//------------------------------//
// The End, or, The Third Blade 
// Story: In the Company of Night 
// by Mitch H 
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SBMS173

I'm afraid this will be the last one, Mistress.  I'm not sure how much time I have left here; this isn't even truly a dream state.  I'm pretty sure this is a delusion, my brain mis-firing as the bits and pieces start to die, section by section, lights out, water pouring in, the ship going down.

But on the off chance that you're real, that I'm talking to the Spirit herself, and not myself dreaming one last dream, let me tell you what happened, before I run out of myself.  But first, let me report one last death in the Company.  Sawbones, physician and Annalist. Died of wounds, blood-loss, and shock, but mostly from the spite of our enemies, internal and otherwise.

I had barely finished my last report to you, in the unconsciousness that had followed my capture and beating by the enemy, when their rough hooves woke me from my correspondence.  I had been taken off of the sleigh they had used to spirit me away from the ambush site, and they carried me up the steps of a handsome, fortified stone mansion, guarded by a pair of Peace River militiaponies.  As they spun me around during the process of getting my bound form up the stairs, I saw the rest of the compound, and realized it was the 'castle' the Bride's ponies had made out of a seized noblepony's family seat, a rough rampart thrown up around their mansion, converting the whole into a motte-and-bailey which was slightly more dignified than a simple winter castra.

I have no idea what happened to the baron they'd evicted from his ancestral seat.

And so, they brought me into the presence of Her Majesty, the Empress of All Tambelon, The Bride.  Who wasn't looking all that well, truth to tell.  She had declined significantly in the years since the last time I had laid eyes on her, sporting a number of fresh-looking wounds, and a general sickly pallor that spoke of sleepless nights and illness.

And she stank, horribly. Like every sickroom I'd seen from New Coltington to the riverland borders, and every scene full of death and ghouls in between.  The miasma poured off of her like fog oozing down over the edge of a plateau onto the lower slopes.  Like smoke from a death-pyre.  Like mists from a malarial marsh.  I dry-heaved through my gag at the smell, my abused stomach spasming, my whole body tugging at the rope by which I was bound.

"Please, enough with the theatrics, traitor," wheezed the Bride in offense at my reflexive display of indiscipline.  "I am well aware of how I must look.  How much of this is your fault?  You - take off the gag. I need to hear him speak."

"There. What do you have to say for yourselves, Sawbones of the Black Company?"

"I'd say it was nice to see you, Your Majesty, except that I wish it were under better conditions.  Can't you keep any servants in here?  It's filthy."  And this is true, her interrogation room was a sty, full of crumpled paper, filth, and bloodstained furnishings.

"I would bring in more maids - except the ones I had all died of the plague, and for some funny reason, nopony will come voluntarily!  Captain!  Take a note - we need to send a patrol out to collect some more servants."

"My ponies.  My donkeys.  My staff!"  She waved her foreleg around the room, and her magic spun me like a top, giving me a view of the shambolic corpses lining the walls of the chamber.  Some of them in infirmary gear, some in torn officers' uniforms.   A few dressed like maids.  "They serve me in their deaths as they did in life.  Not as well, mind you. A ghoul's absolutely useless as a maid, for instance.  And the quality of my operations planning has dropped precipitously since my staff ceased to answer my queries with anything but variants on 'braiiins!'"

They took up the chorus, and she waited until the half-intelligible moans died down.

"My fault, of course.  I knew that this, or something like this, would happen if I took the field.  This, or incidents like this, have happened in the past. I find myself, in times of war, hung suspended between two weapons. One is fine, subtle, self-knowing, apt – and horrifically fragile.  Every time I put my hoof to that wondrous glass blade, it shatters in my grip.  Living armies are not made for my usage.  Clever, wise, agile – and so, so vulnerable.  Whenever I get agitated, or excited, or am required to defend myself.  Well, you all personally have experienced my little crochets, haven't you, my pets?"

The herd which had once been her headquarters groaned in response to her loving question, somehow knowing when they were being addressed, and when they were merely the audience to her ranting.

"And the other weapon is a club.  It is blunt, and mindless, and immeasurably destructive.  Ghouls and revenants and barrowgasts and liches – the most of them are mere mechanisms, bundles of tropisms you can direct here and there and give specific commands, but general commands? Trust? Even these liches are endlessly treacherous, and by and large incapable of strategizing their way out of wet paper bags."  She glared at the three liches, who smiled smarmily right back at her.

"And yes, you repugnant clods, I know at least one of you has been playing White Rose all this time.  I learned that much down in the riverlands.  Did you think to hide your magical signatures from me?  It didn't work.  We'll figure out who's been flying the 'Rose Flag' all this time.   Sometime this season – mark me if we won't figure out who's been playing sides again.  And then there will be a reckoning, yes there will."  She waved the other foreleg in disgusted dismissal.

"Well, that's for another day. Today, you have brought me my other blade.  The third blade, the steel-forged axe-blade I thought to bring to bear on my problem. Resilient, clever, wise, sharp as a serpent's tooth. Resilient against my crochets, I believed.  I had intended to make you my personal legion, you know. Bring you down into the riverlands, do some real damage to the rebels.  But somehow, you never came to my hoof.  I was stuck playing fire-brigade in that idiotic siege, and you all had to be heroic." She paused, frowning.

"When you weren't murdering my liches."  She noted my look of objection and waved to overrule it. "Yes, yes, I know I gave you commission to put down those three oath-breakers. And a fine job of it you did.  But you didn't leave it at that, did you? My Beau!  My beautiful, loyal Beau."

For the second time in my life, I saw a dead thing weep.  It was vile, and disturbing, and somehow heart-breaking.

"Oh, my Beau. A terrible, feckless general like all of my legates, it is true. But he meant so well, and often found an equine cats-paw to correct his many, many military flaws. He was the one legate I could truly trust to lead armies without plotting how to get them killed in the most expeditious manner possible. He was my only subordinate who grasped the idea."

"And you murdered him.  Snuck past his undead guards with your clever little cantrips, killed him in his repose, and then returned later while publicly lauding your 'recovery' of my Braystown fortress from the runaway ghoul infestation. Oh, yes – I do have my sources, I know what you did. I have the eye-witness who saw you enter the Shambles, personally, zebra."  Raging, she gestured again at another dead thing against the back wall.  A revenant donkey. Except that pony was supposed to be dead.  What the hay?

"d'Harcourt.  We didn't find your body. We thought you had gone into the river," I ground out, gravel-voiced.

"Ha! Ha!  Got away from you, didn't I?  Traitor!  You visited m'lord, didn't you? Came back in the dead of night, wearing those evil eyes, right past the ghouls as if you weren't even there!  Of course I went into the river, to get away from your assassins. I hid until I could find an authority figure you hadn't corrupted.  And your agents were everywhere. I had to bide my time, until Her Majesty returned from the front."  The revenant very nearly had color in his cheeks.  I was baffled, unsure of what he was talking about. Eyes?

"And, so, evidence of your perfidy came to my door-step," fumed the undead empress.  "All that remained was for you to stray into my grasp, Annalist.  All I want to know now, is how deeply the betrayal extends.  Is it your entire Company?  Must I burn the entire valley?  Tear it all down to the foundation-stones, exterminate every last pony that ever served under your banner?"

"Wait, Your Majesty, did he just say eyes, plural? Look at me! I lost my eye over a year ago!  How does that square?  We know a traitor, a foresworn brother murdered the-" 

She had one of her legates stuff the gag back in my mouth, snarling.  All this time I thought we would be undone by our adventure on the river, the theft of the second Housa fleet. And here, she didn't even think about it, didn't consider it. Too busy blaming us for Obscured Blade's perfidy, his bloodthirstiness.  Damned for something we didn't do.  Wasn't that a kick in the head?

She stomped around my bound form, staring down at me, glaring, until I thought she'd light my coat aflame from her regard. "Are my legates that delicious, that you must devour every last lich in my service? Is that your plan? Is that the secret of your Company's resilience?  I now find myself wondering how much of the Marklaird's claims were true.  Are you truly agents of the White Rose? Are you agents of the white alicorn?"

As the lich-empress glared, fuming, raging, she opened her mouth again.

And from that dead mouth emerged a sword-point.

She choked, twitching, her dead eyes crossing, losing all personality.  I struggled to figure out what was going on as her legs fell out from under her, and her wings dropped like lead weights.  As her body fell out of my sight, I saw behind her a legate, grinning, dead and pallid.  A glamour was fading from her – no his hide.  A horn emerged from the semblance which had hidden it, and the distinctive grey-silver-white coat of an old comrade joined that long and wicked horn in my sight.

Howling and screaming surrounded the three of us, the collapsing lich-empress, my bound self, and the legate who was no legate.  d'Harcourt was the one screaming, the howling were the ghouls, locked in some sort of sympathetic resonance with the dying Bride, and the clanging noise was the other two legates, blades drawn, and fighting with each other, a blur of death and steel in my peripheral vision.

And while the two legates locked in brutal combat behind the ancient unicorn, he approached me, grimacing a parody of a smile, and pulled that foul gag out of my mouth again.

"Obscured Blade," I greeted the traitor.  "True to your name in the end."

"The end?" His weird, terrible grimace shifted, and became genuine, delighted.  "Oh, no, my dear zebra.  This is just the beginning.  Oh, can you feel that?  She's going.   Oh, hold tight, hold tight.  This is going to be marvelous."

The traitor-unicorn frowned, something occurring to him. "Wait, no, don't hold tight. We can't have you soaking this up, that could ruin everything.  Here, die."

And he took his backup knife, and he stabbed me through my remaining eye, right into my brain.

I can feel the burning of the empress's death raging through my dying meat, but it is too late for me.  Death and power are even now chasing through the veins of my failing body.  My brain is shutting down, section by section, the end flooding each compartment in turn.

You are my last refuge, Mistress. I put my faith in you, and the fillies. We've failed them again and again, let them into evil company, failed to protect them from this wicked world, failed in every last way.

Don't fail them in this last thing.  Be better than that traitor thinks you to be.  Be the Mistress we all believe you to be.  Be better than you have to be, be better than we were.

We will be watching you from behind, from your mane and your tail.

I'm ready.

Dead in the service of the Nightmare, Sawbones, Company physician, and forty-second Annalist of the chronicles of the Black Company.  Murdered by a sly and victorious traitor, of a knife to the brain.

Goodbye.

Thus ends the third volume of the Book of Sawbones, my mentor. I hereby begin the first volume of the Book of Feufollet, wherein I will detail how Sawbones' betrayal and murder was avenged.  To be continued.

Again, to belabor the obvious, an entry from Sawbones, but in the hoof associated with Feufollet's work.

-  Faded Palimpsest, 2nd Grade Archivist, Restricted Archives