“He looks hurt,” the enormous boy’s deep voice said, eyebrows knitted together.
“He looks rich.” The smallest one plucked a dagger from his belt and spun it skillfully between his fingers. “And that horse could be sold for a fortune.”
They stood in the road and debated about what to do. The boy with acne and his little brother wanted to check the injured man for money and take the horse. The big one argued they were being greedy and should take the horse and not chance anything else. They hadn’t reached a conclusion when the mousey boy turned without warning and started toward Lancelot.
“Dunstan!” his brother hissed, his voice cracking. “Stop!”
But Dunstan did not stop. He marched forward, dagger poised to strike in front of him as the other boys stayed rooted on the spot. He kicked Lancelot hard in the side, and any sympathy Vera felt drained away in an instant. Lancelot didn’t so much as flinch. She couldn’t imagine how. Her heart hammered furiously.
Lancelot had two pouches at his waist and, satisfied that his prey wasn’t conscious, the boy started fussing with the closure on one. When Lancelot’s hand snapped up to grab his wrist, Vera jumped nearly as much as the boy did.
In one fluid motion, Lancelot was sitting up and eye-to-eye with the shocked child. Dunstan clumsily swung his dagger in retaliation. In the blink of an eye, the dagger was in Lancelot’s hand, and their positions were swapped; Dunstan was now on the ground with Lancelot kneeling over him. His movements were so precise that figuring out how Lancelot managed it was as fruitless as trying to describe a hummingbird’s wings mid-flight. Vera’s question of whether he should face the situation unarmed now seemed asinine.
To their credit, the other boys hadn’t turned tail and run yet. In fact, Dunstan’s brother was charging forward, drawing his own dagger. Lancelot didn’t even turn around entirely as he thrust his hand out and caught the boy about the wrist. He stood to his full height, twisting the elder brother’s arm until his dagger dropped to the ground.
“Oh shit,” Dunstan’s brother moaned, a flash of recognition lighting his pimply face.
Lancelot cocked his head and smiled ruefully. “Well said.” He looked over his shoulder at the largest of the three. “If you want to have any chance of keeping your hands, get over here now.” His voice was so commanding Vera almost wanted to hop off her horse and obey, too.
The large boy reluctantly trudged forward. Lancelot stowed the brothers’ daggers in his belt. They’d all shifted enough that Vera couldn’t see, so she edged her horse closer to the road. She wasn’t as hidden but had a much better view. It was nearly dark, and the boys were facing away from her now anyway. As Lancelot turned back to Dunstan, the largest boy stopped halfway between Vera and Lancelot. He bounced on his toes, hanging in the balance of forward and backward movement. Lancelot’s eyes shot up, sensing that something had gone amiss. The boy was about to do something stupid.
He turned and took off at a lumbering sprint down the road toward Vera. She didn’t pause to consider the potential consequences. Vera kicked her horse into a run, urging her out into the road, where she drew up the reins and stopped so hard that her hood fell back. She unsheathed Lancelot’s sword with both hands, wheeled it in a high arc over her head, and brought it down in front of the boy, halting his path forward. He skidded to a stop and fell back on his bottom, staring up at her in unbridled shock.
“I would reconsider,” she said.
The boy mouthed wordlessly, scrambling backward like a scuttling crab.
“Is that the queen?” the boy with acne asked in horrified awe.
Lancelot gazed at Vera with one corner of his lips quirked up. “Yes, it is.”
Vera thought she heard astonishment in his voice but decided she might have been mistaken as Lancelot shifted to glare at the largest boy. He lumbered back and joined the others.
“Sit.” Lancelot spat the word.
Unsurprisingly, they all did so. None of them dared move. They likely hadn’t even dared blink.
“I don’t know what your lives are like,” Lancelot began after an uncomfortably long stretch of glaring at them in silence, “but the mess you have created on this road has not gone unnoticed by your king. It will not continue.” He paced in front of them, pointedly meeting each of their eyes. “You have a choice. Show up tomorrow at the armory, swear your allegiance to your king, and join his forces. You will have a place to live and food to eat, and you will learn to become good men rather than thieving boys. Or, if you don’t show up, you will be found by the king’s guard itself, and you will not be treated with the leniency I offer today. Do I make myself clear?”
They all nodded vigorously, like anxious chickens pecking for worms.
“Good,” Lancelot said. “Now go—before I change my mind.”
The boys scrambled to their feet and took off back toward Glastonbury at a run. They gaped at Vera slack-jawed as they passed her, except for the large boy, who stared at the dirt. Soon, they were formless lumps fading in the distance.
Vera turned back to Lancelot. His stern expression remained, but it fell away when he met Vera’s eyes.
“Yes!” he shouted, thrusting both fists in the air. “You,” he said, pointing at her, “you were fucking brilliant.”
She was so caught off guard that she laughed. “It was a stupid thing to do,” Vera said, “and this sword is insanely heavy. I about dislocated my shoulder.” She held the sword out to him, both arms straining with the effort.
He accepted it, and where she’d had trouble wielding it with two hands, he easily sheathed it with one and mounted his horse as smoothly as if he were putting on a jacket.
“You were brilliant,” Lancelot repeated. He clicked his tongue, and their horses obediently began to plod along. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You always had a good tactical mind.”
“Tactical mind?” Vera stared at him.
He nodded. “You and Arthur were married mere months before the final invasion. You came up with a crucial part of our battle strategy.”
“I—I did that? You’re certain?”
He laughed though he eyed her appraisingly. “Very certain. You wouldn’t call yourself strategic now?”
“Hell no.” That was the last way she would describe herself.
Half a grin took Lancelot’s face, and he eyed Vera appraisingly for a moment. “You’re different than—” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “You’re different.”
She squirmed in her saddle. “In a good way or a bad way?”
“Just … different,” he said, though he looked hopeful. “S’pose that’s only fair, though. What’s been a year for us has been a whole bloody life for you. What’s it like? In your other time, I mean.”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that. How could she explain the phone she’d forgotten not to reach for about twenty times in the last hour? Where could she even start in describing the future? “I help my parents run an inn,” she said.
Lancelot had loads of questions about how Vera occupied her time. She fumbled through a laundry list of interests, but when she mentioned running, he sat up straighter in his saddle.
“You run?” he said.
“Yes.” Vera bit her lip. Was that an extraordinarily odd thing to say?
He fixed her with a delighted smile. “I shouldn’t be surprised after that bit back near the stables. You looked comfortable running.”
She hadn’t thought about it, but Lancelot had seemed at ease, too. His stride and posture … Vera gaped at him. “Do you run? I didn’t think people ran in this time.”
“Soldiers do,” he explained. “We were at war for the better part of a decade and ran every day to stay battle ready. Most soldiers have scattered to their corners of the country and lead much slower lives—and well deserved, I might add. I train the local forces and the king’s guard, and I still run to keep fit. And I like it.” He shrugged. “It calms my mind.”