The nurse comes close to him and presses a cup into his hand, to his lips. He barely holds the heavy mug and lets her strong hand guide it. The wine is watered down and laced with herbs that smell as foul as Merlin's breath ever did, sour and thick. He coughs and sputters as she tilts the cup, forcing the dregs down his throat, her fingers closing hard over his nostrils to insure that he swallows the wicked potion.

He closes his eyes as she withdraws, leaving him to his silence. It is a tomb, he thinks, decorated in the finest Britain has to offer, and it leaves him as hollow and cold as the dead. This is not how he should die, not how he should spend his last moments. He forces himself up, supporting his body with his hands as he shoves back the covers that make the room seem warm. There is nothing warm about death.

Burn me.

He had lost knights before Lancelot. Every name imbedded in his heart as deeply as their swords dug into the earth. Gareth and Agravaine, Kay and Percival. Dagonet. He thinks on them now, remembering the boys and young men they were and that they never became. He remembers how Kay was so silent and wide-eyed, following the Romans around, just out of reach of the swing of their swords. He remembers Agravaine swearing in his own language as Arthur dug the poisoned arrow from his flesh, ripping the shaft from Arthur's hand and plunging it into his throat.

He remembers how Gareth lay on the ground, his neck twisted to the side. He remembers Percival's hand as it closed around Arthur's arm, in death offering a peace he could not in life. He remembers Dagonet's strength, his sacrifice.

Lancelot and Tristan, lost in a battle not their own, though they chose it far more than any battle they fought for Rome. Lancelot's pair of blades no longer spear the ground above his empty grave, nor does Tristan's wicked curved sword. Instead they hang in the hall, a memory bathed in blood that Arthur no longer sees, trapped here as he is.

Galahad next. He had not told them of his wounds, had suffered them in silence until the pain was too much for him to take. His wounds were self-inflicted, as damaging as the gut-deep cut the Saxon's sword had made, but the fall from his horse, spooked as he drove him toward the edge of the cliff was the final blow, and he didn't not need to look at the rest of his remaining knights to know that whatever the peace of the time, Galahad died in battle.

Bors died in the second wave of Saxons, a splinter group remaining from the original attack. They drove toward the wall late and made it through the first line of defense, stopped by Gawain and Bors's swords. He does not know what happened to the rest of the bodies, but he can still hear the song of mourning Vanora sang to the skies.

Three weeks ago, Gawain. One of the Woads that remained true to the old ways, the ones who fought them still, the ones Merlin swore would one day come to their side rode to the wall and stopped, holding aloft a trophy in his hands, waiting until he'd seen Arthur's face at the wall to drop it at his horse's feet. The body was dumped as unceremoniously before the horse wheeled away, the rider not twenty paces out before the arrow fell from the sky and drove them both to the ground.

Arthur turned to look at his wife, his queen. She had not held a bow since Baden Hill, just as he had not held a sword. He had brushed past her and gone to the gate, pushing past the gawkers and others to reach Gawain's side, gather him in his arms.

Excalibur hangs in the hall as well now in a place of pride and honor. He turns back to the bed and crawls beneath the silken sheets. There is no honor in anything for him anymore. He is a warrior with no battle to fight, a commander with no knights to lead.

This room is his tomb. This earth his grave.

And he is death's to claim.