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SGA: Slightly Tarnished Armor (Arthurian crack, 3/4)
Back to Part Two
Rodney hated the wilderness in general. It was full of wild beasts, which he would be expected to kill, and ruffians, which he would be expected to fight, and flowers, which he was allergic to. He hadn't thought that anything could make him hate the wild lands more than he already did. Come to find out, though, he'd found something that did the trick: riding through the woods on a recalcitrant, ancient warhorse that just wanted to find a nice patch of sun and take a nap, surrounded by all of Kell's most vulgar and violent knights and their even more loutish squires, riding off to kill some poor bastard who was going to be outnumbered thirty to one.
The only bright spot was that he had Teylaval with him, so at least he knew that he could depend on one person to have a measure of brains and common sense. Teylaval had gotten stuck with a long-legged pony, but rode as if he was born to it, though he shifted his seat occasionally as if he found the saddle uncomfortable; Rodney thought the stableboy was probably used to riding bareback. Teylaval soon took up a position at Warstrider's head, grabbing the old warhorse's bridle whenever it decided to take a detour for some grazing.
Rodney might be generally out of the loop, but he'd caught enough of the gossip among the knights to know that they were riding off to apprehend the ruffian who'd abducted Kell's daughter (in which case "apprehend", Rodney suspected, knowing Kell and his knights, was a euphemism for "brutally murder"). And Rodney was not exactly the foremost student of human nature, either, but even he could pick up on the fact that Kell seemed to be much more concerned with the slight to his honor than his daughter's safety.
Teylaval dragged Warstrider out of yet another patch of thornbushes. "Thanks," Rodney said. He'd given up on keeping to the usual knight-squire formalities, because, frankly, Teylaval was a whole lot better at this than he was, and trying to maintain his own supremacy in the face of his squire's clearly superior skill just made him feel like an idiot. Also, he didn't want to risk annoying Teylaval and being left to guide his horse himself, because Warstrider would probably wander off a cliff and break both their necks.
"That's quite all right." Teylaval dropped back to keep pace with Warstrider (not exactly difficult, even for the pony; they were at the very back of the column of knights). "If you don't mind my saying so, if you straighten your spine and seat yourself more like so --" he demonstrated by slouching and then straightening " -- your horse will respond more efficiently to you. They are used to someone who rides with an air of command."
"I have an air of command," Rodney said indignantly.
The corners of Teylaval's mouth turned up.
"I do!"
"Well," Teylaval said in a voice that sounded as if he was choking back laughter, "perhaps it would be a good idea to convey that air of command to your horse."
As they rode along through the flower-infested forest, Teylaval prodded Rodney to sit up straight, turn his heels down, tuck his elbows in and stop shifting his weight around in the saddle. He couldn't tell if it actually made a difference to Warstrider, but he had to reluctantly admit that it made him feel a little more manly.
"How can you spend all your life riding horses and continue to be so poor at it?" Teylaval inquired, nudging the small of Rodney's back in an attempt to correct his posture yet again.
"You've really taken this honesty thing to heart, haven't you?" Rodney grumbled.
"Yes," Teylaval said, smiling.
"I hate you."
He watched the squire out of the corner of his eye for reaction, but Teylaval merely smiled wider and then rode up to wrest Warstrider's head from a particularly tasty patch of clover. Rodney's eyes widened as he realized that he was staring at Teylaval's really quite nicely shaped fundament on the saddle, and wrenched his gaze back to watching out for low-hanging branches. He'd heard of knights who harbored an unseemly attraction for their squires, but surely he wasn't that sort of knight ... was he?
He was jolted out of his contemplations by a sudden yell and some kind of scuffle up ahead. Teylaval seized Warstrider's bridle and dragged him along as the knights converged on ... okay, that was weird. Through the crowd, Rodney couldn't see a whole lot, but it looked like several of Kell's knights and their horses were entangled in a large ... net?
There was another scream as one of the knights, trying to turn his horse around, ran afoul of a rope strung between two trees at chest level. He was flipped off his mount and landed on his back with a resounding clang.
Rodney stared. He'd seen a trap like that before. He'd set a trap like that before ... for his brother David, nearly thirty years ago, in retaliation for David's bullying of John.
"Stand firm, you children!" Duke Kell shouted. Horses and men were now milling around in the forest, no one sure where the next attack would come from. Someone shrieked, somewhere off to the side, and there was a loud crash.
Rodney leaned over to slap Teylaval on the arm, catching the squire's attention (and almost falling off in the process). "Come on," he said, and urged Warstrider into the bushes. For a change, the geriatric warhorse seemed to be happy to comply.
"What are we doing?" Teylaval asked, ghosting after him on the pony.
"We are staying out of the way," Rodney said firmly. "Obviously someone has set traps in the area, and while the Duke's men are apparently perfectly happy to charge around until they break their necks, I'd say it might be a better idea to wait and watch."
"Hide," Teylaval corrected him.
Rodney glowered at him. "We are not hiding, we are observing from cover. There's a difference."
"Shouldn't we warn them?" Another crash and scream punctuated Teylaval's words.
"And they'll listen to us?"
"Excellent point," Teylaval sighed, and then twisted around in the saddle, pointing down. "Watch your horse's step. Another trap."
"Good eye." Rodney leaned from his horse, looking down at the leaf-covered noose that Teylaval had noticed. "Someone's been busy around here." And this, too, was a booby trap that he and John had rigged up to catch their well-deserving brothers, back when they were young and this sort of prank seemed like a good idea.
But John's dead.
* * * * * * * *
"Hey!" Guinevere protested when John tied her to a tree.
"Sorry," he said, and he sounded genuinely apologetic. "But I can't have you running off and warning anyone. You'll be all right here."
She glared at him. "What if all of you kill each other and no one's left to untie me? Am I supposed to stand here until wild beasts come to eat me, or until I fall over from thirst?"
"Hmm. Good point." The Black Knight rubbed his stubbled upper lip thoughtfully, then took out a small knife and laid it on the ground near her feet.
"How is that supposed to help me?"
He grinned at her. "You're an educated woman; I'm sure you can contrive a way of getting it. As long as it takes you a while."
Guinevere fruitlessly stretched and strained at her bonds, trying to reach the knife with her toe, while John strolled across the clearing and began donning his armor. She was sweating, frustrated and panting by the time that he rode the horse back over to her. "How's it going?"
"Wonderful," Guinevere reported through clenched teeth. After a night in the cave and the trek through the forest, her hair was a tangled mess, and now sweat plastered it to her face; she could barely see.
"I told you: think. Your brain's your most important weapon. At least, that's what my brother always said." John wheeled the horse around and trotted out of the clearing, clanking.
"This is unfair!" Guinevere shouted after him, but he'd vanished into the sun-dappled woods.
When it became apparent that he was not coming back, she sighed and contemplated the knife lying in the dirt. It was just out of reach beyond her toe.
Nice.
Think, John had said. What assets did she have? Staring at the tips of her shoes under the edge of Sora's gown, the thought occurred to her that she might be able to snag it with one of those. Carefully, she toed out of one shoe and hooked her bare toes over the lip, using it as an awkward scoop. After some more contortions, she retrieved the knife and, bending and twisting until the ropes dug painfully into her stomach, managed to transfer it from her toes to her hand.
Very nice!
Cutting oneself free of tightly knotted ropes sounded much easier in the stories than it turned out to be in real life. Trying to hold the knife at an angle to the ropes set her wrist on fire.
She was resting between attempts when a soft rustling in the forest made her jump.
"Hello?" she began warily, and then stared when the King himself slipped quietly from the shadows, dressed all in soft, patched brown leather.
* * * * * * * *
Ronon had given an excuse about feeling unwell after the previous day's feasting -- not entirely unbelievable; half the court had been carousing until all hours and were nowhere to be found this morning -- and, after securing a promise not to be disturbed under pain of royal wrath, had slipped away down one of the secret tunnels, pausing only to obtain a few things from his stash of emergency escape gear.
It wasn't that he was paranoid. Much. But when your parents have been murdered in their beds and you suddenly find yourself in a hotbed of conspiracy and intrigue after living on your own in the forest for a number of years .... well, it just seemed natural to keep a few stashes of food, clothing and weapons hidden in the tunnel system.
Alone in the sun-washed green wilderness, he was relieved to find himself slipping back into his old habits, like shedding an ill-fitting skin of satin and jewels. The familiar, supple leather conformed to his body, more comfortable than the finest robes, and he barely stirred a twig as he ghosted from sun to shade.
No special woods skills were necessary to find the trail of Duke Kell's party, though -- the broken branches and churned earth of the horses' passage blazed a veritable highway through the forest, and the distant jangling of armor and raised voices could be clearly heard. Ronon stood in the crushed vegetation and stared after them. A slow anger kindled in his chest. If you value her life, meet me alone, the ransom note had written of Kell's daughter, Ronon's betrothed. Yet here was Kell with a war party.
With a short bow against his side, his sword lashed to his back so that it would not entangle his legs, he ran swiftly through the forest, pacing and eventually outpacing the war party. In the dense trees, a lone man could move faster than the laden horses. Before he reached Kell's men, however, Ronon veered off and slipped through the brush, staying close enough that he could be aware of their movements but not near enough to be seen or heard -- if they could hear anything over the noise they were making.
Ronon saw the first trap in advance of the riders, and stepped over it carefully: a noose covered with leaves. He scanned it with an expert's eye -- he was very familiar with the design of similar traps from his childhood. The peasants often used them, in smaller versions, to catch birds and rats; he'd set hundreds of them himself.
Apparently Guinevere's kidnappers were not entirely unprepared for a double-cross.
This thought had just crossed his mind when a tremendous commotion erupted: horses squealing, men shouting angrily, cracking tree limbs and sudden sharp cries of pain or shock. Ronon smiled to himself. As little sympathy as he had for the fate of Guinevere's kidnappers, from what he'd seen of Kell's knights he had even less for them.
With silence no longer as much of an issue, Ronon strode quickly through the trees, skirting the noise, dust and flying twigs that let him know where Kell's war party were currently thrashing around in a line of traps. He skillfully avoided a few more; the unknown person or persons who had kidnapped Guinevere had seeded the forest with them. They're close, Ronon thought, all his senses alert.
Over the sound of the struggling horses and men, and Kell's furious cries as he tried to regain control of his men, Ronon could hear the sound of the river. He caught glimpses of sunlight and sky through the trees -- the open country around the water.
Meet me alone at noon in the glade by the river, the note had read. And Kell had clearly known where he was going. The kidnapper or kidnappers, and hopefully Guinevere, would be nearby. Ronon moved from shadow to shadow, and paused at the edge of a clearing overlooking the river.
Across the clearing, bound to an oak tree, was a slender shape in a blue dress, long golden hair falling across her face as she struggled. Ronon stared, doubting his own senses. With her head down, she looked so much like the peasant girl that he'd met in the palace --
The girl raised her head, exposing a long curve of pale throat as she arched her back, stretching and struggling with her bonds. It was her. Jennifer.
Various possibilities occurred to Ronon, most of which were equally unlikely. Still, she was clearly a prisoner, and probably bait as well. He cast a look around the clearing, but could see no sign of enemies watching. Still, someone canny enough to prepare those traps would likely have a plan for Jennifer as well.
Ronon the woodcutter, the huntsman, would have remained hidden, crept around the edges of the clearing. For a long moment, he was tempted. But he was Ronon the king now. Drawing a breath and throwing back his shoulders, he assumed the invisible mantle of command and stepped from the woods, into full view of whoever might be watching the clearing.
"Hello --?" Jennifer began, then sucked in a breath when she recognized him.
Shoulders tense, back prickling, he scanned the trees rapidly, all his senses on full alert. She had to be a decoy; why else leave her tied here?
Jennifer attempted a small curtsey, as best she could while tied to the tree. "Your Majesty."
"Right," Ronon said absently. No arrow winged its way from the still and steadfast trees to bury itself in his chest; no ruffian burst from the bushes, waving a sword. Crossing the clearing swiftly, he knelt to cut her bonds, pausing briefly when he saw the small knife clutched in her hand.
"I, um, thought I might cut myself free ..." Blushing, she opened her hand and let the knife fall into his palm; he slit her bonds.
"Harder than it looks," he said, offering her a hand. She took it shyly, eyes downcast.
The sun lit her downturned features -- the outline of her nose, her slightly parted lips. Strands of tangled hair clung to her cheeks, but the demure pose told him what he had not been able to believe when he had first seen her in the clearing. For a moment he saw both of them overlaid: the chastely downcast face of his betrothed, the loose bright hair of the peasant woman who had bandaged his wounds. Two women ... but really, only one.
"Guinevere?" he said, and as her eyes came up to meet his own, Ronon realized that he'd fatally allowed his attention to lapse -- an instant before the soft jingle of harness behind him let him know that he was not alone.
"Highness," a quiet voice drawled behind him, with the slightly muffled and hollow quality that came from speaking through a closed visor.
Ronon's hand twitched towards his sword.
"I wouldn't," the voice said. "My quarrel is not with you. Turn slowly, Highness, very slowly."
Ronon did so.
In the bright, sun-drenched clearing, the Black Knight looked shockingly out of place, like an inkblot on a lady's white lace sleeve. He held a long sword, extended, the tip quivering near Ronon's neck.
"You must know who we are," Ronon said through clenched teeth. The accent of the peasant classes, acquired during his long exile and so recently lost through deliberate effort, slipped back, and he forced his tones to those of the king he had become. "This is a grave insult."
"Like I said," the knight said lightly, "quarrel's not with you. Didn't mean to get you involved, Your Highness. But that's the bait for my trap that you're setting free, there."
Ronon moved to place his body between the Black Knight and Guinevere. "That's your future queen, miscreant. If you've hurt her --"
"I haven't harmed a golden hair. Ask her. I am not your enemy, Highness, and there's nothing to be gained by --"
"You!" a voice bellowed across the clearing.
Looking somewhat the worse for wear, Kell came charging into the open, flanked by a ragged phalanx of knights -- plus, Ronon saw, one squire on a pony.
The Black Knight turned sharply; his sword lifted from Ronon's neck. And Ronon moved, drawing his sword in one swift motion. He could only blunt his sword on the Black Knight's armor, unless he got a lucky strike, so instead, he brought the sword forward, slicing the Black Knight's saddle straps.
The Black Knight was already in motion, swinging back around towards Ronon with sword in hand. Momentum swept him off the horse, saddle and all. He crashed to the meadow grass with a tremendous clang and a startled cry.
Shoving Guinevere towards the trees, Ronon closed with his fallen opponent, ignoring Kell's shouts.
* * * * * * * *
"There's another one," Teylaval said, pointing, and tugged on Warstrider's bridle, leading him around another noose half-hidden under a scattering of leaves.
Teylaval had dismounted and, leading both horses, was skirting the edges of the trap-riddled area, eventually working their way around to the front of the scattered column of riders. Rodney saw, peering through the trees, that Kell's knights were in shambles. As far as he could tell, no one seemed to be dead, but men were down with broken limbs and injured horses; others had become thoroughly tangled in nets and nooses, their terrified horses struggling and plunging while their fellows tried to extricate them.
Through luck or caution, Kell himself seemed to have avoided the traps, though he was missing his helm, with leaves in his hair. "You, over there!" he bellowed in Rodney's direction. "All, to me! The bastard's probably laughing at us now -- and escaping while the lot of you stand around tangled up in your drawers!"
Rodney urged Warstrider forward, and for a change, the old warhorse actually cooperated. "M'lord, my squire can lead us through the traps."
Kell shot a hard glare over his shoulder. "Can he now." He looked past Rodney at Teylaval, swinging lithely up onto his horse. "Show me."
So it was that the three of them, plus the handful of Kell's knights who were not currently tangled up with their enemy's traps, burst out into the meadow just in time to see the tableau spread out before them -- Guinevere in a peasant's dress, with her hair spilling over her shoulders; the Black Knight with his sword at the throat of a tall huntsman in drab brown.
After his initial glimpse of the scene, Rodney was temporarily distracted, trying to keep Warstrider from picking a fight with the other knights' stallions -- so he missed whatever happened next in the meadow. He heard Kell shouting and cursing, and then a very loud crash that he instantly recognized from the jousting fields. Looking up, he saw the Black Knight on the ground; the huge black stallion wheeling, bereft of rider; the huntsman with a huge longsword in hand and -- wait, good God! His eyes tracked back to the huntsman, taking in the startling height, the unfashionably long hair; was that the King?
The unhorsed Black Knight had regained his feet rather shakily, and now he was facing off against the rangy figure in brown. Even Rodney could see that the knight in his heavy armor was at a tremendous disadvantage in speed and agility against the King in his light leathers. The armor was not meant for this sort of fighting -- it was exhausting to move in, and vulnerable to precisely targeted strikes in close combat.
Kell's frustration was obvious, but he could not presume to interfere with his monarch. No one seemed to know what to do. The horses and their riders milled helplessly. Teylaval moved in close to Warstrider and seized his bridle again, trying to keep him from wandering off into the woods and taking Rodney with him.
The King had drawn blood, sinking his long sword into a gap in the Black Knight's armor. His blade glistened oily-dark in the sun as he sidestepped and parried the knight's counterswing. Rodney had never been better than mediocre at fencing, like all the rest of his father's war-sports, but he recognized that neither of the combatants were extraordinarily skilled. The King's technique was rough and unschooled; the knight's was somewhat hesitant, as if he'd seen it done and was now trying to follow through by rote.
The King drew blood again, blade meeting flesh in a vulnerable spot under the knight's arm. The knight was visibly tiring; under the King's onslaught, he was driven back to the lip of the hill falling away to the river.
"Sir Rodney!" Heedless of the mounted knights and their restless, tetchy horses, Guinevere ran in her peasant's skirts to Rodney's side and seized his stirrup, tugging on it. "Sir Rodney, you have to stop them. He'll be killed!"
Rodney looked out at the impromptu field of battle, where the Black Knight was barely managing to stand his ground. "M'lady, I don't think your fiancé is in danger."
"Not him! J-- the Black Knight," Guinevere protested. "He's not the sort of man they think. He was kind to me."
With a sudden ringing clash of swords, the Black Knight regained the upper hand, forcing the King back a step. Rodney looked up, as did the other spectators; he was aware of Guinevere, tense against his leg.
It was clearly the Black Knight's last-ditch effort; with the heavy armor weighing him down, he could not possibly have the strength for another such attack. But, as he strode forward, he gave a piercing whistle.
The large black stallion, generally ignored by the knights, had wandered to the edge of the woods. But at the ear-splitting sound, his head went up and he wheeled around.
The King didn't see him until it was almost too late. The great black animal bore down on him like a charging boar. At the last moment, he saw it coming out of the corner of his eye and spun to avoid the horse, but one of the powerful shoulders clipped him, sent him spinning, his hair whipping around him. And the Black Knight was on him. For an instant Rodney's view was obscured by the horse's great body as it cantered to a halt and turned about; then he saw the King on his back, looking up at the knight standing over him. The sword lowered to the King's throat trembled slightly from the fatigue dragging down his arm.
For a moment, no one moved. Then, "Highness!" Kell bellowed, spurring his horse forward, as Guinevere cried, "Father, no!"
The Black Knight turned, but, slowed with exhaustion, he only partially avoided the powerful blow that Kell struck with the flat of his sword. It glanced off his helmet, ringing like a bell. Stumbling back, he stepped directly into the path of another of Kell's knights, who struck him in the sword-arm. The broadsword fell from his fingers into the grass.
"No, no!" Guinevere shrieked, and struck Rodney's mailed leg with her fist. "Sir Rodney, they mustn't!"
Rodney himself couldn't help feeling sorry for the Black Knight, surrounded and harried by Kell's riders, like a fox at bay. It was more than his life was worth, though, to interfere with them -- and, worse, it would be the downfall of all his plans, his hopes for vengeance. Kell would not suffer such an insult lightly, particularly in front of the King.
"He is a good man." Guinevere sounded near tears.
"She is correct; it is not right," Teylaval said in his light, quiet voice. "I will stop them, Sir Rodney."
And Teylaval made to ride forward, into the fray. He's a peasant; Kell will kill him -- Rodney thought, and his hand whipped out, almost without his conscious command; it was his turn to grip the bridle of Teylaval's mount. "Idiot!" he hissed. "You're nothing to him; he can strike your head from your shoulders for interfering with his sport, and no one will stop him!"
"I am not nothing, Sir Rodney," Teylaval said bitterly, meeting Rodney's eyes with his brown ones. "I will not stand by and witness this cruel excuse for justice."
The Black Knight had been forced to his knees on the churned earth. Kell himself struck another ringing blow to the Black Knight's helmet. There was no cry of pain, but the knight swayed and fell to catch himself on his hands.
"Then protect the Lady Guinevere," Rodney said, trying to sound bold and commanding, and kicked Warstrider viciously in the ribs. The warhorse tottered forward to meet his more aggressive brethren.
* * * * * * * *
Ronon allowed one of Kell's men to help him to his feet. Silently, he watched Kell's baiting of the Black Knight. It was cruel sport and he wondered if he ought to stop it, but he was not sure enough of his authority. This was a lonely place, and he had no one that he trusted at his back. This would not be a good place to press his ability to control his vassals.
So he watched as the Black Knight was forced to his knees at the feet of Kell's stallion -- supporting himself on one hand, his other arm dangling uselessly. His warhorse had been captured and hobbled; something in Ronon's heart twisted to see them both brought low.
Kell looked down at the prisoner, sneering. "So this is the mysterious Black Knight. Let's see who you are. Take off your helm."
The Black Knight said nothing, though the angle of his head shifted; he was listening.
"Do you speak? Are you deaf? Dumb?" Kell glanced in the King's direction, and then leaned forward; Ronon thought that he probably hoped to keep his words private, but Ronon's ears had always been sharp. "For defiling my daughter's honor, I could strike your head from your shoulders right now, and none would gainsay me. But I would know how you know my business."
After a moment, the Black Knight pushed himself up to his knees, and pulled off his helm. Dark hair spilled free, tangled and matted with sweat. Ronon was near enough to see the knight's face -- pale, bruised and unfamiliar to him. Despite the Black Knight's obvious exhaustion and pain, his piercing green eyes glared up at Kell with quiet enmity through a tangle of disheveled hair.
Kell recoiled, his own face going pale. He said nothing at all, his lips pressed together in a hard white line as he drew back his sword for the killing stroke.
* * * * * * * *
Rodney had managed to bully and cajole Warstrider into the circle of knights when the Black Knight removed his helm, and the bottom dropped out of Rodney's stomach.
It can't be. He knew that face, the face of the boy who had defended him from their brothers, who had been his partner in boyhood petty crime, his only friend and ally throughout his childhood.
But John was dead. He was dead ...
Kell drew back his sword and Rodney's vision whited out in a blinding rush of rage. He kicked Warstrider in the ribs, and miraculously, the old horse leaped in the right direction -- straight ahead, colliding with the shoulder of Kell's horse, throwing off his swing. Kell's sword-swing went wild, slashing a shallow red line across John's forehead.
And that was the last thing Rodney saw before he lost his balance in the collision and fell off his horse. Stars exploded in his vision and he found himself flat on his back, staring up at the sky. Somewhere far off, he heard Teylaval cry out, "Sir Rodney!" and hoped that the squire would have enough sense to stay back.
Rodney pushed himself painfully to his hands and knees to find himself facing a ring of swords. Looking up, he froze as the tip of Kell's sword hovered under his nose. Beyond the furious-looking knight, he saw the King watching the scene with an unreadable expression, arms folded. Teylaval had circled around and and was approaching the King, with Guinevere riding on the saddle behind him. At least the kid wasn't charging to the rescue and getting himself stabbed.
"Nice rescue, Rodney," John's voice drawled at his shoulder. Rodney's chest lurched, and, all thoughts of Kell momentarily blanked from his mind, he turned his head to see the familiar, sardonic green eyes watching him.
"You bastard!" he burst out, still on hands and knees, staring.
The corner of John's mouth quirked. His face was pale, bruised; blood trickled into his eyes from the gash across his forehead, and he blinked it away. "Still the master of stating the obvious, I see."
"You -- you're -- dead!" Rodney began, his stomach curling into a tight hot ball. "You complete ass, how could you let me think --"
Kell's boot connected with the side of his head, sent him sprawling. John shouted something, wordless and furious, and when Rodney opened his eyes and the world stopped spinning, it was to see John in his black armor, injured arm trailing, crouching over him, blocking Kell's blows with his own body.
"Useless," Kell snarled, out of sight somewhere beyond John. "What is he to you?"
John didn't answer. "Brother," Rodney croaked, pushing himself up on shaky arms. "He's my brother." It wasn't as if there was any point in hiding it anymore.
Kell laughed, and Rodney didn't think he'd ever hated anyone so much in his life. "Is that so? Are the two of you in this ridiculous conspiracy --" His eyes widened suddenly, and his triumphant grin broadened. "So," he said quietly, and then he struck John in the side of the head with the flat of his sword; John dropped like a rock, falling across Rodney's legs.
Rodney's throat seized up. "I'll kill you!" he forced out, scrabbling to get upright.
"You'll say nothing, do nothing," Kell said, leaning forward and dropping his voice, "or I'll kill him."
"You're going to kill us anyway," Rodney snarled back at him. John's face was ice-white under the bruises, and shockingly open in his unconsciousness, shockingly young-looking despite the fine lines that had gathered at the corners of his eyes since Rodney had last seen him. Rodney laid an arm across John's chest, a fragile and futile defensive motion.
But he could feel Kell's stare on him, assessing. Kell wasn't a subtle man, and up to this point, Rodney would have said that he wasn't a smart man, either. Duke Kell was very much of the "stab first and ask questions later" school of diplomacy.
But he didn't like the way Kell was looking at him. He didn't like it at all.
"Not necessarily," Kell said softly. "Depends on what you do."
Rodney tightened his arm across John's chest, feeling the rise and fall of John's shallow breathing. His brother was alive. He tried to hold onto that.
* * * * * * * *
Teyla's heart battered her ribs. Sir Rodney was right; Kell would never listen to her, and she could not possibly take on a trained, armored knight. But the King might listen. She did not know him, did not know what sort of man he was, and nothing in her life had given her any reason to believe that those of the moneyed classes cared a thing for the affairs of those below them. But she liked the monarch, and she hoped that if anyone would listen to a call for leniency, he might.
Plus, there was Guinevere. And when Teyla looked down and met her friend's cornflower-blue eyes, she saw her own desperation reflected there.
Teyla extended down a hand, and pulled Guinevere up behind her. "Will the King listen to you?" she asked over her shoulder, coaxing her mount forward. The small, docile creature did not want to approach the warhorses, but for once, Teyla had much more on her mind than the horses' welfare.
"I'm not sure," Guinevere said softly, lacing her hands around Teyla's waist. After a moment, she added meekly, "I can try."
Teyla glanced over her shoulder at Guinevere's bowed, golden head. The subdued manner was very much at odds with her friend's usual eager energy. She wondered what had happened after Guinevere had run away -- how she'd come to be in the Black Knight's company, what changes it had wrought in her.
But there was no time to worry about that now. Teyla had little attention for anything but Sir Rodney, down on the meadow grass with Kell's sword at his throat. She could not understand how the arrogant, incompetent knight had managed to get under her skin so thoroughly. But he looked at her as a person, not as a piece of furniture -- and the idea of watching him die here, on the green grass of the field, caused something inside her to wither and die.
"Your Highness," she said, bowing as best she could on horseback. The King turned towards her, his brow wrinkled in a frown.
He was so shockingly tall. Even on horseback, she looked into his eyes without dipping her head. She could not help noticing that he was a very handsome man.
"I -- We don't know you," the King said. As someone who had practiced a deception most of her life, Teyla could see him visibly drawing into himself, collecting the fragile shell of kingliness that he wore around himself. He was not, she thought, a man who enjoyed the power that he wielded. It made her think better of him.
"Teylaval, Highness," she said, bowing again. "I am Sir Rodney's squire." And that was as far as her brain would take her; to her frustration, the words balled up in her throat. Rodney's life hung in the balance, but what did you say to a king to convince him of a disgraced knight's merits? Sir Rodney was far more than he appeared at first glance, but everything she could think of to say in his favor came out like an extremely back-handed complement at best.
Guinevere slid off the pony's back in an unladylike flurry of skirts, but made a nice curtsey once she was on the ground. "Highness, you must stop them," she said without preamble. "This is not right. Sir Rodney is my friend, and the Black Knight was never less than courteous to me."
Ronon's eyebrows lifted. "He tied you to a tree," he pointed out.
Color flamed in Guinevere's cheeks, but she met the monarch's level stare, tilting her chin far back to do so. "My father once wronged him greatly, and that is where his quarrel lies. He never meant any harm to me. He fed me and treated me well."
Ronon looked back to the circle of knights; Teyla's eyes were drawn there also, her whole body tense as a bowstring. Sir Rodney was still alive, kneeling with his arm defensively thrown across the Black Knight's body.
"Usually it's best to let people work out their own business," Ronon said. In other words, I will not interfere. Teyla's heart sank.
"But you're here," Guinevere pointed out. "Why did you come?"
"I came for you. You are my business," he said, faltering a bit. To Teyla's surprise, a blush climbed his cheeks. "I mean, you're my future wife, aren't you?"
Guinevere seemed to consider this, then took a deep breath, drew back her shoulders, and pointed to the knights with the same air of authority that Teyla remembered her using as a child when she wanted a favorite toy. "Then, future husband, I demand that you call off my father and his men."
Teyla had never been so proud of her friend. She held her breath, as the King stared at Guinevere as if he'd never seen her before.
But Kell acted before Ronon could do anything, wheeling his horse, turning to his monarch. "Highness, I suggest that these miscreants should be locked up until justice can be meted out."
The King raised an eyebrow, then turned his head to his betrothed, a slight smile curving his lips. "And does that meet your approval, Lady?"
Guinevere opened and closed her mouth. "I suppose," she said at last, and the look she gave her father was a suspicious one.
* * * * * * * *
All the way back to the palace, Guinevere wondered what her father was up to. Because he was, clearly, up to something.
She rode behind him on his horse, as he was the only person in the group who wasn't an unrelated male -- well, except for Teyla, but of course no one else knew that Teyla wasn't a man. The former Black Knight, still unconscious and now bereft of his armor, was lashed across one of the other knights' saddles, while Rodney sat hunched and miserable on Warstrider's back with his hands bound before him.
Guinevere found herself leaning away from her father. She told herself it was just the unpleasant feel of his cold armor, and its tendency to pinch her hands.
It just didn't make sense. From what John had said back at the river, her father had every reason to kill him. Letting him live would merely give John the opportunity to ruin him. And, even in her girlish innocence, she had never known her father to be a merciful man. So why was he taking him back for trial? The King had even offered the palace dungeons, and Kell had accepted with unusually good cheer.
He was definitely up to something.
At the palace, the Duke of Kell handed Guinevere down to the cobblestones, with a firm and impersonal grasp, delivering her into the waiting arms of her serving maids. Guinevere could only watch, past her fluttering maids, as the horses and prisoners were taken away. Teyla cast a sympathetic look over her shoulder, and then went with the rest of the men.
Guinevere was hustled off to her family's suite of rooms by the twittering maids. Sora was conspicuously absent, but the others were excited and envious and solicitous, begging for details of Guinevere's adventures.
Guinevere just wanted to be left alone to bathe and eat and sleep. Well, no -- more than that, she wanted to be wherever John the Black Knight and Sir Rodney had been taken. She didn't even know if she could help, but it seemed entirely wrong that they should be in danger, injured, suffering -- while she was being primped and pressed, cleaned and changed, her hair done up so that she looked like a proper lady again.
"Where is Mother?" she asked, futilely pushing away a maid with a tortoiseshell comb. "I need to speak to my mother."
"The Lady Elizabeth has suffered an attack of nervous exhaustion, milady. She is prostrate with worry over you, and was taken back home to recover under the care of her personal physician."
"What?" Guinevere slapped away the comb. "No one told me!"
"A messenger has been dispatched to let her know of your safe return, milady," the maid said hastily.
"Out, out. Please. I -- I need to -- to rest."
She unceremoniously chased out the maids, leaving her alone to pace anxiously. Worry for her mother gave way slowly to wondering if her mother, too, could be nursing plans of her own. The Lady Elizabeth had never suffered an attack of nervous exhaustion in the entire time that Guinevere could remember -- she simply was not that kind of woman. But wherever Elizabeth was, whatever she was doing, Guinevere could not rely on her for help.
"But I need to tell her about John," she said aloud, wringing her hands. Now that she was dressed in her usual garments, back in familiar surroundings, the stories that John had told her of her mother's youthful exploits seemed distant and strange, like tall tales told in childhood. Had it all been a lie, designed to get her cooperation? Yet he'd seemed so earnest, so easy to trust. "Or I could talk to the King again. He seemed to listen to me --"
The door opened; Guinevere jumped. Teyla slipped in and closed it behind her.
"Teyla! How are they?"
"Shackled like common criminals. They are not in the dungeons; they have been imprisoned in one of the towers." Teyla ran her hand through her boyishly short hair. She crossed the room to the basin of water that Guinevere's attendants had left under the window and splashed it on her dirty, tired face. She smelled of leather and horses; Guinevere hadn't noticed it in the woods, but here, where the only smells were those of perfume and rosewater, it stood out sharply. "But alive," she added. "For now."
Guinevere sat down on the window seat, kicking her heels at the floor with restless anxiety. "My mother might be able to help, but she's gone home. I don't know why."
Teyla ran her wet hands across her face, and sat down next to her friend. "I would help if I could, but I am powerless here." Frustration laced through her tone.
"You? Powerless?" Guinevere looked at her in shock. In the forest, she'd felt so helpless, so envious of Teyla with her boys' clothes and her confidence in the world of men and fighting. Throughout their childhood, she had often wished to be more like her bold, unflappable friend, and had envied Teyla's freedom from the ladylike behavior that Guinevere's parents and tutors expected of her.
But there were different kinds of power, weren't there? In the world of courts and intrigue, Guinevere was the one with the advantage of birth and training. Looking at her friend, Guinevere wondered if Teyla sometimes felt as she herself had today, helpless in the woods in her heavy skirts and soft, impractical shoes.
"You know why I ran away, don't you?"
Teyla looked up, met her eyes. "You did not want to play the role in which your birth had cast you," she said simply. "I am much the same."
"I thought that was it. But now I think it was fear." Guinevere's hands tightened in her lap, small fingers working over the top of each other. "I feared living a life like my mother's, and I looked down on her for her own fear -- for supporting my father despite all that he did to her. I thought that I was the strong one to leave." The moving fingers stilled, grew firm. "But in the end, Teyla, I think that I was the one who was weak. Sir Rodney, and you -- I put my friends in danger, because of the things I did. And my mother -- all my life I've thought she was a coward, taking my father's abuse. But I've begun to realize that she's been protecting me, and the servants, and keeping my father's temper and profligate ways from causing our ruin."
"Sometimes it takes more courage to stand than to run," Teyla said gently.
Guinevere nodded, her eyes on her lap, feeling small.
* * * * * * * *
"That went well," Rodney said. "Hold still."
He was bandaging John's wounds crudely with strips torn from his tunic. John had regained consciousness in fits and starts on the trip back to the castle, but he remained somewhat dazed and woozy.
Shackles dragged at Rodney's wrists and ankles, a weight that reminded him of their terrifyingly precarious situation every time he moved.
"Seriously, what kind of revenge plan was that?"
"A plan that didn't figure on royalty showing up and picking fights with me," John retorted, ducking his head in an attempt to avoid Rodney's clumsy ministrations, but all he managed to do was jar his injured arm, and a pained breath hissed through his teeth -- Rodney was pretty sure that it was broken, but John wouldn't let him look at it. "At least I wasn't ... okay, what were you trying to do, anyway, over the last few years?"
"Get close enough to kill him," Rodney said sullenly, giving up on trying to bandage his recalcitrant patient and retreating to his corner of their cell. His head still throbbed abominably where Kell had struck him in the meadow.
John opened his mouth as if to say more; then his eyes softened, and he closed his mouth and looked away. After a few moments of silence, he said, "So, who was the pretty girl with you?"
Rodney gave him a sharp look. "What girl? You don't know who Guinevere is? You're the one who kidnapped her!"
"Not her. The one in men's trousers, riding the pony."
"That's Teylaval," Rodney said in disbelief. "A boy, John. A boy."
To Rodney's utter annoyance, John laughed. "Rodney, she's a girl. She's very obviously a girl. I can't believe -- seriously, you didn't notice?"
After a few minutes of silence, Rodney said in a very tiny voice, "Really?"
John kicked his leg in an affectionate sort of way. "Yes, you idiot."
"Female."
"Yes."
"Well," Rodney said thoughtfully, "that does make me feel better about my somewhat disturbing attraction to my squire."
The sudden clank of a key turning in the lock made him stiffen and John snap to attention. The door opened, and Rodney was vaguely aware of John rising to his knees, supporting himself on the cell wall, when the Duke of Kell entered, alone. He closed the door behind him and regarded them in silence for a moment.
John was the first to speak. "My lord," he drawled in a voice heavy with sarcasm. "How's your lady wife? Does she still have the little mole under her --"
Kell lashed out, kicking him viciously on the side with the injured arm. John curled forward, gasping; Rodney rose up onto his knees, his hand twisting in his chains.
Kell's lip curled. "I see that you haven't learned a thing. Badly bred gutter trash. I don't know what she ever saw in you."
John straightened his body with a slow and deliberate effort, glaring up at Kell through his ragged fringe of dark bangs. "I didn't treat her like a slab of meat. You should try it sometimes."
Kell just snorted. He stepped out of reach of both of the chained men, leaned against the wall and folded his arms. "There's one reason you two are still alive," he said casually. "That little display out there at the river made me realize there's a thing you could do for me, John of Nowhere. And I think I've got just the way to make you do it."
"Right," John said. "Because I'm all about doing things for you."
Kell grinned, showing cracked, yellow teeth. "You're going to kill the King for me."
There was a long, startled silence. Rodney was the one who said, "What?"
"See, it's simple," Kell said, and drew his sword with a groan of scraping metal. "The two of you are a problem for me. But it's not every day I find a couple of people who are so easy to control. You're going to kill the King, or ..." He lowered the sword until it touched Rodney's shackled wrist. "Or I'll cut pieces off him."
John gave a violent yank at his chains, while Rodney tried to flatten himself into the wall. "You try and I'll --"
"You just think about it for a while," Kell said softly, sheathing his sword. "I'll come back in a while. Maybe if you want to take me up on my offer, I'll see about getting some food and water sent down. Otherwise ..." He shrugged. The door closed behind him with a hollow thunk. Rodney heard the sound of the locks being set, the bar falling across it.
"You okay?" John said after a while.
Rodney's breathing had finally settled down to a more-or-less normal rate, at least enough to enable him to talk. "No! I'm trapped in a cell while a crazy and power-mad knight threatens to cut pieces off me."
"Sit down." John leaned back against the wall, holding his injured arm. "Think," he added. "Why in the world does he want the King dead? The King is marrying his daughter. Not that he's the sentimental type, but I'd think he'd be in it for the power."
"The marriage was arranged when they were little kids," Rodney said, sliding down the wall and pressing his head back against the cold stones. He searched his brain for the various bits of gossip that he'd picked up from Guinevere during the years he'd been with Kell. "I think it was set up by the old King -- this one's father. It wasn't Kell's idea."
John leaned forward. "That's more or less what Elizabeth said, back when -- you know. The marriage was arranged because the former King wanted control of Kell's lands. A large portion would have gone as her dowry. I don't know if that's still true?" The sentence ended on a questioning note.
"Right, because I pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing."
To Rodney's surprise, John laughed -- that oddly nasal laugh that Rodney always used to tease him about. Tired, sleep, deprived, hurting and filthy as he was, Rodney found himself caught between laughing back, and bursting into tears. His emotional control in tatters, he had to look away, blinking rapidly.
"So," John said quietly, and Rodney stared at the floor for a moment longer before he was able to look over at his brother. "What have you been doing all these years?"
* * * * * * * *
A somber mood hung over the fortress of the Pendragons when the Lady Elizabeth rode again through its gates, accompanied only by one of her husband's elderly retainers. She would have come alone -- she did not like the idea that the man would shortly be running to report her comings and goings to her husband -- but the hue and cry that she would have created by vanishing from the Kell estates without an escort would have been considerably more problematic for her plans.
She took leave of her escort in the courtyard, handing him the reins of her palfrey and ordering him to see to the horse's welfare. Temporarily unencumbered and unwatched, she hastened towards the King's rooms and requested an audience, only to be rebuffed by attendants who told her the King was not seeing visitors.
"I have important information for him. It is vital that I see him."
But she was turned away, leaving her at loose ends, frightened, furious. It was long past noon, but no one knew anything of Guinevere. Her husband was somewhere in the palace as well, she assumed, and the last thing she wanted was to meet him here, now. Under her traveling cloak, the packet of papers that she carried felt as if it burned like a torch -- a blazing fire of suspicion that he could not help but see.
She'd fled the palace under the excuse of illness, traveling home at all due speed and vanishing into her chambers. But what she wanted was much more pointed -- to search her husband's correspondence in pursuit of the thing she'd suspected for years. What little she had unearthed was not precisely a red arrow of guilt pointing at him, but perhaps it, along with the letter from Guinevere's kidnapper, would be enough to convince the King that she was not a madwoman.
And she'd needed to make one other stop at home, too. A small bundle, obtained from the old herb woman Charin, had been tucked into her dress. She touched her side occasionally, ensuring that it was still there.
Though she feared meeting her husband in the halls, she couldn't hide indefinitely, and resolutely she turned her steps to her family's guest quarters in the palace.
As soon as she stepped into the sitting room, she froze in shock at the sight of her daughter sitting on the window seat with Teyla in her boys' clothes -- Elizabeth knew of Teyla's deception, had been a willing accomplice to it in fact, but at the moment she only had eyes for Guinevere.
"Mother!" Guinevere exclaimed, jumping up. "Where have you been?"
"Where have I been?" A laugh tore from Elizabeth's throat; only a lifetime of plastering over her emotions enabled her to stop herself from running to fling herself onto Guinevere's neck. Instead, she crossed the room with a careless stride and gripped her daughter's hands. "How are you? Are you well? Were you hurt?"
Guinevere looked startled but did not pull away. "No, no, I'm fine. Very fine. Mother --"
"Is your father here?" Elizabeth interrupted anxiously.
Guinevere shook her head. "No, I'm not sure where he is. Mother, so much has happened, I have to tell you --"
"Softly, Guinevere, softly," Elizabeth said, looking to Teyla.
Defensive of her friend, Guinevere moved to intercept Elizabeth's stare. "She must stay, mother. She is a part of this, and my most trusted friend. She knows all that I know."
Elizabeth looked back and forth between them. "Knows all that you know about what?"
Guinevere's hands tightened on Elizabeth's own. "Mother," Guinevere said quietly. "I know about John."
A furious heat, anger and something else, rose in Elizabeth's chest. Her first, insane instinct was to deny it, but her emotions must have been stamped plainly on her face. Wrenching her hands free of her daughter's grasp, she took a fast step backward, breathing hard, her iron self-control shaken apart.
"You cannot know," she said helplessly. God above, they had been so careful. After all these years, how had so many people learned of this? A terrible suspicion gripped her. "Guinevere, please tell me you were not responsible for the letter." Did her daughter have enough guile to fake her own kidnapping? No wonder Duke Kell was nowhere to be seen at the moment, if his own daughter had managed to fool him.
But Guinevere only looked surprised. "What letter?"
"Never mind. Never ..." Elizabeth rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand. She had not slept, but her exhaustion went deeper than the flesh. It was a very old thing.
Guinevere's mouth opened and closed. She glanced at Teyla, who rose in a single fluid motion. "Lady, let me take your cloak," the stable girl said gently.
"Not just now." Elizabeth's hand closed firmly over the packet of papers at her side. She had not allowed it to leave her person.
"Mother," Guinevere said, reaching out to touch her as one might gentle a frightened bird. "Are you well? They said you'd taken ill. I didn't believe it, but looking at you now --"
"I am well, Guinevere." She'd spent her life protecting Guinevere from her father, but the Duke's crimes had caught up with them anyway. Guinevere was no longer a child, no longer something to be sheltered and protected. Elizabeth looked into her daughter's eyes, and then brought out the packet, wrapped in one of her best scarves. She laid it on the window seat and spread it out. "Guinevere, Teyla, come here."
"Mother, I'm sure this is important, but I really must tell you what's happened," Guinevere said.
"It's more than important. It is your life." The letter from the person claiming to have kidnapped Guinevere, with its spiky handwriting so like John's, lay atop the pile. Elizabeth put it carefully to one side.
"Mother, what is all of this?" Guinevere picked up a letter, crumpled and flattened.
"This," Elizabeth said, "is the best circumstantial evidence I could find that your father was at least partly responsible for the murder of the Pendragon family, twenty years ago."
The room went deathly still and quiet. "Regicide?" Teyla whispered.
Guinevere had gone pale, but, Elizabeth saw, she did not protest or deny it. Not a child anymore, not at all. "Mother ... are you sure?"
"I am sure, but my proof is very weak." Elizabeth ran her hands over the letters. For many years, she'd acted as secretary for her semi-illiterate husband. But she had been too afraid, for a very long time, to save evidence of the conspiracy among some of the nobles to eliminate the Pendragons' threat to their sovereignty. What she had wasn't much. She only hoped it would be enough.
"But ..." Guinevere floundered. "Why?"
"Power, my love," Elizabeth said gently. "The Pendragons did much to unify Britain from a collection of small warring states into a nation. People like your father didn't appreciate that; they didn't like to yield total control of their lands and pay taxes to the King. Your betrothal to the King's son was secured at a time when the old Duke of Kell, your grandfather, had to go to the Pendragons with his hat in hand, needing their help to muster a large enough army to repel an incursion from one of his rivals."
She tucked the precious papers back into their packet. "But neither he nor his son ever forgave them for it," she went on. "The old Duke died, and as time went on and your father began to realize that I might never give him a male heir, he saw that your marriage could cause all the Kell lands to slip into the Pendragons' hands. I still do not know if your father spearheaded the conspiracy, or went along with it when someone else suggested it, but I do know that he was closely involved, and may even have struck some of the killing blows himself."
She looked up to see the effect her words had had on her audience. Both of the other women were silent and still; she could see them processing it in their own way. Teyla was the first to speak, direct and practical, as was her way. "My lady, have you spoken to the King?"
"I have not." Laid out bare as it was, Elizabeth found herself shrinking from her own cowardice in waiting so long. "Though I do not know what will happen if I do. He may think my accusations against my husband to be the ravings of a madwoman. It is fairly widely known that my marriage to the Duke is not a happy one."
Guinevere's face was set in stubborn lines. After a moment, Elizabeth realized why it was so familiar -- she'd seen it in her own mirror. "He'll believe you, Mother," Guinevere said loyally. "He's a good man. And I'll stand up with you."
"No, you certainly will not! Why do you think I've hidden this for so long? The last thing I want to do is make a target of you."
She'd expected Guinevere to fight and rail, maybe to throw a tantrum, but instead there was only a pensive silence. She is, indeed, no longer a child, Elizabeth thought with both sorrow and pride.
When Guinevere finally spoke, the question that she asked was not at all the one Elizabeth had been expecting. "Did you ever tell John? Does he know?"
Even after all this time, the sound of his name still took a sharp bite out of Elizabeth's fortified heart, particularly hearing it on her daughter's lips. "No. John never knew; I would not have put him in that much danger. And, for a long time, it did not seem to matter -- no one knew that one of the Pendragon children had survived." After a pause to strengthen herself, she said, "You still haven't told me what happened to you, and how you learned of John."
"He told me," Guinevere said simply. "About you," and then, as Elizabeth stared at her in honest bafflement, Guinevere caught her hands. "Mother, he's imprisoned in the palace right now, along with Sir Rodney. He's the one who took me, to lure Father out where he could fight him, but it all went wrong and now Father is going to kill him."
Elizabeth could feel the pieces of her world coming apart in slow motion beneath her feet. "John is dead," she said blankly.
"No -- no, Mother, he had to pretend to be dead," Guinevere said with the impatience of the young, not so far removed from nursery stories where such things were commonplace. "So that Father wouldn't finish the job of killing him. But now he's being held in one of the towers, I don't know which one --"
"I do," Teyla said, breaking in with her quiet tones. "It's heavily guarded, though."
Elizabeth tried desperately to gather the rumpled rags of her composure about her. "This is John Sheppard you're talking about?"
Guinevere shot her an exasperated, "adults are idiots" look of the sort that comes naturally to teenagers. "Yes, Mother; I just said so. He was injured, and I don't know how Father has been treating him, or what he has planned."
Teyla spoke again when a short pause fell. "I could talk to the prisoners. Perhaps take them some food as well, because I do not expect they are being treated well."
"You can get into the tower?" Guinevere asked, her surprise visible on her face.
Teyla inclined her head in a small nod. "I have ways."
Part Four
Rodney hated the wilderness in general. It was full of wild beasts, which he would be expected to kill, and ruffians, which he would be expected to fight, and flowers, which he was allergic to. He hadn't thought that anything could make him hate the wild lands more than he already did. Come to find out, though, he'd found something that did the trick: riding through the woods on a recalcitrant, ancient warhorse that just wanted to find a nice patch of sun and take a nap, surrounded by all of Kell's most vulgar and violent knights and their even more loutish squires, riding off to kill some poor bastard who was going to be outnumbered thirty to one.
The only bright spot was that he had Teylaval with him, so at least he knew that he could depend on one person to have a measure of brains and common sense. Teylaval had gotten stuck with a long-legged pony, but rode as if he was born to it, though he shifted his seat occasionally as if he found the saddle uncomfortable; Rodney thought the stableboy was probably used to riding bareback. Teylaval soon took up a position at Warstrider's head, grabbing the old warhorse's bridle whenever it decided to take a detour for some grazing.
Rodney might be generally out of the loop, but he'd caught enough of the gossip among the knights to know that they were riding off to apprehend the ruffian who'd abducted Kell's daughter (in which case "apprehend", Rodney suspected, knowing Kell and his knights, was a euphemism for "brutally murder"). And Rodney was not exactly the foremost student of human nature, either, but even he could pick up on the fact that Kell seemed to be much more concerned with the slight to his honor than his daughter's safety.
Teylaval dragged Warstrider out of yet another patch of thornbushes. "Thanks," Rodney said. He'd given up on keeping to the usual knight-squire formalities, because, frankly, Teylaval was a whole lot better at this than he was, and trying to maintain his own supremacy in the face of his squire's clearly superior skill just made him feel like an idiot. Also, he didn't want to risk annoying Teylaval and being left to guide his horse himself, because Warstrider would probably wander off a cliff and break both their necks.
"That's quite all right." Teylaval dropped back to keep pace with Warstrider (not exactly difficult, even for the pony; they were at the very back of the column of knights). "If you don't mind my saying so, if you straighten your spine and seat yourself more like so --" he demonstrated by slouching and then straightening " -- your horse will respond more efficiently to you. They are used to someone who rides with an air of command."
"I have an air of command," Rodney said indignantly.
The corners of Teylaval's mouth turned up.
"I do!"
"Well," Teylaval said in a voice that sounded as if he was choking back laughter, "perhaps it would be a good idea to convey that air of command to your horse."
As they rode along through the flower-infested forest, Teylaval prodded Rodney to sit up straight, turn his heels down, tuck his elbows in and stop shifting his weight around in the saddle. He couldn't tell if it actually made a difference to Warstrider, but he had to reluctantly admit that it made him feel a little more manly.
"How can you spend all your life riding horses and continue to be so poor at it?" Teylaval inquired, nudging the small of Rodney's back in an attempt to correct his posture yet again.
"You've really taken this honesty thing to heart, haven't you?" Rodney grumbled.
"Yes," Teylaval said, smiling.
"I hate you."
He watched the squire out of the corner of his eye for reaction, but Teylaval merely smiled wider and then rode up to wrest Warstrider's head from a particularly tasty patch of clover. Rodney's eyes widened as he realized that he was staring at Teylaval's really quite nicely shaped fundament on the saddle, and wrenched his gaze back to watching out for low-hanging branches. He'd heard of knights who harbored an unseemly attraction for their squires, but surely he wasn't that sort of knight ... was he?
He was jolted out of his contemplations by a sudden yell and some kind of scuffle up ahead. Teylaval seized Warstrider's bridle and dragged him along as the knights converged on ... okay, that was weird. Through the crowd, Rodney couldn't see a whole lot, but it looked like several of Kell's knights and their horses were entangled in a large ... net?
There was another scream as one of the knights, trying to turn his horse around, ran afoul of a rope strung between two trees at chest level. He was flipped off his mount and landed on his back with a resounding clang.
Rodney stared. He'd seen a trap like that before. He'd set a trap like that before ... for his brother David, nearly thirty years ago, in retaliation for David's bullying of John.
"Stand firm, you children!" Duke Kell shouted. Horses and men were now milling around in the forest, no one sure where the next attack would come from. Someone shrieked, somewhere off to the side, and there was a loud crash.
Rodney leaned over to slap Teylaval on the arm, catching the squire's attention (and almost falling off in the process). "Come on," he said, and urged Warstrider into the bushes. For a change, the geriatric warhorse seemed to be happy to comply.
"What are we doing?" Teylaval asked, ghosting after him on the pony.
"We are staying out of the way," Rodney said firmly. "Obviously someone has set traps in the area, and while the Duke's men are apparently perfectly happy to charge around until they break their necks, I'd say it might be a better idea to wait and watch."
"Hide," Teylaval corrected him.
Rodney glowered at him. "We are not hiding, we are observing from cover. There's a difference."
"Shouldn't we warn them?" Another crash and scream punctuated Teylaval's words.
"And they'll listen to us?"
"Excellent point," Teylaval sighed, and then twisted around in the saddle, pointing down. "Watch your horse's step. Another trap."
"Good eye." Rodney leaned from his horse, looking down at the leaf-covered noose that Teylaval had noticed. "Someone's been busy around here." And this, too, was a booby trap that he and John had rigged up to catch their well-deserving brothers, back when they were young and this sort of prank seemed like a good idea.
But John's dead.
"Hey!" Guinevere protested when John tied her to a tree.
"Sorry," he said, and he sounded genuinely apologetic. "But I can't have you running off and warning anyone. You'll be all right here."
She glared at him. "What if all of you kill each other and no one's left to untie me? Am I supposed to stand here until wild beasts come to eat me, or until I fall over from thirst?"
"Hmm. Good point." The Black Knight rubbed his stubbled upper lip thoughtfully, then took out a small knife and laid it on the ground near her feet.
"How is that supposed to help me?"
He grinned at her. "You're an educated woman; I'm sure you can contrive a way of getting it. As long as it takes you a while."
Guinevere fruitlessly stretched and strained at her bonds, trying to reach the knife with her toe, while John strolled across the clearing and began donning his armor. She was sweating, frustrated and panting by the time that he rode the horse back over to her. "How's it going?"
"Wonderful," Guinevere reported through clenched teeth. After a night in the cave and the trek through the forest, her hair was a tangled mess, and now sweat plastered it to her face; she could barely see.
"I told you: think. Your brain's your most important weapon. At least, that's what my brother always said." John wheeled the horse around and trotted out of the clearing, clanking.
"This is unfair!" Guinevere shouted after him, but he'd vanished into the sun-dappled woods.
When it became apparent that he was not coming back, she sighed and contemplated the knife lying in the dirt. It was just out of reach beyond her toe.
Nice.
Think, John had said. What assets did she have? Staring at the tips of her shoes under the edge of Sora's gown, the thought occurred to her that she might be able to snag it with one of those. Carefully, she toed out of one shoe and hooked her bare toes over the lip, using it as an awkward scoop. After some more contortions, she retrieved the knife and, bending and twisting until the ropes dug painfully into her stomach, managed to transfer it from her toes to her hand.
Very nice!
Cutting oneself free of tightly knotted ropes sounded much easier in the stories than it turned out to be in real life. Trying to hold the knife at an angle to the ropes set her wrist on fire.
She was resting between attempts when a soft rustling in the forest made her jump.
"Hello?" she began warily, and then stared when the King himself slipped quietly from the shadows, dressed all in soft, patched brown leather.
Ronon had given an excuse about feeling unwell after the previous day's feasting -- not entirely unbelievable; half the court had been carousing until all hours and were nowhere to be found this morning -- and, after securing a promise not to be disturbed under pain of royal wrath, had slipped away down one of the secret tunnels, pausing only to obtain a few things from his stash of emergency escape gear.
It wasn't that he was paranoid. Much. But when your parents have been murdered in their beds and you suddenly find yourself in a hotbed of conspiracy and intrigue after living on your own in the forest for a number of years .... well, it just seemed natural to keep a few stashes of food, clothing and weapons hidden in the tunnel system.
Alone in the sun-washed green wilderness, he was relieved to find himself slipping back into his old habits, like shedding an ill-fitting skin of satin and jewels. The familiar, supple leather conformed to his body, more comfortable than the finest robes, and he barely stirred a twig as he ghosted from sun to shade.
No special woods skills were necessary to find the trail of Duke Kell's party, though -- the broken branches and churned earth of the horses' passage blazed a veritable highway through the forest, and the distant jangling of armor and raised voices could be clearly heard. Ronon stood in the crushed vegetation and stared after them. A slow anger kindled in his chest. If you value her life, meet me alone, the ransom note had written of Kell's daughter, Ronon's betrothed. Yet here was Kell with a war party.
With a short bow against his side, his sword lashed to his back so that it would not entangle his legs, he ran swiftly through the forest, pacing and eventually outpacing the war party. In the dense trees, a lone man could move faster than the laden horses. Before he reached Kell's men, however, Ronon veered off and slipped through the brush, staying close enough that he could be aware of their movements but not near enough to be seen or heard -- if they could hear anything over the noise they were making.
Ronon saw the first trap in advance of the riders, and stepped over it carefully: a noose covered with leaves. He scanned it with an expert's eye -- he was very familiar with the design of similar traps from his childhood. The peasants often used them, in smaller versions, to catch birds and rats; he'd set hundreds of them himself.
Apparently Guinevere's kidnappers were not entirely unprepared for a double-cross.
This thought had just crossed his mind when a tremendous commotion erupted: horses squealing, men shouting angrily, cracking tree limbs and sudden sharp cries of pain or shock. Ronon smiled to himself. As little sympathy as he had for the fate of Guinevere's kidnappers, from what he'd seen of Kell's knights he had even less for them.
With silence no longer as much of an issue, Ronon strode quickly through the trees, skirting the noise, dust and flying twigs that let him know where Kell's war party were currently thrashing around in a line of traps. He skillfully avoided a few more; the unknown person or persons who had kidnapped Guinevere had seeded the forest with them. They're close, Ronon thought, all his senses alert.
Over the sound of the struggling horses and men, and Kell's furious cries as he tried to regain control of his men, Ronon could hear the sound of the river. He caught glimpses of sunlight and sky through the trees -- the open country around the water.
Meet me alone at noon in the glade by the river, the note had read. And Kell had clearly known where he was going. The kidnapper or kidnappers, and hopefully Guinevere, would be nearby. Ronon moved from shadow to shadow, and paused at the edge of a clearing overlooking the river.
Across the clearing, bound to an oak tree, was a slender shape in a blue dress, long golden hair falling across her face as she struggled. Ronon stared, doubting his own senses. With her head down, she looked so much like the peasant girl that he'd met in the palace --
The girl raised her head, exposing a long curve of pale throat as she arched her back, stretching and struggling with her bonds. It was her. Jennifer.
Various possibilities occurred to Ronon, most of which were equally unlikely. Still, she was clearly a prisoner, and probably bait as well. He cast a look around the clearing, but could see no sign of enemies watching. Still, someone canny enough to prepare those traps would likely have a plan for Jennifer as well.
Ronon the woodcutter, the huntsman, would have remained hidden, crept around the edges of the clearing. For a long moment, he was tempted. But he was Ronon the king now. Drawing a breath and throwing back his shoulders, he assumed the invisible mantle of command and stepped from the woods, into full view of whoever might be watching the clearing.
"Hello --?" Jennifer began, then sucked in a breath when she recognized him.
Shoulders tense, back prickling, he scanned the trees rapidly, all his senses on full alert. She had to be a decoy; why else leave her tied here?
Jennifer attempted a small curtsey, as best she could while tied to the tree. "Your Majesty."
"Right," Ronon said absently. No arrow winged its way from the still and steadfast trees to bury itself in his chest; no ruffian burst from the bushes, waving a sword. Crossing the clearing swiftly, he knelt to cut her bonds, pausing briefly when he saw the small knife clutched in her hand.
"I, um, thought I might cut myself free ..." Blushing, she opened her hand and let the knife fall into his palm; he slit her bonds.
"Harder than it looks," he said, offering her a hand. She took it shyly, eyes downcast.
The sun lit her downturned features -- the outline of her nose, her slightly parted lips. Strands of tangled hair clung to her cheeks, but the demure pose told him what he had not been able to believe when he had first seen her in the clearing. For a moment he saw both of them overlaid: the chastely downcast face of his betrothed, the loose bright hair of the peasant woman who had bandaged his wounds. Two women ... but really, only one.
"Guinevere?" he said, and as her eyes came up to meet his own, Ronon realized that he'd fatally allowed his attention to lapse -- an instant before the soft jingle of harness behind him let him know that he was not alone.
"Highness," a quiet voice drawled behind him, with the slightly muffled and hollow quality that came from speaking through a closed visor.
Ronon's hand twitched towards his sword.
"I wouldn't," the voice said. "My quarrel is not with you. Turn slowly, Highness, very slowly."
Ronon did so.
In the bright, sun-drenched clearing, the Black Knight looked shockingly out of place, like an inkblot on a lady's white lace sleeve. He held a long sword, extended, the tip quivering near Ronon's neck.
"You must know who we are," Ronon said through clenched teeth. The accent of the peasant classes, acquired during his long exile and so recently lost through deliberate effort, slipped back, and he forced his tones to those of the king he had become. "This is a grave insult."
"Like I said," the knight said lightly, "quarrel's not with you. Didn't mean to get you involved, Your Highness. But that's the bait for my trap that you're setting free, there."
Ronon moved to place his body between the Black Knight and Guinevere. "That's your future queen, miscreant. If you've hurt her --"
"I haven't harmed a golden hair. Ask her. I am not your enemy, Highness, and there's nothing to be gained by --"
"You!" a voice bellowed across the clearing.
Looking somewhat the worse for wear, Kell came charging into the open, flanked by a ragged phalanx of knights -- plus, Ronon saw, one squire on a pony.
The Black Knight turned sharply; his sword lifted from Ronon's neck. And Ronon moved, drawing his sword in one swift motion. He could only blunt his sword on the Black Knight's armor, unless he got a lucky strike, so instead, he brought the sword forward, slicing the Black Knight's saddle straps.
The Black Knight was already in motion, swinging back around towards Ronon with sword in hand. Momentum swept him off the horse, saddle and all. He crashed to the meadow grass with a tremendous clang and a startled cry.
Shoving Guinevere towards the trees, Ronon closed with his fallen opponent, ignoring Kell's shouts.
"There's another one," Teylaval said, pointing, and tugged on Warstrider's bridle, leading him around another noose half-hidden under a scattering of leaves.
Teylaval had dismounted and, leading both horses, was skirting the edges of the trap-riddled area, eventually working their way around to the front of the scattered column of riders. Rodney saw, peering through the trees, that Kell's knights were in shambles. As far as he could tell, no one seemed to be dead, but men were down with broken limbs and injured horses; others had become thoroughly tangled in nets and nooses, their terrified horses struggling and plunging while their fellows tried to extricate them.
Through luck or caution, Kell himself seemed to have avoided the traps, though he was missing his helm, with leaves in his hair. "You, over there!" he bellowed in Rodney's direction. "All, to me! The bastard's probably laughing at us now -- and escaping while the lot of you stand around tangled up in your drawers!"
Rodney urged Warstrider forward, and for a change, the old warhorse actually cooperated. "M'lord, my squire can lead us through the traps."
Kell shot a hard glare over his shoulder. "Can he now." He looked past Rodney at Teylaval, swinging lithely up onto his horse. "Show me."
So it was that the three of them, plus the handful of Kell's knights who were not currently tangled up with their enemy's traps, burst out into the meadow just in time to see the tableau spread out before them -- Guinevere in a peasant's dress, with her hair spilling over her shoulders; the Black Knight with his sword at the throat of a tall huntsman in drab brown.
After his initial glimpse of the scene, Rodney was temporarily distracted, trying to keep Warstrider from picking a fight with the other knights' stallions -- so he missed whatever happened next in the meadow. He heard Kell shouting and cursing, and then a very loud crash that he instantly recognized from the jousting fields. Looking up, he saw the Black Knight on the ground; the huge black stallion wheeling, bereft of rider; the huntsman with a huge longsword in hand and -- wait, good God! His eyes tracked back to the huntsman, taking in the startling height, the unfashionably long hair; was that the King?
The unhorsed Black Knight had regained his feet rather shakily, and now he was facing off against the rangy figure in brown. Even Rodney could see that the knight in his heavy armor was at a tremendous disadvantage in speed and agility against the King in his light leathers. The armor was not meant for this sort of fighting -- it was exhausting to move in, and vulnerable to precisely targeted strikes in close combat.
Kell's frustration was obvious, but he could not presume to interfere with his monarch. No one seemed to know what to do. The horses and their riders milled helplessly. Teylaval moved in close to Warstrider and seized his bridle again, trying to keep him from wandering off into the woods and taking Rodney with him.
The King had drawn blood, sinking his long sword into a gap in the Black Knight's armor. His blade glistened oily-dark in the sun as he sidestepped and parried the knight's counterswing. Rodney had never been better than mediocre at fencing, like all the rest of his father's war-sports, but he recognized that neither of the combatants were extraordinarily skilled. The King's technique was rough and unschooled; the knight's was somewhat hesitant, as if he'd seen it done and was now trying to follow through by rote.
The King drew blood again, blade meeting flesh in a vulnerable spot under the knight's arm. The knight was visibly tiring; under the King's onslaught, he was driven back to the lip of the hill falling away to the river.
"Sir Rodney!" Heedless of the mounted knights and their restless, tetchy horses, Guinevere ran in her peasant's skirts to Rodney's side and seized his stirrup, tugging on it. "Sir Rodney, you have to stop them. He'll be killed!"
Rodney looked out at the impromptu field of battle, where the Black Knight was barely managing to stand his ground. "M'lady, I don't think your fiancé is in danger."
"Not him! J-- the Black Knight," Guinevere protested. "He's not the sort of man they think. He was kind to me."
With a sudden ringing clash of swords, the Black Knight regained the upper hand, forcing the King back a step. Rodney looked up, as did the other spectators; he was aware of Guinevere, tense against his leg.
It was clearly the Black Knight's last-ditch effort; with the heavy armor weighing him down, he could not possibly have the strength for another such attack. But, as he strode forward, he gave a piercing whistle.
The large black stallion, generally ignored by the knights, had wandered to the edge of the woods. But at the ear-splitting sound, his head went up and he wheeled around.
The King didn't see him until it was almost too late. The great black animal bore down on him like a charging boar. At the last moment, he saw it coming out of the corner of his eye and spun to avoid the horse, but one of the powerful shoulders clipped him, sent him spinning, his hair whipping around him. And the Black Knight was on him. For an instant Rodney's view was obscured by the horse's great body as it cantered to a halt and turned about; then he saw the King on his back, looking up at the knight standing over him. The sword lowered to the King's throat trembled slightly from the fatigue dragging down his arm.
For a moment, no one moved. Then, "Highness!" Kell bellowed, spurring his horse forward, as Guinevere cried, "Father, no!"
The Black Knight turned, but, slowed with exhaustion, he only partially avoided the powerful blow that Kell struck with the flat of his sword. It glanced off his helmet, ringing like a bell. Stumbling back, he stepped directly into the path of another of Kell's knights, who struck him in the sword-arm. The broadsword fell from his fingers into the grass.
"No, no!" Guinevere shrieked, and struck Rodney's mailed leg with her fist. "Sir Rodney, they mustn't!"
Rodney himself couldn't help feeling sorry for the Black Knight, surrounded and harried by Kell's riders, like a fox at bay. It was more than his life was worth, though, to interfere with them -- and, worse, it would be the downfall of all his plans, his hopes for vengeance. Kell would not suffer such an insult lightly, particularly in front of the King.
"He is a good man." Guinevere sounded near tears.
"She is correct; it is not right," Teylaval said in his light, quiet voice. "I will stop them, Sir Rodney."
And Teylaval made to ride forward, into the fray. He's a peasant; Kell will kill him -- Rodney thought, and his hand whipped out, almost without his conscious command; it was his turn to grip the bridle of Teylaval's mount. "Idiot!" he hissed. "You're nothing to him; he can strike your head from your shoulders for interfering with his sport, and no one will stop him!"
"I am not nothing, Sir Rodney," Teylaval said bitterly, meeting Rodney's eyes with his brown ones. "I will not stand by and witness this cruel excuse for justice."
The Black Knight had been forced to his knees on the churned earth. Kell himself struck another ringing blow to the Black Knight's helmet. There was no cry of pain, but the knight swayed and fell to catch himself on his hands.
"Then protect the Lady Guinevere," Rodney said, trying to sound bold and commanding, and kicked Warstrider viciously in the ribs. The warhorse tottered forward to meet his more aggressive brethren.
Ronon allowed one of Kell's men to help him to his feet. Silently, he watched Kell's baiting of the Black Knight. It was cruel sport and he wondered if he ought to stop it, but he was not sure enough of his authority. This was a lonely place, and he had no one that he trusted at his back. This would not be a good place to press his ability to control his vassals.
So he watched as the Black Knight was forced to his knees at the feet of Kell's stallion -- supporting himself on one hand, his other arm dangling uselessly. His warhorse had been captured and hobbled; something in Ronon's heart twisted to see them both brought low.
Kell looked down at the prisoner, sneering. "So this is the mysterious Black Knight. Let's see who you are. Take off your helm."
The Black Knight said nothing, though the angle of his head shifted; he was listening.
"Do you speak? Are you deaf? Dumb?" Kell glanced in the King's direction, and then leaned forward; Ronon thought that he probably hoped to keep his words private, but Ronon's ears had always been sharp. "For defiling my daughter's honor, I could strike your head from your shoulders right now, and none would gainsay me. But I would know how you know my business."
After a moment, the Black Knight pushed himself up to his knees, and pulled off his helm. Dark hair spilled free, tangled and matted with sweat. Ronon was near enough to see the knight's face -- pale, bruised and unfamiliar to him. Despite the Black Knight's obvious exhaustion and pain, his piercing green eyes glared up at Kell with quiet enmity through a tangle of disheveled hair.
Kell recoiled, his own face going pale. He said nothing at all, his lips pressed together in a hard white line as he drew back his sword for the killing stroke.
Rodney had managed to bully and cajole Warstrider into the circle of knights when the Black Knight removed his helm, and the bottom dropped out of Rodney's stomach.
It can't be. He knew that face, the face of the boy who had defended him from their brothers, who had been his partner in boyhood petty crime, his only friend and ally throughout his childhood.
But John was dead. He was dead ...
Kell drew back his sword and Rodney's vision whited out in a blinding rush of rage. He kicked Warstrider in the ribs, and miraculously, the old horse leaped in the right direction -- straight ahead, colliding with the shoulder of Kell's horse, throwing off his swing. Kell's sword-swing went wild, slashing a shallow red line across John's forehead.
And that was the last thing Rodney saw before he lost his balance in the collision and fell off his horse. Stars exploded in his vision and he found himself flat on his back, staring up at the sky. Somewhere far off, he heard Teylaval cry out, "Sir Rodney!" and hoped that the squire would have enough sense to stay back.
Rodney pushed himself painfully to his hands and knees to find himself facing a ring of swords. Looking up, he froze as the tip of Kell's sword hovered under his nose. Beyond the furious-looking knight, he saw the King watching the scene with an unreadable expression, arms folded. Teylaval had circled around and and was approaching the King, with Guinevere riding on the saddle behind him. At least the kid wasn't charging to the rescue and getting himself stabbed.
"Nice rescue, Rodney," John's voice drawled at his shoulder. Rodney's chest lurched, and, all thoughts of Kell momentarily blanked from his mind, he turned his head to see the familiar, sardonic green eyes watching him.
"You bastard!" he burst out, still on hands and knees, staring.
The corner of John's mouth quirked. His face was pale, bruised; blood trickled into his eyes from the gash across his forehead, and he blinked it away. "Still the master of stating the obvious, I see."
"You -- you're -- dead!" Rodney began, his stomach curling into a tight hot ball. "You complete ass, how could you let me think --"
Kell's boot connected with the side of his head, sent him sprawling. John shouted something, wordless and furious, and when Rodney opened his eyes and the world stopped spinning, it was to see John in his black armor, injured arm trailing, crouching over him, blocking Kell's blows with his own body.
"Useless," Kell snarled, out of sight somewhere beyond John. "What is he to you?"
John didn't answer. "Brother," Rodney croaked, pushing himself up on shaky arms. "He's my brother." It wasn't as if there was any point in hiding it anymore.
Kell laughed, and Rodney didn't think he'd ever hated anyone so much in his life. "Is that so? Are the two of you in this ridiculous conspiracy --" His eyes widened suddenly, and his triumphant grin broadened. "So," he said quietly, and then he struck John in the side of the head with the flat of his sword; John dropped like a rock, falling across Rodney's legs.
Rodney's throat seized up. "I'll kill you!" he forced out, scrabbling to get upright.
"You'll say nothing, do nothing," Kell said, leaning forward and dropping his voice, "or I'll kill him."
"You're going to kill us anyway," Rodney snarled back at him. John's face was ice-white under the bruises, and shockingly open in his unconsciousness, shockingly young-looking despite the fine lines that had gathered at the corners of his eyes since Rodney had last seen him. Rodney laid an arm across John's chest, a fragile and futile defensive motion.
But he could feel Kell's stare on him, assessing. Kell wasn't a subtle man, and up to this point, Rodney would have said that he wasn't a smart man, either. Duke Kell was very much of the "stab first and ask questions later" school of diplomacy.
But he didn't like the way Kell was looking at him. He didn't like it at all.
"Not necessarily," Kell said softly. "Depends on what you do."
Rodney tightened his arm across John's chest, feeling the rise and fall of John's shallow breathing. His brother was alive. He tried to hold onto that.
Teyla's heart battered her ribs. Sir Rodney was right; Kell would never listen to her, and she could not possibly take on a trained, armored knight. But the King might listen. She did not know him, did not know what sort of man he was, and nothing in her life had given her any reason to believe that those of the moneyed classes cared a thing for the affairs of those below them. But she liked the monarch, and she hoped that if anyone would listen to a call for leniency, he might.
Plus, there was Guinevere. And when Teyla looked down and met her friend's cornflower-blue eyes, she saw her own desperation reflected there.
Teyla extended down a hand, and pulled Guinevere up behind her. "Will the King listen to you?" she asked over her shoulder, coaxing her mount forward. The small, docile creature did not want to approach the warhorses, but for once, Teyla had much more on her mind than the horses' welfare.
"I'm not sure," Guinevere said softly, lacing her hands around Teyla's waist. After a moment, she added meekly, "I can try."
Teyla glanced over her shoulder at Guinevere's bowed, golden head. The subdued manner was very much at odds with her friend's usual eager energy. She wondered what had happened after Guinevere had run away -- how she'd come to be in the Black Knight's company, what changes it had wrought in her.
But there was no time to worry about that now. Teyla had little attention for anything but Sir Rodney, down on the meadow grass with Kell's sword at his throat. She could not understand how the arrogant, incompetent knight had managed to get under her skin so thoroughly. But he looked at her as a person, not as a piece of furniture -- and the idea of watching him die here, on the green grass of the field, caused something inside her to wither and die.
"Your Highness," she said, bowing as best she could on horseback. The King turned towards her, his brow wrinkled in a frown.
He was so shockingly tall. Even on horseback, she looked into his eyes without dipping her head. She could not help noticing that he was a very handsome man.
"I -- We don't know you," the King said. As someone who had practiced a deception most of her life, Teyla could see him visibly drawing into himself, collecting the fragile shell of kingliness that he wore around himself. He was not, she thought, a man who enjoyed the power that he wielded. It made her think better of him.
"Teylaval, Highness," she said, bowing again. "I am Sir Rodney's squire." And that was as far as her brain would take her; to her frustration, the words balled up in her throat. Rodney's life hung in the balance, but what did you say to a king to convince him of a disgraced knight's merits? Sir Rodney was far more than he appeared at first glance, but everything she could think of to say in his favor came out like an extremely back-handed complement at best.
Guinevere slid off the pony's back in an unladylike flurry of skirts, but made a nice curtsey once she was on the ground. "Highness, you must stop them," she said without preamble. "This is not right. Sir Rodney is my friend, and the Black Knight was never less than courteous to me."
Ronon's eyebrows lifted. "He tied you to a tree," he pointed out.
Color flamed in Guinevere's cheeks, but she met the monarch's level stare, tilting her chin far back to do so. "My father once wronged him greatly, and that is where his quarrel lies. He never meant any harm to me. He fed me and treated me well."
Ronon looked back to the circle of knights; Teyla's eyes were drawn there also, her whole body tense as a bowstring. Sir Rodney was still alive, kneeling with his arm defensively thrown across the Black Knight's body.
"Usually it's best to let people work out their own business," Ronon said. In other words, I will not interfere. Teyla's heart sank.
"But you're here," Guinevere pointed out. "Why did you come?"
"I came for you. You are my business," he said, faltering a bit. To Teyla's surprise, a blush climbed his cheeks. "I mean, you're my future wife, aren't you?"
Guinevere seemed to consider this, then took a deep breath, drew back her shoulders, and pointed to the knights with the same air of authority that Teyla remembered her using as a child when she wanted a favorite toy. "Then, future husband, I demand that you call off my father and his men."
Teyla had never been so proud of her friend. She held her breath, as the King stared at Guinevere as if he'd never seen her before.
But Kell acted before Ronon could do anything, wheeling his horse, turning to his monarch. "Highness, I suggest that these miscreants should be locked up until justice can be meted out."
The King raised an eyebrow, then turned his head to his betrothed, a slight smile curving his lips. "And does that meet your approval, Lady?"
Guinevere opened and closed her mouth. "I suppose," she said at last, and the look she gave her father was a suspicious one.
All the way back to the palace, Guinevere wondered what her father was up to. Because he was, clearly, up to something.
She rode behind him on his horse, as he was the only person in the group who wasn't an unrelated male -- well, except for Teyla, but of course no one else knew that Teyla wasn't a man. The former Black Knight, still unconscious and now bereft of his armor, was lashed across one of the other knights' saddles, while Rodney sat hunched and miserable on Warstrider's back with his hands bound before him.
Guinevere found herself leaning away from her father. She told herself it was just the unpleasant feel of his cold armor, and its tendency to pinch her hands.
It just didn't make sense. From what John had said back at the river, her father had every reason to kill him. Letting him live would merely give John the opportunity to ruin him. And, even in her girlish innocence, she had never known her father to be a merciful man. So why was he taking him back for trial? The King had even offered the palace dungeons, and Kell had accepted with unusually good cheer.
He was definitely up to something.
At the palace, the Duke of Kell handed Guinevere down to the cobblestones, with a firm and impersonal grasp, delivering her into the waiting arms of her serving maids. Guinevere could only watch, past her fluttering maids, as the horses and prisoners were taken away. Teyla cast a sympathetic look over her shoulder, and then went with the rest of the men.
Guinevere was hustled off to her family's suite of rooms by the twittering maids. Sora was conspicuously absent, but the others were excited and envious and solicitous, begging for details of Guinevere's adventures.
Guinevere just wanted to be left alone to bathe and eat and sleep. Well, no -- more than that, she wanted to be wherever John the Black Knight and Sir Rodney had been taken. She didn't even know if she could help, but it seemed entirely wrong that they should be in danger, injured, suffering -- while she was being primped and pressed, cleaned and changed, her hair done up so that she looked like a proper lady again.
"Where is Mother?" she asked, futilely pushing away a maid with a tortoiseshell comb. "I need to speak to my mother."
"The Lady Elizabeth has suffered an attack of nervous exhaustion, milady. She is prostrate with worry over you, and was taken back home to recover under the care of her personal physician."
"What?" Guinevere slapped away the comb. "No one told me!"
"A messenger has been dispatched to let her know of your safe return, milady," the maid said hastily.
"Out, out. Please. I -- I need to -- to rest."
She unceremoniously chased out the maids, leaving her alone to pace anxiously. Worry for her mother gave way slowly to wondering if her mother, too, could be nursing plans of her own. The Lady Elizabeth had never suffered an attack of nervous exhaustion in the entire time that Guinevere could remember -- she simply was not that kind of woman. But wherever Elizabeth was, whatever she was doing, Guinevere could not rely on her for help.
"But I need to tell her about John," she said aloud, wringing her hands. Now that she was dressed in her usual garments, back in familiar surroundings, the stories that John had told her of her mother's youthful exploits seemed distant and strange, like tall tales told in childhood. Had it all been a lie, designed to get her cooperation? Yet he'd seemed so earnest, so easy to trust. "Or I could talk to the King again. He seemed to listen to me --"
The door opened; Guinevere jumped. Teyla slipped in and closed it behind her.
"Teyla! How are they?"
"Shackled like common criminals. They are not in the dungeons; they have been imprisoned in one of the towers." Teyla ran her hand through her boyishly short hair. She crossed the room to the basin of water that Guinevere's attendants had left under the window and splashed it on her dirty, tired face. She smelled of leather and horses; Guinevere hadn't noticed it in the woods, but here, where the only smells were those of perfume and rosewater, it stood out sharply. "But alive," she added. "For now."
Guinevere sat down on the window seat, kicking her heels at the floor with restless anxiety. "My mother might be able to help, but she's gone home. I don't know why."
Teyla ran her wet hands across her face, and sat down next to her friend. "I would help if I could, but I am powerless here." Frustration laced through her tone.
"You? Powerless?" Guinevere looked at her in shock. In the forest, she'd felt so helpless, so envious of Teyla with her boys' clothes and her confidence in the world of men and fighting. Throughout their childhood, she had often wished to be more like her bold, unflappable friend, and had envied Teyla's freedom from the ladylike behavior that Guinevere's parents and tutors expected of her.
But there were different kinds of power, weren't there? In the world of courts and intrigue, Guinevere was the one with the advantage of birth and training. Looking at her friend, Guinevere wondered if Teyla sometimes felt as she herself had today, helpless in the woods in her heavy skirts and soft, impractical shoes.
"You know why I ran away, don't you?"
Teyla looked up, met her eyes. "You did not want to play the role in which your birth had cast you," she said simply. "I am much the same."
"I thought that was it. But now I think it was fear." Guinevere's hands tightened in her lap, small fingers working over the top of each other. "I feared living a life like my mother's, and I looked down on her for her own fear -- for supporting my father despite all that he did to her. I thought that I was the strong one to leave." The moving fingers stilled, grew firm. "But in the end, Teyla, I think that I was the one who was weak. Sir Rodney, and you -- I put my friends in danger, because of the things I did. And my mother -- all my life I've thought she was a coward, taking my father's abuse. But I've begun to realize that she's been protecting me, and the servants, and keeping my father's temper and profligate ways from causing our ruin."
"Sometimes it takes more courage to stand than to run," Teyla said gently.
Guinevere nodded, her eyes on her lap, feeling small.
"That went well," Rodney said. "Hold still."
He was bandaging John's wounds crudely with strips torn from his tunic. John had regained consciousness in fits and starts on the trip back to the castle, but he remained somewhat dazed and woozy.
Shackles dragged at Rodney's wrists and ankles, a weight that reminded him of their terrifyingly precarious situation every time he moved.
"Seriously, what kind of revenge plan was that?"
"A plan that didn't figure on royalty showing up and picking fights with me," John retorted, ducking his head in an attempt to avoid Rodney's clumsy ministrations, but all he managed to do was jar his injured arm, and a pained breath hissed through his teeth -- Rodney was pretty sure that it was broken, but John wouldn't let him look at it. "At least I wasn't ... okay, what were you trying to do, anyway, over the last few years?"
"Get close enough to kill him," Rodney said sullenly, giving up on trying to bandage his recalcitrant patient and retreating to his corner of their cell. His head still throbbed abominably where Kell had struck him in the meadow.
John opened his mouth as if to say more; then his eyes softened, and he closed his mouth and looked away. After a few moments of silence, he said, "So, who was the pretty girl with you?"
Rodney gave him a sharp look. "What girl? You don't know who Guinevere is? You're the one who kidnapped her!"
"Not her. The one in men's trousers, riding the pony."
"That's Teylaval," Rodney said in disbelief. "A boy, John. A boy."
To Rodney's utter annoyance, John laughed. "Rodney, she's a girl. She's very obviously a girl. I can't believe -- seriously, you didn't notice?"
After a few minutes of silence, Rodney said in a very tiny voice, "Really?"
John kicked his leg in an affectionate sort of way. "Yes, you idiot."
"Female."
"Yes."
"Well," Rodney said thoughtfully, "that does make me feel better about my somewhat disturbing attraction to my squire."
The sudden clank of a key turning in the lock made him stiffen and John snap to attention. The door opened, and Rodney was vaguely aware of John rising to his knees, supporting himself on the cell wall, when the Duke of Kell entered, alone. He closed the door behind him and regarded them in silence for a moment.
John was the first to speak. "My lord," he drawled in a voice heavy with sarcasm. "How's your lady wife? Does she still have the little mole under her --"
Kell lashed out, kicking him viciously on the side with the injured arm. John curled forward, gasping; Rodney rose up onto his knees, his hand twisting in his chains.
Kell's lip curled. "I see that you haven't learned a thing. Badly bred gutter trash. I don't know what she ever saw in you."
John straightened his body with a slow and deliberate effort, glaring up at Kell through his ragged fringe of dark bangs. "I didn't treat her like a slab of meat. You should try it sometimes."
Kell just snorted. He stepped out of reach of both of the chained men, leaned against the wall and folded his arms. "There's one reason you two are still alive," he said casually. "That little display out there at the river made me realize there's a thing you could do for me, John of Nowhere. And I think I've got just the way to make you do it."
"Right," John said. "Because I'm all about doing things for you."
Kell grinned, showing cracked, yellow teeth. "You're going to kill the King for me."
There was a long, startled silence. Rodney was the one who said, "What?"
"See, it's simple," Kell said, and drew his sword with a groan of scraping metal. "The two of you are a problem for me. But it's not every day I find a couple of people who are so easy to control. You're going to kill the King, or ..." He lowered the sword until it touched Rodney's shackled wrist. "Or I'll cut pieces off him."
John gave a violent yank at his chains, while Rodney tried to flatten himself into the wall. "You try and I'll --"
"You just think about it for a while," Kell said softly, sheathing his sword. "I'll come back in a while. Maybe if you want to take me up on my offer, I'll see about getting some food and water sent down. Otherwise ..." He shrugged. The door closed behind him with a hollow thunk. Rodney heard the sound of the locks being set, the bar falling across it.
"You okay?" John said after a while.
Rodney's breathing had finally settled down to a more-or-less normal rate, at least enough to enable him to talk. "No! I'm trapped in a cell while a crazy and power-mad knight threatens to cut pieces off me."
"Sit down." John leaned back against the wall, holding his injured arm. "Think," he added. "Why in the world does he want the King dead? The King is marrying his daughter. Not that he's the sentimental type, but I'd think he'd be in it for the power."
"The marriage was arranged when they were little kids," Rodney said, sliding down the wall and pressing his head back against the cold stones. He searched his brain for the various bits of gossip that he'd picked up from Guinevere during the years he'd been with Kell. "I think it was set up by the old King -- this one's father. It wasn't Kell's idea."
John leaned forward. "That's more or less what Elizabeth said, back when -- you know. The marriage was arranged because the former King wanted control of Kell's lands. A large portion would have gone as her dowry. I don't know if that's still true?" The sentence ended on a questioning note.
"Right, because I pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing."
To Rodney's surprise, John laughed -- that oddly nasal laugh that Rodney always used to tease him about. Tired, sleep, deprived, hurting and filthy as he was, Rodney found himself caught between laughing back, and bursting into tears. His emotional control in tatters, he had to look away, blinking rapidly.
"So," John said quietly, and Rodney stared at the floor for a moment longer before he was able to look over at his brother. "What have you been doing all these years?"
A somber mood hung over the fortress of the Pendragons when the Lady Elizabeth rode again through its gates, accompanied only by one of her husband's elderly retainers. She would have come alone -- she did not like the idea that the man would shortly be running to report her comings and goings to her husband -- but the hue and cry that she would have created by vanishing from the Kell estates without an escort would have been considerably more problematic for her plans.
She took leave of her escort in the courtyard, handing him the reins of her palfrey and ordering him to see to the horse's welfare. Temporarily unencumbered and unwatched, she hastened towards the King's rooms and requested an audience, only to be rebuffed by attendants who told her the King was not seeing visitors.
"I have important information for him. It is vital that I see him."
But she was turned away, leaving her at loose ends, frightened, furious. It was long past noon, but no one knew anything of Guinevere. Her husband was somewhere in the palace as well, she assumed, and the last thing she wanted was to meet him here, now. Under her traveling cloak, the packet of papers that she carried felt as if it burned like a torch -- a blazing fire of suspicion that he could not help but see.
She'd fled the palace under the excuse of illness, traveling home at all due speed and vanishing into her chambers. But what she wanted was much more pointed -- to search her husband's correspondence in pursuit of the thing she'd suspected for years. What little she had unearthed was not precisely a red arrow of guilt pointing at him, but perhaps it, along with the letter from Guinevere's kidnapper, would be enough to convince the King that she was not a madwoman.
And she'd needed to make one other stop at home, too. A small bundle, obtained from the old herb woman Charin, had been tucked into her dress. She touched her side occasionally, ensuring that it was still there.
Though she feared meeting her husband in the halls, she couldn't hide indefinitely, and resolutely she turned her steps to her family's guest quarters in the palace.
As soon as she stepped into the sitting room, she froze in shock at the sight of her daughter sitting on the window seat with Teyla in her boys' clothes -- Elizabeth knew of Teyla's deception, had been a willing accomplice to it in fact, but at the moment she only had eyes for Guinevere.
"Mother!" Guinevere exclaimed, jumping up. "Where have you been?"
"Where have I been?" A laugh tore from Elizabeth's throat; only a lifetime of plastering over her emotions enabled her to stop herself from running to fling herself onto Guinevere's neck. Instead, she crossed the room with a careless stride and gripped her daughter's hands. "How are you? Are you well? Were you hurt?"
Guinevere looked startled but did not pull away. "No, no, I'm fine. Very fine. Mother --"
"Is your father here?" Elizabeth interrupted anxiously.
Guinevere shook her head. "No, I'm not sure where he is. Mother, so much has happened, I have to tell you --"
"Softly, Guinevere, softly," Elizabeth said, looking to Teyla.
Defensive of her friend, Guinevere moved to intercept Elizabeth's stare. "She must stay, mother. She is a part of this, and my most trusted friend. She knows all that I know."
Elizabeth looked back and forth between them. "Knows all that you know about what?"
Guinevere's hands tightened on Elizabeth's own. "Mother," Guinevere said quietly. "I know about John."
A furious heat, anger and something else, rose in Elizabeth's chest. Her first, insane instinct was to deny it, but her emotions must have been stamped plainly on her face. Wrenching her hands free of her daughter's grasp, she took a fast step backward, breathing hard, her iron self-control shaken apart.
"You cannot know," she said helplessly. God above, they had been so careful. After all these years, how had so many people learned of this? A terrible suspicion gripped her. "Guinevere, please tell me you were not responsible for the letter." Did her daughter have enough guile to fake her own kidnapping? No wonder Duke Kell was nowhere to be seen at the moment, if his own daughter had managed to fool him.
But Guinevere only looked surprised. "What letter?"
"Never mind. Never ..." Elizabeth rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand. She had not slept, but her exhaustion went deeper than the flesh. It was a very old thing.
Guinevere's mouth opened and closed. She glanced at Teyla, who rose in a single fluid motion. "Lady, let me take your cloak," the stable girl said gently.
"Not just now." Elizabeth's hand closed firmly over the packet of papers at her side. She had not allowed it to leave her person.
"Mother," Guinevere said, reaching out to touch her as one might gentle a frightened bird. "Are you well? They said you'd taken ill. I didn't believe it, but looking at you now --"
"I am well, Guinevere." She'd spent her life protecting Guinevere from her father, but the Duke's crimes had caught up with them anyway. Guinevere was no longer a child, no longer something to be sheltered and protected. Elizabeth looked into her daughter's eyes, and then brought out the packet, wrapped in one of her best scarves. She laid it on the window seat and spread it out. "Guinevere, Teyla, come here."
"Mother, I'm sure this is important, but I really must tell you what's happened," Guinevere said.
"It's more than important. It is your life." The letter from the person claiming to have kidnapped Guinevere, with its spiky handwriting so like John's, lay atop the pile. Elizabeth put it carefully to one side.
"Mother, what is all of this?" Guinevere picked up a letter, crumpled and flattened.
"This," Elizabeth said, "is the best circumstantial evidence I could find that your father was at least partly responsible for the murder of the Pendragon family, twenty years ago."
The room went deathly still and quiet. "Regicide?" Teyla whispered.
Guinevere had gone pale, but, Elizabeth saw, she did not protest or deny it. Not a child anymore, not at all. "Mother ... are you sure?"
"I am sure, but my proof is very weak." Elizabeth ran her hands over the letters. For many years, she'd acted as secretary for her semi-illiterate husband. But she had been too afraid, for a very long time, to save evidence of the conspiracy among some of the nobles to eliminate the Pendragons' threat to their sovereignty. What she had wasn't much. She only hoped it would be enough.
"But ..." Guinevere floundered. "Why?"
"Power, my love," Elizabeth said gently. "The Pendragons did much to unify Britain from a collection of small warring states into a nation. People like your father didn't appreciate that; they didn't like to yield total control of their lands and pay taxes to the King. Your betrothal to the King's son was secured at a time when the old Duke of Kell, your grandfather, had to go to the Pendragons with his hat in hand, needing their help to muster a large enough army to repel an incursion from one of his rivals."
She tucked the precious papers back into their packet. "But neither he nor his son ever forgave them for it," she went on. "The old Duke died, and as time went on and your father began to realize that I might never give him a male heir, he saw that your marriage could cause all the Kell lands to slip into the Pendragons' hands. I still do not know if your father spearheaded the conspiracy, or went along with it when someone else suggested it, but I do know that he was closely involved, and may even have struck some of the killing blows himself."
She looked up to see the effect her words had had on her audience. Both of the other women were silent and still; she could see them processing it in their own way. Teyla was the first to speak, direct and practical, as was her way. "My lady, have you spoken to the King?"
"I have not." Laid out bare as it was, Elizabeth found herself shrinking from her own cowardice in waiting so long. "Though I do not know what will happen if I do. He may think my accusations against my husband to be the ravings of a madwoman. It is fairly widely known that my marriage to the Duke is not a happy one."
Guinevere's face was set in stubborn lines. After a moment, Elizabeth realized why it was so familiar -- she'd seen it in her own mirror. "He'll believe you, Mother," Guinevere said loyally. "He's a good man. And I'll stand up with you."
"No, you certainly will not! Why do you think I've hidden this for so long? The last thing I want to do is make a target of you."
She'd expected Guinevere to fight and rail, maybe to throw a tantrum, but instead there was only a pensive silence. She is, indeed, no longer a child, Elizabeth thought with both sorrow and pride.
When Guinevere finally spoke, the question that she asked was not at all the one Elizabeth had been expecting. "Did you ever tell John? Does he know?"
Even after all this time, the sound of his name still took a sharp bite out of Elizabeth's fortified heart, particularly hearing it on her daughter's lips. "No. John never knew; I would not have put him in that much danger. And, for a long time, it did not seem to matter -- no one knew that one of the Pendragon children had survived." After a pause to strengthen herself, she said, "You still haven't told me what happened to you, and how you learned of John."
"He told me," Guinevere said simply. "About you," and then, as Elizabeth stared at her in honest bafflement, Guinevere caught her hands. "Mother, he's imprisoned in the palace right now, along with Sir Rodney. He's the one who took me, to lure Father out where he could fight him, but it all went wrong and now Father is going to kill him."
Elizabeth could feel the pieces of her world coming apart in slow motion beneath her feet. "John is dead," she said blankly.
"No -- no, Mother, he had to pretend to be dead," Guinevere said with the impatience of the young, not so far removed from nursery stories where such things were commonplace. "So that Father wouldn't finish the job of killing him. But now he's being held in one of the towers, I don't know which one --"
"I do," Teyla said, breaking in with her quiet tones. "It's heavily guarded, though."
Elizabeth tried desperately to gather the rumpled rags of her composure about her. "This is John Sheppard you're talking about?"
Guinevere shot her an exasperated, "adults are idiots" look of the sort that comes naturally to teenagers. "Yes, Mother; I just said so. He was injured, and I don't know how Father has been treating him, or what he has planned."
Teyla spoke again when a short pause fell. "I could talk to the prisoners. Perhaps take them some food as well, because I do not expect they are being treated well."
"You can get into the tower?" Guinevere asked, her surprise visible on her face.
Teyla inclined her head in a small nod. "I have ways."
Part Four