SBMS017
The Captain glared over the nodding heads of sleeping foals at our eldest warlock in the morning sun creeping between the leaves of the canopy above. The woods echoed with the chaos of dozens of carts and hundreds of ponies jockeying for room and space, everypony and everything colliding in the suddenly tight quarters of the encampment's approaches. I frowned, worried about the noise, even out here in the buffer-brush between the base and the nearby farms and farm-lanes. Then I looked down at the half-dozen tiny ponies asleep where they had been dumped off a cart beside one of the tracks back into the mustering-yards.
"Gibblets, why are they sleeping through this racket? This could wake the dead. Where did they come from?" I waved my hoof over a donkey foal, who had started to snore in counterpoint to the epic exchange of obscenities between two carters stuck in a traffic-jam on the track nearby.
"Well, I had to put them under once I realized that they'd followed us all the way here. But I think I was too late – if any of them remember the route we took, then the base's cover is blown. And there's six of them, I don't like our chances." He turned and pointed a clawed finger at the Captain. "And that's why I think we should keep them! The Company hasn't had military apprentices in decades! I've always said that soldiers are better if you start ‘em off young and train the cringe right out of them before it has time to set! And this one!" he pointed at a little female earth-pony curled liked a cat on a winters-hearth. "She smells like magic, strong magic. I haven't trained an earth-pony mage in forever! Do you know how rare they can be?"
I coughed in outrage. "They're rare because we have no racial talent for magic! You know how many hoops we have to jump through to replace horn-magic! Might as well be rune-casters, once you count all the trouble and gadgets."
"Keep out of this Sawbones. And you're still not an earth-pony, you confused alicorn-damned zebra! Earth ponies have as much magic in their hooves as most unicorns carry in those bone wands on their skulls, and this one…" He waved one goblin-paw over the smiling child's forearms. "She's packing some heat under her fetlocks."
"If a half-dozen foals could follow you here, then so could enemy scouts," interrupted the Captain, still fuming. "We may be blown anyways. I need to send out couriers to check the observation posts. Oh, Tartarus, I'm not even sure Tickle Me has them posted, she's still out of pocket. I need to find her second… No! I'm not getting distracted! You can't foalnap half the countryside, you're not keeping them, they go right back out to wherever they followed you from as soon as it's dark! Sawbones, back me up here, foals in the Company have a bad record. You should remember this Gibblets, I know you were there the last time we had someone bring children into Company quarters!"
The traffic-jam had broken in the mustering yards, and the carts were rumbling slowly past us now. I tapped my muzzle, thinking about recent volumes of the Annals, and older ones. "Well, now, that's not exactly true. Some of our best ponies have been military apprentices. Tradition holds that Fatinah herself was an apprentice, and I know that Bitter Ambrosia and Feather Storm were. I'll grant you that there have been… incidents. But those were unstable ponies, and something would have come along one way or the other, it was just… ugly with the foals."
We all grimaced, unwilling to dwell on the details of that ugly moment in Company history. Not all of our wickedness has been easy to gloss over, and some of our warlocks have been blacker-hearted than others. More than one have had to be put down by outraged brethren. Something dark in the heart of some Company ponies… The accusations of Pythia and her loa echoed in my ears, louder than the rumble of the passing carts, louder than the continued argument, louder than thunder.
"Sawbones! Wake up! We need to make a decision! We can't just leave them laying out here in the woods. They'll bring ticks into the compound!"
"They can just take their ticks home to their families," grumbled the Captain, eyeing one brown lump more closely. "Damnit, Gibblets, this one is a caribou! What the hay kind of Pied Piper are you that you piped the foal of our enemies to my front door! You damned Puck, you Tylwyth Teg, you Hameln!"
"Right, OK. So they were conscious right until Gibblets put them to sleep outside our front doors. That makes them a security risk. Something made them follow his group after they burned down their granary and – Gibblets, you were on the de Pere raid? And after you hanged a lot of ponies."
"Caribou!" coughed Gibblets.
"Whatever! Point is, you were pretty ugly in front of this bunch, and they still followed you home. They're obviously not put off by the usual run of violence. It could be they're our sort. But we need to make… preparations. Foals in the vicinity of the Company need to be run through the usual song and dance; it doesn't go well when they're not. I can think of three incidents in the Annals just off the top of my head, including that ugliness with P-." Gibblets cringed at my use of that name, which had been officially expunged from the Annals. But whoever had done so hadn't used the proper ink in the volume in question. "Relax, Gibblets, I fixed the problem, it's entirely expunged now. I know how to mix inks that don't let older stains through like that. When we die, his name dies with us. My point is, we introduce them to the pikestaff at the earliest moment, buy us some madpony insurance."
"You make us sound like an ambulatory insane asylum," grumbled Gibblets. "The vast majority of Company brothers are well-adj-" The Captain broke out in an aquiline shout of laughter. "Ok, relatively well-adjusted."
"I need to talk to you both about my encounter with a maddened donkey seeress in a town named after her, or possibly a jenny named after the town, I don't know, but it's never good when they prophesy at you like that. She's got me jumping at shadows right now, and that includes within the Company itself."
I didn't like the glow in the Captain's eyes as I said this. It almost felt like somepony else was looking out of his eyes, something with slit draconic pupils in the dark behind his own. There was an uncomfortable silence, and Gibblets stared at the Captain, all humor gone out of his rubbery strange face.
"Very well, Annalist. We will play things your way. And we must discuss your dalliances with meddlesome spirits found by the roadside. The Company can be a jealous mistress." The Captain turned away suddenly, and left with an almost feminine sway to his hips that was utterly unlike him.
"Gibblets, I maybe don't spend that much time with the Captain. Does he… usually act like that?"
"Sawbones, every Captain eventually starts acting like that. It isn't a great sign." He sighed, and looked over his new charges. "Can you help me find some space on a cart? I don't want to waste a half-dozen trips hauling all of these foals inside by hand."
"What's a hand?" He waved his monkey-paws at me and grimaced.
"Fine, hoof, whatever. Not everything under the firmament is a pony."
"No, but everything that talks is."
"You know you're delusional, right?"
"Then at least I'm in good Company." I waved down the next cart in the line, and we started hoofing slumbering, tiny ponies onto flour sacks behind a yawning and impatient carter.