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“Went the day well, then?”
Leon froze, fingers hovering over the buckles of his chest plate. After a moment he breathed again and resumed his task.
“Why ask? I’m sure you know.”
He cast a glance over his shoulder as he rid himself of his sword and saw the tall, Cornish knight lounging against the wall. Geraint was smirking, acknowledging the truth of Leon’s statement.
“I hear the King graced the battle with his presence – in the end.”
Leon shrugged off his chain mail and laid it aside.
“You hear too much.”
Geraint laughed and shoved himself away from the wall to go and look out of the window. Leon turned from the sight, his fellow knight too pale in the moonlight.
“What else is there to do?” Geraint replied, sending Leon a teasing smile.
Leon fought his amusement, pride warring with it in his breast.
“You never understood what it meant to be a knight, the dignity of it. Too busy gossiping with the maids, I imagine.”
The Cornish Prince’s smile was small now, looking down on the deserted, decimated courtyard. “I knew what it meant to be a knight,” he replied quietly, before he turned back to the room, charmer’s grin in place. “But, yes, I spent a lot of time with the maids.”
Leon shook his head and went to pour himself a goblet of wine. His shoulders were stiff and he rolled them back as he fell into a chair by the fire. He should bathe, ease the tension in his muscles, scrub the soot and sweat and blood of the battle from his skin.
He wouldn’t though, not yet. Not while Geraint was still here.
He lifted the cup to his lips and downed half of it, the wine bitter on his tongue and harsh to the back of his throat.
“And did you remonstrate with the so noble Uther? Stop him from joining the battle?”
Leon smiled again, Geraint’s words pulling him from his melancholy and into the past, a memorable time when the fiery redhead had done just that, grasping the King by his lapels and shaking him into submission.
“No,” he snorted. “I haven’t got a – ”
He brought himself up short, ice filling his stomach. He couldn’t say the words. He could feel Geraint behind him, still and silent by the window, the raised hairs on the back of his neck a testament to the man’s presence, and he couldn’t finish his sentence.
I haven’t got a death wish.
Geraint held silent for a moment more before leaving the window and coming to stand before Leon, looking down into the fire.
“Yes, you never were the rough and ready type, too political.”
And that was deliberate provocation.
“I seem to remember knocking you from your horse.” Leon replied, before swallowing more wine past the lump in his throat.
“That doesn’t count, jousting doesn’t count.”
“You say that only because I always won.”
“You are deluded, my friend. You couldn’t even beat that fool we found in the woods, do you remember?”
Leon nodded and got swiftly to his feet, reaching for the jug to refill his drink. He would need the fortification if they were going to reminisce.
“What I still don’t understand is why you kept referring to him as ‘my boy’ when he was clearly as old as we were. So puffed up in your own esteem, Leon.”
There was such affection in the teasing Leon felt his throat constrict. He swallowed the wine and refilled his goblet again. Turning, he saw Geraint was smiling at him again, inviting him to share in the warmth of past conquests.
“We could have used you today,” Leon said instead and Geraint’s face fell into something between disappointment and pity, pity for Leon. He looked back down into his wine and tried to recapture their lighter mood. “Cenred had his undead, why shouldn’t we have used ours?”
Pity was now the clearest emotion in Geraint’s face, tears ghosting in his green eyes. “I am no bewitched undead,” he said, and in another time it would have indignation in his tone not this gentle sympathy. “I am no bastardized word, but the purer form.”
Leon clenched his jaw and allowed his eyes to fall shut for a long moment. When he looked again Geraint was wearing a gentle smile Leon had never seen in the knight’s life.
“You always try to be so clever.” Leon told him, the bitterness in his voice unwarranted by the words.
“Ah, my friend, I have no need to try,” Geraint’s airy words had Leon’s lips twitching despite himself. “And that was worthy of the bard and you know it.”
Leon released an involuntary bark of laughter. “Camelot’s bard is appalling! He sounds like – damn, a bag of screaming cats would preferable.”
Geraint laughed as well. “And tonight’s offering was certainly one of his best,” he raised an arm, shrugged his cloak behind him and began to proclaim the bard’s latest creation. “Fearless Lady Morgana, Clad in well-forged armor –”
He stopped when he saw Leon’s expression, stony faced rather than reveling in the bard’s ineptitude as he should have been. The knight’s eyes were fixed to Geraint’s torso, a point that had been revealed when he had swept his arm up and moved his cloak.
There was a perfect stab wound, the gore around it browned with age. The place in his chest where a fierce sword thrust had forced the laughing life from his body.
Geraint hurried to swing his cloak back into place. Leon turned away, finishing another drink, the dark wine staining his lips.
They were silent, a log falling in the fireplace the only sound that disturbed the room.
“You fought well today, Leon.” Geraint said finally.
Leon felt a brief breath of cold air on the back of his neck and he knew Geraint was gone.
No one questioned the fact Leon never wore a lady’s favour when he fought in tournaments, just a strip of rough red cloth ripped from a shirt and bound twice around his wrist.
And no one ever commented on how cold his chambers always remained, even in high summer.
And people stopped questioning Geraint's bravery,
which is well, for he is brave, it is the truth,
Since I happen to know that thinking otherwise is base knavery.
And my tale is done, forsooth.
- Tennyson, The Marriage of Geraint