General Porthos du Vallon

There’s a sound like an angry cat and to everyone’s surprise a small child comes leaping out, sure-footed, going for Porthos and the bundle slung over his shoulder. Porthos tosses the bundle across the distance to his captain, everyone ranged wearily a good distance away, tired and not interested in whatever has their general on this scavenger hunt through what is, by now, a familiar sort of dead village. Or town, it’s hard to even tell. Captain Errard catches the bundle reflexively, he has a second to realise he is now in the path of the tiny ball of rage, and then Porthos is shooting into the house and blowing them all up.

Or that’s what it feels like. There’s a great whumph and heat and wind, the explosion too close to be loud.

“Bigger’n I thought,” is the first thing Errard hears when he can hear again.

The men pick themselves back up and glare at Porthos, who is lying on his back about a metre away from where he’d taken his shot, ignoring the small blaze of house. There’s nothing close enough wooden enough to cause it to spread.

The child, torn between coming at Errard for the bundle of things (it rattles like it’s bones in there), and going for the house that is on fire, or going for Porthos, stands undecided on the rubble of the village, as it starts to rain, fizzing into the ruins, capping off a shit day at the end of worse week.

“Er, general. Sir.”

Porthos doesn’t look up from the report he’s signing off.

“She’s back.”

Porthos just grunts. He is aware that she is back, she is curled up in a corner out of his sight but she’s asleep and she’s snoring. Hard to miss a six year old who snores like a dying goat. Porthos has had to learn to sleep through this atrocious sound; he is very much aware that she is back. She’s been following them as they pick their way along this stretch of what was recently the front but is now, ostensibly, France. It’s not France, it’s not anything, in three months it’ll belong to Spain again. They’ve been pushing back and forth over these same ten or so miles for years and years now. France, Spain, sometimes Porthos forgets who is who, doesn’t really care.

His tiny charge, when she speaks, speaks Spanish. No one knows that, the men think her a mute, or think she’s too damaged by being somehow alive and alone on the front to say anything.

“What am I doing for you, captain?” Porthos asks, cutting across the man rambling on and on about the really very tiny child who is irrelevant at the moment.

“...and he- what? Oh, sorry general. Brujon’s back,” Captain Faure says, seeing as he’s not going to be able to oust the goat-snorer, he delivers his message and gets on.

Brujon means intelligence, so Porthos heaves himself out of his chair and stretches, cracking and popping and creaking like some sort of house himself. He walks out of his tent after his captain, aware of the letting up of goat noises, and his faint shadow padding invisibly somewhere out of sight.

They find the Spanish. It’s not really what they’d been searching for but by the time they get around to finding the Spanish holed up in some sort of maybe-useful position, Porthos has forgotten what they were looking for, traipsing up and down the dead space they’re all fighting over. The men will follow their general, they’re tired and bored and dirty and they’d probably head for a fight even if he didn’t lead them toward it. They circle around it for a bit, tiptoeing, spreading out and pretending not to be there, until they know how, when, where, and who.

“Right, let’s go send ‘em off to hell, eh?” Porthos says, his version of a rousing speech.

“Sir.”

The men are stirring fitfully and uncomfortably, and no one seems ready to ride into battle with him. Porthos looks about him.

“She’s riding Mercredi, general,” Brujon points out.

“How’d you think she got up there?” Porthos asks, bemused. He put her there himself, safest place for her.

“You cannot take a child into battle,” someone shouts.

Porthos considers that. Probably true. He’s not supposed to take himself into battle either, judging by his generals, when he was first out here years and years ago with Athos and d’Artagnan their generals had stayed back in their tents. Porthos shrugs and swings up onto Mercredi. She’s Mercredi the third, full name. The first put out to pasture, the second dead in a skirmish. Porthos shifts his seat to adjust to the slight weight of his extra charge, then adjust his weight again to offer his men a fight with him if they’re not ready to fight the Spanish.

“She’s just a child,” Brujon murmurs.

“What’s your suggestion, Bruj? Leave her here with the medics? I’ve only got four medics, they’ll be waist deep in viscera before we’re done,” Porthos says. Brujon winces, but none of the men can hear, Porthos can pitch his voice right for this. “Where’m I gonna take her that’s safe?”

Brujon hasn’t got an answer. The real reason is she’s going to follow them anyway. It’s not affection that has her dogging Porthos’s heels, he knows enough of Aramis’s language to know what she’s after; revenge.

It’s the sort of battle Porthos never dreamt of, in the old days. Viscous, long, more dead either side than is worth anything. He can’t tell his men from the Spanish when they’re underfoot. No hope of backup, out here - they’re miles from any lines, he wrote letters and sent off reports but really, he can't tell if anyone even knows where they are. He’s sure he hasn’t a clue. He tears through the outpost, men straggling around him, closing a messy net. His regiment is small, they never give him very much, not being noble or in Paris much or very good at the politics.

No, he is good at the politics, he just doesn’t bother. He fights for France, that should be good enough. He wheels when he gets through the town the Spanish have ‘captured’ (who from? Who for?), his charge dropping lightly off the horse. Mercredi rears, night falling sudden with rain heavy around them, lightning and thunder and a storm coming up. Porthos charges back the other way, caught halfway in the main street, Mercredi falling under him, collapsing on top of him, hot and breathing hard and then whinnying and kicking at the muskets and canons and crushing him as she rolls and gets her legs and bolts. Porthos wonders if he’ll be shot, but he’s not.

So, he gets to his feet, lucky his legs are not broken, the mud deep enough he sunk in under Mercredi’s weight. His sword and pistol are in his hand and he charges on. He’s both the centre of the plan and superfluous, it grinds around him like clockwork; he’s their beacon, fighting face first with a few men, the rest slipping and weaving in and out, shadows darting here and there. Porthos spins, trips, falls flat on his face. He sees her, then, inching along a wall. She’s got a knife in her hand. He sees her in the flash of lightning and sees her arms shaking.

He runs, twists, ducks out of his own plan, sinks into the shadows, and follows her. The man she’s hunting is big, shut up in a house upstairs, uninterested in the battle, full of good food and good wine. She’s standing over him when Porthos comes in and he’s laughing at her, uncaring of her knife or her fury or her tears.

“Your choice,” Porthos says, and then again in Spanish. “Me or you.”

He hadn’t offered it before, hadn’t offered her anything much. They’ve barely spoken. He isn’t sure she even knows he can speak Spanish. She drops the knife, so Porthos guts the man and spills him all over the floor, catching the child up and against his shoulder to save her seeing it, sweeping her up and away and into the battle.

They win. Of course they win, Porthos wouldn’t have bothered with this useless little town if they weren’t even going to win it. He ties up their prisoners. The last lot they captured they sent off to Paris, loosing a chunk of the regiment on escort. Porthos considers shooting these. Just lining them up and shooting them and leaving their corpses for carrion. Instead he ties them up and gives them water and sets his regiment on a rout through the town, gathering supplies, taking any food and drink they find. He sends his quartermasters, strategically placed to count everything out as it’s discovered, and in as it’s gathered.

“How many we lose?” Porthos asks Errard, who’s stood looking exhausted, bedraggled, muddy, bloody.

“Four,” Errard says.

That is too few. Porthos tells him to go and count again, and next time the answer is twelve, which is acceptable. Too many for his disintegrating regiment, not so many that they’re dead if they don’t run screaming for the hills. If the war hasn’t flattened those too, in which case he supposes it’d be more of this mud and shit they’d have to run screaming for.

“Not really worth it, is it? Screaming for this shite. And who has the energy to run?”

His charge doesn’t answer, tucked into his jacket, his armour discarded so she fits. She’s a tiny thing, half starved, all starved really. She sounds like a goat when she laughs as well. She laughs because he laughs, and he laughs because. Because he was about to cry, and this seemed a better bet.

Taking a position sounds glorious but really they just get stuck. The Spanish didn’t care about the town, they’d been hiding here for something to do, all but deserters. There’s fighting, but the last month or so mostly it’s been like this, most of what they find is each other in shitholes, hiding, like stinking animals waiting to die. Spanish hunt French, and French hunt Spanish. The Glories of War.

Eventually orders catch up with them, one of Porthos’s weary messengers traipsing back into camp after months finding a post to pass a message on to, waiting for a reply, news, anything, and then chasing the regiment down through the scar of country. Which country, who knows.

“These are months old,” Porthos says, in disgust, tossing them aside. He’s miles and miles out of position for that, and anyway even months ago he’d have been no good.

Instead, they carry on their weary pick through what is being called France’s victory, rousting out Spanish who are bedded down in the dirt. There isn’t really anyone, and weeks turn to months, and Porthos’s little shadow haunts after them, in boots far too big. Porthos finds her a mule, left by farmers and not yet caught for someone’s dinner, wandering like them. She rides at the side of Mercredi, who came back after her bolt but limps now, lame and fed up. Porthos walks most of the time, there’s no need for a rush afterall, and he has a soft spot for his horse.

“You care more about the beast than your men,” Brujon accuses once, hungry and hating the world and hating Porthos most of all.

He has no youth left, after years of this, and Porthos is the man who wasted it all, sending Brujon here and there, dragging him onward. They’ll reach the fighting soon enough, they’re almost through, and then… glory.

“Orders! General, General du Vallon! Orders!”

Porthos looks up. He’s sat on a tumbled wall (he’s got the good bit, further down it’s blown up), his little shadow sat behind him out of sight, back to the wall he’s sat on. They’re cleaning weapons, eating carrots they found growing under a collapsed house. The messenger clatters through on a clean horse, gleaming and bright, the sun sparks off them. they’re travel worn, they’re not a soldier, they don’t look like Porthos’s regiment - they've ridden from Paris. Porthos doesn’t rise, doesn’t do anything except gesture for the man to get down off his daft horse and give over whatever letter is important enough for him to have hunted Porthos down.

It’s from Aramis, and it’s recalling him and his men to Paris, and the reason is nonsensical. Porthos calculates how close they are to the fighting, figures it’s close enough, and sends the messenger back.

His men head on to the front, and come thundering to someone’s rescue, turn a tide of a fight or two, mop up the remains of a battle lost, leave their supplies at a camp back from the front, and collapse from exhaustion.

Porthos lets them rest for the two weeks it takes for his messengers to catch them up.

It takes them six months to reach Paris. Four months in the fighting, six months travelling and picking up their regiment where they left people behind for intelligence, as messenger posts, for injuries. It’s nearly a year before Porthos fulfils his orders and rides under the city gate. His charge is at his side on her mule, singing along with the men who are overjoyed to be home, French tripping off her tongue now. At eight she’s sturdy, short, looks more like a boy - most of the regiment still take her for a boy. Porthos doesn’t know her name, or doesn’t know what it was before. The men call her all sorts, anything, affectionate and silly. Porthos reins in at the gate and lets his regiment be accosted and searched, ignoring the poking and prodding with a sword, the rude words thrown at him, the questions. He doesn’t answer to these guards.

He waits them out, then and only then he calmly removes his pauldron and uses the last of his water to clean off the dust and mud. It’s from travel, he’s kept his uniform in good nick even if it isn’t clean.

“You are speaking to General Porthos du Vallon, do you not think you should show a little respect?” Porthos’s little ghost says, accent cutting and high class, imitated from who knew where. She sounds like Athos, and Porthos wants to laugh happily. Actually, that might be a little unsettling; he goes ahead and has a few chuckles and the guards look suitably frightened.

He gets a lot of apologies and someone rides off in a clatter of dust, probably to announce them ahead to save other guards such dubious honour. Porthos takes back his pauldron and leads his men into the city they left five years ago, last time. They ride slowly, he wants to go home but he’s not actually a musketeer anymore, so he heads for the army garrison, sits in silence while the quartermaster, a captain, and a general of some lower grade bicker about where to put them all up. Once that’s over Porthos roars instructions and his men issue past him into the courtyard.

He sees them settled before heading for the Louvre.

“What’s your name, then? What name do you want, here?” Porthos asks, while they sit and wait for someone to make time to see them. The Louvre is very clean and they are very dirty.

“Porthos,” she says, laughing. She still sounds like a goat when she laughs.

“That’s mine. You need one of your own,” Porthos says.

“Make it up for me.”

Porthos considers this for a long time. She waits. She’s given him many names to call her as they go, choosing for each place. Like she’s searching for home, or for herself, or for something to tie her together.

“Samara,” he says.

A servant comes out and ushers and hurries them deeper into the palace. Samara accepts her name easily enough, taking Porthos’s arm and holding her head high. She reminds Porthos of his friend, dirty and tired but warm and full of fire and never giving up, his to protect if only briefly. Maybe for longer, if she’ll keep following him.

Some servant tries to take them to a bath, Porthos stands and waits while the servant tries to explain that in fact turning up to greet whoever it is they’re here to greet, while caked in muck and dust and wearing clothes so worn and torn that they look like scraps, is not ideal. Porthos doesn’t care. His uniform is well kept and his hair is clean and his fingernails are neatly cut. Samara’s wearing a dress and all. They wait.

Aramis comes to them, in the end, inexorably. Drawn through the Louvre by impatience and curiosity. He has to have heard they are here, the regiment back in Paris is news and that spreads fast. Faster than they’ve been inching their way into the palace, at the very least, stopped and started and turned into rooms with gleaming walls and clothing waiting for them to change. They do not change.

“There you are,” Aramis says, weak and breathless, standing in a doorway over a whole bustle or servants who are bringing water for Porthos to wash his face and trim his beard, all that he’s conceded to.

Porthos stares at him. He’s older, heavier, grey in his hair, neat dressed in court clothes. He looks nothing like the men Porthos has spent the last five years among. No, he still looks like a soldier. His bearing, the way he wears his muscle and fat, the way his hand rests at his sword. His eyes. The familiar quirk of a smile, a real one, not quite showing through sorrow. Or astoundment.

“Samara,” Porthos introduces her, giving her a shove. She tries to bite him in retaliation but doesn’t swear, which is a good start. “Aramis,” Porthos says, indicating Aramis.

Samara gives Aramis an inquisitive look, head tipped, eyes full of curiosity to meet the man she’s heard Porthos grumbling and complaining about these long years. The man who dragged them here. Porthos’s heart is missing a beat and he steps away from Samara, away from Aramis.

“Porthos,” Aramis says. His voice is firm and light, covering up whatever wrench is in him.

Porthos wants to run.

“Screaming for the shit,” Samara says, catching his restlessness, used to him after spending so much time hiding in his shadow.

“Screaming for the shit,” Porthos agrees. “Right out that window.”

“Third floor, courtyard, maybe,” Samara says. Height, landing, possibility of survival.

“Mercredi,” Porthos points out.

“Still the third?” Aramis asks, having no trouble following their short hand, though he should have trouble.

“Fourth,” Porthos says, still sad about that loss. Only time he saw Samara cry was over Mercredi the third.

“What now?” Samara asks, when Porthos remains quiet and doesn’t bolt.

“Now we eat,” Aramis says. “Though, I will have you know that I prepared for your return eight months ago.”

Porthos doesn’t bother to answer for that.

Aramis waits until Samara is asleep, stretched out on a sofa, snoring her little goat snores. Porthos is sat on the floor under a window keeping watch, he hasn’t had much to say to Aramis yet, but he ate plenty and so did Samara, none of it rich enough to make them sick.

“Who is she?” Aramis asks.

“Dunno. Started tailing me, going after revenge for what happened to her father. Got loose from her mother when they ran,” Porthos says, a little of what he’s discovered. Her mother is probably here in Paris, most refugees end up here, or that is the hope. Her hope, not Porthos’s. Porthos would like to take Samara with him to Elodie, to his own Marie-Cesette. “Stuck to me.”

“Stomped into your heart in her soldier’s boots?” Aramis asks.

“Where’d I get children’s shoes for her on the front?” Porthos asks, aiming for belligerence but coming out plaintive.

“She is happy and healthy,” Aramis says.

“She’s Spanish,” Porthos says.

Aramis’s breath catches, and Porthos looks up, ready for a fight, but Aramis just looks like Porthos has done some sort of wonderful thing. Is some sort of hero. He lets his head thunk back against the wall and tears inch over his cheeks. He’s so tired.

Samara finds her mother at the musketeers garrison. Porthos is sitting on a bench watching the cadets, biding time with d’Artagnan until he can stand to be inside for longer than an hour, until he feels enough like himself to see Elodie. Marie Cesette he would visit immediately, she’d not mind at all, but Elodie might not recognise him quite, not recognise him as the big, calm, safe musketeer who she put her trust into. d’Artagnan doesn’t care, loves having him there, hasn’t stopped laughing and talking and slinging arms around him and pressing kisses to his cheek and hair and shoulder. Samara had been watching it all with grave amusement until the woman had come in under the arch holding a cadet by the ear, grim and shouting at him in broken French.

“I didn’t steal it, captain!” the cadet shouts, tossed into the courtyard, hurrying to d’Artagnan to get his story in first.

Samara is watching the cadet and d’Artagnan with eager anticipation for the fight, so it’s Porthos who sees her, recognises her.

“Samara,” he says, nudging her with his elbow.

Samara looks up.

It’s definitely her mother. She looks like Samara. She walks like Samara. She speaks French like Samara. She speaks Spanish, fast and desperate and running, like Samara. She catches Samara into a strangling, snatching, struggling hold and drags her to the floor weeping and clutching her. Samara stares at Porthos with big, big eyes.

Porthos manages to get himself home. He walks up to the front door, then slips around to the servant’s side entrance and into the kitchen to sit by the fire. His cook and servants don’t recognise him, but his uniform is clean, and he washed at the Musketeers garrison under Constance’s careful hands, cleaning the injuries he never noticed, d’Artagnan too distraught to help. Samara had watched Constance, sharp eyes taking in everything, Constance slowing and explaining the medicine, the types of bandages, why she wanted to bind Porthos’s arm to his body (no thank you fuck that).

“Father.”

Porthos doesn’t look up, doesn’t dare look at Marie Cesette yet. She’s twelve and has lived three lifetimes without him. Little life times, but life times none the less. She comes and he stands to meet her, to embrace her, to hold her golden head in his hand and cradle her. He wanted so many times to hold Samara like this, too. He weeps into her hair and her arms around him are strong.

“Where’s your mother?” he asks, eventually, not letting her go. She cajoles him until she can tuck into his side instead of being clutched to him, and entices him into the house, through wide hallways into warm rooms.

“She’s out, you didn’t tell us what date you would arrive,” Marie Cesette says. “There’s a girl here to see you, they announced themselves at the front, I said you weren’t here but we'd heard the news that the regiment had returned so I thought I’d just check in the kitchen, in case you snuck in earlier than usual.”

He just sort of appeared. Porthos had been watching the room, this man was sat over by a window with a small-ish child, last Porthos noticed. Now he was stood by their table, hands on his hips, eyes on Porthos’s mug.

“Huh?” Porthos said.

“Oversteeped.”

“How do you know? You don’t even know what he’s drinking,” Dijon snapped.

“Everything is oversteeped here. You have to ask for a pot, and get them to give you the leaves separately. What is it?” the man leant over Porthos’s mug and sniffed. “Jasmine?”

“Yeah,” Porthos said, enjoying himself for the first time. The man flourished. He added flourished to every gesture. Even the way he stood was a flourish. “You some sort of tea expert?”

“I absolutely am!” the man said, eyes going bright with happiness at the idea.

“Do you work here?” Dijon asked, reaching for the tray he brought their things over on, clearly hoping to get rid of this brand new entertainment.

“No, no. Just a concerned citizen. Shall I go get you better tea? Give me the mug, I’ll say you complained and I am saving their honour and reputation.”

Porthos handed over his mug willingly, watching the man stride to the counter. The shop server started laughing at whatever he said, reaching across the counter to smack the man’s shoulder. The mug was accepted back, and moments later Porthos’s tea saviour was sallying back, hips swaying, a tray balanced on one hand. He put down a pot, and a tea infuser, and a small plate, and a new mug.

“The water should be cooler, for Jasmine. They haven’t got a thermometer,” he said, pausing to exchange incredulous looks with Dijon and Porthos as if this was inconceivable. “We’ll just wait a few minutes for it to cool.”

They all watched the pot. Dijon cleared his throat a few times and made some indistinct noises that indicated he might start up on his conversation again, but Porthos was enjoying this interlude too much and ignored that. Soon enough, the teapot lid was being lifted (with a flourish), the infused put in (another flourish, it was fitted to the pot), and the lid returned.

“Three to four minutes,” the man said.

“Just enough time for introductions,” Porthos said, accidentally on purpose cutting across Dijon before he could get words out edgewise. “I’m Porthos.”

“What a good idea. I’m Aramis, lovely to meet you. And your quiet friend?”

The way Aramis said ‘quiet’ was loaded with meaning, and Porthos suddenly thought there was a chance Aramis had noticed him, as well as him noticing Aramis. Maybe he’d come over to save more than Porthos’s tea. Dijon had barely been stopping for breath let alone to allow Porthos to join in the conversation. Porthos grinned.

“I’m Dujon,” Dijon said. Porthos blinked.

“Like the mustard?” Aramis asked. Then he held up his hands. “Apologies, so rude, I didn’t quite hear what you said.”

“Dujon,” Dujon said.

“Du… jon,” Porthos repeated.

“Yes,” Dujon snapped. “Look, are you done with the tea thing? We were in the middle of something, Arthritis.”

“Aramis,” Aramis said.

“Did you call him ‘arthritis’? That’s not even nearly what he said,” Porthos said. “He just didn’t hear your name, he wasn’t being rude.”

“Yes well, whatever. Are we done?” Dujon said.

“Yeah, I think we are,” Porthos said. “Look, it was nice, thanks for the invitation, thanks for the tea and cake.”

“Seriously?” Dujon said.

“Yeah.”

“Right in front of my tea,” Aramis said, but very, very quietly, lifting out the infuser, putting the lid on the pot, and sliding away back to the small-ish child and the homework. The shop worker was sat over there with the child watching, clearly Aramis knew the people here.

Porthos turned back to his date, and set about being polite and charming to try and defuse the fuming man, clearly insulted and quite pissed off. In the end Dujon stormed out with a snappy ‘fine, but I’ll be the one to leave. You can pay’. Porthos was alright with that. He sat back, huffing out a breath, and pulled out his phone. It was full of notifications from Constance, which mostly seemed to be laughing face emojis and ‘think twice before starting fights with kitchen forks at my house next time Vallon’.

“So, how is the tea?”

Porthos looked up. Aramis was back, leaning a hip on the table. Porthos poured out some tea and took a sip. He was doing it for show, but he was genuinely surprised at the difference. Light, slightly sweet, and aromatic, the Jasmine tea was mellow and distinctive. He looked at the mug and then up at Aramis, who’s grin had turned soft and really genuine.

“That was lovely,” Aramis said, quietly. “I haven’t seen someone do that over tea in a while.”

“You do this a lot? Tea corrections?” Porthos asked.

“Better than homework corrections. He’s doing Spanish homework, it’s the worst,” Aramis said, making a face.

“I’m not complaining. Hey, do you mind doing me a favour? Another one I haven’t said thank you for the first one yet, thank you. And for the tea,” Porthos said. Aramis tipped his head on one side to work all of that out and then smiled widely.

“Ah. I thought I was being subtle.”

“You were. Much appreciated. I’m the butt of a joke, my friend was taking her revenge for a, hm, disturbance that I may or may not have caused,” Porthos said. “In the name of which, would you think it was weird if I asked you to sit over there and let me take a photo to show her how great this is going? Fake date.”