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Arthur fought hard against the bruising grip on his arms, but it was useless. He took what pride he could in the fact it took three of them to hold him in place. Four, when they tried to haul him away.
He writhed and roared, but even he could not overpower four small giants of men. From the sounds that reached his ears, his men were faring slightly better. From what little he'd managed to see, in the dim light of the tunnels they'd been drawn into, the bandits his men were up against weren't nearly as hulking. Percival was broader than most of them.
It made sense, of course. What kind of idiot would put his strongest on mere Knights when they had a King to restrain? It angered him, regardless. His men needed him, and here he was, being practically carried like a tantrumming child.
He hoped his men could fight them off. He hoped they'd get away.
He was thrust unceremoniously into a dank cell, and the door clanged shut on him so violently it rang around the hollowed out stone long after his captors had left. It wasn't long before he was joined, the cell next to him opened, a rather worse for wear Gwaine dumped onto the poor excuse for a cot. Elyan on his other side, barely conscious himself but yelling profanities even as he was locked in.
Not long after, Lancelot and Leon, frog-marched in with bloodied faces and exhausted eyes.
Arthur prayed in the quiet after, that left Percival. Perhaps he'd gotten away, perhaps he'd overpowered his own attackers. Arthur so hoped he'd gotten out. Had gotten Merlin out.
It was one thing for his men, trained and knighted, to be captured with him. Merlin had not even a sword on him. What were the chances that these men would care if a peasant escaped?
Arthur hoped Merlin had used his sense for once and escaped in the commotion. The longer the wait, the more the hopes grew.
And fell, like a stone in his gut, when the sound of footsteps returned. Percival, unconscious, dragged with his boots scraping the dirt floor of the pithy corridor. He was dropped in a cell at the end, and the bandits receded once more, leaving a devastating silence in their wake.
A new dread took hold. Why capture a servant when you've captured a King?
Arthur's chest constricted. Prisoners were, by their very lives, a commodity. They had value, not least for ransom. And no peasant was worth a ransom. It had become very difficult to breath the moment the thought came to him. He waited, for the bandits to return with Merlin, to have chased him into the forest, to have found him and hauled him back before he could alert Camelot.
Time stretched on and the shadows grew as the torches on the walls began to die. It could have been hours before Arthur could force his paralysed tongue to finally speak. He hoped his men would attribute the weakness in his voice to injury.
"Do any of you know what became of Merlin?"
" 'lost sight of 'm 'n th sc'ffle."
Gwaine, whom Arthur had thought unconscious, slurred, and then spat upon the floor of his cell.
"I didn't see." said Elyan quietly, as though the same thought had occured to him as had occured to Arthur.
Further lack of answers from Leon and Lancelot. And Percival was no closer to conscious than he had been when he was locked in his cell.
Arthur sat, in the foul-smelling damp of his dim cell, in the awful silence of his men, and tried to believe that Merlin had gotten out.
He had to believe it.