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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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.