Fic: Swords up, swords down

[issenllo]

This may as well go into my wildcard sqaure for cottoncandy_bingo?

Title: Swords up, swords down
Crossover: Merlin/Narnia
Summary: Two kings meet the once and future king.
Notes: Written for wildcard square of my cottoncandy_bingo and was a snippet that grew a bit.



All right, so it was true that he much preferred to solve problems with his sword rather than with diplomacy, but Peter rather thought that one, there was nothing wrong overall with that fundamental approach and two, he and Edmund against a giant boar was just good odds.

The valley that they were in was narrow; the last thing they wanted was to be trapped here. Talking Beasts had a tendency to be larger than dumb beasts and the one that had cornered them was the largest that Peter had seen yet. "Traitors," it accused. "Do you think you're fit to rule Narnia-" Edmund sliced through a foreleg of the first boar, and rolled out of the way as it tried to stamp on him.

The wounded boar staggered towards him, and Peter put Rhindon into its heart. He heard a scream, eerily inhuman, as it collapsed on the ground. He wrenched his sword out of the boar's body, his grip firm despite the blood.

All of a sudden, two men appeared out of nowhere, chased by yet another boar, and passed him. One had a sword.

"Peter!" Edmund shouted. "Look out-"

And then the boar had turned around somehow, and was rushing at him, attempting to crush him with its weight. Things got very confusing after that.

Once he was certain that neither of the boars were getting up again and Edmund was all right, Peter flicked the blood from Rhindon, then pointed it towards the two strangers, only to be faced with another sword similarly pointed at him by the one dressed in full armour.

"All right," Edmund said. He was holding his sword out at the other stranger. "What just happened here?"

"Right after I killed the first boar, they showed up with the second," Peter said, eyeing the sword aimed at his throat. It was an exceedingly fine sword, with abstract markings down the blade. "Who are you?" Peter asked its owner, when it looked like the strange knight wasn't going to attack, either out of caution or some misguided sense of honour.

He was young, Peter thought as he observed the knight, who was about his age, blond hair, blue-eyed and apple-cheeked, and he wasn't panting hard even after having helped to kill a giant boar. His armour looked unfamiliar but expensive, and showed signs that it had been well-used, and not merely in practice either. This was a fighting man as well.

The knight frowned at Peter's question, and said something that sounded vaguely similar, like something in a French lesson taken a long time ago. Peter remained silent. The knight spoke again, louder, and evidently realising that he was not understood, nodded at the other stranger and gave an order - for there was no way that tone of voice meant anything else - with an air of "do something about this".

His companion looked out of place on the battlefield, however. He was dark-haired and thin, carried no weapons, and was wearing an odd assortment of clothes and a handkerchief around his neck, and his ears stuck out from a narrow-looking face. Now he turned an expressive, and exasperated look at the unknown knight, unheeding of Edmund's sword aimed at his throat, and held up an outstretched palm as he spoke.

Peter could have sworn he saw the man's eyes glitter yellow, like that of a lion's. Beside him Edmund gasped.

"...and there. Can you understand me now?"

Peter suddenly heard, and he narrowed his eyes at the man, whose yellow eyes had turned back to blue.

Edmund 's sword was now pointed at him again. "You're a magician," he said harshly. "What did you do to us?" Magic from unknown sources always made Edmund wary.

The knight, Peter noticed, was now studying them as though for any hidden weaknesses before he attacked. The magician, on the other hand, rolled his eyes. "I don't believe it," he said with an air of disgust. "We've travelled to the ends of Albion, and it's still got witch-hunters in it." He held up both hands as though in surrender when Edmund's sword went up by a couple of inches. "It's just a little translation spell, seeing that we're having communication problems here. And I'm not a magician. 'm a wizard."

"You're the world's worst manservant," the knight said, seemingly unconcerned still about Peter's sword pointed at him.

"Am not," the wizard retorted, then studied Peter and Edmund with eyes that seemed to see through them.

Peter could feel Edmund tensing.

But the wizard merely turned to the knight. "Do you really want to stand around waving swords, or do you want to talk?"

To Peter's surprise, the knight sighed, and pulled back. He seemed to be unconcerned about Peter's blade still pointed at him.

The wizard gestured delicately. "Er, if you don't mind-"

Peter assessed them for a moment, then nodded at Edmund and both of them drew back as well, though - like the knight - they held on to their swords, prepared for anything. "I'm High King Peter of Narnia and this is my brother King Edmund," he said. "State your names."

The knight bristled. Not someone who took orders easily, then. But he raised his chin a trifle haughtily and replied, "I am Arthur Pendragon of Camelot."

The wizard coughed. "Ahem-"

"And this is my manservant, Merlin."

That got him a glare. "I'm not your manservant."

"Are too." Then the knight grew serious again. "I've never heard of a place named Narnia in Albion."

Albion? Peter was thinking that he never heard of any such country bordering Narnia either, when the name 'Camelot' caught something in his memory. "Camelot. Albion. England?"

"England?" Edmund was frowning too, no doubt like him, trying to recall the things of that other world they had already started to forget. Something of nursery tales told about someone with the knight's name, and his companion's name was similar too. "I've heard of King Arthur-"

Immediately the point of the knight's sword was pointed at Edmund's chest. Peter was unwillingly impressed. He hadn’t even seen the knight move. "It is treason," the knight said, "-to call me king. My father, King Uther, is ruler yet in Camelot, long may he live."

Peter could respect loyalty like that. "My brother meant no disrespect. But if you are from England, you are far from home indeed." He remembered how they had come to Narnia the first time, their astonishment at finding an entirely different world from England.

"Merlin!" the knight - it was difficult to think of this young man, however skilled, as someone who would become the legendary King Arthur - growled. "This is what comes of bringing you on hunting trips."

And that was another puzzle. From what Peter remembered of the stories, the wizard Merlin had always been an old man with a long white beard, capable of powerful magic, not this stripling who seemed incapable of even holding a knife, even if he could do magic.

Said stripling was now ducking from a well-telegraphed cuff to the back of the head. "I didn't want to come, anyway!" he protested.

"You said you found signs of the talking dragon in that cave, so I went in with you, but once inside we were chased by a talking lion-"

"-how was I to-"

"-and once we found our way out, we nearly got crushed by a giant boar-"

"-but that was not my-"

"-and now we aren't in Albion anymore? It's all your fault, Merlin. Again. How did you mistake a talking lion for a talking dragon?"

"Talking dragon, talking lion, same difference."

They seemed to make a habit of bickering at every point, Peter thought. "You saw Aslan?" he interrupted.

"Who's Aslan?" Arthur asked, and Peter blinked. It was hard to imagine that anyone in Narnia didn't know who Aslan was, and he had to remind himself that they were from England.

The wizard narrowed his eyes. "Aslan's the talking lion," he said, "isn't that right? He brought us here. We're in a different world."

Peter exchanged glances with Edmund. Why would Aslan bring the two of them to Narnia? As far as he knew, there were no other prophecies about more humans - especially not about the legendary King Arthur and his court wizard Merlin. "I think we should talk about this. May I invite you to our camp?"

/end

Comments

[edenfalling]

This is neat!

[issenllo]

Thanks!

[aishuu]

And and and?????

Love this concept.