Edgard lets out a long sigh. The condescension is nothing new. It grates as usual, but it's not worth the fight. He doesn't take his eyes off Marcoulf and puts his hands behind his head.
"You don't know either, then. What about this arrangement?"
jk doing this now so I don't forget. scoops this back onto my plate.
It is not the first time someone has said to Marcoulf de Ricart that he doesn't know a thing. Given the ability and the care to, he might fill a book with such things that he doesn't know. As it is, he might recite a list in exacting detail.
Fortunately, such things do him little in the way of good and so he has no interest in the endeavor.
Edgard leans his head back looking behind him and releases another sigh. He is so tired and this man is particularly exhausting.
"The arrangement where I answer your questions, which I did, and you let me go."
He does not expect a positive answer to this. Why would this man stop being difficult? Why would something go right for Edgard? Why would the world stop ending time and time again?
The look he receives in reply is, for a moment, perfectly blank in the narrow sliver of moonlight. Then he laughs. It's a short sawing noise, ugly for its lack of reflection. His grin sticks - wolf sharp.
"That's funny." The toe of his boot finds Edgard's side. "Get up. We're going back to the fire."
Edgard thinks about running. He considers fighting. But, as the boot pierces his side, he can't make himself care. He lifts himself to his feet, a long painful process. He hurts all over and his insides sink.
He motions with his head as if to say 'lead the way' and then says without much emotion, "Anyone ever told you you're a real piece of shit?"
"Please, Monsieur," he says, taking a step back rather than forward as the other man rises to his feet to keep well out of arm's reach though he reaches out with his toe again - prodding the Empress' disloyal bowman in the back of the calf and nodding to indicate the direction they are to travel in.
Edgard trips a little at the second prodding and slows his pace down even more. He doesn’t know if it’s his state of mind or the knowledge he is royally fucked that makes him ask it.
“Would you kill one of those friends if your superior asked it of you?”
"I cannot say. My friends have thus far not been stupid enough to require my superior to make such a request."
Were he not herding the man down from the picket line through the must toward the dullest embers of a distant fire, it might be easy to misconstrue it as good humor. There is a certain lightness to his tone and temper; and why shouldn't he be? They will be returning to the fort with an enemy soldier in their custody. He may receive a bonus for this - extra rations, some extra share of liquor, his pick of new shoes. What a turn of good fortune this is.
This is what does it. Edgard can take the condescension, the insults, even the outright lying, because in the end he feels he, Edgard, probably deserves it. But not Alexandre. He did not deserve what happened to him, he thought never of himself, and it killed him. It killed them both. But, he was not ever stupid.
All the weight, guilt, misery, and self-loathing supernovas out as rage through his body. He launches himself at Marcoulf, kicking, punching, hell, maybe even biting. He doesn't see, he doesn't think, he is just rage.
Later, he will consider that when in the middle of a contested bit of territory and confronted with a stranger in the dark intending to steal one of his horses, a more reasonable man would have simply produced his belt knife and done away with the thief. It would have been easy to do then. If he'd successfully wrenched the bowman from the saddle, he might have just as simply put a dagger in his guts and have been done with it.
(A man bleeding from the belly would have been just as easy to press with the kind of questions his superiors would prefer he ask, and half as likely to hit back for it.)
Later, one of his companions - a broad man named Berger who had been a shepherd before being pressed - will laugh at him for being punched in the eye for his troubles. "What is this sentimentality, Monsieur de Ricart?"
"Next time we have a deserter in our camp, I'll simply point him to your horse," Marcoulf will answer from behind the flat stone, cold from the night, he has pressed to his swollen eye socket.
Right now though, he gets a punch in the eye.
--And recoils from it, stumbling backward. He has enough sense (and warning, thanks to that careful arm's length he'd preserved between them) to produce the vicious parrying dagger from his belt and to bring it around in a wide, blind slash as he trips back over his own heels and falls.
When the blade swings around, Edgard leaps back, snarling. The separation from himself and the body his fist are punching at first enrages him further, but then allows his senses to catch up to his actions.
The body becomes the man falling and he hits the ground hard. Edgard sees the opportunity and is determined to take it, but cannot help one last impulse. He whispers out a harsh guttural, "Fuck you. I'm taking the horse." and spits on him which despite distance, reaches its mark on the man's face.
Edgard turns and runs. When he looks back on this time, the face of his ruin will not be the man who ordered him to kill someone close to him or the bloody head of Alexandre, it will be this man. All of his own self-loathing will twist into loathing of this man. He will be the face of all that has happened to him, a representation of Edgard's failures. It is not a face he will forget.
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no subject
"You don't know either, then. What about this arrangement?"
jk doing this now so I don't forget. scoops this back onto my plate.
Fortunately, such things do him little in the way of good and so he has no interest in the endeavor.
"And what arrangement is that, Monsieur?"
no subject
"The arrangement where I answer your questions, which I did, and you let me go."
He does not expect a positive answer to this. Why would this man stop being difficult? Why would something go right for Edgard? Why would the world stop ending time and time again?
no subject
"That's funny." The toe of his boot finds Edgard's side. "Get up. We're going back to the fire."
no subject
He motions with his head as if to say 'lead the way' and then says without much emotion, "Anyone ever told you you're a real piece of shit?"
no subject
"I am very polite when compared with my friends."
no subject
“Would you kill one of those friends if your superior asked it of you?”
no subject
Were he not herding the man down from the picket line through the must toward the dullest embers of a distant fire, it might be easy to misconstrue it as good humor. There is a certain lightness to his tone and temper; and why shouldn't he be? They will be returning to the fort with an enemy soldier in their custody. He may receive a bonus for this - extra rations, some extra share of liquor, his pick of new shoes. What a turn of good fortune this is.
no subject
All the weight, guilt, misery, and self-loathing supernovas out as rage through his body. He launches himself at Marcoulf, kicking, punching, hell, maybe even biting. He doesn't see, he doesn't think, he is just rage.
He would like to kill this man.
no subject
(A man bleeding from the belly would have been just as easy to press with the kind of questions his superiors would prefer he ask, and half as likely to hit back for it.)
Later, one of his companions - a broad man named Berger who had been a shepherd before being pressed - will laugh at him for being punched in the eye for his troubles. "What is this sentimentality, Monsieur de Ricart?"
"Next time we have a deserter in our camp, I'll simply point him to your horse," Marcoulf will answer from behind the flat stone, cold from the night, he has pressed to his swollen eye socket.
Right now though, he gets a punch in the eye.
--And recoils from it, stumbling backward. He has enough sense (and warning, thanks to that careful arm's length he'd preserved between them) to produce the vicious parrying dagger from his belt and to bring it around in a wide, blind slash as he trips back over his own heels and falls.
no subject
The body becomes the man falling and he hits the ground hard. Edgard sees the opportunity and is determined to take it, but cannot help one last impulse. He whispers out a harsh guttural, "Fuck you. I'm taking the horse." and spits on him which despite distance, reaches its mark on the man's face.
Edgard turns and runs. When he looks back on this time, the face of his ruin will not be the man who ordered him to kill someone close to him or the bloody head of Alexandre, it will be this man. All of his own self-loathing will twist into loathing of this man. He will be the face of all that has happened to him, a representation of Edgard's failures. It is not a face he will forget.