Chapter 43 #2
“Stay in it, Guinna!” Lancelot called, sensing her weariness as he shot a hopeful look down the path toward town.
No one was coming. Who knew how far away Gawain had been?
Vera couldn’t keep taking the blows on her shield.
The pain burned in her wrist. She reluctantly started parrying with her sword.
She had to drop the shield to wield her weapon with two hands; she needed all her strength to steady her sword.
Her assailant leered as he scooped up the discarded shield.
She tried to take advantage of his movement, swinging her sword hard, and he barely got the shield in place.
Vera’s sword bit into the wooden shield and wedged there.
It wouldn’t yank free. It had been the wrong choice.
It left her too close to this man, his inky black eyes lapping at her soul.
This was bad. If she stayed close enough to try to leverage her sword free, he could swing up and stab her in the side.
It was too high a risk. She let go of her sword and scrambled back.
Vera grabbed a rock from the ground, the only thing near her feet remotely resembling a weapon.
His advance was fast. How was he not exhausted?
Vera swayed where she stood, fighting to stay alert with the rock cocked back, ready to throw.
Lancelot was fully entangled. He wouldn’t even know what happened to her. Vera stared defiantly up into the hateful face of her assailant and—
She heard the thunder of horse hooves growing steadily louder. She and the attacker looked up in its direction together, and the giant was promptly sliced into oblivion by a horsed warrior and his great upward-arcing swing. Vera staggered back.
The rider glanced back at her as he rode toward Lancelot.
It was Arthur. Vera stomped on the discarded shield with one foot, wrenched her stuck sword free with aching arms, and ran behind him.
Neither he nor his horse wore any armor.
He swung down from his saddle and ran to join the fray as he yelled without turning back, “Ride, Vera!”
She didn’t want to leave them but knew she’d be no help fighting. Vera sprinted to Arthur’s horse.
“Where is Gawain?” she heard Lancelot shout.
Vera was struggling to get her foot in the stirrup when she looked back at the fight as Arthur reached the three remaining men. He had only reeled his arm back to swing when he faltered. For a split second, panic gripped her heart. Was he hurt?
And then she saw.
The oldest farmer in front of Arthur sprouted a gaping hole in the center of his chest. His skin, his organs—all that had once filled that space was removed in a perfect circle, evaporated into nothing.
He crumbled to the earth before the light could leave his eyes.
The same happened to the man in front of Lancelot, too.
From where she stood, clutching the saddle of Arthur’s horse, foot suspended in the stirrup, Vera saw straight through the man’s body to the unstained grass beneath him.
He didn’t even bleed. The third man jolted.
His black pupils shrank in a flash. His eyes cleared and registered surprise as Lancelot delivered a clean and fatal blow.
Vera looked to the road like a magnet had drawn her attention.
Merlin, still horsed, had both hands raised before him. There was a fire in his eyes, and power pulsed from him. For all the times Vera had stood toe-to-toe with him and shouted him down, she’d never once thought to fear him.
Relief and exhaustion collided, and she dropped to her knees, panting and dizzy. Then, there were hands on her shoulders, and Arthur knelt in front of her.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes searching over her for injury and settling on her face. Expectant foreboding etched his brow with lines.
Vera thought of how her body had forgotten how to draw breath after she killed Thomas. But that was different. She nodded.
“She was brilliant,” Lancelot said, panting with his hands on his knees. “Held her own better than I could have hoped.”
“I had to fight,” Vera said through heaving breaths. “I couldn’t—I’m so sorry.” She hoped he heard all that was unsaid behind her apology. But as he stroked her hair, she could see in his eyes that he understood.
“I know.” Arthur kissed her forehead, clutching her shoulders, and she leaned her head into him, still catching her breath but not shaking. Not in pieces. And relieved. He didn’t hate her.
Merlin caught up to them with Gawain on his heels. “What were you doing out here?” he demanded, his smoldering eyes locking onto Lancelot.
“Training. Running,” he said. “I thought the risk was where you lot were. Those men were bewitched and set on the queen.”
Vera sat bolt upright, ignoring the sweat that threatened to drip into her eyes. “They were?”
Lancelot nodded. “They were hell-bent on getting to you. I was just in the way and—” He gestured at the dead men littering the ground around them. “Did you see their eyes?”
She had. The unnaturally ravenous, black eyes.
Lancelot knelt down and wiped his bloodied blade clean in the grass as he spoke. “The Saxon?” His eyes darted between Merlin and Gawain. “Does that mean he’s here?”
Gawain climbed down from his horse. He didn’t answer. Instead, he strode purposefully from dead body to dead body, pulling their shirts aside at their chests and moving on after only a few seconds.
“What are you doing?” Lancelot asked, voicing the question for all of them.
Gawain ignored him. He went to the next man, the one Vera had seen behind the inn, the one she spent all her energy to keep from killing her.
Gawain stayed at his side longer. He mumbled quiet words with his eyes closed and his hand hovering above the man’s bare skin.
A breeze rustled the nearby trees, and Arthur’s horse stamped uneasily in the dirt—and then an unnatural squelch came from the man’s body like a stuck boot being pulled from the mud.
A bloody clump zoomed into Gawain’s hand.
He wiped it on his trousers, turned it, and held it up to Merlin. “A trigger hex.”
“What is that?” Vera asked.
“It’s a multi-layer bewitchment,” Gawain said. “This man was the trigger, embedded with a vial of your blood. It bound him to you. Once the embedded person sees their target, they have the scent and track the target like hunting dogs. He infected the others.”
“That’s possible?” Lancelot asked in disbelief. “Mages can do that?”
“It’s mostly theoretical,” Merlin said. “And it’s strictly forbidden. I’ve never seen it used so effectively in practice. They are imprecise and terribly dangerous.”
“How did he get her blood?” Arthur asked.
Merlin shook his head. “I’d guess it was some sort of arrangement with Viviane. Collateral, maybe?”
“Does that mean the Saxon has been here recently?” Vera asked.
“There’s no way to know.” Merlin reached for the vial, and Gawain readily handed it to him. He incinerated it right there in his palm. “After a trigger hex is set, it will last until it’s cleansed by a mage or the embedded one dies. Now that we know he’s used them, Gawain and I can scan for more.”
The fallen men here weren’t evil. Just bewitched. Lancelot stared at the last farmer he’d cut down, the one whose eyes cleared and who was left in confusion as his life ended. He sighed heavily and rubbed at his brow. Blood trickled from a cut above his elbow.
Aided by Gawain’s magic, they moved the bodies to the edge of the wood while Merlin prepared to ride ahead to the town. He’d check for more hexes and go on to Oxford to prepare the mages for their arrival.
He looked at Vera from astride his horse, his expression resolved with dread. “There’s no turning back now.”
Vera wasn’t sure what she could say to him. “Thank you for saving us.”
He breathed a sigh. “I would never abandon you, Your Majesty.”
She expected shame to rise at his loyalty and more so at the path that Vera had condemned them to with her choice, but it did not.
As Merlin disappeared down the road, Arthur walked his horse in a wide loop to help calm the beast and Gawain hovered near Lancelot.
Lancelot’s expression broke from the drawn anguish that had been fixed there since the fight ended. He chuckled. “You want to heal that, don’t you?” he said, glancing at the cut on his arm.
“Very much,” Gawain said. He launched into it immediately.
Lancelot grinned over his head at Vera. “We’re lucky. Healing gifts are extremely rare.”
Gawain’s face reddened in the midst of his focus. “Mine aren’t good for much more than cuts and scrapes,” he said as he rubbed the wound the way he had with Vera’s. But he glanced up at her for a breath before he added, “There are greater healing gifts out there, but I am fortunate.”
“It’s the gift he was born with,” Lancelot said as Gawain shut his eyes in concentration and hissed, “Shh!”
Lancelot’s grin broadened. He tilted his head down and touched his forehead to Gawain’s, as close to a hug as he could manage with his arm occupied by healing magic. Gawain’s cheeks reddened. He fought not to smile and lost the battle, staring up at Lancelot with an intimate sort of adoration.
And in that instant, Vera understood what she’d been missing all along.
That wasn’t just friendship. The night at the Yule festival when Vera thought Lancelot had been off in the field with a girl, hadn’t Gawain been right there on the edge of the light, too?
The way she and Lancelot ran less after that.
The way Gawain and Lancelot were nearly always together.
Holy shit. Now that she’d seen it, it was obvious. And a selfish pang followed. Lancelot was her best mate. She wished he’d told her.
Vera rode back to town with Arthur on his horse, and Lancelot rode with Gawain. She made herself resist looking over at them every few minutes. It was the least she could do; this wasn’t a story she was meant to know.
The soldiers were ready when they arrived. Tristan took it in turns to bear hug them on their return. Vera pulled away from the embrace quickly.
They needed to get moving. Arthur wanted an audience with the mages as soon as they arrived in Oxford, the sense of peril more imminent a threat than ever before.
Gawain hung back with Vera while she mounted her horse.
She could never tell if he wanted to talk or had simply chosen the area near her to stand.
“There’s more to what you know of Mordred, isn’t there?” he asked.
“He kills Arthur.” She said the words so quietly that, at first, she thought Gawain hadn’t heard her.
He stared away at the others and said, “I’m glad we’re taking action to thwart him.”
“What if it’s the wrong action?” Vera asked.
“Because Mordred may have set hexes to come after you?”
“Whatever I know, it must be vital. It was selfish not to do Merlin’s spell work if it would have given you that advantage. That has to be the most strategic course of action.”
“I disagree. Lancelot told me what happened with Merlin this morning,” he said. “Merlin is far too intent on what is locked within you, Guinevere.” He fixed her with a piercing stare. “There is more in you than memory.”
The skin on the back of her neck prickled. “What do you mean?”
Gawain stared into the distance for a long time before speaking. “I’m glad you refused and that you’re safe.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Vera said. “You do that a lot, you know. And I am well aware that it is deliberate.”
He gave a quiet chuckle and then a long sigh. “Don’t underestimate what you might have to offer.” His words were slow as if he was choosing them carefully.
Vera thought back to how he’d referred to Grady as an inhuman specimen, yet here he was, facing a dire situation and answering it with compassion.
“Why are you protecting me?” she asked.
Gawain looked Vera squarely in the eyes. She’d always been so distracted by how deeply set they were, how he often looked up at people with that unnerving scowl. But he had very kind eyes.
“Because the mages have a part in this, and we must be accountable for it,” he said. “And because you are my queen.”
Vera stared down at her toes, touched by his loyalty. She was stunned when he spoke again.
“But most of all, because you are my friend.”