SBMS130
The Lieutenant flew in the next morning, and we held a pre-conference meeting in the front offices of the unstaffed infirmary. Heavy Bucket kept an eye on the prisoner in the quarantine rooms, and Feufollet took notes. The Company needed to get everypony on the same page about what we knew and what we needed to know before plunging fetlock-deep into the militia puddle.
"We have been patrolling the line of the upper river for the last two seasons, as well as le Coppice's back-country and the northern fringe of the riverlands," began the Lieutenant. "The 93rd Rear Support Battalion and the rest of the rear support battalions have been missing since about the end of summer, missing as in, nopony's seen them, there's a vacuum behind the fortified lines, as far as my scouts can determine. The incidental undead that the RSBs keep suppressed, have been slowly increasing in number in our patrol areas. Since the beginning of winter, those numbers have been more rapidly increasing – which is unusual because the winter is supposedly the slow season for the undead, they tend to go into hibernation in the black months."
"The other flotillas of the White Rose's upper fleet have not been seen on the river proper since about two months after we destroyed the heavy ships in the harbor at Falaises du Conseil. We didn't make much of it at the time, but at this point, we can be pretty sure that they broke the boom at Harmony's Root, ran the gauntlet, and re-inforced the fleets along the middle river."
"That's where my story picks up," said Dancing Shadows. "Rumours have it that there was a major naval battle at the forks of the river and the Housa. A catastrophic one, that put at least two legates out of commission, and wiped out the Imperial fleet at the forks."
"I've been hearing similar rumours, but they've been just that, rumours," said Cup Cake. "Nopony has anything specific, or official. Not even our Imperial engineer is getting anything one way or the other on the subject, or really, anything but family matters. Everypony from le Coppice to the borders of the eastern provinces has suddenly gotten laryngitis."
"What the hay are the Mondovan voyageurs saying, then?" I asked. "Aren't they our informational ninjas in the debatable lands? For that matter, what about the caravan guards?"
The Lieutenant cleared her throat, looking apologetic. "Didn't anypony tell you? We haven't had a caravan guard out with the voyageurs since the ambush on the Baneway. They… didn't take our little surprise at all well. Something about letting them bumble about the dead lands with a monster protecting them while they slept…" She looked unsettled. "Not at all well."
"The Mondovan voyageurs aren't what they used to be, either," contributed Cup Cake. "It was always an expedient, the only way the town could maintain itself. And it was pretty dang dangerous, that's for sure. There's all sorts of things the donkeys and ponies of Mondovi can pay their freight with these days that isn't adventuring through ghoul-infested wastelands in search of cargo and stories. Brass Tones is paying top dollar for labour, for one thing. That half of Mondovi which isn't farming their share of the remaining cropland is working for Mr. Tones. It's only the serious wanderers that have gone out on voyage this year."
"And," concluded Dancing Shadows, "Nopony's heard from them since they went out in the middle-fall. They're overdue. And since they were self-guarding, we don't have armsponies to check and see if they're still with us."
I thought for a moment. "So, we're thinking this naval squabble down on the Housa is the source of all this confusion?"
"It… is possible. I don't have a firm grasp of the geography down there. There were all of these armies in between where I went, and whatever we're talking about," said the Equestrian spy.
"What, do we really need *geography lessons*?" demanded the table's sole native Tambelonian. Well, other than Feufollet, who hadn't said a word, simply scribbling away at her notes in the corner.
"Fine! Look, this is the riverlands," said the slightly older jenny, as she scribbled on the desk-top we were using as a conference table. "Great river here, down the middle. Tributaries here, here, here, here, and here. There are tons of smaller ones all over the place, but these five are the navigable ones, the economically and militarily relevant ones. They're known as the 'Five Mouths'. Housa," she pointed at the middle-eastern tributary, "flowing into the heartlands of the east, the Rima, whose springs are only five miles west of the gates of Rime, here. The Trade river, way the heck down the great river, here, goes through the heart of the rebellious provinces. Then you have the 'Twins', Castor and Pollux, down this way, that drain the upper southern highlands, down thisaway. The Imperials draw a lot of their pony-power out of the highlands, mostly ponies down in those mountains, and they're poor and pugnacious, a good mixture for troops, or at least, that's what my elders always used to say."
"The White Rose began their rebellion by seizing the 'Fifth Mouth', the grand fortress holding the boom at the forks of the Trade. The war proper started when they burst across the great river and besieged the 'First Mouth' at the forks of the Rima. That siege lasted for ten years, until our friends the Walker and the Stump diverted enough resources destroying Caribou City that the First Mouth fell, and the battle-lines rolled back to the general vicinity of the line anchored at Harmony's Root. The Imperials have kept control of the other three Mouths, along with the fortresses which dominated those forks. Oh, I should mention, the Third and Fourth Mouths are actually forks of the Housa, not the great river. So those fortifications are themselves behind the great complex at the Second Mouth."
"OK, that explains why everypony keeps talking about the Second Mouth, then," said Cup Cake with an air of revelation. "And that's very bad news, because the most common version of the rumours is that something called the gates of the Second Mouth were breached in the rout which ended the battle on the river."
"Where did you hear that?" demanded an alarmed Dancing Shadows.
"I touched base with my sources up in the village this morning, looking to see if anyponies' gotten in any sugar since last time I was up here. And no, no sugar, Celestia damnit."
"Bugger your pearl-pink princess and your powdered sugar," blasphemed the Lieutenant, "If civilians are talking about the fall of a major fortress up here, and ponies in the actual front-line fortifications aren't aware of it – well, damn. Just before flying up here, I had a report from a patrol that buttonholed some Imperial lieutenants in the bastions south-east of the Root. Not only hadn't they heard about any big fortresses falling, it doesn't sound like they'd heard of any battle. Are they keeping the front line troops ignorant?"
"If the Second Mouth has fallen, and there's still a White Rose fleet on the middle river," said Dancing Shadows, "They could drive halfway to Trois Rivieres before they'd hit any defensible lines in the Housa, and that assumes that the militia in the eastlands has been keeping up any of the river-fortresses. The best of those choke-points is at Coriolanus, next district over from where my family's from, and that fortress is a rotting pile of rocks that rich donkeys like to go and picnic over the river, watch the barges go by."
I put out a hoof, and waved in a calming manner. "Easy, filly. Last thing the rebels would want to do would be to plunge their battle-fleet hundreds and hundreds of miles behind Imperial lines to get cut off as soon as somepony enterprising got a boom or a flotilla of pirogues out into the river behind them. And look, here – you have two major fortifications on these two rivers, right?"
"The Third and Fourth Mouths are aimed towards controlling access to the Twins, not holding traffic on the main channel of the Housa. You're right, though, they can't get too deep. They don't need to get too deep, though, to get between Rime's walls and the main Imperial Army in the Root Line."
"If they were going to try and trap the Imperials in their own lines, wouldn't the news have passed down the ranks?" asked the Lieutenant.
"Internal communications could have broken down, they may be controlling information to prevent panic, impossible to know at this remove," I said. "But it sounds like the war may be turning fluid. We probably need to start thinking about putting ourselves on a more mobile footing. Something we need to bring back to the Captain. Hopefully we can get more clarification when the militia officers start streaming in?"
"If nothing else, I'd call a major defeat a good reason why the Imperials might be too distracted to care about the Company liquidating their troublemaking, noncombatant legates," I concluded. "Swatting us across the muzzle with a rolled-up newspaper has got to be pretty far down the priority-list from 'Rebels raiding the midlands' or 'the possible loss of the Imperial Field Army'. But hay, at least this happened in the muddy months. We'd all be up horseapples creek without a scoop if they'd broken loose in the summer months."
The meeting broke up. The Lieutenant needed to greet the arriving militia officers, and the rest of us to interrogate our newly captured spy.