SBMS093
The hidden colony had settled in the vicinity of the convalescent facilities we had established in a pair of leased townhouses in a town in Hydromel which shall remain nameless for security purposes. Messages to the previous colony - in a likewise anonymous town in the previous world we had left - had reached them sometime early last spring, and the Company's civilians, retirees, and support ponies had begun selling out and drifting through the portals later that spring.
They traveled in inconspicuous family-sized groupings, most of them carrying their most prized and necessary possessions in humble carts as they went, some of them disguised as tinkers and traveling merchants, some appearing exactly as they were, immigrating families on the move from there to here.
The real question was the many unicorns and pegasi among the migrating families, not to mention the four griffins and two minotaurs who lived among their families and Company friends. For those ponies who could not simply hide in plain sight, they relied upon the glamour-magic of the Company's sole retired warlock, an aged and somewhat feeble unicorn by the name of Obscured Blade.
The old witch had taken retirement to mentor a previous generation of Company foals, whose mothers had decided to maintain their positions in the cohorts. This occurred more often than you might think, and many a daughter or son of the regiment found themselves raised by an 'uncle' or 'aunt' until the were old enough to leave the hidden colony and return to their matrimony. Uncle Blade had presided over the colony for the past forty-five years, never having returned to the Company proper, even after his first group of nephews and nieces returned to take up their mothers' professions.
The bulk of the colony consisted of ponies too worn or crippled by their life in the Company, and those uncles and aunts who had taken leave like Uncle Blade. A scattering of actual pledged couples were actually raising their own foals, but it was by no means a majority of the colony, nor even a significant plurality. The ponies of the colony were by and large self-supporting, working in various minor professions, taking in piece-work or labouring as carters, sempsters, farriers or craftsponies.
They had taken up leases and rentals in the general vicinity of the original Company-leased townhouses, but it was difficult to not reveal the colony's presence by the simple influx of far too many ponies into what was, after all, a sleepy backwater in a sleepy and peaceful northern provincial district. During the late spring and summer, the colony had waited patiently, scattered in short-term leases across the length and breadth of Hydromel, awaiting the natural turnover of the targeted neighborhood, and filtering into place as leases became available.
Some assistance to the natural process of turnover might have been provided courtesy of Uncle Blade and his unicorn mentees. Uncle Blade's training in glamour-craft and evil imagination was the process by which Company unicorns were sorted, and his merciless process identified who was capable of being a proper Company witch, and who was capable of fighting among the bowmares. The remainder went into the cohorts as common swordsponies. It was rather peculiar that the overwhelming majority of those he sent into the bowmares were, indeed, mares. Some accused him of gender bias. None to his face, though. Uncle Blade's wrath was nothing to deliberately court - he wouldn't hurt you to your face, but many a pony suffered weeks of sleepless nights in fear of the shadows that delivered word, evening after evening, night after night - Uncle was still irate, and apologies were still in order.
So the neighborhood of the convalescent homes might have developed an evil reputation by mid-summer, an aggregation of unsettling urban legends, stories of vile little shadows whispering ponies' most shameful secrets to anypony who paused to listen in the night. For some reason, this made the neighborhood suddenly unpopular among the common run of ponies and donkeys. Each broken lease was taken up, after a decent interval, by a Company 'family'. And the darkness gathered darker and deeper around that sleepy town in a peaceful northern provincial district.
By winter, most Tambelonian ponies had been displaced from the neighborhood, and the colony was firmly planted. The ponies of the Company in settlement had begun producing goods and services for the Company in the field - the winter uniforms I and Rye were wearing were themselves product of the new colony. And some of the smith-work being hauled southwards into Pepin were being made in a pair of smithies erected on the outside of town, nearest the neighborhood. The two Company minotaurs ran one of those smithies; the other was operated by Iron Hoof's elder sister, Steel Shod. The sons and daughters of the Company each took their shifts within the smithies as directed. It was felt that the discipline of the forge helped breed a certain mind-set in the foals that prepared them for Company life.
Some on the town council had become quite aware that there was something seriously wrong with the neighborhood, which had somehow, while nopony was watching, become an immigrant quarter. Others on the town council had a better idea of what was going on, if not the exact details, because they had been properly and thoroughly bribed. The next election-cycle, two Company ponies would find their way onto the council. Uncle Blade had already picked out his candidates.
The Company had learned utmost caution in the matter of our hidden colonies, after some particularly horrible atrocities committed against our most vulnerable and undefended ponies in previous generations. The terrible slaughter of the colonies in the Dar al Hisan at the tail end of the Company's time in that benighted moral wasteland was an object lesson beaten into every pony that grew up under the Company's tutelage. Literally, with sticks. Secrecy and caution were the life-blood of the colonies.
This was not the only colony, it was only the closest one. There were others, on other worlds. I will not commit to paper where they are; and only Uncle Blade knows the location of one or two. As those colonies' foals approach maturity, and display the adventurousness necessary for a Company pony, they send them, alone, across the Chain of Creation. If all goes well, they follow the occulted sign-posts, from abandoned home and house to abandoned post, until they find their way to Uncle Blade, or those other ancients who maintained the parent-colony before him. We only knew of the old colonies by the adolescents who find us via this hidden network. As they fade away, the foals stop coming. There might have been three or four out there somewhere across the Chain, based upon the ponies who occasionally present themselves to the Company.
As such, the Hydromel colony was nearly over-run with adolescents when Rye and I arrived with the pregnant mares and the section of guards maintaining security. Shadows shifted in the alleys of the town, as the young of the colony practiced their stalking tactics upon the new visitors. Rye looked from side to side, clearly spotting our shadows, but not quite sure of what was going on. I let her figure it out on her own.
Neither of us had come up in the Company system, being outsiders of a sort. The colony system wasn't enough to maintain the Company's numbers, and so we took in many recruits to fill out the cohorts, and bring in necessary talents. But just as the Annals were the intellect and memory of the Company, the colonies were her bone and muscle-memory, those things which the mind does not remember, but the heart retains. There were no blatant symbols of the Company in the neighborhood, no sigils or banners. Yet still, there were already little grace-notes which told a pony in the know that something was here. Twists of hay on window-sills, little bits of wood and twine tucked into the thatch.
Obscured Blade had taken up residence in a little shack behind the townhouse two doors down from one of the convalescent homes. He had filled it with the usual accouterments of the witch and warlock, pretentious bollocks and fright-masks and the like. He pretended to be exactly what he was - a bokor working as a carpenter for his living. Half of the shack was filled with his projects and his carving tools; the other half with said witchy nonsense. He was surely doing a side-business in conning ponies out of their money with the old psychic grift.
"Uncle, I have come to deliver two mares into your care. Zero Phase, and Cold Front. It is my understanding that Zero Phase will be returning to the Company after her confinement, and Cold Front expects to stay. But that's still up in the air, I expect. You know how this goes."
"I'm no uncle of yours, Acolyte. Don't talk to me as if you're one of mine. Gave you the damn Annals, did they? Keep them safe, you striped bastard. You're not worthy of them. Should have been Shorthorn, if he wasn't such a comprehensive disappointment, the damn foal. Or, better, that Bongo had lived and you or one of the rest of you worthless fools had died in her place."
It was going to be one of those conversations. Rye was cringing in distress.
"Bongo chased her own doom, for reasons that I never did quite make out. Do you have any idea what that was about? It was some sort of shape-changer. Whatever it was, it never made it into the Annals, but it was enough for the two of them to fight to the death, Bongo and that nameless warlock."
"You'd be surprised what never makes it into the Annals, Annalist. It isn't my story to tell. Ask that shame upon the Company honour to explain, if you must get it into your book. I do not think it will touch upon the Company again, but then, I did not think it would touch us again, when it appeared before you in that rotten city."
Time to change the subject.
"Acolyte, by the way? I've been hearing that a lot lately. Has She made her way out here? Do you know of whom I speak?"
"Of course I do, zebra. She's walked through a few of the foals' dreams, and I saw her twice this last fall. She comes and she goes. Can be decades between a sighting. We've kept it from that green interloper you have running things up at the front, of course. We remember him, even though he thinks we don't. The green one, the frog, the slime-trailing half-heart." Uncle spat in rejection.
"She more than walks dreams these days. She's appeared before the Company in assembly three times now. The last time, this happened." I took off my amulet.
His eyes widened. Then he reached out and tapped at the amulet.
"Hah, that Neighponese mute's work? Knew she would be worth her salt. Better than the lot of you put together. She's started Touching ponies, has She? Yes, yes, the Spirit, not the mute. The Work must be growing strong, if she's walking the real world now. Never heard of that happening before."
"There's more. We may have… fed a lich to the standard-lance. It was what caused this," I waved at my eyes, " And considerably more. The attempt caused a flash-off, some sort of reaction to the lich's blood-magery. Blinded a bunch of us, did worse to some. Then the Spirit manifested, and devoured the lich's remains. Re-grew our eyes. I'd call that a great deal more than just walking the world."
"Hrm, hrm. Ha!" The old stallion laughed to himself. "Well, that's certainly a Work worthy of the name. And I guess it only took bringing the standard into this stinking half-tartarus you fools found. I hear the old bird finally bit it? Knew that flying house-cat was a damn fool, only took a few decades to prove that out. But maybe his foolishness was what we needed? Interesting, interesting. I take it you'll be more careful of what you feed to the Spirit from now on?"
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at Uncle Blade. "Yes, sir. We will do our best. But this world is overrun with liches, and so far the spear is the only solution that's presented itself."
"I might want to take to the field again. Things are finally getting interesting. Year after year, decade after decade of stupid little succession wars and playing gendarme, I grew tired of it. More interesting to mess with the young ones after a while. But the Spirit! Walking the world! Let little Languid run this backwater, she always aspired to just sit around a parlor telling foals what to do. She's been goldbricking about, hinting that she was done with the front."
"I owe my life to Lady Languid, her fire-spell saved the warlock-section from a particularly nasty ambush."
"If you all could be killed by a feeble little ghoul-ambush like that, you ought to have died properly. And don't give her that self-assigned title, it inflates her fool head. Ha! The field again!"
I tolerated the old stallion's crochets for the rest of the afternoon. I wasn't sure how I'd tolerate living with the old fool if he actually came down to the Company with us.
I left Rye Daughter to make friends with the younglings who would be coming up to the front with us. We had a dozen adolescents Rye's age or older, and another dozen slightly older recruits from the colony and friends of the colony who would be following us west and south into the Company proper. She needed to figure out how they would be relating to each other. At least she had some stories to impress the colony brats with.
I looked in on Languid and the rest of the convalescents. Uncle Blade was right about the indolent mare, she was as healthy as she ever was. But she also was in her element, happily socializing with the rest of the colony, happier than I'd ever seen her before. I went on to get the two pregnant mares settled in one of the convalescent homes, a back room that could double as a foaling-room. I introduced them to the physician we had on retainer. That doctor was well-compensated for her silence, and I'm sure that Languid and Uncle Blade had tied her up tight with whatever minor geas they were capable of; Languid was the only active pony with the Company who could rock a geas, and the old hoof-picker was the one who had taught her what she knew.
We couldn't stay long enough to wait on the actual foalings, however much I wanted to sit in on them, for practice if nothing else. The winter was wearing on, and a break in the snows gave us a chance to return with our retinue and the new recruits. We filled up Brass Ring's now-empty travelling coach with supplies from the colony, and headed back towards the Road. The back-roads were a miserable chore, but at least the recruits were one and all in excellent shape. Say what you will of Uncle Blade, he trained up excellent recruits.
No, seriously, say what you will of Uncle Blade. The old cud-chewer haunted me like a foul stench, filling up a third of the coach with his trinkets and toys, and tromping along through the snow beside the younglings like a stallion a third his age. He kept up a continuous commentary on my leadership skills, my penhoofship, my slackness in training up Rye, and my lack of proper Company style.
I was almost glad to be pulled aside in Pythia's Fell by yet another delegation of militia-captains looking to stuff the Company with their gormless companies of drafted ponies. I told them the same thing I told the ponies of Rennet. We'd think about it, damnit.