'Men at Arms'. Merlin. Redshirts. G.

[whynot]

WHERE IS MY [spoiler for upcoming 'Merlin' episode] ALREADY

Anyway. I wrote this at one of the camelot_fleet parties a few weeks ago when heather11483 gave the prompt "Clueless Guard #2/Clueless Guard #3".

This one is for the redshirts.


Men at Arms
Merlin. The knights and guards of Camelot. 970 words. Rated G.
"He wants to be heartened by Sir Leon when he tells them that Camelot needs them now more than ever, and he wants his trust in his prince to be enough, but Bedwyr wonders."


The word spread quickly enough that Lancelot had been cast out for treachery and lies. ("And magic?" said Sir Calhoun. "I heard it was magic."

"That's just the king's claptrap getting to you. Not everyone who's better than you is doing it by magic, Calhoun. In fact, I can guarantee that they're not!"

"'Claptrap', Gaheris?" Calhoun chortled. "Perhaps you'd like to join Lancelot in being cast out for treachery!"

"God save the king, my friend,” sighed Sir Gaheris. “God save him always, especially from himself.") And it was a shame, because Sir Bedwyr had liked Lancelot, who seemed good-hearted though a little clumsy at court. And hadn't they all been a little clumsy at first, overwhelmed by the duty they had just won for themselves?

"You have not been at Camelot as long as I have," Gaheris told him, "so perhaps you will not agree with me, but consider Lancelot one of the lucky ones."

Bedwyr frowns. "Why?"

"He will lead a longer life than us."

+

These are dark days at Camelot if Gaheris is to be believed, and Bedwyr finds himself torn between the evidence of his eyes and the idealism that he is loathe to give up. He wants to be heartened by Sir Leon when he tells them that Camelot needs them now more than ever, and he wants his trust in his prince to be enough, but Bedwyr wonders. Strange monsters come from who knows where, and they are such stuff as nightmares are made of. Strangers come from all over and throw the kingdom into chaos, and each time more and more of his comrades fall.

When Bedwyr became a knight, Camelot was the shining jewel of these territories: wealthy, powerful, and fortified. Kerys envied them, Mercia feared them, and Northumbria courted their favor. This changed when the queen died, or so Bedwyr had heard from one of the squires. That was when magic left the kingdom; it died with her. It left the kingdom weak with grief. One of the cooks said no no no, the queen was killed by a witch, didn't you know. The stories have tangled themselves through the years, and Bedwyr finds that the past is as unclear as the future. It's getting more difficult to tell where the magic ends and where it begins. The superstitious say that there is dissolution in the air, and that the kingdom cannot keep going like this. Something is making the foundations crumble; something is trying to take it apart and start anew.

"Don't listen to Gaheris, friend," Sir Calhoun tells him one day. He slices an apple as they wait on the training grounds for the other knights. Across the field the prince is yelling at his manservant for one reason or another, as the prince is wont to do. "He has been a knight a long time," says Calhoun, "and it’s made him cynical.”

"He doesn't want to be a knight anymore?" Bedwyr asks, as he takes a proffered apple slice from Calhoun.

"That's not what I said,” says Calhoun, “but understand that Gaheris has lost many friends to Camelot's recent... attacks. He is weary."

"But... but he is still a knight," Bedwyr ventures.

"Yes. That is the problem."

+

There are strange things afoot under the earth of Camelot.

Things move by themselves, the guards say. There are horrible noises like the roar of some demon and the clanking of chains. Sometimes the guards fall to an enchanted asleep, and wake up hours later with no idea of what has taken place.

Calhoun rolls his eyes. "The guards are fools. You don't have to pay them too much attention."

"Is it not our duty as knights to honor and respect the people of Camelot?" asks Bedwyr.

And that’s when Calhoun gives him a look that indicates he doesn’t think much of Bedwyr’s intelligence. "No. Our duty is to protect Camelot."

"The guards are idiots," Gaheris agrees, and he doesn't usually agree with Calhoun on much.

"Perhaps these strange things underground," says Bedwyr, a teasing smile on his face, "have to do with Camelot's dark days of which you speak, Gaheris."

"The guards have been scared of the underground for years," Gaheris shrugs. "They're afraid of the dark, nothing more."

But later when Bedwyr talks to the guard named Alcott, his suspicions arise again.

"Wasn't just noises this time!" Alcott confesses. "There were voices! I heard voices!"

"What sort of voices?" asks Bedwyr. "What did they say?"

"It was saying things about the prince! And... and Camelot!"

"Bad things? Alcott, tell me."

But Alcott's recounts are a phantasmagoria of doom and death, destiny and magical bargains, witches and wizards. They sound like nothing so much as the ramblings of a madman, and Bedwyr has to wonder if they are working the man too hard. Alcott is not a liar, so if he is not a madman, then presumably he is telling the truth. Bedwyr finds himself reluctantly preferring that Alcott is mad.

"Your doubts are slowing you," Gaheris says some days later, over pints of ale with Bedwyr and Calhoun.

"My doubts buoy me," Bedwyr protests. "But I suppose that if we hold honor to be sacred, then we are… we are willing to sacrifice many more things for it."

And Gaheris grins at this and seems almost proud. His expression makes Bedwyr uneasy. “But,” Gaheris says, "is it really for honor that we sacrifice?"

Bedwyr says, "But for what else?"

No one has an answer to that.

"A toast then, friends," Calhoun says instead, raising his glass. "For the sacrificed: for all those who have fallen, and for those who have yet to fall."

"Hear, hear," says Bedwyr.

"You are sentimental when you are drunk, Calhoun," Gaheris mutters, amused.

Calhoun replies, "I don't consider sentimentality a defect."

They drink.