Ashes, Prayers and Promises

Chapter 2.

The next day Guenivere continued her attempts to subvert Arthur to the Briton’s cause, and although she eyed the bruises that Lancelot had left on his neck, she ignored the implication.

They faced the Saxon infantry that day, and they lost Dagonet on the ice. But Guenivere stood with them, proving herself to be a warrior in Arthur’s eyes. He was torn; Guenivere, young and beautiful, with her fierce determination to save her people on one side, and the man who had been his companion for over a decade, and who commanded his utmost loyalty on the other.

But, Arthur was half Briton. Merlin had made him remember that. And the other half was Roman; Arthur could never forget that. And neither, he thought, should Lancelot. For the knight was a man who’d been enslaved by the Romans, after all, and made to fight for fifteen long years in a land far from his home.

~*~

The night they returned to the Wall, the entirety of the Saxon horde was encamped outside the gates. And as Arthur stared into the night, at the glittering Saxon campfires, he made his decision. Both Lancelot and Alecto had told him that what he had been fightfor for was an illusion; that his Rome and the ideals of freedom and equality that he had always associated with her, existed only in his dreams. His teacher was dead; Rome was corrupt, and he had seen first hand the horrible examples of what priests were doing in the name of the Christian God.

He could no longer pray.

He had promised his men their freedom, and now they had it. They could go home, all the way to Sarmatia if they wished. Off of the wet, wretched, island of Britain, at least. But what did he, Arthur, have left?

He looked at Guenivere beside him, rescued from the priest’s dungeon, as proud and as brave as any of his men.

What did he have left?

The cause of his mother’s people, Guenivere’s people. The fight to keep the Saxon’s at bay and the Briton’s free.

With one last look at Lancelot and the rest of his knights, he turned away from the Saxon fires. “Knights,” he addressed the men. “This is where our paths must part. I can no longer go with you.” And he fled the wall.

A hand on his arm stopped him. Lancelot had followed, as Arthur had known that he would. And when the knight questioned him, demanding an explanation. He just touched the other’s face and answered, “You should understand Lancelot. You who know me best.” And he let his arm slide across the knight’s chest as he walked away, feeling Lancelot’s finger’s brush against him, but the other man didn‘t try to hold him.

Arthur tht tht that with his decision thus made, he would find a measure of peace. But with the loss of his faith and his men, neither serenity nor sleep came easily that night. If Lancelot came to him--no-- if any of his men came to him and asked him to leave with them in the morning, he would have acquiesced. Such were his doubts.

But as he tossed and turned in the late hours it was Guenivere, looking fey in the dark, who slipped into his chambers. Perhaps she hoped to further secure his loyalty; perhaps she truly desired him. But when she straddled him, kneeling above him, her eyes betraying nothing, and guided his hand over the smooth expanse of her leg to the juncture of her thighs, Arthur remembered what Lancelot had asked him, looking up, with snow in his eyes. “What will you promise her when she is on her knees?” Because when there are lives at stake, nothing can be offered without a cost.

So, what indeed? Arthur wondered as he let his rough beard scrape against her delicate skin. Will I promise her my sword because she is beautiful? Yes, he thought, as his fingers found her wet center and slid inside. She was mewling into his ear, then, and rocking against him, as he freed himself from his trousers. Will I promise her my life for her cause because she offers me her body? He askimseimself as she slid easily onto him, taking his length deep inside of her. Yes. He palmed her buttocks and spread her open farther, she didn’t protest, and he braced he feet on the floor so that he could use her as he liked.

Will I give her my heart? At her soft cry of pain he looked up and then over her shoulder. Lancelot was standing in the doorway, his face in shadow. No. He grit his teeth at another whimper from Guenivere. His heart was given.

Lancelot moved out of the darkness, then, to stand before the entwined pair. He took Guenivere gently out of Arthur’s grip and lifted her off of him. There were spots of color in her pale cheeks and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I can endure it, knight,” she hissed at Lancelot. “I understand pain.”

Lancelot looked first at Arthur and then at Guenivere. “Perhaps you do,” He acknowledged quietly. “But it is not necessary this night.”

Her hair had fallen over her face, and she glared at him through the long locks. “I’m not leaving,” she said through gritted teeth.

Arthur looked at her, but he didn’t know what to say. He had hurt her, and he wasn’t sure that he was sorry. It was Lancelot who, unlacing his shirt and then his trousers, said, “I don’t want you to leave.” He was conceding her right to Arthur, the Briton’s right to him.

Arthur’s heart broke a little at that. He and Lancelot had shared women in the past, but this was different. Guenivere was different; and this sharing of her felt more like a splitting, a tearing apart, of the two men. It felt like an ending.

He moved, making room for Lancelot as the knight crawled across the bed to lay his head against Arthur’s leg. Guenivere reached out a tentative hand from where lae lay next to Arthur to touch Lancelot’s hair, and the knight didn’t stop her. He let her guide him to Arthur’s hard flesh. He licked the head, catching the moisture glistening at the tip, and then looked up at Arthur and murmured, “I can taste her on you.”

Arthur sighed and reached for Lancelot’s hand. When he found it, he placed it high on Guenivere’s thigh. She lay back, resting her head against Arthur, and let the knight’s rough fingers play gently over her.

They lay like that for a time until Arthur’s anger abated and was replaced by a slow, burning need. He sat up and shook the two others off of him. Lancelot sat back on his heels, waiting, and Guenivere eyed him warily. Arthur gently rolled her onto her stomach and ran his hands over her body, starting with her tattooed legs and ending at her waist. He could feel her ribs, and she shivered as his fingers brushed them. Lancelot maneuvered himself between them, then, replacing Arthur at Guenivere’s back, and Arthur found the feel of the knight’s familiar, firm, strong body reassuring after being confronted with Guenivere’s seeming fragility. He wasn’t ready for her yet, nor she for him.

Guenivere raised herself to her knees, something that both men could tell that she found distasteful, and let her hair cover her face. Lancelot knelt behind her and put a reassuring hand on her back, while Arthur lay on his side next to them, keeping a hand on Lancelot’s taught flank.

Lancelot didn’t hesitate; he plunged inside of the Briton, and Arthur was pleased to hear her moan in reluctant pleasure rather than pain. The knight kept one hand on her hip to steady himself and set a steady pace while Arthur snaked a hand underneath her to fondle her breasts, avoiding her sharp teeth as she attempted to nip at his arm.

And then the only sounds in the chamber were the slap of flesh against flesh and Guenivere’s angry breaths. It must seem to her, Arthur mused, that I am forcing her to whore for my knights in order to prove her loyalty to me, to persuade me of her capacity for sacrifice. It was unfortunates if she assumed that, but he could never bring himself to explain the truth: that he could only accept her if Lancelot did; that he could not even take her body without Lancelot preparing her for him.

He became mesmerized by the sway of Guenivere’s body as she took Lancelot’s thrusts, by the sweat that beaded on her forehead and upper lip, and by the wiry muscles that twitched in her arms as she struggled to support the knight’s weight on her back.

When she caught his eye, she bared her teeth at him and hissed. He smiled back and left off touching her chest, instead running his hand down her stomach, pausing where her body joined Lancelot’s, causing them both to jerk and cry out.

But he didn’t want the stubborn Briton to find her pleasure yet. Not with Lancelot. So he slid his finger around her opening instead, brushing against Lancelot’s member in the process, until it was slick with her juices.

Then he left her gasping, helplessly shoving back onto Lancelot, as he worked the slippery finger inside of the knight.

Lancelot stopped his movements for a moment when Arthur penetrated him, and then growled deep in his chest before lunging forward hard enough to knock Guenivere onto her face, filling her with his seed.

Arthur allowed the knight to lay slumped upon Guenivere for a short time before nudging him away. Lancelot’s eyes were huge and liquid as he watched Arthur tentatively lick the woman’s thighs and then the flesh between her legs. Arthur finally saw the future there, in his knight’s dark gaze, and it hurt him.

“If only . . .” Arthur was surprised that he’d voiced his thought aloud, but he didn’t finish it. If only he could have a family and a home and peace at last. And if only Guenivere could always taste like Lancelot.

When Arthur’s tongue reached her sensitive flesh, Guenivere moaned quietly into her crossed arms. But when she felt his manhood touch her, she tried to roll away, and whether it was to escape the pain of taking another man, or to escape the possible pleasure, Arthur couldn’t . Ei. Either way, Lancelot moved quickly enough to pin her in place, still on her hands and knees, in front of Arthur.

“Be still, princess,” Arthur muttered, tangling one hand in her mass of dark hair. “This is what you came for, after all. What you want.” He wasn’t wrong; her sharp gasp and the involuntarytch tch of her hips was proof of that. She wanted him for more than just his skill in battle, and so he didn’t waste his time. Watching Lancelot take the woman, and denying his own pleasure, had worked him into a frenzy.

But when he took her, looking over her bony shoulder at Lancelot, it seemed to go on forever, building in intensity, until Guenivere began to tremble with fatigue. She may die tomorrow, Arthuoughought, looking down at her arched spine. He could see the bones pressing through her fine skin.

What will I promise her when she is on her knees?

He looked into Lancelot’s dark eyes and he knew that the other man was thinking the same thing. I can only promise that she won’t regret this night. I can only promise she will get what she came for.

And what did she come for? My body, he thought bitterly as he looked away from his knight who fingers were bruising Guenivere’s arms, and down at the woman below him. She will have my body, both in bed and on the battlefield, because Britain is my home and the Briton’s are my people and their fight is now my own.

He let his hand trail over her jutting hipbone and then between her legs where he found the center of her pleasure. She gave a surprised, strangled cry, and he could feel her flutter around him.

After two more thrusts Arthur came as well before collapsing, sweating and panting on top of his companions.

~*~

The next day dawned with Arthur alone on Badon hill watching his knights, including Lancelot ride away. The Saxons made ready for war, and Guenivere and Merlin waited in the trees. Arthur caught glimpses of them, but they had covered themselves in blue paint and looked strange and savage to him.

He thought for a moment that he was safe, that God had finally granted mercy on his companions when they rode away from the Wall, away from the battle and toward their long-deserved freedom. But when the Saxon war drums sounded, they came riding back, Lancelot on his great black stallion in the lead. The chose him, Arthur, over their faded memories of home. They chose him, and the life they knew, rather than the uncertainty of a future within a foreign, crumbling empire. Some of them, he knew, were choosing death.

As they stood on the hill, waiting for Merlin’s archers to set the field beneath them alight, Arthur tried one last time to send Lancelot away.

“You’re free, Lancelot. lon longer command you, nor does Rome.” He glanced at his standard, stuck firmly in Britain’s muddy earth. “So, go.”

Lancelot’s face was shuttered, and when he answered his voice was flat. “I’ll never be free of you, Arthur.” And his horse whuffed and pranced angrily beneath him, tossing its spiked and armored head dangerously close to Arthur. Both horse and rider, it seemed, were eager to shed blood.

Toward the end of the battle, with smoke from the pitch fires billowing around them, Arthur fought alone with the Saxon leader. The enormous blond warrior had already killed Tristan, and the scout’s hawk circled mournfully over the battlefield in search of his master. Arthur was fighting for his life and he didn’t see Lancelot fall.

When it was over, he could see Guenivere kneeling in the blood and the dirt next to the knight. Lancelot had died defending her, defending Arthur’s choice.

The damned woman was on her knees again. Lancelot, and God how he would miss him, had known. Days ago, in a quiet clearing with the snow falling in his eyes, the knight had seen this ugly day.

Guenivere didn’t move to touch him. She let him grieve. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Arthur cried, looking into the faces of his remaining knights as they carried Tristan’s body to him. “I’ve failed you,” he told them. “I failed you.”

Epilogue.

After the battle, Merlin wasted no time in announcing his plans to marry Arthur and Guenivere and then declare Arthur king, something that he’d never wanted. Gawain, blond and taciturn, an accidental lover and one so different from the dark and tumultuous companions of his recent past, pointed out the irony in Merlin’s plan for him. It was contrary to everything he believed in and had fought for.

He was glad that Lancelot and quiet, beautiful Tristan weren’t there to see it, although he did sense a dark, mocking gaze lingering on him.

They buried Tristan and burned Lancelot, as he’d requested, casting his ashes to the east wind.

Then Arthur let the knight’s black stallion go, hoping that in death some part of Lancelot had finally found his freedom, either running with the horse, unfettered across the moors, or drifting on the currents of the wind.


~finis~