In the Company of Night

by Mitch H


Mudholes And Stockyard Syndrome

FFMS005

Not all militia were created equal. Scattered among the time-servers, the wet-manes and the old salters were a number of talented ponies and donkeys, even mystically talented ponies. These were clever people who had managed to hide their skills from the Imperials' voracious talent-scouts somehow, long enough to find their niches within their respective militia-companies, among ponies and donkeys who had either languished ignorant of their fellow militia ranker's skills, or had conspired to hide said skilled individuals from the authorities.

One such cluster of talented ponies was a set of brothers who we caught messing with the mud on the fourth circuit of the training grounds, hidden with two similarly-skilled cousins among the militia-ponies of the I Chutes des Cristal. They might have hidden forever among their peers, just another set of vaguely similar-looking earth ponies, variants on a theme of crimson, red and scarlet, if it weren't for a system of heavy gusting squalls which turned the barely-traversable mud of the training-circuit's farmlanes and byways into impassible morasses that could swallow a small donkey entire without even a tuft of her ears to be seen above the surface of the muck.

I know this to be true, because Gibblets had to fish me out of one particularly deep trough I found myself drowning in during that horrid week. I was shit-brown for a day and a half until I could finally wash the last bit of Vallee du Pierre out of my coat, painted from fetlock to ear-tuft in dried mud.

So, when I tell you that the mud of a Vallee du Pierre spring was enough to test the patience of an immortal alicorn, you can take as read, that I know of what I write. And the brothers Humus were not all that patient, nor did they find it easy to resist the entreaties of their weary, desperate fellow militia.

So it was that the militia caught us out of position for a change, instead of vice-versa, and made that third week an exercise in frustration and confusion for the witches' section. Time and again, we had to form up out of place, while still in motion, separated or in great confusion. It hardly provided the expected training experience for the militia-ponies of Chutes des Cristal, but at least we were generally able to separate out that regiment from the seriously trailing militia of Rennet's fifth regiment, who caught none of the advantages of the earthbending savants. Not that we warlocks out in front figured it out, but the Company sections trailing the CdC regiment caught them out quickly enough.

I will say that once we isolated the Humus ponies, the rest of their regiment still maintained a level of skill and morale which set them above and beyond the usual run of northern militia. They bred them tough and intrepid in that remote province, even when they didn't have the ability to strain the water out of a bottomless morass of muck, or to flood a dry field with groundwater.

Cup Cake and Dancing Shadows took custody of the Brothers Humus and their two cousins, and that was all she wrote. We cut that circuit short, and took the rest of that week to work with the regiments cooperatively instead of combatively. We tested out the limits and constraints of the Humus touch, seeing if we could figure out a way to open up narrow passageways through muck, or to drown a defending line just before an assaulting force reached their position.

Their Company minders took away the two regiments' spears, and told them to play pretend while we experimented with our new toys. That way, we could march actual ponies, donkeys, and caribou across fields against each other, without producing too many accidental stabbings and clubbings.

It mostly turned out that the marshification talents of the Humus clan wasn't rapid enough to be used tactically on the attack, or in a rapid deployment on the defense, but we were impressed with the long-term value of a pony who could generate moats in a couple of hours, or dry out roads on the advance. It was three times as fast as anything the construction corps could accomplish with planking or corduroying, and it didn't require the heavy and expensive supplies that would have to be hauled hither and thither across the roads of Tambelon by mere mortal ponies.

Talented ponies like the Humus clan were not the only thing that the secret sisters were looking around for, in their long lurking stalk of each regiment as it passed through their domain. Dancing Shadows and Cup Cake had become quite close in the past six months or so, and were now working as a team, evaluating the thundering hordes of militia for suspicious behavior, possible spies, and saboteurs. I could not tell from my vantage-point how effective they were being in this endeavor. It wasn't something you could look over and just see – like six file of militia plunging into a sudden morass opening up in the middle of a dry field, for instance.

Still funny, I swear to Grogar.

Anyways, they were skulking about, asking questions, poking at ponies, seeing if they poked back. And a good number poked back, or at least, that's what I've heard. Corporal Cake began to sport shiners around about this time, as well as the occasional full-body bruise, and I'd noticed that the terrible twosome, along with their standard-bearer minder, had become even less popular among the militia than those of us in the witches' section. And we were the warlocks who were setting them on fire, tripping them with vines, and beating them over the head and shoulder with animated clubs.

Imagine my surprise when the older jenny and her Stockyard-syndrome earth pony sidekick showed up one evening in the fourth circuit 'round the training course, along with three militia-ponies and one of the General's ADCs.

"Feufollet, we need your help with something. You're Sawbones' understudy, right?" asked Dancing Shadows quietly, trying to keep our conversation out of the hearing range of the outsiders.

"Yeah? All that means is I can carry around the Annals-chest, and read the occasional volume of the Annals without Sawbones there to open up the locks. And I don't have it with me – it should be with the extra baggage back at port." I shudder to think what might have happened if I had been carrying the chest when I fell into that mudhole. On the one hoof, the chest weighs nothing when Sawbones or I am in contact with it, and it moves frictionlessly in our hooves. On the other hand, its inertial moment is effectively infinite without our contact, and neither of us have ever experimented to see if it was waterproof or capable of acting as a flotation device. Somehow I doubt it, but that's the problem – one just can't be sure. And you damn better *not* try any such baffle-headed experiments. It's the Company's heart and soul, not a damn mystical puzzle-box. – Sawbones

"According to the Lieutenant, it also means that you can officiate at an induction ceremony. And we need one. Right now, if you have a moment," said Cup Cake, looking shifty.

I stared at the two of them. Then I looked at the Equestrian spy in particular. "Miss Cake, what on Tambelon do you think you're doing? I thought you were an Equestrian loyalist. You yourself have told all of us how we're traitors to the homeland, that the Princess is a madmare, and that we're all lunatic cultists out of touch with the true path to harmony!"

She rolled her eyes at me, smug as only that mare could be. I looked down at her, and suddenly realized I was taller than her. I frowned, unsettled by the sudden realization.

"Look," she finally said. "I have my issues with you folks, you know that better than most. But there's home disputes, and out-of-doors disputes. You don't bring the former out of doors where everypony and their neighbors can hear you airing your family's dirty laundry. This isn't Equestria, now is it? And Nightmare Moon may be a genocidal maniac, but she's, well, our genocidal maniac. And we're here in this death-addled craphole full of religious madponies and undying horrors. One must make… allowances for family and for friends, mustn't one? And demented and dangerous as Nightmare Moon is, she's the closest thing to an Equestrian Princess within four portals of this sodden tartarus."

"What's that got to do with inducting random ponies and donkeys into our 'genocidal doom-cult', as I believe you once described it to me as?"

"Well, it's like this. They want to join. And who am I to stand in their way? It's a free tyrannical craphole, isn't it?"

I just stared at her.

"Look, OK, maybe we need to confirm their loyalty," she admitted very quietly – not whispering in a way to attract attention, but speaking slightly, without much in the way of volume. "And that might require a way for the snaggly-toothed horror to find her way into their hearts, their minds and their secret dreams." Now speaking louder, the earth-pony continued, saying, "If I'm going to be haunted by our common night-horror, might as well make good use of that demented pry-bar."

"I still think that if I were your Equestrian handler, I'd haul you back in chains as a crazed turn-coat, but you're the one that needs to manage your divided loyalties. Point me at 'em, and have your beau rustle up his lich-sticker. I think I can remember a bit of Annals to cover the necessary ceremony. I've heard Sawbones recite it often enough."

And so I found myself officiating in the induction of first a few militia-ponies into the Black Company, and then an Imperial lieutenant. I had no idea what exact scheme the two spy-hunters were up to, but in the end, it wasn't my business. I was still an apprentice after all.

Odd that the magic of the Company allowed a probationary member like myself to induct proper brethren into the mystical body, though. I hear tell of mages who treat magic as if it were a science, full of predictions and measurements and statistical analysis. For those of us here on the primitive backend of Creation, it was more of an art than a science – and a wild, savage art at that.