Grantaire retained breath alone for a croaked gasp, and all at once slumped into Honoré's arms. The bullet had gone through some as-yet unidentified portion of his upper body, as evidenced by the location of the blood.
"HOLD!" cried Honoré, and his voice did not require a bullhorn to be heard by everyone on both sides of the barricade. "Whichever of you idiots fired, I will deal with you apace!"
By the time he'd got his burden properly settled, propped against his knee, two insurgents had scaled the barricade to assist him. One was the devastatingly androgynous blond youth, with a look on his face that spelled death in richly illuminated letters. The other was a boy with light brown hair and glasses, lower than his companion and a little broader, a concerned expression in a face that hoped for life, albeit in script more subtle. But he had with him a doctor's bag, which made him infinitely more useful both in spirit and in reality than the murderous, if pretty blond. There was no doubt in Honoré's mind that they and the rest of the barricade would kill for their leader. The Ogre was either deceived in this, or else more demoniacally clever than he had even appeared. Honoré conferred the leader's weight to this young man at once. As he did so, he heard the voice of his Sergeant, Chauvert, who had apparently discovered the culprit and was haranguing him mercilessly.
"What were you thinking? You could have hit the General!"
Honoré realised that he had not even considered this possibility. He had been too busy calculating his doom in so many other, more complex ways. He deeply appreciated Chauvert's head start on the idiot soldier; it would serve for a good warm up before Honoré got to him. The General turned his attention back to the brown haired insurgent and his paling patient.
"The wound is in his side, and should not be fatal," he was telling the blond, wiping blood from his hands, "but it is embedded. He'll need real attention soon enough."
The blond cursed eloquently, and there was fire in his eyes when he looked again at the great, looming General. "If he dies," The boy hissed, a sword at his side that had not seemed to be there a moment before, "your friends will have killed you."
"Peace, Enjolras." The other boy looked up at Honoré too, with an expression that, for all it's mildness, was very disconcerting.
"What will you do now, General?"
The boy's words echoed the exact shape of General Reille's thoughts, although the gentle, painstakingly polite tone in which they had been openly uttered rankled his fur. He said nothing in reply, but instead made his way gingerly down the front of the barricade and strode-- in very few steps, considering his exceptionally long legs-- towards the one who had fired the unlucky shot.
"Buffoon!" He snarled, albeit in a voice more weathered to exasperation than fury, "Cretin, Idiot! What on earth were you thinking? Didn't I tell you not to shoot!?"
The culprit, a dirty blond and pock-marked corporal of near-middle age with his hair shagging in his eyes, winced at this new onslaught.
"I thought you were in trouble, General, when you were saying that you felt compelled and all... I thought you were trying to warn us. In code. That they'd got you hostage."
Honoré was dumbfounded into temporary silence, but found his voice after a moment. "You, mon enfant, are guilty of the crime of being entirely too clever for your own good. Pray that Monsieur Grandeur is not dead, or you will be held accountable for his murder." Honoré shook with anger, but also fear, a little. He believed the words of the boy Enjolras entirely, and he could feel the rising swell of blood-madness around him. That was the problem with the Republicans, he decided sourly: too many convincing speakers.
As one, the unit realised that Honoré's allegiance had shifted more or less utterly from the one pole to the other, and another cheer arose. Fortunately-- and not accidentally-- this coincided with a bandaged Grandeur, raising his dark and homely head above the peak of the barricade. He smiled-- half wince, but full of life-- and the roar of the army and the insurgents both obscured the long roll for a blessed time.
It was during this partial reprieve that Honoré realised how completely he was undone. His corporal-- private, if he lived, Honoré swore-- and his over-paranoid action had left him with no option suitable to status as a Gentleman, soldier and human being than to take up in the event that Grandeur could not (provided that hot-headed blond didn't promptly execute him) and to go along at his side in any case. To do other wise would be to face as a liar, or at least, a plain coward. In this particular theatre, a coward was not a healthy or safe thing to be. Thus defeated by his own sense of honor-- and survival-- General Reille turned to face the barricade and raised his saber in salute. Grandeur saluted back, and Honoré confronted his men.
"Do not look to me, mes enfants. We have heard talk of glory, let us now prove that we believe in it. We have heard speeches on freedom, now show that we love it. There is your General now. Let us follow him. And for God's sake, be careful of your weapons!"
That was for the unfortunate corporal, who had been seized by his comrades and stripped of armament.
Thusly another cry of sharper hue rose forth-- everyone's throat must by now be achingly sore!-- this time from the whole of the Chanvrerie as the two sides moved, met, and commingled as a many-bodied beast with a single head: the proud, if wounded Grandeur.
"We march." He said most simply, and as they began to stream out briskly to infect the greater body of Paris, the long roll fell finally silent.