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[lord-alexander.livejournal.com]

Title: The Wanderer - Part VIII/?
Author: Serpentis lord_alexander
Pairing: Impossibly AU and historical Arthurian!Monaboyd with a few other pairings thrown in for some good measure, aye?
Rating: Depressive 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: Only a short one. Just to warn you - this part isn't happy.

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



To the west lay the hill fort, earthen embankments flanked with wooden palisades and those who had been besieged, pale faced and thin from the ordeal of the battle. For seven days and nights they had repelled those wishing to destroy them and now, finally, the armies of Arthur ap Uther had come.

It was early, just before dawn, and there was no sleep to be had by brave warriors, whores, or those who had followed the procession from Camelot. Those who were inclined to lose their fears for moments were drinking steadily, or laying with the women. Others talked quietly, or were cool and solitary, watching the starlit sky drift effortlessly pink and purple. No one was idle, not now, not with the copper of war scribing their veins. Adrenalin and fear. Uncertain but passionate bedfellows. They never allowed their possessors to rest in a mesh of anything but the realisation that they could die here, on these low downs.

Viggo sharpened his axe with stone and sand, burnishing the murderous blades to their dull bronzed gleam. She had seen blood before, his people believed that once metal had a taste for death then it was more dangerous. Once it had sliced into the body and had killed, it craved more and more. He had purposely, without the others seeing the paganistic ritual, ran his finger along the cutting edge, watching his own blood spill. Incitement for the spirit of his ancestors who had lived and died by war, who almost haunted this weapon. It was not just Viggo's axe; it was created long before by his grandfather, and then passed through the generations to him, and those before had fallen with her clutched in their hands.

Without his religion, and even the ancient beliefs of those before him, Sean was purely workmanlike in his oiling of the great sword he carried.

For once, by some agreement never voiced but obvious to both, they were touching. The Dane's shin pressed against Sean's thigh, and they did not move even when the others came from the eerie growing light to meet with them. Pulled back from the rest of the army, isolated in their togetherness, they had not spoken a word to each other since the previous evening. But they had communicated, with the glance of blue eyes, and the slight sardonic curve of Sean's mouth, or the arch of Viggo's brow. Tiny little nuances, learned from years of being so close that nothing could slide between them on a less physical level, and working for them both.

For once the northerner wasn't carving.

"Alright mate?"

Andrew, smiling though grey about the throat and temples, looked pinched. He wasn't a warrior, his sort were rarely gifted in battle though he did have a meanness in fighting and rarely was fair. Daggers, of course, to catch a man off-guard, and a sword that was chipped and dented but as sharp as Sean's tongue. He preferred other techniques, learned in drunken scuffles at Camelot. Andrew could shatter a man's pelvis with his heavy boots, a sharp and crushing blow to the groin that decimated those who attacked him, or the well-aimed blow that shattered arms and thighs. Not gentlemanly, of course, but who ever said the Kentaii was?

At his shoulder, curly hair tangling with the shocking dark locks of his mentor, Elijah appeared coltishly terrified and excited. Never having fought in such circumstances, he was desperate to prove his masculinity. A quick little creature, lithe and moving like an eel, he was talented with a sword but lacked the strength to be truly lethal. He would learn, though, for what was death and war if not an education? What was to be thrust into the heat of battle if it was not to teach the priceless beauty of being the victor? But he was scared, so scared that he was almost silent, following Andrew more shadow-like than ever.

"Seen Dominic? He like went off somewhere and he's like so not round here, is he?"

"He likes the solitude before he comes back to us, Elijah."

*****

Always like this before battle. Always alone to compose himself before affirming the closeness with his peers. Dominic lay in the long grass, on his back, and watched the sky transform.

It wasn't the young man taking himself away from others for the sake of doing so, there was method in the way he removed himself. Much of it was in some way for his prayers, never uttered before another soul. He had his religion, he believed in the Lord and His Son, and the Trinity, but to almost be weak and admit this before others? He had pride, of course. To do such a thing would be to arose the quiet amusement of his pagan friend, and the needling contempt of Sean, who had such a fierce loathing for anything Christian that he avoided those who he saw as overtly religious. Why the hatred was confined to the Church no one knew, not even Viggo, but it hadn't passed any of them that the northerner was more tolerant of the Dane's paganism, or the lingering Celtic religion that still was followed by some in the Army, or even the remnants of the Roman deities that had become more popular. Mithras, the bull-god of the War, taken from Persia and transplanted into the Roman legions, was still a deity worshipped. After all, was there not a pit in a secret place to the north of Camelot where young men were placed and a bull slaughtered above them so they could bathe in the blood and show their adherence to that God?

His prayers, of course, were whispered in his mind and fevered by the terror of what was to come.

And after them he lay, watching the sky, absorbing what lay around him. The grass whispering in the faint breeze, the slow waking calls of larks and linnets. Scents of meadows and fresh earth. Nature at her finest. It was pagan to love the land, but land was what Dominic was fighting for. Those acres lost to the foreigners in Cumbria, and his dead family; that was why he had come to Camelot and had fought for a king who was not even his own.

He lay, upon his back, and watched the sky turn to blood.

*****

They faced the invaders, and it was terrible.

Arthur, Romano-British Arthur, clung to the superior fighting techniques of his Mediterranean ancestors. The central body of men were foot soldiers, heavy shields as tall as a man, armed with short slashing swords and eight feet long spears. Each flank, to the right and left, was cavalry. Arthur himself led the right, entrusting Bors, faithful and most loyal of his knights, the latter.

The plan was simple, yet effective; the Saxon men would break themselves on the shields of those on foot, and as they retreated would be dispersed by those mounted on horseback. It was interesting to note that this technique would, nearly a thousand years later and combined with Welsh longbow archers, win the English the battle of Agincourt and therefore the majority of France. Reliance on foot, not on cavalry, was an ancient yet sweetly-successful method.

*****

On their horses, in the left flank - the loyalty of Elijah enforced this - and before them were the mighty armies of the enemy.

"Nasty looking bastards."

Dominic was lounging on Boudica and pretending not to care that he could die, watching the lines of tall fair-haired men before them, noting that few carried swords. There were axes, as vicious as Viggo's, named for their deeds of course, named for what they had wrought upon those who were cut down. Hammers, weapons of Thor, also gleamed, and these men were wielding them as if they weighed little more than a copper coin.

"They will give themselves to the frenzy when blood is spilled, and will fight until death."

At the slight note in Viggo's voice, Dominic looked back.

"You've fought them?"

"My father, and his father before him fought before them, and never returned to their wives."

"Are you really wanting us to cack our pants, mate?"

Andrew shook his head, before strapping his leather and bronze helmet over his untidy face. Not a natural rider, not a natural warrior, but with his brothers in the time of need. It was natural to respect such a man. Many did.

"They will die."

Sean, who had not uttered a word before this, turned his head and gave them all a smile that looked like death. His face was a skull mask, still and set, white with purpose under the stubble and jaw line tensed.

The unanswered question of the cause of this obsession flitted between Dominic and Viggo.

"Sean..."

"I did not tell my tale last night, I'll say it now. We might all fall here, and it needs to be told. An explanation."

The four stared at each other, at a loss, and Elijah shivered through his armour. Something in the tone, in that flat northern accent, was as if Sean had already died. Unnoticed before by three, it became shockingly clear that it had always been present, though Viggo, watchful Viggo, had known. Being with Sean for so long, being the one who coddled him through the dark depressive hatred and was always there without fail, he'd heard that note in every word the man had ever spoken. A dead man. Dead inside, including his soul.

"There was a man, before, who had a wife. She was not beautiful, but she was good and she was his. All his. He loved her, of course. Because though she was plain, and fat, she was some angel given to him by the grace of God. He believed that, the fucking fool. Some red-haired fat little angel who hadn't given him children but wanted a dozen of them to make him happy. They were happy, and this was before he knew what reality was. They lived on a shitty farm and made little money from the land, but they were happy. One day he heard that the Saxons were coming, so he took his sweet wife, who he loved too much, to the monastery and asked the monks to guard her against the invaders. He went off, and fought the Saxons, and of course they lost because they were just a load of farmers playing at warriors. But he lived, and managed to come back to the monastery. She wasn't there. The monks were, the worthless bastards, and they had given all their valuables to the Saxons to stop them killing them all. All their chalices, and books, and gold. And the women who'd been sent there for their own fucking protection by men who thought they could trust in God. To punish those who had been stupid enough to fight them, the Saxons locked their women and children into a barn, and torched it around them. This is why there is no God, for what God could let her die like that? There is no God. There is no life without her. There is only death."

He stared at them, expressionless. He didn't expect or want their pity, he was preparing them. For while the others would protect themselves from being taken by death actively, Sean would not. He would fight to kill, and nothing else.

Viggo moved, and Dominic could see the Dane's soul bleeding, and took the reins of Sean's raw gelding, removing them from the others.

There was nothing to be said.

*****

"Why say that now, before battle? Why say that when you know that I would stand before you and take the blow intended for you?"

The Dane and the northerner had slowly ridden over to the edge of the ranks, Sean even more inward after his words. Never opening up. Never having spoken so much and with so much passion.

"So that none of you would stand in the way."

"So that is that? We are to watch you destroy yourself? Do you not know that those men love you? Do you not care what watching you offer yourself to the Saxon blades would do? Are you entirely selfish, Sean, or is there nothing left in that dead soul to allow some warmth in? You are loved, you are adored, they think of you as some great myth and you would destroy that because of your own wretched melancholy! Do you not think that Dominic saw his family killed before him? Do you not think at Jerusalem that Elijah watched the knights he worshipped fall in search of a dream of the Grail? Do you not think that Andrew was damaged by the Saxons too though he hides it well? You suffer, you bleed, but as a leader of men are you to be a coward and leave those who love you more broken? Are you to burden them with the guilt of having to watch you die when they could have saved you? Are they to suffer as you are..."

A snarl, and Sean's face contorted.

"You do not know my suffering!"

"Would you have me feel as you feel? I have no wife, I have no family upon these shores, and in my foolishness I have given you my soul! To watch you die...you did not see your wife suffer, but you would have me, who loves you, tormented with having your blood upon my hands as you breathe your last? Should I fall upon my sword when you leave? Or would you have me live in the agony of you not being there? For a decade I have been at your side and I have destroyed myself a thousand times with wanting to exorcise your demons. I have borne your tempers and rages, I have held you in the night as you sobbed upon my shoulder for something that you would never let me know. Never letting me in, yet I have loved you as a brother and more than a brother, though you have used me as a whipping boy!"

His voice, slightly nasal, was shaking and hoarse, fingers clenching on the dark mane of his gelding.

"I never asked for this love, I never once asked for it! My wife..."

"Is dead. She is dead and she will not come back to you. Would she wish for you to dwell upon her death to the point where you hate so much that it eats you into insanity? Would this kind woman of yours want you to throw yourself after her, or live?"

Behind them, there was a low murmur that grew into a roaring crescendo, and Sean wheeled his horse, lips drawn back and face bloodless. Death. Written in his eyes.

"If I die at least it saves me from watching you all being killed."

Another shout, a clash of metal upon metal, and then with a sweeping gallop, they entered the fray.

*****

In the year of our lord 511, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, king of the Britons, defeated the invading Saxons at the battle of Badenbury Rings.

*****

A hand, scarlet with blood, gripped Dominic by the arm, and Bors, trusted servant of the King, stared up at him. The great warrior's destrier had been slaughtered under him, and he'd fought on foot after that, deadly and accurate and cutting swathes through the Saxon ranks until they were shattered by the force of the true foot soldiers and the cavalry.

"You must come with me."

The younger man's heart slammed into his chest.

"What has happened? Tell me."

Something flared in Bor's stern yet kind eyes, and he did not answer. Instead he led Boudica and her master into the field of the dead.

*****

He'd fought so hard to try and quell the attackers, pushing the injured man who had been unhorsed behind him - William being equally at home out of the saddle and fighting, indeed he was even more deadly with his slicing blows and devastating nimble speed - but there had been too many even for a man of his ability. And now, he could see Dominic, coming towards them, and William was even more aware of the laboured breathing behind him.

*****

"I tried...there were too many..."

Pushing William from his path, Dominic expected to see someone else laying on the blood-soaked ground, but his knees buckled and he fell. Not him, not him. Anyone else, he thought selfishly, before shoving the thought back, just not him.

He looked peaceful, that was the terrible thing. At peace and almost relaxed, his face spattered with blood. One clean slicing blow to the chest, through the leather and flax padding. A neat blow, perversely, at least whoever struck him hadn't mangled him.

"He took a blow to the leg, and I shielded him, but there were too many..."

A look from Dominic, and William quietened.

And there, among the dead and the dying, both Celtic and Saxon, there was lost the charmed life of the one that no one ever thought could be killed such.

Andrew was lost to the darkness of what comes after life.