Page 42 of The Dragon Ring
Someone grabbed my shoulder and pulled me upright. Hands forced my arms apart from where I’d been holding them in front of my face.
“Open your eyes. Are you hurt?” Arthur’s voice was rough and urgent.
I blinked open my eyes. I could see barely see him in only the dim light of the fire’s embers. Someone was kicking them back together from where they’d been scattered during the fight.
“Are you hurt?” he repeated, more gently.
I shook my head. Words wouldn’t come.
Merlin stepped up. There was a graze on his forehead and blood had run down the side of his face.
“Is she all right?”
Arthur nodded. “Shaken.”
That was an understatement. I’d just stabbed a man. I’d plunged a knife into living flesh, and I could feel the blade grating on the bone again and again in my head. Yes, I’d done it to save myself. Yes, he’d been an enemy. But he’d still been a living breathing human being. I couldn’t get the feel of it out of my head. What was I turning into?
Merlin picked up my blanket from my overturned bed and put it round my shoulders. “Come and have some wine. It’ll make you feel better.”
I looked down. The man who’d attacked me lay face down by my feet. My dagger still stuck out of his right thigh. Someone had sliced halfway through his neck, and the ground was slick with his blood. I could smell the iron in it. Someone had killed him– for me. But in the heat of the moment I would have done the same. It had been him or me.
Arthur put a booted foot on the dead man and turned him over. His helmet rolled off his head revealing long golden hair stained black by the congealing blood. He had a long moustache much like Theodoric’s.
“Saxons.”
Merlin nodded, his arms still round me, holding the blanket in place.
Arthur bent down and pulled my dagger out. Before straightening up, he wiped it clean on the Saxon’s clothing. Then he handed it to me.
I couldn’t touch it. Even if I’d wanted to, my hands were shaking too much. There was still blood on it. I looked down at my right hand. The man’s blood was all over me too, drying on my skin and dark on the sleeve of my tunic. The bile rose in my throat, and I bent forward and vomited on the ground.
Merlin took the dagger and tossed it onto my bed. Then he ushered me toward the fire and found me the wineskin. There was some left in it, and he made me drink it. When I lifted it to my mouth I smelled the blood on my sleeve again and vomited a second time.
Tears of delayed shock streamed down my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ve never seen a dead man before. At least, not a man who’s died like that.” I’d seen my father, but that had been different. No one had tried severing his head.
Merlin guided me to sit on a large cornerstone that lay close to the fire. “You’ll feel better in a minute. Your first dead man’s always a shock.”
My sleeve was wet and cold. “I have to get out of these clothes. They’re covered in his blood.”
All around me Arthur’s men were moving about. I didn’t look at what they were doing, but from the sound of it they were stripping the bodies of armor. I didn’t want to know how many bodies there were. I didn’t want to see them.
Merlin fetched my saddle bags and rummaged through them until he found a clean undershirt and tunic. I didn’t care that the men were still milling about in the dark. I wriggled out of my bloody clothes and into the clean ones as fast as my shaking hands would allow, and Merlin rinsed my hand in beer to get rid of the horrible iron smell. Then I had another swig of wine and managed to keep it down. Merlin put his arm around my shoulders again and I leaned against him. He had a slightly musky, masculine smell to him that was reassuring. As the shock began to wear off, exhaustion swept over me in a tidal wave.
After a while, Arthur and Theodoric returned to the fireside. Flames crackled now from the new wood piled onto it. The front of me glowed with warmth, but my back, away from the fire, felt chilled. It reminded me of Bonfire Night and fireworks. My eyelids began to droop, but I forced myself to stay awake and listen to what they had to say.
Arthur turned to Merlin. “This was meant to look like a Saxon raid. The ones we killed are all Saxons. To a man. But it wasn’t. They were after one thing.” He nodded at me. “They were after her.”
I came properly awake.
“How do you know?” Merlin asked, his arm tightening around me protectively. He must surely have felt the responsibility of bringing me into this world. After all, I’d been here less than a week and he’d already nearly got me killed.
Arthur put his hand on his sword’s hilt, caressing it almost lovingly. “The one I killed wasn’t trying to kill her. He was trying to snatch her. He knew she was a woman. He was looking for her. They all were.”
“I don’t understand how they could have known we’d have her with us,” Theodoric said.
Merlin stiffened. “Morgana.”
Arthur nodded. Blood spatters flecked his face, but they weren’t his. “She used the Sight.” He glanced beyond Theodoric, at where Cei was making his way toward us, sword still in hand, dark with blood. “If you knew Gwen was coming, Merlin, then she could have as well.”
