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“On me!”
Arthur’s call to arms falls on unhearing ears. As he whips his head around, he sees his knights, his most trusted men, sprawled in the dirt and bracken, bloodied and unmoving.
But for the twist in his gut, he spares them no second thought; his focus stays trained on the beast in front of him—the Questing Beast, Gaius had called it.
He lunges from his defensive stance, swiping his sword across the beast’s chest in what is almost certainly a fatal blow. He watches, expectant, for the creature to fall—for it, at the very least, to stagger away in deference to his superior skill.
It does neither of these things; instead, it emits a piercing wail and lashes at him with claws like baselards.
Arthur stumbles in his haste to retreat, his boot catching on a gnarled tree root—the enemy of all great warriors. He falls, with the undignified clatter of metal on metal, onto his arse.
He watches the beast approach and grips his sword tighter. Perhaps he will be able to strike at its heart when it deals its final blow; at least then, when he dies, it will be with the knowledge that this creature dies with him, no longer able to torment and murder his people. Panting, he steels himself for its attack.
Then, from the shadows, movement. A hand grips his wrist and pulls him to his feet. A boy.
“Stay behind me,” he orders as they retreat as one.
Arthur huffs, his face twisting in disbelief. The boy was deranged; he wore no armour, nor did he carry any weaponry. “You’re not serious? You stay behind me,” he commands, tugging him back by the collar and raising his sword. “You don’t even have a sword.”
“That won’t work against it!” he continues to argue, as if he knows anything of battle and swordsmanship. “It’s a creature of magic!”
The Questing Beast snarls, drawing their attention back to its serpentine face; its fangs bared, eager to strike.
“Bregdan anweald gafeluec!”
The shout comes from beside him, from the boy with his hand raised and his eyes flashing gold. Arthur’s heart gives a great lurch as if to drop into his stomach or flee his body completely. But then his sword erupts in a great blue flame and Arthur shouts and nearly drops it.
“Stab it!”
He does not need to be told twice. Recovering himself, he thrusts the flaming weapon into the creature’s breast with aim true and strength unconstrained.
It gives an almighty shriek, its monstrous anatomy flailing wildly before falling with a resounding thud into the underbrush.
Arthur pulls his sword free with a sick wet sound, wiping the creature’s gore on his trousers. Breathing hard, he keeps his eyes trained on the sheathing of his weapon, the tremble of exertion in his fingers.
“You’re hurt,” the boy—the sorcerer—says, taking a step towards him.
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Here, let me—” He reaches into a satchel Arthur hadn’t noticed slung over his shoulder and pulls out a strip of linen.
“It’s fine. We have a court physician.”
“Don’t be stupid; you’re bleeding now, you might as well get it patched up,” he says with a stubbornness to rival Arthur’s own, and tugs Arthur’s arm into his grasp.
The boy’s insolence catches him so off-guard that he forgets to flinch at his touch. “Do you know who I am?” he asks.
Arthur’s eyes, trained on the boy’s downturned face, studious as he binds the fabric tight to his arm, do not miss the tiny quirk of his lips. “Of course.”
“So you can’t call me stupid, then.”
The quirk widens into a grin. “I just call them as I see them, my lord.”
Arthur chokes on his scoff when the boy pulls the bandage’s knot tight. The words he’s kept swallowed, burning in the back of his throat, come spilling out now, now that he’s not being touched and feels a little wild from the memory of it. “You have magic.”
“Yes,” the boy says. The grin is gone, replaced by something smaller and more guarded, and Arthur, strangely, feels its loss. “Are you going to have me killed?”
Arthur’s not sure if he’s still being teased. He begins to speak—to say what, he doesn’t know—but the boy interrupts. “It would be pretty impolite, since I just saved your life.”
That makes Arthur scoff again. “You did not; I had the situation perfectly in hand.”
“Right,” the boy says, not at all sceptically. “You were about two seconds away from having your head eaten.”
“I knew exactly what I was doing,” Arthur maintains. He glances at the boy, who once again looks as if he’s enjoying himself, now that it’s less likely he will be put to death.
He is strange. And gawky. With ears too big for his head and eyes the colour of the sky at noon. There is something puzzling about him that Arthur can’t quite put his finger on, and isn’t sure he wants to—he’s certain it’s a door that, once opened, could not easily be closed.
“Who are you?” Arthur asks, against his better judgement.
The boy grins, producing two rather appealing dimples that Arthur had not before noticed. “I’m Merlin.”
From around them come the quiet groans and scuffles of Arthur’s men stirring. Some are beginning to sit up, while others clutch dramatically at their wounds and moan. When Arthur looks around for Merlin, he is retreating back into the shadows.
“The next time you decide to make a prat of yourself and nearly get yourself killed, come and find me, why don’t you?” Merlin says.
Arthur balks. “Excuse me?”
Merlin only grins. “Come and find me.”
Sir Leon reaches him first; his face smeared in blood and dirt. He claps Arthur on the shoulder in the way that men do when they’ve just survived a terrible battle. “You did it, sire. You killed it!”
“What—oh. Yes.” Arthur looks around, but Merlin is gone.
“Are you alright, my lord? You seem a little—distracted.”
Arthur glances back to Leon and hopes that his smile is normal, that the flush on his cheeks can be excused for the flush of triumph over a battle won—which it is, of course.
“I’m perfectly fine,” he says convincingly.
But Arthur turns back to the shadows all the same, feeling slightly sick for reasons he cannot name.
Come and find me.
When Arthur spurs his horse toward Camelot, with the knights victorious at his side, he wonders, briefly, if Merlin, too, feels altered.