In the Company of Night

by Mitch H


The Errand-Colt

SBMS162

The pegasi flew search patterns across the sky overhead, quartering the region around the walls of Braystown and the Shambles. The witches were aloft in their gigs, aiding in the search for our AWOL warlock and his band of fellow – well. There were certain words I don't want to commit to paper just yet. But matters were quickly spiraling out of control, and the sooner we found Obscured Blade and his grim band of lich-hunters, the better.

Because there was at least one lich still active in the area, and he technically, allegedly was an ally. Or, at least, still loyal to our own liege, the Bride. As such, we had an obligation to not murder the damned undead thing – or to stand by and let him be murdered by a pony still supposedly under Company discipline.

Only problem was, Obscured Blade had developed his own peculiar ideas about what constituted Company discipline, and wasn't answering his messages.

In the meantime, we found ourselves in the peculiar situation of standing, encamped, before the gates of a supposedly friendly fortress and its castle-town, the gates were barred against us – and because the fortress was teeming with ghouls and other undead, it rather seemed the better part of valour to occupy the siege-camp and maintain a properly armed guard. There was no telling how the legate within the Shambles was going to react to our presence.

He may or may not be aware of the Company's history with the greater undead. But Obscured Blade's little display could not have dispelled any of his possible misgivings.

While Brigadier Guillaume settled his division into the fortified positions the White Rose had thrown up all around Braystown, I met with Gibblets, who took a few moments away from the search for his missing warlock to discuss how to approach the legate.

"Have we had any contact at all with the lich?" I asked.

"Nothing direct. The Lieutenant twice tried to make contact with the authorities inside Braystown and the Shambles, and both times, they came back saying they hadn't seen anything but ghouls on 'shamble' mode, not reacting to their presence." He was sweating heavily, and the shade we had found was vanishing quickly as the sun moved overhead.

"Is he likely to just ignore our presence again?" I asked, sweating a bit myself.

"Now that we've effectively invested his walls? Again? I'd think he'd take at least a parley now."

"Is that what we're doing, Gibblets? Besieging him? I mean, is there anything we'd be doing otherwise if we were?"

"In the short term, we do whatever the General orders, until somebody over her head countermands those orders."

"And now that you've checked that box, again, what are we doing?"

"In the real world, the Beau hasn't done anything to show that he's disloyal, he hasn't despoiled any provinces, rebelled against the Phylactery, or even attacked any other loyalist force. On those same lines, he held this position against overwhelming force for weeks, kept the gates of the Housa locked tight, and basically held the line until we could show up and show off. The only thing holding us in place here is that lich's own paranoia and refusal to talk. Get him to talk, Sawbones."

"Me? Why me? We have plenty of diplomatic ponies that are better at this sort of thing."

"Name two." Gibblets was now in direct sunlight, and he positively gleamed with sweat.

"Uh, Dancing Shadows? The Brigadier?"

"Dancing Shadows is occupied with civilian affairs up north, and Guillaume is command and isn't expendable."

"Pfft, thanks. Fine, I'll go. But I'm not going into a spooky wreck of a castle full of the undead unarmed."

"You know you look preposterous in barding." He started sidling towards the retreating shade of the tree, and I had to scramble to follow his retreat.

"No sillier than Carrot Cake. Ooh! Can I take him?"

"You are not killing the legate, so no, I'm not going to send you in there with our best lich-killing weapon. Are you sure you're not Uncle Blade under an illusion?"

I poked myself in my chest, looking down. "I don't think so. I'd tell you to ask the Mistress, but she's been kind of evasive on the subject of Blade recently."

"You talk too much to the Nightmare. Princess Luna is much more helpful."

"Oh, so she's told you where to find the old bokor?"

"No," the dripping goblin fumed. The shade continued to dwindle "Not that. Can we get out of the damn sun?"

***

So I, hastily armed in my caparison and peytral, with my chamfron hooked to the back of my harness along with my bearded axe, approached the gates of the Shambles in the late afternoon. A squad of Hydromel troopers held a forward bastion within charging distance of the gates, and we exchanged greetings as I collected a lance and tied a white rag above its balancing-point. I stuffed the lance into my harness's banner-socket, and cantered forward with the parley-flag flying.

No projectiles flew from the walls. Not that I could spot any fighting-platforms in the tumbled mess that was the Shambles' forward wall. I'm not at all sure how exactly the fighting had gone on over this sort of terrain and fortification, but I would have been just as happy to never find out for myself.

These walls had held off tens of thousands. And as I came closer, I realized that the ground was studded in all directions with caltrops, and as I came closer, embedded spear-heads and other sharp implements half-impaled across the berms and crevices and half-collapsed walls. Many were still blood-stained from previous assaults, despite the multiple violent storm-fronts that had broken over the region in the last few weeks.

As I slowed to avoid all of the sharp points and spear-heads, the sally-port of the main gates creaked open, and a dead thing half-stepped through the port to open it for me. Several weeks dead, the once-stallion was wearing White Rose barding. Positively fresh, by ghoul standards. And not visibly thralled. No sign of a thralling fetish. It stepped back to give me room to pass through the port into the fortress, and I paused, reluctant to come within biting radius of what looked like a 'free' ghoul.

"Be welcome, herald," it ground out of a half-rotted throat. "This one is under the control of its master."

Still, it stepped back even further, and I passed by quickly, moving into the killing-space behind the gates. As it closed the sally port, I took stock of my surroundings. A full lance of armed undead stood to their posts around the gates, just as if they were living soldiers. As I was led through the rambling, winding passage within the walls, I passed ghoul after ghoul, armed as they had been in life, holding their posts. There were hundreds of them, and the Shambles' entrance-passage was the most convoluted and baroque mess of a fortress entrance-passage I had ever laid eye upon. It literally spanned the entire northern and part of the eastern face of the fortifications, a killing-zone half a mile long.

Eventually we debouched into a courtyard between the outer wall and one of the inner walls. This led into another barred gate, and again, back and forth like a drunken, broken-backed snake. And once again, through a third killing-zone. The interior of the Shambles was mostly wall and kill-zone. Once I finally got out of those miles of corridor – lined almost every step of the way with murder-holes and individual sally-ports spaced out every couple hundred yards or so – I found myself before the citadel or bailey. And here, my journey ended. A large honour-guard of undead stood with weapons in hoof, surrounding a tall figure wrapped in shining leather strips, so much like the late Marklaird that I blinked in astonishment.

The legates had a certain common style to them, I had to give them that.

While I had never been quite sure as to the tribal origins of our former employer, this lich had clearly been an earth pony stallion in life, so tall and broad-shouldered that his stature made his origins obvious. He had half a head of height on me, and would have stared down at me, if his eyes had not been hidden behind a wrap of highly polished leather.

"Are you an assassin?" the lich asked, nonsensically, looking at the battle-axe on my harness.

I blinked in confusion, looking right and left to see if there was any sense to be found in the courtyard. The Nightmare appeared in my peripheral vision, and told me, "Tell him you're a soldier." So I did.

"You're neither," he said. "You're an errand colt, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill." And, bewilderingly, he snickered.

"Tell him that you had been told that his methods were unsound."

He liked that. "Are- are my methods unsound?"

Before the Mistress could even prompt me, I said, inspired, "Sir, I don't see any method at all."

The legate began cackling madly, delighted by whatever scene we had just reenacted. He literally broke into a caper, bouncing on his back hooves. "Oh, my stars, I love the classics!" he brayed.

The Nightmare smiled, amused. "He hardly makes a proper Hetman Court, don't you think? More of a Mad Scribe, if I were to be casting a production of Dämmerung der Hirsche."

I thought I had been well-read, but apparently some literary references are going to go over anypony's head. I figured that silence was the last refuge of the fool, and let my confusion pass through me, leaving only calm. Hopefully our little performance had calmed the madpony – at least a little.

"Legate Beau, I bring greetings from the commander of the Army of the North, General Knochehart."

"Ah, your grocery clerk?"

"If you must. The White Rose is cleared from your front, and we're currently sweeping the region and establishing security from here down towards Leveetown."

"And yet, I still seem to find myself besieged, here in my little stone box."

"You have many… armed entities here. They maintain a hostile presence. The General felt it appropriate to maintain our own posture until matters settle down. In addition…"

"Oh, yes!" he interrupted. "'In addition' – whatever it was that just happened in front of my gates. Not a mile away! Something or someone MURDERED A PAIR OF GREATER UNDEAD ON MY DOORSTEP!" he screamed into my face. "That's a heck of an addition, dear sir! And I believe, you have me at an advantage. What did you say your name was?"

"Your pardon, Your Eminence, I am Sawbones, Surgeon of the Black Company."

"Are you now? Take off that glamour, right now."

I sighed, and hoofed off the slight glamour, which toned down the more… thestral aspects of my appearance.

"Well, indeed. I've heard a great deal about you lot. Look at you, all fierce and edgy! No wonder you don't want to be called an assassin, with teeth and an eye like that! And they call us monsters."

"The eyesight, at least, is useful for night affairs. Makes us more effective in the dark."

"Thus the other night and that fracas in the siege-camp. Was that you lot? Did you murder my brothers on my doorstep? As, I hear, you may or may not have done to a number of my other siblings? No legates lost to this world in centuries, and then, in the course of two short years – five! Five generals and legates of the Empress, her rod and her staff in this damned world, wiped out like recruits flung into the front line!"

"The two put down in the siege-camp were rebels against the phylactery, play-acting at being White Rose warlocks. How is it that the 'rod and staff' can be found leading the Bride's own enemies into battle?"

"Don't evade the question, weirdling! The two in the siege camp – and I never did get their names, they were far too cagey for that, insisted on being called Rope and Candle, those pretentious berks! They we knew about, that can be excused as the result of battle – but the Marklaird? Stump and the Walker! Loyalists all!"

"The Marklaird was conspiring against the Bride, we are certain of it, and the Bride herself gave us letters of reprisal against the architects of the demolition of the province of Pepin, which we determined to be those two traitorous liches, who were put down at the Empress's own request."

"Well. Well-said, weirdling." The lich's temper had turned on a sou, and now he drooped into a slouch, suddenly looking away from me, to the west. "Even those of us who stand proud and loyal in the light of day, how many of us creep about under cover of night, and plot, and conspire, and steal from the royal treasury? Far too many. The Marklaird was a friend of mine, you know. But I knew she was plotting, and scheming. And avoiding her duties for years, decades on end. I loved her like a friend, but I knew her. She lost her souljar, and would have done anything to take it back."

"And what makes you loyal, if you agree that your fellows are not?"

"Me? Loyal? Well, I suppose, I am, sort of. None of us wanted to be like this in the beginning. The dregs of the Barrow-Lord's dungeons, the ones who didn't die – not quite. There's not much in the way of equinity left in a pony after they've come out of Grogar's mills sapient and self-motivated. More often than not, that self-motivation is the only thing keeping us upright, keeps us moving. For most of them, that is. My motivation is rather, a sort of curiosity, and doubt. Grogar turned my doubt against me, bound it up into my self-image so tightly that I don't know how to operate without it."

"And that's why you take mortal generals as your commanders? Radical self-doubt?"

"Why yes, of course! None of us are any good at tactics or operations, you must know that, as well-informed as you seem to be. I always take a commander, whom I can trust to do the right thing, since I am now such that I cannot see right from wrong. If only I wasn't so often let down in my choices." He stiffened, and turned to the right. "Isn't that right, d'Harcourt?"

A dead thing shuffled out of the shadow of the citadel, and I saw that it was an aristocratic-looking former donkey, a jack of middle-age. In life he must have been very prepossessing, having that look of command and vigour about him that almost eclipsed the rictus-grin of undeath and the rot of the summer sun and summer humidity.

"Go ahead, d'Harcourt! Tell us why I spared you!"

"You did not spare me, master. I died, and you would have made me one of your ghouls, as you did all of our mortally wounded ponies and donkeys."

"Yes, but you went and rose before I could enspell your remains! Up on your hooves, and looking at me all dead-eyed, you revenant bastard!"

"Master, I failed you in life. How can I rest until I see the valley of the Housa cleared of the rebel scum?"

"Go back to your corner, you failure! The next time I need to throw away a legion of ghouls, you can lead the assault!" The lich turned his sightless, leather-wrapped head back to me . "You see what I have to deal with? I know I know nothing, but even those I trust to guide me through the darkness, they just direct my cannons into every stick of furniture in the room, every rock in the path! How can I, blind as I am, trust these frauds who say they see?"

"Trust in those that see in both the darkness and the light, Your Eminence? I can't say for sure. I am only a herald, although I speak for my superiors."

"You want to know if you can trust me to keep my undead under control, to keep them from rampaging against the living and disrupt any order you can summon out of this… disorder? One-eyed pony, I like you. Can you guarantee my safety under you, your Company's aegis?"

"So long as there are no more deaths of civilians, of allies, of the wounded, of prisoners in proper captivity and under authority, I can promise you protection."

"But not safety?"

"What world is safe? We are currently dealing with a situation, that might make your own position more precarious than not."

He was suddenly alert. "And what does that mean?"

"The Empress's legates are not the only body to find itself struggling with disloyalty. There is a… rogue element at large in the vicinity. He has shown the capacity to kill… legates. We have lost track of this rogue. He is not under authority. If you become aware of him, please-"

"Damn you! You come in here being all diplomatic and meek and mild, but you're just setting me up for a fall, aren't you! Talk me out of my walls, and then set your 'rogue' at my throat! No! No! I won't be fooled again! Take your flag of parley, and get out, one-eyed pony! Get out! Out! Out!"

And with that, I was thrown out of the Shambles, each hoof-step dogged by snarling, barely restrained ghouls at my heels.

Not exactly my best day, I'm afraid.