In the Company of Night

by Mitch H


The Reapers And The Grain

FFMS025

With the campaign in the east ending in a sort of anti-climactic face-off between nominal allies, the minor operations in the west gathered more attention, resources, and momentum.

Brigadier Brune in Rantoul moved forward into the districts to his south upon receiving the news of the obliteration of the White Rose's expeditionary force, reinforced with a large contingent of baronial levies supposedly placed under his command. Two days later they were fully occupied chasing bison barbarians through the disordered districts of New Harmony and the Mounds. Very little progress was made after that, even though the hoof-full of Company sections posted with Brune's two Northern regiments provided invaluable lines of communication between the two forces moving along their divergent roads. Brune began experimenting with breaking up the Company sections, assigning pairs of armsponies to each of the loosely organized 'brigades' of Rantoul baronials. It didn't seem to accomplish much.

We heard nothing but complaints from the few Company ponies condemned to this particular tartarus, who insisted that the baronials were nothing but a rabble under arms. From what little I was able to glean from the affronted Company ponies, there wasn't much to distinguish the baronials from the bison they were chasing through the hedgerows and fields of New Harmony and the Mounds.

Further eastward, the Left-Division of Brigadier Eugin was reinforced by the remaining regiment from the Right-Division, some troops from the Reserve, and the Third Cohort under Stomper. They fortified the river approaches to Leveetown, and skirmished regularly with marine detachments and flotillas of boats sent upriver by the timid White Rose fleet on the middle Housa. This fleet-in-being had proven to be nothing like those fears and expectations we had worried over at the beginning of the move to the east. Whoever it was that commanded that fleet, they were cautious to the point of cowardice, and appeared far more spooked than they should have been by the hoof-full of immolated flour-ships Cherie had destroyed at the beginning of the campaign. We sent down Bad Apple with some pegasi support to provide a continued and credible threat to that apparently pyrophobic fleet.

The General remained with the Middle-Division and the remainder of the Reserve in the wastelands south of Dover, facing off with our supposed ally in the Shambles, and supporting the bulk of the Company's search for our missing comrades and the ghost-like III Verdebaie.

Everypony was spooked about that, but nopony seemed able to do anything about it.

Finally, Cherie and I were left, isolated, with a section or two from the Third Cohort, a couple of flights of ponies from the Aerial Cohort, and the regimentals guarding the thousands of prisoners in their POW cages. This was an untenable situation, but the sudden flood of returning refugees to the stabilized districts of the southern baronies offered a method and outlet for the exercise of the unoccupied and restless captives.

The refugees found themselves short-hooved and facing the heavy prospect of salvaging those early and neglected crops in the fields which had not been trampled by the converging armies. Winter crops were very popular in the Baronies, and many fields were full of heavy-headed, almost overripe grain. Wheat, barley and oats were trembling on the edge of wastage throughout these districts. And the refugees badly needed a corps of field-workers to help bring in the harvest before they went to seed in the fields.

We had just such a corps to hoof. The problem being, of course, that sickles and scythes – while fairly piss-poor as weaponry – still could under extreme circumstances be used in that capacity. Could we possibly dare to put bladed tools into the hooves of thousands of imprisoned military prisoners?

Cherie thought so.

After all, the majority of the camp-mayors adored her, to the point of indulging in actual worship in her presence during the council meetings we were using to govern the affairs of the camps. Cherie gave no indication of what she thought of the little prayers of supplication that ponies like Noon Dream and Iron Wheels insisted upon offering before getting down to the mundane discussions of camp conditions and requirements. The looks of disgust upon the muzzles of the dissenting camp-mayors were, in truth, shared by yours truly. But it wasn't exactly something we could do anything about, so we let it lie.

These 'loyalists' were clearly such that we could trust them to work the fields without rising up to fertilize the stubble and crop residue with the blood of the owners of those fields and their scattered guards. It was the dissenters that concerned us. Or, at least, it gave me pause. Cherie and the Mistress seemed to have some sort of plan that required putting some measure of trust in ponies who had offered no reason for trust.

But I was overruled, and so it went.


I distracted myself with my studies, and the examination of the veritable libraries of information on the West, and the rebellious westerners. We had, after all, more than seven thousand volumes in this captive archive, just begging to be interrogated. And so, I talked to ponies. Lots of them. Frightened ponies, defiant ones, loyal and dissenting.

I was surprised at first to find that they were almost exclusively ponies – few caribou, almost no donkeys at all. From what the prisoners told me – captive after captive, consistently – the West had never many donkeys or other tribal representatives to dilute the pony culture of the great granaries of Traverse and her sister-provinces. Those donkeys that once could be found in the West had been nobility, numerous by aristocratic standards, but few in comparison to the common pony, almost a rounding error. These nobles, along with those few lackeys that were needed to support them, floated in a sea of narrow, resentful earth-pony commoners. This isolated nobility had claimed the rents of the countless hundreds of thousands of ponies who had settled the West over the course of the last four centuries, those pony settlers who had populated and cultivated the vast, sprawling agricultural districts along the lazy Trade River and her many, equally indolent tributaries.

The endless plains of the West were drained by these endless, small, barely navigable rivers, but they were still navigable. The little rivers of Traverse and the other western provinces were the wealth of the West, even moreso than those endless golden-grained fields and orchards, and the greedy nobles had seized the cream of every crop. The West was dotted with little walled boroughs at the heads of navigation of each little tributary, and slightly larger towns and cities scattered all up and down the magnificent Trade. The nobility clustered in these little boroughs and towns, their families, their retainers, and their pony servants, growing fat on the commerce of the plains.

The rebellion of two generations back had left the aristocratic townhouses of the little cities and boroughs blackened and shattered, entire clans had been wiped from the face of Tambelon. The aristos, the support and staff of the rule of the hated Bride, were overthrown almost overnight. These noble donkeys, whose power had been supported by their blood-mage and necromancer kin, had been overwhelmed by their enraged tenants, armed initially with nothing more than those simple scythes and other field-tools that Cherie was proposing to place in the hooves of those rebels' militant, captive children.

Or, at least, that was one version of the story I was told by some of the more credulous captives. Other, more cynical ponies said that this was not true, that the rebellion was not simply a peasant's revolt. They had also been supported by a new thing under the heavens – a secret, fanatic cadre of earth-pony bloodmages and necromancers. That this death-magic – which had always been the strength and support of we smaller, weaker, slower donkeys, had – somehow – secretly – been stolen by the damned ponies, who were already so blessed by the marks of destiny and power and fate. It hardly seemed fair, but one of the first tenets of the Company is that life is not fair.

And so, that new race of pony bloodmages underwrote the rebellion, giving it their support and their magic, and their religious warrant, their beliefs. In that new fanaticism, the new aristocracy of the West – proud and fat from the clever investments of their elders and ancestors – died ugly. In many districts, I was told, the donkeys had been wiped out, jack and jenny, foal, colt and filly. Many of my subjects regarded me with the sort of bemusement that one might direct towards a monkey talking to you. Despite an entire season spent despoiling districts along the river full of donkey farmers and townsfolk, these foals of the revolution still didn't quite know what to make of actual donkeys.

The pogroms had been that thorough during the first year of the rebellion, so bloody and total that the foals raised in the years afterwards had, many of them, never even laid eyes on somepony like me. I was as exotic as a sheep to these Western bumpkins –and as terrible as the dream of the Demon-Ram himself, Lord Grogar. It was as if I had raised up, revenant, from their collective guilty to haunt them for the sins of their fathers and mothers.


I was trying not to fume at Cherie one morning a week and a half into the first harvest, as we marched out with a contingent of captive ponies from their cages to outlying camps out to the northeast in the general direction of Dover. The prisoners would be loaned their implements by the farmers to whom we were lending these ponies' labour. Many of the ponies in this contingent were, to put it kindly, dissenters. A good many seemed to me more like openly rebellious thugs just waiting to get their fetlocks around something long and pointy. I was certain the lot of them were dreaming bloody dreams about slit throats and freedom. You could see it in their beady little eyes.

"You feel like they think you are exotic, Feufollet? You're a donkey, there are millions of you in this world. You are, as a tribe, as common as grains of sand. Try being a thestral! I'm the only one of my kind in this world. They say I may be the only one remaining in existence! Oh, filly. Be happy to be different, it means they've noticed you, and are thinking about you. To be understood, one must first be seen. It's a first step!"

"Bah, enough of that. What can you be about, giving these cut-throats their liberty? Look at them, glaring at you. As soon as they get out of those barns, they're not going to go out into the fields and start harvesting, they're going to go after their guards, and the farmers – and us!"

"Always with these negative waves, Feufollet! Why can't you imagine something righteous, and beautiful! Look at this gorgeous morning! The skies are blue, the sun is gentle, and the breeze out of the north will make the reaping move fast!"

"What in tartarus is a 'negative wave'?"

"Oh, something I heard somewhere. Bad feelings, evil expectations, breed evil moods, and bad results. Think positive thoughts! Will understanding into the thoughts of those that hate you! Look for common ground with our prisoners, and it will be there. See nothing but your differences, and that's all they will find between you."

Just as we were arguing over this silly sort of pseudo-philosophy that Cherie had picked up from Grogar knows where, the column was suddenly stopped by something up ahead. Cherie took to the air, and went forward to see what the holdup was.

"Bridge is out," she said, wheeling back over the glares of the prisoners in their ranks. "Hey, ponies, looks like we have some work to do! Fall out, set to. Let's see how the West repairs a fallen bridge. We've got wood over there in that copse, let's get industrious!"

Cherie's enthusiasm had always been contagious, whether it was in practice for a seasonal pageant, or in burning enemy ships, or fighting the enemy, or fast-talking captives into repairing a small bridge over an even smaller creek, her cheer was… infectious.

We were barely late to the first of five camps these captives were to have been delivered; but this first one caused some excitement. It was here that a group of ill-tempered Westerners raced each other to the nearby barn, and then broke out into loud argument we could hear from the road, where we were getting ready to move out with the rest of the prisoners.

"What's all that about, do you think?" I asked. "They can't possibly be so stupid as to try something with us right here, concentrated."

"Oh, I imagine they just discovered that this particular farming co-op owns an impressive set of mechanical reapers," giggled Cherie. "I'd like to see them rise up in rebellion with a circular reaper rig. Are they going to try to run us over with something as silly as that?"

"Where in the Chain did these farmers find themselves mechanical reapers? I've heard of them, but I don't think I've ever seen one. Wait here, I need to look at this."

She laughed at me, and held me back from trotting back to the barns full of irate White Rose. "Settle down there, jenny. There's another set of mechanical reapers at the next camp. We couldn't put scythes in the hooves of these ponies, after all. I sent out somepony to track down the two co-ops in this region that had the fancy new gadgets. We knew we'd have a need for something like this. I hope they enjoy gleaning, because these reaper-rigs replace over a dozen ponies with scythes. Says so right in the advertising material!" She grinned her petty triumph over the scene. I didn't ask how she knew which prisoners couldn't be trusted with polearms; she and the Princess had been conspiring to study her herd of captives pretty much non-stop.

And I couldn't concentrate on the question of just how deep into our prisoners' minds and dreams the Spirit and our Cherie had burrowed, because this was the point where the ghouls came boiling out of a deep woods beside the road a mile and a half past the first camp. The unarmed, unbarded prisoners bellowed in stark terror, and stampeded for the nearest grain-field. It's hard to surprise Company ponies, but whomever had guided these undead to this road had managed the improbable. The ghouls swarmed over the vanguard of regimentals, who fought back valiantly.

Far overhead, the flight of pegasi who had been shadowing our column as an outer security detail came plummeting down in a steep dive. They were too far out of pocket to reach the beleaguered Rennetians in time, but we weren't. Cherie screamed out a raptor cry of joy, and snapped into the wingblades she always kept strapped to her harness, flying to the rescue of our van. I laboured mightily on hoof to catch up to my friend the winged terror, stumbling as I tried to score myself with a spur while still moving forward. I got some blood on the spur's blade, but I nearly face-planted in my hurry.

I gave up trying to catch up to the hurtling thestral, and reached out to gather up vines to tangle and restrain the rampaging ghouls. Too slow, too slow. I kept that going, but I tried once again to do two things at once, and threw a quickly-weaved repellent cantrip at the vanguard, too many of whom had already fallen before overwhelming numbers.

Thank the Nightmare, but I didn't trip all over myself again, and as the tanglevines began to crisscross the roadway in front of the vanguard caribou and ponies, my ghoul-repellent cantrip blasted through the Rennet regimentals' collapsing formation, and many of the undead stopped dead in the tracks, some of them stepping hoof by hoof backwards like living ponies backing away from a poisonous snake.

And just as my cantrip broke the ghouls' charge, Cherie hit the undead still tearing away at the downed regimentals, her wingblades spaying ichor across the roadway. She was alone for a terrible moment, spinning and trying her best to keep moving. They say the moment a pegasus stops moving, they're dead. Their primary advantage is speed, mobility, agility. They're weaker than just about any other type of pony you can think of. (Some of them can't even beat a unicorn in hoof-wrestling.) But so long as they're moving, they've got the advantage of momentum. A pegasus with momentum behind her is a merciless projectile. A pegasus standing still is a reed waiting to be broken in two. And as that moment stretched out into an eternity, Cherie slowed down, and came to an almost-stop.

Then the moment was over, and the ponies of the protection detail dropped out of the sky and ripped through the undead. Those ghouls my cantrip hadn't repelled, that Cherie hadn't cut up in her headlong charge, were driven back by the savage assault of our winged Company brethren. And those veteran pegasi showed us all how rapid and agile armed pegasi can be. They tore apart those ghouls, and scattered their remains across the dirt and gravel of the farm-lane. But the mass of the undead still built up in front of our line.

As I stood there in the road and tried to remember how to breath again, the rear-guard came galloping past, and I gathered myself enough to lay personal repellent charms on a scattering of the remaining regimentals among our guard. I didn't have time to ensorcel every single one of them as they streamed past, but I figured they ought to benefit from a sort of herd effect if I got enough of them tagged.

As the rear-guard entered the battle, an ichor-stained and grinning Cherie came flitting back to me, chirping a preposterous request.

"Feufollet, cryfoal me! I need to attract some of these mindless things, or we're going to be out here all day long!"

"Are you out of your everloving mind, Cherie? You're supposed to be in charge here, not running off playing Commander Hurricane among the Stratocumuli conspirators!"

"Aw, come on, Feufollet! Give me this! Tartarus, if you could phantasm me a bit with the big wings and the fright-show, that'd be great. The prisoners are watching, Feufollet! Time to burnish the legend!"

I blinked, and almost asked the wrong question. Then I did what she asked, and gave her an illusory form almost as tall as the Nightmare in her full stature, weaving in a 'cryfoal' ghoul-attractant charm.

"Do you want the horn, too?" I asked.

"What horn?" she replied. "I don't have a horn, their White Rose doesn't need a horn. Go on, get back to work! I have some grain to reap!"

And she flew back into the fray. I followed slowly in her train, until I reached the fallen ponies of the van. Their still-fighting brethren had pushed ahead with their reinforcements, leaving behind the severely injured. I recalled the tales I'd heard of the blade-brothers sworn into the Company down further into the wastelands – the method and the words – and pulled out the hoof-blade I had once been given as a filly by my knight, Octavius. And I settled down by one of the savaged caribou, and asked her if she wanted to live. Because I was offering life and service today to those damned to die from ghoul-bite.

The Company expanded by a dozen members that day. Two died before we could get them back to one of the field hospital. Dead that day of their wounds, was a caribou doe named Freude am Himmel, and an earth pony stallion named Round Ball. I look forward to seeing them shine when it is my time to plunge into that river in the starry sky.

Oh, the prisoners? We eventually dragged them out of the field of barley they were hiding in. They were skittish from there on out, but cooperative. The gore-streaked, violence-satiated Cherie flitted cheerfully about like an aerial sheep-dog, gathering in her flock. They watched her with awestruck, terrified eyes. Once she had gotten up her momentum in that farm-lane, very little had stopped her. The undead had fallen like grain before the scythe-blade.

Myself, I was more frustrated than not. We never did figure out who was behind the horde of undead. It was too large to be a wandering pack of free ghouls, and many of the corpses were found later to be properly fetish-thralled, although it was impossible to tell if they had escaped control at any point before the sudden attack. But if there was a necromancer in the pile of corpses we burned, it wasn't obvious. They might have just been cut down along with their thralls, for all I knew.

We never did get the rest of those prisoners out to their work-camps. They spent the rest of the day building the pyres and tending the flames.