Arthur's Sons (Book 1)

The Beginning of the End (Part 1)

It had been a few weeks since the Sidhe debacle and Merlyn's first painful visit to the stocks, Arthur had been relentlessly making sure that while he was training the knights  Merlyn was working through a core body workout regime to strengthen her core muscles and back so she wouldn't have a repeat of last time. He had also insisted she practice her archery as part of this regime and she had happily made a bit of coin outshooting the knights of Camelot. During this time Arty and Rowan had also begun trying to take on some of the tasks like polishing the Prince's armour, sharpening the smaller weapons and repairing any damage to the armour to help take the load of Merlyn who was grateful.

Currently, Arthur had a spare hour this morning and while both boys sat polishing his armour at the table and Merlyn was pottering about cleaning and rearranging his room, he had a map spread out in front of himself and the twins while he taught them battle strategy. The had taken the chest pieces and labelled them as different divisions: Archers, foot soldiers, cavalry etc...And were running through scenarios trying to defeat the opposing army and take the citadel. Currently, the twins were the defending army of Camelot while Arthur played the invading army, they were going over a siege scenario and to make it a bit more 'chance' realistic the boys had scrounged up a pair of dice so that when you made a move you had to roll, anything higher than 7 meant the action succeeded and anything less meant the action failed and troops were lost. They also had a trump card which could only be used if you rolled a 12 twice in a row, currently, Arthur's army had been cut down by half but he had used his trump card to sneak a battalion of foot soldiers in through the siege tunnels causing mass casualties.

"Move one section of knights from the west wall to the siege tunnels and spare archers from the gates to provide cover fire." Arty spoke after a moment of staring at the pieces on the map, Rowan picked up the dice and tossed them back on the table rolling an 8. Arty then picked up a knight chess piece and a pawn moving them to the siege tunnels then plucked Arthur's piece of the table and set it aside.

"Your turn." Arty said going back to polishing one of the vambraces. Arthur looked surprised for a second before studying the table. He chose to focus his siege weapons on the west wall and rolled a 7 meaning the wall was being accosted by soldiers with ladders as well as a catapult. 

"Your move." Arthur replied smugly. Arty looked up studying the map for a moment before turning to his brother who grinned and nodded.

"We chose to try our trump card." Arty spoke with a wicked grin. Arthur smirked and handed him the dice, Arty shook them in his fist a moment before blowing on them and rolling a perfect 12. Arthur stared at the die a moment before looking at his son with suspicion for a moment, Arty picked up the dice and handed them to his brother who repeated the previous action before rolling the dice. One of the dice hit Arthur's goblet and bounced off onto the floor skittering under the bed.

"Damn it, Mum can you get that." Rowan asked Merlyn who had been folding the mountain of laundry on the bed. Merlyn sighed and crawled under the bed before grabbing the die and handing it back to her son who quickly thanked her and re-rolled the dice getting another 6 to make 12.

"Yes!" Both boys cheered and Arthur sighed.

"Alright hit me with your trump card." Arthur huffed wondering what they had chosen.

"The King goes down to the underground cavern with the key and releases the dragon in exchange for defeating your armies." Arty grinned moving the king piece to about where the cavern sits in the castle before pulling out a large carved dragon toy and wiping all Arthur's pieces off the board. At this Merlyn choked and turned to find Arthur looking stunned before he squawked in outrage.

"You can't do that!"

"Technically when we made rules about trump cards we agreed that it had to be something real and within ones power to do, the dragon in the caverns is quite real and could be released if you were desperate enough." Arty grinned back with a nonchalant shrug, Rowan snickered at the look of horror on Arthur's face.