Fight Scenes, part III

The word of the day is: enfilade. It refers to a military action. It means to direct a volley of gunfire along a line. Apparently, it also means a series of rooms in which the doors all line up.

It also means that my vocabulary is far smaller, and dirtier, than I ever imagined.

Heard it this morning while listening to Professor Garrett Fagan's series of lectures, called Great Battles of the Ancient World recorded by the Teaching Company. Because Fagan hails from Dublin and has the elegant Irish accent to prove it, I first heard this word as en "fellate," which would indeed be a very odd battle tactic. He used it to refer to the siege defense tactic of firing weapons down from the windows of a tower. So you're firing down the line of the building and hitting people who are trying to breach or climb the walls. (I think). Found all that out later. In the moment of listening to the lecture, I was so confused (aroused?) by this word or what I thought it was, that I had to jump down off the treadmill, run home and look it up. Ancient warfare is a crazy business. Anything is possible. Oh, not fellate. Enfilade. Well, that's totally different. All better.

Fagan is an Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State and he is just the sort of charismatic smarty-pants that characterizes the Teaching Company lectures and makes them so addictive. He's really good at dialing into the details of the weaponry and the jingoistic battle accounts written for the kings by sycophants. And then he dials right back out to detail the vitriolic battles between camps of scholars who espouse this or that theory about the past. These are sometimes more fun to hear about than the skirmishes they study.

I got this course out of the library because I sat through the movie 300 and had no idea what actually took place in it, aside from the killing of men and the stacking of bodies and the fact that a certain Scottish actor can yell the word Sparta! with his mouth just abnormally wide. Perhaps foolishly, I thought that a little historical context might explain things. With the movie now long forgotten, I've become enthralled by the whole subject of ancient warfare. I can pound out endless miles with Fagan's lilting syllables in my ears.

He has another course on Roman emperors, one that promises to be a rip-roarin' good time. New words galore.

Fight Scenes, part II

Found one. Well, sort of. Dorothy Dunnett to the rescue. Her novel, The Game of Kings features Francis Crawford of Lymond, who is referred to only as Lymond, is a sort of rascally nobleman who gets into all sorts of trouble in Scotland, circa 1547-ish. I've had this on the shelf for years, a gift from someone. Can't remember who. Maybe it's time to read it.

Anyway, on page 424:

"Admitted through the gate, he guided his horse toward Acheson, smiling, and drawing abreast, bent down to address him. 

"Only one of the four men standing around them saw the twelve inches of steel in Lymond's hand, and he shouted too late. Acheson took the stab full in the chest, propelled backward with the force of the blow; then the blank amazement in his face gave place to vindictive fury. He straightened. The dagger, falling from the rent cloth over his breast, betrayed the sparkle of chain mail beneath. Acheson was unhurt, and five men leaped on Lymond. 

"There was one weapon left to him. Driving his feet hard into the mare's flanks, Lymond dragged her soft mouth back and guided her plunging hoofs. Acheson, isolated under the iron soffit of the rearing horse, screamed once, the blood leaping from a great cut on the temple, before he was kicked to the ground. 

"There was just time for Lymond to see as much before he, too, was overpowered."

Funny thing is that I don't really know who this Acheson guy is, and I'm not sure I care. If two people are fighting over a clause in a prenup, or some hurt feelings from long ago, then the writer has lots of explaining to do. When someone stabs someone else, or tries to, the reasons are nearly irrelevant.

Also, the writing here controls the pace. I would have been tempted to use short sentences all along to speed things up. Dunnett does not. There is only one short sentence. He straightened. And it occurs right where it needs to be. For the rest, she favors lots of clauses and a semi-colon, Lord help us, and yet it mostly works. She uses a long stream of micro images to draw us along. Twelve inch blade (oh, my), a late shout, a stab in the chest, flailing, changing look on face, blade falls, glittering chain mail, horse flank, horse mouth, horse hooves, rearing horse, head wound. Semi long shot as the bad guys converge. And we're out. Keep the eye moving around and things seem to speed along, no matter how long the sentences, and no matter how you feel about a face showing vindictive fury. 

Wicked Kishers

Garret, who is six, loves sword fights. This obsession started last summer, when he would stop all play and challenge me to a light saber fight. For this, you need to make two fists, stack them one on top of the other as though gripping a baseball bat, then undulate your arms and elbows as though swinging an invisible sword of light. It helps if there are convincing sound effects such as the low hum of the light, and the kish, kish sound whenever these invisible swords might connect.

(A few years ago, I did a radio story on birding, the team called itself the Wicked Pishers. Pishing is making the exact sound of the word, making a "pish" sound to flush birds out, really "PSHH, PSHH." Try it sometime out in the back yard. Stand next to a bird feeder, if possible. Birds loathe this sound and immediately start chattering to each other, warning each other of danger.) 

So, I guess this could be called kishing, and Garret and I are the Wicked Kishers as we dash around the living room pretending to fight. Sometimes we miss and our knuckles collide, which hurts like hell. The object is to "get" the other person who then falls down with closed eyes. Garret takes these deaths scenes very seriously. He jerks as if absorbing a blow, drops the imaginary sword and just keels over. It's really classy stuff, daytime Emmy quality. When I go down, I look like an old lady finding a seat on the bus. Slow motion squat with one hand exploring the terrain behind me, and all the while whispering, "OK. OK. Here we go." The next step is that the victor gets to revive the loser using tickle power. That means sneaking up on this loser who is lying quietly, lifting the shirt and tickling the bare skin. Garret also uses cold hand power, and believe me, his little mitts are like ice. The G-man has further lobbied to be allowed to use fart power to revive the mommy person, but here I draw the line.

The only trouble is that he wants to do this all the time, morning, noon and night. I've resorted to rationing these fights. Once, I told him I couldn't fight him until I'd folded this huge mound of laundry. He pulled his shirts out of the pile, folded them and put them away. I nearly cried. Also, Garret is not a big fan of taking turns. (Well, who is?) Once, we were kishing away and he wouldn't go down. I mean I really got him a couple of times. But he just wouldn't fall down. He kept laughing at me. Finally, I got annoyed and said this: "I've killed you twice! Why won't you die?" Garret found this hilarious, but was good enough to stifle his laughter behind pursed lips. This is when Larry poked his head around the corner and said, "You're the one writing a parenting book, right?"

THE EXERCISE: Write a fight scene, one that is physical as well as verbal. The difficulty would appear to lie in presenting action, and speed of action, without getting bogged down in physical detail. I've been scouring my bookshelves for a good example and can't find it. I've got The Count of Monte Cristo, but it's on audiobook (35 discs! Still, if you have to have a companion on the treadmill, a voice in your ear, it might as well be Dumas.) I skimmed Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini. Nothing doing. Will keep searching, and drafting possibilities.