//------------------------------// // Beech Grove, or, Contact // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// FFMS011 I climbed the hillside above the Road south-east of High Earth, the Bride's engineers having dug a gap through the ridgeline to pass their legionary road along an easy slope rather than wind it up the somewhat steeper sides of the really rather modest elevation, the sort of thing which passes for hills in the country south of Rime. Sawbones about had an aneurysm when he laid eyes on those ridges from the campground on the far side of the town, and insisted that we claim them 'before some damn rebel gets there first and makes us regret it'. Nobody could convince him that the signal absence of any White Rose closer than the outskirts of Dover several dozen miles to the south and east and the lack of any military objective in this direction made that highly unlikely, and so, under the pressure of his considerable stubbornness when he got worked up, I was accompanying a battalion of militia along with a stiffener of Company sections to clear each ridgeline choke point along the Road from High Earth to the bridge over the Hayfriend. The battalion had been posted yesterday south and east of the main regiment in the general direction of Dover, along a lesser local market-road. It had accomplished exactly jack and shit where it had lolled about, while the pegasi and griffins skirmished with enemy scouts far outside of support range of this not-particularly-mobile fragment of the Vallee du Pierre. So it wasn't exactly a loss to the dispositions of the Division's forward elements, to leave a single company on yesterday's post, while I led the rest of them on a recce along the open Road, so far as we had open road. Company doctrine holds that you clear passes by assaulting the sides of the pass, rather than trying to rush the pass proper. If the enemy knows what it is doing, they'll post the shoulders of the pass anyways, and if they don't, hey! Free massacre! The doctrine was sound, but doctrine was exhausting in execution, as we swarmed up the sides of each tiny pass, found a signal lack of enemy, and then descended the far side to take to the Road to cross the wide valleys in between, until it was time to seize another empty crest and another empty pony-made pass through low, rolling ridges. By late afternoon, we were looking down on a somewhat burnt-looking town in front of a definitely burnt-looking former bridge, barely visible from the hillside. The Hayfriend was a feeble little thing, utterly invisible beneath its high banks and screen of soggy-looking oaks. The only reason I could see the burnt remnants of the Beech Grove bridge was that its box-frame construction had left burnt-black broken ribs jutting up over the high banks. I couldn't spot the beeches the town had to have been named after, it was all farmland and apple-orchards and the scraggly swamp-oaks down in the creekbed. The troops that had burnt the town and the bridge – and I had been informed that the ones that had done the latter had almost certainly not been the former – were no-where to be seen. Which was peculiar, because this was the most direct route between the north and north-west and beset Coriolanus in the misty distance. The war had been here, and then it had gone, and would no doubt return again in its good time. Some activity in the fields and the town proper indicated that the burning had been more notational than enthusiastic, and that there were still civilians in the district. The Patrol had scattered far ahead of us that morning, an hour before the Vallee Major had gotten her ponies on the Road. A pair of Night Watch's friends were supposed to find us somewhere along the Road, wherever we fetched up by the afternoon. I was keeping an eye out for them, while the corporals and sergeants of the militia posted their three-sixty guard against unwanted visitors around our position dominating the Road-pass. I examined the foliage around our position, and started using Gibblets' method for feeling out the runners and vines of 'friendly' plants for the usual tricks and traps in case we had to put up a sudden defense. Whenever you're not moving, you best be planning to defend what you're sitting on. The hedgerow across the small field from my position stirred, and out popped two earth ponies, hats, bulging packs and saddlebags alike. The fact that the hedgerow was *inside* the sergeants' perimeter was monumentally dispiriting. The militia had learned their lessons, but they hadn't fully absorbed them yet. The fact that the two ponies were recognizably two of Night Watch's friends made up a great deal for the failure of the militia to be, well, proper Company ponies. "Well met in the wood!" I chirped. "Well met in the wood, indeed," replied the older of the two 'peddlers'. "You're well and away from the nearest White Rose, by at least a dozen miles. Word is, there's to be a screen on patrol from the riverbank to the second ridgeline today. Double-company strength, maybe? No more than a battalion, although that's probably more over towards Dover, if your winged friends keep up their harassment." Dover was nestled in a wide low spot in the rolling ridge country that separated New Equestria from the Baronies along the river. For whatever reason, the Bride's engineers had not chosen to include Dover in their military road system, so it languished, once a great market-town in the good old days, now a decaying farming-country baronial seat. It laid on the direct route between High Earth and New Coltington and the river-districts. The main body back in High Earth could deal with whatever was developing over in that direction. We were here to see if we couldn't make a hoof-shake with the remnants of the Army of the Housa down in Coriolanus. We wouldn't be doing it via that burnt bridge, though. I had laid out a cloth set of banners on the new grass of the open field the battalion had surrounded, a wide white cross within a black square. As I was talking with the scouts from the Patrol, a flight of pegasi came spiraling in from the west for a landing. It was Whirlwind and her half-section. They'd spotted a company-strength enemy formation in motion on the road to the southwest, approaching Beech Grove. We huddled with the Patrol, and it was agreed. The Major led two of her three companies along with her Company supports southward cross-country behind the Patrol scouts, who knew the area well enough to get us through the local fields and farmlanes quickly. The afternoon was getting long, and a late-spring stormcloud was threatening by the time they led us into position along a worm-fence just the other side of the market-road leading into the half-burnt town. One of the pegasi was hovering overhead, wearing one of my field-expedient phantasms, visible to us, but nothing but a wisp of sky-vapour to the approaching enemy. She gave us a series of hoof-signals as the enemy advanced. I felt out the fresh new growth around the road, and coaxed them across the roadway, as carefully as I could. Blood dripped down both of my forearms, and I relaxed my concentration upon the plant-domination magic. It wasn't my bailiwick, and took more out of me than the usual effort. I turned instead to my preferred tricks, and gathered the imaginary horrors which I would conjure upon the enemy when they finally showed their sorry – And there they came. Four by four, pikes held high, chamfrons thrown back upon their shoulders and caparisons tied up and piled on their backs. Every fourth pony carried unlit torches, every other fourth carried bags. They weren't here to fight, they were here to loot, have fun, and burn. We let the column enter the kill-zone as deep as they could get before I pulled the vine and runner trip-lines and set off the screaming horrors. A full third of the enemy column planting their feckless muzzles into the dirt and gravel of the market-road was all the signal the militia needed. I didn't even need the screaming horrors, I think they distracted the Vallee militia more than they accomplished in herding the enemy back into the kill-zone, to be honest. The enemy had been laughably unprepared for an ambush. It was over in moments. It took considerably longer to finish off the wounded and decapitate the dead. The storm broke early, and the darkness of storm-clouds and rain faded into true twilight and evening damp, before we were done. I was able to talk the Major into returning to the Road, the reserve company, and our expected position closer to the main body in High Earth. The night-march did not make me popular with the Vallee rankers. At least we had pegasi cover to clear the passes on the way home. None of us, bloodied, soaked, and tired, were in a condition to climb each ridge as we went. It would have been a perfect counter-ambush on the part of the enemy to squat in one of those defiles and take their revenge for our small success. It certainly would have been what I'd have done in their place.