Free Camelot & Vine by Petrea Burchard

the road led out
across open fields between the town and the great hill before us.
To the southeast, tents spread across the land, hundreds of them,
teeming with men and smoke. Arthur’s armies, I guessed. To the
northwest lay marshland, clouded with fog.
    On we went, the mood of the soldiers
climbing the heights before we even arrived at the base of the
hillside. As we neared it, the hill appeared steeper, and at last
we came to the beginning of a path that zig-zagged up a series of
switchbacks to a great, wooden gate. There, shouting guards leaned
over the wall to hail us, their arms waving like stalks peeking
over a garden fence and swaying in the breeze. With a groan, the
gate pushed open and out poured a dozen men, shouting and rushing
down the muddy zig-zag in a torrent of testosterone.
    Lucy betrayed her nervousness with a loud
whinny.
    “Welcome back!”
    “How’s Gawain?”
    “Did everyone survive?”
    “Surely Beran Byrig has better women to
offer.”
    I tried to ignore the jab by staring at my
lap. The laughter ended when someone asked about the riderless
horses tied to Agravain’s cart. Questions and shouts filled the air
until Bedwyr raised his hand for silence. “Get these carts up the
hill,” he ordered.
    The brutes bent their shoulders to the work
without argument. The wagon lurched, zig-zagging up and across
earthen ramparts wide enough to ride two or three abreast, steep
enough that an invader would be hard put to climb them, old enough
that grass, weeds and even trees sprouted between their stones.
Below, the town we’d passed through was laid out like a map of
itself. Miles of road we’d traveled curled back across the plains,
disappearing into the morning we left behind.
    Anticipation built in my breast as the cart
pitched and swayed, drawing near the gate. Finally we made it to
the top and rolled under the high, wooden arch where the horses
could pull the weight on their own. I jerked and wriggled to turn
myself to see. Like the opening shot of a grand epic, my first
sight of Camelot was revealed to me.
    Sun bore down on a grassless camp. Men and
women came and went pushing carts, trotting briskly in the dust or
meandering along the wide path that led away from the gate. With
the red-haired boy driving, we rode among the meanderers along a
path as deep as a trough, worn to a ditch in the dark soil by
centuries of rolling cartwheels and trampling feet.
    Could this Cadebir be Camelot? It was a
working fort, and working hard, from what I could tell. The dust
couldn’t settle, being constantly kicked up by activity. I had no
choice but to breathe it. Even the young wore work on their hard
faces. Sunburned men pushed carts loaded with produce, animal
carcasses or black dirt along the path. Women carried bundles. No
hand was empty. Even the animals, at least the live ones, bore
burdens, pulling wagonloads of stones or wood across the hilltop.
Sweat glistened on every neck, from bent laborer to plodding dray
horse, dripping in dusty rivulets through fur and hair.
    Our carts bumped past a row of cement
barracks like the one in which I’d spent the previous night. Across
a lumpy expanse, the ground rose to a promontory where a large,
rectangular structure commanded the rise. Its steep, thatched roof
swept up to meet a pair of beams at the crest, declaring the
building to be the main hall. On the slope at its flanks several
high-peaked, round huts huddled near it like campers at a fire.
    We rolled to a stop at the hall's massive,
wooden doors. Bedwyr dismounted and climbed aboard the wagon to
unlock my chains and help me to the ground. Blood rushed into my
feet and I thought they wouldn’t hold me, but my ankles warmed
quickly. Standing felt like a reward. I awaited instructions.
    A pair of wide-eyed boys gaped over their
shoulders at me as they led the riderless horses away. They took
Lucy, too, my last connection to the real world. Sagramore shouted
after them, “No one touches that saddle until I