Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It seemed like such a simple plan. Foolproof, really.

Everything had fallen apart, but there was still a way to extricate themselves from Helios’s disaster. There was no command structure left in Camelot to pursue them. There were no patrols, no garrisons, and no reports that would flit back to the Citadel about what they were doing. Camelot would be too busy putting itself back together to worry about their little group of survivors.

The border was a mess – on both sides. Ordinarily, a kingdom with internal strife would attract the attention of its neighbours like a wounded sailor attracting the attention of sharks. But Camelot's neighbours had been caught flat-footed by the surprise attack that had been launched within Camelot's own borders. There had been no warnings - no troop concentrations, no royal levees calling up men-at-arms, none of the tell-tale signs that there was a war brewing. Mercia and Wessex and all the others were left scrambling, with no real idea of what was actually happening, and no communication into Camelot. The whole border area was a disorganised shambles of returning refugees and stragglers and abandoned crops.

And of course, for the rest of the plan - there were red cloaks a-plenty, if you didn't mind where you got them. There were weapons, horses, armour ... all of it literally lying around for the taking. Yes, it was a mess; a delightful free-for-all; a freebooters' paradise...

"…and nobody will suspect a thing!” Cully said over the fire, the night they came across the dead patrol, the night after they realized that Helios was never going to pay them a farthing because Helios had got himself killed, the stupid twat. "Raid a bit, steal a bit, commandeer a bit more from the peasants - then we chuck the red cloaks, and before King Arthur knows it we'll be in Normandy.”

He looked around at their firelit faces, at the pitiful handful he had left. All the rest of his men were lying dead in Ealdor. Rot in hell, Helios, he thought, bitterly, but he didn’t show it on his face.

“It can’t be that easy,” George said.

“But it is!” He rubbed his palms together. “You'll see. Helios got killed because he was a fool. Helios forgot that if you want to play with the nobles, you have to be one. We're no nobles, oh no. We're survivors, is what we are.”

“We’re with you, Cully,” Wulfric, his brother said.

"Besides, what choice do we have? We stay here, and Arthur will catch us, and then we'll be finished, and no mistake. This is the only way to get out of this mess, but it will be easy!”

“I’ll do it,” Iorik said. Iorik was the tipping point. One by one, the rest of them agreed, each man glancing at his neighbour before nodding his head.

Two days later, Cully drew rein on the crest of the road, and his stolen charger came to a sulky stop. His men drew rein around him, and sat back in their saddles to look down on the village.

Iorik, George and Dinadan rode to his left. All of them looked unfamiliarly sparkly and bright in their ‘borrowed’ mail and red cloaks. Wulf sat to his right, on the scrawny chestnut gelding he’d insisted was the best of the loose horses. He had shaved off his thick black-and-grey beard. Mal, the youngster, sat his roan beyond Wulf, chewing hungrily on a stale bread-roll. Mal alone had been unable to get his hands on an intact red cloak, but at his age he could be taken for a squire-in-training.

Cully resisted the urge to glance down at his own clothing. The golden dragon on his shoulder seemed to glow with outrage at what he was using it for. The huge red cloak reached all the way down to his stirrups, its unfamiliar weight dragging at his shoulders. How on earth did a knight get used to fighting with one of these things hanging from his back? It seemed determined to work itself under his saddle and strangle him.

At least there were no bloodstains left on it. Wulf had taken care of that for them, and there was no sense in betraying his own nervousness to his men. They would follow him as long as they sensed he was confident, and as long as they believed he could lead them to riches and survival.

Wulf, of course, followed him because he was Wulf and Cully was Cully. He would follow Cully anywhere, provided Cully only led him where he wanted to go.

Below, at the bottom of a fallow field, lay a small village. The morning sun smiled down on it. Lines of smoke bled placidly from chimneys, and a pair of roosters crowed in avian contest. He could see people in the ploughed fields beyond, standing upright, pointing arms toward the road, and beginning to move towards the houses. They were abandoning their fieldwork to share in the news. Knights! Look! Knights on the road!

“Right,” Cully said to the riders behind him. “In and out, snatch the tax money. In three months we'll be in Normandy, drinking calvados and figgling with pretty Norman girls. Aye?"

“Aye!” Dinadan and George punched each other’s fists confidently.

“What’s figgling?” Mal asked, but the others ignored him.

“Now, remember – we are knights of Camelot,” Cully warned. “We don’t do skirt-chasing, or drinking, or hitting, or screaming. They’re expecting knights, they have to see knights.”

“We know,” Din said. “Act like knights. Can’t be hard, mate - poncy bastards.”

Cully didn’t reply, but kneed his new horse into movement. The horse flipped its ears resentfully – it knew very well he was no knight – but it got moving, and a moment later they were all riding at a dignified walk down the lane towards the centre of the village.

He jerked up his rein at a scream, and then relaxed. It was a child, running out from the hedge along the road.

“Knights!” the grubby little thing screamed. There were more of them springing out from the hedge, all screaming at them and running alongside their horses. Cully’s horse seemed to tolerate the shrill sounds, and kept plodding as if it was used to a screaming escort, but when he turned in his saddle he saw Iorik take his hand away from his sword-hilt and drop it back to his thigh.

“Knights! Knights!” the children screamed, some of them actually reaching up to touch their horses.

Wulf dropped his empty hand back to his reins, his fingers relaxed, and grinned at him. Cully was struck by how boyish he looked without his beard. “We’re the knights of Camelot!” Wulf said, cheerily. “They’re glad to see us.”

“There’s a first,” Cully said.

“Are you here to kill the monster?” the first child screamed, from somewhere level with Cully’s horse’s knees. “Are you? Are you going to kill the monster? My Papa said if there’s a monster knights come to kill the monster.”

The call was taken up by the rest of them, and turned into a chant. “They’re here to kill the monster! They’re here to kill the mooonster! They’re here to kill the mooonster!”

Cully stared at his brother and raised his eyebrows. “Monster?”

“Eh, what’s in a name?” Wulf just shrugged his shoulders, still clearly amused at their reception. He seemed no more disturbed by the mention of monsters than ever, since in certain circles he was regarded as something of a monster himself.

Din was grinning as well, his teeth white, but the rest of Cully’s boys looked tense, their lips twisting thinly.

“Easy-peasy,” Cully said, as if the job was half done already. “See, what did I tell you?”

They rode in with their escort, all the way into the heart of the village, unchallenged, and the villagers were congregating ahead of them.

People were spilling out of the hovels, stepping out of their kitchen gardens, out of pigsties. They were assembling placidly, but quickly – no panic here, only a keen eagerness to get to where the visitors were. Beyond the thatched roofs of the houses he could see other peasants, trotting down the fields towards the village.

The village was centred, as many in this kingdom seemed to be, around a small tavern that was itself build around a well. Gods, but these Camelotians must like their mead. No temples or churches, but lots and lots of taverns.

Cully drew his horse to a stop in front of the tavern, and heard his riders coming to a halt around him. He didn’t look around at them.

Don’t ask, he reminded himself. Make your wishes known, and then leave them to get it done.

“Good people!” he announced, turning in his saddle. “I bid you greetings from Camelot. King Arthur is once again secure on his throne. The usurper has been defeated, and…”

He was forced to break off his words as a hubbub of voices arose.

They all seemed to have something to say about his news. Oddly, most of them seemed to be pleased about it – he saw grins and nodding heads all around him. As if Arthur’s restoration had something to with them, personally! There couldn’t possibly be much difference between one king or another to these people, he thought, sourly; but perhaps these people took their ruler’s squabbles as their own.

He waited until the noise died down, and decided on the spur of the moment to change his prepared speech, from hectoring them to rousing them. “I will carry your appreciation back to King Arthur personally. He will be pleased to know that you are pleased!”

That went down well, too.

“The usurper has been defeated, overthrown, and her armies destroyed.” And his own little band of mercenaries had been destroyed with them, and for the thousandth time he cursed Helios, and his own stupidity for allying himself with him. Gods damn Helios and his grand plan, leading them all to disaster. He bit down a mouthful of sorrow at the memory - it would not do his plan a bit of good to get distracted now.

There was an audience around their horses now. They were standing and listening. It had been a long time since peasants had done anything around Cully except hide their women, bury their coins, and sulk intensely.

“The usurper has left a trail of destruction and damage in her wake. Camelot will take much time and work to restore to her glory. King Arthur calls on every man and woman to do their duty. Camelot needs every ounce of strength she possesses! And that strength is here, good people, in this village, and in a thousand others.”

They seemed even more pleased by that. Then again, Cully had not mentioned the magic words yet: Tax. Collection. Early. Now.

“You tell King Arthur the people of Greensward are willing to do what he needs us to do.” It was a wrinkled old man, just a few points to starboard of Cully’s horse’s head. He had a long drooping moustache and wiry grey eyebrows that wandered out from his brow as if they were trying to escape. He scrunched up his face, so that his eyebrows seemed to wriggle towards each other. “If Camelot needs every hand, we’re truly blessed that he sent you. We could have borne the monster until he had a spare hand, you know. We’ve seen ‘em before. We’re truly grateful, truly, that with everything else on his plate he still saw fit to send you.”

“They’re here to kill the monster!” one of the grubby children squealed, jumping up and down.

Oh Gods. He was going to have to find out more about this monster if he wanted to steer around it.

Well, he supposed, it couldn’t hurt these people if he promised that Arthur would see to this monster of theirs. It wouldn’t break their cheerful little hearts to bend the truth just a little bit. Arthur undoubtedly would send knights, when – if – he found out about it.

He stood up in his stirrups. “King Arthur takes monsters very seriously!” he said, pitching his voice to carry as if he was addressing a company. “A monster in one of his villages is as hurtful to him as a monster on the bastions of Camelot itself. Your monster will be dealt with, good people of Camelot, by the knights Arthur sends in his stead to defend you all!” He threw his hand around in an arc, gesturing at the tiny village as if it was a mighty metropolis.

Another surge of satisfied noise buffeted his ears. Cully looked down at the wrinkled old man. He bit back the words, You there! before he could say it. “My good man. Can we put up our horses in this village?”

“Of course, my lord, of course. And you can lodge here in my tavern. We’re making room for you as we speak. We’ve hot food ready as well, and mead. Everything m’lord and his knights need for your quest, we can give you.”

“Excellent,” Cully said, and kicked his feet out of the stirrups to dismount.

………………………………….

An hour later, they had all eaten, and drunk their fill. The tavern was small and dark, but the food was plentiful. Rooms with real beds! Hot food! Mead! Life was good again. Life was usually simple for the rank and file.

The villagers had tried to draw them into a celebration of their arrival, and perhaps might have succeeded if it was later in the day. Cully had persuaded them that it was too early in the day to feast, that they would celebrate after the monster was killed, and that his men – the knights – were exhausted from riding, and needed to be left alone to eat and rest. He would address the village elders in an hour, he promised them. At first they had been inclined to hang about staring at the ‘knights’ but after a while, seeing that nothing interesting was happening and that knights ate and drank just like anyone else, they drifted off back to their work.

Cully found that the tightness in his belly, which had sat there since the disaster, was beginning to loosen – partly from sating his hunger at last, and partly from relief. This is going to work, he thought, releasing a little of the dread that he had not allowed any of them to see. He sensed his simple plan coming into tactical reality around him.

He looked around the table at his men. Just five. Three days ago he had commanded twenty-five, tough fighters all, an independent mercenary company - and now these five were all that were left. All that remained of a thirty-year career. Burn in hell, Helios! he thought bitterly.

Yet he realized that for the first time he felt that they were going to manage. He was going to get them all out of the shit he’d led them into. All was going to be well. They just had to keep the charade up long enough, and confidently enough, and no-one would suspect a thing.

George lowered his mead tankard from his lips, his eyes following the old tavern-keeper as he crossed the room and went out of sight. “Must be nice to be a Knight of Camelot, if this is the reception you get everywhere you go,” he said.

“Can’t be that bad being a peasant in Camelot, either,” Wulf said. “Not if this is the reception the knights get everywhere they go”

Iorik put his tankard down on the table, and pushed it away with the air of a man getting down to business. “Cully, my friend, so far so good, but I haven’t heard you say the word ‘tax’ yet.”

“Aye, you’re right,” Mal said.

“Cheer up, I’ve got a plan,” he said. The tavern keeper was out of the room. He lowered his head towards them. “I’ve thought it all out. They were expecting us. So we find out which direction this monster is. We tell them Mal is here to collect the taxes, and that we’re going around to all the villages. Then we all ride out in one direction as if we’re after the monster, and Mal rides out in the opposite direction, and we meet up somewhere out of sight. Simple.”

“Why Mal?”

“He’s the only one who stands out,” Cully explained. He jerked a thumb at Mal. “No cloak, he’s in-coggonallito. In conganito. In…”

“He’s in disguise,” Wulf rescued him. “And Mal’s the youngest – he can pretend to be a squire. ”

Mal had frozen at the mention at his name, and now he set the tankard down on the table with a smile. “What’s to stop me just taking it all and bolting?”

“It’s a long way from Aquitaine without you speaking any French, son. You want to go, go. Best of luck. Besides, even if you do, we can get more. You can’t.”

Mal shrugged. Din shoved his shoulder. “So there you are, Mal. You pays your money and you takes your choice, eh?”

Mal shrugged again, picked up his tankard and drank.

“It’ll work,” Iorik agreed.

“This is mad,” George said. “The more complicated the plan is, the more things there are to go pear-shaped.”

Cully glanced over Iorik’s shoulder to make sure the tavernkeeper hadn’t come back yet. “This is just a brief change of plans. This monster of theirs complicates things, but it’s only temporary. Next village, we go back to the original plan.”

The tavern-keeper came back into the room, tottering over to the barrel of mead on the trestle-table. Cully turned around on his bench and called to him. “Henrik, my good man. It’s time we learned what you know about this monster of ours.”

The tavern keeper changed direction and came up to them. “I thought you would know?” he said. “We wrote what we knew in the letter.”

“We’d like to hear it again, if you can spare us the time to tell it,” Cully said. “Have you seen it?”

“Yes,” Henrik said. His lips quivered. “Most of the village saw it.”

“Tell us what you saw,” Wulf said. “Tell us exactly what you saw.”

The tavern keeper lowered himself to sit down on the bench at another table. His eyes went far away. “I saw it two days ago. The second time it was here.”

“It’s been here before?”

“Yes. Five days ago. When we wrote to you about it.” The eyebrows wriggled, as he wondered why Cully didn’t remember.

“Go on.”

“It was big,” Henrik said. “Big and noisy. I didn’t hear it at first, I was in here, and then someone ran in here and said, "Come see", so I went. I saw it from the well. It was on the hillside, up to the north. It had a cow. Widow Mullins’s cow. It was eating it. It was … well, it was a monster.”

“What did it look like?” Wulf said, sitting forward, his mead still held aloft in his hand, forgotten.

“It had a head like a bird – like a bird of prey – but huge. Eyes like saucers, and a long sharp beak the size of this bench. And its body was shaped like a huge cat with a long tail.”

Cully saw Din and Mal’s eyes go a little wide.

“A lion?” Wulf questioned.

“Not like a lion. I’ve seen one on a shield, once.”

“Real lions don’t look like the ones on shields,” Wulf pointed out. “A lion is really a big yellow-orange cat, with a long tail.”

“Then maybe it was a lion, then?” Henrik rubbed his chin. “It had the head of an eagle, and the body of a lion. And it had wings, huge feathered wings like a bird. Its wings were as wide as the road. As wide as this room! It stretched right across the road!”

“Of course it did,” Din croaked hoarsely.

“It’s called a gryphon,” Wulf said. “There was one in Camelot before.”

“Aye,” the old man said, eagerly. “I heard the song about it when the minstrel came in last year! A gryphon, is it? And Sir Lancelot killed the other one, so you lads can kill this one! Gods above, that’s good news. Aye, that’s a load off our backs, and no mistake.”

“We can kill this one,” Wulf agreed. He met Cully’s eyes with a flick of his eyebrows. “Right, Sir Cully?”

“Right you are,” Cully agreed, a sense of foreboding creeping over him. Wulf sounded altogether too eager to meet this gryphon. Dinadan, sitting opposite him, looked as if the same thought had just occurred to him too, and for once he didn’t look as if he was about to crack a joke.

“I’ll tell the others. And the King of Mercia can keep his bounty, aye? That’s to the King of Mercia,” he said, and snapped his fingers for emphasis. “Ha! We’ve no need for the King of Mercia with you fine young lads here.”

“What bounty?” Iorik asked, sharply.

“The King of Mercia’s hundred gold sovereigns to kill this monster. It came from Mercia first, see. That’s what the messenger said. A hundred gold sovereigns to anyone who can bring him the monster’s head.”

A hundred gold sovereigns! You could pay your way to Normandy for five men with a hundred gold sovereigns. You could pay your way to Araby with a hundred gold sovereigns! – and the King of Mercia was rich, no doubt that he was good for the money. A hundred gold sovereigns, and they needn’t go through this charade with the red cloaks at all!

“Oh, that bounty,” Iorik said, looking at Cully with a hungry eagerness. “That’s the last thing on our minds, right, Sir Cully?”

“Never fear, Father Henrik,” Wulf said, leaning over and clapping his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “We can deal with this monster. We’ll give it its death-blow for the glory of Camelot, and save the King of Mercia his money.” He bared his teeth at Cully in a sudden fierce grin. “Right, brother?”

“In the meantime,” George said, uneasily, “about this tax money…”

“Tax money?” Henrik answered.

“Never mind the tax money,” Wulf interrupted.

“Aye,” Iorik said, “Forget that we mentioned it.”

“Tell your elders that we’re riding out this afternoon in quest to slay this monster,” said Cully. “They have nothing to fear. We are trained fighters all, tough and battle-hardened, and we have the weapons to slay this monster. Tell your elders that.”

“I will do that, Sir Cully, I will do that,” the old man said. He got up from the stool and hobbled away, rubbing his hands together. “I will do that, I will.”

Cully knew he was going to have to do some quick talking as soon as he cast his eyes around the table.

George leaned low over the table, and cast his voice even lower. “Cully …” he croaked. “Are … you … mad?”

“I know what this is. It’s that cloak,” Din said, pointing at the golden dragon on Cully’s shoulder. “Either the cloak’s magic, or you’ve gone bonkers and think you’re really a knight of Camelot.”

“A hundred gold sovereigns,” Iorik breathed, greed lighting up his face. “Divided six ways – that’s sixteen-and-a-bit sovereigns each. Each!”

“Think of what we could do with sixteen sovereigns each!” Mal agreed.

“We can do this!” Cully said. “We’re not knights – eh, no. We kill knights! The knights of Camelot ran like rabbits when they saw us coming. And besides, we’ve got him,” and he jerked his thumb at Wulf.

“I can kill this thing,” Wulf agreed.

“The knights of Camelot ran like rabbits, right. But then they re-grouped out of sight and came back to kick Helios’s arse,” Din snapped.

George growled. “The King of Mercia wouldn’t be offering so much money if he thought it would be easy! This is mad, Cully. We have to stick with the plan. Hit a few villages, grab the tax money, get out!”

“As opposed to one big windfall all at once!” Cully tapped his fingertips on the table. “One big job, or lots of little ones.”

“Lots of little safe jobs,” George said.

“I can do this!” Wulf insisted. “It’s do-able.”

“A hundred gold sovereigns, George!” Iorik said. “Think how many little safe jobs you’ll have to do to get that much gold!”

“I didn’t think you were a chicken, George,” Cully said, jeering at him. “We’re scared of a little old lion with a birdie’s head, then, are we?”

“I’m not a chicken, I’m a survivor,” George said. “Your words, Cully, remember?”

“I’m a survivor too,” Mal said. “And I agree with Cully. What are we scared of, here? A monster – or Arthur Pendragon’s vengeance? The longer we spend in Camelot, the more our chances of getting caught.”

“And I, for one, am a lot more scared of that person in those caves in Ealdor than I ever could be of some monster.”

They all went quiet for a moment, considering Wulf’s point. Wulf had saved their lives in Ealdor – all their lives. They were the only ones he had been able to convince not to follow Lord Agravaine into the cave – the only ones who had believed him when he insisted that something worse than a dragon was down there, that death itself was down there. And whoever, or whatever, it had been that had killed Lord Agravaine, it was clearly on King Arthur’s side. Nobody wanted to stay in Camelot longer than they had to, lest they bumped into him, her or it again.

“Well, what the hell. I’ll go with you,” Din said, breaking the silence. “You’re mad, but at least you’re interesting. If push comes to shove, I’ll just run and hide under a bucket.”

“I think you’re insane,” George said. He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not doing it.”

Iorik opened his mouth to protest, but Cully quieted him with gesture. “All right, George, you don’t have to. Ride out with us, and then take the North road, and cross the border. One rider can go where six can’t.”

“I’ll ride with you a little way, at least,” George said.

Iorik shrugged. “All right,” he admitted. “It’s more gold for the rest of us.”

"Twenty sovereigns each," Din said. "And then we can take a real job. With Aquitaine, maybe. Aquitaine was nice.”

“Or Bavaria,” Iorik said. “I've always had a thought of going back there."

“Prester John,” Mal said. “I want to join Prester John.”

“You’ll have to find him first,” Cully told him.

“You’ll have a bitch of a job finding him, since he doesn’t exist,” Din teased.

“He does too! He’s in India!”

“I want to retire,” Wulf said.

Cully jumped and stared at his brother. “You … what?”

“I want to retire,” Wulf said. “Settle down. Put down roots. I’m tired of the road, brother.”

“Why retire when you can go looking for Prester John?” Mal said.

“Doesn’t exist,” Iorik insisted. “Bavaria is the place!”

He would have to come up with a quick plan to keep them together, Cully realized, or his little band would split up in six different directions. Or … five, really, because if Wulf settled down, what would be the point of Cully still soldiering on by himself?

He knocked his hand on the table, interrupting the growing argument about Prester John. “But that’s for later,” Cully ordered. “We cross that bridge when we get there! First, we go after this gryphon thing, kill it, chop its head off, and take it to the King of Mercia. Agreed.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Mal said, and they all raised their tankards.

……………………………………………….

After they rode out of the village, red cloaks in place, and saddle-bags bulging with food and supplies, Cully reined back his horse until Wulf was alongside him.

“You know what to do with this gryphon?” he asked. He hadn’t asked at all, just assumed that Wulf would be able to deal with a monster as if it was an incoming shot from a mangonel.

“I think I do.”

“Oh, that’s promising.”

“No, really. I think I do. Remember what Lancelot told us? The knights of Camelot attacked the first one with lances. Which, when you think about it, is a really stupid way of attacking something with wings. Sure, when they get up to speed they can get a few pounds of pressure on the lance point – but they’re only going in one direction! The damned thing just has to jump over them and then it’s behind them – and you know as well as I do how long it takes a galloping horse to turn around. Stupid, stupid, stupid…” he shook his head.

“You have a better idea, brother?”

“Of course I do. Arrows.”

“Arrows?” He looked over his shoulder at the other four riders – other three, really, since George had not changed his mind, and would leave them as soon as they were out of sight and he could switch red cloaks with Mal. “We’ve only four archers. Including myself.”

“Ah,” Wulf said, raising one hand from his reins and wagging one finger at him. “Arrows, spiced up with a certain little spell I picked up from a fellow in Cardiff. I haven’t had a chance to use it in combat just yet but I’m sure it will do the trick. And once we have it down with a few arrows in its bum, we can finish it off with good old swords-and-Feorbearne.” He held out his hand and at the word a little bolt of flame sparked momentarily on his palm. “And it’s new moon. My strength is as good as it gets. I wouldn’t take it on alone, or during the waning moon, but now, and spreading myself out between the four of us… This will work, Cully. This gryphon is as good as cash in the hand.”

“And then?” Cully asked. “Are you serious about settling down?”

“We’re not Mal’s age any more. I want to settle down, Cully.”

Cully twisted his lips. “Hm. Hang the Sea Bitch across a mantelpiece somewhere? There’s a thought.” His hand caressed the hilt of the old sword. She was as cold as ice, as always.

“The Sea Witch,” Wulf corrected him, fussily. “And we can’t hang her up on a mantelpiece. We have to put her back in the Goodwin Sands, to wait for her next owner.”

Cully grinned at him, and raised on eyebrow. “You realize, if we ride back to Dover with twenty sovereigns each, we’ll have made a profit of exactly thirteen sovereigns three shillings between us - over thirty years?”

“Twenty sovereigns each is enough to be comfortable. Bit old for marriage and babies, but I want to sleep in my own bed, get to know my neighbours, grow my own flowers.”

“Flowers?” Cully asked, incredulously.

“You know what I mean. It’s been thirty years. We’ve seen the world, but what have we to show for it? And the world’s changing, there’s not going to be room in it for men like us for much longer.”

………………………………..

They said farewell to George, and rode west for the rest of the day, tracing the valley floor. They kept their eyes on the sky, alert for the sign of huge wings, but saw nothing and no-one at all.

The road they followed ran down a meadow and then sank towards a band of trees. “We’ll camp in there,” Cully decided, pointing ahead. “There should be water in there, and grazing for the horses.”

The grass around them gave way to bushes, and they rode in under the trees. The trees were not too thick and not too dark here, not gloomy but shady. Soon they heard the sound of water rushing and burbling over stones, and saw a band of bright light between the trunks. A moment later the trees opened out around a glossy stream.

Cully rode his horse out into the sunshine, and yanked his horse to a dead stop. Facing him across the stream were men on horseback.

There were five of them. And four of them wore the bright armour and red cloaks of the knights of Camelot. They carried long lances – unpainted lances with sharpened steel tips; lances for battle, not for jousting.

Real Knights of Camelot. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shitfuckshit…

The other knights were in the process of walking their horses towards the stream, but at the sight of Cully’s men they too had stopped their horses and were staring at them.

“Uh-oh,” Mal said.

“At least our odds against the gryphon just got better,” Din said and gave his odd little whinnying laugh.

“What are we going to do?”

“The only thing we can do,” Cully muttered. “Brazen it out.”

He lifted his rein and kneed his horse forward, straightening his pose in the saddle to something more like a knightly swagger, his reins gathered in his left hand and his right fist on his hip. He rode to the edge of the stream, until stones crunched under his horse’s hooves, and stopped.

“Well met, Sir Knight!” he said, cheerily.

The knights stared back at him.

“Who the blithering hell are you?” demanded the knight in the middle of their little formation. He was a young man, blond-haired, with a broad face and an arrogantly-boned nose. He moved his horse forward, stopped opposite Cully, and stared at Cully’s knights with an expression of consternation.

“Who the blithering hell do we look like we are? ” Cully demanded back. He carried the Sea Bitch at his hip, ready to be drawn, although he was careful not to put his hand on her hilt just yet. Not while he could still bluff his way out of this mess. “We are knights of Camelot! Who the blithering hell are you?”

“You’re not knights of Camelot!” the knight said. His companions were beginning to put their hands on their sword hilts.

Cully decided to match outrage with outrage, and inflated his chest. “How dare you say that! We were sent by King Arthur himself, to slay the gryphon!”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life!” the lead knight said, staring at Cully with an expression of mounting outrage.

“Oh, and does King Arthur consult with you every time he knights a new bunch of knights and sends them on a quest?” Cully demanded.

“Ooh, you’d be amazed,” chirped the young man who had ridden his horse alongside the blond-haired knight. He was no knight, this young man, but a loose-limbed youth in a shabby brown jacket. His face was crinkled up with impish delight, as if Cully was the most glorious creature he’d seen all day, and it was all he could do not to double over and laugh into his horse’s mane.

“I’m sure I would be amazed!” Cully shot back at him. “I’m already amazed he’s sent two groups of knights to find the same monster. I’m amazed he has the resources for it, with everything else on his plate. I’m amazed neither of us has found the damned thing yet! But it’s not my place to ask King Arthur questions, is it?

“Oh, no,” the peasant admitted cheerfully. “I wouldn’t dare.”

Cully redirected his false irritation at the knight, his heart hammering in his chest. “And it’s surely not your place to sit there and say, who the blithering hell are you? in that tone of voice! King Arthur doesn’t need your permission to make a bunch of new knights! Arthur does as Arthur pleases. He called us knights, and on his say-so that’s what we are! How dare you sit there and say, Who the blithering hell are you? as if we do not wear your own uniform, sir! As if you have the right to decide who is and is not fit to be knighted by your own king! We are new recruits, that is who the blithering hell we are!”

Shout at a knight, yes, shout at him – he’ll take it as knightly defiance, and it will never occur to him that a commoner would dare.

There was a moment of silence, and Cully’s heart drummed in his chest. For a moment both groups of riders stared at each other. The blond-haired knight’s eyebrows were almost hidden in his hair, they were raised so high.

And then, to Cully’s astonishment, the blond-haired knight’s face slowly broke up in a wide grin, displaying white, slightly-crooked teeth. He rolled his head back and gave a loud honk of laughter at the sky. “Hah! Hah!” He wagged his head at it, as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune at meeting Cully, and was congratulating something up there for a most delightful turn of events. “You have a point, Sir Knight!” He twisted around in his saddle, to share his glee with the riders behind him. “Isn’t that so?”

Cully nearly slid from his saddle in relief, but he held his back straight.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded.

“Do you know who you are addressing?” the tallest of the knights asked Cully, a frown rumpling his broad brow as if he was deeply concerned for Cully’s sake.

“I apologise, we are so new to the Knighthood that we only met those knights at court when we left there. I have a great many new acquaintances to make.”

“Well, you’re in for a surprise,” said the peasant. “Because this is –.”

“Sir Andrew,” the blond-haired knight introduced himself with a glance at his companion, and a finger jabbed forcefully at his own chest.

The peasant hesitated for a moment, and then carried on as if he had not been interrupted. “Sir Andrew of Dollop Head; Sir Percival, sixth son of Lord Eldridge of Northumbria; Sir Gawain, seventh son of Lord Eldridge of Northumbria; and Sir Ellyan of the Forge.”

Odd that the peasant made the introductions, as if he was one of the knights and not merely a go-fer. He reassessed the importance of the peasant. His clothes were shabby and hung off his narrow shoulders – but his horse was every bit as finely-bred as the knights’ horses.

“And you are?” he asked the peasant.

“Me? I’m nothing special.”

“This is Merlin,” Sir Andrew said, “Squire, servant, physician’s apprentice, and general idiot.”

Cully lowered his head in a bow to them all. “Allow me to introduce my companions and myself. I am Sir Cullinan of Kent, this is my brother Sir Wulfric. This is Sir Malcolm of the Hilltop Bare, Sir Dinadan, and Sir Iorik of Copenhagen.”

Sir Andrew of Dollop Head was smiling at them, still shaking his head. “So. We’re here to kill the same gryphon, are we?”

“Those were our orders.”

“Oddly enough those were our orders too,” Sir Gawain said, flicking his long hair out of his eyes. “Direct from King Arthur’s own lips, and he was standing as close to me then as Sir Andrew is now.” He glanced at Sir Andrew, as if measuring the distance between them.

“Perhaps when he sent us he forgot that he already sent you?” Cully asked. “It is a forgivable mistake.”

“True,” Sir Andrew agreed, still smiling. “He’s only human, after all.”

“I’m not sure…” interrupted Sir Percival.

“It’s all right, Percival. I’m quite sure,” Sir Andrew said, waving down his objection with one hand. “It’s true what he says, King Arthur doesn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to make a few new knights. Ex post facto, ipso facto, de facto, and all that … And we can use all the help we can get.”

Oh, hell, no, Cully thought. They weren’t going to spend any more time with these strange knights than they absolutely had to. Quite apart from arousing suspicion when it turned out they knew none of the poncy shibboleths of the noble classes, what would they do if they actually found the gryphon? It would take a lot of fast talking to explain why the new recruits wanted to cut the monster’s head off and gallop off to Mercia with it.

“It would be better to split up and search separately,” he said. “Two reconnaissance parties are more effective than one.”

“True,” Sir Andrew said, cheerfully. “But dispersing your combat force costs you in effectiveness when you do meet the enemy. There is such a factor as force concentration.”

Uh-oh, Cully thought. “Not necessarily something to be factored in when we’re talking about a mere beast.”

“It’s a rather big beast, though, isn’t it? The other one was huge. It came down in the Great Square of the Citadel, and it was taller than the statue, and that’s twenty feet.” Sir Andrew lifted his reins and rode his horse forward, splashing through the fetlock-deep water, until his horse faced Cully’s. He leaned sideways from his saddle, and muttered to Cully’s ear, “Just between the two of us, it scares the hell out of me, and I’d welcome the extra swords even if you are rather new recruits. This creature is big.”

“You saw the first one?” Cully asked.

“I was there when Lancelot killed it, and so was Merlin. It was huge. Huge, I tell you,” Sir Andrew said. He lifted his eyebrows, as if encouraging Cully to make up his mind.

“I fought alongside Lancelot in Benoic, a few years ago. He also said that it was huge.”

“Lancelot was the best of us all with the lance, but even he agreed that he was very lucky to strike it down when so many others failed,” Sir Andrew agreed. “We will need all our luck when we meet it again. Come, let us camp together tonight, in these lovely woods, and discuss the matter.”

He had a friendly smile, this knight. And he mentioned Lance as if he knew him well. “Very well,” Cully decided. “We can decide whether to ride together or separately in the morning.”

“Excellent,” Sir Andrew said. He reined his horse around. “You won’t regret it. Merlin might not look like anything special, but he’s a fine cook. We can camp right here, and picket our horses on this grass.”

Cully looked over his shoulder, and jerked a nod at his men. Then he started his horse following Sir Andrew over the stream.

………………………………….

The real knights of Camelot were clearly accustomed to working together as a team. They set about setting up their camp with little fuss, and a very economical division of work.

Fortunately, so were Cully’s own men, and the process by which any two groups of soldiers sets up a night-time bivouac is sufficiently similar that it aroused no visible suspicion. They were strangers still, and there was none of the joking and challenging that there would be between soldiers who knew each other, but the Camelot knights seemed to accept them, as friendly strangers at least. Cully could see the stiffness in his men, the close attention they were paying to their words and gestures, but he hoped that none of the strange knights noticed it. Or at least, if they did notice, that they put it down to a diffidence around strangers, and saw nothing suspicious in it.

The tightness was back in Cully’s belly again, but he forced it down. To camp with a group of real knights of Camelot was risking everything – but refusing to camp with them would definitely bring on a challenge. He couldn’t risk a fight with real knights, in a fight where his enemy had endless reinforcements and he did not. He couldn’t risk losing any of them, couldn’t risk having wounded men to look after so far from any friendly face. This was a dangerous game, but it would be more dangerous to refuse to play it. He could only hope that all of his men carried on playing the roles they had adopted since last night.

As the light faded and the western horizon turned to peach and gold, the horses were untacked, and the night’s bivouac was set up. Cully and Sir Andrew each gave orders that the two groups of horses were to be picketed separately, to prevent status squabbles between them, and the space between the two picket ropes became, naturally enough, a shared campsite. Pots and pans and bedrolls appeared as if by magic, and Iorik and Mal, as well as Sir Ellyan and Sir Percival, were sent off into the trees to fetch firewood. Ever since the arrival of the Dorocha, everyone in the whole of Albion took great care with their supply of firewood, and it seemed that the real knights were no different.

In the meantime, Cully and Wulf set about brushing their five horses down and checking legs and hooves, as Sir Andrew and Sir Gawain began to do the same with theirs. Din opened their saddlebags, and compared their supplies with Merlin’s, and the two of them decided on what they would make for supper that would feed ten men.

Cully sat down next to his saddle, aware of Sir Andrew’s gaze on him. He unbuckled his bedroll, and spread it out. He sat down in the centre of it, and watched Iorik and Mal walk up with bundles of sticks over their shoulders.

“Put it there,” Merlin said, pointing next to the shallow hole he had scratched up in the grass. Iorik and Mal dumped their load and stood back. “Do we need to get more?” Iorik asked.

“No,” Merlin said. “Ellyan and Percival are fetching another load. That should be enough.”

Ellyan and Percival, he said, as if he was one of them.

He was not a knight, that was certain, but what exactly was he? Physician’s apprentice, Sir Andrew had called him, and general idiot, but what did that actually mean in Camelot? He was certainly doing a servant’s work, peeling something rapidly with quick swivels of his wrist as if the motion was utterly familiar from years of practice, but he spoke with a confidence that said to Cully that he was more than just a paid drudge.

A footfall crunched next to him, and he looked up to see Sir Andrew standing above him. “So, Sir Cullinan,” Sir Andrew said.

“Sir Andrew,” Cully greeted.

Sir Andrew sat down on the grass alongside Cully, settling onto the ground in spite of his bulk and his armour with practiced suppleness. He reached into thigh-slit of his mail-coat and drew out a folded square of parchment. “Let us have a look at where we are,” he said, conversationally.

Knights have pockets like normal people? Cully boggled momentarily, but focused his eyes on the parchment which Sir Andrew was unfolding. It was a map. Cully shifted his seat, the better to see it.

The golden dragon of Camelot had been stamped in the corner – proof, if he needed any, that these men were real knights of Camelot. The map showed this section of the kingdom – villages, roads, hills, streams, the outlines of woods.

“We are here,” Sir Andrew’s fingertip tapped on a spidery blue line that wiggled from north to south.

“We’ve just come from here,” Cully reached over and pointed at the village that they had left, to the east of the river.

“We have come from here,” Sir Andrew said, and traced a line that zigzagged across the map from west to east, ending on the river. “Each village we reach has seen the monster, but it has moved on. It is as if the beast has just left. These creatures roam, as we learned from the first one. It is heading west, and it will probably continue to do so. It arrived before the war, and was last seen eight days ago.”

Cully tapped the village of Greensward. “This place has seen it twice. Five days ago, and again two days ago.”

“Twice, in the same place?” Sir Andrew pursed his lips.

“Maybe it’s found a place it likes?” Merlin asked, from where he sat still peeling industriously. “Maybe it wants to settle in and put down roots?”

Sir Andrew had made no attempt to shoo Merlin away from their discussion, Cully noted, and he had offered his opinion without hesitation, as if he was used to listening in on councils-of-war.

Helios had met with the witch in private, even though technically Cully was his equal, as the commander of an independent company. Sir Andrew drew no such distinctions, clearly, even with a servant.

“It gives us a direction to ride in, at least, after this zig-zagging around.” Sir Andrew folded up the map, and rested it on his knee. He said to Cully, “We are not the only people seeking this creature. You heard about Bayard of Mercia’s bounty?”

“It doesn’t interest us.”

“Ah, but it does interest me. That is to say, it interests King Arthur. Not that we need the money, but we do need to send a message to all comers that Camelot is in no way weak. I’m not such a fool that I don’t think our neighbours wouldn’t nibble a few valleys away, if they think they can.”

“I would have thought that King Arthur would have more important things on his plate than a big cat with wings.”

Sir Andrew shook his head, his eyes still on the folded map. “Camelot fell by treachery, not force of arms. The Dorocha did far more damage than the Southrons did. And I think both were Morgana’s doing.” There was a steel ring in his voice, and he seemed to notice it, because he shook his head, and raised his eyes to meet Cully’s with a slight smile. “But unless we want to fight another war, we need to send a message of strength. And nothing will say We are strong quite as well as a knight in a red cloak galloping into Mercia with this beast’s head in a sack. Word will get around. That is why I was so pleased to see you and your companions. I can use your help.”

“I am still not convinced that we should ride together,” Cully said. However much he might like Sir Andrew – and he was starting to think that here was a knight with whom he would be glad to ride – he was still a real knight, oath-sworn and full of aristocratic honour, and he was still a threat to Cully’s men’s lives. “Two sets of eyes on the sky have more chance to spot it than one. And I think, I really do think, that we can take down this beast all by ourselves.”

Wulf arrived, and knelt down next to Merlin, arranging Iorik and Mal’s firewood into a little pyramid, ready to light a fire. Merlin was dropping diced vegetables into a large pot, but he was also listening keenly.

“Well, then, Sir Cullinan. I have a proposal for you. Ride with us, and help us take this monster. It doesn’t matter in the slightest which knights of Camelot take the message to Mercia, as long as they wear the red cloak. You and your men may have the honour. You can even keep his hundred sovereigns, if you wish. Does that sound like a fair proposal, Sir Knight?”

Sir Andrew flicked up his brows, his blue eyes dark in the evening light, and Cully gulped.

It did sound like a fair proposal. Half the risk for his men when they met the beast, in exchange for all of the reward? It sounded like a juicy temptation, but it also sounded like a suicidal risk. They had got away with it so far, but at any moment one of the other knights might realized that Cully’s knights knew nothing of knighthood’s secret rites and codes. They weren’t noble, and they couldn’t pass for noble for long.

And yet … and yet … Cully couldn’t stop, could he? Not now, not with all of them looing at him. Iorik and Mal were watching him, too, waiting for him to decide for them all. Iorik had been whetting his sword blade, slowly and rhythmically, but the sword was motionless now between his hands. If Cully had been by himself, he would have stopped, he would have turned around and buggered off and to hell with the money, but they were all watching him, waiting for him to decide, and he couldn’t cower away from a challenge and still keep their respect.

Shit. He should have abandoned his red-cloaks-tax idea when it first occurred to him, but it was too late now. This was a horse he could not get off until the ride was over…

“All right,” he said.

Iorik shrugged his shoulders and started sharpening his sword again.

“Do you have a plan, then, Sir Andrew?” Wulf asked. “A plan to bring down the monster and slay it?”

“Sir Lancelot killed the last one with a lance,” Sir Andrew said.

“He charged the foul beast right bravely with lance encouched and there-withal he smote the dread beast through its breast and brake his spear all to-shivered,” Merlin said, clearly reciting from fond memory. He grinned up at them.

“Shut up, idiot,” Sir Andrew said. “And why are you listening in, anyway?”

“I’m cooking!” Merlin protested, pointing at the pot as if Sir Andrew couldn’t see it. “You decided to sit down next to me.”

Sir Andrew huffed through his teeth, and shook his head. “Sir Lancelot took down the first one with a lance. We will try that again, since it worked once.”

“We were going to use bows,” Wulf said.

“Bows?” Sir Andrew’s brows drew down, so that a line appeared between them. “This creature’s hide is like iron. No arrow you could send against it could pierce it.”

“No arrow you could send against it,” Wulf corrected him. “We have a different species of arrow in mind.”

He held out his hand toward the little pile of sticks and kindling, and dropped his head forward in a posture that Cully knew all too well. Before Cully could protest, or do anything more than jump in shock, Wulf had muttered power into his spell.

“Feorbearne,” he rasped, and the gold fluttered across his eyes. The dusk light fell to night as the fire roared into life.

………………………………………

Merlin nearly shrieked with shock at the sudden flare of another sorcerer’s spell so close to his face. From his squatting position, his leg muscles jerked reflexively like a galvanised frog, but instead of shoving him to his feet ready to strike his flinch simply pitched him over backwards.

He crashed over onto his back and sprawled on the grass, and then rolled himself over. He pushed himself urgently to his hands and knees, his hands digging into the soil, and then scrambled to turn himself around.

Arthur , he thought desperately, and brought his spell hand up as he turned around, his fingers crooked ready to cup a spell, ready to blast the false knight away from his king.

Arthur had received as great a shock as Merlin himself, but even if his fear was greater than Merlin’s, his drill-honed reflexes kept him under control. He stood tall and silver-coated in the sudden firelight, his hand reaching across his body to his sword hilt.

“What was that?” he hissed.

Something twisted painfully in Merlin’s heart at the sight of his rocky jaw and the flicker of fear and outrage in his eyes, and he nearly cried out in despair.

“Whoa, there,” Sir Cullinan was on his feet as well, equidistant to his brother and Arthur, hands outstretched toward both of them as if he could forestall a fight by flagging it down. Merlin looked over his shoulder and saw the other two false knights on their feet as well, eyes on Arthur, ready to defend their own commander.

Wulfric alone was still as he had been, still on one knee at the fire. He looked up at Arthur, looming above him with one hand around his sword hilt, tilted his head sideways and smiled slightly as if he did not see that sharp steel death was heartbeats away.

“That was our best hope of bringing down the gryphon,” he said.

There was the pounding of feet, and Sir Ellyan and Sir Percival broke into the firelight from the sudden dark around them. They sprang to bracket their king, supporting him.

“What’s going on?” Ellyan asked, and Merlin could see his eyes flicking between Arthur and Cullinan, measuring distances.

“That was magic,” Arthur hissed at Sir Wulfric, ignoring Ellyan.

“I have magic,” Sir Wulfric agreed, without moving or taking his eyes away from Arthur.

Arthur’s jaw jumped, and in a single sweeping movement the magnificent sword was out and around, the firelight flickering across the impossibly bright steel as if it was glass. He took a step back from Wulfric, putting himself backward to lunging distance. “You have magic,” he accused.

Cullinan drew his own sword, a blade that tingled against Merlin’s skin with its own magic. He stepped forward. “Sheath your sword, Sir Knight,” he barked. “Threaten my brother, and you will fight me first.”

Swords rasped all around, as the other four knights drew their own weapons.

Steel was drawn, and stiff aggression bristled. Cullinan still stood, guarding his brother, facing Arthur, who had Ellyan and Percival at his back. Behind Cullinan, Malcolm and Iorik stood ready, waiting for his lead.

Merlin, alone, lay forgotten in the shadows, in the middle, and the best placed to end all of this right now. He drew the shape of a spell in his mind, and crooked his fingers ready to strike. Lunge at Arthur and die , he promised Cullinan. He had slaughtered dozens of men for Arthur less than a fortnight ago – he wouldn’t be any less of a monster for adding five more.

The flames were glittering in Arthur’s hard eyes. “Your brother has magic,” he told Sir Cullinan.

“I know that, he is my brother. Sheath your sword.”

“I have magic,” Wulfric agreed, drawing Arthur’s gaze to him. “Get it into your head, and keep it there. We are all soldiers here, but magic is my weapon. Without me none of us will defeat that thing out there. Not ten of us, not a hundred of us. No arrow will pierce a gryphon’s hide, and as as for your lances? You haven’t a cat’s hair of a chance, and the odds are that you’ll all die trying.”

Arthur’s jaw was working, one jumping muscle tapping in his cheek, and his eyes darted between the brothers. Cullinan was frozen, his sword still extended, and the two knights faced each other like angry statues.

“Arthur,” Merlin breathed, from his position in the grass, “Don’t. Don’t.” Don’t make me kill them…

Another pair of feet hammered up in the harsh silence, and Sir Gawain leapt into the light, to outflank Cullinan. His sword was already bare. “What’s the game?”

“This man has magic,” Sir Ellyan said.

“Oh, is that all?” Sir Gawain drawled. He sheathed his sword, and flicked his hair out of his eyes.

Ellyan goggled at him in disbelief. “Did you perhaps not hear me correctly? I said, this man has magic.”

“Aye, I heard. So does my ma,” Gawain drawled. “Arth- An drew, don’t be a twit, now, you hear? A drop of magic’s nothing to have a fight over.”

“Cully,” Wulf said. “Put your sword away.”

Cullinan shook his head, his eyes on Arthur. “Not until he does.”

“Cully, brother, put it away. These good knights are not our enemies. Five of us, and five of them. There will be no winners, we’ll just butcher each other to no purpose. I have lost too many friends already. Put your sword away, brother.”

Cullinan glared at Arthur. Then, slowly, very slowly, Arthur put the point of his sword to the lip of his scabbard, and slowly, slowly, he slid the weapon away. He took his hands off the weapon, and opened his palms toward Cullinan.

Merlin let his magic sag away again. He heard me, he thought, weak with relief.

“Iorik, Mal. Sheath ‘em,” Cullinan ordered over his shoulder. He copied their movement, and at a sidelong movement from Arthur, Ellyan and Percival did likewise.

Wulfric and Merlin were the only ones on the ground, but unlike Merlin who sprawled, forgotten on the grass, Wulfric was the centre of attention. Give that man his due, Merlin thought, he has a nerve .

“You have magic,” Arthur said again, but his tone was different, asking for confirmation and not accusing.

“I do,” Wulfric said. “I have had it since Cully and I were twenty-three. I’m not the strongest around, nor the wisest, nor the most educated, but I manage, and I know my strengths. You can’t take this gryphon down by yourselves, but neither can I.”

“We took down the first one without it,” Arthur said. “We can treat this one the same way.”

“Yes,” Cullinan agreed, “And how many good knights did you lose the first time? How many of us here tonight will die trying, without Wulf?”

That was a point that would strike hard on Arthur, Merlin thought, and indeed he saw Arthur flinch. He had lost good friends that night.

“All our swords, combined with my magic, can bring this gryphon down,” Wulfric said.

Arthur was beginning to look at Wulfric as if was a man again, and not a demon in human form. That was always a good sign where Arthur was concerned – humanity usually won out against the letter of the law.

“You can do that?” Arthur asked.

“I can enchant all of our weapons with a spell that will let them pierce the hide of a magical creature. Magic draws to magic, and magic yields to magic. The only problem is that I can’t do it by myself.”

“Magic is illegal in Camelot,” Arthur said.

“Pfah!” said Gawain.

Arthur’s eyes ran over them all.

Sir Percival shrugged his shoulders. “It’s your call, S- Sir Andrew.”

Arthur sighed. “If my father knew I was thinking about using magic to kill a monster, he would roll over in his grave,” he said. “He would think the loss of lives was a lesser evil than the use of magic to save them.”

“If your father’s in his grave, he won’t know about it,” Cullinan said.

“It is your choice, whether you ride with us or not,” Wulfric said. “If you want no part in it, we’ll go our separate ways in the morning. You can try your plan, and we’ll try ours, no harm, no foul.”

Arthur’s eyes ran around all of them again, and then, as it tended to do at moments like this, his gaze reached Merlin’s.

Never, ever, would the king show a single sign that he was asking Merlin’s opinion – not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash, not in front of the knights, never in front of strangers – but his gaze locked with Merlin’s and lingered there for a long moment.

The moment was long enough for Merlin to give the tiniest of nods.

“I cannot, in good conscience,” Arthur said, slowly, “turn away five extra swords and the chance to avert bloodshed. I don’t like magic. It makes my skin crawl. But I can’t risk the lives of men I love like brothers for the sake of my own squeamishness, and I can’t endanger any more of the innocents in these villages if we should fail. My father could do that, but I am not him, for good or ill. We will ride together, until this gryphon is dead.”

“Good,” Sir Wulfric said. “And in return, I’ll make you a promise. On my honour, none of my magic will be used on you, or against you, or against any of you. You have my word as a sorcerer of the right-hand path. And when I do use it, I will give you a warning first so that you don’t get a fright.”

Arthur frowned at his words, but nodded. “Glad to hear that,” he said.

“On that note,” Sir Cullinan said, and he turned on his heel. “Dinadan!” he called. “Come in!”

For a moment nothing happened, and then a figure formed up from the dim light beyond the fire. It was the tall, skinny one, Dinadan, carrying his longbow, his quiver over his shoulder. He cleared his throat, and set the bow and quiver down against his saddle with an apologetic air.

“How long were you out there?” Arthur asked.

“Er,” Dinadan hesitated, and his eyes slid to Cullinan’s. “Long enough that I had a shaft aimed at your spine, Sir Andrew, from the moment you stood up.”

“Well!” Arthur said. To Merlin’s surprise, this didn’t seem to bother him at all. He tipped his head back and smiled at them all, flashing his teeth as if he was pleased to have met them. “You are a soldier, truly. It’s always easier to ride into battle alongside professionals.”

…………………………………..

And that seemed to be that, Merlin thought to himself, a little later. How simple life was, when you were a knight. Somehow, against all the odds, there were now ten of them, going against this monster.

His friends had this side of the fire. Sir Cullinan’s men had the other. Merlin sat in the middle, between them all, placidly stirring his pot like a stage witch. He breathed a few words over it, as if cursing under his breath, holding his magic tamped down to as low as possible. The spell that he had woven into the matter of the pot came to life, and did what it was intended to do.

The two groups of men did not quite chat with each other. Almost, but not quite, but at least the overt aggression was gone. Ten men were sitting in a circle, waiting for Merlin to work a small miracle and feed ten men out of a pot large enough to feed five. They weren’t talking much to each other, just watching with a tense patience.

The tensions were starting to get to Merlin as well. He sat quietly, turning the long ladle in the pot for form’s sake, but he rehearsed in his mind a pattern of magic for knocking his own friends unconscious, if he had to leap to his feet to defend them all.

The only exceptions were Dinadan and Sir Gawain, who were engaged in a game of Find The Lady.

Sir Dinadan had taken a glass bead out of his pocket, and began practising sleight-of-hand tricks. He challenged Gawain to guess where he had hidden The Lady, and Sir Gawain had taken up the challenge with an eagerness that brought a frown from Arthur. Their personal game was made unique by the fact that each quickly recognised in the other another master player of the ancient game. Their version of the game was composed of guessing in which palm the other had hidden the pebble, and critiquing each other’s form.

They were really good, Merlin thought, both of them; and he wondered what they would do if he reached in and stole the bead. He hadn’t used his powers for his own amusement since Ealdor…

But here they were, all ten of them, waiting for Merlin to make supper, and while they weren’t bosom friends, they weren’t actually killing each other either.

And above all, Arthur had, for now, agreed to tolerate Wulfric’s magic.

Merlin wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. There was an unhappy little knot in his belly at the thought that it had been a stranger, not Merlin, who had first looked Arthur in the eye and declared I have magic, without a sign of fear.

And besides, Arthur had agreed to ask the ‘old sorcerer’ for his help as well, once, and look how well that had turned out. It had been a disaster. It seemed as if Merlin ended up killing somebody or making things worse, no matter what he did, as if his magic itself had turned against them.

But on the other hand, Arthur had agreed. He agreed! He had sheathed his sword, and he had agreed to Wulfric’s suggestion, and that was good news. Any lessening of Arthur’s paranoia was a good thing for Merlin, because every sign Arthur was given that magic was not evil was another step toward the day he could accept Merlin’s magic as well.

There was a footfall close to him, and Arthur sat down on his heels close to him. Close enough to speak in undertones, but not so close that it seemed like they were scheming. Arthur had taught him how to have private conversations while in the public eye – don’t look like you’re whispering, and never frown.

“Supper is not ready yet, so don’t ask,” Merlin said.

“Smells good.” Arthur’s blue eyes examined Cullinan over the fire, where he sat next to his brother, checking their arrows. “Am I doing the right thing?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Merlin said. “None of us knows, it’s a complete mystery to us all. So, what are you doing, Sir Andrew of Dollop Head?”

“I’m not sure. Trying to kill that gryphon before it starts killing people. And I think I’m about to use magic to do it. I must be mad.” He shook his head, gazing into the fire with an amazed expression.

“You must be mad,” Merlin agreed, giving his stew ladle a turn in the stew. “You’re just going along with whatever Sir Cullinan is doing. He’s not a knight of Camelot, as you know very well. He could be here for anything.”

“I know that. But he says he knew Lancelot.”

“A lot of people knew Lancelot. Doesn’t prove anything. That horse Sir Malcolm is riding – I recognise that horse. That’s Sir Griflet’s horse. And Sir Griflet was killed…”

“On his way to take a letter to King Lot, I know, when Helios invaded. But … the war is over, Merlin. Morgana has gone, Helios is dead. I don’t know why they’re here, but I know why I’m here, and it’s not for vengeance. They’re either a group of Helios’s survivors, or they’re Mercians. Whoever they are, if they want that hundred gold sovereigns, if they’re willing to earn it, they can have it. The war is over .”

Merlin sighed. He recognised the signs of Arthur in an introspective mood – the distant gaze, the pursed lips. He was beautiful when he brooded, but he was also sometimes stupid. Merlin didn’t need another sudden fit of self-doubt from the King.

There was a whoop from Sir Gawain, and a groan from Sir Dinadan, drawing Merlin back to the present.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Merlin asked.

Arthur shook off his gloomy look, and raised his head with a faint smile. “Are you thinking, Oh God, Oh God, now there’s two of them?”

“You win!”

Arthur smiled, but the smile faded a little too quickly.

Arthur was harder to read, these days. The grouchiness of the last months might have faded, but his new reserve had not. Ever since they had retaken the castle, Arthur had been … thoughtful. Not unhappy, not sulking, not displeased about something, but rather as if there was something going around and around in his mind that he was struggling with. Arthur had stopped broadcasting every thought that came into his head.

It was probably a good thing, for his own sake, but Merlin sometimes missed it. He was sure that Arthur still trusted him, sure also that Arthur loved him in his own way, but the open-hearted, loud-mouthed lout who had blurted his opinions all over the city was gone for good. Agravaine had seen to that.

Perhaps the marriage wasn’t going to well? But if that was the case, Gwen would have been showing the same signs. The only distress she had shown was when her new husband announced that he would lead the quest to slay the gryphon himself, in the middle of their honeymoon.

Perhaps it had something to do with the Dragon? Arthur knew that Kilgharrah was alive, knew that he had struck and slaughtered dozens of men in Ealdor, but he had said nothing about it.

Perhaps it had something to do with Lord Agravaine, found stone dead in the tunnels, but he had said nothing about that either.

For that, Merlin was deeply glad. He had killed so many men, both through the dragon’s assistance, and personally. Those deaths weighed on his mind. He was afraid that his guilt would show on his face, that if Arthur questioned him too deeply, and gazed at him too closely, he would somehow see in Merlin’s eyes what he had done, and what he was capable of doing.

Those deaths weighed on his mind – not only because the deaths of so many had marked a sudden growth in his strength, but because it had been so easy . He hadn’t even seen their faces. He’d simply pushed them all off into Death with less effort than it would take him to push over a tree. They had been his enemies, true, but sending the whole lot to their doom without even taking a deep breath – it had been so easy. Monstrously easy.

Arthur might have killed that many in battle, but every man Arthur faced had held a weapon and had at least had a fighting chance. It bothered Merlin, to realize that he hadn’t lived up to Arthur’s standards.

There was another loud jeer from the game of Find The Lady. Merlin checked Arthur’s face, to make sure he was still staring into space and not looking at Merlin. Then he reached in to Sir Gawain’s upturned cup with his mind, and stole The Lady. He moved it to Ellyan’s pocket. Let them all puzzle over that for a while…

There was a footfall, and a sigh, and Sir Wulfric sat down on his heels next to Merlin.

“You’re taking a lot of time and effort over supper,” Wulfric observed.

Merlin glanced up at him. There was a rather fixed expression on Wulfric’s face.

“Ah, yes, but I would, wouldn’t I?” he said. “I’m going to eat it too. It doesn’t matter what I feed them, they’re knights, they’ll eat anything you throw at them. If I wasn’t eating any of it I could just toss a roasted rat in Sir Andrew’s direction as usual, but since I am eating it, and cooking all of it all by myself, which let me tell you is a very important consideration on its own … well, I may as well please myself. They’ll eat anything as long as they don’t have to cook it themselves.”

“Listen!” Sir Gawain said, in the background. “I haven’t got it! All right? It must have fallen on the ground. Maybe you’re sitting on it?”

“They don’t mind?” Wulfric asked.

“Well, King Arthur complains a lot, but that’s because…” he leaned toward Wulf, “Between you and me, King Arthur is getting fat.”

“Is he, indeed?”

“Oh yes. All those royal feasts and banquets and things. A bit of extra padding goes with the job.”

Merlin looked at Arthur, who was narrowing his eyes and pouting with an expression that said that something was about to be thrown soon. Well, that was one way of cheering him up…

But Arthur couldn’t throw things right now, without the strangers wondering why ‘Sir Andrew’ took the King’s reputation so seriously. He decided to be merciful to Arthur.

“But since you are hinting… the answer is thyme, Sir Wulfric,” Merlin said. “Thyme, basil, and lots of rosemary. That’s my secret recipe.”

“I will have to take your word for it,” Sir Wulfric said. He got up, and walked back to his brother.

Arthur watched him go.

“His magic doesn’t bother you?” Merlin asked him, without looking at him.

“Oh, it does, Merlin. All magic bothers me. But … here we are.”

“Right, here we are.” Merlin nodded, as if he understood what Arthur meant. “We’re all behind you, whatever happens. We’ll follow your lead,” Merlin told him.

“Yes,” Arthur agreed, with a smile, and reached out a hand to clap it on Merlin’s shoulder. “Whatever else happens, that much I know.”

He got up and walked away to talk to Sir Ellyan, and Merlin watched him go, wondering if he should be worrying.

…………………………………………..

Cully looked up, as Wulf walked up to him. Wulf folded his arms, and said, “Cully, will you come and take a look at Danny-Boy’s larboard hock? I want a second opinion about that bruise.”

“Don’t mind,” Cully agreed, and got up, taking a flaming log from the fire to light their way.

Sir Andrew watched them go, over the rim of his cup, from where he sat in low conversation with Sir Ellyan and Sir Percival.

In the dark beyond the horses, Wulf led him toward his horse, and bent low by Danny’s hindquarters. “They’re not what I was expecting of knights,” he whispered.

Cully held the torch aloft, as if lighting their examination of the horse’s hind leg. “Me neither. They don’t seem anything like the other nobles I’ve ever met.” Cully spoke to the horse’s hock.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if … How sure are you that these are knights of Camelot?"

“Absolutely sure. Sir Andrew has a map with the royal crest ... and what are the odds of there being two groups of us, playing the same game? No.”

“There’s something else that doesn’t add up. That man, Merlin,” Wulf whispered.

“He’s no servant, whatever flag he’s flying.”

“He certainly isn’t a servant. He’s a powerful sorcerer. He’s using magic, Cully. I can feel it.”

“What, really? Him?” He leaned upright to glance over the horse’s rump at Merlin. The peasant still sat by the fire, his back to them. His peculiar ears stuck out, and his hair tapered down the nape of his skinny neck like a little tail. “He doesn’t look like a powerful sorcerer!”

“Oh? What does a powerful sorcerer look like, then? Teach me, oh wise brother, that I may learn?” His brother managed to load a lot of sarcasm into a barely-audible whisper.

“All right, there’s no need to bite me! What sort of magic?”

“He’s cooking a three hour meal in half an hour. He’s using a time spell, taking the inside of his cooking pot through time faster than the rest of us. Cully, listen to me – he’s using the level of magic that it would take me a lifetime to learn, and he’s using it to make stew. ”

“Can’t be.”

“You wait for that stew, and tell me it tastes like it was cooked in thirty minutes.”

Now that Cully thought about it… stew was a rather ambitious meal to whip up from scratch in half an hour. He began to scratch his chin.

“That man has serious power!” Wulf whispered. “And he’s using it to make stew! I ask you, what the hell is that about? Stew , for pity’s sake! Who uses power like that for something so stupid? It’s the power of the universe, not a … a… God, why stew, Cully?”

Wulf seemed more agitated by the misuse of his art than by the threat of a powerful sorcerer in their midst. “But when they saw your magic, they all panicked.”

“They don’t know about his magic.”

“They must know. They wouldn’t drag a servant all the way out here, if they didn’t want him to use his magic against the gryphon.”

“I’d swear they don’t know. He’s making sure they don’t see anything he doesn’t want them to see.”

“You saw.”

“I didn’t see it. I felt it. Remember the Lady Morgana?”

Cully remembered. Wulf had felt Lady Morgana, and something about her had horrified him. He’d panicked, and refused to allow Cully to mention his magic to Helios. “You said her magic felt warped.” There was no point questioning his brother more deeply than that … Wulf simply didn’t have words to describe what Cully would never feel.

“This one’s magic isn’t warped. Thank the gods for that. Cully … remember the night we took Camelot? Remember chasing those knights down that corridor, and the flames jumping across the room at us?”

Cully wouldn’t forget that in a hurry. The churning bar of flame from the wall sconces had nearly taken his head off. “You said there was a powerful sorcerer with those knights.” It was one reason he had been so eager to follow Agravaine – between the stranger and the Lady Morgana, Camelot was not healthy for a lower-order sorcerer like Wulf.

Wulf straightened his back, as if he was finished looking at his horse’s hind leg. He gestured with his head toward the fire. “I think we’ve just found him. Knights of Camelot, and a sorcerer riding with them.”

……………………………………………….

Supper was a success, at least, however it had been prepared. Give that man his due , Cully thought, he can really cook. The meat slipped off the bone (rabbit, or he was no forager) and the thick sauce it was in had been soaked up by the vegetables, so that the whole meal was a hot, juicy perfection. It was a meal fit for a prince, not men on the march. He exchanged raised eyebrows with Wulf. Wulf was right. Not a thirty-minute meal at all.

The knights, real ones and false, all settled back around the fire to eat, and for a while there were no words, as ten men sat inhaling their meal as fast as they could.

“Good?” Merlin asked Sir Andrew.

“Mmm. Yes. Very good, thank you, Merlin.”

“Naah,” Sir Gawain said. “Too salty by half if you ask me.”

“Far too salty,” Sir Percival agreed.

“Merlin makes everything too salty,” Sir Ellyan addressed the strangers directly for the first time. “He makes salty tea.”

“Aye, he just has to look at things and they turn salty,” Sir Gawain said. “Milk. Eggs. Strawberries. All salty. I remember a time when he and I were being chased by wyverns across a swamp, and all we had with us to fight them off was a brace of pheasants. So we lobbed the pheasants at ‘em to distract ‘em, and then we legged it off to a deserted castle. Well, there we were that night, safe as houses in that castle, and fast asleep, when there was a knock at the door. So I went to the door, and I said “Who’s there?” and a voice on the other side of the door said, “It’s the wyvern from this afternoon,” and I said, “What do you want at this time of night,” and it said…” he drew in a deep breath and pitched his voice plaintively high, “It’s too salty-y-y… ”

There was a laugh, around that side of the fire – a rather longer laugh than the rather pointless tale called for, which told Cully that this had to be a running joke at Merlin’s expense.

Merlin went a bit dark around the ears, just visible in the firelight, and he rolled his eyes and shook his head. “All right, very funny,” he said. He turned to face Cully’s men. “You know what this is? This is a meal fit for a king.”

“I’d drink to that,” Din said to him, “if I had anything stronger than water to drink. Is there any more?”

“There’s enough here for one more bowl.”

“I’ll take seconds,” Sir Andrew said, holding out his bowl.

“I asked first,” Din said.

Sir Andrew stopped short. “I outrank you,” he said.

“I’ll challenge you for it for it, then.”

There was an astonished gasp around the fire. “You’ll challenge me?” Sir Andrew asked, astonished, and then his eyebrows twitched upwards.

“Aye, I throw down the gauntlet to you, Sir Andrew.” Din mimed pulling off a glove and throwing it down on the ground.

“I accept.”

“On my terms?”

“On any terms!”

“Excellent! I challenge you to a contest of singing!”

Cully, looking around, realized that for the first time, everyone was sitting up and following a single conversation. He silently blessed Dinadan’s professional training, which had taught him how to yank a disparate group of prickly strangers into a single audience.

“A singing challenge…?” Sir Andrew said, doubting.

“You did say any terms. Do you accept?””

Merlin, in the middle, held up a hand to each of them. “It’s a fair trade. A song for seconds.”

“It’s not a fair trade – I can’t sing!” Sir Andrew complained.

“We’ll take a vote on it instead,” Merlin said. “If he can sing, he can have it. If he can’t sing, you can have it.”

“Since when does this camp take votes?”

“Since King Arthur himself declared that no man in the Knights of Camelot was greater or lesser than any other,” Merlin said.

“Ah- ha ,” Sir Gawain said, “And we were all of us witnesses to that! Let’s have a song.”

“Let’s have a song!” Mal repeated.

Here was a chance to loosen the stiffness of the camp a little further, Cully thought. His idea would either break the ice further, or backfire hideously. He stood up. “A challenge, Sir Knight!” he called to Sir Andrew.

“You’re challenging me now?” Sir Andrew said, as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“I’ll add a wager. If Sir Dinadan is deemed to be able to sing by an audience of his peers – he’ll eat the stew and you’ll wash it out. If we all find that he doesn’t sing well, you can eat it and I’ll wash it out.”

“Ooh, that’s a steep one!” Sir Gawain murmured gleefully. “I like it!”

“Hell, no!” Sir Andrew barked.

“You refuse the challenge?”

“Then the pot goes to Sir Dinadan by default, as Sir Andrew withdraws from the contest,” Merlin said, cheerfully. He picked up the pot held it out towards Din, and grinned at Sir Andrew.

“And since when did you become a judge of knightly contest, Mer -lin?” Sir Andrew blasted at him angrily.

“Since I cooked the stuff myself, it is mine to give to whomever I choose,” Merlin said serenely, not at all intimidated by knightly outrage. “My pot, my recipe, my choice.”

“Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll accept that!” Sir Andrew said. He turned to Cully. “You’re on. I accept your challenge. If this audience finds that Sir Dinadan can sing, I’ll wash that pot.”

Din climbed to his feet, his tin bowl held in front of him. He looked around the fire at his audience, and dropped Cully a wink. “What shall I sing?” he asked.

“How about the lay of Robin Hood?” Iorik suggested.

“Too long, the stew will get cold. The song of Cuchulain!”

“No, that’s too tragic, sing something cheerful.”

“The Rose!” Sir Percival suggested.

“Aye, the Rose! Sing the Rose!”

“Everybody wants the Rose? The Rose it is, then.” Din cleared his throat. “I was taught never to sing on a full stomach, nor yet on an empty one, but since I am singing for my supper I will make an exception.” He drew in a few deep breaths, straightened his back, and began to sing.

Dinadan’s voice was a thing of beauty. He had always sung with both self-confidence and elegance, the confidence of a man who knows exactly what his audience expects, and knows that he can give it. He needed no accompaniment, either – he knew how to use his voice itself as an instrument. His voice spooled out onto the night air, a rich, deep ribbon of sound.

“I think I’ve just been suckered into a contest against a trained minstrel,” Sir Andrew groaned, into the brief silence at the end of the first verse.

Din flashed them a grin, before launching into the second verse.

When the last long sorrowful note of the song was finished, Din rocked back on his heels and looked around at all of them. “So, what say you all?” he asked, grinning. “Can I sing, or not?”

“I think this man can really sing!” Sir Ellyan said, in tones of surprised pleasure. “Sorry, Sir Andrew, but my knightly honour demands the truth.”

Sir Andrew got to his feet, bowed to him with immense dignity, and said, “I withdraw from the contest. You have bested me, Sir Knight.”

“Victory is sweet, Sir Andrew,” Din said.

“I think you mean victory is too salty,” Sir Gawain pointed out, grinning up at Sir Andrew.

“Now, hold on a minute,” Sir Percival said, “he didn’t say he could sing like that. This hasn’t been a fair trial.”

“Not in the least,” Sir Andrew said. “The contest was whether or not he could sing. He didn’t bring anything else into it except the voice the Gods gave him. It was my lookout, and I didn’t ask. Merlin, dish this man his stew, and then give me that pot.”

Din handed Merlin his bowl, and Merlin ran his ladle around the inside of the pot to scrape out the last of his stew and drop it into the bowl.

Then Merlin picked up the pot by its wire handle, and gave it to Sir Andrew, with a solemn bow. “Your forfeit, Sir Andrew.”

Sir Andrew stomped off into the dark, without another word. Nobody followed him, but they all watched him go. His figure went off toward the stream and then hunched down at the water’s edge. They heard the sound of the sponge being dunked and squeezed into the water, and then the sound of scrubbing.

Dinadan sat down on the ground again, and began ladling large mouthfuls of stew into his mouth. “Music needs fuel,” he told them, full-mouthed.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” Merlin said. “Don’t go galloping around issuing challenges to knights you don’t know.”

“But issuing challenges to strangers is half the fun of being a knight!” Sir Gawain protested. “There’s no fun in issuing challenges to … Sir Leon, for example. I already know he can knock my head off, so where’s the fun in finding out?”

“Knights,” Merlin sighed, shaking his head, as if they were too far beneath him even to try to explain to them what they were doing wrong. He began stacking the empty bowls.

“Where did you learn to sing like that?” Sir Ellyan asked.

“I was trained as a minstrel,” Din admitted. He shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t worry about me, though. If there’s a fight I just hide under a bucket until it’s all over, and I can come out and get to work with a nice tune afterwards.”

There was more to it than that, Cully knew. The nicks along Dinadan’s blade had come there from combat, not chopping wood, but if Din didn’t want to tell how he ended up as a mercenary under another name, it wasn’t Cully’s place to open that history. “You’ll have to write a song about this quest of ours,” he said.

“I’ll call it the Tale of Nine Knights, a Servant and a Gryphon.”

…………………………………………

Merlin got up, stacked all the empty bowls into each other, took a flaming log from the fire, and wandered after Arthur. The sounds of sloshing and scrubbing, and the occasional muffled grunt of irritation, came to Merlin’s ears from the direction of the stream.

He grinned to himself in the dark. Arthur was washing in the dark. He walked carefully in the night, following the sounds to where Arthur hunched over by the edge of the stream.

Merlin sat on his heels next to his King, so that the knees of his trousers didn’t get damp, and set the flaming light down on the ground, pointing uphill so that it didn’t burn out. He set the bowls and spoons down on the ground in front of him, just short of the water.

Arthur didn’t wait for him to speak, but launched into a complaint even before Merlin had reached the ground. He’d clearly been brewing it for a while, waiting for Merlin’s ears to hear it.

“It would be bad enough even if there wasn’t a minstrel here tonight! I am going to be a laughing stock!”

Merlin took a soothing tone of voice. “It won’t be that bad. Remember the story about Lancelot and the lady with the kite in the tree, and how different it is with what Lancelot said actually happened?”

“Huh. I am paying the price of my own arrogance, Merlin. How hath the mighty fallen! That will teach me, Merlin – that will teach me not to go challenging strangers to contests.”

Merlin grinned. “It would help if you had remembered to take a light, Sire,” he said.

Arthur huffed his irritation, but a moment later his teeth gleamed in the dark. “It would help if I remembered to take the soap, too, but I’m damned if I’ll go back and get some, with all of them watching me.”

“Well, never fear. Merlin’s here, and I have a light and the soap. Here.” He handed the soap to Arthur, picked up his bowl, and dipped it into the stream to get some water in in. In the firelight, the stream looked black. He poured the water out, and dipped it again. Arthur had their only sponge, and he was working away with it at the inside of the pot.

“Well. At least it’s broken the ice,” Arthur said, sloshing soapy water noisily into the pot and sluicing it around and around in a circular motion. “We can’t work as a unit if no-one is willing to open their mouths and talk.”

“Yes,” Merlin agreed, keeping a straight face. “At least you haven’t made a fool of yourself for absolutely nothing .”

“Hah. Who in Camelot would imagine their King washing out a stewpot like a servant?

Arthur had washed a pot before. He had washed their dishes too, during their flight to Ealdor, but Merlin was sure he would never believe it. Merlin would cherish that memory for the rest of his life. Without his iron will, and beyond any thought of his rank or his royal privileges, Arthur had turned out to be as sweet as a duckling.

“How is that pot?” Merlin asked.

Arthur held the pot out toward him, so that he could see it, and they both inspected the inside carefully by the light of the torch, putting their heads together to see the inside. “I think that’s all right,” Merlin agreed. He reached out and took the sponge out of Arthur’s hand. “My turn.”

Arthur did not reply. He clapped a hand on Merlin’s shoulder, pushed himself to his feet, and walked back to the fire. A moment later, Merlin heard him say in ringing tones, “Gentlemen! I have paid my forfeit. Our adjudicator has decreed that the pot is now clean, and my honour is restored.”

Arthur’s embarrassment was a thing between the two of them alone, it seemed – the King would not let on to a soul that he was anything other than good-humoured and gracious. Embarrassed? Me? Not at all!

The news met with acclaim, and a call from several voices that Sir Dinadan should mark the occasion with another song. He obliged, and a moment later Merlin heard his voice lift up in the first verse of the Lays of Robin Hood.

Merlin scrubbed the sponge against the soap, and then began scrubbing out the inside of his bowl.

There was another crunching pattern of footsteps, and he turned, expecting to see Sir Gawain, but it was the stranger, Wulfric.

“Oh. Hello,” Merlin said. He rinsed the bowl in the stream, and set it down on a clump of grass behind him.

“You and I need to have a chat.”

“Oh, we do, do we?” His stomach tightened. This man was Merlin’s opposite number, and if Cullinan and his men intended harm, this man would also be Merlin’s enemy.

“Your friend over there is a good sport, but none of them is what I expected. Tell me, is he really a knight?”

“No,” said Merlin, shortly. He still wasn’t quite sure how he felt about this man’s declaration to Arthur. I have magic was supposed to be his great reveal, not this stranger’s. He kept his eyes down, and began scrubbing the next bowl. “Only one of them back there was born to be a knight, and it’s not Sir Andrew.”

“I thought not. They don’t act like any other nobles I’ve met.”

“The Knights of Camelot don’t need to be noble at all, to become knights,” he said, feeling slightly offended. “It takes more than just noble birth these days. King Arthur’s standards are not those of his father.” This bowl was finished, and he started on the next.

“There’s no need to jump down my throat,” Wulfric said. “We’re on the same side. We’re the same, you and I.”

“No, we’re not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come, now, don’t try to deny that you have magic. I saw your little game with the stew. You and I are the same.”

Merlin could have groaned aloud. His secret was out. He knew the stew had been a mistake, but he had already been committed to the recipe before he’d found out about Wulfric’s magic.

“We are not the same,” Merlin said. “I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t know what you want, but I am warning you – make one threatening move toward any of my friends, and I will destroy you. Be careful, Sir Wulfric. I’ve killed stronger sorcerers than you.”

And he’d killed some who were not sorcerers at all. The poor fools who had rushed into the caves of Ealdor after Agravaine, for a start. He shook that grim thought away.

Wulfric should have been worried. He should have been challenged by Merlin’s threat, but his voice in the dark was calm and no louder than before. “Then let me warn you in return. Be careful, Merlin. I’ve survived stronger sorcerers than you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I might not be as powerful as you, but I didn’t get as old and wily as I am by being stupid. Make one threatening move toward my brother, or my friends, and I won’t destroy you. I’ll just walk in there and tell your friends what you are. That’s your Achilles heel, isn’t it? My word, that’s quite a weakness you have there!” He sat back, and his teeth gleamed in the dark.

Merlin winced, despite himself. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“I won’t, unless I have to. I’m not here to hurt any of your friends. I’m not a threat to you, or any of them.”

“I’ve hardly met one of my own kind who hasn’t tried to hurt them.”

“Then I’m very sorry for you, but I’m not one of them. I’ve defended my brother from sorcerers and monsters in a hundred fights between here and Jerusalem. I don’t want any more enemies, and I’m tired of fighting. All I’m here to do is help my brother glue his dignity back together again, and then I want to retire. He wants this gryphon, and I’m going to kill it for him.”

“No, you won’t,” Merlin said, reluctantly.

“What do you mean, I won’t?”

He could almost feel the man’s eyes narrowed, even though he wasn’t looking at him. “You aren’t strong enough,” he explained.

“How do you know?”

“I fought the first one myself … I know what it took to bring it down. It will take more strength than you’ve got. I saw what an effort Feorbearne was for you.”

“Sir Lancelot took down the first one with a…”

Merlin shook his head. “Sorry, no. Sir Lancelot’s lance, accompanied by my spell. I was there. You won’t do it without me.”

Wulfric huffed a grunt of laughter. “You’re very arrogant, for such a young man!”

He thought about that. “Yes,” he admitted. “Probably. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.”

“Oh, you and my brother are going to get along just beau -tifully.”

“I know my own strength. I know what I can do.”

“Then we do have something in common. I know what I can do. You have more strength than me, but I have more freedom than you. Perhaps I can’t bring down the gryphon – but how are you going to do it yourself without them noticing?”

“I’ll think of something,” Merlin said. “I always have before.”

“This time you don’t have to! We can work together, much better than we can work apart. I can work magic in front of them, openly, and you can’t. And if you’re really as strong as you think you are, you know I’m no threat to your friends. Working together will benefit us both.”

He stood up. “Think about that, and then give my your answer in the morning.”

Merlin heard his footsteps going away in the dark, and turned around, abruptly. “Wait,” he said.

Wulfric turned, silhouetted against the fire a few yards away. Around the fire, the others were preparing for bed. Merlin saw Arthur, watching them from the other side of the fire with a rather strange look on his face.

Arthur was getting harder to read, these days. He didn’t like the feeling that Arthur was keeping his thoughts from him. It was unfamiliar and worrying, the inverse of how things were supposed to happen between them.

“Yes?”

“A proposal.” He tried not to let his voice wobble, as he took his gaze away from Arthur and looked up at Wulfric.

Wulf came back, and knelt down on one knee. “Yes?”

Arthur couldn’t possibly hear him from this distance, but he pitched his voice low anyway and spoke quickly. “I have magic. But I don’t have their trust. Not the way your brother trusts you. I can’t tell them what I am – not yet.”

“Why on earth not?”

“I just can’t. They’re not ready. But I have an offer for you. I’ll take down the gryphon, and I’ll make it look as if you did it, if… in return…if…” he ran out of words.

“If I do what in return?”

“If you talk to Sir Andrew about magic.”

“Talk to him about magic?”

Merlin found his words tumbling out. “He’s terrified of magic, he thinks it’s evil. Nobody in his whole life has showed him anything about magic except to try to kill him with it. Even his sister. I love him like a brother, but I can’t tell him about my magic while he thinks it’s evil. But he accepts you. If you can talk to him about it, and show him, even a little bit, that magic is not evil … show him that you and Cullinan are all right with your magic … then I’ll kill the gryphon for you.”

There was a silence. He could hear Wulfric’s breathing – heavy middle-aged-lungs breathing. “My brother knows my magic because he was there when it came to the surface.”

“I was born with it. And I’ve had to hide it all my life. And I’m so tired of hiding it. I want to be able to show my friends who I really am. I want to show him who I really am! Because he doesn’t know, and I can’t bear it any more. I’ll deal with the gryphon, and you can have all the credit. And you can talk to Sir Andrew about your magic on my behalf. That’s my deal. Take it or leave it.”

He gulped, hoping that Wulfric couldn’t see his desperation. This chance might never come back again! Arthur had sheathed his sword, he had sat down and eaten a meal with a sorcerer! He had another chance to show Arthur that magic was not evil – he could not let it slip through his fingers.

He didn’t know what he would do, really, if Wulfric refused his offer. He couldn’t drive Wulfric away without a good excuse, and Wulfric had to know that. And he couldn’t threaten him without him threatening back. And what would Wulfric do, if he turned Merlin down? He might walk back there, and announce Merlin’s magic to the whole camp. All the cards were in Wulfric’s hands, if he only knew about it. The only card Merlin held was Cullinan’s desire for the gryphon.

Wulfric looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded. “Very well. We have a deal. You’ll deal with the gryphon, and I’ll deal with magic.” In the dark, Wulfric’s hand came out toward Merlin. “I’ll shake on that.”

Merlin gripped his hand and shook it, aware that his own hand was wet and soapy. “We have a deal,” he said, giddy with excitement.

“What spell were you going to use?”

He leaned forward, and muttered his old friend. “Bregdan anweal gafeluc .” He was careful not to press any power into the words, so that they were just words, and that nothing showed in his eyes. Arthur, he saw, glancing over Wulfric’s shoulder, was still watching them steadily over the fire.

“That one doesn’t work, lad. I tried it, years ago.”

“It does work, but not if you’re holding the weapon in your hand. It needs to get up a bit of speed first. At least the speed of a galloping horse. You don’t need the spell to send the weapon, you need the weapon to send the spell – but it doesn’t matter, does it? I can do it.”

“You’re strong enough for that? It’s a complicated spell.”

“I did it once, I can do it again.”

……………………………………………

Was it true? Could it be? Cully watched, carefully, as the knights on the other side of the fire prepared for bed.

Yes, it was. Each knight was unpacking his own bedroll, and settling himself down to sleep in on the ground. Not only that, but they seemed to be ready to sleep in their chainmail, with their swords close at hand.

Weren’t they going to do the traditional knightly thing, and raise the usual elaborate tents, with their hanging curtains and folding furniture and boastful banners?

Then again, they did have only one servant between the four of them. If they were to wait for Merlin to pitch four tents with all the trimmings all by himself, they wouldn’t get to sleep before four bells in the middle watch! Perhaps even knights could give way to common sense sometimes.

They settled down with the easy companionship of long practice. Sir Percival and Sir Ellyan chose to sleep close together. Nobody seemed willing to sleep next to Sir Gawaine. Sir Andrew unrolled his blankets. It seemed the blond knight was a newly married man, because there was some gentle teasing about him becoming amorous in his sleep. Sir Andrew merely sat down in his blankets, with the smug smile of a man who is getting regularly and fulfillingly laid for the first time in his life.

Cully looked up as Wulf walked back out of the dark. He had already spread his own bedroll and blankets out, and he had taken Wulf’s bedroll off his saddle, and was beginning to spread it out for him.

“Did you have a good chat?” he said, conversationally, as if Wulf had wandered off to discuss the weather. He rocked back on his heels, to let Wulf take over his bedroll.

Wulf finished laying his groundsheet and blankets out on the ground “Very good. Poor lad. He’s very paranoid, but at least we see eye to eye about some things. I think I set his mind at rest.”

“Poor lad? What’s this? I thought you said he was a wildly powerful sorcerer?”

Wulf lay down on his bed, and propped himself up on his elbow. “Oh, he’s that too, but look at him, Cully. He’s just a lad. How old is he? Eighteen? Twenty?”

Cully lowered himself closer to his brother’s ear. “Now is not the time for you to get all paternal, brother!” he hissed.

“We have an arrangement,” Wulf said, as if he hadn’t heard him. “He’ll deal with the gryphon, and I’ve agreed to talk to his friends about magic on his behalf. He needs help, the poor lad. He’s got himself into a pretty pickle.”

“Now is not the time to nursemaid some youngster! Have you forgotten the plan? Gryphon, bounty, Dover - remember?”

“You nursemaid Mal.”

“Mal’s different. Mal’s one of us.”

“Cully –,” Wulf sat up. “That lad is one of my ‘us.’ I do have a responsibility to the younger generation of my own kind, you know.”

It was too late already. Cully recognised the signs of Wulf with an Idea stuck in his stubborn head – and once that happened there was no way for Cully to get it out again. He might as well factor it into his plans – because Wulf was going to do what he wanted to do anyway.

“Oh, Gods.” Cully stared at his brother. “I’m going to have to put up with this, aren’t I?”

“Yup,” Wulf said. “We’ll have to have a few words with the lads. You see, his friends don’t any of them know he’s got magic. So we have to pretend we don’t know either. Anything you see him do, you pretend it was me.

“How can they not know?”

“I don’t know either, but they don’t. They’re Camelotians . They’re all completely dumb about magic. Actually, you can help me with that, if you’ve a mind to. The easiest way to show them there’s nothing to worry about is to show ‘em you’re not worried.”

“I’m not worried,” Cully said.

“Good, then there’s nothing to worry about, is there? Then that’s our plan, ship-shape and Bristol fashion.”

No, it wasn’t – not as far as Cully was concerned – but there was nothing he could do to change Wulf’s mind. He could chivvy his men into anything, coax soldiers into going anywhere, talk his way into anything, lie his way out of everything … but his words would have no effect on Wulf. Anything he could say would simply bounce off Wulf’s stubbornness like arrows off a castle wall.

He sighed. “We’ll have to talk about it in the morning.” Cully pitched his voice to reach Sir Andrew across the camp. “Sir Andrew. Shall we arrange a guard rotation?”

Sir Andrew was already lying in his blankets, examining his map again, and he looked up at Cully’s words. “We’ll do it. We have a set rotation.”

Oh, no, he was not letting the strangers stand watch while every one of his own men slept. “So do we,” Cully said – although his sentry rotation was missing almost all of its names. Twenty good men who would never answer muster ever again. Rot in hell, Helios. “It’s no trouble.”

“Maybe we should set two men to watch at the same time? Two sets of eyes and ears are better than one.”

“Good idea. The gryphon hunts at night, I believe. One from yours, and one from mine?”

“Just what I was thinking, Sir Cullinan.”

“All right. Dinadan, you’re on first with Sir … who?”

“Sir Percival, and then Sir Ellyan,” Sir Andrew said.

“And I’ll start the usual rotation from myself,” Din agreed.