Stand Tall

Part Fourteen: Kiss and Kill

"Did he just walk out on us?" the knight asked. Braith shook her head solemnly and walked back over to the campsite.

"No, no. He went to warn Arthur. He's very loyal," she spoke absently, not meeting Gawain's eyes.

"Are you alright?" he asked, concerned.

"Not as much as I'd like to be, but that doesn't matter right now. Wake one of the others; they'll take watch."

"Where are you going?"

"To don the armor I packed, of course. Better to be safe than sorry."

---

It was as if morning refused to arrive. Arthur stared uneasily out his window, watching but not seeing. He had practically no idea what he was up against, except for the few things his servant had told him. Merlin held up Excalibur, contemplating his reflection in the perfect steel blade. A sword designed to kill instantly, and without pain. Merlin cleared his throat and the prince turned, taking the polished weapon with a heavy heart.

"Thank you, Merlin," he said absently. This alarmed his servant. He never thanked him. Something must be very wrong.

"Sire?"

"That'll be all. You'd better prepare yourself."

"Are you sure?"

Arthur sighed in response. "I don't know. Nothing is ever simple anymore, and I guess I want that time back. When everything was exactly what it seemed to be, and people didn't always want you dead."

A deep silence filled the room as memories flooded through their minds. A mace fight. A snake's enchanted bite. A love potion more like a poison. A lovely druid with a secret set of wings. So many terrible things had almost come to pass in the last three years, it was a miracle they were both still alive. Well, not a miracle. Magic. Half a hundred times Merlin had saved the Prince, and not a scrap of credit had ever gone his way. And that was the way it had to be.

A noise drew their attention back to the current time and place. Arthur strode to the window again, brow furrowed.

"What is it? Is She here?"

"No... I think it's... part of the Danish Army," he concluded, quite surprised. As Merlin's heartbeat slowed back to normal, recovering from near panic, he remembered what he'd planned to do.

What he'd secretly planned to do.

---

A sound like a thousand screams of rage rang out through the woods.

"She's here," Braith said slowly. She and the knights backed into a circle, swords drawn and blood pounding like footsteps in their ears. That horrific sound came again, shivers running with their little rat feet down the company's spines.

"Can you see anything?" Percival whispered harshly.

"It's too dark, I can't make out anything past the tree line," Gawain answered.

"Same," Braith agreed. They could hear more things now, the rustlings of leaves and something like claws grating against the trees. The Dane girl lashed out at the dark in frustration, but her blade found nothing. Everything stopped for a moment, like it was waiting, the eye of the storm.

Suddenly, without warning, a tail slashed down at them, its quill-like tip burrowing into a piece of firewood. It had nearly caught Gawain's foot, and he hacked at the creatures tail with all his might. The great She thing howled, or shrieked more like, and the end of Her tail was left in the burnt log.

"Du betaler for hvad du tog," (You will pay for what you took) crowed a harsh and ancient female voice from the shadows. There was a deafening hiss, and the monster began to show Her face. Only... it was the face of a young woman, except for Her eyes, which were sea-colored and had pupils slit like a cat's. And the needle-like fangs that extended from her incisors, obvious now as she shrieked again.

Something seemed to cut Her short. Her head jerked to the left, as if yanked by an invisible rope. The creature appeared to be listening, honing in on a sound by pivoting Her head at sickening angles. She spat into the fire pit, and left with a great rustling of leaves.

A moment of unsure silence followed.

"Was that it then? Did we get her?" Leon asked the Dane girl. Braith stabbed her blade into the earth with conviction and swore.

"Gawain, where did you put the drinking horn?" she asked, an icy edge in her tone.

"It's right here," the knight answered, picking up a saddle pack from the side of his bed roll. After rummaging through for a second his face fell. "I don't know - It's gone!"

Braith groaned in frustration.

"If I ever see Merlin again, I'll kiss him, and kill him."
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