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Sam shuffled uncomfortably in his heavy armour, leaning from foot to foot in a largely fruitless attempt to stop each from falling asleep. He had to admit, guard wouldn’t have been his first choice of occupation if he had to repeat the last few weeks. But in the flurry of moving to Camelot, meeting the honest to gods King Arthur, and trying to find a stable job and small living space that he didn’t either share with rats or unfortunate drunk roommates, he hadn’t had much time or energy to give all that much coherent thought to the whole thing. To be fair, however, there were certainly worse jobs—he had learned that upon his first day when he came across a teenaged boy mucking out the entirety of the kings stables on his own—and it paid well and had reasonable hours.
Sam always made an effort to be a ‘goblet half full’ kinda guy.
He sighed, then winced, as the pins and needles feeling he was trying to avoid crept up his legs. He leaned awkwardly on his wooden-handled spear, giving him some relief. In an effort to take his mind off things, both physical and mental, he focused his gaze on the busying marketplace before him, absentmindedly eyeing the wide cast of characters spread out before him. (Sam didn’t quite get yet that the gist of guarding was to, in fact, guard, and while other guards would diligently scan their area, he preferred to idly stand by and shake himself from his thoughts once in a while. He was lucky everyone cut him some slack cause he was a ‘country bumpkin’, but not so lucky that this excuse would last indefinitely. Sam was not, to be completely honest, a spectacularly good guard.)
On both sides of the plaza, and the subsequent roads leading off of it, stood an array of stands, sellers displaying their wares—including colourful fabrics, steaming foods, and all types of services—and engaging with customers. The citizens of Camelot bustled about, buying goods and chatting freely, the sounds of laughter and the patter of feet filling the square, children darting between their guardians legs and giggling. Sam couldn’t help but smile along with the rest. He was already becoming fond of Camelot, its eccentricities and oddities included.
Suddenly, a chorus of greetings and chuckles brought Sam’s attention back to the side of the square he’d surveyed first, and he raised a suspicious eyebrow as a young serving boy weaved clumsily through the crowd, an infectious grin on his face and peculiar red bandana around his neck, a selection of maces and bludgeons held haphazardly in his skinny arms.
With a cheerful, “Sorry, everyone, no time for pleasantries, His Majesty awaits!” The raven haired man gave an awkward half-wave around his cargo, and slipped through the final dam of people in a burst, nearly dropping everything to the ground. At the last second, he righted himself, and continued on so casually that Sam got the impression such near-accidents tended to happen often.
Eyeing the weapons in the mans arms warily as he strolled nearer, Sam’s suspicion grew as the realization that a servant had no business carrying dangerous weaponry around dawned.
“Hey, you!” Sam barked brazenly, as the servant passed by.
The man pointed a sceptical finger at himself. Upon Sam's stiff nod of confirmation, the man changed course and walked up to stand in front of him.
“What exactly are you planning to use those contrabands for?” Sam prodded in what he hoped was a tough voice. He didn’t actually know if maces were contrabands per se, but it didn’t matter much because it sounded very professional and threatening.
Or so he thought.
Confusion filled Sam’s already inherently muddled mind as the lanky serving boy, when he would have expected him to cower or stutter out a lame excuse, grinned widely and said in a cheery voice, “Oh, these?” He held up the weapons. “Why, I’m going to kill the King, of course!”
Sam blanched.
Only his fourth day and already their was some crazy guy plotting to murder King Arthur? He struggled to keep his expression stony instead of shaken and unsure.
The servant's smile didn’t falter.
At least, it didn’t until Sam thrust his spear at him forcefully and declared, “You’re under arrest for High Treason!”
________________________________________
Arthur finally had a day off. One where he didn’t have any counsel meetings, any hunting trips, any outings to procure taxes, any evil creatures to fight, any mishaps to fix, any papers to sign, any treaties to negotiate, any sorcerers to stop, any dastardly plots to foil, any knights to train, or any buttered chickens to unplug out of chimneys before Gaius returned.
And he was enjoying it immensely.
Relaxing into his arm chair with a contented sigh, he closed his eyes and folded his arms behind his head. If anything was the life, he thought, this was it.
And then a frazzled guard burst in through the door, stammering about murder plots and crazy people, throwing his arms about in his panic and nearly smacking Arthur right in the nose.
He smothered a curse.
“What, exactly, is so important that it requires you to interrupt my single day off all year?” Arthur demanded as he sat up, then held up his hand as the man (or rather boy) opened his mouth to speak. “And none of this gibberish! Pull yourself together and tell it to me in proper English!”
The guard paused, closed his mouth, and took a moment to calm his obviously shot nerves. Far too soon (in Arthur’s opinion, anyway) he focused his gaze back on his king and straightened. “Sam saw a young servant carrying weapons above his rank, and he thought it suspicious, so he asked the servant about them. He said the man ‘grinned creepily’ and threatened to kill you, Sire.” The guard answered, voice still somewhat nervous.
Arthur sighed and rubbed his face. “Alright. Thank you for the speedy relay of this information.”
The guard grinned ecstatically at the praise, bowed, and skittered out of the room.
The King rose reluctantly. Grabbing his red jacket from the chair where he’d tossed it earlier, he strode to the door, already considering how exactly he was going to manage this supposed mad-man. He'd almost prefer the chicken.
As he moved to tug open the door, it was instead flung open by an out of breath and distressed Gwaine, causing Arthur to narrowly avoid being hit in the nose for the second time that day.
He eyed the knight with a mix of confusion and exasperation. “What do you want, Gwaine?”
The man in question, who was bending over with his hands on his knees and breathing heavily, held a finger up. Arthur huffed and tapped his foot, but waited while the drunkard caught his breath.
“Princess,” Gwaine said, rising abruptly and ignoring Arthur’s cross look at the nickname. “Merlin’s been arrested.”
That got Arthur’s attention. “Merlin’s been arrested?” He asked sceptically.
Gwaine nodded vigorously.
Arthur considered this. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same Merlin?”
Gwaine rolled his eyes. “‘Course I’m sure! He’s not a hard guy to recognize!”
“That’s certainly true,” Arthur admitted. “What exactly is he being arrested for? Merlin’s about as close to a hardened criminal as a chipmunk.”
“I’ve no idea!” Gwaine threw his hands in the air. “I was just walking through the market—“
“On your way back from the tavern?”
“—well yes, but that’s not the point!” Gwaine cried indignantly. “The point is that I saw him walk up to that new guard, what’s his name….Spam! Thats it! He walked up to Spam and they hade a nice chat and then Spam goes and grabs Merlin’s arm and waves a spear at him and shouts ‘Jail isn’t good enough for you, you pig-faced nitwit with a toad for a mother!’ And next thing I know he’s dragging Merlin down to the dungeons!”
“One of Camelot’s guards said that?” Arthur asked suspiciously.
“Ever heard of a thing called 'creative licence'?,” Gwaine huffed. “Anyway, that man deserves infinitely worse for arresting Merlin!”
Arthur gave Gwaine a look, which was promptly ignored.
“Idiot probably got himself drunk again,” The king grumbled. “I’ll speak to the guards and bail him out of there after we talk to a supposed regicide plotter.”
“Ah,” Gwaine smiled wryly. “Just a normal day in Camelot, then.”
“Unfortunately,” Arthur muttered under his breath, tugging open the door.
Leon dashed down the corridor, accompanied by Percival, Lancelot, and Elyan.
“Sire, Merlin’s—!”
“—In the dungeons, yes, I’m aware,” Arthur interrupted briskly. He and Gwaine brushed past the confused quintuplet of knights.
“Well, what are you waiting for, you simpletons?” He demanded, startling the knights into action. “I’m assuming you’re all going to want to come now too!”
____________________________________
Arthur and the knights tromped down the solid stone steps, now trailed by the Queen, two more knights, Gaius, a whole slew of servants, the stableboy Nick, Cook, two council members, and a random tabby cat who was just following for the fun of it. Arthur wasn’t quite sure how the group had gotten so large, but it had nonetheless.
Arriving at the bottom of the staircase, Arthur raised an eyebrow when he spied the hoard of townsfolk clustered together at the opposite end of the dungeon.
“What are you all doing here!?” The blond demanded impatiently.
A middle aged man with an entirely unflattering combover near the front of the group shrugged in response. “We were bored. And Merlin here tends to attract entertaining situations.”
Arthur had no choice but to concede to this point. He spun to address the guard standing nearby. “Are you the one who arrested the man convicted of treason?”
The guard, who bore a mop of shaggy brown hair and scruffy stubble, nodded fervently. “Yes, sire!” He replied, standing to attention.
“And you say he was carrying weapons and threatened to kill me?”
“Yes, sire!”
“And so you brought him down here?”
“Yes, sire!”
“Alright, alright,” Arthur waved him off, already tiring of the mans brash and over-the-top formal manner. If he had to guess, Arthur would say he hadn’t been a guard more than a week. “Which cell is he in?”
“This way, sire!” The guard scurried down the corridor, gesturing for Arthur and his cohort to follow him. With a tired sigh, the king obliged.
The guard (Spam, Gwaine had said?) led them all the way to the end, where the mob of citizens mingled, and pointed into the last dingy cell in the row. “Here he is, sire!”
It took Arthur’s eyes a moment to adjust to the sputtering torches dim glow, but when they did he squinted in confusion.
“Wheres the traitor?” He asked skeptically. “Behind Merlin?”
Because where he had expected a rough, battle worn, probably scarred criminal with a tragic past to stand, instead was Merlin, in all his neckerchief sporting, absurd haircut having, amused expression wearing glory.
Spam adopted a bewildered look. “No, this boy is the traitor, sire.”
“Oh, yes, I’m the traitor!” Merlin jumped in, humoured sarcasm in his tone. “If making a joke is a capital crime!”
“Silence, criminal!” Spam hissed, banging his spear against the bars of the cell.
A sharp intake of breath was taken in synchrony by all.
Spam, to his credit, immediately realized he’d done something horribly, horribly wrong.
“If you wish to keep your head,” Arthur said in a dangerously low voice. “I would suggest you refrain from bullying my manservant.”
“He-he-he’s your manservant?” Spam asked in a high pitched tone. “B-b-but he said he was going to kill you, sire!”
“It was a joke! I was joking!” Merlin cried in exasperation. “By the Gods, if I’d known you were new to Camelot I never would have said anything!”
“Shut up, Merlin, I’ll handle this.” Arthur waved a dismissive hand in the air. “I’m going to need you to tell me exactly what happened, Spam."
Spam shot him a hesitantly confused look. “M-m-my names Sam, m’lord…”
“Spam, Sam, whatever! Get on with it!”
“Right, yes, okay! Well, sire, I, um, saw that the servant was carrying weapons that he shouldn’t have, so I asked him about them, and he said that, he uh, he was going to kill you…”
Arthur exchanged an unimpressed look with Merlin. “Were the weapons Merlin had maces by any chance?”
“…Yes…?” Sam replied weakly.
Arthur sighed wearily. “I requested that Merlin fetch those for me,” He fixed Sam with a glare. “For a new training exercise. The knights are getting far too arrogant in their own lacking skill—” a chorus of ‘hey!’s filled the room. “—and we hardly ever train with maces, so I sent Merlin to get some. And the joke, that was just him being an idiot.”
Sam spluttered. “Well, h-how was I supposed to know he wasn’t actually planning on killing you!”
Everyone, literally everyone, in the dungeons shared an exasperated look.
“He’s Merlin!” They all cried as one.
Sam, who had opened his mouth almost certainly to defend himself (foolishly, this was a battle lost before it had begun), started to say something but was quickly cut off.
“Sam,” The senior guard berated, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The What Not To Do In Camelot pamphlet literally has an entire page on Merlin, with a drawing and description of him!”
Sam, suitably chastised, closed his mouth with a snap and turned a rather amusing shade of pink, mumbling something about stupid crazy servants and damn empty goblets and not signing up for this shit.
“Sam, mate,” Gwaine leaned towards the man conspiratorially. “I’d leave before you make a bigger fool of yourself, if I were you.”
Sam took the advice to heart and booked it out of there before anyone could bring up the fact that he had somehow managed to overlook handcuffing Merlin as well as taking away the variety of deadly maces he still had with him. (Needless to say, no-one complained when they noticed Sam working a, er, rather different job the following day. He no longer had to merely pity the stable boy…)
“Merlin, you truly are an idiot, aren’t you?” Arthur quipped, unhooking the cell key from his belt and sliding it into the lock.
“At least I’m not a prat,” Merlin replied with a grin. “‘Sides, it’s not my fault Sam didn’t recognize me!”
“If you weren’t such a cabbage head no-one would have to recognize you in the first place! I mean really, Merlin, who needs an entire page in the pamphlet?”
“What can I say,” Merlin shrugged, stepping out of the cell and stretching, “I have skills.”
“Ah, yes, that’s what you have…”
“Glad we agree!”
“Merlin.”
“Shut up?”
“Precisely.”