FFMS019
The highest rank of our flights were bathed in the rays of the sun as we rose up into dawn from the remnants of the night and our long hunt. The other witches and I let loose our phantasmic terrors one by one, and they winked out of existence as we rose flight by flight into the light, as if the creatures of the night were being banished from this earth by the touch of the dawn.
We put on a proper show for any rebels cowering in the mud-pits and flooded trenches and hidey-holes they had found to shelter them from the wrath of the Nightmare. I imagined their wide, pin-pricked-pupil eyes staring up into the light of onrushing day, watching their nemesis returning into the darkness which spawned her.
Our little display of theatrical brio complete, the Lieutenant led her troops home, reduced to the mere physical and mortal wings and limbs of the ponies and griffins of the aerial cohort. With the dawn behind us, each flight bent upon their descent curves, gyring westward, homeward. Down towards fields in which each section's wagon-homes were parked. The witches' conveyances were taken by their drivers to the unified camp that Throat-Kicker and a number of civilian carters had put together next to the ranks of the aerials' cart-tents; all but for me and Whirlwind.
We were carrying the battered body of one of our griffins, a hen named Greta who had landed poorly in one last pre-dawn pass and had either sprained a couple things, or possibly broken a limb or two. I wasn't entirely sure – that sort of thing was more Rye Daughter's brief, and Sawbones had never provided me any more training in medical aid than a standard Company pony receives.
Well, that, and what I've read in his unfinished chapters of his Book. For a pony who is so hard on overly-technical digressions in pages intended for the Annals, he is surprisingly prone to rattling on. Anything to talk about other than other ponies' private lives, the prude.
We delivered the battered griffin to the theoretical custody of the surgeons of the main field-hospital, but we actually ended up leaving her in the calm hooves of a Rennet donkey, a soldier turned orderly who seemed to be taking care of business in those early hours. I told Whirlwind that if she wanted to just park the gig somewhere convenient, I could walk home; I wanted to track down Rye and see what the last few days had looked like from her perspective.
When I found Rye Daughter, she was passed out in a cot near the front of a tent full of snoring and very, very blood-stained ponies. I looked around at my master Sawbones' surgical staff, all of them dead to the world, and I wondered who was taking current casualties. As I turned to leave, the old bear himself came shuffling into sight, heavy bags under his one remaining eye, blood-stained from dock to poll, as if he had been bathing in the stuff.
"Boss! I hope you're not going to lay down in a perfectly clean cot looking like that. Showers! We haul them from place to place and across dreadful muddy tracks for reasons other than their decorative appeal!"
"Ah. Apprentice. I hear you had an eventful night?"
"You did? From whom?"
"Well, the usual way I suppose. She's always whispering in my ear anymore. Constant updates, you know. I… don't think I've been paying proper attention, though. You may have to help me out with some of my material later on, when we've all more sleep than this. I gather that they'll be coming at us again this morning, or maybe in the afternoon?"
I blinked in confusion, not sure how he had arrived at that totally inaccurate assumption.
"Boss, I think you really need some sleep, if that's where you're at in the current state of affairs. Far as I could tell last night, the enemy has disappeared into the rough. The ones we couldn't find and kill, spent the night hiding in muddy holes. Well, I think. A surprising number of mudpits and quicksand holes were showing all sorts of lifesign by my magics, all over the field. But we couldn't see tail nor mane of any of them, really. The ones that didn't run for it, if you ask me. We didn't cast all that far back into their backfield, maybe there's some intact elements a quarter-day's march back?"
"What? Hey, you, yes you," he said to empty air. "How is it that I'm apparently working on fifteen-hour-old information, you blue nag?" I didn't see the Princess he must have been talking to, but it had to be her, because he would never abuse the Cherie-aspect that way, and the Nightmare would have never have put up with it. I can't say I approved of his manners, to be honest. Didn't seem right, didn't seem righteous. I found out later just how terrible the conditions had been in the forward surgical stations, and why he was so short with the Princess, and why she had cut him out of the informational loop. But it was all rather disillusioning. One's master should not quarrel publicly with one's Princess.
I prodded him towards the long lines still crowding the pump-driven shower stations, and left him dozing against a pair of pegasi mares likewise asleep on their hooves, the three of them leaning against each other like a pony-tripod. Hopefully their fellows would wake them all up before they missed their turn at the showers.
The warlocks' encampment was beyond the showers a short trot, no more than a few minutes. My aching legs needed the respite from that long night spent crouching in my tiny gig-chair. It wasn't particularly taxing to sit so, but after a while, your muscles start to cramp, and if you're not careful, your legs can fall asleep. So I might have been pronking a bit on the way to our home away from not-really-home. Hey, I'm young enough, I can get away with that sort of thing. I may have caught a few dirty looks, though.
Dance Hall had been the closest we all had had to a home for a fairly long time, and that hadn't been all that long of a time, in retrospect. A few months more than we had spent up at the Palisades, or the string of fortifications before that. Home was returning to its old definition again, the company of fellow Company ponies, and a nest of blankets in a familiar wagon. I found my cart, with Otonashi already sleeping curled up against the carter who carried our goods and supplies around with him. I let them be, even though they both sprawled over the space I usually occupied in the wagon. I was young, I could sleep anywhere.
I wasn't ready to sleep, anyways. So I wandered. And my wandering brought me to the supply-wagons, and a dozing Throat-Kicker, looking fifteen years older than she should have, her wing-stump wrapped up tight. A single timber-weasel laid watchfully beside the invalided pegasus, curled up within the circle of her forehooves. They weren't exactly… friendly, but they knew who fed them, and who loved them. And though the salty older mare would never admit it, she was fond of her accidental charges. Almost as fond as she was of…
And there was the rest of the timber-weasels, piled up in a protective hedge around a passed-out thestral filly – almost a mare, these days. Cherie slept with a grin on her face, and gripped two of the larger timber-weasels by their high thorn-scruffs. I looked closer, and their empty-socketed eyeless hollows were narrowed like a pair of cats being stroked by an indulgent gran-mere. The other four were curled close around the thestral's wings and her lower legs, as if to protect her from thieves that might steal away their treasure, their prize.
Those animate shrubberies knew which side their rose-bush cuttings were buttered on, I had to admit.
I sighed, and found a drier patch of mud to sleep on. The timber-weasels might love Cherie and her maîtresse, but they knew well enough that I was a stingy hoof with the cuttings. They barely tolerated me, and certainly weren't safe to cuddle in my unconscious state.
I didn't get much more than four hours when a messenger arrived from command, demanding my presence at the operations tent.
"Can I get enough time to shower off this mud?"
"Jenny, they're not going to give a hoof-full of horseapples. Get over there soonest."
And so I got. The timber-weasels' captives were assured their proper sleep – that squirrelly messenger wasn't about to risk a cannon full of rose-thorns just to wake a half-grown filly like Cherie.
The operations tent was jumping, as it generally was in those urgent days. I looked about, searching for the Lieutenant or Gibblets to report to, someone to take the burden of interacting with the actual higher-ups. My eyes adjusted to the relative darkness of the tent, and I realized that the Captain, the General, a number of her colonels and brigadiers were all standing around a sand-table of the Clearances, and every single one of them had their muzzles turned to little old me in the tent-entrance, staring expectantly as if they expected – I don't know what.
"Captain, sir? Did you intend to send for Gibblets or the Lieutenant?"
"No, little donkey. Word is that you're the pony to talk to about what exactly happened last night over the enemy positions. Both Gibblets and the Lieutenant delegated you to make their case."
Good of them to tell me about it. Or at least, to have had the Princess brief me before this little ambush. Ah, bah.
I approached the sand-table, and began gesturing broadly, trying to remember all our sweeps, our little skirmishes, where we had found resistance, all the places we had found nothing at all, the veritable swiss cheese state of the enemy's positions at the beginning of the night, and the total collapse I had seen as dawn broke over the battlefield.
It all came and went quicker than I had expected, and I was done almost before I had started, it seemed afterwards. They asked question after question, and I answered what I could. My witch-talents suited me to this sort of reporting, it is true, and I handled the matter better than Bad Apple or Cherie might have, but an elder warlock could have done even better.
Brigadier Guillaime replaced me at the sand-table and continued the presentation. His regiments had been probing the front since dawn broke. "We honestly thought they had pulled back, and were getting ready to ambush our skirmish line. There's a lot of abandoned equipment in front of the main line, most of it wrecked, but not all of it. The officers commanding the skirmish line have been, waal – spooked is the word for it. Even the bodies are missing for the most part."
"You'll find them in the mudholes," I interjected without thinking. "They're there, some of them, the ones that didn't drown themselves or die of exposure. Some of them might even be stuck down there."
The entire conference turned to stare at me, and I blushed and allowed myself to be dismissed to a chair in the back of the tent. I listened absently to the rest of the meeting, half-dozing. A few hours had hardly been enough other than to just leave me groggy and ready to keel over if I hadn't been trained better than that. Obscured Blade's hickory switches had prepared me well enough for this, I will grant that to the miserable old horn-head.
They planned a major advance with the bulk of Brigadier Guillaime's regiments, with a hoof-full of Left and Right Division battalions in support. The rest of the Left Division was already casting forward from its supporting line to our left rear, where they had dug in a while back. A scattering of out-of-control ghouls had made their way to that flanking position, where they were easily destroyed by my doughy former ponies-in-arms. They didn't have any of the protection against the undead inherent in being a member of the Company, but they still were willing to face those pony-eating monsters. Good for them.
The regimental colonels and the brigadiers scattered to the four winds, to implement the afternoon's plans. I asked a Cherie-aspect to watch for me, and bring me to awareness if somepony needed me, and then I got some urgently needed rest.
As it turned out, nopony needed me. I awoke a number of hours later, awakened not by the pocket princess, but rather the hesitant tromp of a steady stream of hoof-steps outside the tent. I followed a pair of the General's aides outside, and we marveled at the column of mud-caked prisoners being marched past the operations tent by northern regulars in full panoply, spears at the ready. I have never seen soldiers so visibly un-mared as this collection of unfortunates. Exhausted, coated mane, tail and coat in dried mud, wild-eyed and spooking at every shadow and dark corner – they looked like they were being led to their own executions.
I couldn't resist; I cast my dark-sight spell on myself with a slight pinking of my fetlock on a spur, and gave them the full effect of the old thestral eye.
The guard detail gave me a real earful later after they recovered the semi-escaped prisoners from where they had fetched up after their stampede - mostly tangled up in the tents and wagons of the depot across the way from operations. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I'm pretty sure they would be even more docile for their guards afterwards, those terrified prisoners of war. Especially after I grinned my sharp-toothed grin at them in apology for scaring them.