//------------------------------// // There Go My Ponies // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS146 My participation in the painstaking coaxing of Castellan Long Scroll off of his high ledge over the virtual paving-stones of Imperial politics was limited, but it seemed as if it took forever. We finally got him out of the stockade cell, which was just as well, as the corporal's replacement had arrived for her shift, and there was a new wave of inebriated Hydromel militia to dry out in the cells. That pristine cell would be getting its vomitous baptism shortly, or I wasn't the judge of intoxicated donkeys. Tartarus of a time for the militia to be getting stink-eyed and riotous, though. We seemed to be on the move. By the time I went looking for my ambulance and the fragment of the medical corps seconded to this division, I discovered that they had left, along with the rest of the Company 'battalion' and supports. I looked back and forth through the torch-lit and busied lanes of the Left Division's encampment, and contacted the Spirit via my aching, overstrained self. Partway down the Road towards the front, three hours away and on their way to High Earth. Not moving at that very moment, but oh my aching head and poor, future-aching hooves, there was no sleep for me that night. I drew over myself my cloak, rueful that I had left my chamfron along with my baggage in the missing ambulance, and began hoofing it towards my runaway command, such as it was. I spent that entire night expecting an uproar on the 'princess radio', as Feufollet calls it, rushing towards the one mobile surgical platform in the province, still hours ahead of me on the darkened Road. Darkness wrapped herself around me like a warm early summer evening, the insects and the small nocturnal animals singing in concert through the moonlit fields that stretched out into the endless distance. Nothing ever really broke. The pegasi courted their damnation again and again through the night, and haunted the enemy in the open and across the half-moonlit fields and woodlots of the distant rolling hills so far south and east of where I cantered, alone with my thoughts and the Spirit. Hour after hour, pounding along well-maintained metalled, sealed surfaces, my steel hooves striking sparks from the occasional shard of stone stuck up out of the asphalt slurry. The occasional small wound in the distant fighting, strains, bruises – but nothing life-threatening. The Spirit was with the aerial cohort that night, and all was well with the world as we closed upon the war. The fugitive would be brought to bay at last. As dawn broke over true hilltops in the far, hazy distance, my watery eye spied the rear guard of the Third Cohort, trailing lances still dark below the sunrays streaming over the distant ridgelines. We were actually in front of the castra west of High Earth when I finally caught up with my medical corps-cattle. "There goes my ponies, I must find out where they're going, so that I might lead them!" I gasped out at a bemused Sack, who, damn him, looked as fresh as a daisy after an entire night's-march. "Could have asked, Mistress would have told, caught a chariot and been ahead of us?" Damn ox was laughing at me. "Too much other business tonight, too many ponies walking tonight because we need pegasi out scouting and screening. A simple night's-march can be done in my sleep. And almost was. Nice to see no screaming patients in the convenience. I take it reports were right, we got off easy last night?" We were standing still now, as the fore of the column was negotiating its way into the castra. I looked up at the distant ridgeline, calculating the drop lines and fields of fire. Just far enough, plus a bit. The castral ground was out of the military zone of control of those hills. I went to find Octavius, still eyeing that ridgeline. He was standing by the castral gate, as the tired armsponies of the Third filed into the camp, heading for the scouts' section. The tired unicorn was talking to an even more tired-looking Feufollet and a pony I didn't know, an earth pony with a cloak and overstuffed saddlebags. No caparison, no helm. "Octavius! You seeing what I'm seeing over there to the east?" "Sawbones, did you just chase our dust-trail all night long? Has anyone reminded you recently that you're our surgeon, not a battle-commander or an AWOL ranker?" "Buck you, you hopped-up corporal of the guard! You took off with my corps-cattle! And my ambulance! And my baggage! What was I going to do, hire a inn-room with my nonexistent personal supply of deniers?" "Huh. Uh, oops? Who can keep track of you, you night-haunt? You show up in your chariot like the Lady of the Night, splash around making a mess, never let me know you're in camp…. Hey, come to think of it, buck you buddy! Your lack of planning isn't my emergency!" Feufollet got in between us before I rattled his brainbox and got him thinking like a Company pony again. "Hey, boss, sir? Let's introduce Sawbones here to our new friend and his friends. Boss? This is Night Watch. He's brought us a lot of news. And his ponies will be bringing us lots more of the same. Night Watch – what are we calling your friends now that it's day and we're not in the woods for the night?" I blinked at this utterly cryptic nonsense, and turned to the cloaked pony. Now that I looked under the bulging saddlebags and lack of barding, Night Watch was a damn hard stallion, lack of weapons and all. "Not going to buy 'the Tinkers', are you?" he asked in a deep baritone. I shook my head in wordless negation. "Fine, the Patrol it is. Since your young jenny seems to have already been given that name by a loose-lipped old fart in New Coltington. I hear tell that prison put a bit of life in that old fool's step. Who should I thank for that?" "Nopony here, if by 'old fart' you mean the militia Major-General. I think it was somebody in the line of command, made necessary when the Castellan had his little… episode." I tried not to glare at Feufollet, but she caught the insinuation and her expressive ears folded back nonetheless. She'd have to work on those tells. Although if I got her into a poker game, I might not leave the table the poorest pony in the room for once. Back to the subject at hoof. "So I'm to understand that your Patrol might have some expertise in these districts we're coming into? And knowledge of who's where, doing what to whom?" "Certainly. A humble society of traders, tinkers and peddlers can hardly make their way in this hard world without a proper supply of information as to who is needing what, and who is looking for whom where. Often, these days, with pikes and hook-bills in hoof, and blood in their eyes. Who fears the ghoul and the revenant, when ponies and bison stalk the land with murder in their hearts?" "I'll take that for a yes. Do we need to be concerned about all these ridgelines just east of here? That looks like highly defensible terrain from down here. I don't want to have to stitch back together ponies cut up trying to take those hilltops from clever-boots White Rose sneaking up on us while we're here talking like civilized ponies." "Today, we have nothing to fear from ridgelines and the western rebels. Today, they are still miles and miles away, and trying to find enough food and supplies to find the way around the fortifications in front of the Hayfriend. Many drowned westerners have been dug out of that shallow streambed by the smug defenders of the great city in the last two weeks. The western rebel has grown cautious of those soldiers behind their swamp, driven from the open field though they were." I stared at the cohort as it and its wagons found their way into the stirring, half-empty camp. I yelled at Sack to go find the regiment's medical corps, if it had one, and set up in the dedicated hospital-section if some damn pony wasn't already squatting. I turned back to Octavius and the others. "What regiment is up here again? Chutes des Cristal?" "Vallee du Pierre, boss." "Right, OK. Pony colonel, I think? Let's go make our bows. See what we can do for now. Anypony have a map of this benighted wasteland?" The new Patrol-pony, irate humour alight in his eyes, pulled a piece of parchment from his left saddlebag, and gestured forward with his muzzle. So we went to find the pony in charge of the forward detachment of the Left Division, first on scene, first no doubt into the fight. Whenever we found it, wherever it was hiding.