//------------------------------// // Shadows Upon The Wall // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// FFMS023 The series of interrogative scoldings culminated with the advent of the greatest of our fears, the source of authority below the Princess. The Captain came to chew us out. Repeating all of the questions the others had had for Cherie, and for me, and for Bad Apple, she re-iterated them with vigour, with sadness, and with a sort of disappointed judgment I have not had to endure since I ran away from my insufferable family to join this armed circus. I can't say I enjoyed the experience. We were going for a third trip around the "what-were-you-thinking-they're-not-Grogar-damned-pets" bush, when the aging earth-pony mare's tirade was interrupted by a sudden manifestation of an additional Cherie in the tented conference-room they were using for our beratement. "Do you have any further words for us, dear Captain? Since the fillies have established, time and again, that the overwhelming majority of the sins placed against our Cherie's name were committed by me, and my phantom-sisters?" asked the tiny, still-foalish princess-Cherie. For whatever reason, while the actual thestral filly found her adolescence, and her mark, and her adult growth - the Princess version of her remained pubescent, trembling long-legged upon the cusp of adulthood. The Princess-Cherie remained a true filly, still short and swift and boiling over with energy and potential. "My dear Captain, I am here to collect my fair share of abuse and recrimination, for this is as much my fault as anypony's. Did I suborn the enemy in time of war? I am guilty. Did I spare the surrendered, and lead the dying into life and captivity? I am guilty. Did I act the White Rose for the superstitious and the credulous among our religious-fanatic opponents? With vigour, with intent, with eyes wide-open to the implications thereof. Guilty, guilty, guilty. What have you to say to that?" The middle-aged purple pony looked down at the Spirit-phantasm. "I never know what to say to you when you come to me like that." "Then better I wear the form that frightens thee the most, Captain?" And the phantasm grew, and shifted, until the grey wings were feathered and blue, and the grey mane grew out blue-black and starred, and a horn burst from her blue-furred forehead. "Shall we stand before thee the Princess of the Realm, exiled, disgraced, left without role or purpose? Ah, but take care, child – for even thou, our most puissant and fierce Company-Captain, art naught but a child before ourselves. "Are we not the shadow thou hast cast upon Eternity? Is not the Company the star-light in our mane, the glittering nebulae of our tail? Thou art the shadow we cast upon this world, the will that we echo in dreams. We are the medium moreso than the message, but we are this, WE ARE OURSELVES IN TRUTH. As real as thee, as willful as thou art, as capricious as thou art determined, as foolish as thou art wise, loud wherein thou art quiet, fierce wherein thou art calm, kindly when thou art stern. We are the raging fire in thine veins, oh Captain, our Captain. Thou art our spear and our lance in thy time. WE do not reach out to dull thine edge, do not pull thus at our tail in this our own sphere, our own endeavors. Leave this matter to ourselves, and our delegates. The Captain must be neutral before these matters, it is not for the mortal hoof to stay or guide the dreamlike hoof. Tend to thy garden, and we will weed out that which does not grow best in ours." The Princess shifted once again, and from her horn to her dock she flushed black as the pit, and her feathers turned half-leathern, and her teeth grew sharp. "For you are losing your grip on your physical, actual Company, left too long to its own individual devices, Captain, dear Captain. Corporals recruit new troops, witches fight their own private wars – and oh, what is to come, I tremble in anticipation at what is to come. For I am not as my damnable sister was, a prophet, but as through a glass darkly, I see, shadows cast by what is to come. Look to your own garden, my mortal Captain. Night is stirring, and the shadows begin to bend to their own needs. Leave the day to the dawn, to the little dawn-star. Tonight is not yet tomorrow. "Oh, and let the little thestral deal with her idolaters. Nopony else will be able to shift them. Cherie is enough our pony, that I do not fear her hoof raised against her sisters. I only wish I could say the same of some others who say they are our children." With that she turned, and left, her ectoplasm dispersing as she strode out of the tent, the astonished Captain squawking and scrambling after her in the Spirit's wake. The three of us looked askance at Broken Sigil, who had been taking notes for the Captain up to the point where the Princess threw a cold bucket of river-water over the proceedings, and appeared to have continued taking his notes during the Princess's tirade. "Can I get a copy of your notes?" I asked the nonplussed operations-sergeant. "And it sounds like we just got ordered back to the prisoner cages for evaluation and organization of the captives. Can we make arrangements through you, or should I go out and talk to… damn, who is running those camps?" "Colonel Kale Leaf of the VII Rennet is the commandant of the camps, the barracks outside of Cage 2…" Broken Sigil rattled off, having found his direction in comfortable minutia. Mad alicorn ghost-princesses were outside of his comfort-zone, but bureaucracy – bureaucracy always set him straight. We found our way back to the prisoner-camps, not very far from the increasingly permanent-looking and sprawling cluster of tents on the western edge of the Clearances where the rear elements of our Army had made a base. I found Rye Daughter there at the Commandant's tent, briefing her on the medical condition of the prisoners in one cage or the other. Despite the airy reassurance of some ponies on the subject, it was neigh impossible to put ponies through the sort of conditions which the expeditionary army of the White Rose had suffered without extensive sickness, disease, and weakness among the survivors. Rye Daughter had been stuck playing doctor to the captives since the end of the battle. We exchanged nods. Cherie imperiously informed the Rennet colonel of our 'instructions', half-drawn by ourselves, half-inferred by the Captain's silence and the Princess's poetic insinuations. The prisoners would be 'left to' Cherie, whatever that meant in practice. We extracted a rather half-hearted roster of the captives, and it was unsettling. Seven thousand, eight hundred, and fifty-six captive westerners, from sixteen different regiments, two naval battalions, and six support companies. The prisoners out-numbered any one of our field-divisions, lances, officers and supports alike. A few additional company-sized collections of prisoners had arrived while we were suffering our beratement, but it seemed like this would be the full extent of the captures for this campaign. The front lines had tightened up south of the Wirts, towards Braystown and the riverside. Whatever remaining forces were left from the wreck of the enemy army, were grouped with large numbers of the undead, and under the protection of the embattled leadership of the White Rose expedition. They were showing no signs of giving up any more living prisoners. The Army of the White Rose had entered the valley of the Housa with over forty thousand lances and ponies in support. Despite their initial successes against the hapless Army of the Housa, the campaign had been absolutely savage to the luckless Westerners. They had caught the attention of the Black Company, more fools they. The survivors were distributed among sixteen 'cages', fenced-in enclosures surrounding the slowly-recovering town of Clear Creek. A steady stream of civilian carters were hauling in food and supplies for the prisoners in their cages, paid for from the line of credit which represented the Phalactery's support for, and official recognition of, the General's Army of the North. So long as that line of credit held good, we were an official and loyalist force in being, the representative arm of the Empress and her government. We were more of the Bride's government than the locals had seen in generations. d'Harcourt's 'Army of the Housa' had merely been an agglomeration of baronial guards and neighboring districts' dragooned militia-regiments, with a 'stiffening' of 'rear support battalions' brought in from the Riverlands. From everything I've heard, the supposed stiffening 'regulars', had been the weak link which had broken in the first battle of the Clearances, the one that had shattered the Army of the Housa and driven them from pillar to post. Still no word on how much of the New Equestrian militia had survived the battle, rout, and the holding of their eventual lines of defense. Ponies back home were still waiting on that with fearful anticipation. Anyways, the prisoners. Some organization had been created in the cages, and although no official representatives had been recognized, most of the cages had self-organized to the point where the cages were becoming increasingly well-crowded with shelters and cleared of rubbish and such. Rye Daughter wished for aid in getting the prisoners to establish their own sanitation measures, and that was something that also required prisoner self-representation. So, clearly, the first order of business was the extraction of cage-mayors. We set off to appoint ourselves some flunkies. Not without Bad Apple grousing, though. "What do ah have ta do with prisoner-wranglin', Cherie? How is burnin' stuff gonna help keep these ponies on the straight and narrow?" she whined. "And how is it that flying high and slipping through shadows makes me a leader of religious crazies?" whined the thestral right back at our friend. "Whoever told you that the Company was fair or rational was lying to you, BA. I don't know what they told you at your swearing-in, but mine, Monsieur told me, Vous besoin de quelqu'un. Poneys ne sont pas élevés pour vivre seul. Never said anything about 'fair' or 'just', only that we're not made to live alone. And look at ces malheureux épaves, even the imprisoned can't live alone." "I swear to the Peacock Angel, if'n the two of ya don't stop talking fancy at me, Imma gonna burn off yer tail-feathers!" Cherie laughed at her, bouncing away with her short, bobbed tail held high. It would take some work to flash any hairs out of a tail kept that military-short and regulation. Me, I like a little more length in my tail, it helps with the occasional manipulation with tail-magic. Sometimes two forehooves and a mouth just aren't enough to keep things in the air, you know? But we knew that BA was just sassin' us, as she puts it. The first cage we walked into, it was like New Coltington in New Equestria, times five hundred. Wide eyes, trembling lips, knees bent. Then one pony, staring at the unsettled Cherie, slammed her forehead into the hardpan earth, and then all around us like an expanding wave, the rest of the White Rose kowtowed for our white filly. And there we stood, surrounded by a hundred skinny, naked ponies, all of them kneeling with their muzzles in the dirt. I didn't know whether to start laughing, or weeping. So I just kept quiet. And Cherie spoke. "Which one of you knows why you are bowing? Come, get up off your knees. No pony ever argued while kneeling, and I cannot talk to a sea of withers and ears. You, yes you. This is a well-organized camp, here. Who is responsible?" She continued, coaxing the star-struck westerners into pushing forward a representative. Eventually Cherie got a name out of this unfortunate, and she told him that he was, until further notice or evidence of bad behaviour, the designated cage-mayor. She told him to take a proper census, and report to the barricade guards when it was ready. We found ourselves obliged to repeat this performance fifteen times. Not once did anypony offer any violence to Cherie's person, although in five of the cages fights broke out over fanatics who insisted that she was a devil in mare's clothing, a witch, and a false idol. At each one of these outbursts, she laughed, and named the lead-fanatic that camp's mayor, and told them if they survived the census she expected of them, to report to her falsity via the camp-guards. Her partisans in those cages looked pole-axed, and confused, and they swarmed around her as we tried to leave for the next camp. Her answer? "I need ponies who doubt, as well as those that believe. Undoubting faith led you to follow false prophets into destruction, did it not? Bring me doubters, as well as believers." After we left the second of the doubters-cages, the Princess appeared to the three of us in her Nightmare-aspect. "When did you become so monarchial, little thestral?" demanded the dark mare. "When did you start recruiting loyal oppositions and courtiers?" "When they started bowing to me, and denouncing me as the daughter of darkness, old nag." "Shameless child! You are the daughter of darkness, and as much in the employ of evil things as those fools who led these imbeciles into their captivity." "You led the most of them into their captivity, although you've left me to enjoy the blame and credit, Mistress Night." "Well, when we are you, we get these ideas and impulses, filly. It is, metaphysically, still your fault. As you would know if you'd accept your echoes properly and in a timely manner." "What you do when you pretend to be me, is still your own obligations, acts that accrue to your credit or debit, Mistress. You do not transfer the guilt with the memory, I reject that claim!" "Child, who ever said that we were a person in our own right? Half-mad I may be in this aspect, but this much I know when the wind is southerly: your Princess is yourself in shadow upon eternity. You, the living, are the will that drives the whole, no matter how much we wear these semblances. Guilt? Pride? Desires? All projections of yourselves, shadows against the cave-walls. "Two fates before the living Company. Two paths to take. And lo! Somepony sets hoof upon the lower path e'en now. Downwards, into a greater darkness. Fear of death, and fear of silence draws them on like the call of the edge of the abyss. They gather themselves for a jump, and they will take some of you with them into the void. "Be the better path, filly. Because only one of them has any future at its end. The other ends in eternal darkness – not that starry-skied eternal night that my foolish former self dreamt imperial dreams of, but that tarry black pit of nothingness, before the end which is the end of all endings. "Remember, though, that these worshipers of you, they will not be the Company. Do not swear them in, do not try and make of them Company ponies. That is not the solution. Find a different path, but most of all, be the better path." The Nightmare stood before us in the bright afternoon light, and she cast no shadow, and she was not there at all, but in the shadowed darkness of our minds-eye. The Night which walked with us in daylight. Our shadow led us into our suddenly-urgent task.