If I Could Tell It

Central Saxon Battle Camp, Britain, 647

“Morgain.” I breathed.

I had so many feelings. So much hatred. So much rage. So much urge to kill. Violent thoughts took over my mind like a plague. All I could think about was running Excalibur through her black dress, into her chest, through her skin, her flesh, piercing her heart. I pictured the way it would feel. The way my sword would lodge in her. I would twist before pulling it out.

“Hello Brother.” She said. Her eyes glimmered, filled with malice. A smile formed across her thin red lips.

I started to raise my sword, but all too quick she raised a straw doll close to my face. She squeezed it and I felt my body involuntarily constrict around me.

“My name is Morgana now.” She whispered, still squeezing the doll. “I do not want the name Ygraine gave me.”

I could barely breath, my words were tight in my chest but I wheezed them out. “Y-you killed her.”

“Yes. I did.” She smiled again and looked at the ground. “Edcennan of hê ofsêon sê, mâl f¯æge feyweorðan caru.”

I looked at her, not knowing what she was saying. It was a language I had only heard a few times. Sometimes Viviane used to speak in it when she would go off on her rants and Merlin would occasionally say a word, mostly curses.

The straw doll began to glow a dull green then and my vision began to take on the same greenish hue.

The world began to spin. It began to spin as if I was turning in circles but my feet were planted solidly to the grass beneath me.

Scenes began to play out in front of my eyes. Scenes of battle first, my vision began to center in.

It was midday, the sun was shining bright overhead. I felt the weight of my battle armor on my shoulders. My boot crunched on something and I looked down. I was standing on top of a body, a saxon warrior. Blood streamed down his chest and an arrow protruded from his breast. My boot had broken his ribs and his chest had caved in from my weight. I was shocked and I immediately stepped back off of the cadaver. I stepped back right onto another man. He let out a low moan and I tripped in shock. I stumbled backward and fell onto something soft and wet. Another body, this time the spilled innards of a man’s stomach.

I tried to yell but my voice seemed to not be working. My head tilted sideways and I saw the rest of the battlefield. It was filled with bodies like the ones I had fallen on.

Then the sky turned a piercing green and the world began to spin again. Solid ground was under my feet again. The cold hilt of my sword was in my hand tonight, I was gripping it tightly.

I felt that my shoulders were broader and I was much much taller. It was like in the dream I had had when I fell in that first battle before I had met Ellion.

I was facing Lancelot, looking down at him from my height. He was older now and he had a short mustache covering his upper lip.

I was yelling at him in a very deep voice in words that I could not quite make out. His eyes were full of sorrow and remorse. I wanted to yell at myself to stop yelling at him, he looked so sorry, so sad.

Then I shoved the blade of Excalibur through his stomach, firmly, with absolutely no hesitation.

The sky turned green again and then I was standing from the balcony that my father stood at executions. I was holding the hand of a girl, no older than sixteen. She looked up at me with shining gray eyes, tears were streaming down her face.

I looked down at the executioner’s block to see a large board with a naked man nailed to it by his wrists that had been broken by a man with a black hood on. I stared at the scene intently, as if I wanted it to happen more than anything else. I raised up my hand and brought it down, a signal.

The man in the black hood took out a pair of pliers. He took the naked man’s hand and pulled out his thumbnail from his finger. Then he took the nail and shoved it deep into the man’s bare chest. The man screamed loudly. Then he took a small vat of hot tar and poured it over the wound caused by the nail. The screams of pain were the most terrible thing I had ever heard.

The girl at my side whimpered and cried even harder.

“How can you do this?!” She screamed. “How can you be this terrible?!”

The sky became laced in hues of green and then the world spun me too a battle. A battle in the dead of night. It was raining and we were standing in a valley.

The boy from my dream walked up to me. We faced each other for a few moments and I felt tears form in my eyes. I took off my helmet and reached out my hand to him. I knew that I desperately wanted the approval of this boy.

My hair was wet and slicked against my forehead and I wiped it away and looked sorrowfully at the boy. His glare remained as cold and cruel as stone.

“This is what you always said you wanted.” He said ruefully.

Then he plunged his sword into my chest.

I stood facing the unlit candle. It seemed to laugh at me, its wick as white as ever and its beeswax completely unmarked and unmelted. I looked over the table at Morgain’s face that was quickly fading into the darkness, she smiled at me one last time and put one finger to her lips.

Then she was gone. I heard the wind blow against the tent flap like it had before and there was no trace of her.

“Arthur?” Kay asked me. “Are you alright? You seemed disoriented for a few moments.”

I shook my head out forcefully. “Yes. I am fine.”

He nodded and stared at the candle.

“Where are Merlin and Lancelot?” I asked, realizing that they had never come into the tent.

“Probably decided they were too afraid at the last moment.” Bedivere said with a bit of salt in his voice.

I decided not to worry about it.

I lifted the red cloth up to reveal the underside of the table, and also a very scared, small, blonde figure.

I reached my hand out to the girl and tapped her shoulder. She turned over so I could see her face and the tears streaming down it. She had big blue-green, shining eyes and quiet features that were set into a pale, pretty face. Her blonde hair seemed to reach her waist and fell in soft waves behind her body.

“W-who are you?” She asked nervously. “Have you come to hurt me?”

“We are from the British Army.” I told her and knelt on the floor so I was eye level with her. “Are you Elaine?”

“Y-yes.” She sniffed. “Did you find Ellion?”

I nodded. “He is already back at our camp. We have come to rescue you.”

She nodded and looked up at me hopefully. I extended my hand to her and she took it and I helped out from under the table. “Thank you.”

She stood with her shoulders sunken as the four of us took in her appearance and she adjusted to her surroundings.

She had on a dress that looked as if it had once been a plain white gown but was now streaked with gray soot and was torn to tatters. Her face was also covered with soot and was smeared with her own tears. She had a red mark across her neck as if someone had hit her. Still, through all of her worn and dirty appearance she somehow still looked beautiful in an innocent, virgin way.

I saw Bedivere whisper something to Kay, most likely about the looks of Elaine and I shot him a glare.

“You are Elaine then?” Bedivere asked her, moving his brown hair from his forehead.

She nodded and looked at him nervously.

I slapped Bedivere across the arm. “We need to get her back to camp, she has clearly been abused.”

He nodded curtly and took a long look at her before moving back a step.

“We need to go now.” Kay said, nervously looking back at the entrance. “I think I heard footsteps.”

We began to walk toward the tent entrance and exit when I stopped just before any daylight could reach us. “What about Merlin and Lancelot?”

“They will catch up.” Kay said. “We need to go now.”

“What about no man left behind?” I asked.

“Since when do we live by that?” Kay asked. “It is better for at least some of us to escape, than no one.”

I just looked at him. That would need to change. There would need to be a code of sorts

“Arthur.” Perceval said, I noticed he had not spoken the entire time. “Kay is right, we need to leave while we have the chance.”

I looked down at the ground. I needed to make a decision, and fast.

Lancelot was my best friend, he had always been there for me. He was the very first person I had ever told about there, and even though he did not believe me and did not talk about with me, he had at least listened, and that was more than I could say for everyone else I had tried to tell. Except for Viviane of course.

“I am going to look for Lancelot.” I told them. “Come if you will.”

It was all too bad that I never got the chance to search for him.

Over thirty Saxon soldiers were waiting outside the tent for us.

Front and center were Morgain, and seemingly the man that had aided her in the murder of my mother, the man with long dark hair and dressed all in skin-tight deer hide.

Morgain was smiling knowingly at me, reflecting back on our time together in the tent which nobody had seemed to notice but me.

“You were right.” The man said to Morgain in a thick Saxon accent. It was obvious that English was not his first language and that he was only speaking it for our sake. “British soldiers.”

“Not just any British soldiers Setanta.” Morgain said with a playful lilt to her voice, she inclined her chin ever so slightly. “My brother.”

“Oh I remember him Morgana.” Setanta said grimly, he scowled at me and his amber eyes seemed to bore into my mind. “He was the hero.”

I stopped thinking. Only reaction.

I flung myself forward, Excalibur extended. I was practically itching to kill. I craved the feeling of sliding my blade into human flesh, picturing the life ebbing away from this person that I had complete and utter control over. I craved that power, needed that power. My urge was only one part revenge for my mother, the other two parts were the need for power.

I was stopped by an invisible force when my sword was only two feet from Setanta’s chest. He had put his hand up and suddenly I could no longer move. Magic. He was using magic against me. Merlin was right.

“Silly boy.” Setanta said calmly. I noticed that his speech pattern was like that, very calm, as if nothing ever went wrong for him. I saw a scar that ran across his left eye to his nose now that I was this close to him. His left eye did not seem to work quite right either, it was a creamy, off white color with seemingly a million red lines through it and his pupil was drifted down to the bottom of his eye. I doubted he could see well out of it, if at all. “You cannot hurt me, especially with only your mortal weapons.”

“Believe me.” I snarled, then I struggled with all of my might, the invisible force wavered for me and I was released and I flung toward him. “I can.”

I had barely grazed the deer hide of his tight tunic when I felt the impossibly painful constriction of my body that I had felt in the tent with Morgain before. I fell to the ground. It was like being pressed with an unimaginable force from all angles, everywhere on my body, in my body, my blood. She was holding the straw doll again.

“Do not underestimate him.” Morgain said, taking a long look at him. “He has been granted the sword Excalibur.”

“By who?!” Setanta snarled, exasperation haunting his voice. “He is dirty!”

“Viviane.” Morgain said. “She found a certain liking for him.”

“Of course it was Viviane.” He sighed. “She knows nothing. It is a wonder the Goddess chose her to be the lady of Avalon.”

I tried to choke out that he was wrong but Morgain only squeezed the doll harder

“What should we do with them?” Setanta asked her finally. Morgain looked straight at me and only squeezed the doll harder. It felt like my body would implode and simply stop functioning altogether.

“We let them go now.” Morgain told him. “We give them back their friends and we let them go.”

“Morgana.” Setanta said. “You must not be thinking straight.”

“I am.” She said smoothly, she smiled at me with malice again. “I have done what I need. Arthur has seen what he needs to.”

Setanta looked carefully at Morgain and she only raised her chin to him. Her long black hair tossed in a breeze that whistled by us. Then he turned and said something in Saxon to his men, they brought forward a very thrashed and beaten looking Lancelot and threw him down next to me. He breathed deeply, trying to catch his breath. I still laid in pain, my body squeezing by a force not my own.

Soon after Merlin walked through the crowd, by his own accord, unharmed. Before he left the cluster of men, Setanta gripped his wrist.

“Son of Taliesin.” He said to Merlin, they made fearsome eye contact. “Make no mistake, you are committing a terrible act against your goddess and your ways. This is treason.”

Merlin held his gaze for a few moments longer and then simply pulled away from his grasp and went to stand above me.

“Leave.” Morgain commanded us and also Setanta. She threw her doll down to me and immediately the pain surrounding me was lifted and I fell limply onto my back, feeling my muscles relax at long last. Merlin picked up the doll and tucked it inside his cloak.

Setanta commanded his men in Saxon and they all walked in an unorganized formation away into other parts of the camp. My sister stayed and stared at us. Lancelot, who had gotten to his feet helped me up off of the ground.

“My brother.” Morgain told me, her eyes met mine and I sensed false security teeming within her. “You have done me a favor.”

Then she vanished, her form withering away like smoke into the breeze.

The six of us made seven walked in a single file line out of the Saxon camp while the sun set and painted the sky in colors of orange and pink.

Merlin led.

When we got back to camp it was dark. Ellion and Lionel were waiting at the north end of camp where we had left from.

“How was ‘hunting’?” Lionel asked me, sarcasm was dripping from his voice.

I ignored his comment altogether and walked past him, brushing his shoulder.

“Arthur!” He said sternly. “I spoke to you!”

I looked back and glared long enough to see Kay tell Lionel something that immediately softened his expression and silenced his harsh words.

I turned and continued to walk toward my tent solemnly without a glance back.

As soon as I got to it I collapsed in my cot and closed my eyes, not even bothering to take my clothes off or even my sword out of my belt.

I needed to get out of this place.