//------------------------------// // Night-Terrors And The Light Of Day // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS089 The foals had cheerfully herded the spy into the quarantine chamber we were using as a dungeon the night before. The next morning when I went to let her out of stir, I was greeted by whimpering so loud I could hear it right through the locked door. When I went in, I found her curled up in a ball between one of the cots and the wall, shivering. She had apparently had terrible dreams, of dead things with the faces of family and friends, stalking her through the streets of her home town. "But as horrible as that was, to see them all dead and still walking, moaning, drooling - in the end, I got away from them, and hid in my gam-gam's attic, where nothing could reach me. Then - SHE looked in through that narrow attic window, and it was like Tartarus opened one awful blue-green eye and LOOKED RIGHT THROUGH ME!" She started in on another crying jag, and I frowned. I sidled up against her, and tried to give her a reassuring hug, having no better idea of what to do. It was amazingly awkward, and she mostly froze up. But at least the crying stopped. "Did she say anything to you? The dream-vision?" "Y-yeah. That I had been judged, and found wanting. But a better pony than I had 'vouched for thine future conduct, and thou art granted limited parole, on condition of good behaviour'. She- she looked like the Nightmare Moon effigies! The flags! It's just supposed to be a foal's story! Something to scare them into good behavior, make them share their things and their candies, put the fear of the alicorns into them, you know? Nothing a grown pony should - oh, Celestia, her teeth!" "Well, that's good news, then. The Spirit doesn't like you, but then, she likes few ponies who aren't members of the brotherhood. I'm glad that she took my plea to heart. Still, we're going to assign you a guard for your duration with the Company, for your own safety. The Spirit is not always of one mind on sensitive subjects, and I wouldn't want any trouble." There was a knock on the open door of the quarantine chamber, and the gawky new standard-bearer shuffled diffidently inside. "I got word that you wanted my service, sir?" "Ah, this is Carrot Cake, he's a guard. Carrot, this is Cup Cake, she's an Equestrian spy. You're going to be guarding her for the Company. Try and keep her out of trouble? That means no wandering into sensitive areas, pestering ponies who don't want to be pestered, or wandering off to be eaten by ghouls." The standard-bearer blinked at his new charge, and sighed. "Well, it's got to be more interestin' than standing guard on the ravelin. I guess I'm definitely not going back to my section, sir? I was just getting used to it." "Your appointment means we can't have you off chasing shamblers in the high hollers anymore. You're a grand tactical asset now, colt. Don't get too far from your standard, you're effectively on call from now on. And since we don't want our spook here wandering too far off the reservation, that means you're both tethered to about a mile around Dance Hall. Try not to wander further afield, right?" He was staring at the little blue mare, distracted. "Right?" I prompted again. "Oh, right, sir. Stay within a mile of post. No rambling. Keep the little lady out of trouble. No ghouls." He nodded firmly, looking rather less reassuring as he did so. His chamfron was pushed back on his mane, and wobbled unsteadily, as if it was about to pitch back onto his withers or onto the chamber floor at any moment. "Corporal, go put away your damn helm. You look like you're going to lose it the way you're wearing it. And I don't want to hear about somepony having to fish it out of the great ditch or anything of the like, right?" "C-Corporal? I thought I was still a Recruit?" "Came with your appointment to the standard. Didn't anypony tell you?" "I guess not?" I face-hoofed in exasperation. "Cup Cake, this goofus is your guard. Please don't get him in trouble. He's much more gallant than he looks, and you clearly have more in common than just your names. Go find some more felicitous quarters, I don't think we'll be locking you in quarantine tonight. You've given your parole, have you not? To the Nightmare?" She nodded, wide-eyed again. "Excellent. I'm going to finish setting up our still, you two go get acquainted." I went back to the distillery room, and started in on hammering together a solid alembic dome for the bigger mash boiling chamber. The banging finally woke up Rye Daughter, and we went to do the morning rounds through the mostly-empty wards. Last I heard from the two Cakes, they were bonding over their grievances against Guilliame's Ravin, comparing Cup Cake's beating with Carrot Cake's mother's failure to survive that town's dubious charity. All in all, it was a day like any other. Work had continued on the Trollbridge, and the bridge itself had been mostly repaired the day before by a swarm of work-teams which consisted of nearly half the second cohort. The damaged portions of the fortifications had been torn down, and the usable materials recycled, but much was still in a state of flux, being mostly piles of rubble, stacks of trimmed-back planks, and recovered fixtures. This became an issue when the daily patrol out on the road to Le Coppice flew back in a hurry, reporting a body of troops approaching that town on the far side. A pegasus reported seeing the banner of the 93rd, which hopefully meant that our business partners had returned to collect the next tranche of enthralled ghouls to feed the Imperial war machine. But we certainly didn't want rumors of the legate-induced damage to Trollbridge getting back to the Imperium. We had struck a deal with the Mondovans to keep the trouble under wrap, not that they knew the details. It was as much in their interest to not see any further negative Imperial attention on our common encampment as it was ours. We hoped. Either the Crow or Otonashi would be keeping station at the ruins of the Trollbridge blockhouse for the foreseeable future, maintaining a first-class glamour over the construction site to keep activity from being noticed by the 93rd or other non-local traffic. It was a major working for those minor warlocks, but the long fighting season had definitely brought the both of them into fighting trim. They were as sharp and well-drilled as any of the Company's more storied magical forebears, if not necessarily wielding those great magics that truly make a magus. The next day, when Major Gorefyre and her sergeant-major led their ramshackle battalion into their temporary quarters in the holler up the way from the Trollbridge, they saw what they expected to see - an intact sprawl of half-flanked ramparts, palisades and fighting-platforms on the far bank of the Withies, surrounding an intact blockhouse and the fortified bridge itself. They did not see the ant-like swarm of ponies feverishly repairing the damages, rebuilding the blockhouse, and shoring up the damaged ramparts. The morning after that, Gorefyre and the bulk of her armsponies passed through the bridge, almost brushing against the unseen work-parties restoring the gruesome trophy-racks along the re-built bulwarks of the bridge. The Imperials marched right past the construction without seeing or hearing a thing. Our warlocks might not be powerhouses, but nopony is better than they when it came to spinning stories from the naked air. Management greeted the returning ponies of the 93rd, and sent a large contingent of the second cohort with them on their march up the old Road, towards the trap-pens in the hollers of the Deep Mines range. I watched as the entire cavalcade passed over the great drawbridge behind the grand ravelin, and through the sallyways towards the Road. Gorefyre was positively bristling with the great fetish-needles she used to control her thralls, each needle's blade plunged a quarter-hoof's depth into her flesh to 'blood' the fetish. I have no conception of the agony that the practice must induce in the practitioner, to have hundreds of needles piercing one's flesh in such a way. I'm told that the pain and the damage is recovered in part by blood-work magery that take the pain and the agony, and re-directs that energy towards the unearthly control of the thrall-master. But for sheer barbarous display, that little donkey blood-witch with her baroque rainbow-porcupine affect, could only be rivaled, and never bested. I turned to our Equestrian spy, standing upon the ravelin fighting platform with her inseparable, gawky guard, and asked her, "Are there still no things in this world that frighten you more than the Spirit? That young lady that passes beneath us on her way to enslave the dead - she is a small and harmless witchling, Cup Cake. There are grand terrors in the greater darkness to the south and west, and they fright me more than anything I carry with me." She looked back up with a sickened pallor and a glare, and snarled, "That there are greater devils in the dark, is no excuse for evil deeds done in the light of day, you damned cultist." "Miss, show respect, please. Sir, please don't take it amiss." "What, the cultist thing? I've never stitched up a wound inflicted by a harsh word, Corporal." I looked down at the long lines of Imperials coursing through the sally-ports onto the planked roadways extending into the middle distance towards the metaled Road. The Major must have been hiring, there were more of them this time. "You'd be astonished to find you are in agreement with the Spirit. She does not approve of our traffic in the enslaved dead. We have to be more pragmatic than our Lady, however much I must admire your shared principles." "Shared! I can't picture it!" "Ask her tonight, if she graces your dreams. She is, after all, a very busy Spirit. Although from what I've heard, once she was sovereign of all the nightly dreams of your entire world. Perhaps a single small regiment is not too little to extend her guardianship over your troubled nights." "Celestia forfend!" "However great your Princess of the Heavens might reign upon her own world, this is not hers, nor does her reach extend to our benighted lands. Take your protection where you find yourself, filly, and from those who are offering." She looked up at the tall, overly orange Corporal, who was ignoring the conversation and staring intently at the last of the Imperials passing through the gates, followed immediately by their Company escorts. "I'll take it under advisement, doctor," she sighed.