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[lord-alexander.livejournal.com]

Title: The Wanderer - Part VII/?
Author: Serpentis lord_alexander
Pairing: Impossibly AU and historical Arthurian!Monaboyd with a few other pairings thrown in for some good measure, aye?
Rating: Bright and shiny and R!
Summary: Dominic hates Saxons, but then who doesn't? Driven out of his home by the invaders, he is a lowly and rather bored young knight at the court of Arthur. William is of the Kingdom of Dal Riada, and comes to the court of Arthur to filfil his personal destiny. But then what does this matter when death is just a swordblade away?
Disclaimer: Not mine. Even in AU.
Feedback: Almost as precious as my history.
Author's Notes: You bastards in the US! Sending hurricanes over my way when I'm on a ship in the Pentland Firth - that's the sea between Orkney and mainland Scotland. Worst water in the world, apparently. And you buggers sent that hurricane so we had force 10 south westerlies and fecking 40 foot waves! Stop having hurricanes, that's an order, right? I'm back, but you guessed that, and this will be updated more regularly, of course. The tales included are Welsh and Irish mythology, and explain a blatant plot hole that was pointed out to me by someone - the Taliesin thing at least.

Previous parts - [I][II][III][IV][V][VI]



A second day of riding across the lingering uplands, and they soon forded the great river, that would become known to others in later millennia as the Severn. The geography was such that instead of making south, the entire army had proceeded along the Wye valley to the north and east, for the broad flat river with the dangerous neap tides and vicious bore wave of autumn and spring was impassable. A natural border between the mountains of the Welsh Celts and the flatter English counties that courted them.

At the crossing, Dominic's horse hating the water and balking goggle eyed until Sean with ruthless efficiency too the flat of his sword to her cringing black haunches, they picked their way south, using the river as their guide, heading towards Badonbury rings and battle with the foreign warriors who besieged the earthworks.

"They are strong, these men of Saxony. Thor has blessed them with their weapons, with axe and hammer, they do not wield swords. The swing is slower but the danger in the massiveness of the blade."

Viggo who was as closely related to them in ancestry knew what he was discussing. He fought with his own axe, preferring it to the lighter weapons of the Celts, and they had all seen the terror that the bronze edges had done to others.

"There is the Angel of Death, they mock those Christians with their doing. An axe blow from groin to throat, then the ribs are cracked apart like the breaking of an egg. It does not kill, they do not wish to kill until the lungs are dragged back and over their shoulders as wings, and finally the heart ripped from the casings with their bare hands."

Elijah, riding so his knee was lightly touching Andy's, shuddered.

"Death is the reward, my friends, not their passing. The afterlife is of carousing in the halls of their ancestors, of beautiful women who are lesser goddesses coming to take their souls from the battlefield. To die in combat, that is to pass into their heaven. To die a noble death and allow the Maidens to collect them."

"Don't sound so fucking wistful."

The sardonic northern accent of Sean cut through the hypnotic beauty of Viggo's speech, slicing the slightly nasal accent, and the Dane bowed his head and quieted. It was unspoken, between the two great warriors, that Viggo believed in such a death. When he was cut down by the end of his days, it would be upon the field, among the others who had been slaughtered, not in bed. Never in bed. He would rather become a mercenary and fight until he was so infirm that he had to die in battle rather than allow the ignominy of a non-glorious death. Once, when they had talked in that copse near Camelot, by the edge of the slumbering Wye, Viggo had extracted from his friend the promise to allow him the freedom to do that. Death held no fear for either of them.

*****

Clink. Clink. The chatter was less now as they pressed on, the snap of leather harness and the jingle of bits eerie. It seemed that even the birds had ceased to sing, and there was a heaviness of ennui overlying them all. Rhiannon, Elijah's friendly whore, was half-heartedly flirting, though the closeness of the day meant that all were too sleepy to respond to her fair advances.

A beautiful day, though slow, the air like molten copper and the sun too white on armour and skin.

Andrew, damp curls clinging to his forehead, was silent. A strange turn of events indeed, for the river man never was so quiet even in sleep. Rather pink across his forearms where he'd pushed his sleeves up for some respite from the head, he looked exhausted. Not sleeping had caused havoc; no, watching Elijah sleep in his arms had caused havoc. Memorising every little nuance of the youth's face, the shape of his hand as it rested on Andrew's chest, the exact colour and texture of his hair. As if he was going to lose him.

Still he did not warm to that whore, who was smiling impertinently, her pert and rather cheeky little nose freckled by the sunlight.

He was not jealous, of course, not really. Elijah was not his, and had a perfect right to communicate with any whores or men he deemed fit, but there was that terrible pain that seemed to cleave his throat at the thought of the beautiful boy being seduced by the company of another. Losing him. It could never happen, though Andrew knew that if it was demanded of him that he would turn his back. Turn about and allow the boy his own life, with another. It did not mean that it wouldn't hurt, of course. It would destroy him, consume his mind in a fit of madness, but after that there would be the future. But then Andy didn't want to think of a future where there was no young man with that slightly Judean accent resting against him and smiling up with those huge blue eyes.

A hand on his shoulder, and that black beast of Dominic's loomed a little close, her rider the one who touched him.

"Come on, mate, I'm stealing you."

*****

"What the hell we doin' over here? You keep that horse away from me!"

Dominic had efficiently put about fifty foot followers between them and Elijah, who was looking rather lost without his dark friend. He was luckily - for the northerner - distracted by Viggo dropping back to entertain the young man, and the moment of worry for them passed. The Dane was excellent, he decided. Thank Christ for him.

"Just wanted to ask you about something, alright? Yeah, it's kind of...right, it's kind of personal."

It had been easily made, that decision about who to discuss the matter with. Sean was unapproachable, and therefore not in the running. Elijah was a chatterbox and a virgin, and had never had such urges to Dominic's mind, so was out of the picture. This had left Viggo and Andrew. The Dane was, of course, the gel that held them all together. Discreet, tactful, educated. There was one problem, however, and this was that his problem was more physical than metaphorical. The thought of telling the Northman about what occurred in his breeches every time that fucking Scotti emerged made Dominic need a shower such was the horror. Viggo was a genius with anything that didn't involve bodily actuality; love held no terrors, philosophy was easy. But sexual acts? It wouldn't have worked. Not that Andrew was last choice, of course! He was the one that had immediately recommended himself. The Kentaii was a man of the world, he was a good talker and a fair listener, and above all he wasn't embarrassed by the mention of functions. He had an excellent line in filthy jokes, he laughed over the most personal things, he was...the one.

"Fire away mate." A reassuring grin from the tired and rather drawn face, and Dominic recognised the same lack of rest in the man that he'd discovered in his own visage.

"I'm getting bloody hard ons all the fucking time when I think of someone..."

"Go fuck 'em, get it out the system."

Andy. So practical.

"That's the fucking problem."

Dominic looked around and noted there was no one watching them apart from Elijah, and he was a fair distance from them.

"This bloke..."

Andrew pulled a small booklet from his pocket and examined something.

"You were 16-1 to be a poof, I got good money out of that..."

There was a moment of frenzied whispering, culminating in Dominic smacking Andrew around the head and then realising that his friend was wearing a helmet. A bronze one. The impact reverberated to his shoulder as Andrew snickered.

"Shut up, you tosser. There's this bloke right, and every time he comes over I get really hard and want to do pervy sweaty manly things with him, to the extent where I...climax..."

"Come you mean, you dirty bugger," interjected the still grinning Andy.

"Okay! Come then. He comes near me, I come in my kecks. I think about him and someone else and I'm having to wank. I think about him on his own and it's like I've got Excalibur in me leggings. Every fucking time. And I would ask, but the bastard's really religious, and fucking scary as well..."

"You want to shag the Scotti, don't you mate?"

Dominic drew himself up to his full height.

"I do not want to...how the hell do you know?"

The darker man patted the younger on the shoulder, fingers warm and sunburned.

"My job to know, how the hell you think I run the book if I ain't knowing what's going on, eh? And you leer at him."

"I don't leer!"

"You so do. Anyway, mate, you got your work cut out there if you want to shag that Scotti."

*****

The Celtic elements were clamouring for entertainment, so they gathered around the fire in the dusk.

Sean carved, fingers moving over the wood automatically, staring at the flames. How was he to know that his closest associate was growing worried with the introspection that the blond was showing. Viggo, riding with the other for most of the day, had barely been spoken to though he had opened conversation a dozen times. The replies were one syllable, or nods, the blue eyes of the northerner fixed on some distant point. And when he'd touched Sean on the arm, a small gesture that was tolerated in company, it was shrugged off like a horse shaking away a fly.

Andrew had not opened for business, and the rumours were sweeping the camp that the trader was back to his old form. The previous day was a small glitch in a glittering career. The lack of bartering was also possibly due to Elijah, rather drunk and heavy in the older man's arms, lips pressed against the softness of Andrew's throat and body nestled between the fork of the other's thighs. Contented, of course.

Dominic rested on his stomach, lazily cleaning his mare's bridle, his voice low and strangely musical. That bardic nature inherent to all Celtic peoples in the language drifted through his words, in the twists and loops of the formality in which he spoke.

"It is said by the Gods that Taliesin is the son of the Cerredwin, the Keeper of the Cauldron in Annw, the Otherworld, and it is spoken that he is the natural child of Gwion Bach, the stirrer of that cauldron. For her child the repulsive Afagddu she created a potion of wisdom and knowledge, which was stirred for a year and a day. But as it brewed to the glory of reckoning, three drops of the mixture fell upon the finger of Gwion Bach, and he received the knowledge and inspiration, that Bardic inspiration that flows through the veins of all the Kymric peoples. He fled to avoid the Cerredwin, but she pursued him, and their battle raged until, in the form of a grain of wheat, Gwion Bach was devoured by the goddess. He was reincarnated as her son, Taliesin, the Radiant Brow, and was cast into a river by his mother where he was discovered by a child. So beautiful was he that he..."

"The bard is pig ugly," came the comment, Sean not even bothering to look up though Viggo, in a spasm of relief, smiled.

"Christ, I don't tell stories that often, and you come barging in and fuck it up! Okay, the end of it is that Taliesin was the Bard of all Bards, and those descended in the tradition from him, and are considered the most brilliant, are called by his name. That's all I wanted to say. Viggo? Your go."

"How can I follow you, Dominic? I know of few tales of your ancestors."

A shadow to the left, and Sean's fingers stroked the scabbard that lay next to him at all times. It had been made clear to all the usual revellers that they would not welcome guests tonight. When this was decreed, only a fool or a brave man would come to try sup with them, so it was natural for the northman to be wary.

"May I join you, sons of these and distant shores?"

The voice, lyrical and peat-bog soft, lilting with a music that Dominic had tried to produce in his tale, and the Scotti, without the war paint but in his battle clothes, stepped into the yellow light. At least this time Dominic was on his stomach, his arousal granite hot against his thighs as his gaze skimmed the beautifully made body and up to the attractive ageless face.

"Yeah, go on then mate, but you're next with the story, alright? And none of that Biblical stuff, it's proper stuff here."

Andrew felt his friend's foot try and kick him hard, but the swing missed.

"There was a woman, who was the most beautiful woman to breath upon the island, and in his greed Conchobar Mac Nessa promised from when she was born that he will take her as his wife. But the Gods are wrathful with those who are more fair than they, and they cast a curse upon the woman. For though her beauty was unsurpassable, she would bring death to the island, death and famine and destruction as said in the prophecy of the Druid Cathbad. But, for she was fair, she lived. And when it came time for her to enter wedlock, she did not wish to do so. Conchobar, King of Ulster, was old, and she had long desired to marry another. Upon seeing a raven drinking blood on the snow, her lover would have hair as black as death, skin as fair as ice, and blood as scarlet as rubies. And he was Naoise, who she eloped with to Alba. But Conchobar wished for the fair Deirdre to return to him, and in his anger betrayed them both by promising freedom if they returned to the Isle. And when they did, in his anger, the King had Naoise slaughtered before the lady. A year passed, and they were married, but she who was so fair was so bleak in her unsmiling pain that Conchobar gave Deirdre to the man who had killed her Naoise as his whore. But, the Gods taking pity upon her, allowed the wretched creature to fling herself from the warrior's chariot, dashing her brains upon a rock. And, there, where she lay buried, the unwilling queen of Ulster, a pine grew and became entangled with that growing from the burial place of her Naoise, and they were never parted in the Otherworld."

A new story, for the tales of the Welsh Celts and those from Hibernia rarely entwined.

Dominic, who had lost himself in the cadence of speech and the skilled way that William used his speech, had almost forgotten his erection. How to lose oneself and mind to a voice? Easily, so easily when that voice was so beautiful, and the tale so tragic. That bitterness, however, was dulled by the sweetness of their joining in death. To love someone to such greatness that they would be willing to die? Sweet sacrifice, more noble than any other death.

"Aren't you Ulster royal blood? Nice to know your ancestor was a fucking cunt, isn't it?"

Sean always had to spoil it; he was doing this far too often recently, and Dominic had sensed the change almost as well as Viggo had. That shift to the left, like he was preparing for something, purposely pushing them all away.

Dominic shivered, and passed William the mead, for once his mind and body not focussed on the Dal Riadan, but on something far more important; a friend imploding before them.