//------------------------------// // On-The-Job Training // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS060 I was showing Rye Daughter how to clean out and stitch closed shallow and not-so-shallow cuts when Gibblets came into our surgical tent in the Plateau Palisades. He was wind-burnt, and Bad Apple behind him still had her mane tied back and a pair of pegasus goggles pulled up in front of her ears. The clearance flights continued, and a bit of charring on Bad Apple's forehooves suggested that those flights weren't entirely fruitless, even six weeks into the sweeps. Gibblets had an odd expression, as if he wasn't sure whether to laugh at me, or rage in fury. BA was just wide-eyed, much like Rye Daughter had been when I stomped into our quarters with dripping bandages and told her to get out the clean needles and antiseptics a little earlier. From the newcomers' expressions, I could see that the escort had already started the gossiping. I fought through the stinging and the inexpert tugging sensation to think how to get ahead of this. "It wasn't that bad." "Then why aren't I done stitching you up yet, sir?" muttered Rye Daughter around a mouthful of needle and thread, closing the long cut down my throat and across my shoulder. She'd been working at that for what seemed like an hour, but probably had been twenty minutes at best. "So tell me what it was, if it wasn't that bad. Because the pegasi are talking like you just tried to prove yourself the second coming of Bodkin Point, for nothing more than a point of honour. You staked yourself out like a sacrifice for half the ghouls of northern Pepin?" Rye Daughter squeaked in dismay, pulling the knot and the lip of the wound closed, and tied it off. I hadn't explained the provenance of my current condition, just told her I couldn't operate on myself, and some of them needed stitching if they weren't going to fester. She started in on the gouge across my right shoulder, using the spare needle and a lot of antiseptic. "That wasn't what that was supposed to - am I the only pony who remembers Baba Ripnema's reading about the buffalo's Dog Soldiers? It was supposed to be a dog-rope. Doesn't anypony remember what a dog-rope is? Stake yourself to a plot of earth, and refuse to be moved. Damn impressive story, always knew I wanted to try it once. Augh! Ow... and yeah, I was showing off a bit. That damned overgrown colt that wears the ducal crown insulted us. I was a little pissed, and I knew that the pegasi could do more against targets fixated against prey out in the open, than dealing with the things coming over a hamlet wall in the darkness. The locals had their damn torches out, would have ruined our darksight to no good effect." It was a relative short gouge, that took care of it quick enough, and Rye tied off another set of stitches, neater than the last. She was improving rapidly. "So you tied yourself to a stake, without barding, by yourself, to play dinner and you rang the dinner-bell." I had Rye swap out for the last needle, and start in on the bite on my left arm. That ghoul had gotten more teeth into it than I had noticed during the fight. After examination, I told her to put down the needle and get the scalpel, and I talked her through debriding the bite. That did more than sting, and interrupted my conversation with Gibblets until it was over. BA watched in fascination, and more than a little blood-thirstiness. Becoming a warlock wasn't a process that left the subject with much in the way of squeamishness, or social graces, I am sad to report. "Ghoul dinner-time?" Gibblets prompted, as Rye began to stitch the now-cleaned wound back together. "The pegasi had their charms on - worked wonders, by the way, the ghouls only saw and smelled me, the aerials just danced right through the scrum cutting throats like ghosts. As far as the dead things were concerned, I was the only living thing in that field, and they just kept trying for me. Especially after I started bleeding and smelling delectable. I - ouch! careful! - just had to stand there and smell after a while." "So you found a way to flank things that don't have the brains to fear getting flanked?" "Sort of. I kind of think we only put down the dim ones, the young ones. It still felt like there were critters nearby when dawn came. Things that knew better than to continue to try for a single meal surrounded by dismembered former ghouls." My left cannon was properly stitched. That left… the cut over my croup and upper flank. I pointed it out to Rye Daughter, and she rolled her eyes, and got more thread. "By Grogar's beard, how are you still awake?" demanded the Captain, stomping into the now-thoroughly-crowded tent. "Don't you tell all your patients to rest after nearly killing themselves?" "Keep going, Rye. I don't exactly know. You'd think I'd come down at some point, but I'm still kind of gliding at the moment. Time enough for sleep after I finish showing Rye how to tie me back together. Alllmost done, Rye. Was that donkey I gave you of any use?" "You mean aside from nearly pissing himself every time he looks at my helmet, and in general acting like a timid little cacasipala? Well, he has the seal and the name, so there's that. Dior Enfant is back in camp, so I put him in her hooves. More her bailiwick than that of operations, anyways. Are we going to get anything more out of the Duc than a spooked representative?" "That's one of the brave ones, don't scoff. And remember, Compte Coup there just fell off his first flight in a chariot. That'll rattle anypony's jimmies. I still don't like it much. The jack was riding with his lord into deadly danger. If we weren't there, those ghouls would have come over that village's walls last night, and maybe we'd be looking for l'héritier du Duc, si vous s'il vous plait. So," I said, looking at both the Captain and Gibblets, while Rye tied off my last set of stitches, "it's just as well we were there with our blades that actually put down the undead, and our force multipliers, and all the advantages I had behind my crazy striped flank. No, the Duc has about all he can handle protecting his enclave in the north. Until we can open the Caribou City junction, they're in a box, and the ghouls climb into that box with them every night." The conversation tailed off into raillery and unproductive squabbling, but Rye managed to get fresh bandages over my equally fresh stitches, as I drank deep from the small-beer barrel. I hadn't realized how thirsty I was until I started drinking. I started wobbling when I tried to get up off of the surgical table, and Gibblets grabbed me by those parts of my shoulders not covered in bandages, and led me into my own ward to have a lie-down. I think I lost track of Rye at that point, although I tried to congratulate her on her first good pass at taking surgical lead. I think she was still there when I said that. I don't know. Last thing I said to Gibblets before drifting off, though, I remember. "That damn Duc pissed me off. I had to kick something's ass, and at least it wasn't the Duc."