Chapter Text
Lancelot would’ve liked to insist it’d be a waste to send him to fight pirates. To tell Arthur he can’t swim, that he’s afraid of water, that he’ll be no good in a naval battle of any kind.
Those are lies, though, and despite all the time he’s spent among humans, he’s never managed to copy their disregard for something he’d been raised to view as taboo. So he listens to the king go on about pirates raiding his northwestern shores near Carlisle, ravaging villages and taking slaves, and when Arthur asks him to help Gawain drive them off, Lancelot can only say, “I’d rather you send somebody else.”
Arthur looks so taken aback it makes Lancelot wince. Gawain is more prone to glossing over things, and if he’s at all surprised, he brushes it off to link his arm with Lancelot’s as if to physically pull him into agreement. “Don’t be ridiculous. If this is serious as the reports suggest, you’ll be the perfect man for the job.”
“I’ve never fought on a ship,” Lancelot says weakly.
Gawain waves that off. “Once we get close enough to board, it’ll be just like fighting on land. Better, because everybody’s packed in real close, and you can do a lot of murder very quickly.”
Arthur coughs. Gawain says, “Are you choking? Would you like some water?”
“I’m… fine,” Arthur says. He rubs his temples and gives Lancelot a pleading look. “I would greatly prefer if you’d obey this order, out of friendship to me.”
There has clearly been a misunderstanding somewhere along the line. Lancelot sucks his teeth. “Um.”
“And,” Arthur goes on, “as my sworn vassal.”
And that—well. Sworn. That’s the tricky part, isn’t it? He’s made an oath, a promise, has given his word. He never really thought about that when he was knighted, and technically it was Guinevere who’d finished the knighting, technically he’s hers, but that doesn’t change that he’d said the words to Arthur.
Breaking vows is worse than lying. Especially since it’s only fear for his secret that makes Lancelot uneasy. Lancelot reassures himself that naval warfare doesn’t, far as he knows, involve exposure to water so long as everything goes well.
“Of course,” Lancelot says. “I’d only meant I wouldn’t be necessary if Gawain is already going. There’s nothing I could bring that he doesn’t offer.”
The defeat of a pirate king had been among Gawain’s first victories, Lancelot has been told. And once, he disappeared to the Orkneys to fight off sea raiders. While most Arthur’s men dismiss battle at sea as unpleasant and less honorable than feats performed on land, Gawain handles such encounters with the blithe deftness with which he performs most tasks.
Arthur only shakes his head. “I’m afraid this is serious enough to warrant sending you both. Reports I’ve received have distressed me greatly.” He adds after a moment, “Even should you only trail Gawain and let the men see you are there, you would do a great deal of good.”
There’s no honorable way to refuse, and Lancelot accepts with good grace. When he and Gawain arrive at the coast several weeks later, he finds Arthur had been correct to assume they’d both be needed. Raiders have ousted Arthur’s men from the king’s two primary strongholds south of Carlisle and are using them for their own operations.
Gawain and Lancelot reclaim the first fort swiftly with the reinforcements they bring, but one ship escapes, and when the pirates hole up in the remaining stronghold and settle in for a siege, there’s no doubt it’s with the expectation of help from the west.
Arthur had repurposed several merchant ships to aid in their fight, stationed at Carlisle, and Gawain orders these brought south to patrol the sea near the besieged stronghold. It’s slow, dull business, and they haven’t touched the oceans at all; Lancelot begins to wonder whether his worries were unfounded when their lookout spies several ships through the rolling mist early one morning.
Gawain coaxes Lancelot aboard the largest ship, both of them wearing armor—Gawain explains that there’s more risk of getting shot by arrows or stabbed once the fighting stars than there is of drowning—and then they’re at sea, Gawain shouting things, and the men at the sails shouting things, while Lancelot tries to stay out of the way.
Everything blurs together after that. The fog is so thick it’s hard to see, and the sky is dark with storm clouds. There’s confusion about how many ships the enemy has, though the general consensus soon becomes more than the lookout initially saw, and Lancelot has the impression they’ve stumbled into a trap. Just as this is sinking in, an arrow hits his breastplate, so sudden, as if from nowhere, that he gives a startled yelp. A man nearby isn’t as lucky, and he lets out a pained gurgle that seems to come from the mist itself.
Gawain appears at Lancelot’s side, his shield out. “They had some kind of enchantment hiding half their ships. It’s hard enough to see through this bloody fog anyway. If we’re not encircled yet, it’s a matter of time.”
“They’d ransom us if we surrender,” Lancelot says after a moment. A ship moves so close it knocks against theirs with a jolt. Then—there are pirates vaulting the rail, suddenly right there.
Gawain takes a look, wavers, then says, “I’m not sure this lot is looking to talk.” He smiles like a devil. “At least this’ll be fun while it lasts.”
Lancelot wants to protest what he’s implying, but there’s no time. A pirate attacks Gawain from the left, and then they’re off fighting, and Lancelot has to shove somebody away with his shield to clear space. He doesn’t have time to think. There’s only one thing he can do. Moving from the fighting as best he can, Lancelot throws off his helm, casting it into the water, praying he won’t get hit with an arrow in the meanwhile.
Another jolt of the ship. Pirates shouting, yelling things in Gaelic. Screams of pain. Shrouded in mist and rain, Lancelot begins to remove his armor. A pirate finds him while he’s fumbling with his gauntlet, and Lancelot throws it so hard at the man’s face he drops like a stone. He gets the other gauntlet, fumbles at his boots. His mail leggings. Finally, sheds his gambeson, just as another pirate lunges for him.
Lancelot sends himself backward over the edge of the ship, straight into the sea. The moment he touches the water, it’s like he’d been bound in tight garments and has loosed the fastenings all at once. There’s a momentary ache that accompanies the shifting of various body parts, but it’s gone in a heartbeat.
The water is itchy and wrong, he can feel the salt, but it’s not unbearable. Still underwater, Lancelot kicks his tail and propels himself toward the second pirate ship, the one from which men would still be boarding, and barrels into it with such force that the small vessel sways and threatens to tip. In the next breath, he punches the wooden hull, then swims with full force along the ship’s base—turning the hole into a long line of broken-open wood.
The ship begins to sink.
Remaining submerged, Lancelot spins until he finds the other ship alongside Gawain’s and launches toward it with his shoulder lowered, hitting the hull with such force the wood gives in and breaks around him. Lancelot lashes out with his tail to tip it fully into the water. When that’s taken care of, he swims to the surface, head breaking into cold air, and squints through the fog until he locates another pirate vessel.
Lancelot gives that one the same treatment as the others, and is pleased when he manages to shove it directly into one of its counterparts. By that point, there are pirates scattered through the water, screaming, and Lancelot goes after them one by one, keeping below the surface, dragging men under and biting open throats, slashing with sharp claws, rending one man’s head from his shoulders.
Once he clears himself space, he surfaces a second time. The rain has turned to a storm, and gales of wind render even the undamaged ships unsteady. Lancelot spies two more pirate vessels, but now going the other way. He chases them down, crossing the distance in seconds, picking up sufficient momentum from his speed that it’s nothing to topple the first, then to rip through the hull of the other, breaking it to pieces as if it’s made of parchment.
Lancelot gets rid of those pirates too, to be safe. That should be enough, he decides after he’s pulled the heart from the last man’s chest, absently shaking his hand to get rid of the gore. That leaves the matter of getting back aboard his own ship and explaining how he’s come to be naked and wet. Perhaps if he swims to shore and hides, then makes up a story about almost drowning and washing ashore? But Gawain would—
As if thinking his friend’s name is a summons, a new note enters the smell and taste of the blood dyeing the water. A familiar one, so potent it’s startling. Lancelot has only encountered Gawain when he’s all but human, his senses too dull to distinguish one person’s blood from another, but he recognizes the scent as well as he would Gawain’s face.
Subsequent realizations flash through him.
Gawain is in the ocean.
Gawain is hurt.
Gawain had been wearing armor.
Lancelot doesn’t think about the consequences. Like a shark tracking prey, he rushes toward the smell of blood.
Gawain fumbles at the latches of his breastplate, kicking hard and making a concentrated effort not to panic. In the frigid water, his fingers are clumsy from cold, and the brewing storm turns the waves dangerous and cruel. But he needs the breath he’s holding to last and refuses to succumb to the instinct to try gasping for air.
He’d never admit it aloud, but he’s afraid. Of drowning, sure. But also of—whatever else is in the damn water. Intense as the fighting had been on his ship, he’d seen the other ships go under even through the fog, and the water around him is crimson with blood and littered with brutalized corpses. If he doesn’t get out of his armor, if he doesn’t swim away soon, he’s going to wish he’d drowned. But—
He feels the presence before he sees it. Cold dread in the pit of his stomach, looming awareness that something very bad is very close. Gawain’s hands fall from his breastplate as he decides maybe he wants that on, after all, and then a face is inches from his own.
It’s about what he would’ve imagined from the ravaged bodies: white skin drawn taught, as if emaciated, over a sharp and hollow face. The creature’s torso nothing but muscle and bone, with an inhuman lack of softness. More concerning are the needle sharp fangs that so fill its mouth the lips can’t properly close, and the long, skeletal fingers ending in bloodied claws.
The sea monster reaches for his arm, where a pirate had sliced through his mail and given him a deep cut, right before sending him tumbling into the sea. It smells the blood. Gawain watches in horrified fascination as it examines the damaged armor, waiting for it to do something appropriate, like bite off the whole limb. And—he’s aware that he should be fighting, but his head is spinning, vision going dark around the edges. He doesn’t have the cognizance to overcome his fear.
The monster looks up, toward the surface. Then looks at Gawain. Then it says something that Gawain can’t hear through the water, but which sounds like a curse. It occurs to Gawain that there’s something… familiar about the sea monster. Something that niggles at the back of his head. But his mind is growing more muddled. He can’t concentrate.
He wonders what became of Lancelot, and realizes with something like guilt that he’s likely to go mad when he realizes Gawain is dead. Gawain’s eyes drift shut, and that’s suddenly the most important thing in his head. He fears he might cry, which would be awful, to die crying. And the monster is—
Grabbing him around the waist, tucking Gawain into his side. Dragging him not up, but down, deeper and deeper into the ocean. Oh of course. He wouldn’t be the one the sea monster murders violently. Does it want to sleep with him? Probably. That’s how things go in these scenarios. How would that work?
He needs air. He really, really needs air. Does the sea monster know that?
Gawain doesn’t bother to struggle. Either he’s going to drown, or the sea monster is going to extend his life. That might not be great, but it’s better, probably.
That’s the last coherent observation he makes, and something about viewing it that way makes it feel like he’s being rescued, and that sense of familiarity is… not gone, and as he loses consciousness, he buries his face in the sea monster’s bony neck and finds he’s not so frightened after all.