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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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."

No, he's not being teased right now. He's being considered very seriously.

"You talk to all of us well enough, and you're not about to lead us into battle. You don't think we're better than your soldiers." He's sure of that, at least. "Hell, you know them better than I do-- or you should-- and you're smart enough. Think of it yourself, what you might talk to a man about."

He thinks before saying the next, but then, Harry's been so insistent. And there is a chance, after all." I don't know if or when you might have a Door back. But if that comes, and you have time for it, some day, you might try it. If nothing else, you're an easy fellow to like, when you let yourself be, and no man fights less for adding love of a friend to his cause."

Edited 2015-09-14 16:51 (UTC)

It's at this point that Enjolras emerges, hair wet and haphazardly finger-combed into place. Unlike Bahorel -- who's wearing a garment which is probably a kind of sarong, but which looks to Enjolras's tolerantly bemused and ethnocentric eyes as if he stole somebody's curtain to wrap himself in -- Enjolras has opted for a borrowed shirt and actual clothing, even if he's leaving off his coat for now.

He's overheard the end of this conversation, but it's Bahorel's last sentence he's in the room for, and of course it makes him smile.

Harry is slightly relieved to be spared having to fully answer by Enjolras's entrance. He suspects that most men don't particularly like having to make polite conversation with their commander-- but he also suspects that answer would not satisfy Bahorel.

"I shall think on it," he says. He turns to Enjolras to add, "We did speak of soldiers."

It would be a good answer! Not complete, but a start!

"We did! --And maps. I find I'm ignorant of the English art of map-making; I shall have to ask Feuilly about it, and he can rightly be offended at me for not thinking to study it before."

A knock low on the door announces the arrival of their lunch. Bahorel gets up to bring it in, and looks at the three trays with sudden suspicion. Two are full of the sort of food all three of them might recognize, but the third is a smallish covered iron pot. " ...You both may have reason for offense at me before that, I didn't think to change my usual order--" He lifts the iron lid carefully. "--ah, only something with peppers. That's all right, then."

The other trays he sets on one of the tables scattered around the room, for his friends to choose as they will.

Edited 2015-09-14 17:52 (UTC)

"Combeferre knows something of surveying too. He's tried to explain it to me a few times -- the principles make some sense, but if I had to put them into effect..." He shrugs, eloquently. He wouldn't know where to begin.

Bahorel can keep his possibly offensive pot of something with peppers. He's infinitely more adventurous with that kind of thing than Enjolras, who's going to start with some bread and cold meat and sliced fruit.

"What of soldiers and maps?" That's to Harry -- for reasons that are probably obvious to Bahorel, and may or may not be to Harry. Enjolras wants to know what Harry's distillation of the conversation will be, and what he thought of it.

"Oh, how they are are made, what soldiers may know of the land," Harry says as he assembles a little plate of his own, airing very much towards Enjolras's side of the cautious continuum.

Enjolras glances at Bahorel, whose first bite of his mysterious something with peppers is apparently... making him turn purple and wheeze? But also grin, with streaming eyes, and give a CARRY ON I'M FINE kind of handflapping.

Uh.

Okay, Bahorel! If you're sure...?

(Enjolras loves Bahorel dearly, but there are so many ways in which he completely does not understand Bahorel's life choices. And afterlife choices.)

So -- right, Harry's summary, to which he nods. "In thy battles, you fight abroad and by map often? Or near the men's own lands?"

Enjolras knows more than a little about army tactics and strategy, at least for the 18th and 19th centuries. But all his personal experience is with urban warfare, riots and uprisings. They knew the ground by inches, there.

Harry is slightly concerned about the color of Bahorel's face, but... He seems to know what he's doing most of the time, so presumably he's fine.

"A lord does raise the men of his own lands-- so when we do defend the borders, it is with men who live upon them."

Enjolras is kind of keeping an eye on Bahorel to make sure he doesn't need to summon Combeferre or Joly or something. But in the meantime --

In the meantime, there are several things to potentially address in that statement, and some of them are more productive to discuss than others. Harry isn't to blame for his entire society, or for predating thinkers who were born long after his century. (But all the same.)

"Then they have knowledge of the land, and clear cause to fight for it," is what he opts to say.

"Ay, they do," he says. "To protect their country, sure that is reason enough for any man."

Someone from another cultural context might have more qualified feelings about patriotism. Enjolras emphatically does not. He smiles at the statement, small and glowingly real.

"Yes."

All right, so Harry Percy's country is not France; that's not the point. France and England have no great love for each other, and that's not the point either. His country is his own. That's as it should be.

"Though," he does add, "the more voice they have in their country, the dearer they'll feel both love of their homeland and desire to defend her."

Harry Percy's country is his own, but it's also his own in the 1400s, when a lord does raise the men of his own land, for his own purposes, good or ill, without asking much of their thoughts on the matter.

"Well," Harry says with a shrug. "That is for the king to say, is't not? Who he will hear, or will not."

Enjolras, eyebrows up, says with the mildness of deep understatement, "Often. Which is the problem, isn't it?"

Has Harry heard the words of his own sentence yet?

"It is indeed," Harry agrees readily. "But still it is so."

Bahorel would love to comment on the obvious gap in Harry's philosophy--really, he would, there is so much to say-- but coughing and choking on Weird Death Peppers has turned into laughing has turned into laughing and choking on Weird Death Peppers. So he settles for getting up and heading to the fridge, thumping Harry on the shoulder in friendly amusement and Enjolras in passing as he goes. All yours, Enjolras! At least until Bahorel can find a beer or something to counteract the Murder Food.

Where to even begin?

Well -- it's Harry Percy. Percy, who looks faintly taken aback every time he's listened to.

"What wouldst thou call a better way?"

"Thou hast asked as much before, in other fashions," Harry says. "And Feuilly has said the ways you do seek to build in France would suit not in my time. And so-- and so I know not, save that we seek the only way we know: a king who will trust his nobles' word, who lives not ever fearing that his crimes past will come to call, but rules in quiet."

There is so much to address within that.

Some of it they've already talked over, though. So that's a start.

"One trouble with that," Enjolras opts for, "is how to ensure that the common people are heard as well, and not only the nobles."

He says it as a prompt, half a question: laying the matter before Harry, equal to equal, and trusting that he'll share the basic premise that the common people are worth hearing.

They may not reach any more consensus than they started with, in the course of this discussion, and Harry may not change his views on anything significantly, not even once Bahorel rejoins the debate. But agreement's not the point, and never has been.

Edited 2015-10-24 04:26 (UTC)

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