//------------------------------// // The North Concentrates, or, The Amputation // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS148 The Spirit awoke me from a dreamless sleep the second morning after the field defeat of the Vallee regiment. I had spent a night and a half in the surgery, putting ponies back together and cutting losses before they became fatalities. When we were finished, there were a pile of sacks along the outside of the Heavy Earth castral hospital, all of them full of severed, mangled limbs, awaiting the pyre. I climbed into a cot, and slept for fifteen hours. One of the bags held the left forelimb of Octavius. His luck had run out, and I had to cut away the mangled hoof and the pulp that was left of his fetlock. He was lucky he only lost the lower half of the cannon; the fitting for a prosthetic would be dirt-simple. And unicorns barely use their hooves as it was; he still would be as dexterous as any other horn-headed buffoon among Uncle Blade's nieces and nephews. But even under the influence of my most powerful concoctions, he'd still be in recovery for a month. The Spirit was a glad interruption, to be honest. Her absence after months, even years of constant presence in the back of my brain had been… almost like a amputation itself. Like a part of me had been cut away, and ached like an empty socket, a stunned stump still half-remembering the lost limb. She wore her Nightmare like a set of barding, like a filly wearing her brother's caparison and over-sized peytral. The Spirit looked uncomfortable in her own ectoplasmic hide. I let her collect herself without prodding, without inquiry. Not my place to poke at her weaknesses, or her shortcomings, or whatever had caused the communications failure. Not my place… She informed me that I was late for an operations meeting, that they were waiting it on my presence. The Lieutenant was in castrum, along with the Brigadier and – the General herself? I hurried to see this seven-days wonder before it evaporated in the chaos of a camp filling quickly up with regiments pouring through the gates willy-nilly, construction details already expanding the campgrounds into the neighboring cropland. Somepony was expecting to house a large contingent of soldiers and an even larger depot of supplies, looked like. They were meeting in a new tent, thrown up over the walls reserved for a commander in the center of the campground. Within was the Lieutenant, the hapless Colonel En Banc, Brigadier Eugin, and there, indeed, was the towering, grey-pelted Knochehart, looking somewhat wind-burned and frazzled. None of her attendants but the mousy little lieutenant assigned liaison to the Division were present. The Lieutenant herself must have flown in the General to take control of the front, before things spiraled any further out of control. "Oh, good, Doctor. That only leaves the tardy Major Jean-de-Dieu, and we are ready to begin." "No, Your Excellency, I think not," I said, talking out of turn. "We really should have the representative of the Patrol in here. Half, and maybe more than half of our intelligence is being gathered by Night Watch's ponies. Better to have them in the room, than relaying information via our memories and getting some of it wrong." "The what? What in Grogar's rotting beard is the Patrol?" boomed the old doe, rattling the premolars in my mouth. She had a set of lungs on her, the old General. The young lieutenant, a scrawny little stallion barely out of colthood, whispered into her ear, rising up on his toes to reach that lofty elevation. "The damnedest things you lot have gotten up to down here. Well, more information's better than none, and the locals in our corner, better than in the rebel's. Don't just stand there with a stupid expression on your muzzle, go gather up your civilian scout!" I trotted off to find where the Patroller had gotten off to while I was asleep. Our second try at a planning meeting came off slightly more successfully. I managed to track down the elusive Night Watch sitting in a kitchen tent, watching the Cakes baking with field-ovens, and tucking into a pile of bearclaws, still steaming from the oven. I grabbed a 'claw of my own, and chivvied the carb-stunned, smiling earth pony towards the command tent. By the time we got there, the disgraced Major Soult was sitting splay-eared, catching a faceful from a three-barreled battery of abuse from his superiors. We waited, patiently, for the General and her underlings to wind down their tag-team denunciation. You could see the flop-sweat rolling off the poll of the equally culpable En Banc, who had left field command to the miserable major. I caught her eye, and something about my expression might have caused her to unstring her personal ballista and refrain from contributing to the barrage any further. The subject of the conference turned to the rather vital matter before us, which was how to proceed now that the troops were pouring into the vicinity of High Earth. Most of the Left Division was here, and would need someplace to go not long after arrival, because the Reserve was right behind them, and the Middle Division a day behind that. The pieces were in movement, and we would soon be concentrated around this sleepy farm-town on the edge of the Baronies, as Night Watch called the districts to the south. The Lieutenant and the Patroller traded off as they presented the officers the current intelligence, as we knew it. The screening force which the hapless Vallee du Pierre had encountered two days before, and how it had withdrawn after its tactical victory. The operation which we had interrupted by being defeated in the field. Wait, what operation? "The Rebel tried yet again to cross the Hayfriend, about a half-day's march north of the Loyalist fragment holding their fortifications in front of little Cleves," explained the New Equestrian pony. "Your regiment encountered a strongly posted flanking force covering the crossing operation. A few of my ponies saw the train carrying the pontoon bridges, but weren't able to get north and report until yesterday evening. The roads were full of Rebel patrols and columns. For some strange reason, they thought there might be a Loyalist army sitting on their northern flank?" "Our scouts with what's left of the Army of the Housa," continued the Lieutenant, "Report that the White Rose really did get a pontoon bridge built across the Hayfriend. But then they found themselves penned in by a marshy oxbow pond or a particularly deep fen, I'm a little vague on the details, to be honest. The Hayfriend seems to be a treacherous stream. The enemy poured multiple regiments across their pontoon bridges, and then found themselves stuck behind a trackless, almost bottomless swamp. There was a nasty battle over there, once the Cleves Imperials discovered the threat to their flank. Heavy casualties on both sides, but the Rebel apparently felt themselves threatened on two sides once word of the skirmish outside of Dover reached the warlocks leading the breaching operation. They pulled back, and left the field to the Imperial force." Both Major Soult and En Banc looked very, very sour at their defeat being described as a 'skirmish', but from the description, we would be seeing much larger fights before this was over. The enemy army which had tried the Hayfriend had pulled back halfway to Braystown, and now laid the better part of a day's march south of Dover. Or somewhere in the vicinity. Soult's mortification was a demonstration that thorough scouting and good intelligence wasn't proof against a sudden surprise on the battlefield. The commanders of the other three regiments of the Left Division had filed into the back of the tent as the discussion had developed. They didn't contribute to the conversation, but merely stood, quietly observing. They would have their turn soon enough. It was decided to take the battered Vallee battalions off of the front line, and replace them with the Tonnerrians. The division's Hydromel regiment would stand to its arms as a reserve until the actual Reserve was in place, and the Chutes des Cristal would form up on the left of Tonnerre, with a battalion advanced as far forward towards Beech Grove as was practicable. The General, looking over the rough map provided by Night Watch, grunted thoughtfully. "I think I'm convinced that we have the enemy force in our front. They could easily pull out of the pocket they've thrust themselves into, at any moment. We need to concentrate further, and catch them before they get away. Lieutenant-Captain, I believe I want to signal the Right Division to arrange for the Rantoul militia to mobilize as much as they can, and to follow the Middle Division eastwards as soon as they can. They might not get here in time for a decisive battle, but if things dribble out like they might, we might be very happy for a reinforcement in a week or so." Major du Bonne, who had accompanied the brevet-Colonel of the Tonnerre when that buck had arrived an hour into the conference, broke her respectful silence, saying, "Your Excellency, if I might? We're depending rather heavily on the supplies that the consolidated baronies of Rantoul have promised us in lieu of mobilized regiments. They will no doubt take it amiss if we leave them entirely to the mercies of the plains savages, and to tell them to raise their militia would be an insult piled upon their injuries." The General glared at her donkey impediment, and ground her molars in agitation. "Bah! Fine, have them forward half of their regiments, plus their Company cohort. A small reinforcement is better than naught at all, and they will not be accomplishing anything worth their salt and bread kicking their frogs in camp behind that dull little town. If two regiments are the price I have to pay to get the use of the rest, so be it! Now, Mr. Watch, tell me about these supply lines the Rebel must be running around his siege of this Braytown Shambles. You say you haven't seen any carts or wagons to speak of otherwise?" A technical argument - about cartage and logistical load and the needs of the pontoon train just shipped by the enemy over two or three days march overland from their riverine logistics dump - evolved slowly and somewhat dully. My eyes glazed over more than once, as the observations of the Patrol and much less comprehensive reports of our aerial cohort were repeatedly challenged by the increasingly pugnacious Major du Bonne, who simply could not believe that an army of the reported size the White Rose was fielding could be supplied for long via such a narrow artery of cartage. This was really more of a Broken Sigil meeting, to be honest. I hope that I've properly summarized the gist of the conversation, but to conclude, the General's plans evolved as we watched the scouts and her head of logistics debate, and the possibility of an over-extended enemy caught in the sudden grips of starvation and defeat by logistical isolation raised its clever head over the proceeding. "Gentles all, I do believe the enemy has thrust her fool head into a guillotine! Let's aid her in her apparent desire for an amputation!" chortled General Knochehart. After the conclusion of the nearly day-long meeting, the Lieutenant and I went to find a quiet corner to conduct some Company business. "I had to take it off at mid-cannon," I confessed. "Octavius isn't in any position to command a cohort, and he won't for a month or more to come." "We've joked about his luck, such as it is, before. But this is a bit more serious than horn-burn or a couple bites taken out of him by an enterprising ghoul. We're going to have to find a new commander for the Third?" "Well, it isn't a career-ending wound, so a permanent replacement would be unkind and unnecessary. But someone needs to be the acting commander. I'm told Stomper did well enough in taking over the field command when Octavius went down." "Hyssop would be better." "Hyssop wasn't on the field, and she's got a history of pissing away promotions. She's a sergeant now, but it's what, the second or third time she's gotten that last stripe, and then lost it for something stupid?" "Three times, yes. Eventually they work it out of their system. I rather thought she was ready this time." "Well, technically she doesn't have seniority, Stomper does, and right now is actually holding command. It would be taken amiss if you made the change. I'm not in the line of command, so all I can do is make recommendations. So there's mine: leave what is, as is. Hyssop's busy managing Brigadier Eugin at the moment anyways." "Why do you have to put things that way, Sawbones?" She fluttered her wings in agitation. "We need to show respect for the line of command, especially when we're spread out like this. The Company is the spine of this army, but it isn't the army. And we're not in command, never forget that." "Of course, 'Lieutenant-Captain'." She slapped me over the head with her left wing. "Respect your elders, Annalist. I still technically outrank you in this mystical sisterhood." "Yes, ma'am."