Page 103 of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love

Some of the king’s men seemed to be attempting to flee back up towards the castle; Arthur watched as one scrambled to his feet, only to be sent back down into the mud with a hand-axe to the back of the head. It was like looking at a particularly violent painting, he thought, or watching a play; his mind couldn’t comprehend that any of it was real.

‘Not good,’ Sidney said, looking around at the open panic on the faces of the crown’s men. ‘Shit. This is going to go south pretty soon, Art. Time to run.’

‘No,’ Arthur said, dazed, feeling as if he were dreaming. ‘Look.’

A fresh wave of men was riding across the drawbridge and down the hill from the castle, unbloodied, unscathed, sure and resolute as they cantered towards the chaos. The rain eased; the clouds seemed to part. Leading them in gleaming gold armour, his helm flashing in the sun, was the scarlet-haired King of England.

A cheer went up from those fighting for Camelot, and it was as if they had suddenly been imbued with new strength; where they had been staggering, they were suddenly upright. Fleeing men stopped in their tracks and turned back towards the battle. Arthur saw a man who had been knocked to the ground, and appeared for all intents and purposesverydead, use his foot to hook his attacker’s ankle and then drive his sword up through the man’s neck when he fell.

‘It’s all right,’ Arthur said, his eyes wide. ‘It’s going to beall right.And Gabriel is … Wait.’ He kept staring as the castleguard – for he could see that’s who they were now – reached the battle and began fighting in earnest.

‘Yeah,’ Sidney said grimly. ‘That’s what I was just thinking.’ The purported King of England was under extremely heavy guard and wasn’t particularly good at holding his sword – not that anybody seemed to notice, as they started to beat Lord Willard’s men back.

‘What thehellis she doing?’ Arthur breathed. He was trying not to think about the implications of this act – trying not to assume the worst. It was becoming more difficult by the second.

‘Look, she’s turning around,’ Sidney said, ‘I think—’

Something enormous slammed into the back of both of them; it sent them sprawling into the mud. Arthur felt blinding pain jolt up his bad wrist as it tried valiantly to break his fall.Don’t be broken, you piece-of-shit arm, he thought furiously, flexing his fingers and finding that they still seemed to work. The horse that had hit them seemed to have coped surprisingly well with the ordeal; it scrambled to its feet and took off across the battlefield, heading for the safety of the trees.

Lying in the mud once again, Arthur wondered why bards and warriors always seemed to leave this part out of their war stories; fighting was just blood, and mud, and falling down and down again until somebody put a sword in your back to keep you down forever. He felt something in his mouth, and spat it out in horror – but it was just the pendant on his necklace.

‘Sid,’ Arthur said indistinctly. ‘I should be dead by now.’

‘Yes,’ Sidney groaned, rolling towards him.

‘Right. Thought so. And didn’t you say this necklace was—’

‘It’s not the bloody necklace,’ Sidney said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m not doing all this for you to give the credit to a piece of sodding jewellery. It’sme. I’m protecting you. Get up.’

Arthur wasn’t listening to him; he was squinting at a dark shape that had appeared suddenly next to his head. ‘Does this … does this bird look agitated to you?’

‘Birds can’t look agitated.’

The crow in question was standing right next to Arthur, doing a strange little dance – it kept turning its head from side to side, skipping away a few steps and then returning.

‘Oh,’ said Sidney. ‘That bird looksextremelyagitated.’

As soon as he’d said it, the crow took flight, swooping low over the piles of discarded swords and broken bodies; watching it go, Arthur saw something glinting in amongst the mud beneath its path.

‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

‘Oh,shit,’ Sidney said, with much more feeling; somebody had just attempted to kill Arthur again, which was becoming a bit of a hazard, and he had staggered to his feet to repel them. ‘Justgo, Art.’

Arthur knew, deep down, that Sidney meant for him to get as far away from the fighting as possible. He knew that he was being a hindrance rather than a help; that with him out of the way, Sidney might actually survive – nay,thrive– in this battle. Arthur should have been doing everything in his power to make it to the edge of the field, and away.

He decided to wilfully misunderstand Sidney’s instructions.

Arthur had always known that he wasn’t a good person, even without his father constantly telling him so. Recent acts of theoretical bravery, he reasoned, had been the last resort of a desperate man. It wasn’t bravery that was on his mind as he crawled – really crawled, up to his shoulders in mud, more swamp creature than man – towards the thing he was sure he had seen in the middle of the field. He wasn’t doing it because he wasbrave– he was doing it for purely selfish reasons.

If Gabriel were to die – and if Gwen were to follow, having inexplicably decided to throw herself into the heat of battle in borrowed armour – then he’d never get to berate them for thinking so little of him. And he really,reallycouldn’t have that.

When he reached Gabriel’s body, it was almost entirely obscured by someone recently deceased; Arthur used the very last ounce of his strength to push the corpse away, bracing himself for what he was about to see.

One of Gabriel’s arms was so mangled beneath his crumpled armour that it barely looked like a limb at all. The other was theoretically still clutching his sword, but his grip had gone slack around the pommel. His skin was waxen, making the copper of his hair look impossibly bright where it was stuck in matted whorls to his damp forehead. His eyes were mostly closed, a thin crescent of white visible beneath his lashes.

‘Gabriel,’ Arthur croaked; somebody staggered past them, and Arthur instinctively threw himself down on top of the king’s broken body, to shield him from view. ‘Gabriel.’

Gabriel didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. Arthur couldn’t tell if he was breathing, or if it was just wishful thinking.