Upon My Sword-Part 2
When Arthur awoke he found himself lying prostrate on Gauis’s exam table, sweat-drenched and stripped to the waist.
Arthur flinched as Gaius smeared slick oil onto his wounded arm. He attempted to lift himself up, but Leon’s hands were set firmly upon Arthur’s chest, restraining him.
“How long have I been out?” Arthur asked groggily.
“Two hours,” Gaius replied. The elderly physician made his way to his desk, retrieving a brown bottle and a coarse looking cloth. After soaking the cloth into a cauldron by the fire, he walked back to Arthur, offering him the bottle. “Drink this, Sire. For your fever.”
Arthur grit his teeth as Gaius began cleaning Arthur’s injuries with the stinking wet rag. His arm was throbbing. Pulsing. Only now did Arthur risk a look at it. The dragon’s teeth had burrowed puncture points the size of silver pieces into his skin. The wounds were black rimmed. Trailing a grisly path up Arthur’s right arm up to the dimple of his elbow.
Aithusa the White may have lost the battle, but he’d clearly left his mark.
Leon’s hands relaxed, and Arthur pulled himself into a sitting position, flexing his muscles. He wiggled a finger experimentally, the digit rising and falling at his request.
Arthur smiled, despite himself. “It seems Aithusa couldn’t even manage to cripple me properly, eh, Gaius?” he asked, moving his arm up and down.
“Sire, I’m afraid you’ve no idea what you’ve done,” Gaius said, wrapping strips of fresh white linen over Arthur’s newly anointed flesh.
“I’ve quite a good idea. I’ve slain a dragon, protected my kingdom-“
“Aithusa was a juvenile dragon. They’ve-“ Gaius stopped, swallowed once and cleared his throat. “Arthur, juvenile dragons are poisonous.”
Arthur felt all the air in Gaius’s chamber vanish with that one word. “Poisonous?”
“It’s to compensate for their size. Aithusa must not have been planning to envenomate you at that moment, or you would be resting six feet in the earth and not sitting on my exam table. However, traces of venom still existed on the dragon’s teeth, weak, but… present.”
“What does this mean?”
“It means that, without treatment, the poison in your body will fester. The venom spreading until….”
“Until it kills me,” Arthur finished.
Gaius’s eyebrow flew up. He nodded solemnly.
Leon fidgeted at Arthur’s side. “Can you cure him, Gaius?”
“Curing a dragons bite is beyond my knowledge, and that of any physician in the kingdom. A wound of this magnitude would require the skills of a Dragon Lord.“
“You’re not implying-“
“Emrys,” Gaius said. “If any man exists that can treat the effects of dragon poison, it would be him.”
Arthurs face went ashen. He gripped the end of exam table for support. “But he’s a sorcerer!”
“And the last of the Dragon Lords. Sire, there isn’t any other choice-”
Five years hence, when Arthur had been a squire at his father’s side, he’d encountered Emrys. It had been his first first large campaign with the Camelot knights. The plan had been to clear out a druid camp at the edge of the kingdom, arresting all magic users they encountered. The royal guard had outnumbered the druids two to one. There was little doubt the skirmish would be a success.
And it would have been, if Emrys hadn’t joined the fray.
Arthur had heard the myths. Listened idly to the ballads about the legendary sorcerer, like his father, and his father’s father before him. The tales spoke of a man who never aged, and slumbered in the chilly coils of the dragons he kept. A warrior, who used his dark art as shield and sword, defending fellow practitioners of sorcery.
The immortal portion of the story Arthur could not vouch for. But the rest of the tale seemed true-
The sorcerer had descended from the sky, on the back of The Great Dragon. Slipping from his mount, he’d herded the druids behind its armored body for protection, shouting hexes in a lilting and ancient tongue as the camp descended into chaos.
But it wasn’t the guard Emrys was after-
The sorcerer’s cloaked figure sailed straight as an arrow towards his intended target, knight’s blowing back from him like straw men in a high wind.
Despite his fear, Arthur had been keen to prove himself. His blade itched in his palm. Eyes locking in on the enchanter who would do his father harm. He’d poised himself behind a log. Waiting silently as his father’s destrier startled at Emrys approach.
Emerys hadn’t been expecting Arthur’s attack, but his reflexes were faster than a snake-strike. As Arthur lunged for Emrys, an enchantment struck him in midair, freezing him in place.
Arthur’s sword hovered inches from the pale slope of the sorcerer’s forehead.
It would have been a perfect kill strike.
If the enchanter were over a hundred years old, as myth said, he didn’t look it. Emrys was young in body. With a bearing Arthur would have called awkward had he not seen the man’s movements in action.
They’d stared at each other wordlessly…for what felt like eternity.
Arthur could see Emrys’ thick coal hair hiding from beneath the hood of his cloak. See the chapped skin of his lips, and the tremble of his long eyelashes. But what he remembered most about that strange encounter, what he was quick to recall years later, where those blazing gold eyes…staring through him. Glaring at Arthur in a way that almost had him convinced that this sorcerer, this walking immortal, was afraid of him--a thirteen-year-old squire.
When the charm finally lifted, Arthur found himself hurling backward into the brush as Kilgharrah decimated the rest of the knights, forcing Uther to call a retreat.
Arthur licked his lips, setting his mind firmly into the present. “Emrys is a magic user, and a sworn enemy of Camelot. His minion has attacked the kingdom, why in Heaven’s name do you think he would help me?”
“We don’t’ know that Aithusa was sent by Emrys, Sire,” Gaius replied. “Or what his intentions were.”
“Come now, Gaius, you can’t honestly believe-“ Something twisted and gnawed under Arthur’s skin. He bowed forward, gasping through an embarrassing arch of pain that had his spine trembling, and Leon holding him steady.
“I’m an old man, I don’t know what I believe in anymore,” Gauis said. “But as your physician, I must advise you, Arthur, that without treatment, prince or not, you will not be long for this world.”
“We must take you to Emry’s, Arthur,” Leon said, squeezing Arthur’s shoulder. “Foolhardy or not, we must try.”
Arthur wanted wanted to tell Leon and Gauis that they were madmen. That he’d rather die than beg help from a sorcerer. But then his gaze met Sir Leon’s. He’d served in battle with this man for years, as a brother in arms, yet he had never seen him so afraid-
It became clear to Arthur, what he must do. He must swallow his pride, if not for himself, than for men like Sir Leon who cared for him. Counted on him-
Arthur blew out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding in, nodding to Leon. “Have the squires ready the horses. We’ll need a party small enough to pass for a hunting expedition. We’ll ride out at dawn.”