Lancelot, of course, takes offense. Lancelot takes offense at most everything though, so Dagonet refuses to be surprised when Lancelot corners him just outside the stables, glaring in the direction of the garrison as they go through their paces. Arthur learned quickly that Romans and Sarmatians are best kept apart, so they train separately, dine separately and, most importantly, drink separately.

"You let them say those things about you."

"What good would fighting them do? They would call me worse."

"They insult you."

"As do you, yet I let you live to see the next day, do I not?"

Lancelot glares at him, and Dagonet works very hard not to laugh. Lancelot is a ferocious sight when mad, a demon on land, spinning magic and death from his blades, but without a battle, he is merely a petulant boy pretending to be a man.

"I would not stand for it."

"And that is the difference between you and I, Lancelot." Dagonet gives him the closest thing he has to a smile and pushes back a lock of dark curl. "I fight battles I have to win. You fight battles you cannot."

It is weeks later that he finds Lancelot's body, beaten and blacked with blood, lying face down in the mud just outside the wall to the North. He is patrolling in the dusk, the most dangerous time, when the Woads feel at one with the land and their blood courses with power. He hears nothing and then there is something, a movement or shifting of shadow. He sees the black leather that has grown familiar of recent, Lancelot adopting it as his uniform as he'd shed the leathers and cloth of home.

He moves over to him cautiously. There is movement, but that doesn't mean he's not dead and a trap set for someone foolish enough to care for dark eyes and wide smiles and a wicked tongue, laced with bitter and tinged with sweet. Dagonet does not count himself so foolish, but apparently he's wrong, as he squats beside him and threads his fingers through Lancelot's hair, lifting his head.

It is a crime what has been done to him. His pale skin blossoms with purple and black, blood scoring the faint lines of adulthood that are beginning to mark his face, the faint hint of stubble darkened to a beard with mud.

"You are a fool, boy," Dagonet mutters softly, lifting him and carrying him to the wall. He weighs nothing, a convincing argument that he is nothing but bone and bravado without his swords. It is then that Dagonet notices that Lancelot is unarmed and anger fires through him. Whatever Lancelot is, he is not a fool, and he never enters a fight unarmed. Dagonet's eyes fall to Lancelot's feet, strangely not surprised to find them bare.

"A sneak attack, eh?" Dagonet brushes back Lancelot's wet hair and tilts his chin back, finally earning a moan for all his trouble. The sound barely registers, but it's enough. Patrol is forgotten as he lift Lancelot and carries him to the gate, pounding on the wood until it is opened, and sliding inside like a shadow himself.

Whatever Lancelot had said, the price should have been earned in an equal battle. As it was not, to Dagonet, there is a reckoning due.

Lancelot does not read. He listens, his fingers tracing over the scrawled writing on the pages as if he can absorb it all that way, draw it into him. As it is now, he can barely move one hand and his eyes are nearly swollen shut. He lies there, unwilling to move, or perhaps unable, looking at no one. He eats what they give him, if only because he knows if he doesn't, Gawain will hold him down while Tristan forces the food down his throat. And Gawain will make it hurt.

Dagonet reads. He has taken every bit of writing that Arthur will allow him, and more besides, learning the strange flow of Latin and the words that are more foreign than the tongue they're spoken in. He traces the words as Lancelot does, but when he moves his fingers along, he makes them come alive.

At night, he sits at Lancelot's bedside and reads to him, half-truths from Roman stories where he turns the tide of the ending, earning painful huffs of laughter from Lancelot's cracked lips as the Romans fall time and again. Sometimes Dagonet knows that Arthur listens from the distant doorway, and occasionally the other knights gather to hear his deep, strange voice fill the building despite his low tone.

Finally Lancelot manages to open one eye, the whites nearly yellowed and veined with thick, clotted strings of blood. "Why do you do this?"

"Because you are a fool."

Lancelot nods. "I suspected it was something very much like that."

Dagonet picks up the story where he left off at the interruption and keeps going, recounting tales of tortured Romans, of victorious tribes. Lancelot closes his eyes and his breathing evens out for a timeless moment. Dagonet touches his forehead. There is a deep gash at the hairline, the source of most of the blood Dagonet had cleaned away that night, and it still seeps, white and soft and tangled with the midnight black hair.

When Lancelot rises from bed, he has no strength and less form. He cannot lift his swords, much less wield them, and worse yet, he doesn't even try. He merely moves out into what there is of the sunlight and watches the horses run. No one approaches him, though all the knights talk behind his back, questioning if he's useless to them now. A few say nothing at all, and it is those that Dagonet trusts to leave Lancelot with, watching him surreptitiously as they go through their paces, playing at battle and honing their skills while the Woads wait to cry havoc down on them.

It is dusk again and Lancelot is nearly healed. His skin is darker now, as though the blood flooding to the surface to paint it with blues and blacks and purples has not left though the flesh itself has faded to ocher and green. He flexes his hands as he watches the horses, shading his eyes against the fading sun. Time will come shortly to set the horses to stable and feed them, hide them away until morning lest an arrow find a mark in the darkness.

"You've not been eating."

"I eat." Lancelot's voice is rough and hoarse from disuse.

"You eat just enough to keep us from forcing you. You've no strength and you're half the size you were. I thought before you were all bones and balls, and I find now that you're barely bones at all. Just skin and air."

"I left a mother back in Sarmatia, Dagonet." Lancelot's voice holds little of the sharp edges it used to have, dulled as much as his blades. "I have no need for one here."

"There we will have to disagree." Dagonet sets one of Lancelot's swords on the ground beside him. "Lift it."

"Are you ordering me about, Dagonet?"

"Depends." Dagonet taps the silvered blade. "The Lancelot I know would nearly kill a man who dared to do such a thing. What will you do?" His voice hardens, thickens to the rough guttural sound of the Roman centurions. "Boy."

He moves like a snake or a whip, lithe and dangerous. The sword is in his hand and there is fire in his eyes, but he stumbles, sinking to his knees nearly before he makes it to his feet.

"I take it back. No air at all in you. No fight. Just skin and what little blood they left you. Should have left you to die."

"Yes." Lancelot manages to stand, leaving the blade embedded in the grass. "You should have."

He is drunk when he finds them. He does not drink to excess, and yet tonight he bid Vanora fill his glass again and again, trying to drown those hell-dark eyes. He is drunk and a wrong turn leads him down pathways he knows better than to tread, lined with smooth dirt and smoother stones, lines and crossways that mark the difference between the beaten ground beneath the Sarmatian's feet and the careful roads of Rome.

He listens to them mock him - dumb and drunk, what they expect of Sarmatians despite the fact that they have fought and died in far more battles than the centurions' shiny armor has ever seen - and listens closer for the words he knows lie on someone's tongue. Someone who will be drunk enough or perhaps just foolish enough to lay claim to the broken boy Dagonet can no longer face.

He finds them eventually. Three men who were smart enough to gang up on Lancelot when he was defenseless, but not so smart as to never speak of it again. Dagonet stumbles as he nears them, deliberate and careful as he lands on his hands on the bench in front of one, breathing a soft curse as he cuts the laughter off with a hiss of the blade and the steam of blood in the frozen night.

The other two are drunk enough to keep laughing, but eventually the night rings with silence and Dagonet walks away, letting the knife blade run along the stone walls, leaving a thin line of blood until he leaves the Roman claimed sector. He spears the knife into the ground and watches it quiver, the surface still black in the moonlight. He waits until it stills and then makes his way back to his bed, staring down at it for a long moment before turning to Lancelot's small space, invading it with the heat of his body, wrapping his arms around the small form and holding him until the struggling stops.

He wakes the next day alone, his head throbbing with the beat of his blood. He closes his eyes against the sharp sunlight until the sounds outside filter in through the thick walls. He rouses himself and forces his way out to the field. Tristan sits on the edge of the corral, watching with sharp, dangerous eyes as Lancelot stands in the center, his hands shaking as they hold his swords. He does nothing but stand there, holding the blades out in front of him, muscles quivering with tension and his wrists threatening to give way.

"He'll come around," Tristan informs Dagonet, sliding off the fence. "It will be slow."

"He will fight."

Tristan nods. "That's why it will be slow."

Dagonet takes up Tristan's place, his elbows on his knees as he leans in and watches Lancelot. His back stiffens as he feels Dagonet's gaze, and the blades rise and straighten, whatever slack he had allowed himself gone now with his new watcher. Dagonet does not move, does not speak as the hours drag on, daylight shifting across the sky until the long shadows fall across Lancelot's naked chest. It is hollowed and concave, the skin faded to pale.

"I have patrol tonight." Dagonet finally says. "You'll come with me."

"No."

Dagonet hops off the fence and moves over to Lancelot. He can see the strain in every muscle, can imagine that Lancelot's entire being is focused on the relief he'll feel when he can lower his arms. "You'll come. Or you'll stay here all night. Your choice."

"Then I'll stay."

Dagonet nods. "Pride will get you killed, little one. The only difference is that with pride you run the risk of it being your own sword you fall on."

Morning comes with gritty eyes and grey skies as Dagonet walks along the corral. The horses nicker as he passes, ready for the gates to be opened so they can have their false sense of freedom. Dagonet understands the need and the ability to lie to one's self. He passes the stable and stops, fighting his smile.

Lancelot stands where he left him, swords still in front of him, though they've sagged down to his waist. His eyes droop nearly as much as the blades, and the corded veins in Lancelot's arms stand out dark against his skin. They're almost too much like bruises and Dagonet vaults the fence and goes to his side.

"G'way." Lancelot's voice is slurred, drugged with sleep and atrophy. Dagonet sighs and shakes his head, carefully easing the blades from Lancelot's hands. He sways forward and Dagonet catches him, wraps an arm around his waist and turns him carefully, slowly. "Not done."

"For tonight." Dagonet informs him, his voice soft, but still brooking no argument. "You are for tonight."

The trip to their barracks is a short one, or would be but for the weakness of Lancelot's steps, his walk nearly drunken in demeanor. He ignores the other knights as they move past them, eyes full of questions they all know better than to ask. Dagonet bypasses Lancelot's berth and drags him to his own. The bed is larger by his right of size, and he puts Lancelot into it, shoving him over against the wall. Lancelot resists feebly, his sounds of protest muffled as he fights sleep, eyes closed before Dagonet has stripped down and joined him. His muscles still shake, so Dagonet holds him, not falling asleep until it stops.

Sarmatian sounds strange to his ears now, like a language he used to know, like the songs his mother once sang to him that faded as his nights became filled with adventures of his own, tinged with smoke and fire and blood and the hunt. But waking to it always seems right, so he keeps his eyes closed and listens to Lancelot's voice, so much softer in their native tongue.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Nearly died." Dagonet thinks that says all that needs to be said, but he's known Lancelot for too long now not to know that's not the case. He can hear the irritated huff of breath, the low growl that rumbles in Lancelot's throat. "For me."

"Not for you."

"You accuse me of allowing the Romans to treat me as nothing more than a stupid dog, Lancelot, careful you don't call me such yourself." He finally opens one eye, looking up at Lancelot. He is all eyes and cheekbones, wild hair and wide mouth he never seems quite sure what to do with - smile or curse or grin like the demon Dagonet sometimes thinks he is. The sunlight falls on the thick dark mass of his hair, coloring it edged in gold. He is on his elbow, still slightly shaky, above Dagonet and looking down.

"I did not nearly die for you. I nearly died for what I said and for the fact that the Romans were far too cowardly to fight me as a man, and instead preferred to tie me in a sack like some dangerous animal they weren't sure how to kill."

"I imagine, for them, that's exactly what you were." He reaches up and touches one of Lancelot's curls, surprised as always at how soft the hair is, how easily it slides between his fingers.

"Why did you save me?"

"Leave no man behind so long as he has breath in him." His fingers slide down, tracing Lancelot's sharp, dark brow and then the edge of his eye, watching the dark lashes flutter closed before his finger finds the curve of Lancelot's cheek. "How could I leave you, little one?"

"Not so little anymore."

"Always little to me." Dagonet's hand slides back, fingers threading through the dark mass of hair, mindful of the sore spots that cause Lancelot's eyes to narrow, sharp gusts of pain in his breath. "Could not leave you to die."

Lancelot shakes his head, his lips parting and eyes closing as he leans into Dagonet. There's air between them, though Dagonet feels nothing but heat in his lungs, searing them as Lancelot's mouth finds his. Words echo through Dagonet's head, Roman words that he's never known before this land - words like sin and wrong and hell - but he cannot hear them, drowned out by those ancient songs that sing through the grasses of home, warm as the sun, as the slide of Lancelot's tongue against his, as the softened calluses of Lancelot's fingers against his skin.

The movements are as practiced as on the battlefield, Lancelot's body a warm pressure on his. There's something in the sleek feel of him, not quite man yet not still boy, and Dagonet wills himself to just feel the slide of bodies, scarred flesh against unbroken, fingers and tongues and hands and mouths all tangled up in half-formed words and desperate breaths.

He can still feel the shake in Lancelot's limbs, the residual from the day before quivering beneath his touch. He wants to still it, give Lancelot back the strength stolen from him with some of his own, breathe and bleed into him until he's himself again.

"Cut out their tongues," Lancelot swears softly, a dark whisper that promises vengeance. Dagonet would smile if it didn't hurt so much, that such dark things are what keep Lancelot alive, keep his heart beating in his chest however it might have slowed for so long. "Never say anything bad about you again."

"Never say anything again," Dagonet assures him. "Their gaping throats assure us of that."

The stillness is almost eerie in how quickly it falls in place of quivering muscles and desperate hands. Lancelot's eyes are nearly black, though Dagonet senses that whatever had darkened them before has fallen by the wayside of the hot anger burning behind them now. "What?"

"They're dead."

"Why?"

It is a child's question, an innocent's question. Not one of them asks why anymore, have not since the day the Romans rode up to their tribes and tied their horses together in a worn leather chain. "They were mine to kill."

"Mine." Lancelot sits up, blood up by the flush of his face and the heat of his skin. "Mine."

"My slight," Dagonet reminds him. "My honor you defended?"

"My life they took in recompense!"

"Tried to take. And failed. You fought my battle, Lancelot, and it nearly got you killed. I fought yours and it ended with them dead."

"I did not ask you…"

"And I did not ask you." Dagonet moves off the bed and stands, looking down at Lancelot. The boy still lurks in his wounded expression, in the fury that fuels his injustice, but the man is there too, building walls and holding grudges behind Lancelot's eyes. Whatever was between them is gone now, though Dagonet knows that Lancelot owes him too much for the tie to ever be completely severed.

"You said you only fought battles you had to."

"And you only fight ones that will get you killed. It nearly did, so I had to fight it." Dagonet straightens his clothes as Lancelot slides off the bed, the rigidity of his body more from strength, from holding himself in check than from weakness. Whatever else this has given him, Dagonet will offer a sacrifice that it has given Lancelot that. "Wage your own wars, Lancelot. Leave me to mine."

"As you wish."

Lancelot snarls and heads for the door, his hands snatching his blades off the low table. Dagonet watches as Lancelot moves, seeing the faint hint of his previous predatory grace. It is something, he thinks, laying back on the bed and closing his eyes. Something, though not enough for what has been lost today.

Dagonet blames that on the Romans. It's easier, he knows, as they all do it. Easier by far than blaming any of it on themselves.