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Lancelot hadn’t seen Leon be killed, but he had heard Elyan’s scream of anguish and Arthur’s battle cry as he exacted revenge on the killer.
After almost five years of peace, these skirmishes with Morgana’s soldiers were becoming more and more common. Arthur had set out with his best knights to investigate a lead- they were trying to find a large group of mercenaries that had supposedly taken up residence in the forest of Essetir. And find them they had.
They were never supposed to engage (not with so few knights), they were just supposed to scout the area and then call for backup. But between one blink and the next, an entire contingent of enemies had descended upon them. They had no opportunity to run. Lancelot had drawn his sword just in time to parry two simultaneous attacks, and then he had no time to breathe as he fought for his life.
Morgana’s followers outnumbered them five to one. Only their superior fighting skills and effective teamwork (and Merlin’s discreet help from behind a tree) kept them alive for as long as it did. It couldn’t last forever. While the small squad of sorcerer’s Morgana had sent with the group were no match for Merlin, they had kept him sufficiently distracted.
And that’s how it happened. It took a while before Lancelot actually managed to look- he still had his own safety to worry about. With one man down, the rest of them should have followed. Instead, Leon’s fall had inspired renewed vigour in all of them. Lancelot swung his sword with increased energy, the unpredictability of it startling the tight unit of mercenaries.
Across the battlefield, Lancelot spied swords flying out of hands, soldiers tripping over their feet, an entire tree tipping onto the army. Merlin had obviously given up all pretence of subtlety in the face of their imminent demise. Leon’s loss was temporary. The same could not be said for Lancelot or any of the other knights.
In mere minutes the tide of the battle had been turned. Once Morgana’s forces had dwindled down to about a dozen- and most of them injured. The survivors turned and ran away. Lancelot kept his sword gripped tightly in his hand. The soldiers could easily return for a second attack with them now sufficiently distracted by their fallen comrade.
Leon’s body lay where it had fallen. Merlin charged forward to check if Leon was alive, but Arthur beat him too it. He checked for a pulse while Merlin jerked to a stop, his eyes widening in horror.
Arthur shook his head, “He’s gone,” he reached down and pulled the sword from Leon’s back, then rolled him over and closed his eyes.
Silence fell over the clearing. Arthur, Elyan, Percival, and Gwaine bowed their heads, a few of them even had tears falling down their cheeks. Meanwhile, Lancelot turned and made eye contact with both Merlin and Mordred. They returned his looks with wide eyes. Lancelot quickly bowed his head as Arthur turned to address the group.
“We need to leave. Morgana’s men could return with reinforcements at any moment,” Arthur said quietly, his gaze flickering back to the body of his oldest friend and first knight.
“I’ll prepare the body,” Merlin said, pulling his medic’s bag from his horse.
Arthur nodded, then made an aborted attempt to step forward and help Merlin. With a pained look on this face, he turned away to prepare his own horse. Instead, Mordred joined Merlin on the ground, wrapping Leon in herbs and bandages. Once they were done, Lancelot walked over to help them lift Leon onto his horse for transport back to Camelot. As they secured him with ropes, Leon’s eyes flew open, and he jerked up.
Lancelot cried out and stepped back. Everyone looked up at him questioningly.
He cleared his throat, “Just a bird. Sorry, I’m just a bit jumpy.” Everyone nodded at that, and Lancelot felt slightly guilty about using their grief to get away with lying.
He turned back around to discover Merlin had shoved Leon’s face back down. He was now whispering in Leon’s ear under the pretence of leaning down to tie a difficult knot. Mordred glared at him for his slip up, but when Lancelot raised an eyebrow at him, he backed down from the senior knight.
Theoretically, Lancelot had known Leon was immortal, just like he knew Merlin was. He’d never seen either of them die, though, and watching it happen was very different from hearing about it after the fact. No amount of second-hand knowledge could prepare a person for watching a corpse wake up as if they’d just gone for a short nap.
Eventually, the sullen group were ready to go. They all mounted their horses and trotted back into the forest. Lancelot wanted to talk to Merlin and Mordred about their latest problem, but since no one else was talking it would be insensitive, not to mention suspicious. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mordred’s face as he rode next to him. His changing expressions suggested he and Merlin were communicating telepathically. Not for the first time, Lancelot wished he shared that skill.
He trusted Merlin and Mordred, though. They would hopefully have created a good plan by the time they arrived back in Camelot.
* * *
Halfway through Merlin and Mordred’s explanation, Lancelot wondered if he could do what Gaius had done and just- leave. Gaius’ eyebrow had risen rapidly through the beginning of the plan before he swiftly made an excuse and swept out of the room. One look at Leon with his hand over his eyes, taking another large gulp of his wine and Lancelot concluded that it would not be fair to leave his friend to the chaotic whims of their resident sorcerers. Sometimes Lancelot hated being a good person.
“Wait,” Lancelot interrupted. He hadn’t really been listening, instead reminiscing about earlier that day when all they had to do was take an important, yet ultimately boring, ride through the forest. What he wouldn’t give to go back to that. “Where are we getting a necromancer from?” he asked.
Merlin tilted his head towards Lancelot and looked him dead in the eyes, “We don’t need a necromancer,” he said, as if that was obvious.
“Right,” Lancelot said, even though he was pretty sure the conversation had been about necromancers for a while. Maybe he imagined it? But no, his brain was not weird enough to come up with that zombie impression he remembered Mordred doing.
“Leon’s not actually dead, Lance. We just need everyone to think there was a necromancer.”
Mordred nodded vigorously at Merlin’s explanation, while Lancelot looked on in confusion and some horror. Leon finished his goblet of wine.
Merlin continued talking as if Lancelot hadn’t said anything, “So, we go down to the Cave of Bones and…” and so on and so forth. Really Lancelot was still stuck on the not-necromancer bit.
“Is this really the plan we’re going with?” Lancelot asked, “Do we have to go to this cave? I mean, is no one else concerned about it being called the Cave of Bones?”
Merlin ignored the last part of his enquiry. “Well what else do you want us to do?”
“Yeah,” Mordred chimed in, “It’s not like a necromancer would perform his spell here, that wouldn’t make any sense. They’d always go somewhere else.”
“Yes, but not in a cave called-” he sighed. One thing at a time. “I wouldn’t have a necromancer at all.”
“There isn’t a necromancer, Lancelot. Have you not been listening to anything?” Merlin sighed in disappointment, “I’ll get what we need and then we can go.”
* * *
One thing Lancelot did like about this plan as opposed to Merlin’s usual escapades, was that dead bodies were a lot easier to transport when they weren’t, well, dead. It should probably concern him more than it did that he had so much experience transporting corpses.
Exiting the castle involved taking a long, roundabout route that Lancelot was not familiar with. Unfortunately, Merlin didn’t seem to be familiar with it either, if the statue they had just walked past for the third time was any indication. Still, he didn’t say anything. Merlin was not to be deterred, Mordred bounced along in his wake like an eager puppy, and Leon seemed entirely too unconcerned about life for a man who had died that day. Plus, hopefully if they got stuck down here long enough, Merlin would forget about the entering-a-spooky-cave plan.
Their awkward silence was eventually broken by the clang of the warning bell. Merlin and Mordred broke into a run, although how they thought that would help their sense of direction was anyone’s guess. Moments later, the four of them tumbled out into corridor in the residential wing.
Marching footsteps resounded down the corridor from both directions. The shadows cast be wall sconces showed guards approaching swiftly. Lancelot grabbed Merlin and Mordred by the arms and dragged them into an unused bed chamber. Leon followed sedately.
Before the door swung closed, Lancelot heard one of the guards say, “Gaius said he was taken by evil old sorcerer-”
“Ha,” Merlin whispered, “Gaius did help us after all.”
Lancelot look at him with both eyebrows raised, “Leon’s body was missing. What was he supposed to say? He turned into a strawberry?”
Mordred frowned, “I see Leon as more of a pear.”
“A pear?!” Merlin asked incredulously, “No, a strawberry is defin-”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence as the guards outside reached the door and attempted to turn the handle. Merlin whispered a spell, and the door rattled but didn’t open. The guard banged on the door.
“Whoever is in there, come out now!”
Lancelot looked around in horror. Even if Leon hadn’t been with them, there was no good reason for the three of them to by sulking in a disused antechamber while Camelot was in a state of emergency.
A crash sounded to his right as the guards started bashing the door in. He opened his mouth to suggest a plan, any plan, but the next thing he knew a wave of darkness crashed over him and he fell to the floor.
* * *
Lancelot awoke in Gaius’ chambers, hoping that the entire day had just been a bad dream. He blinked away visions of pears and strawberries raising the dead. One look at Mordred’s unconscious form, Merlin’s guilty face, Gaius’ look of judgment and Arthur’s worried pacing almost made him turn over and drift right back into unconsciousness.
The stark grief in Arthur’s eyes when he turned towards them stopped him. They needed to fix this and fast. But what had even happened? One moment they were about to be caught, and then… nothing.
Merlin cleared his throat, “I was just telling Arthur how the evil sorcerer locked us in that room after we saw him stealing Leon’s body.”
Lancelot just blinked at him, trying to process that, “Ah, yes,” he said finally. Hopefully any confusion would be put down to his recent bout of unconsciousness. “We tried to stop him, but his magic was too strong for us.”
Arthur nodded, “We’ll find him,” he turned to Gaius, “Make sure they’re alright. Let’s not lose anyone else today.”
Without another glance at them, the king swept out of the room. A good thing, too, as it meant he missed the wince Lancelot and Merlin shared.
“What happened?” Lancelot asked.
Merlin bit his lip, “I knocked us all out,” he said eventually.
“Yes, I got that part. But why?”
“So Arthur wouldn’t be suspicious of us. There wasn’t time to explain, otherwise we could all have just pretended. Sorry.”
Lancelot was way too tired to deal with any of this, so just nodded his head and accepted the apology.
“Where is Leon, anyway?”
“He went to hide under the bed last I saw. He can’t still be there now otherwise he would’ve been found.”
Great- now Leon really was missing.
* * *
Once Mordred awoke, the three of them agreed to travel to the cave in the hopes that Leon would meet them there. After all, there was little else they could do. With the castle in such a panic and no Leon in tow, sneaking out of the castle proved a lot easier. Lancelot could only hope Leon’s powers of escape were superior to Merlin’s. And really, it was a miracle Merlin had survived this long. He was almost as bad as Arthur.
The Cave of Bones certainly lived up to its name.
“Is no one else concerned about the number of human bones in here,” Lancelot asked once they had reached the inner cavern. He’d just tripped over another femur and come face to face with half of a skull. If he didn’t know better, he’d say a large bite had been taken out of the skull. His torchlight illuminated a whole plethora of other skeletons. In fact, Lancelot had seen battlefields with less dead people.
As was becoming more common, neither Mordred nor Merlin paid him any attention, instead bent over a cauldron with a large book open. Merlin bandied about a lot of magical words Lancelot didn’t know and gestured to the herbs he had laid out on what looked disturbingly like an altar.
A few minutes later and Leon wandered in covered in feathers, wearing a large-brimmed hat and muttering something about lizards. Lancelot decided not to ask. He really couldn’t take much more of this today.
At any rate, all four of them had made it down the cave without arousing suspicion, and Lancelot considered that a minor miracle. All they had to do was perform one spell (that Merlin had already done before), lure Arthur here, and then get Mordred to run away. Then, everyone would know Leon was alive without being any the wiser to his immortality. Maybe, against all odds, this crazy plan would work.
Just as he finished that thought, the sound of charging horses echoed from outside. The knights had found them on their own, and way before schedule. If Lancelot remembered correctly, he and Merlin were not supposed to be in the cave at this point in the plan.
“They found us!” Mordred cried, pointing out the obvious.
“Well, you did leave a lot of tracks,” Leon said in a voice so matter of fact that Lancelot could only conclude that he had made exactly zero attempts to cover them up when he saw them.
Mordred started blabbering in a panic. His gibberish was cut off when Merlin threw a deep black cloak at his head. “Put that on,” he said, “I’ll do the spell.”
Mordred scrambled for the cloak, managing to pull it on backwards, thus obscuring his view. He stumbled around blindly for a few moments, a stream of panicked works mingling with the lengthy spell Merlin had started reading. Lancelot sighed, and moved to fix the problem. Meanwhile, Leon lay down on the altar like a sacrifice accepting his fate.
The orange glow of dozens of torches appeared from down the passageway, accompanied by marching feet and Arthur’s yelled instructions. Lancelot pulled Merlin down behind a mound of stalagmites even as he finished off the ageing spell. Not a moment too soon. Arthur, accompanied by the rest of the knights of the round table and a couple dozen others, appeared almost immediately from around the corner.
Lancelot hadn’t saved them, though, only delayed their fate. Their hiding place lay exactly between the king and Mordred. And their lack of time to plan meant they hadn’t come up with an escape plan for Mordred anyway. Only Leon would be alright. Which might explain why he had taken up on the altar like he was just going to bed.
Not to be put off by their impending doom, Merlin signalled Mordred to carry on with the plan. Instead of his round, youthful face and short, curly hair, Mordred now sported wrinkles and a bushy grey beard. In the flickering torchlight, Lancelot supposed he really did look like a necromancer.
He started chanting, although Lancelot couldn’t tell if it was a real spell or not. Arthur threw a hand up, halting his forces. He edged slowly towards the supposedly dangerous sorcerer. This wouldn’t save them, though. At this point, they were only delaying their inevitable discovery. Lancelot should jump out and cause a distraction, give everyone else a chance to escape. Mordred, at least, could push past the knights with magic, and not get recognised.
A faint remnant of hope (and the knowledge that Merlin and Mordred had been the ones to get them into this mess in the first place) kept him from moving. Or maybe it was sheer terror. The thought of the pyre appealed even less now he risked being put on it.
Just as Arthur was about to reach the stalagmite cluster and discover their hiding place, a rumbling echoed through the cavern. On second thoughts, at least the pyre was familiar to Lancelot. It had to be better than whatever unknown horrors lurked in this murder cave.
A figure stepped out in front of Arthur, and for a moment Lancelot thought Merlin had decided to take responsibility for his disastrous plan after all. But that wasn’t Merlin- Merlin still crouched next to him. In fact, the figure wasn’t human at all, just the remnants of one. A skeleton had risen to confront the king. Arthur raised his sword and swotted at his new foe, but it didn’t do any more damage than the last time he had faced skeletons in battle.
All around the cave, bones rattled and rose to create an imitation of their past owners. A disembodied hand grabbed onto Lancelot’s ankle. He desperately shook it, fighting between the urges to escape its bony clutches and avoid being noticed by a now retreating Arthur.
Merlin’s whispered spell to rescue Lancelot coincided with Arthur’s yell of “Retreat!” and he was able to stumble to his feet and out of the way of any undead enemies without fear of being seen.
“I thought you said there was no necromancy!” Lancelot hissed.
“Oh, you actually were listening,” Merlin grinned far too widely for a man now wrestling three skeletons. Lancelot decided to leave him to it. He could rescue himself. Probably. Either way, he deserved a bit of payback for the way Lancelot’s day was going.
“I didn’t know I could do that!” Mordred exclaimed, trying to beat away a zombie that clung tightly to his robe, “It was an accident!”
“Don’t worry, Mordred,” Merlin comforted with considerably more aplomb than a man being beaten over the head with a tibia should be able to manage, “It happens to the best of us.”
Lancelot wanted to argue that nothing like this had ever happened to him. Given the company he kept, though, it was probably only a matter of time.
“So, no ones concerned about how easy it was to raise an entire army of people from the dead?”
Once again, Lancelot’s worries were ignored. He could probably forgive his friends this time since they were both under full-scale osteological assaults. Leon, on the other hand, had been doing such a good job at playing dead that the skeletons had left him alone. Assuming he actually was still alive. At this point, he couldn’t be sure of anything.
Finally taking pity on Mordred, Lancelot pulled the cloak off him. He threw it over Mordred’s attackers, trapping them underneath it just as Mordred had been earlier. Merlin had seemingly remembered he possessed magic and dealt with his own skeletons.
Merlin pulled Leon to his feet (and yes, he was still alive). “We should leave while we can. Arthur can’t exactly doubt the necromancy now,” he said.
Which was certainly true. Although Mordred had certainly come off as far more evil than originally intended. Maybe Morgana would hear about him and decided to stay away from Camelot.
Not a chance. More likely she would try and recruit the necromancer. Afterall, she had a lot in common with him. Either way, patrol would be just awful until Arthur decided to give up on locating the soon-to-be-non-existent sorcerer. Speaking of which-
“When is Mordred supposed to turn back? I thought this spell couldn’t last very long.”
Merlin grimaced, “Well, usually. But when I do it, I often get, um, stuck.”
“Stuck!” Mordred shrieked. Lancelot took some perverse satisfaction in Mordred not enjoying part of his plan for once.
“In my defence, you were the one who was supposed to do the spell,” Merlin argued. One look at Mordred’s terrified face and he cracked, though, “Look, it’s fine. We’ll just have Gaius brew the antidote.”
At this point, they had reached the cave entrance to discover the Camelot knights standing not a hundred metres away. Lancelot sighed. They were never getting out of here. Soon he’d be just another one of those skeletons, with nothing else to do but prey on unsuspecting adventurers (or suspecting adventurers- the clue was in the name: Cave of Bones).
Before them lay a man with the power to doom them to the pyre if he found out they had something to do with a dangerous sorcerer. Behind them approached a gaggle of the undead moving in a way disturbingly similar to Mordred’s zombie impression. One might suspect he actually was a necromancer in his free time.
“We should just leave. Dealing with Arthur has to be better than this.”
Merlin looked at him, “That’s a crazy plan.”
“Crazier than not doing necromancy in the necromancy cave of death?!” Lancelot asked.
Leon, who Lancelot belatedly realised had contributed nothing of value the whole afternoon, finally spoke up, “I’ll distract them,” he then stalked straight out of the cave.
Cheers of shock and joy rose up. Peering around a rock, Lancelot spied him being pulled into a rare Arthur hug. Gwaine joined soon after, almost knocking the two embracing friends to the floor. After much discussion, Leon seemingly convinced Arthur to leave the cave behind. Leaving only two of their comrades behind as guards, the search party returned to Camelot triumphantly.
And not a moment too soon. Merlin pulled his favourite trick: rendering people unconscious. The two guards fell to the ground, and Merlin, Lancelot and Mordred stumbled out of the Cave of Bones just moments before their pursuers reached them. The skeletons stopped at he cave entrance, watched them for a while, and then retreated. Obviously, that meant Mordred was not the one truly in control. He didn’t even bother voicing his thoughts at that. No one would care about his worries.
Lancelot leaned forwards with his hands on his knees. His bones ached from the constant tenseness of the day, and he could now feel the cold sweat on his back.
“So, who wants to bet Arthur is headed for Gaius’ rooms to show us the good news,” Merlin chimed up eventually. Lancelot cursed. They just couldn’t get a break. Somehow, they had to reach Camelot before the king, and without anyone seeing Mordred, change Mordred back to normal, and then act surprised at Leon’s resurrection. If he was honest with himself, even walking sounded difficult right now, let alone anything else.
“Come on,” Merlin said, spurring them into action. They raced for the horses they had tied up in a hidden bunch of trees. It had seemed an unnecessary risk when they’d first set out, but Lancelot was glad of it now. They’d never make it back in time otherwise. Not unless Merlin spontaneously got better at teleporting. Frankly, Lancelot would rather face the pyre than go through that again.
They raced through the trees, taking a roundabout path that would avoid the party of knights. Before long, Camelot’s walls rose before them. They tied the horses back up to a tree to be retrieved later and jogged back to the entrance to the secret passageway. It wasn’t actually secret since it was apparently the way Arthur had once snuck Mordred out of the castle, but there really wasn’t much they could do right now.
They arrived back at Gaius’ chambers with no incidents. News of Leon’s miraculous return from the dead had apparently already reached the castle, and the former chaos of the corridors had given way to a jubilant party in the courtyard. They were too late, though. Arthur had already reached Gaius’ rooms.
Gaius had appeared to reason with the king, though, explaining away their absence. Lancelot almost felt bad for assuming he wasn’t helping them.
“I believe they all went to the tavern, sire,” Gaius told Arthur, “They wanted to celebrate.”
Arthur’s worried expression changed to a glare, “Of course they did. Merlin is corrupting all my knights,” he paused, “Except Gwaine- he was a lost cause already.”
“Indeed, sire.”
Arthur’s expression as he stormed past their hiding place promised retribution for their premature welcome home party. Lancelot had never been less glad to be proven right. Gaius was the truly evil one among them. Or that was possibly just a side effect of dealing with Merlin for so long.
“I think I shall take my leave, Arthur,” Leon’s voice carried back to them, “It’s been a trying day.”
At Arthur’s agreement, he walked calmly towards his chambers. Lancelot had the weird feeling that, despite having died, Leon had a better day than anyone else in the kingdom. He wondered where he had gone wrong.
As they entered Gaius’ chambers like a group of children about to be chastened, a thought occurred to Lancelot.
“So, no one else is worried about the army of the undead we left behind in the cave of horrors?” As usual, no one answered him.