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Arthur can never predict the night, though he knows the coming of it. This is now the thirteenth year and it continues. On the darkness, when the night is pulled down like a blanket around the earth, his knights slip easily and silently from their beds and disappear out of the formal structures of the fortress, move along the wall like wraiths and find a distant grove, settling in a rough circle. There is a fire, which is what draws his eyes first. It flashes crimson and burnished gold, draping his knights in an ethereal glow. They no longer wear the trappings of his world - no armor, no leather. Instead they wear simple breeches and shirts made of hard woven wool. He watches them as they slip into their native dialect, their mouths and tongues moving over words he does not and cannot understand. A hush will fall over them eventually, the smiles and words and laughter dying out as one by one their voices fall away until silence fills the night save for the crack and spit of the fire. Then, when it seems that all has ended, a low, soft voice will begin to sing. The words are just as foreign, but the melody echoes just as easily in Arthur's heart and blood as another voice joins until all his knights are blending together in a rough, deep chorus that cries plaintively for home. Their eyes are all closed as the notes die away. The fire sends a shower of sparks up toward the pitch-black sky and breaks the spell, the shifting wood tossing embers at their feet. They all scramble back with laughter and curses he knows, in voices he understands. Closing his own eyes for a moment, Arthur turns to go, stopped by the ghost of a touch on his hand. "Come, Arthur," Lancelot nods back toward the group as they settle back around the fire. "Rome is as far as Sarmatia. Let us give you a taste of home."
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