Chapter 30 #3
“No,” Mordred said, letting out a long breath. “No, I am afraid of the very same thing, Galen. I can keep watch. I do not know which knights were in the square beyond Lancelot, who . . . who helped us.”
Galen’s expressive eyes swept toward Mordred’s for a brief second, contemplative but not at all surprised.
Then his attention returned to the injured healer, who was now gently settled on the table.
“Do you wager I can count on the usual lot of you?” the physician asked, gesturing wordlessly for Mordred to grab his supplies from the trunk.
“Palamedes, Gawain, Morien, Peredur,” he rattled off, snatching up Galen’s kit and placing it next to him on the table.
Elaine moaned and opened her eyes. “Large knife,” she stammered. “I’m . . . I’m bleeding out fast. Probably . . .” Her eyelids fluttered.
“Nicked an artery, I know.” Galen smiled kindly, holding her hand as he explained what he was going to do and how he was going to keep her safe.
A foreign emotion swelled in Mordred’s throat as he threaded a needle for the physician, placing it on the wooden tray.
He had worked beside Galen on the battlefield many times, when peace had been more an ideal than a reality in Camelot.
It somehow, all at once, felt as though it had happened yesterday, ten years ago, and to someone else entirely.
“Help me remove the packing,” Galen instructed. “We will need to be quick. I might have to cauterize.”
Time blurred as Mordred assisted the physician, night falling outside. Only once Elaine was bundled up in a woolen blanket, stable and resting on a cot, did he finally think about anything else.
“Nyneve . . . she did not go to the village with Elaine today, did she?” Mordred asked quietly, wanting to be sure.
Galen looked up at him and smiled. “Would’ve told you the second you walked through the door if she had,” the physician said, gripping his shoulder for a moment. “No, she’s in the noble quarters with some of the other healers. Lady Gwendolen is probably giving birth about now.”
“Good,” Mordred said, feeling as though he could weep. “I will find someone we can trust and send them over.”
“And then?” Galen asked, cutting another strip of muslin. His eyes gleamed bright in the candlelight as he met Mordred’s gaze.
The changeling smiled at him, all teeth. “I imagine you already know.”
Mordred tracked the monk to a pub’s private room for card-playing. He thought perhaps the brown-cloak was attempting to hide out somewhere unexpected, but when he slipped through the door, he found the monk was actually playing and drinking as though he had not stabbed a woman in cold blood.
Like most predators, Mordred was patient.
He settled into a corner. He bought a pint of ale.
He listened to the man laugh and joke, rousing his fellows for another round.
Elaine was lucky to be alive, the monk’s long knife having just missed a major artery.
Still, she would likely never regain full use of her abdominal muscles.
A woman who did nothing but help, but serve, had been brutalized by one of Merlin’s lawless men.
So, Mordred sat and listened, wondering whether the man deserved matching blows—or something worse.
The moment came when the monks, rising to depart for the night and believing they were alone, began to speak about the events of the day in hushed tones.
The brown-cloak who had attacked Elaine scoffed and muttered, “I hope that stupid bitch is dead.”
Mordred toasted his half-empty cup of ale to the table of monks, though they could not see him across the smoky room. “To your last hour alive,” he murmured, taking a long sip. “Enjoy.”
It had been a long time since Mordred had hunted a mortal.
Fey often stalked Their quarry first, making use of mimicry and misdirection.
Mordred slunk through Camelot’s quiet streets like a shadow attached to the length of the monk’s cloak.
Instinctively, he matched his footfalls to those of the brown-cloaks, waiting for the right place, the right time, the right moment.
He would wait a very long time, if he must.
The Cynosbythrae bared its teeth in his chest, a growl rising in its throat. Unsure if he could control it the way he needed to, Mordred reached into his boot for his dagger. The iron bit into him, but he welcomed the pain. It cleared his mind of anything but the hunt.
He slowed when the pack of monks slowed. He picked up his pace when they did. He paused when they got turned around by the citadel’s old, winding streets. He was simply part of the group until one of them looked too closely over their shoulder. Then he was nothing more than a rustle in the dark.
The brown-cloaks cut through the blacksmiths’ quarter, which was deserted this time of night.
It was, he decided, as good a place as any.
He called to the shadows clinging to the squat stone buildings, commanding the darkness to peel away and become something stranger.
When the Cynosbythrae strained against his control, Mordred cut his fingers on the edge of the iron blade, quieting the power just enough to focus.
As the monks scattered, shouting at shadows and drawing their blades, Mordred neatly herded his quarry away from the rest of the group.
Then he dragged him deep into an empty foundry.
Mordred yanked the brown-cloak’s hood down.
He was not surprised to find an ordinary man.
His broken teeth and pox-scarred skin likely meant he was far more like the woman he had tried to murder than the sorcerer he served.
Pulling the many shadows of the foundry around him to stop a passing guard from hearing anything, Mordred removed the handkerchief he had stuffed into the brown-cloak’s mouth.
“P-please,” the monk pleaded, the whites of his eyes bright in the gloom of the low-slung structure. “What do you want?”
The changeling shrugged. “Justice for Elaine,” he said in a low voice. “But justice is a rare thing in this citadel. I will accept retribution in its place.”
He slammed the monk into the stone wall, and the man began to scream. Mordred held him there by the throat, studying him, forever impressed by the propensity mortals had for making so much noise.
“You can keep screaming,” he said. “No one is coming.”
But the man cried out for help anyway. Mordred closed his fingers around the brown-cloak’s throat, all that patient, coiled violence inside of him thrumming. He had learned control at a very early age. He had little choice. Two goddesses had seen fit to put an apocalypse into his chest.
“My God is always with me,” the monk said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Oh Lord, lift this burden from me, I beg of you; save me from the arms of this beast.”
Mordred paused, looking around in the darkness expectantly. Nothing happened. He smiled at the brown-cloak.
“It seems,” he murmured, “that your god has forsaken you.”