Helm's Barricade
What happens when a nerd gets tired of reading Hugo's thoughts on argot.
Enjorlas was having a long, long day. On top of attempting to overthrow the government, he had to deal with his, in all truth, astonishingly incompetent revolutionaries. Most of them hadn't ever picked a weapon up before. Some of those who had used them for dark purposes, which made mankind no better. For instance that bastard who'd shot an innocent porter to gain a better firing position on the National Guard. In most cases of course, it was incompetence or distraction. Since Marius had arrived, despite his saving the entire barricade almost upon entry, (Enjorlas still felt threatening to blow it up was a bit much. But it worked, and there was no innocent blood spilled so he wasn't complaining) he now spent most of his time whining about Cossette to anyone who would listen, or sitting off in a world apart. Enjorlas didn't ban his troops –such as they were- from romance, but it usually ticked him off when they spent their watch writing poetry about their girlfriends. On top of all this, Grantaire had found the alcohol. May god have mercy on their souls. Of course, basically any of the revolutionaries finding it would have been inconvenient, with his ban on the wine from the cellar still in effect, but Grantaire…Of all people why did it have to be Grantaire? Because Grantaire had a better sense for locating and consuming alcohol than Bonaparte did for achieving glory. Both sought it, both invariably found it and basked in it. In Napoleon's case it made him a General and an Emperor. In Grantaire's it made him a drunk. And, like Bonaparte, he also relentlessly crushed anyone who stood in his way when this substance displayed itself. As has been said in Hugo's works, Enjorlas had something of the chief and the priest about him, and it took both aspects to manage his men. The chief to keep discipline, teach the men to shoot, keep them ready, and the priest to uphold the ideals of the revolution in such cases as the murderous death of the porter. Despite this, when he looked upon their flag –the bloody coat of an old man who had given his life to replant their original red banner on its perch after it was shot off- he couldn't help be feel proud of these men, sacrificing their lives for the greater good of France and the world. These men would fight to the last. Tyranny could not suppress them, and no fear could make them retreat. These men knew they would fall here, and yet they stayed. They stayed that the people might know that even when abandoned, a soldier of the future republic does not abandon the people. They stayed that there might remain a bastion of the republic in France yet, if only for a few more hours. When fighting for an ideal, there are no losing battles, for even should its soldiers fall, their tale may be told yet as a rallying cry for others. Even if they were wiped to the last man, their legacy may yet live on, and it may inspire a future generation of idealists to fight for their ideals, and eventually, not even Napoleons Old Guard, or the Scots noble Black Watch could stand against armies of ghosts, armies of ideas, the ghosts of those fallen in their service steadying the muskets and rifles of their successors. Sadly, there are times when this applies to a false ideal, but is as noble in its intent as when the ideals are true, but in these cases, when this ghost army triumphs at long last, no matter its intentions if the ideal is false, or unattainable, then this can twist men's very souls. A case similar, although not identical to this phenomenon, is that of Inspector Javert's overzealous allegiance to the law and duty. The ghosts of those who fell stamping out violent crime, putting down rebellions which threatened to take mankind backward, or safeguarding merchants goods against thieves steadied his nightstick in its tireless pursuit of anyone who broke any law or code, whether that code be just or unjust. In some cases, this particular ghost army contributed to the capture and sentencing of truly dangerous criminals. In other cases it made possible the capture of men like Jean Valjean, who had broken the code merely to save their starving relatives, or as a last resort for their tired and empty stomach, and who had the potential for true redemption within them, were instead, by this army's influence, locked away in the galleys where they became cold and bitter, and began to sharpen themselves into daggers to thrust at society's heart. But as in the case of Jean Valjean, a dagger may be changed to knife which cuts bread. This is the dual nature of the ghost force, that it helps ideals in all their forms, be it the functioning mild ones, or those which are pure, extreme, radical and uncompromising. Such were Enjorlas' thoughts as he waited In the darkness for the inevitable national guard attack.
But this barricade is not the only desperate fortress of which we must speak. Millennia earlier, and in a different world there was one. One not a barricade, but a proper fortress. Walls of towering stone without a gap in them save the battlements and the gate, built up against the side of a mountain it seemed to take on the lands qualities; immovability, formidableness, stalwart strength and the great power which the earth gives off in those natural fortress' called mountains. A great road sloped, built up from the ground towards this bastions great gate, which towered all the more for it. Built into the mountain as it was, there was also a complex series of tunnels stretching back from its main hall through the mountain all the way to dun harrow beyond. This fortress was the ancient last line of defense between the people of Rohan and great evil, and it was occupied now by a small group of women, children, and warriors (resources given, these groups were not exclusive) led by Rohan's noble King Theoden, Son of Theodred, and standing against one of the greatest evils any world has yet seen. A dark presence and a dark power, a being of immense strength and evil, with powers greater than our world has ever known, and bent solely on domination. His only purpose beneath the sun was to conquer, not for the glory, not for the good of the peoples he could then lead, but by a lust for even greater power and dominance. He was fixated on conquering and ruling all, controlling it as he saw fit. And this dark lord had a warped but grand empire which marched from his fingertips and took much land and many peoples under its dark and corrupting grasp. Its soldiers had no purpose but to serve him, and to consume flesh. They were twisted creatures, made in mockery of the Eldar, and were quite strong compared to the average being, but they had their military drawback. They were burned by sunlight, and had to retreat to caves or other shelter upon daybreak. A dark wizard eventually created a faster, smarter, stronger race of this being, known as an orc, which would not flee before light. These were known as the Uruk-Hai, or Uruks. It was this dark army which besieged helm's deep now.
It happened at one time, that Q (for those of you who don't know him, he is an omnipotent, chronologically indifferent nuisance from Star Trek) got very bored, and decided to try out a few scenarios he'd picked up from reading fanfiction. He randomly selected defenders of helms deep, and defenders of the barricade of the Rue de la (wherever the hell it was. I can't remember) and switched them. As the reader has doubtless perceived, Q is an A-hole. And so, Jean Prouvaire, Courfeyrac, Joly and Gavroche van Awesome were transported to the barricade. In return, Théoden, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and several random cavalrymen and elves were sent to the barricade. We shall now tell of the sheer chaos which ensued.
Enjorlas was extremely confused. Several non-french speaking knights had mysteriously appeared in the middle of his barricade and begun berating him in a language he didn't speak. Marius was somehow even more confused, because he, being an English translator, could understand them. They were ranting about some kind of dark lord -Louis Philippe wasn't quite that bad was he?- who had an army of orcas. Nope, definitely not Louis Philippe. How someone could have an army of non-amphibious sea creatures was unbeknownst to Marius. He quickly offered his translation services to Enjorlas, who eagerly accepted, hoping to rise out of his current state of confusion. Once Marius gave him a basic idea of what they were talking about, these hopes fell as Enjorlas merely sank deeper into it. Enjorlas' impression was that they must have been foreigners who escaped from an asylum somewhere, had broken into an antiques shop, stolen several suits of armor, and somehow climbed the smaller barricade in the back. Marius, who had less faith in his translation ability, was not as decided upon the subject. Eventually, he noticed that they were leaving the A off of orca. He attempted to ask them why, which sounded a bit like this "I am a Nigerian prince- Non, ce n'est pas juste (no, that isn't right) Why you A leaving off orca?" Needless to say, Aragorn, who was doing most of the talking, was confused by this abnormal phrasing, and reference to a country he'd never heard of. He replied "Who art thou sir! Does your Nigeria stand with or against the free peoples? And what are these orcas of which you speak?" (Translation: Who the hell are you? Whose side is this Nigeria of yours on? What the hell is an orca?) Marius, after about 30 seconds of translation, got the general idea that they didn't know what orcas were, and were thus clearly referring to something else. He informed Enjorlas of his mistake. Enjorlas facepalmed. This circus of confusion continued for some time until Legolas realized he spoke French because, coincidently, it was identical to the language of an eradicated elven kingdom. Marius only being a written translator, having learned a highly confusing language fairly recently, and having his mind clouded by thoughts of Cosette, was not particularly effective in a negotiation setting. Legolas, however, was quite proficient in French. He decided to, rather than speak for their party himself, simply translate Aragorn's words. He began by explaining that he spoke French to Enjorlas, and then proceeded to translate Aragorn's response to Marius' first attempt at contact. Enjorlas responded by asking who the hell mentioned Nigeria anyway, but before Legolas could translate it, Marius noted his initial mistake. Legolas passed this information along to the group, and sent back an updated version to the effect of "Who art thou? Do you stand for or against the free peoples? Also, what's an orca? Is that some kind of super-orc?" Enjorlas decided to begin with the orca. He responded by telling them that an orca was a type of whale. After seeing their confused faces, he specified what a whale was. Aragorn supposed that the translator had thought that they were speaking about this strange land's mythology and left it at that. After this, Enjorlas informed them that he was (insert whatever first name you always imagined Enjorlas having here. I'd normally stick with just Enjorlas, but introducing himself by only last name would be awkward here) Enjorlas, leader of the Friends of the ABC, a pun which he instantly warned them not to laugh at, and chief of the barricade and its revolutionaries against the oppressive government seeking to create a new French republic, and began to introduce his compatriots. Marius Pontmercy, resident Buonapartist (Enjorlas' words not mine) and savior of the barricade, Combeferre, treasurer, Feuilly, resident expert on Poland, Bossuet, armorer, Grantaire, who he regretted the inability to introduce in person due to his current state of unconscious drunkenness in the nearby wine shop, Jean Prouvaire, head of public relations, who appeared to be missing. Again. (I know, mangling the timeline, he's already been shot, if he'd already been gone then he'd already be dead, etc. Ignore it. I'm being as faithful as I can be at this point while keeping everyone alive) They called for him, Enjorlas grabbed his megaphone, which Feuilly had been occupying his time whittling -although it had originally been meant to be a model of Poland, Feuilly had little skill at whittling- and asked the national guard if they had him. The National Guard responded by saying that they currently had no prisoners, and who was this Jean Prouvaire fellow anyway? After a roll call, Joly, Prouvaire, Courfeyrac, Gavroche and a few random revolutionaries were reported missing. Grantaire's status was marked as unknown because no one wanted to risk a repeat of the infamous Dracul incident, in which the Friends of the ABC had been letting him sleep it off, gone in a bit later, and found that he'd woken up, thought he was Vlad Dracul III, started shrieking something about the ottoman empire, and viciously attacked them with a nearby spare sword. Bossuet had lost a finger in that incident. And several of them were still haunted by the image of Grantaire attempting to suck Enjorlas' blood. (that's a Dracula reference for those of you who don't know that he was loosely based off an actual historical figure. Irrelevant though, back to the story) For a blind drunk, Grantaire was an excellent swordsman when he was crazy. This still left a question to be answered for the LOTR Brigade: Where were they? The pressing question on the minds of the revolutionaries, however, was something to effect of Who are you and where did you come from? With the missing "soldiers," the asylum theory seemed a bit less plausible, leaving everyone open to create their own ridiculous conspiracy theory. This only lasted a few minutes, because Enjorlas was quite understandably eager to learn the answer to this question. This being so, after roll, he asked Legolas at his first opportunity. His response was roughly as follows "I, Legolas Greenleaf, hail from mirkwood, the realm of my father, King Thranduil. Aragorn hails of the Dunedain to the west, and from the forgotten realm of Arnor. Gimli, our dwarven compatriot, hails from the mountain of (name of hobbit mountain here. I know that's where he's from, I just don't remember the name) the realm of King Dain Ironfoot. And lastly, but by no means least, this is Theoden, King of Rohan, Lord of the Mark. We were preparing our fortifications for the defense of the fortress of Helm's Deep when we found ourselves here. We assume one of your number is a wizard. Bring him forth, so that he may speak why he hast brought us here!" Enjorlas was beginning to believe the asylum theory again. It may not explain his missing friends, but it was definitely the most plausible explanation for these four adventurers and what appeared to be their personal guard. It was driven from his mind again fairly quickly by their high quality mounts, garb, armor, and weapons. They'd have had to have raided an antiques dealer, a theatre, and a pasture to have acquired all that. The next most plausible explanation was that the national guard were playing with their heads. This was quickly dismissed as well. The government wouldn't allocate such funds and troops to such an unimportant ruse. Next up, they were really hardcore RPGers. Enjorlas dismissed this immediately as he didn't even know what it meant, nor why it had popped into his head. Enjorlas had now run out of plausible explanations. Or rather, he had until Q showed up. This entire thought process had taken place in the span of a second or 2, thus justifying Q's dramatic timing to Legolas' demand to see the wizard. He had arrived in a very detailed uniform of the time of the revolution, and instantly cried "VIVE LE REVOLUCION!" extremely loudly, frightening the entire garrison of the barricade out of their wits. As we said, he was doing this for fun. Legolas instinctively fired an arrow at him. He snapped his fingers and it stopped in thin air. "Really Laegel nin (my green elf) I would think that you'd respond to my answering your request with a positive attitude! There are lots of people demanding my presence right now! Jean-Luc has had another little temporal episode and is –as always- blaming it on me, although I admit, he has good reason to, Kathy doesn't seem particularly happy about my leaving my son on voyager –and honestly, who would be?- (For the record, I DO NOT take Q being responsible in that episode as canon. He was just doing it to convince Janeway to let Q Jr. stick around) and a total of 217 races across the galaxy have a bounty of some kind on my head. Quite pointless really. And then I think I'm late for my appointment with that Kirk fellow as well. I never really liked him. But there's the man himself! Enjorlas! Mon Amis! Oh I can't wait to see how you react to the rest of this." Enjorlas, being the strong leader that he is, intersected at this point "Who are you sir! You dare mock the Republic! I demand an explanation!" Q laughed hysterically "Oh you demand do you? Have some patience Mon revolutionarie! You shall have your explanation! But in exchange you will lose all memory of this, because that makes things more interesting. I look forward immensely to seeing how this plays out." And In a flash, Q was gone, and everyone understood that some cosmic force of unspecified nature had switched several revolutionaries and the middle earth natives, and no one had a memory of Q. Enjorlas was the first to speak. "Well…..that was interesting. I suddenly seem to understand what happened." Legolas felt it necessary to chime in here as well "Strange. I have this feeling too. It is as if I have woken from a dream with but a vague memory of it. I do not know how, but I am somehow both aware and unaware of the circumstances of this exchange of soldiers, if you will." (And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you fix a plot hole. Just throw Q in there somewhere) Enjorlas, being rather Spartan about revolutionary matters, and being in battle mode, made no poetic offering of his own, but rather proceeded to begin adjusting the positions of his men to make up for the absence of 3 of his senior staff and the barricades biggest morale booster. He briefly considered asking Marius to fill in for Gavroche by singing joyously at the top of his lungs, just to see how he'd react, but decided that Marius going on a 3 hour rant about Cosette and why he was even here in the first place would simply be a downer and a waste of time, and thus decided to convince Feuilly to sing some Polish folk songs. Once this was accomplished however, and he had a steady, if strange audiological background for his repositioning, the dark haired man whispered something to the tall blonde archer/translator, who quickly called to Enjorlas "Ahoy! You seem to be reforming your ranks to replace your missing comrades. We privy you to let us aid you in your struggle." Despite the serious appearance of these men, Bossuet had to restrain himself from laughing. Enjorlas was quite taken aback, surprise overwhelming him still further, which explained his inability to complete a sentence for several seconds. These men seemed sincere enough, but they were using weapons hundreds of years out of date. True the cavalrymen may still have been of use if they weren't in a barricade, but the others were carrying swords, axes and bows, which would be little use against muskets and rifles. Legolas cut Enjorlas' stammering off by saying "We are of sound mind and body, and we are inclined to fight evil wherever we may find it. We humbly submit our service and beg you to find spots in your ranks for elves, dwarves and men." Enjorlas was, needless to say, even more confused at "Dwarves, elves and men" for he had been so preoccupied with the band's sudden appearance that he had not noted Gimli's height, or the pointed ears of Legolas and several of the other archers. Now that he was looking for it, he saw it. Enjorlas fainted, his last thought being that fainting would be extremely OOC, whatever that was. Well, that was his second to last thought. His last thought was his wondering why all his thoughts were becoming acronyms which made no sense. Feuilly, upon seeing Enjorlas faint, was so shocked that Enjorlas had fainted, that he fainted. Combeferre, upon seeing Feuilly faint, assumed that he had just received word that something terrible had happened in Poland. Then he saw Enjorlas on the ground, assumed he'd been shot, and yelled at the National Guard. It was 5 minutes before he figured out that Enjorlas had fainted, and was so relieved, that he managed to avoid fainting at the fact that Enjorlas had fainted. Feuilly came around after about 30 seconds, because his subconscious insisted that that had had to be a dream, because Enjorlas simply didn't faint. He didn't have a relapse upon being informed that there were mythical creatures walking among them, which was nothing compared to Enjorlas fainting. He did almost have a relapse when they told him that Enjorlas had, indeed, fainted. "Strange," remarked Legolas. "Does this kind of unconsciousness occur often?" Combeferre facepalmed, then responded "No, but you mean to tell me that people don't faint where you come from?" Legolas looked confused "They do, but normally only when in shock, or in great heat. Does it take your people at random times?" Combeferre would have laughed if he hadn't been so exasperated. "So, you didn't expect us to be shocked when you informed us you were mythical creatures?" Legolas' confusion deepened. "Mythical? What do you mean by mythical? Do you mean to tell me you don't have dwarves or elves here? Or men?" Combeferre did burst out laughing at that. When he got himself under control he replied "We ARE men, but no, no dwarves or elves." Legolas nearly fainted. He quickly regained control of himself however, and said "But the second fellow who fainted, he was out of human earshot" Combeferre said, in full seriousness "That's because he saw Enjorlas faint. Enjorlas doesn't faint." Legolas found this a reasonable explanation, and changed the topic "I do wonder what effect your comrades are having upon the battle of Helm's Deep. I sincerely hope no trouble is being brewed." Combeferre decided to either confirm these fears or put them at ease "Do you have any hypochondriacs?" "I don't know what that is." "You'll probably have no trouble from Joly then. Any haters of the arts?" "I would shudder to think so." "Jean'll be fine then. Anyone who hates children singing exuberantly?" "Perhaps Gandalf, but he isn't there." "Gavroche should be fine for awhile then. Lastly, and by far the most important, are there any attractive women within a 5 kilometer radius?" "Only the Lady Eowyn." "Crap. Can she defend herself?" "You've clearly never met Eowyn." "Is that a yes or a no?" "A yes." "Good. Can she take being constantly harassed?" "I do not know. In such matters, all I know of her is that she is in love with Aragorn, but Aragorn has eyes for none but Arwen." "You'd better hope somebody keeps her away from Courfeyrac. Or more accurately Courfeyrac away from her." Courfeyrac was by no means a rapist, but he was extremely irritating and persistent, and his never ending pursuit of any moderately attractive female had a tendency to annoy said female at best, and inadvertently send an entire area into chaos at the worst. Combeferre didn't think it could do much harm in that context though. But knowing Courfeyrac…..