SBMS133
Cherie slunk off with her patrol-corporal riding herd on her, Cherie's short, bobbed tail low and dejected behind her as she shuffled off. Heartbreaking, but if ever she needed to not be underhoof, it was in the midst of the slowly convening militia conference. We were expecting delegations from all of the northland provincial militia establishments. From distant, snowy Chutes de Cristal; to the shaggy ponies and mining-caribou of Tonnerre; Vallee de Pierre, Hydromel, and Verdebaie along the long, meandering shores of the Inland Seas.
And vast, inland Rennet, no longer the hag-ridden rebel bastion we had found it, but rather, the recovering core of the northlands. Several years of peace and stability had retrieved some measure of prosperity, and with it, political power. They were closest to the Palisades, and thus could have arrived first.
In the event, they arrived last. Even their nominal chief, Rollo Murs, le Duc de Pepin et Rennet, arrived before the militia-commanders of that once-proud province, now remembering, fitfully, their pride. Duc Murs was also the nominal host of the venue, as commander in theory and fact of the slowly reconstructing Pepin militia. Pepin was technically not a part of the northlands, but the facts of geography and war had severed that appendage of the shattered riverlands from the rotting and gangrenous body of the whole.
The Company had made this new fact in the world; that Pepin and her sisters of the north were now all one quarreling family, me against my sisters, me and my sisters against the rest of the family, our family against the world.
The confusion in the south, which stubbornly refused to resolve as each new militia-source arrived and checked in with the chatelaine-major of the Palisades, had not kept the Imperial bureaucracy from sending forth new and staggering demands for pony-power to the militia commands of the north. Regiments where companies had sufficed in previous draft-years; entire formations demanded as price of subjugation under the eternal phylactery.
And, explicitly, the refusal of any back-door satisfactions of the quotas through special foundations or recruitment of mercenary forces under the authority of the Empress or anypony else. No more sneaking companies of recruits into the Black Company and calling it a quota. Just as well from our point of view, we were in serious danger of becoming, inadvertently, a legion, if not quite yet an army. The Company's command structure was stretched as it was, expanded into a four-corner establishment; we had done perfectly well in our various forts and behind our various walls, but it was still an open question how we would keep ourselves under control in four cohorts in the open field.
And as the ponies of the northern militias discussed the situation, it sounded increasingly as if the Company would, indeed, be moving into the open field. No more holding down the long line of the upper river for the Company. This was now a task that could be satisfied by a hoof-full of under-strength militia-regiments raised from the Sea-side provinces, supporting the new formations being raised by Duc Murs from the nearly-settled districts of the plateau and his hard core-remnant in the north of the province behind the fords. The central districts, the Deep Mines, and the black bottom-lands were rapidly repopulating, and the Duc's task would be to protect those settlers and re-colonizers as they brought the old corpse back to life.
Like so many shells the Company had shed before in its long cicada-life, we would be leaving behind Dance Hall and all of her accessories, her stonework diadems, wooden-palisade chokers and earthwork bracelets. We had built, and now we would be leaving behind. Would they leave the terrifying bonework and friezes? Oh, I suppose it would be the choice of the ponies of Pepin as they re-founded their districts upon the bones of the past. I rather suspect most of the actual bones and antlers would be removed and interred, leaving perhaps some abstracted stone-work to remind posterity of the slaughter which made a future possible.
At least there would be a future for Pepin, assuming the Company didn't find a way to destroy existence beforehoof.
In the fourth day of the conference, an actual Imperial delegation arrived via one of the ports in southern Hydromel. A pair of majors, a small herd of lieutenants shepherded by an exhausted-looking jenny-captain, and a bona-fide captain-general, a salty caribou doe named Knochehart. As you can tell from her nom de guerre, she was a runecaster, a good one by reputation.
General Knochehart arrived with a commission and a plan. She even had news, although the Lieutenant had to pry the information out of her close-muzzled majors with pliers and a blow-torch. The Second Mouth had not been taken last fall, but it was under comprehensive siege. The war-engines and the boom which the Second Mouth had used to control the line of the lower Hausa had been destroyed, along with most of the fleets which had sheltered behind the Second Mouth. It didn't look good, and the line of the lower Hausa was no longer an Imperial lake.
Raiding formations had plunged into the districts all along the Hausa, from the Mouths of the Twins to almost the ruined fortresses of Coriolanus. Rime herself laid safe behind a hundred and fifty overland miles of prosperous and vulnerable Imperial heartland, but that was still IMPERIAL HEARTLAND laying exposed to the riverine reivers of the White Rose.
The fall and winter had brought fire and slaughter to that portion of the riverlands which had escaped the war in previous seasons. It wasn't the fall of the field army, or the death of Rime - the distances and weather had been such that this hadn't been possible - but it was a catastrophe for those poor ponies under the axe-blade.
One of the new general's swarm of lieutenants confided to Dancing Shadows that rumour had it that the Bride herself was besieged inside the remaining fortifications of the Second Mouth.
On the fifth day of the conference, the Captain stepped out of an aerial chariot, to provide the official leadership that the new General had been demanding of the Company. This was a symbol and a promise that the Company would indeed be letting itself be pried out from behind its precious walls, and committed to the plans of the new leadership. The General eyed the chariot and its driver, speculatively. You could see the wheels turning behind Knochehart's eyes; it sometimes took a military pony a bit of time to recognize the military import of the Company's first or aerial cohort, but the new general had very few flies on her.
As it was explained to the militia-ponies of the north, the Imperials could no longer depend upon the mountain-volunteers which in previous seasons had provided the bulk of the yearly reinforcements to the Imperial field army and the fortification-troops in the posts of the south and the Mouths. The loss of the line of the lower Housa meant that this year, those regiments would be tied up in relieving the siege of the Second Mouth, and bringing the southern banks of the Housa under control.
The rear support battalions, including our friends of the 93nd, had been pulled back all the way to Coriolanus to erect defenses against deep strategic raiders, and to protect the shipwrights of the upper Housa as they re-built the shattered Imperial fleet. This had largely left the rich country of the western eastlands, and the remaining inhabited riverlands, exposed and naked to the world. Likewise, the field army in the lines of the middle-Rima would be starving for reinforcements, living or otherwise.
It was the northland's time to provide. The demands would be heavy. More than a dozen militia-regiments, fully mobilized, their supports, and the Company. All of the Company. Any rumours of quarrelling with legates, of dark magic, of dubious loyalty to the Phylactery - irrelevant in the crisis.
The Imperials actually wanted two dozen militia-regiments, but it didn't feel like they were going to get it. The mobilization of Verdebaie a few years back had exhausted a good percentage of that establishment's available deployable regiments, at least by legal means. Our push to clear out Rennet's crumbling White Rose rebellion had eaten up that seed corn, at least insofar as the deployment-terms written into that province's militia-laws. The militia-regiments deployed in that brief campaign couldn't be sent out of the province again for another two years, as the statutes were written.
I could see phantasms of despotism and tyranny turn over and blink their sleepy eyes at the stubborn militia-officers of Verdebaie when they made this declaration, but the hoof-full of Imperial officers kept control and discipline over their own reactions, their obvious anger and desperation. There were no Imperial line-regiments in the north to enforce their demands, no prospect of fire and rapine to force the militia-ponies to do anything their own sense of law and loyalty didn't demand of them.
And the other, smaller provinces weren't any more capable of making up the short-falls. Most of the population of the north was concentrated in the three core-provinces of Rennet, Verdebaie, and to a lesser extent, Hydromel. Each committed to four regiments for the General's new field-force, except Verdebaie. Surprisingly, after the Verdebaie leadership had stiffly refused to mobilize the full force, our old friend Colonel Guillaume of the III Verbebaie strode forward to proudly volunteer his blooded regiment for the expedition. So, five regiments it was from Verdebaie.
One or two regiments each from the smaller and border-provinces filled out the mobilization order. It was enough that it was obvious to anypony who had ever hacked logistics for an army, that we couldn't possibly march it overcountry. Especially not through the blasted, depopulated riverlands.
We would be marching down-slope into the ports to take ship for Rime. It would be a home-coming for those surviving recruits of the Company whom we had picked up in the Great Smoke. They were every one of them veterans now.