Chapter Text
"Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone." Merlin had said and Arthur had laughed.
He wasn't laughing now.
It seemed the knights had been right when calling Merlin their lucky charm.
He'd sent Merlin off with a horse loaded with goodies and riches ("for Hunith, Merlin, not you, keep your greedy fingers to yourself") and in the beginning, he'd just been bored.
Without Merlin around, a lot of events just seemed to lose their lustre. Without his servant making comments court was a lot less entertaining.
Arthur was bored, and impatient, but not necessarily inconvenienced.
And then the problems began.
The replacement manservants didn't even last half a day before Arthur was hollering to have them reassigned.
Guinevere was not amused.
"Arthur, you can't keep doing this," she told him. "You're going to go through every man in Camelot!"
"None of them meet my requirements," he did not sulk. Brooded. In a manly way.
"Your requirements amount to Merlin," she exclaimed exasperatedly.
He scoffed. "Hardly. I want someone competent."
She rolled her eyes. "Are we still pretending this isn't about you missing Merlin?"
He gasped, scandalized. "Guinevere! I am the king. I do not miss anyone."
She, obviously, disagreed.
However, the kingdom remained standing, despite Merlin's worries to the contrary.
That was before Arthur had to write a speech to the basket-weavers himself.
Because the official speech-writer had clearly become lazy.
"What sort of tripe is this?" He demanded in a barely polite tone.
The man paled and almost tripped. "Your Majesty. . . That is what I always give your manservant. I assumed you made modifications according to your experience."
And then the gold dropped.
Merlin had essentially been rewriting his speeches.
"I've always told you you overwork him, Arthur," had been Guinevere's calm response.
"I didn't even know he was doing that!" He protested.
Everyone looked judgmental at that. "Your speeches are literally the best in the entirety of the country thanks to the way they resonate with the people," Elyan pointed out. "Did you really think a stuffy lord wrote all that?"
"So you knew?" His tone was harsh, but his closest were used to that.
"Well, no," Leon conceded. "But we suspected you were getting someone to write them for you. That it was Merlin. . . Is not at all surprising. He is quite smart."
"Merlin? We are talking about the same person here, right?" Arthur tried to laugh it off.
"He isn't here, you don't need to pretend you think he's stupid," Percival rolled his eyes. Percival, of all people!
He fell silent.
He knew, of course, that Merlin was far smarter than he gave him credit for. He managed to be an apprentice physician while remaining his manservant, after all.
But he'd never thought it extended to things like this—like running a kingdom, since speeches were one of the most important matters when it came to that.
The next time was when he had to count his money. "Merlin—" He started, before remembering his servant was on holiday.
And Arthur trusted no other servant to do it.
So he had to complete the laborious process of dragging the chest out and counting each coin himself.
There were other, small inconveniences: his bath water was never the right temperature, the sweet spot that Merlin always managed to make it land on. Court entertainers were constantly coming up to him to ask for his opinions on their acts and what ought to be performed the next day, since Merlin wasn't there to field that for him. Being woken up too early or late.
The most important thing was, however: the conversation.
Not advice. Arthur would never let a servant advice him.
But the conversation. He would admit—that had been useful.
These other servants had no aptitude for bouncing ideas off. Their reassurances were all fake and rooted more in awe than in truly knowing him. They didn't have Merlin's odd, infuriating bouts of wisdom.
'They weren't Merlin.
And eventually, it became like an itch. Merlin had been his shadow for almost the past decade. Not having him there, constantly following him around and jabbering on and insulting him was so discombobulating he felt like his sword arm was broken again.
"You miss him, man," was Gwaine's stunning contribution. "Don't worry, I miss him too! Next time, I'm going with him."
Arthur refused to voice how appealing the idea was. "I. Do. Not. Miss. People."
"Not even me, husband?" Guinevere's voice was sweet.
The knights chuckled—only Elyan looked as panicked as Arthur felt.
What would Merlin say?
"We will never be far apart enough for me to have to miss you," he said smoothly.
The knights oohed as he kissed her hand. She smiled, looking quite surprised.
He supposed the idiot came in useful sometimes.
Then came the time for a patrol Arthur had to lead.
"No, Arthur, servants don't go on patrol," Guinevere explained patiently. "It's dangerous, remember?"
"Merlin always comes," he argued.
"Merlin has no sense of self-preservation," Percival opined. "He goes into more battles we do, all without any armour or weapons."
This unsettled Arthur. "I protect him," he argued.
"You try," Guinevere's voice was gentle. "But no other servant is going to run that risk."
"My own subjects don't have faith in me?" He sounded injured even to himself.
"Not to protect them at a time when your priorit ought to be protecting yourself," she responded; the knights were all silent. "Tell me, Arthur, how much attention do you really pay Merlin during battles?"
"He hides behind a tree like a coward, anyway," he pointed out, hating all these new revelations that were coming in his manservant's absence.
"Don't call him that," Gwaine snapped.
"Merlin is the farthest thing from a coward," Leon agreed. "I remember the horro that used to pass as food before he started coming along on patrol. And no other patrol batch gets to take a servant with them. They all have to pitch their own tents and cook their own food."
"Well, if they can do it, so can we," Elyan said optimistically.
This proved to be misplaced very quickly.
They barely patrolled, because they were too busy dealing with one crisis after another.
"I am never letting Merlin take a vacation again," Arthur growled.
"You are so spoiled, Princess," Gwaine laughed scornfully.
"You aren't much better," he growled. "Didn't you survive on your own out there for years? How are you so useless in the wilderness?"
"Hey, I didn't exactly live out in the woods. I always gambled enough to land an inn."
"And what about the rest of you?" Arthur demanded from his knights.
They stammered and offered weak excuses.
At least Percival and Elyan got something done about firewood and food.
Even if it tasted terrible.
Leon shrugged. "It's better than some of the slop I've had before."
Gwaine grimaced, pushing his bowl away. "Seriously? "
"Really."
As Leon regaled them with horror stories, Arthur heard movement. "The horses! Which one of you idiots tied and tended to them?"
"Not me, it was someone else's job," every one of them chorused.
It was in that chaos that they were attacked.
Arthur was almost glad for it.
He wasn't quite so glad when the torture began.