3. We're still there
The door creaked gently, then gave what sounded like a little whine as it was jerked open forcibly until it crashed against the wall. There was a soft rustling as a few flakes of plaster fell to the ground.
With a groan, Cédric Enjolras sat up and rubbed his eyes. He felt as if he had slept on a straw-filled mattress – which he had, he realized, since he was down in the hall and not up in his own room. He was sitting on one of the straw-filled old mattresses lining one side of the hall's length, without a pillow, but covered by a thin sheet with holes in it that was a rather sorry excuse for a blanket.
Curse you, Courfeyrac! It's all your fault.
"Well, well, well," came a cheerful voice from the hall's entrance. "What have we here? Still a sleepy-head when outside the sun's been up for ages? Get off your bum, Céd, rise and shine!"
"Bahorel," Enjolras groaned, "go back to bed."
"Back to bed? Are you crazy? Or rather bloody blind? Can't you see the light flooding this whole bloody room?" Bahorel laughed. "Had a rough night, did we, eh?"
Throwing back the old sheet, Enjolras clambered to his feet. "I came back late," he grumbled, "and Courfeyrac kicked me out. Had a girl in our room again and wanted to be alone."
Bahorel snorted with glee. "There's a good boy, old Fatty! Man, will you never get the hang of this?"
"No," Enjolras said simply, shaking his blond mane out of his eyes.
"Fine." Leaning against the doorpost with his shoulder, Bahorel still managed to shrug. "You don't know what you're missing, but have it your way."
It took a lot of self-control for Enjolras not to roll his eyes, and not only at realizing that he had slept in his clothes. Bahorel, you mindless, useless ladies' man!
He was being unfair, he knew, and being unfair was something he detested actually, but on the other hand, it was hard to be fair when woken up like that and finding oneself down in the hall and fully dressed, like Grantaire when he had been too drunk once again to find his way upstairs.
Besides, Bahorel really ran after every skirt – when he was not too occupied with spreading noise and chaos, that was.
"That's better," Bahorel stated as Enjolras came towards him, attempting to get some order into his blond mane. Bahorel's own hair, straight and of a glossy chestnut, was neatly slicked back as usually already, and he had picked one of his fancy vests to go with the surprisingly simple brown linen shirt and tight-fitting breeches. A new vest, Enjolras suspected. Yet another new vest. And it suspiciously looked like silk, fine red silk embroidered with gold and silver.
Oh, you vain cockerel!
"We'll be over at the inn," Bahorel said, throwing up a coin he had produced from the pouch at his belt and catching it again. "If you manage to get your lazy limbs together, feel free to join us."
"Who, we?" Enjolras asked, ignoring the taunt.
"Why, me and my bunch." Bahorel shrugged. "Joly and happy old Master Bossuet. Perhaps Feuilly, if he's finished shaving by now. Well then, o my Leader," here he offered his friend a mock salute, "I'll see you later some time."
"Don't get drunk, mind you!" Enjolras called after his retreating back. At least there had been no mention of Grantaire, which meant one drunkard less staggering back to their abode in broad daylight, and when Grantaire was not with them, they did not drink as much as they might otherwise, but still, he would not put it past them to empty a whole bottle of wine and have a tankard of beer each to go with it.
Yawning and stretching his arms over his hand, Enjolras left the hall and stepped out into the entrance room from where the stairs led upwards. Another door, closed now, hid the large stables, while the main door stood ajar, allowing bright sunlight to flood the floor. For a moment he hesitated, then he chose the way out, making another attempt at taming his hair with his fingers as he went.
The building he had left, what looked like a large old farmhouse, dark framework and a roof where thatch work had only very recently replaced straw, was joined to a large wooden barn, almost as high as the house and about as long, yet standing so that they formed a right angle together. Along with a hedge at the other side and a fence at the front, they formed a little dusty yard that was yet large enough to comfortably contain a well of stone, the water tinkling down merrily into the basin and flowing out through a drain again at its opposite end, down into a lower little basin, which was being used currently, and rather noisily.
"Good morning, Lamarque," Enjolras said, sitting down at the edge of the main basin, rolling up his sleeves and thrusting his arms up to the elbow into the cold water. It chilled him, but it was very refreshing.
The wolfhound lifted its head out of the basin, around the muzzle still dripping, and answered with a short bark and a friendly wag before it returned to the activity of slurping greedily.
Smiling, Enjolras splashed his face with cold water, then raked his fingers through his hair and tugged a few rebellious strands behind his ears. For now, it would have to do. They would surely have a bath in the pond before their midday meal, just as always, and then he could get properly washed.
The stable door opened, and out slunk a large, grey wolf, its tongue hanging out, its yellow eyes passing over Lamarque, then fixing Enjolras. Behind the tip of its tufted tail, another muzzle appeared, belonging to a smaller wolf of a darker fur colour, but with a white face.
Lamarque lifted his shaggy head and pricked up his ears, but made no sound, just watched the animals intently.
"Out with you!" a merry voice came from just behind the door. "Sheesh!" Another wolf appeared, a slender animal with a bronze shading in its grey fur, and behind it followed a young man with blond, lightly curled hair, laughing as he came. "Here we go, boys. Yes, there's a bunch of good doggies. Why, hello, Céd."
"Good morning," Enjolras replied. "Have they curled up in an empty box again?"
"You bet. And the horses are getting used to them, I hardly realized they were there until I looked inside. Now off with you, boys. Here, what are you looking at, furball? No! Come back here! Right now!" For the first wolf had, after some sniffling, decided to enter the house through the main door Enjolras had left open, and its darker companion trotted after it immediately.
Enjolras grinned. "That's what you get when you're famous for feeding any wildlife coming to our doorstep. Remember the stag last week?"
"God, yes." His friend laughed. "I just have a soft spot for anything furry, no matter what size. Right then, you too, boy. Your sausage. Hey there, Lamarque, come with your brothers."
"Half-brothers," Enjolras corrected. While the wolfhound's mother had been a farmer's sheepdog, his father probably belonged to the same pack as those three who had apparently slept in the stable – which was obvious, Enjolras noted, there was a little hay in the bronze-grey wolf's fur. It was a large pack, consisting of fifteen of more wolves, all half-tame and sometimes seen strolling through the village even in broad daylight. The local dogs had gotten used to them more or less, though they eyed them with suspicion, but the local hunters had immediately decided to put them to some use, and now the pack was used to drive the deer towards them, and in return the wolves got their share of the prey. It worked out well enough, and even the sheepherders had no more objections, though some had reinforced their fences or invested in another sheepdog.
And it was only natural, Enjolras reflected. Many ages ago, at the dawn of times, had the wolves not come out of the forests to hunt with mankind? And their descendants had never left them.
Just as it was natural that they would frequently come just here, since this farmhouse was closest to the forest… and since they knew there was someone here who would always give them a slice of ham or a bit of sausage. Jean Prouvaire – or Jehan, as his real name was, and as the others occasionally called him – would never turn away a child or an animal that came to his doorstep.
"Oh, there's just one thing I'd like you to know." The third wolf slipped in through the door, but Prouvaire did not mind it much. Instead he bowed down to scratch the wolfhound's ears. Of course, it was him who had brought Lamarque home, then still a small fuzzy thing with crumpled ears and the tiniest black nose imaginable. Lamarque was twice as large now, if not more, and still growing. "Little Eponine was there again, giving the horses water."
"Her?" Enjolras automatically turned to the stable door, as if expecting to see the girl's skinny shape there. "Is she gone again?"
Prouvaire nodded, frowning. "I brought her a bowl of milk, but she refused anything else. I must say that girl is worrying me. She lives nowhere really, just strays about. And she never tells anyone what she's up to."
She was a poor thing, that girl, and a bit funny in the head perhaps, as Courfeyrac put it, but they could not afford to have anyone spying on them, not in times like these. She needed to stay somewhere, to stop strolling about and remain in one place. Sometimes Enjolras wondered if he should find a way to make her, for her own good. They had tried, Prouvaire especially, but none of their attempts at making her stay had succeeded, no matter what comforts they'd offered her. Her refusals of food, clothes, and similar necessities baffled the young men to the point where they let her come and go as she pleased, accepting her company whenever she chose to grace them with it.
But it needed to change. It simply needed to. Especially in times like these.
Looking up to the sky's unblemished blue, he found it hard to believe what was brewing away in the mountains. But this was the way it was, the way of the world, of every world. Life was an eternal struggle, a never-ending war for justice. "One day," he told Prouvaire, who was just ushering Lamarque inside, "I'll take the girl and lock her in the house, just wait and see. So we can force some decent meals on her and keep her safe. And away from certain… influences."
"Right you are," Prouvaire agreed. "At least you know what you're at, with wolves. I mean, all you have to worry about with wolves is that they might decide to eat your sheep."
Sighing, Enjolras thrust his hands into his pockets. If it were up to him, he would have had the girl locked away long ago, with someone to keep an eye on her. But Orvar had been strictly against it, and it was still Orvar who decided on matters here.
But, curse him, he was too soft! Dolorin had been soft before him, but that an old warrior like Orvar would act like that… Enjolras had expected changes when Orvar had taken Dolorin's place after the latter's still unexplained disappearance, but for now, nothing had. Surely the girl did not plot anything bad, but she might well be a danger to the village as well as to herself. And she was not the only one worrying Enjolras. There was one even more dangerous, and one who was not naively innocent at the same time. No, he was the kind of man who would readily sell all their secrets to the enemy. Dark and grim, evil was practically written on his face, and still Orvar let him do as he pleased, openly scorning everyone and spreading the seed of hatred in the hearts of men…
"Hey! You!"
Raising his head, he saw Gavroche standing at the other side of the fence, grinning and waving, a fishing rod held over his shoulder, the line not quite rolled up. There was a worm still dangling at the hook. A little behind him stood a man Enjolras did not recognize. "No need to shout like that," he said. "What are you up to?"
"Taking my new friend for a walk," Gavroche beamed, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. "He thinks he's come to Paradise, which I can't quite show him, but I told him I can at least show him around in Rosendale. I bet that's better than Paradise, anyway."
Enjolras shrugged. Paradise? He did not believe in Paradise, just as he did not believe in God. Those were nothing but myths to keep the people content… and enslaved. What this place truly was he did not know, though he had wondered about it often enough, but he had come to the decision that it was a world like the one he had known before, wherever it was, a world that worked the same way as the old one. And he would continue here what he had begun in a different place. Once war broke out, he would be there to fight. It was his destiny to be a soldier in the legion of light, and never, neither in his former life nor in this, had he questioned it. It was who he was, and who he always would be.
Turning his gaze from the grinning boy, he subjected the stranger to a closer scrutiny. A new arrival, then, easy enough to tell from the shirt and trousers he wore, fashionable in the place where he had once dwelled himself, but not what was worn here. From time to time they turned up, men and women and sometimes children, confused and at a loss where they were, but they found their places here soon enough, and they stopped asking questions after some time. Sometimes they aged with the time, sometimes they did not, and sometimes they even grew younger, but normally they did not even question that. It was the way of this place, a man was as old as he felt, or at least this was the conclusion Enjolras himself had come to. Some of his friends, Combeferre and Prouvaire mainly, had given it all some thought, but he had decided that there were more important things, and had devoted his time to learning to handle bow and arrows and wield a sword instead. When the great battle came, he would be ready.
But this one… this one was somewhat odd. His age was hard to determine. While his hair and short beard were white as an old man's, his features appeared more or less youthful, and he walked upright and with an energetic bearing. He was not overly tall, just about average in height, yet of a squat, muscular stature.
Well, maybe this was a very light blond, yet to be honest, Enjolras did not quite believe that such a light shade of blond existed, not even when bleached long under the sun.
And he seemed somewhat familiar. Enjolras was sure he had seen him before. But then again, would he not remember if he had ever encountered a man with such unusual white-blond hair?
The man's eyes met his briefly as the stranger mustered him. As he caught Enjolras's look, he gave him a brief yet nonetheless polite nod in greeting. If he recognized him from somewhere, he did not show it.
Nodding in return, Enjolras wondered if he should simply ask. But then again, there was no reason to give his ignorance away in times like these. He would take the boy aside later on and once again remind him that he should not consider everybody a friend. That boy was far too trusting.
"I met Lèsgles, Feuilly and Bahorel on my way," Gavroche said. "Heading for the inn. Oh, and Joly, who was once again going on about some funny rash on his arm or something."
"Don't mind him," Enjolras answered automatically. Despite a merry disposition, Joly always thought there was something wrong with him.
"I don't," Gavroche stated. "It's good I see you, because there's been trouble with the Lowforders again, they say."
"Treacherous folks." How could they give others trouble in times like these? Did they not know the meaning of solidarity, of loyalty? Or were they on the other side, perhaps?
"But surely they're taken care of, so don't let it worry you," the boy continued lightly. "Well then, good day to you, I'm taking my new friend here to the inn." Then he took the man by the sleeve. "Come on, off we go. You wouldn't mind a drink, or would you?"
Enjolras watched them go thoughtfully, his mind filled with dark thoughts about traitors, Lowford and what lay in the mountains.
On the horizon, dark clouds appeared.