His Majesty and His Knights

Preparations

Arthur woke up to the smell of freshly baked bread and perfectly seasoned meat.  He sighed contently. His bed was so comfortable and it smelled so good. He briefly wondered if he had died and gone to heaven. But then-

"Let's have you laisy daisy!"

Arthur groaned and pulled his covers over his head, not yet ready to leave his half-awake paradise. Merlin, however, had other ideas, seeing as he pulled Arthur's covers off of him. Wait- Merlin?

Arthur sat up. "You're back already? I thought you were going to be gone for another week."

"I was, but... there were some complications."

"Oh?"

"We can talk about it later."

Arthur stood up and walked over to the changing screen and got dressed, with a little (read: a lot of) help from Merlin. Fully dressed, he walked over to the table to eat breakfast. What he was was truly a sight to behold. There waiting for him was a plate with at least four different kinds of meat, grapes and a few slices of freshly baked, warm bread. It was almost too good to be true. Actually, it was too good to be true. Arthur turned to face his friend.

"Alright. What do you want?"

"What?" Merlin did his best to look innocent.

"Come on, Merlin. You never get me this much food. You tell me that we need to keep me in shape- which is wrong by the way because I am fighting fit!"

"Can't I just get you a lot of food because I feel like it?"

"No."

Merlin sighed. "Fine, but eat while we talk. You're grumpy when you don't have any food in you."

Arthur glared at him but did not say anything. Merlin sat across the table from Arthur. 

"Turns out that most, if not all, of the people hate Morgause, which is good because it'll be that much easier to overthrow her if we have their support."

"That's good."

"Yeah. Everything's looking up... But there's just one problem."

"And what's that?"

"Morgause is recovering. Morgana and Elizabeth-"

"Elizabeth?"

"Childhood friend and Morgana's current maidservant."

"Oh. Continue."

"Morgana and Elizabeth think that we have a month at most before Morgause is back to full health, and once she is, she'll head right back to Camelot to take it over."

"I see."

"So we're going to take back Myrddia before she can even get to Camelot."

"So that's what you want."

"Yeah... You don't have to but it would be helpful if we could get some help from Camelot..."

Merlin likely would have continued off into a ramble, but Arthur had already made up his mind. "Merlin, I promised you that I would help, and I don't break promised. How many men do you need?"

Merlin let out a breath of relief. "Just a few. It won't be a big operation. Just taking out Morgause."

"Will the Round Table be enough?"

"More than enough."

"Great. We can leave at dawn tomorrow."

"We?"