//------------------------------// // New Equestria, or, First Impressions // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// FFMS008 "In those days the Black Company was in ser-service to the Republican Oligarchy of Mauga, having escaped the consequences of its highly chequered recent past off-world. In the third year of that service, said service found them among the canals and pestilent hammock-swamps of the Sugarteats, aiding in the encirclement and eventual siege of the great hilltop fortress-town Nickerberg…" Sawbones insisted that regular, periodic, ceremonial readings from the Annals was a vital element of Company morale and discipline, and I did my best to follow his instructions. I was not a natural public speaker, and only the warm sensation of a mystical dark wing laid across the back of my barrel kept me from stuttering even more than I already was. "…Later command insisted that the main body's disinclination to come to the aid of the detachment under attack was due to a Republican pegasi plot to baffle sound from the assault, having somehow known enough in advance to cleverly lay the exact atmospheric lensing conditions to keep the terrible sounds of battle from alerting our clever and nimble generals to the danger of destruction in detail. It is possible that the conditions had evolved naturally from the wildling nature of weather in the vicinity of chaotic wartime disorder. But it is as equally possible that the commanding general, with his weakness for the cider-barrel, was sleeping another one off when the Republican scratch force hit the two divisions of the right flank, far from any support. "We, however, in our advance camps beyond the main body, heard the fighting well enough. First the terrible slow thump, thump, thump. Each heavy crunching sound like the hooves of titans carrying those behemoths further out of the tataruses that spawned them; the titans were imaginary, but the deaths those phantom foot-steps carved out of the isolated force were not. Far too many of those thumps we heard, they were the battle-mages' death-globes blooming over Nortemaugan platoons, blowing away entire files, squads, sometimes every single pony in the formation. The dead were blown to grey cinders and scattered to poison the soil and waters. Then, when the battle-mages on both sides had exhausted their reserves, or were killed and taken out of the fight, and only then. Only then came the high warbling screams, the war-cry of the mares. The low bearlike bellowing of stallions for some reason never carried worth a hoot, but the marefolk? That pierced the heavens. As did the iron-smithy clangour of the meeting of arms, and then the indiscriminate screaming of the wounded, mare and stallion alike. "Nothing is as terrible as hearing a battle you can't see, excepting only one you can see." I closed the book, and looked out across the full membership of the Third Cohort, gathered under the torches and the gathering darkness, the wide-eyed bull-calves of Sack's medical detachment looming at the back of the crowd. "What are we to take from brother Ambrosia's story of defeat overheard? That battle is bad, ugly, to be avoided? No! It is that communication is as to strength as two to one – a weak force in full communication with its scattered self will be able to unite against a strong force without any measure for gathering itself to the fight. Know where your fellows are, know how to summon them, know when to summon them. A small force on the flank of a victorious foe can cause them to break and run even in their own triumph!" I stood, and locked eyes with my charioteer for the night, Pinfeather. One-eyed mare, a little chewed-on by life, but still a typical Company specimen of health and vigour. "Think tonight of how you can improve communication with your fellows here in the Left-Division! The Company is good at keeping touch with the Company. We need to be better at keeping the regiments in contact with each other and the rest of the army. Thus endeth the lesson!" As I walked towards Pinfeather, I noticed that there were more ponies out in the darkness than just Sack and his calves. At least several dozen militia-ponies had been listening quietly to the reading. Might have been more – there was a lot of donkeys, caribou and other ponies milling about the camp that night. I looked up at Pinfeather. "What do you think, two or three circuits and a long run down the road towards tomorrow's camp?" She smiled, showing off her mouth half-full of ivory teeth, the rest her original dental package. "Hey, fine by me. Easy gig, flying your little basket. Just no vomiting over the traces, OK?" I snorted. "Sawbones is my mentor, not my father. And I certainly haven't inherited his airsickness via what process I don't even know." The rest of the night was dull. The day, though, was restless, miserable under canvass. Spring was ending with the first real heat wave of the year, and it felt like high summer, especially in the back of an ambulance. I couldn't sleep, and had started reading from the later volume of Bitter Ambrosia I had packed for Company readings and just plain thinking about. Bitter Ambrosia was an interesting pony, and I could see where his influence had warped Sawbones. I could feel the cynicism twisting me as I lay there, steaming under that unseasonable heat. I stuck my head out of the back of the ambulance, and looked north-westwards over the heads of the rear-guard. This afternoon, it was the Chutes des Cristal, sweltering as badly as I, their chamfrons pushed back onto their shoulders, their caparisons untied with the sides rolled up and tied back again on their backs. The spear-heads danced overhead like hundreds of breezies made of light, catching the merciless sun's rays and scattering the glare across the basking black-soil fields all around us. The fresh-planted field crops were emerging everywhere, as far as the eye could see in every direction, earth ponies walking here and there through the rows, doing something or other to the fresh shoots as they went. My family had always been much more hooves-off with their fields than our pony neighbors. It was always something of an embarrassment just how much better the earth-ponies were at this farming business, my elders had complained about how the ponies bought up land, generation after generation, failed donkey farm after donkey farm. They say a thousand years ago, Tambelon was almost exclusively caribou and donkey, and its farms likewise full of the long-eared and high-racked. Then a fresh wave of pony migration brought the newcomers to our grim little world, and everypony got stinking rich. Well, not all at once, and certainly not if you weren't an earth pony or in good with the ponies. Which the nobility made sure they were, right from the very beginning. Any duc or duchesse with a thriving earth pony community in their province was a rich donkey, indeed. I gave up sleeping, and packed up my books and hopped off the back of the ambulance. Went around front to the bull-calves drawing the ambulance to tell them their free-rider was on her own hooves for the rest of the afternoon, and then I started forward to survey the rest of the column from jenny-eyes-level, as it were. It took much of the rest of the day to work my way down the long, long column. You'd think that a bit more than 6500 ponies wouldn't take up that much Road, but take into account spacing, the carts and wagons, and proper intervals, and the entire Left Division in march order took up well over a mile and a half of roadway. And I was neither an officer nor a messenger, so I wasn't authorized to use the passing lane left by the corporals along the right side of the marching troops. Gave me the opportunity to network a bit with the troops as I went. We had trod on a lot of fetlocks during the field training, but for most of them, time and good humour had banished most of the fury at our more aggressive ‘performances'. It helped that I was small and inoffensive-looking. Nopony could stay mad for long at the fresh-faced little jenny with the nervous grin. By the time I arrived at the head of the day's vanguard, the II Hydromel was approaching the last castral camping-grounds, just outside of the castle-town for New Equestria. I looked up at the sign beside the road continuing into the town, which announced ‘New Coltington'. A patrol was forming up for a pass through town itself, and I recognized the lieutenant commanding the patrol. He agreed to let me tag along if I kept to the rear and avoided any conflict. New Coltington was built like nothing I had ever seen in the North. Highly decorated one-and-a-half storey buildings were interspersed with massively overdecorated two-storey monstrosities. Hearts and sunbursts adorned every gable, crested every window-frame. The patrol stuck together, and we made for the central market and plaza. It wasn't a big town – we were far from any rivers here, any waterways. Maybe about the size of Benoit? Or Charred Horton? There were only ponies on the street, and they glared at the Hydromel militia, a mix of donkeys and ponies. And yours truly, barely visible between the shoulders of the patrol. They had re-tied their caparisons and dropped their chamfrons over their faces. They could feel something wasn't right, too. There was yelling going on in the main plaza, a refuse-strewn market-square where a number of older ponies were in the process of cleaning up behind what must have been one stem-winder of a market session. As we came into sight, I discovered Cup Cake and her looming colt-dolt, the Company battle-lance sloped casually over his shoulder like it was a garden-rake. I looked around trying to figure out why the Cakes had suddenly materialized ahead of the Left Division, and spotted the heavy chariot with a pair of irate-looking pegasi in full Company regalia, chamfrons down and wing-blades up in a dominance display. The little Equestrian spy was arguing red-faced with an equally choleric pony notable in a heavy gold chain of office and cloak. "I don't care who you say you are! I'm not giving over command of my Duc's forces to a force commander mad enough to dress his scouts up like Nightmare Night frighteners! Look at them! It's like they're getting ready to feed a pack of foals to the temple broilers!" He waved a hoof at the pegasi, who snarled in response. "And what the buck are you wearing on your baldric? You both have demon-spawn broaches! I thought you said you were representatives of the Imperium!" "Look, Castellan Long Scroll, we're duly engaged mercenaries and mobilized militia under proper command of Imperial officers. General Knochehart with her staff are a day and a half's ride westwards towards Rantoul, and I believe there's an Imperial lieutenant aid-de-camp with Brigadier Eugin in the force just now pulling into your camping grounds just outside of town. Look! Here! A patrol from the Left Division! Lieutenant, what regiment are you?" "II Hydromel, ma'am?" the Lieutenant in command clearly had no idea who Cup Cake was, or why she was here, interfering. I had no idea, either, to be honest. But I came forward, to help iron out the mess. "Good evening, Lord Castellan. I'm Feufollet of the Left Division. You've been talking with one of the Field Army's civilian liaisons, Miss Cake. And the aerial ponies who have alarmed your citizenry are mercenaries in the direct employ of the Empress. I'm sorry if we transgressed upon any local taboos or ordinances. We will do our best to keep interaction with the civilians to a minimum while in this province." "And what in Celestia's name are you supposed to be? If you're older than fifteen, I'm the son of a mule!" OK, that's about enough of that. "I am," I started as I pinked my left foreleg with the needle-bracelet on my right, "A duly accredited bloodmage in Imperial employ." My shadows began crawling out from under every piece of trash and half-abandoned market stall left in the quickly-darkening square, causing the cleaning crew to scatter in terror. Trust ponies to display hair-trigger capacity for panic. The shadows wrapped me in darkness, and I let my eyes go thestral. "Do not interfere in the affairs of warlocks, for we are subtle, quick to anger, and leave precious left for the next of kin to bury. Now WHERE IS YOUR MILITIA COMMANDER?" I had accidentally produced the Nightmare's voice from my throat. Cup Cake's eyes were wide with alarm. And Carrot Cake had a lazy grin on his long, lanky face. Oops.