FFMS037
The wrecked galleys brought home to us that this thing was happening. The fleet would be needed sooner rather than later, and the rest of the White Rose – 'in the wild', as it were – were recovering from their former timidity and caution. To come so far up the Housa, and engage the existing flotilla, and drive them back into port! After driving in the flotilla, they had spent the balance of the day exchanging fire with the riverside batteries in the Braystown Shambles, accomplishing little but setting a lot of fires. If anything in the Shambles had been in the least flammable, it might have even been a threat.
That night, the Nightmare chaired the officers' meeting, with Stomper leading the presentations, and ghostly shadows of the Company's Captain and Lieutenant sitting in on the planning. But with all of the Company or former-Company leadership present, it was the former White Rose non-coms who dominated the argumentation. And it was argumentative, that discussion. I think most of them hadn't really thought through the implications of what we had been training for, what we were doing up to that point. The collapse of the loyalists' flotilla had brought it home to many of the members of the Order that they would have to fight their way downriver, actually row our galleys into battle with their former peers and compatriots.
I think most of us, especially those who hadn't been read into the planning, expected some sort of bloodless miracle, a sudden coup de main or illusionist's trick, that we would simply row our ships out onto the river, and reveal ourselves to an amazed world.
The burning of the flotilla put an end to that daydream. Now was the time for Nightmare dreaming.
The Captain and the Lieutenant's shadows looked bored, if a mat-grey shadow could look bored. The anxieties of the former White-Rose held little to interest them, and neither were inclined to empathize with these ponies who they had defeated in the field, and then had deigned to welcome into the cultic fold.
I've had some Order ponies ask me in private if the Company's officers resented having given up so many cadre to the new-formed Order. Honestly? It's hard to tell. Both of them have always been somewhat distant from me and the rest of the apprentices. They were such intensely practical, unemotive ponies, that it has always been hard to get a read on either of them. I think it helps that neither were all that close to the members of the Third who carried over into the Order. Even Stomper was basically a brevetted sergeant, only filling in for the convalescent Octavius, and not a particular favorite of either of them. It's possible they think the Order's some sort of temporary thing, and the survivors will merge back into the old Company when the day is done. After all, they'd just spent the better part of a campaign season with a fifth of the Company detailed out to supporting positions in over a dozen militia regiments. They were used to their ponies disappearing for weeks or months on end while on detachment.
I'm not sure they've grasped that Cherie and the Spirit are building the Order to last. And if the plans being made come off, the Order is going to go pretty far before they're done.
In the end, it might be the Order absorbing the Company, rather than vice versa.
After the officers got all of their emoting and angst out of their system, Stomper cleared her throat, and turned her eyes to Cherie, who had been sitting quietly next to the lazily smiling Nightmare, the two of them looking rather like a chastened foal hiding behind her confident but protective mother.
"OK, promised child. It's your plan we're making changes to; what do you say?"
The thestral got to her hooves. "Il ne change rien, except that we'll have to do more of the initial fighting ourselves, get that blood directly on our hooves, rather than just on our consciences. The blood would have been split either way. We have deux problèmes here: premièrement, we must arrive at the lower river while we are still to all appearances a loyalist fleet, et une menace plausible. Deuxiemement, we need to make it seem plausible that what comes when we arrive in the lower river, se produit organiquement, is coherent, naturel. We need to sell both the threat, and the ending of that threat, without letting the either look like a performance."
The Nightmare leaned closer to the chattering night-pegasus, and whispered something to her. Hopefully it was something like 'tone down the Prench, you silly filly.'
Then Cherie continued, saying, "Bien! Right! Ah, a performance, which does not appear performed; a false war which is still fought with weapons, producing blood and bodies and death – well, we have our work cut out for us. And we have to do this, mes poneys. Sang fraternel must be shed, so steel yourselves to the shedding of it."
She shrugged with her wings, unfolding and folding them again. "And we will be providing une distraction, des destractions. The spirits and I will be afflicting the opposing fleet with visitations, signs and portents. Hopefully, they shall be too fixated upon the grey and white winged apparitions overhead to notice any discrepancies upon the river."
And that, was that. The White Rose had spoken, and the faithful fell into line. A great deal of discussion of ways and means continued, long into the night, but that was implementation, the necessaries. The decision had been made, the way forward decreed. The forming fleet would fight in earnest, we'd fight it to win, and drive in the enemy, those who bore arms in the name of the White Rose, and carried her banners upon their masts. All for the chance for that dramatic, heroic reveal – all that blood and fire, to build us a proper stage for a proper performance.
The Order redoubled its daytime efforts the day after the meeting. The officers of the "III Verdebaie" joined our 'guards' and the masters of the Arsenal in driving their chattel to the work, and those extra hooves, though they appeared to be used in bullying and bluster, gave us the excuses we needed. To convert the slouch to the walk, the walk to the trot, the trot to the gallop. Every threatening glare from a Northern eye, every crack of a overseer's whip, every Northern hoof battering the flanks or heads of a Westerner laggard gave apparent impetus to the work.
Suddenly the Lagoon was full of galleys and dromons, skittering back and forth across the once-calm waters. The docks and workyards rang with the tumult of construction and preparation thrown into high gear. A return of the Western threat had woken up the masters of the Arsenal, and they'd finally found the energy and the inspiration to get the work done.
The spirit of the town was likewise energized, alert, almost fierce in its optimism. The advance of the enemy fleet had come just as the former inhabitants of Braystown had crossed the Lagoon in large numbers to return their abandoned city to its former glory. Empty domiciles, streets and shops filled with the detritus of a long season of occupation by ghouls – and some damage from the siege of the White Rose – had all contributed to this desolation. A desolation which the Braystowners had been busy setting aright just as the galleys started streaming by, flaming and smoking, just beyond that port-town's quays.
There was never a question of a second evacuation. The ferries and lesser boats that had evacuated Braystown last spring on the last approach of a White Rose force were now tied up in the fleet-construction project, and even then, nopony wanted to empty out a town which had just been re-occupied. The townsponies of the main city were delighted to have the Braystowners out from underhoof, and the sullenness of the exiles lurking in every doorway and corner café was not missed by anypony, even the Braystowners themselves.
One afternoon a week after the enemy raid, I looked up from my bench on the deck of the dromon we were putting through its testing trials, and found myself being examined by a half-dozen foals and mares sitting on one of those Braystown quays. We were astonishingly close to the shoreline, almost close enough, I felt, that I could reach out with a hoof and bop one of the little ponies in their gaping muzzles as they stared at us, and looked down at our oars rising and falling out of the waters below them. The rains had spared us on this day, and the sun was shining down on us from above, and up from the glittering waters of the Lagoon, until I could barely see the lower deck for all of the glare. But I could see every hair on those little jennies and jacks, fillies and colts, and their elders looming suspiciously behind their younger charges.
Our dromon was designed for close-in work along the tight shorelines of the river, with all of its snags and occasional rock outcroppings. The lower deck had their short-oars, while those of us on the upper tier struggled with ungainly lengths of spruce, as long and hard to work with as infantry pikes. As the ruddermare yawed us over to starboard, I yelped an alarmed command, and the entire upper-deck bank brought up our oars before they were smashed into the quay.
As our oars dripped lagoon-water over the heads of the suddenly-scattering onlookers, I could hear the ship-master bawling out that screw-up of a ruddermare. She wouldn't last in the job, I suspected. My bet was that she'd go up into the mostly-useless lanteens. What in the name of the Peacock Angel was the point of sails on a river-boat, anyways? The old salts among my ponies insisted I'll appreciate the value of a well-rigged lanteen when it comes time to tack our ships upstream against the current, but my thinking was, we were only planning to row these half-built wrecks downstream until we revealed ourselves. Why worry ourselves with sails and seamareship and all the accompanying song and dance?
I might have been feeling a bit out of sorts from the unaccustomed effort. You can train yourself in a dream-academy for subjective weeks at a time, but for all of the Spirit's amazing tricks with dreamstuff and dreamtime, she couldn't make you sweat in a dream, or exhaust non-existent muscles. And you can build up muscle memory in a dream, but you can't exercise actual muscle there, and mine were screaming from the sudden abuse.
And from what I saw of my ponies in the upper bank, they weren't feeling any too much better, either.
Finally, the swearing, cussing ship-master had gotten the rudder pulled over, and we were shifting back out away from the looming stone quay we had nearly collided with. If you ask me, the ship-master should have put that fool onto an oar-bench, and let her wear a chain on her foreleg for a while.
Those might have been chafing a bit as well.
The broad expanse of the Lagoon was full almost to the point of crowding with ships of all sizes, from skiff to the great battle-galleys, and it seemed like none of them were being coordinated with each other. We hadn't gotten quite all of the Order into the boats, but we were getting closer. And even the 'marines' were afloat, with my own dromon hosting its little contingent of ponies in regimental livery, awkwardly holding their newly-issued billhooks in a useless line as they stood to attention, swaying back and forth with the motion of the ship.
The small crew of freeponies scurried about the upper deck and in the sheets overhead, trying to look busy. They had surprisingly little to do with the operation of the ship, there mainly to rig the sheets, handle the sails if they were up, and to handle the rudder and the pace-drum. But it pays to look busy when the boss has his blood up, and the ship-master was barking loudly.
We still hadn't figured out what we'd do with the crews when the time came. I was in favor of a surreptitious recruiting campaign, but so far leadership had shot down my proposals. I'm not sure if they're intending to capture them, throw them overboard, or just push them off to shore when we were ready. As little as the nominal crews had to do while these ships were in motion with the current, ships do need their crews, and we'd be much less maneuverable if we had to empty every third or fourth bench to take over from the existing crew.
The ship-master got us running straight and true for the cluster of barrels which were our targets. Two of eight were already aflame, and the waters around the targets were likewise on fire in puddles and pools of burning naphtha. The crew that handled the war-engine our dromon had been built around turned their spigot to lead their chosen target as we rapidly approached the floating barrel. A dedicated naphtha-thrower, the war-engine clicked and roared as the flints sparked the flamer, and the stream of stinking, flammable liquid rushed out of the bellows being worked by a team of three Order-slaves. A jet of flaming liquid briefly connected the naphtha-thrower and the barrel, and then, as we rushed past it on the port side, it fell out of view.
So far, we'd managed to not set our own ship on fire, although I couldn't say the same for one other hapless crew of screw-ups. I was ever so glad that they hadn't been one of my companies, although it had been somepony in the brigade. Each one of these smaller ships took about a company's worth of Order ponies, which made it quite handy for command purposes. Although I was a little worried that the ship-master might have noticed my outburst earlier when we'd almost hit the quay. He probably hadn't noticed that it was more in the way of an order than a simple squawk.
But I didn't want to give him more reasons to start making guesses, so I kept as quiet as I could, kept to the princess-radio, even though I was sitting scant yards, even inches, away from my ponies.
And the ship-master found himself another ruddermare among the watching crew, and we wobbled back around to give the naphtha-throwers another shot at the floating targets. They found their mark, a barrel went up in flames on the starboard as I rowed, and on the Braystown quay in the near distance, our audience of little ponies and donkeys shouted an Ole! in approval of the flaming strike.
We came around yet again, and my oar-blade had caught on fire from the puddle of naphtha I'd paddled through on that last pass. I groaned, and plunged it deep into the water to extinguish the fire, slowing us down just a little. I looked up and down the bank of oars, and almost yelled out a command to the half-dozen other oarsponies with burning paddles to douse their blades. The princess-radio can be a damn slow way to command a company, but I wasn't about to break my resolution mere seconds after having made it.
The ship-master came over to yell at us for bringing the ship off of its line of attack, until he got a look over the gunwale and realized what we were doing, and then nodded, pleased. It took far too long to put out that nasty stuff. It stuck, it stunk, and it had a vile tendency to re-light as soon as you brought it back up above the water-line.
Finally, we were doused, and we turned again, for a secondary target.
We stayed out there until we'd exhausted the barrels of naphtha they'd had us haul onto the ship. If there was one material that Coriolanus had more than enough of, it was naphtha.
Good thing the storage-tanks upstream of town were down-wind, though. The whole city could have stunk like that.