave through one man are shepherded to another, where they will be of a better liking to Arthur—and of all things, isn’t that what matters?

Arthur is sick all down Caradoc’s mail when he comes back to himself. 

Goreu, though, takes in a great gasp of air, choking on the rain. “Cousin,” Arthur says, voice slurring. He’s dizzy. Ten times too big for the skin he’s in How does Merlin do it?

“How?” gasps Caradoc. He cups the back of Arthur’s head with one hand, the other reaching out towards Merlin and Goreu. It’s trembling.

“My lord?” a voice asks from behind them, and then another. “Lord Agravaine?”

“The shock was too great.”

“Or the gods have judged him,” suggests one, more grimly.

But Arthur knows the truth. The gods had nothing to do with it. He pushes himself up and away from Caradoc, who is too limp to stop him. The ground is slick beneath his feet, and he nearly trips twice in helping Merlin prop Goreu up. His eyes are wide and wild, and he holds so tightly to Arthur’s arm that it hurts.

If this is magic, he thinks, casting a wary look to his uncle’s body, it is as ugly as it is beautiful.

Merlin beams at him, though. Cheeks pink and dimpling with happiness at his success, and so Arthur tries his best to not be sick again.

Chapter Text

Avagraine’s death is, to Arthur’s shame, a blessing.

Largely his men are far too busy worrying over their rapidly cooling-lord to worry about much else. Caradoc must not have struck fatally, so Goreu had merely been wounded. Prince Arthur had been made upset, and so he had become solemn and still. All easy things to explain away and waste no deeper thoughts upon.

No one really thinks too hard about Merlin to begin with.

Sweet, but a bit dim. Strange, and as lucky to have saved Arthur as Arthur was to be saved by him. No other twists of fortune or rise in circumstance would come for a boy like him, after all. Arthur tries to forgive them for their ignorance, for they do not know they judge him by the same standards they would have for any little boy—but he is a wild creature.

Arthur himself hadn’t understood how much so.

As for whatever manner of magic Arthur has… he does not understand that either. 

Regardless of the deeper mysteries such as how, though, Goreu lives, and for this, Arthur is grateful. Despite his churning stomach, despite his trembling, despite everything, he is grateful. The old man had not said much, only held Arthur to his chest for a long moment, cheek pressed tight to his stuttering heart, and then Merlin after him. 

Arthur wonders what it was like to be dead.

Now Goreu sits, sopping wet, in a tent, staring wide-eyed out into the night. Caradoc hovers, too afraid to abandon him and too afraid to approach. The rain had stopped when Arthur’s temper passed, and there is a thin strip of night sky showing as the clouds break apart, like the slash of a knife.

Arthur is bursting with questions, but he doesn’t want the answers. Merlin sits at his side, a blanket wrapped around both of them since there is no chance of a fire. 

“Are you hungry?” Arthur asks, hearing Merlin’s stomach growl, instead of any of the rest.

“Yes!” Merlin nods vigorously enough that water drops scatter through the air.

And so for something to do, Arthur filches them some things from the wagon—no one is paying them any mind anyway—and brings them back, spreading the small bounty between them. Merlin picks at bits as he pleases, always starving, but Arthur cannot find any appetite.

“Was it…me?” he asks, when he can no longer stop himself. He plucks at his wet sleeve, swallowing harshly.

“Was what you?” Merlin asks around a mouthful of trail bread and tart apple. Arthur knows because he can see it.

“Close your mouth when you chew,” he corrects out of habit. “The lightning, I mean—or all of it, I guess.” He can’t quite say the rest of it out loud. “Things keep happening when I want them, although not always how I want them. Is it like that for you? Magic?”

“Magic is when you change things, like the lights?” Merlin confirms, cocking his head.

“Yes.” Arthur reminds himself not to be frustrated. It’s not Merlin’s fault.

“Oh. Well, I don’t know.” Merlin furrows his brow in thought, having never cared much before. “Sometimes I want things to happen, I suppose, so I do them, and you must, too.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” 

It isn’t, is it? Everyone wants things. All of the time. Arthur certainly does, and he’d never done magic before. Little things, big things, impossible things. Another bite of breakfast, a sunny sky, a mother. 

Merlin shrugs one bony shoulder, and then finishes his bread in a single great bite. “It’s pretty tiring, though,” he admits after a long moment. Although to his credit he doesn’t show Arthur a mouthful of chewed food again. “If you want to keep doing it–”

“I don’t!” It’s a vehement enough shout that heads turn their way. He doesn’t. Arthur fidgets, and tries not to look at his dead uncle.

Had he truly wished for that? 

Even with his eyes closed Arthur can see it. The lightning strike, clear as if it was burned into his memory. The black mountains stretching into the clouds, swollen and writhing with rain, the bolt lighting up the world below. Agravaine. The shape of him, standing tall.

Unrepentant.

Arthur forces himself to look. 

Lord Agravaine, in death, is laid out flat and towers over no-one. There is too much wet for a fire, and truth be told no one seems to want to dig a grave for him. It’s pitch black, rocky ground, and to everyone here other than a few he was abandoned by the gods for attempting to kill the child of a king. The only child of his only sister. Is Arthur a monster, that he is not sorry? All he can think of are the dead knights wasted on such an unworthy man. Goreu and Caradoc circling each other. Their misery. Swords wet first with rain and then blood. 

That had not felt like justice.

Agraviane’s death, Arthur thinks, making himself look, and look, and look until his eyes burn, might.

***

The remainder of the path back to Camelot is quiet.

“If,” Goreu had said, about their return, looking perilously old as he shapes the word. A simple word, If. If. It snags Arthur like a barb, somehow. “If your father would not come for you–”

He had silenced himself before finishing his thought, but Arthur can finish it just fine himself. King Uther is not an enemy any man would wish for, and should they abscond back to Tintagel that is what he would become. Goreu doesn’t mention the magic, but it sits there in the air between them; unspoken but no less dangerous. 

Caradoc doesn’t laugh, grim and pale at all hours, and Goreu doesn’t tell any stories.

Agravaine’s body is in the wagon now instead of supplies, and Arthur does not turn around to look at it, for he has already looked his fill.

The citadel rising over the horizon is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. It is too far away to see the banners, but Arthur imagines them anyway, the red and the gold, twisting in the breeze for all to see. He pokes Merlin, sitting in front of Arthur on their horse, and points into the distance. “Do you see, there?” he asks.

“Oh!” Merlin exclaims, whipping his head around to look at Arthur—fast enough that his hair smacks into his face and he has to spit out the strands. “Will we have cake there?”

Goreu rumbles out a laugh when he hears, the first Arthur has heard in days. “I’m sure you’ll have as much cake as you can eat soon enough, lad.”

Merlin’s mouth drops open in shock, and Arthur has to catch him before he leaps off of the horse to run the rest of the way. His wrapped feet kick in the air, and the horse huffs in irritation. Arthur huffs in irritation, too.

Merlin’s feet kick here and there for the rest of the road like a twitch, eyes darting to take in everything at once. Each farm, each chicken or pig. He waves at everyone they pass, and Arthur feels his cheeks flush in embarrassment when a woman carrying a little babe waves back, her laugh warming his ears. 

Past the gate the lower town is heaving, and Merlin stops kicking entirely. The fear that had come upon him when they first went to the little town returns ten-fold. Buildings stretch up around them instead of trees, filled with shouting and people instead of animals, wares and smells unfamiliar. Smoke billows up from hearths, and Merlin shakes. He turns, staring into Arthur’s face with the whites of his eyes showing all around.

He gasps, wordless and overwhelmed.

Arthur knows Merlin is a boy as well as a bird, but all he can think of is the hoods they use for hawking, and so he claps his hands over Merlin’s ears. “Close your eyes,” he suggests. Merlin does, squeezing them tight—only to open one and take a peek, unable to resist. Too curious by half.

“What’s that?” Merlin asks, not waiting for an answer. “What’s that?” he asks again. He opens his other eye, looking to Arthur for answers.

“It’s a forge,” Arthur tells him, not moving his hands as Merlin still winces from every strike of the hammer. “They make swords there.”

“Nails, too,” Goreu says, reaching out a wrinkled hand to pat at Merlin’s head in comfort. “For building houses. Pots and pans for baking cakes. Horseshoes, for your friend the horse.” Merlin’s shoulders lower, bit by bit, with every calm word. “First time in a city, hm?” 

With three hands on his head—none of them his own—Merlin looks very silly as he nods.

“It will get easier,” Goreu promises, certain in that way that only the oldest of old people ever seem to manage.

They march up the stairs to the great wooden doors of the hall, and Arthur clenches his hands at his side, ashamed that now he has begun to shake. It’s only… he doesn’t want his father to kill him. Arthur’s neck is still sore from being caught around the collar in the forest, and he cannot help himself but to imagine the noose.

To his shock, however, they never make it into the throneroom—for King Uther himself strides from the doors, and kneels right there and then in front of the court and the crowds, the gods and Arthur, and everyone in between. Strong hands find his shoulders, clasping down.

“Arthur,” he says, his usually steady voice a rasp, and then says nothing at all, only pulling them together. Arthur’s face presses into the links of fine chain that cross his father’s broad chest, and his throat swells shut. A gloved hand cups the back of Arthur’s hair, uncaring of the sweat and road dust. It’s been a long while since he’s washed in anything other than river water. 

He cannot speak, only turning to blink up at his cousin. Unshed tears sting his eyes, monstrous relief and shame boiling under his skin in equal parts.

“What has happened?” Uther demands, seeking Caradoc and Goreu for answers. They stand like bookends on either side of Merlin, who clings to their hands. His father’s keen eyes slide over Merlin without seeming to see him at all, and Arthur breathes a thin sigh of relief.

The king cannot tell. The magic is secret, and with any luck shall stay so. Arthur has never kept a secret from his father before, he thinks, stomach swooping.

Merlin sends him a wobbly smile, and Arthur tries his best to send one back.

“Grave news, your majesty,” Goreu offers, bobbing a shallow bow without letting go of Merlin. “Better spoken with less audience.”

It is a loss to feel his father let go of him, but he is a king, and there is much to be done. 

In Uther’s solar Goreu gives a matter-of-fact recitation of the events leading up to Agravaine’s death—and Arthur had somehow forgotten for a moment that his cousin could give them away until the fear strikes him anew. Yet neither he nor Caradoc speak anything of the sort. Perhaps they, like Arthur, are yet uncertain if they’ve truly done anything wrong. 

Uther seems to recognise Merlin only long enough to give him the crown's thanks, his mind stolen away to elsewhere. Eyes flinty and cold; looking far past any soul in this room. Agrivaine’s betrayal had not been something Uther had anticipated—and another fear Arthur had not even known he carried is whisked away like so much wind.

“We will speak more of this,” the king promises, when the short sum of things has been laid out. “I will hear everything. Go, for now,” he orders, waving forward a guard and giving an order with a nod, “be made comfortable, and recover.”

Merlin doesn’t have the sense to bow when they are dismissed, of course, but sends one last tentative smile at Arthur from behind Caradoc’s leg, and even Uther seems to soften a little under the weight of his gratitude.

“I ran,” Arthur finds himself speaking at long last, once the door is shut, and there are only a pair of lingering guards. His feet shuffle on the stone, loud in the sudden quiet.

“You lived,” his father states plainly, dismissing the issue. “When you are grown, and a knight in your own right, you will not falter.”

“Yes, father,” Arthur agrees. He shall make sure of it. “Merlin didn’t run.” 

“The boy?” 

“Merlin,” Arthur repeats, going to his father’s side. He does not dare take his hand, but it is nice to be close nonetheless. He tries to make himself serious, and princely, and everything that seemed so unimportant outside the walls of Camelot. “I owe him a debt.”

“We shall find a place for him, then,” Uther agrees. He leans against the edge of his great wooden desk, more weary than Arthur can ever remember, as if a great weight has been upon him. He must have worried. He must have. “He is young enough to learn the way of things.”

“I found him in the forest.” The words pour out of Arthur, beyond his control. “His family died, and he doesn’t know much about anything, but he’s clever, and brave.”

“A fortunate thing,” his father admits, offering a nod even as the corner of his mouth gives a rare twitch of amusement.

“He could have left me, but he didn’t.”

Uther considers him, his small smile fading. “I know he’s done you a kindness,” he says, at length. “He will be rewarded, for the life of my son is beyond all value.” Arthur’s heart swells. “Tell me. Did you make any promises to him?”

“Only that he could have as much cake as he liked,” he answers, feeling very childish. “And that he’d be happy here.”

“And so he shall be,” Uther agrees, the smile returning when he learns Arthur has not promised away half of the city. Camelot is beautiful, and good, and although there is much Arthur has had cause to doubt over the past days, never has he doubted that. “Perhaps a trade, of some sort. Do you know what his family did, before they passed?”

Flew, probably, Arthur assumes. Nested, and did whatever else birds do when men aren’t there. “Uhm,” he fumbles his words. “No. I didn’t ask—he was very little when it happened, I think.”

“He is still very little,” Uther says, amused. “A family would take him in, young as he is. Farmers, if no skilled trades have need. Someone without a son would be glad to have a pair of hands that are unafraid of work.”

Merlin, Arthur thinks direly, doesn’t know how to do anything.

“But I want him,” he whines, before he can think better of it. “I am responsible for him,” he corrects quickly—before his father can do it for him. 

“He’s a peasant,” Uther reminds him, but not without a hint of understanding. Still, however, he  does not waver. The king’s word is final. “He is not your friend.”

Arthur clenches his jaw, feeling all of his previous happy warmth from his father’s regard twist up in a complicated knot around his heart, cinching tight. “Yes, sire,” he says. 

But Arthur knows it for the lie it is.

***

When they next see one another, Arthur almost doesn’t recognise Merlin. His long, wild hair has been cropped short, like a proper boy, and he’s been wrangled into trousers and a blue tunic that fits—even shoes and everything. There isn’t a spit of dirt on him.

“Shoes,” Arthur says dumbly, but Merlin only beams and sticks his foot out for inspection.

“Shoes,” he agrees, shaking out his head and showing off his shorn hair. “Look,” he demands, not letting up until Arthur shoves him away, both of them riling up and chasing about the little hallway where they’ve met.

“What colour did the bathwater turn when they dropped you in?” Arthur teases.

“Green!” Merlin shouts, and for the life of him Arthur cannot tell if he is jesting.

A soft cough interrupts them, although Goreu does not look put out. He is still clad in black, the white wings of Tintagel bright on his breast. Caradoc is nowhere to be seen. “Boys,” Goreu says, thin lips twitching into a smile, “a feast awaits us. Certainly you would not make a hungry old man wait any longer?”

“No!” Merlin agrees, taking Arthur’s hand with one of his, and then Goreu’s with the other, pulling them forwards with admirable strength for such a twig of a boy.

“You don’t even know where you’re going,” Arthur reminds him with a laugh, letting himself be pulled even so.

“It’s over here,” Merlin claims boldly—and wrongly.

After a route to the great hall that is nearly three times as long as it need be, they are settled in. It’s only Arthur, his father, Morgana, Goreu, and of course, Merlin.

The table, though, is heaped with all sorts; enough for a dozen more men besides. Roasted partridge still steaming, soft breads and seeded ones, butter whipped into peaks, glistening with sprinkles of salt and sprigs of green herbs. His mouth begins to water as soon as the scents hit him, and he has just enough brain left in his head to tug on Merlin’s sleeve before he can dart straight onto the tabletop and dig in with both hands.

“Sit by me,” Arthur demands, “and pay attention to how I eat.”

“There are laws for eating?” Merlin whirls around to demand, face twisting in betrayal.

“Rules–”

“Is that different from laws?” Merlin asks miserably.

“Yes,” Arthur says, choking down a laugh. “It’s just civilized, that’s all. No one wants to see what you’re chewing.”

“I know that,” Merlin insists, with all of the authority of one who has known it for days already.

Despite his clear agony, Merlin does do his best to mimic Arthur. He is too old to need help, but still young enough that no one looks terribly hard when Goreu cuts up the venison that Merlin covets so desperately. 

Across the table, Morgana surveys them with her pale green eyes, silent.

Uther and Goreu speak, and Arthur knows better than to talk over his father no matter how curious he is, the far-away words tickling his ears. Merlin is far too occupied to talk at all, trying a bit of everything, eyes shining with delight. It is very delicious, Arthur thinks, savouring the tart bramble sauce. The forest certainly had none of Cook's bramble sauce.

“Are you alright?” Morgana asks, after she has picked apart an entire roll of bread and scattered it across her full plate. Her face is long and white, even in the warm-yellow candlelight of the hall. It catches on the beading looping around the neck of her dress, flickering like fireflies. She is older than Arthur, and stretched out in the way of growing things, gangling and childish despite the trappings of ladyship she wears.

Somehow, he cannot muster up the same bitterness for her that he had before he left, although she herself seems much the same. It is hard to see her as such a terrible thief, now. “Alright enough,” he answers, twisting his knife in his hand and watching the candlelight bounce off of it instead of her beads.

“I’m sorry about your uncle,” she offers, and Arthur wonders what she’s heard.

“I’m not,” he says, jutting out his chin with a sniff. He’s not.

“I meant that he betrayed you,” she claims, narrowing her eyes, “not that he died.”

“Oh,” Arthur says, hating the feeling of heat coming up to his cheeks. “Well. Thank you, then.”

She smiles at him—a meagre sort of smile, but he appreciates the effort. “I’m sorry, too,” he says, ashamed that he had never once said so before. It feels heartless, now. “About your father, I mean.”

She looks down at her plate, the little pile of torn bread that she has not eaten, and blinks away the shine in her eyes. “Yes. Thank you,” she mumbles, after a long moment where Arthur wonders if he’s truly stuck his foot in it this time.

The meal passes, and the most excitement that occurs is when all of the plates are cleared away and a tray stacked high with cakes comes to replace them. Even Uther laughs at the way Merlin cheers—loud enough that the noise bounces around the hall. He marvels at them until Arthur makes a choice for him.

“This one,” he insists, selecting one from the mountain, blushing as his father and Goreu clap. A production and an amusement that doesn’t feel mocking, not tonight. “It’s good!”

Morgana picks the next, after the first is gone so quickly it’s a wonder Merlin tasted it at all. “Here,” she sets it on his plate herself, standing to reach across the distance. An uncommonly bright grin spreads across her face as she does. “It’s my favourite.” 

After even Merlin can stomach no more, Arthur follows Goreu halfway to his rooms until their ways part; with Merlin draped over the old man’s shoulder like a sack of snoring turnips. The night is a clear one, the halls limed in silver from the moon and stars. Peaceful. So wondrous to be home that it feels a magic all its own.

“I bid you goodnight, young cousin,” Goreu tells him quietly, as to not wake his burden.

Arthur does not wish to say goodnight and go back to his room alone. He had quickly become used to the sounds of a watchman’s soft steps, or the less-soft feeling of Merlin kicking him in the shin. “Goodnight,” he whispers anyway.

Despite their efforts, Merlin opens his eyes, staring down at Arthur from over the pitch black of Goreu’s gambeson, eyes dark and blue like a lake with no bottom. His thin fingers look pale as bone in the light of the moon. They hook around Goreu’s neck, little links in a chain. Knots in a rope. Arthur swallows, his dinner sitting heavily all of a sudden. Merlin says nothing at all, only stares, unblinking, seeming very different from the joyous boy from the feast somehow, as if dreams have taken him somewhere far away, a bridge to some place Arthur does not know.

But then he lays his head against the curve of Goreu’s shoulder, and the feeling passes. “What’s under the castle?” he asks, voice still dreaming.

“Earth?” Arthur says, straightening his shoulders, and then remembers the cisterns and the wells. “And water.”

“And fire,” Merlin adds, yawning, but otherwise accepts Arthur’s answer.

“If you say so,” Arthur agrees, parting from them and walking the rest of the distance to his chambers, lone and lonely, with only his own shadow for company. He watches it walk, lurching in and out of the cracks in the white stone that make up the citadel, and then turns his eyes away, not wanting to magic it real.

***

Arthur dreams.

He dreams of Ser Ector, and of his red-haired Kay. He dreams of his uncle’s scout, pocked full of arrows, and Caradoc fishing the scroll out of his slack, open mouth. A fly buzzing. Gold coins, rolling down the black mountains, calling for the head of Arthur Pendragon with every clink of metal on rain-slick stone. They illuminate in the flash of lightning, molten like Merlin’s hawk-eyes. 

Arthur dreams; but the images and memories slip away like quick fish in the water as soon as he wakes, then gone with the dawn.

Yet he should have gotten up even earlier, it seems, for Caradoc is already away, without even a whisper of goodbye. Hengist remains at large—a name Arthur had somehow managed to forget in all the upheaval of magic and death and cakes. The sword that had cut down Ser Ector and all the rest of their company, for all that Agravaine was the hand that had weilded it.

A score of armoured men and knights on horses and more have gone to seek him. 

And Arthur remains stuck here, all while villains run rampant. 

Well, he thinks, stomach churning as he remembers Agravaine laying flat on the ground, still smoking. He shan't be running anywhere anymore, let alone rampantly, and that has to account for something.

He drags Merlin around the citadel all morning, showing him all the things promised. The stables, which Merlin finds fascinating, the aiery, which he does not. They duck behind a corner when Arthur sees a head of red hair in the training yard, heart thudding with a dream half remembered. They take the long walk around the parapets instead, and the dark hallway leading down to the old tombs after.

“But what is it?” Merlin asks, peering into the black.

“Where we lay our ancestors to honorable rest,” Arthur answers knowingly, neglecting to mention he had asked that very question himself when his father had taken him to view all the previous kings as well.

“They just stay here?” Merlin squints even harder, wrinkling his nose. 

“Where else would they go?” 

“The ground, for the bugs,” Merlin suggests, and it takes a full hour for them to become friends again, and for Arthur’s heart to stop its furious lurching. Merlin rubs tenderly at a bruise upon his shoulder, and Arthur tugs his sleeve down to cover his fresh bite-mark, but they go to find luncheon together nonetheless.

“It’s very different from the forest,” Arthur says, ignoring the sting of Merlin’s bite, “but do you like it?”

“Some,” Merlin agrees readily enough. He kicks his feet under the bench where they sit, back and forth. It seems strange, suddenly, to see his feet in shoes.

There is a question itching at the back of Arthur’s throat, but he’s wary of sending Merlin running off back to his home if he asks it. What’s worse? What’s better? The bright Citadel or the vast forest? With the animals and the earth—and none of the cruelty of uncles, at least. There is an appeal. 

“Caradoc left.” Arthur pokes his spoon against his peas. Merlin doesn’t answer other than a hum around his second serving of fish. “He’s going to hunt for that man who sent the mercenaries.”

“Good,” Merlin cheers, after he’s swallowed. He grins, teeth white and straight.

He’s learned more manners than Arthur would have expected, but he’s still an animal.

***

“I’d like to take Merlin,” Goreu says. He’s knelt in front of Arthur despite the creaking of his old knees, a serious look set upon his face. “I spoke with your father on this, last evening. When we return to Tintagel, he should come with us.”

“No,” Arthur denies. It’s unfathomable. Merlin is his. The boy in question is a ways away, looking out a window, distracted by a bird swooping in great loops in the sky above. Morgana speaks to him, but he does not turn to her, not even once. She stops her attempts, and does not seem bothered by his impoliteness, only joining him in watching the bird.

“It would be safer for you both,” Goreu goes on, as if this were up for discussion.

“I can keep Merlin safe.” Arthur can. He will.  

“I should like for you to come as well,” Goreu says, his words kindly meant but painful all the same, “but your father has forbidden it. Not again. Not so soon.”

Perhaps a month ago Arthur would have argued—but his father had not been as unaffected by the attack as Arthur had feared he would be. “No,” he denies once more. “No.”

“Camelot is not a place where one like Merlin will go unnoticed for long.” Goreu does not say the word magic, of course, but he hardly needs to. “He is a good lad, but not a subtle one.”

“He listens to me,” Arthur reasons, “he’ll be good! He doesn’t have to go–”

Merlin looks over at the shout, and Arthur clamps his mouth firmly shut. 

“He does listen to you,” Goreu agrees. His blue eyes seem fogged, and his lined face seems so very tired. The black of his clothes drains the colour from his cheeks, pale like one of the carved marble busts from the tombs. “So I’d much prefer you do the asking.” His hand, when it finds Arthur’s shoulder, is warm. “I’ve seen many things in my life. Good things. Ill things.”

He squeezes his hand down, and Arthur feels his eyes sting. He’s sick of crying though, and he sets his jaw instead.

“Magic,” Goreu says, moving his hand and holding it between them, twisting it this way and that, “can be both. An open hand or a closed fist. But a frightened creature becomes a cruel one. How many hangings will he witness before he learns fear? Cousin,” he rasps, swallowing. “This is no place for Merlin.”

“Merlin’s not afraid of anything, and neither am I,” Arthur lies.

 Goreu only smiles. “It is this old man’s shame that he cannot take you to Tintagel as well. Not yet, at least. She is yours, by all laws and rights in this land. King Uther will let you come, in time, to learn her people and how to rule. It is only a matter of waiting.” He takes a breath, looking over Arthur. “I do not know what gods have touched you both.”

He trails off as though there is more to come. A thought to finish, or some wisdom, but he has been struck by the weight of his own words, and falls silent once more. Sorrow and duty tangle across his face.

And Arthur… Arthur does not wish to be abandoned here.

“Then stay,” he croaks. “Stay, and maybe father will let us all go together in a season, or a year, or–or–” Goreu holds his gaze, and Arthur feels naked, seen straight through. “Don’t go,” he begs, for he has no shame left to hide behind. Ser Ector has left a hollow place in his heart, the grief fresh and aching. “Don’t leave me.”

“Aye,” Goreu finally agrees, cupping Arthur’s cheek in his hand. Relief washes over him like cool water, poisoned by guilt. Merlin will be safe; Arthur will make it so. They both will be. Tintagel will wait for them, and all will be well. 

“Aye,” Goreu says once more, something firmer settling over him. “Together, then, or not at all.”

Besides, Goreu is wrong. 

When Caradoc returns victorious, Hengist dragging behind his horse with skin torn bloody from ropes and rocks, Merlin does not mind the hanging one bit.