Well, that certainly didn't last long...
     Half the summer. For a month and a half, he was sober. He was training. He was glorious, good-humored, in good standing, in good company. Among them, Lady Catherine of Somerset, Alys of Caerleon, Gladys the scullery maid and the miller's daughter.
     But it didn't last. You knew it wouldn't last...
     Cruel messengers carried the news of a queen's expectancy. Even when the pregnancy ended in miscarriage a month later, it was no consolation. For Drustan had been reminded that he was not sharing the bed he wanted most to share. He was not holding the woman he most wanted to hold. Someone else was. She didn't love him.
     He's been in his tent ever since. Midsummer jousting has turned to late summer preparations for the coming harvest, tally's and inventories being made for the coming winter. And Drustan is drunk again.
     He sleeps in his hammock, still wearing his armor and his crimson cloak from last week's hunting excursion. Empty bottles all around him. No more mead in all Camelot, surely. He's drained the lot. Normally clean-shaven, he now has the scruffy appearance of a beard growing in, two weeks' worth. His dark curly hair has grown longer and is unkempt. It still has straw in it from the last time he passed out...

     While the ill-fated prince's sobriety did not last long. It lasted longer than most wagering men would have expected. Those that knew the prince's nature the best gained from Drustan's deplorable state. The Pagan prince of Gorre for instance is a whole libre richer for it. Sometimes Ywaine feels a bit guilty for that.
     Of course his guilt melts away when he realizes that as one of the younger knights still searching for a place at the round table, once again the Duties of Collecting Drustan fall to him. Such as collecting him from the woods where he passed out on the same hunt he still wears his armor from. But Ywaine is not here simply to collect Drustan today. He is here to try and rouse him long enough to ask a favor.
     The sound of booted feet stops short, just outside the tent, and the deep voice of the young Pagan knight is heard, rehearsing what he is going to say. It is punctuated by a self admonination. 'I must be crazy.' He mutters before tugging the tent flap asside. "Drustan! Drustan wake up!" he calls as the wooden bucket he carries splashes water on the sleeping knight. "I have a favor to ask you."
     He was going to leave the bucket behind.. but well.. Gawain dared him to do so.

     Unlike much of his fellows, and even though everyone here is from an island, Drustan has a great deal of experience with water, as every Cornish prince would, their lands being a peninsula, nearly an island to itself (and always seeing itself as separate).
     When the cool water lands on him, for a moment it only makes his dream seem all the more real. The dream of being on the sea with her, making love in the cave beneath Tintagel, the crown of Cornwall's summer home. But then drunken synapses fire and he coughs, sputtering, groaning, and... of course... cursing.
     The hammock squeaks, the wood pulling with his weight as he flops over. "Go get fornicated," comes the precise Latin.

     "I would love to but you've left all the ladies that normally reciprocate to such.. discreet.. encounters quite worn out." Ywaine says as he moves into the to stand next to your hammock. With a sweep of his foot he moves errant bottles out of his path before up ending the bucket and setting it down into the earth like a make shift stool.
     Settling down onto the stool the young knight heaves a sigh and shakes a head, again he asks himself why he is doing this. Shaking his head the young knight's resolve becomes firm again and Ywaine says, "So help me.... you will wake up if I have drag you to the cliffs of dover and wash you sober."

     He tries to hide his head in his arms, his legs sprawled out both on and off the hammock. It's no use. He's awake. "There's not enough water in the sea," he gruffs. "Now, leave me here... leave me here to drown in peace..."
     Drustan is not going to cooperate...
     Cooperation only comes in sobriety. When he's sober, he's quite cooperative. A moderate man with a good heart, a kindly heart. Determination of steel. And when he's drunk, that's all that's left. Determination of steel. Determined to wallow. Determined to drown. Determined to stay in his cot.
     A hand fumbles to the side, seeking a bottle. There has to be more mead in one of them...

     The young knight rubs the bridge of his nose. This is never easy, dealing with Drustan. "Trust me Drustan... if I could just leave you be I would.. but as I happen to actually need your help the option of leaving you hear to wallow in mead, piss and pity is lost to me..."
     There was more to that particular diatribe but it ends when Ywaine see's a hand fumbling for a bottle that still has some mead in it. "No wonder the christian god has to have an entire commandment about people not swearing on his name."
     A handful of hammock is taken in each hand and Ywaine lifts swiftly upwards, intent on dumping Drustan out of his roost.

     "Do it... and so help me god..."
     That's all he gets out before you send him tumbling over, creating a great tintinnabulation of armor and bottles. What a clamor! The sound of metal, glass and Cornish swearing.
     Inglorious...
     Drustan sits on his rump in a tangle of crimson cloak and glowering. "For someone expecting me to do him a favor, you have a funny notion of courting it, for certes. So ...what..." his voice lifts, his color lifts and he struggles, drunken to his hands and knees. "...do you want? Or hasn't enough money exchanged hands over the past few weeks?"
     He's aware of the betting, of course. He's the one who set the odds.

     Point of fact he's lucky you're only mostly drunk instead of completely drunk, or else he might have a gladius buried to hilt in his gut right about now. "Villiages in Sussex and Kent loyal to Arthur are being razed. The Saxons swear they are not behind these raids yet claim that if peace is to remain he best do something about these raiders." Ywaine states, his voice is almost cold as he pushes to his feet.
     On his feet he gives the bucket he was sitting on a sideways kick to move it out of the way. "The Pendragon fears war with Ireland and many of his best knights are attending other duties. So he wants me to go and find out what is going on." Slowly he looks down at the miserable prince sitting on his rump in the wet earth. "I know of no better knight doing so much nothing as you Drustan. I need your help..." Is the son of Uriens perhaps, a bit scared?

     There is that...
     Drustan exhales, there's probably a curse on that too. He lifts a dirt covered hand and rubs his eyes. "If Arthur wants Ireland under his lee, he should speak with Mark. Mark made the bargain. He has their princess in his bed," rancor, bitterness, venom. But it is brief.
     Thank the gods for the small favor of the oncoming hangover...
     Drustan exhales again and he says nothing. He merely holds out his hand. Pull me up.

     His hand clasps yours at the wrist and with a grunt and hoist he pulls your armored self upwards and onto your own feet. "Is this a yes... or do you just need help standing so you can give me a square strike on the jaw?"
     Frustration with his friend asside, this is the most activity he's seen out of him in weeks. It is, at the very least, a good sign.

     The sunlight peers through the open fold of the tent.
     Gawain comes in, looking somber. He looks between the two of you as he stands, backlit. He's dressed somewhat martially, as if he is preparing for a departure. Not today, it's true, but sometime soon.
     "Well," he says, his deep voice bouncing a bit to see the strange sight. Gawain's eyes quickly scan the room and its potent remainders before returning to settle on the two of you.
     "Hmph. Looks like I owe someone," Gawain snorts, impressed with the water around the hammock.

     "I'd never aim for your jaw, boyo," the words are grunted out, and after managing to get vertical, Drustan leans over, hands on his thighs. Stars dance in front of his eyes. He says nothing in Gawaine's entrance. Dangling down, one of Yseult's amulets, green connemara marble embedded in gold etched with intertwining knots to symbolize the sea. He never gave it back. He never takes it off.
     "Glad to know I'm making everybody rich..." A moment more until the stars twinkle away and Drustan slowly rises, muscles aching from lying in the hammock for a week. "I need a drink. Is the sun shining?" he wonders suddenly, half turning toward the tent's opening.
     He's not ready for the bright light. "Uh... I could fill the mare nostrum," with piss one reckons, from all the mead he's consumed. So much for the harvest festivals.

     Backlit by the sun, Gawain looks every bit as fearsome as his reputation. Ywaine has long since accepted that knights such as Lancelot and Drustan are greater than he, but Gawain is the only one among them he feels truly humbled by. Bowing his head to his cousin, Ywaine says, "He didn't kill me for splashing him with water after all." The young knight says with a smile.
     The Orkney heir's manner of dress does not escape Ywaine, nore does his soon to be traveling companions request for a drink. A skin that drapes over his shoulder is unslung and offered to Drustan, "A brew of my mother's." Well step mother. "It is supposed to help on wake up and find sobriety." It probably doesn't taste good, but nothing good for you does.
     Attention returning to Gawain, the Prince of Gorre asks, "You look like you are getting ready to Campaign Cousin. Where are you ready to make off to?"

     There's little emotion in his voice. That gives his general feeling on the topic away. "I'm to Kent...lending support to some defenses. I'll meet Percival and Galahad," who'd been sent earlier. "Get their information. They're coming back from the Saxon borders," he says blandly, mindful of their sometime soon return. "They'll have a first report."
     "But, I suspect, if you both are going," and Gawain fully expects that you will, "...you'll pick up where they've left off?" Which means more danger at the borders, of course.

     A hand waves off the offer and Drustan shuffles forward, shuffles toward daylight, half-averting his face from the coming onslaught of bright light. "This is as good as it's like to get," he mutters to them both.
     He spares you both the sight, but not the sound, of him relieving himself outside his tent. Thank god there's no wind and that he at least had the decency to move away from the entrance. He aims for Bors' tent and groans.
     You know, he might be able to fill the mare nostrum. Whether or not he'll make it to the Saxon shore is another topic. What can be done, brothers?
     "I suspect I haven't a choice," Drustan's voice raises. In a few moments, he's appearing back in his tent's entryway.

     There is a look to Drustan as he asks if he has a choice. Well he does in fact have a choice, but Ywaine certainly doesn't look like he plans to take the 'no' as an answer. "Kent is where at least two of the razed villiages are so we will be heading that way.." Ywaine says with a nod to Drustan as he re-enters the tent, most likely, lighter by a stone.
     "I was planning to be off in the morning. When are you leaving Sir Gawain.. we might ride together for aways."

     "Think that's a good idea?" Gawain asks, hands coming to rest around his formidable girth. "I don't mind," he explains, waving a hand, "...but we should separate long before we are on the main road towards Kent. We aren't leaving for another two or three days," he notes.
     "And no," Gawain smiles thinly to Drustan, "You don't really have a choice." None of us do now, apparently. "Once Galahad and Percival get back, I'm sure they'll have to leave again too."

     He's already drawing in, he's already getting that look, that quiet. Before battle, Drustan says nothing. He lives in a bubble of absolute silence. There is never any music. Never any final words. Never a farewell. After battle, there is none who weeps or sings with more distinction. He is a warrior who grieves for each soul, saxon or otherwise. It was not uncommon in the old days for his fellows to find him wandering over the slaughtered field, weeping, replacing divets, righting the arms and legs, and sometimes heads, of former rivals.
     Deadly in combat though he may be, even with his luster quite tarnished, he dreads it. But it is as inevitable as the sea, as death, as his pain, and as the next tipping of a bottle.
     Steel blue eyes look to both of you. He wouldn't look for a choice, despite his protestation. "It will take me a day to... " He makes a motion. Get it together. "Maybe two..."

     Nodding to the Cornish prince, Ywaine says, "A day then." And then he looks to his cousin, "As long as we seperate before we reach Sussex I would wager we will be alright..." Ywaine says with a confidant nod. "I do not know if I trust the Saxon claims that they are not behind the raids. So far I have heard that only villiages and hamlets that are loyal to the Pendragon and Logres have been attacked. I suppose will will no more when Percival and Galahad return..."
     Looking then to Drustan, Ywaine starts to inch towards the entrance of the tent, "I will make ready our horses. I will be traveling light. Dalan..." His squire.. "is anxious to see battle. Too anxious. He's a good lad but I don't think he is ready to see the game of knighthood casually swept asside by the tides of war. I'm not ready to see another anxious boy in their grave because of me."
     In an unconscious guesture he scratches at the face scar he gained not but half a year from getting his sword and spurs. The same battle that gained him that mark lost him a squire.

     On that, Gawain can agree. He nods, "None of us do. Pendragon doesn't either. The Saxons...want a battle, apparently. I expect, at some point, we may have to give it to them." Matter-of-factly said.
     "Alright you," Gawain says, swinging a hand at Drustan's arm. "Two days." He'll move up his own departure. Eyes look to Ywaine. "We'll go, and part before Sussex."

     Drustan nods simply, lifting his eyes, turning his head to Gawain. An old brotherhood this. "Alright then," he replies. "I'll..." he looks around him, at the pandemonium of his tent. In a later vernacular it would be called and considered 'thrashed'. "...put my head back on my shoulders... I will be ready," he promises.
     When it comes to this kind of promise, Drustan's word is gold...
     Distraction. War provides a great distraction. For the moment, the ache finds another place to rest. The Saxons have cause to fear. Who sings their songs in their tongue more sweetly? Who fights them more completely?
     Drustan exhales and brings his hand to the bridge of his nose. "If only I could release the pain between my ears upon the lot of them. We'd have everlasting peace..."

     "Very good then Cousin..." Ywaine says with a bow of his head and a turn to look at Drustan, "I'll leave you alone to collect yourself then." After all such can be a very personal thing. Never mind that he just barged in here previously and doused you then dumped you out of your hammock.
     "Shall we meet at the gates in the morning two days hence then?"

     "Two days hence," Gawain says, fishing something from a pocket. It flashes and hurtles towards Ywaine. "You're a better man than me," he remarks, grinning at the wet Drustan. "I'd rather meet a line of Saxons..."

     And the first smile in months crosses Drustan's expression. Oh, good cousin... I remember when that was really true. Raking a hand through wet and curly hair, Drustan turns about and surveys the damage. Well, nothing to do now but burn it, really. He moves a few of the bottles away with a foot and bends, beginning the long process of cleaning up after himself...

     A quick hand snatches the flashing token from the air and it is quickly slipped into a pocket in his leather vest. "Well then good Sirs... I will bid you both a fond good day." Following his Cousin out, Ywaine makes his way from Drustan's tent.
     And for those of you keeping score, that is two Libre that Ywaine has made off of Drustan of late.

Posted by rowan at October 01, 2003 09:49 PM