//------------------------------// // The Military-Apprentices // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS019 Gibblets was positively vibrating with jealous rage, as the unfortunate noncom had wandered unknowing onto the warlock's claimed patch of land, a sort of mentorship ranchette, if I had read the situation right. Well, served Gibblets right for leaving me in charge of his toys. Not my fault if some of them got up before he got home to play with them. I laughingly kept the bipedal frog-monkey-thing from the flustered Bank Shot, interposing my chortling striped hide before the wrath of the little witch-king. I suppose I was fortunate that he had been quite busy by Gibblets standards, and was more than a little drained by all the showmareship and illusion the Company had been demanding of him recently, because his behavior was more than a little over the top, not exactly Gibblets as he normally over-reacted, more than a little… Like the Captain recently. And like P- in the partially expunged accounts of the last foal incident. OK, right, re-prioritization time. The little warlock's attention was diverted by a proper introduction to the two fillies, and their awkward names got him ranting on a different tangent than the hypothetical shades and colors of Bank Shot's lower intestines. "No, no, we can't have a military apprentice named Bloody Ploughmare, the other PMCs will laugh at us at conventions. Child! We need you renamed soonest! What do you think of Blood Orange? Or Monkey's-Wrench? Or Bad Apple?" Diverted myself from my forming intentions, I objected, "You can't call her Blood Orange, I can think of at least three in the Annals. And I'd have to check on Bad Apple, I think we recently had a something Apple a few decades back, but I can't recall if it was…" "Bah! Things like Blood Orange are perennials, we've had eight Swift Blades and nine Steel Wings over the years. And you're thinking of the Black Apple, he was a corporal with the then-fourth cohort during the Eastmaark contract. Do you like Bad Apple, girl? Yeah, you're warming to it, I can tell…" The fillies didn't quite know what to make of the green frog-monkey-thing. I strongly suspect his performance out there on the roads the night before had been a big part of what had drawn them here, but he was growing disturbingly manic, and while they were grinning, there was more and more whites to their eyes. I hoofed him over to the cots full of still-sleeping brats, back on task. "OK, Gibblets, they've had enough rest for today, don't you think? Let's get the rest of them up and introduced, and make sure none of them wake screaming for the mamas, how's about? Octavius, come over here, please." I figured Octavius was the last pony to threaten Gibblets' sense of superiority and ownership over the foals. There's something about that unicorn which makes the warlocks puff up in supercilious amused contempt; none of them can take him seriously. And I needed to make arrangements, badly, quickly. If the effect was taking the eldest warlock this rapidly, we had a real problem brewing. I had a ritual to kitbash. I rushed out of my infirmary, ranking priorities by knowledge and availability. I knew where the pikestaff was, I had ideas about an open-but-protected space I could seize for the ritual, and I could probably find a proper text in the Annals given a couple untroubled moments with the chest. Drummers! I needed the drums and at least two of the oxen. Which meant diving into the vehicle park, finding Sack or one of his relatives, or if they were not in sight, Asparagus and some clue as to where they had… Sack and his brother Tiny were working in the cluttered, trampled former-brush around the old vehicle park. Scratched and mis-matched carts and other heavy vehicles had been pushed out into bramble, brush, and grassy hummocks in every direction, some with their loads still pressing their wheels into the forming muck, some of them hurriedly emptied before being pushed out of sight and out of mind. Sack was harnessing up Tiny to a still-loaded heavy cart, and once he was done, I helped them rock the mud-bound wheels out of their new ruts, and pushed it out of the park and over towards the rapidly-expanding storehouses on the edge of the compound. I could see why Gibblets looked tired, our former forward-base was starting to sprawl, and we were spiraling out quick-set construction like a boomtown in a rock-farming land rush. He had to have been straining himself glamouring all this nonsense under increasingly heavy no-see-ums and you-didn't-hear-that-hosses. As the three of us walked back to the corner of the barracks I had my Annals-chest stashed, and they had their drums shoved under their cots, I explained what I needed from them. Nothing too heavy, kind of spritely. We needed the Company in a playful, tolerant mood. Because I was increasingly certain that there was a sympathetic connection between the spirit of the Company and, well, the Spirit and her company. I hefted my bottomless chest of codexes and scrolls onto my back, and led them over to the main mess hall, where I left Tiny and his much smaller brother experimenting with the edges of their hooves and seeing what kinds of light or sharp sounds they could get out of the great deep-chested war-drums, and inadvertently amusing the busy cooks at their work preparing the first shift of dinner. The Company banner and its great war-lance was standing in the corner of the hall, which was one last resource check. Back to the infirmary. Not quiet, but I wasn't likely to be trampled by the continued frenzy in the teeming compound around it. The infirmary wasn't much less of a mess, all the foals were up and about by now, and were playing some sort of chasing game with each other and some little phantasms conjured by a reclining Gibblets, looking suddenly rather old and tired. I paused, uncertain if I could do my preparation in this cacophony, and then ponied up. It was good practice for working trauma on battlefields, after all. The Annals chest is a useful piece of devilry, constructed of dozens of generations of archival, storage, and preservation cantrips by the many storied Annalists who had need to store the collected chronicles in a portable and indestructible manner. The loss of the old Annals in the Dar-al-Hisan had been a great trauma, and every subsequent Annalist had taken it as the caution it was. The chest of that period was bottomless, obviously, and covered in ironclad protective spells. You could put that thing in a wall-breach and it would shrug off war-engines and withstand the detonation of petards. In fact, there's at least one instance in the book of Bitter Ambrosia where he records having used the chest in exactly that fashion while the Company had been besieged at Colter's Notch. It was also indexed, with a hoof-friendly set of levers and switches marked with shorthoof notation. I looked over the levers, considered my options. Fatinah's initiation into the Company was retrospective in her Book, only mentioned in passing. The aforementioned Bitter Ambrosia had always earned his sobriquet, and wasn't suitable for a reading on the subject, however appropriate the description of his initiation had been in the previous Annalist's telling. Which left… Law Stock's account of the apprenticeship of Feather Storm. I hoofed the lever for Law Stock's volumes, and the interior of the chest shifted, opening up a shelf where there had only been velvet lining an eye-blink before. I could feel the eyes of curious foals over my shoulder as I pulled the second volume out of the chest, and closed the lever. There was always a brace of pencils and some scrap paper set into a slot on the side of the interior, I've never seen the stock run out. I'm still not sure if there was a vast supply of the stuff in there, or if some thieving past Annalist had hooked the spell up to some very long-lived office supply warehouse in one of the more stable and prosperous home-worlds of the pony diaspora. Not all of the Company's prior warlocks were the midgets and pygmies of our later, degenerate days. Some of those ponies were true powerhouses, wizards worthy of the name. I paged through the volume on the top of the chest, scribbling quick notes to myself for framing the reading, and found my place in the account. I copied it out shorthoofed, making some style changes on the fly. Law Stock was another stuffy unicorn, and she didn't really go in for drama or narrative flourish. Not that I had time for either, but there's a certain amount of professional pride at work, even when you were racing a madpony for the asylum doors. I opened the chest again, pulled the lever, and replaced the archival copy, and put away my pencil and spare pages. One of the foals came up to the chest as I closed and latched the lid. Bloody, or Bad Apple if she took to that name, reared up and tapped against the chest-latch, and then tried to open it. It wouldn't budge, nor would it no matter how hard she pushed. "That's a spelled chest. Only I, or my designated understudy, can open it, pick it up, or even shift it from where it sits. Go ahead, try and move it from the cot." She pushed and pushed against its side, and the other foals came stampeding up to lend their shoulders, the lot of them shoving like a tiny pike-line making a push. They broke before the cantrip did, and burst around the edges of the luggage like a wave breaking over a rock. "This is why I can just leave the Annals wherever I choose; the only question is whether I can retrieve them without my person being molested by anypony laying in wait. They can ambush me, but they can't take the Annals. Children, this is the memory of the Company, the Black Company. Have these ponies been telling you what villainous company you have fallen in with?" They nodded severely, solemnly, some of them flat-lipped like they were holding in peals of laughter. The caribou fawn spoke up, lisping, "Ja, zir. You're empl'ees of th' Bride. You've been doin' zis vor vorever und ein day. You gau vrom virld to virld und zell your lances to eines grossherren oder prinzessin. You're hier to schlachten der Weisse Rose und der rest o' der caribou." She spat sideways. On my nice sanitary infirmary floor. "Well, now, the first three-fourths of that is true. We're only killing caribou because there's so many of them in the rebel regiments and the White Rose leadership. In theory if there are loyal caribou – and I swear you're the first one I've met yet – then the Bride and her employees are no intrinsic threat to them." I frowned, theatrically. "And go get a rag, and clean up that spit off the floor. I know this place is a mess, but I do surgery here, and we need to keep up appearances. No spitting inside the infirmary unless you're doing it into a spittoon." I found my train of thought. "Right, this is the Company. And we're a sacred brotherhood. One with fairly strict rules and regulations, for our protection and the greater good. And one of the strictest is that we keep no foals with the Company, who are not properly apprenticed. This doesn't make you brothers of the Company, but it does bind you in ways that are important to your safety and the well-being of the Company. Do you understand what I'm saying?" They nodded, wide-eyed. "Anypony who can't swear to an apprenticeship, can't be here in the camp. We'll have to make arrangements, return you to your families or masters, get you out of the camp soonest. Because it just isn't safe for you here. Any questions?" "Ja, zir. Ich bin bereichts apprentizin, mit das Bastarden sie gehängt letzter Nacht," rattled out the caribou in rapid-fire Germane. I closed my eyes and parsed what I remembered of that. Oh! "You're already apprenticed? Well, if we hung your master, I'd say the contract is broken. Fires of Tartarus, that's sort of how I got my start in the Company, although I was much, much older than you when they forcibly broke the apprenticeship the old toad-diddler double-extended on me. What's your name, filly?" "Meine Name ist Roggentochter," she curtseyed. "Huh. OK, anypony else have issues, or want to opt out now? I need you to not be with us if you're not going to go through with it… it could be bad. Names! I've got the names of three of you, who are the rest of you?" The rest of them seemed willing to go with the flow, and I was introduced to Charleyhorse, the Dodger, and a little donkey named Tam Lane, all three of which seem to have come from some shady workhouse next to the burned granary in de Pere. I could feel dusk creeping up from the dirt under my hooves, under the infirmary floor-boards. It was time. I led a procession of convalescents, foals, and a sleepy-eyed Gibblets out of the infirmary and across the compound to a mess hall emptying out a shift of well-fed ponies, some of whom turned right around and fell in with the parade. Some brethren know a show when they see one in the offing. I led the foals into the hall, checked their hooves, and then helped all six of them up onto a long dinner-table still somewhat cluttered with the detritus of a commissary dinner. Their eyes followed me as I walked over to the waiting oxen and their drums, and I prompted Sack to start the changeling march. The two oxen rapped out a soft, pattering, cheerful tremble, shorting their huge hooves on the big hide heads. I circled around the hall, approaching the pikestaff, and bowing to it like I would to a great lady and her retinue, then bowed again, and took the pikestaff and its support, carrying it in solitary procession to the front of the hall, across from the line of foals, and set it in pride of place. "Thus, from the second volume of the Book of Law Stock: In those days, the Company was in the service of the Lord Protector of the Mountain, in the Domination of Derecho. The land had been wracked by war and dearth and the all-consuming pestilence that trots in the train of those terrible scourges. The wars produced many orphans, but kept few of them, choosing rather in its blind and wasteful way to feed most of those foals to their dogs like table-scraps from a feast of misery and death. Be not deluded, as was written in the Book of Bitter Ambrosia, ‘war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.' Some few orphans fell into the hooves of various brethren of the Company, more charitable or compassionate than the general run of soldiery, or perhaps, simply more bored." I paused to glare significantly at Gibblets, but he was sleeping standing up, and not hearing a word. I waved my hoof at Octavius to his right, who poked the goblin awake. "Some strife arose from the presence of these charity cases within the brotherhood, and the Captain appealed to the Annalist, who upon reading the books of her predecessors, declared, ‘there are no children in the Company, but there can be military apprentices'. So it was written, so it was done. They brought the foals before the war-lance, and anointed their heads, and brought them up to the lance, and swore them to apprentice each a war-pony to be their knight and them their squires. Thus does the Company deal with foals that would walk side by side with grinning death, and fly with devils in the dark of the Night. Who would sponsor these six foals we have brought into our midst?" Gibblets shuffled forward, and grabbed his Bad Apple, pulling her down from the table-top. She looked rather lost, and kept shooting glances across the hall as the warlock brought her up in front of me and the pikestaff. I nodded, and then marched myself over to the table, and reached out a hoof to the caribou fawn crouching down, her muzzle between her hooves. Roggentochter looked up at me as if I had hoofed her a cone of iced cream, and scrabbled down from the table, following in my wake. Various other ponies followed, with Octavius leading Feufollet up to the front, until each foal had a brother or sister of the Company standing for them before the banner. I looked around the dining-hall, realizing I had forgotten the anointing oil, and my eyes fell on a half-full bowl of salad-dressing, part of the stock of thousand-islands the cooks had brought with us all the way from Openwater Bay. Good enough! I grabbed the bowl, and dipped my forehoof into it, walking three-hoofed towards Bad Apple and the rest of the foals, and dabbed a quick side-cross of slightly rancid olive oil reeking mildly of citric accents on each forehead, ending with my Roggentochter. I bowed to them, and turned, stepping forward. "Milady! We bring these foals to you as our apprentices, and your children, O Night! We beg your blessing upon these, our apprentices and foals, and the future of your Company!" This was slightly off script from the usual ceremony, but I was uneasy in my soul at that moment, and needed some sort of… reassurance. What I got was an explosion of deep darkness alight with burning stars, that burst out of the black pike-staff like the flaming gust-front of a flour-clouded granary exploding.