pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

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Bahorel was volubly gleeful at the prospect of learning swordfighting from a genuine medieval English knight who lived and made war with his longsword, and equally gleeful at the prospect of teaching him canne de combat. Enjolras isn't surprised at all by this; it's why he felt comfortable making the offer to Harry Percy in the first place.

This would probably be true even without Bahorel's current level of boredom. As it is, he'd probably leap at the chance to teach canne de combat to a dressmaker's dummy.

(A poor analogy. He's probably already done that, too.)

At any rate, the idea being mutually agreeable and their schedules being largely free, Enjolras and Bahorel and Harry have made their way together to the practice room upstairs.

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"...what becomes of the ceilings?" Harry asks. He casts an uncertain look upwards-- but, of course, sees only the top of the tent.

"Hah, nothing becomes of them, though that's a fair question here. --No, but sometimes after the wrong dreams..." Bahorel lounges sideways across the bed and looks up. They're good ceilings, really. Solid. He does like the room.

"Sometimes, after the wrong dreams, it's just the wrong ceiling, that's all. It's not home. Wake up dizzy in a dream and it feels like drowning." He says it with no embarrassment at all. "But both of us used to wander around at night, and fall asleep under a balcony or a branch; so that--" he stretches out to tap a branch of the odd lean-to "is close enough, sometimes."

"Wander?" he asks with a laugh. "For what cause?"

He feels a bit silly, just sitting and parroting questions, but-- to touch on the subject of dreams, wrong dreams, well-- that's a topic he is not capable of broaching with Bahorel's ease and lack of embarrassment, and certainly not to the man who has soundly beat him in now two fights.

Bahorel's smile is for somewhere far beyond the current conversation.

"Ah, so many reasons. To know the city. To hear her speaking, the voices of the people, and their silence at night; to learn her shape and the feel of her in the dark. To find a friend in the shadows where you expected an enemy, or find an enemy and become friends, when the nights made that possible."

He looks towards the ceiling again, not seeing it, one arm up to sketch out the remembered shapes of another life. "To watch the shadows take the walls at sunset, or the light take them in the morning; to learn the patterns of the people in the street in the lighter hours. To feel the Paris falling asleep around you, and going into her own dream, and being a waking part of it-- ah!"

He laughs. " --Or to steal a measure on the good officers of the law, and do things that Respectable people would stop when the light gave them courage to get out of their houses-- that, too." It was all the same, all for the life and love and liberty of home.

That faint whooshing sound might be all of this flying right over Harry's head. He looks more than a little bewildered.

"--I have not ever tried such things," is the best he can do. What?

Bahorel's laughter is friendly. "Well, you've never lived in Paris." Of course an Englishman isn't going to really understand.

He turns to study Harry for a moment; how to put it into English Knight-speak? "Say: because I loved my city, and meant to fight for her; and that meant I had the duty to know her. And because Paris was home, and a man should know his home, and the people in it."

Harry nods.

"Ay," he says. "Ay, I see."

Not about Paris specifically, of course, but-- yes, those are terms he can more readily understand.

Gad, it's like talking to Feuilly. All that dire seriousness. If the lean-to weren't in the way, Bahorel would ruffle Harry's hair.

But at least Feuilly knows not to be so damned respectful with him. Bahorel grins. "No need to be so sober about it; you'd have despised me there. Most of the people I met, I met in bars and cafes; we drank, we gambled, we brawled, we danced. And I loved that, too." That had been part of the whole conversation, the flow and art of Paris herself and the preparations for revolution in particular. Bahorel knows he can argue for it well enough. But he'll give Harry a chance to understand it on his own.

It's a testament to Harry's growing respect for Bahorel that he briefly considers politely lying!

"--no indeed, I would have liked thee not," he agrees. "And yet-- to do such things, and still to fight in a good cause--"

Well, it's not like anyone he's ever known. But he's getting used to that idea with Bahorel. Slowly.

Bahorel can hardly say he's never met anyone who lives with Harry's apparent asceticism-- Enjolras is in the next room, after all. But Enjolras is a particular case, and from a social world that Bahorel understands much better than Percy's England.

"And where else do you meet men, for any cause?" He's studying Percy with something like seriousness now. "Were all your men met in the barracks? Did you never share a drink with them, or sing with them, or share stories before a battle?" Really--how would that even work?

Harry shrugs. "I commanded them, I did not drink with them. And for my fellow commanders, they-- my father and uncle often made one amongst them."

Maybe in France people happily get drunk in front of their fathers, but Harry somehow doubts that is any country's custom.

In Bahorel's considerable familial experience, drinking and singing and playing games are all very much things families do together. But he's pretty sure his and Harry's experience of family is even farther apart than their experience of cities.

He's also not going to push at that, right now. Harry will learn, in time, if he's stuck with them-- and if he's not then it might not all be true, anyway.

"It was different for us, of course. No commanders-- hah, you could say that was the point, in a way. And I for one wouldn't have trusted anyone claiming to fight for the people who wouldn't join us all where we lived-- or how could they have any idea of what was needed? And that was mostly in the cafés and bars, back home. It might well be different in other places-- and I'd expect to see anyone of our cause in with wherever the people there made their lives happen."

"The matter of what was needed was, to us, rather plainer. A village sacked, a castle burned, and so must be defended or answered." Harry's not good at purely intellectual debate: his volume is starting to rise a bit. "They were not battles could be planned in a tavern-- and the debate 'mongst the commanders oft caused delay and strife enough, I cannot think how 'twould be to add the voice of every foot soldier, who know nor the land nor the ways of the enemy."

Oh no, someone is raising their voice at him, a totally unprecedented event in the last five minutes! "Where were your foot soldiers from? Were they recruited like Napoleon's army, from all over the country?"

It's not ceding the point; there's no point of true disagreement yet, though Harry seems to have missed that. But it is gathering information.

"A lord's army is his tenants," Harry says. "He may march with them where'er they are needed, but in the guarding of the borders, we lead men of our own lands."

"Hm, very different from the army of our day. Were these borders and castles very far from your men's homes? Long marches away?" Totally innocent questions, Harry. Just figuring things out.

Harry shrugs. "That would depend upon-- upon the castle, the county, the cause."

No, in fact, it's not a question he's ever considered.

"So the men for any campaign might be men who had never seen the land they're fighting in-- or men who lived in shouting distance of the battle, as the cause demands?"

Just checking on this.

He considers this a moment.

"Yes," he concludes at last. "That is so. Wherefore do you ask it?"

"Ah, it is a matter of cultural difference, that's all, mere curiosity. You see in France a commander often considers that a man with local knowledge might have a useful opinion, even if he is of low birth. Indeed, the opinions of local men are often so sought after that a commander may kidnap one for a guide, if he finds himself without such a fellow in his ranks."

He grins. "That a man in England might not know his own neighborhood enough to have an opinion worth hearing would, I grant, surprise few of my countrymen of any time. --Ah, but you'll say it's down to the greater wisdom of English nobles. Say so! I take no offense at any insult to the nobility of my country.But say how it's gained, too! You have good maps, then, you English commanders? Or do you all know the border so well?"

"We do indeed-- and have maps and knowledge enough to need to no guide. I know that--" He lets out a huff of frustration, more than partly at himself for not quite being able to find the right words to proceed. "I speak naught against the common man. I would not mark the advisings of some high-born gentleman who knows naught of war merely because he was of noble blood. 'tis skill I seek, not status, and the common soldiers have it not because they have learned it not."

Bahorel's smile is hardly even teasing! For him. You're doing okay, Harry.
"Of course--a trained army takes time. And more time away from home, for those who are away from home." Seriously, Harry, you're not on the hook for your entire society. "What do they learn, your common soldiers? --And who makes the maps, along such borders? It must be skilled men, to learn the shape of the land under fire." That's not even a little sarcastic. Maps are hard, even outside a battle zone.

Edited 2015-09-13 20:42 (UTC)

Er.

"Men who-- make maps, I know not. 'tis someone's duty, for some way or other they are made."

Things just happen somehow and are eventually given to you, isn't that how most things paper-based things work?

"But they've never led you astray? You put a good deal of trust in them, these hidden map-makers." It's a dark thought, to consider who Harry trusts, on his own side of the door, and Bahorel . "But if you're not curious, I am; I'll have to see what the Library has on your English maps."

But that's for later! "--But you do speak to your men sometimes, surely--beyond just calling orders."

Harry isn't quite sure if Bahorel is teasing. "Speak to them? On what subject? 'tis a custom, true, to give some words or other ere going into battle, but I am no orator."