//------------------------------// // The First Day Of Training // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// FFMS002 The aerial cohort and the construction details hacked together a series of tent-frame campsites and very rough training facilities in the fields and groves of a hoof-full of towns and hamlets within a seven-day loop-march of Grand Dame, whatever they could get up and standing with the aid of the local militia before the first regiment and the rest of the Company arrived to take possession of Camp Expedient, as the General's staff called it. The Company had found a side-road to slide around the flank of the straggling Hydromel militia, and beat them into camp. We were there to greet them as they wandered in, and to berate them on a section and individual level as they floundered, trying to get themselves sorted out of march-order and into camp discipline. The Company seniors didn't interfere in this very shaky evolution on the part of the Hydromel donkeys and ponies, but their pointed suggestions were almost sharp enough to draw blood. In the end, many of us gave up and helped the hapless militia find their own supply wagons, assisted them in setting up their tent-halves on the provided barracks-frames, and generally beat the militia's disorganized supply-train into something approaching order. The Company's own supply train, meanwhile, quietly went about its business, setting up the Company hypocrites' own tent-city, and went forth to finish pre-positioning the necessary supplies for the week of training that was to come. The Company itself would be 'depending' on the militia regimental supply trains during training. But since none of us wanted to actually starve, Asparagus and her ponies were putting back-stops into place. Once the militia had finally gotten organized, and straggled into assembly in the open area provided in front of the temporary tent-barracks in 'City One', our doctor, my Annalist, Sawbones strode forward to address the Hydromel regiment. Sawbones wasn't actually the commander of the Company, but he played the part well, and nopony outside of the Company ever seemed able to take the actual Captain seriously when it came to PR and addressing the general public. The Captain was short, and kind of salty-looking, and had a strange accent. Everypony agreed inside the Company there was no greater tactical or operational mind, and she kept the machine running, even back in the bad days last year when she looked like she was about to keel over dead. But for somepony to go peacocking about in front of recruits or outsiders and put the fear of Nightmare into their bones? We relied on Sawbones. He was evil-looking, one-eyed, scarred, and if he cared to scare the horseapples out of you, he could drop his glamour-charm and let his one eye go thestral. It was enough to loosen the bowels of the most redoubtable of armsponies, and that was before anypony started telling the 'stories'. And so, Sawbones spoke for the Company. "Greetings, you poor, hopeless stains upon the reputation of the North! Your ramshackle, gormless, hopeless shambles of a militia has been called to the Bride's colours. The war demands blood and skulls for the ongoing slaughter! That blood, and those skulls, can either be yours, or the enemies of the Bride. We would rather prefer the latter, but if you don't get your act together, it will most certainly be yours. It is your great misfortune to be the first regiment through this training course, which means, we will be calibrating it with your hopeless carcasses! Your fellow-militia all up and down the western coast are in camps NOTHING LIKE THESE, refreshing their training, and receiving Company remedial instruction as we speak. You, you lucky flower-children of hopeless Hydromel, get to stumble through the course absolutely unprepared! Enjoy the benefits of being close enough to be marched straight here, instead of to an instruction camp in your own province. We will not take it easy on you, for the enemy will certainly not. They want you dead. They need you dead! Let us not help them achieve this goal." He went on to explain the course of instruction in the seven Expedients, and the Company's intention to train them in the basics of how to operate in skirmish order, open field deployment, and maniples. I sat there to listen, but Obscured Blade grabbed me not more than two sentences into the Annalist's spiel, and that old bastard unicorn boxed my long ears for lollygagging about listening to speeches. The witches had no time to goof around in garrison. We were a big part of the preparation and execution of the instruction-course. Since nopony could trust militia-ponies to engage instructors playing enemy-forces in a training situation, management had decided to exploit the Company's capacity for large-scale glamouring and creation of phantasms. We would provide the rebels, reivers, raiders and rabble that the militia would be 'engaging' in the course of their battle-training. Because these militia had been wasting years, in some cases decades, beating on pells and other inanimate blocks of material with their spears and their lances, and plinking away at immobile targets with those unwieldy bow-staves that the militia used for projectile weaponry in the field. Not one unit in a dozen even so much as used quintains, or at least, that was what we were told. So Bad Apple, I, and the seniors would provide for the militia an 'enhanced quintain' experience at each successive training-centre, day after day, in a closed march-loop around Vallee du Pierre's sole major port. We would be there to give the scares, and offer the realistic targets, for the militia to whet their very dulled blades upon. And we only had a week. We set out that night, and got into position in City 2 for the next afternoon's fighting-simulation. The regiment-in-training was going to be turfed out at fourth-bell and made to march the short distance to our new position. From how they'd been straggling on the way down from their own province, they'd probably consider it a full day's march, and be pretty salty by the time they came into range of our posts outside of their 'camp', which they'd have to 'take' from us. Most of the ground elements of the Company would be accompanying the regiment-in-training, and would be helping them 'assault' our position. But for that night, it was just the witches' section, and two sections for security, in case some wild-mare rebel saboteurs decided to parachute out of the night skies and overrun us in isolation. Frankly, I'd like to see the White Rose try it, I suspect BA would parboil them in their horseshoes. But safe is as safe does, I suppose. Our trainees finally wobbled into view about first bell after noon, having taken nine hours to cross a distance that we had made in three, in the dark, with half-grown pansy-flank apprentices in our ranks. Their task was to scout in our direction, find our 'raiders' supposedly sacking a 'town', and sweep our phantasms into either custody, or an open grave. Nopony really expected them to achieve 'custody'. The first day of training was in 'open field order'. Which basically just meant, move in clusters, listen to your corporals and sergeants, follow the flag if you can see it, swarm the enemy if you spot her. We would mostly be training them in why open-field was a poor substitute for skirmish order in the field, and a worse substitute for maniples in the assault or the line of battle. I know, big talk for a jenny who hasn't even gotten her full growth yet, and has up to this point been mostly kept from the intensive fighting. Rye Daughter's seen more action than I have. Mostly because BA's pyromancy has always been a much more impressive and effective battleground tool than my glamours and ghoul-geases. Since my repellants, attractors, and detectors work for hooves other than my own, the Company generally has preferred to keep me in a shop, cranking out my toys, rather than on the battle-line, putting my flank in danger along with everypony else. No, I don't have a complex about it. So, I was actually tickled pink to be sitting in a little box up in a tree, looking out on a stretch of fields and orchards, where my glamours were stirring at the approach of a company of militia-donkeys, trotting forward in loose clumps with couched spears. They milled about a bit, and so I made my own projections likewise form up, coming together shoulder-to-shoulder, their halberds bobbing overhead, in squads. The militia likewise fumbled about, finding their file-mates. They began to approach my glamours tentatively. I looked down-field, and saw that the militia-ponies' Company minders were hanging back, letting the northerners get their practice in. The militia-squads started getting up to speed, so I thought I'd give them a startle. My glamours brought down their halberds, and gave forth a guttural 'huah-huah-huah!" and jabbed at the approaching militia. They stopped dead in the middle of the field, and I had them. My glamours couched their halberds, and charged. At least one of the militia squads broke and ran. Not all of them, though. I had a couple sticks floating with the glamours, enough for the weapons of the militia to hit something when they jabbed forward. Pretty soon, they'd broken my ranks, and I had them flee for the edge of the orchards. If the militia followed my illusions, I would have them get ambushed at least once. But no more. We needed to save some tricks for tomorrow, and the days after that. Huh, OK. This and the other journal entries are better than what I had in my notes. Accepted. Although you really need to brush up on your tactics with Octavius, what you have written here isn't exactly right about what they were trying to train out of the militia-ponies. See me later. - Sawbones.