//------------------------------// // Grogar's Grammar // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS028 "Patriotism, noun. 'Burnable trash ready to the torch of anypony ambitious to illuminate her name. In Fine Diction's famous lexicon, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to my learned predecessor, I beg to submit it is the first.'" The hall was filled with the pained scratching of dozens of pencils laboring to copy down the line projected against the whitewashed side wall by the clever little device I had pulled from my chest of tricks. I was not the first pony to while away the long hours in garrison and castra hiberna conducting writing and literacy classes for the new members of the Company. The mess hall was filled to bursting with donkeys, oxen, and fledglings, their mouths full of variably worn pencil-nubs, seated at cleared tables and covering their scraps of paper with dumb-copies of the projected text blown up forty times its size beneath the projector. I had gotten one of the stronger unicorns to power the device; it would be good for another two hours. "Peace, noun. 'In international and internecine affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.'" I slowly read each sarcastic and cynical definition so that the class could absorb the meaning of the words as well as the simple mechanical mouth-writing itself. I paced between the tables, checking their work, and correcting here and there. "No, Sack, that's fighting with an 'f', you've got an 's' there. You can simplify by contracting it more strongly. The older style makes the two far too similar. Modern Company usage prefers the compact 's', anyways." "Penitent, adjective. 'Undergoing or awaiting punishment.' A gloss on this definition – here Ambrosia is deliberately blurring the consequences and the desired state intended to be created by the consequences. You all know well enough that punishment often only produces the semblance of penitence, and so did Ambrosia." I had told them to entitle their dictionary 'Grogar's Grammar'; Bitter Ambrosia had called it something else, which would mean nothing to my students, and they all knew which devil Grogar was well enough. Shorthorn had yelled at me that it wasn't a grammar, but I liked the alliteration and who the heck knows who Discord is, anyways? More than half of the recruits we had pulled out of Rime had been utterly unlettered; the education system in the new cities was lacking at best and nonexistent in many of the stews. Openwater Bay had been much the same, which is where I had learned to teach, assisting Bongo in those days. She had been better at this than I was, but I was getting better. At least she could power her own projector. "Perseverance, noun. 'A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.'" Skritch, skritch, skritch. "Mediocrity is a lack of talent or inherent skill. It is no excuse for incompetence or failure in the eyes of the Company. Mediocrity is where almost all ponies start out, it is not a goal but something we escape by perseverance. We also do not care a pin for glory. Success is our expectation; glory matters not in the slightest." Once they were done, and the work not being too terribly mauled, we would bind their scraps together and they'd have a pocket-book to amuse themselves in future encampments. Many of their veteran peers had similar little bound books in their packs and saddlebags from sessions just like this one. "Rabble, noun. 'In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Majin of Saddle Arabian fable – omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.' The word is Zebric, and has no exact translation in simple Equuish, but it means as near as may be, 'mindless livestock'. You know, like pigs, or officers. But seriously, a rabble is a collection of hoydehoos, hayseeds, gutter-sweepings, and unemployed clerks. A rabble is also an untrained armed mob – and is thus the favored opponent of professional armies, and the loathed bane of the trained soldier. They are hopeless allies, and dangerously unpredictable obstacles as enemies. Don't expect them to be clever, but stupid can be dangerous in large numbers." "Reveille, noun. 'A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but to rise and have their blue noses counted. In the Nortemaugan army it is ingeniously called "rev-e-lee", and to that mangling our countryponies have pledged their lives, their misfortunes, and their sacred cutie marks.' This one is a historical curiosity. The Company has thrown over trumpet-signals and other loud blattings and bellowings as far too likely to reveal our positions to the curious ears of our watchful enemy. Ambrosia's Company operated in the presence of vast armies requiring ear-splitting communication methods such as trumpets and drill-sergeants to keep order. You know well enough our corporals prefer a switch and a glare over leather-lunged bellowing." "Revolution, noun. 'In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.' In our current situation, the substitution of our anarchy for the tyranny of the White Rose, who in their turn substituted their interested theft for the disinterested theft of the Bride. We aim to reassert the sole authority for organized thievery to the duly appointed bandits of our employer." "Right, noun. 'The legitimate authority to be, to do, or to have; as is the right to be the Princess, the right to swive thy neighbor, the right to catch the cholera, and the like. The first of these rights were once believed throughout the Chain to be derived directly from the beneficence of the alicorns, and this is sometimes affirmed outside the enlightened realms of Republican oligarchy, where we know it is fully vested in the hooves of ponies of great wealth and greater magical power to bully their underlings and lickspittles.' Ah? Well, Ambrosia's Company fought for the right of one band of thieving bandits – known as the Oligarchs – their exclusive right to steal within the confines of that particular world, which was known in those parts of it under proper authority as the Republican Oligarchy of Mauga. Their enemies were the Oligarchic republic, known as the Republicans, who arrogated to themselves a sort of sub-monopoly for theft, and extended it to the practical assertion of theft of the labor and persons of individuals of certain breeds and tribes, or to be more clear, they were arrant slavers. Ambrosia's Company put its blood and honor behind the pack of thieves who did not claim ponies to be property, but rather lusted solely for those ponies' physical chattel, trinkets, and debts." "Self-esteem, noun. 'An erroneous appraisement.' What? Yes, to be erroneous is to be in error, a state of being incorrect. And by your looks I see that you also need a definition of appraisement. Think of it as a performance review. No? How about a barracks inspection by your sergeant? Ah, there we go. Ambrosia is stating that a sergeant that allows his privates to inspect their own barracks unsupervised will very soon find himself with a section full of filthy, slovenly, drunken ponies indeed." "Selfish, adjective. 'Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.' The selfishness of others extends to such luxuries as not being inflicted with the filthy camp-sicknesses engendered by certain ponies' unwillingness to observe basic sanitation; to not being slaughtered as we sleep because the pony detailed to the watch felt it proper to herself sleep at her post; to not being gassed where we sit because Private Haricots Sournois cannot stop over-indulging himself on the cooks' three-bean surprise! Take it OUTSIDE, Private!" As we tried to air out the mess hall, I noticed the sand-clock, and realized we had overrun our time, and looked over to discover the cooks glaring at me in irritation, whether due to the noisome miasma, or my having blocked breakfast for the next shift. Rye Daughter put away her chap-book and helped me collect the pencils and spare paper. The chest had never run out of either, but I wasn't about to waste resources, and the troops would simply abscond with them to make new markers and chits for the eternal floating poker game if we didn't gather them after every class. "Herr Doktor, you and the Annals talk about this vorld, that vorld. Mauga, Darl al Hisan, Crossroads, Tambelon. Vhat are these? Vords meaning the same as 'land'? You valked here from Crossroads, ja?" I liked it when Rye Daughter called me Herr Doktor, it scratched an itch left by certain snobbish ponies back in Crossroads who didn't like my presence in their medical college's archives. I could never make myself correct her mis-usage. I thought how to explain the Chain. "Have you heard us talk about the Chain of Creation? Or the Glory Road?" "Ja, ist a highway system like the Bride's Roads, between realms, no?" "Well… not exactly. This place you were born and raised, these heavens above and lands below, they are a part of the world we know as Tambelon. Each other world - the Darl al Hisan, Crossroads, Rakuen, Equestria - they each look up at different skies, different heavens, stand on different soils. Not simply something that lies over this ocean or that mountain-range, but only to be found through a magical portal. It's not at all clear if this world was here before the first pony opened the first portal into Tambelon, or whether the opening of the portal brought Tambelon into existence. There was nothing thinking on Tambelon before the first hoof stepped through the first portal – it may have been here all along, or it may have sprung fully formed by the act of crossing the threshold. There are ponies that insist that this later position is a massive violation of the conservation of magical energy; and there are other ponies that counter that there is no such thing as a conservation of magical energy – there are no closed systems, and every portal into a new land is the Chain extending itself one more link, adding more energy to the system as it extends the system into nothing and makes it something. " "Ponies came from these somewhere elses?" "Of course, we didn't spontaneously generate out of the portals. Zebra, earth ponies, unicorns, pegasi, minotaurs, caribou, donkeys – the tribes have migrated as their leaders and greed have driven them, from world to world, portal to portal. Don't ask me where the various tribes came from before they took to travelling the portal-roads. It is the favored theory of scholars that each tribe originated on its own home-world, each driven from their own, national Edens. I have no idea if this is true, but it is a neat and orderly idea." "So caribou come from some original v- w- world! other than Tambelon? Stories I vas told as foal, they talk about great one-eyed buck in northern voods, woods, damnit!" She barked at herself, irate. The double-yous were coming hard to her, but she was fighting them as hard as she could. "Vodan king in the north woods, ha! And all caribou his children throughout this world. Nopony talk about doors or portals." "Maybe, maybe not. I don't know the exact history of the settlement of Tambelon, I haven't had the opportunity so far, we've been rushing about on the march, or stuck here in the rural backend of no-where. Other worlds – on Crossroads, the caribou like to claim they're the indigenous population, that they were there when the first pony came through the first portal, although I've always thought the mer-ponies of Openwater Bay would have something to say about that one. I don't think the caribou could be indigenous to bothTambelon and Crossroads, and Crossroads is older than dirt. There's a reason it's called that – there are more portals on that world than you could count. It's why 'Chain' is a misnomer, the Glory Road has many side-roads, branches, intersections, and yes, crossroads. But most people call it the Chain of Creation because it sounds poetic in Equuish." Rye Daughter rolled her eyes at the idea of poetics. Versification was ever the bane of the barely fluent. I heaved the packed chest onto my back, and we drifted back to the infirmary, in no particular hurry to go anywhere. Time slowed down in winter garrison, with little to do but quack the sickly and endlessly clean and polish and work over ingredients. I usually had more of the latter to work with – the busy campaign season had taken up my usual gathering time, and I was running short of a lot of materials other than distilled alcohol. Ironically enough, I had that in spades. As we approached the infirmary doors, a courier found us. I had a visitor at the front gates.