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// The Raid On Falaises du Conseil 
// Story: In the Company of Night 
// by Mitch H 
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SBMS105

We had made the first preparations for setting up a powder works late last summer, building into our latrine facilities the necessary shunts and filters.  Part of my house arrest during our second summer at Dance Hall, was cracking open the saltpetre catchbasins under the latrines and mucking out the stinking by-products.  With the way that stuff smells, there was no chance that we'd be running the works inside the Hall proper, or anywhere near anypony trying to sleep, eat, or live.  Charcoal was easy enough to produce, and all you needed for saltpetre was an active latrine filtration system.  Sulfur's cheap enough if the trade routes are open, but if they're not…  well.  Not many active volcanoes in this part of Tambelon.  Luckily, we were in the midst of supporting an operation that was reopening a complex of abandoned zinc, lead, and tin mines, all of which were just chock full of valuable metals locked up in sulfides.  Sulfur was an industrial waste in the Deep Mines Range.

In the end, our limited capacity for saltpetre production was also our limit for blasting powder production.  If the griffins had their way, I think we'd be installing filtration latrines in every household along the Pepin Front, and under every building of Mondovi and Guillaime's Ravin.   I told them if they wanted to start up a side-business, I wouldn't get in the way of their industry, but I wasn't mucking out all those catchbasins.

The subject of blasting powder comes up because the griffins ended up using our entire remaining supply about two weeks into the new season.  The Lieutenant continued to ride herd on her former cohort, and was heavily involved in the planning of our assault on the river-port of Falaises du Conseil.  The White Rose's new flotilla on the upper river was protected below the fortified bluffs of the river-port, along with the piers of the original port, and any remaining civilian boats left on the western side of the river.

We had avoided any intensive probing of the target, for fear of provoking further reinforcement, or preparations.   But the town was already full of troops and supports, clearly getting ready to either push north into our sector, or, more likely, to plunge southwards into the strategic rear of the Imperials holding the right of the Bride's armies on the river's east bank.   

This had happened again and again, season after season, during the endless see-saw fighting that saw the river war waver back and forth across the blackened districts.  One army would flank the other by means of some new fleet or flotilla, causing the abandonment of flanked fortifications, until the wayward fleet was destroyed by the other side, and the fortifications re-taken or dug again at some remove behind the previously held line.  Some square miles of worthless, destroyed, obliterated land would be given up to the other army, or taken from the other side, and everypony would dig into their new positions, and harvest the new undead, and dispose of the expended thralls destroyed in the fighting.

The limited overflights meant that the aerial sections couldn't intensively plot out their approaches and narrow down their assault targets.   It meant that we had to substitute overkill for delicacy and precision.  The entire cohort was used in the attack, with only enough chariots to bring in unicorn and warlock supports.  Fifteen bow-unicorns, and the whole of the coven aside from Feufollet, whose specialty wasn't such that her effectiveness overrode her youth and vulnerability.  The same couldn't be said of Bad Apple, whose pyromancy had become so strong that in some ways, she was now our strongest magical support.  She was worth an entire powder works by her earth-pony lonesome, a one-mare artillery battalion. 

The rest of the Company's pegasi and griffins were mustered in the fields outside of Trollbridge, two hundred and twenty-some winged ponies, and nearly fifty of the late Captain Gilbert's fierce kin.  The aerial cohort was under the command of a griffin once again, Gerlach the bold, Gerlach of Radspur, who could blow up a legate and then look that lich in its lack of a face and wonder how the White Rose had managed to set that booby-trap.

Some ponies carried their assault-posts, and some carried great quivers of javelins.   The griffins carried satchels full of charges, grenadoes, and pyrotechnic devilries.  Everypony had their wing-blades sharpened until they gleamed in the setting sun.  The entire cohort rose as the sun crept over the horizon, and twilight fell upon the eastern limb of the world.  By the time they reached the line of the river, well south of what used to be Caribou City, the rays of the sun were long-gone.  They turned south, aligning on the western bank of the river for the dressing of their formation, but abandoning the river as soon as its curve took it to the east.  The aerial cohort flew as the crow flies, arrowing straight for Falaises du Conseil.  A pair of pathfinders had gone forward that afternoon, placing cloud markers along the line of advance for the cohort to follow in the darkness.  Thestral charms and true dark-sight guided the ponies of the air through that moonless night.

When the cohort arrived at a particular marker, half of the pegasi carrying assault bollards rose above the rest of the formation, climbing for altitude and speed.  Three pathfinders flipped the coats they were wearing over their withers, brightly coloured cloth that shone like beacons in the darkness to anypony watching from above.  They advanced ahead of the remainder of the formation, acting as targets for the heavies who now were reaching the peak of their trajectories.  

The heavies began their long dives, swiftly gathering momentum, their bollards now hanging beneath their barrels, tightly grasped by all legs.  They sought out the pathfinders and their bright backs, and dove for the unseen targets beyond those advance ponies.   As each heavy passed the line of pathfinders, they let loose their burdens, and leveled out before they slammed into unseen crenelations or turrets.  

Amazingly enough, nopony actually did either things, speeding overhead of any night-guard the White Rose had posted in the forts over the sleeping flotilla.

The bollards struck true for the most part, their mass and great velocity shattering curtain-walls and caving in turret platforms.  A few bollards, mounting triggers and pots full of blasting-powder or wood alcohol, burst into terrible explosions and fire, immolating some stretches of the walls, blasting others apart.

The bulk of the cohort swept over the walls just as the flames began to take hold, and the few White Rose guards still on their hooves were cut down by the pegasi flying at a dead run.  The ponies of the White Rose were not properly maring their war-engines, and alcohol-bombards were used to destroy the ballistae and catapults before they could be turned against the aerial assault.

The griffin grenadiers came behind the wave of shock-ponies, and cast about for the garrison barracks.  Some brief moments were wasted in the darkness and chaos, before one griffin or the other spotted the earth-ponies and donkeys tumbling out of their doorways half-armed.  The griffins' battle-cry gathered their fellows, and lit grenadoes fell into the masses of confused ponies trying to form dressed lines in front of their barrack doors.  Much slaughter ensued, and a brief, panicked rout meant that the White Rose's planned reinforcement of their defenses was deranged for the time being.

We think this was where we lost Hans Holshok, there may have been a flash within the ranks that Gerlach later decided had been Hans fumbling his charge and detonating his own explosives inside his sachel.  We were unable to recover his body, and thus we cannot be sure of the exact circumstances of his death.  But he was missing afterwards, and was not seen after the strikes on the enemy barracks.

The second group of heavy bollards had peeled off on an eastern heading, and rose into the sky over the far bank of the river, gaining their necessary altitude for their own strike.  The pathfinders curved around likewise, and joined half of the pegasi as they stooped to clear the docks, piers, and boats of the flotilla of defenses.  The ponies of the flotilla had managed to properly mare their war-engines, and a scattering of projectiles rose to sweep the skies of their tormenters.   

This was when the hoof-full of chariots caught up with the rest of the assault, and the bowmares began hosing down the engine emplacements, while the witches multiplied the number of targets in the sky with their glamours.  Bad Apple, riding in her witch-gig behind a swift runner, began laying gouts of magefire across the sterns the war-boats huddled in the lee of the harbour-tower.  A ballista pivoting on the top of that turret nearly knocked Bad Apple and her driver out of the sky, and it looked rather grim for a moment, before the bollards of the rest of the heavies rained down out of the night-sky to destroy that tower, and kill the ballista-crew.

The boats of the flotilla were already a sea of flame by the time that the warlocks of the White Rose arrived to restore the situation for the enemy.  They must have had several witches of significant power, because two or perhaps three green-white domes of shielding arose around the surviving war-engines mounted along the docks.  Most of the piers had been shattered by the bollard-strike, and the ships and boats of the flotilla were quickly becoming a flaming array of wreckage, so this would have been a good time for the Lieutenant to call a retreat.  

Unfortunately, the pyrotechnic signals intended to announce the planned retreat were lost in the fiery chaos, and too much of the cohort remained to fight for too long.  The mares Hailstorm and Tempest were lost in the fighting after the retreat was called; the stallion Double Bolt was mortally wounded by magefire from one of the White Rose witches as he tried to cover the withdrawal of the griffins and pegasi who had struck the magazines on the docks next to the flotilla flagship.  Double Bolt's body was the only one recovered by the Company in the retreat.  The witches' glamours and light-shows did much to aid in the chaos of the retreat, while Bad Apple's fire caused even more damage to the lower town, and collapsed the shieldwall of one of the enemy's witches.

The next day, scouts overflew Falaises du Conseil to evaluate the damage.  The flotilla was a total loss, and the port facilities were heavily damaged.  A good third of the town was charred ruins.

There would be no flanking of the Imperial positions in the riverland that season.