//------------------------------// // Pomposity And Pageantry // Story: Good Trooper Gilda // by Mitch H //------------------------------// The first few bosses started showing up beginning at an hour and a half to noon, and arrived in trickles as the minutes wore on. They came escorted by numerous entourages, griffons of rough and evil aspect. These gangs of street toughs knew better than to brandish their weapons in full view of the assembled Territorial and EUP pickets, but Gilda was certain that they had come armed to the beak. They kept their weapons under coats, hidden beneath wings, in cases and bundles held close to claw and beak. The bosses didn't cross the square, but stood, isolate, each in the midst of their little knots of scowling minions, each moving to an otherwise unoccupied patch of pavement roughly equidistant to the other, earlier arrivals. The scattered crowds of civilian onlookers scurried to get out of the way of the organized mobs, and bit by bit, the onlookers were displaced by the would-be councilors and their toughs. At a half-hour to noon, the guildmasters arrived as a single body. As a single column, in fact, preceded by two companies of the Twenty-First Territorials in full panoply. One of the few pony officers of that battalion not languishing in the infirmary presided from overhead in a griffon-drawn chariot surrounded by another company of troopers arrayed in a neatly ordered flight covering the column of guild-griffons from the air. It had taken a good deal of negotiation with the guildmasters via Rarity and Garrick before they'd agreed to leave behind the technically-banned guild militias. The troopers of the Twenty-First were the fruit of that necessary compromise, one Gilda had endorsed enthusiastically - if anygriff had given a damn about what she thought. The street bosses could try their own luck. Nogriff would mourn three-fourths of those villains if they died in a simultaneous hail of gonne-fire. And there had been no way, no conduit by which to convince them to give up their individual armed bands, even if they had been willing to be persuaded to any such compromise. The challenge now was to separate the would-be councilors from their armed retinues in the moment, in the square. Said retinues had begun to shift and mutter as the guild-column entered the center of the square, passing between the respective street-bosses of the Ninepennies and the Threepennies. Gantry himself exchanged a glare with a few of the guildmasters as they passed his position exactly opposite the laborers' portal. The guildmasters were led by Garrick in his full master's robes, and the masters glittered in the noonday sun. Each master bore his or her chain of office, along with accoutrements in physical reference to their respective guilds' remits. The garment-makers carried long lance-length needles and whip-like measuring-tapes; the machinists their heavy clublike boiler-wrenches; the stevedores and the longshoregriffs their belaying pins and pry-bars. The common, incidental character of said symbols of office being their dual usage as melee weapons should have been lost on absolutely no-one. The guildmasters in their mass were themselves nearly a company strong, surprisingly numerous once you gathered them together like this. The street bosses scattered around the rim of Ironmongers' Square might have outnumbered them, but they were individual, alone in the midst of their minionates. The guilds were united. And as the guild-griffons approached the steps in front of the laborers' portal, the advance companies of the Twenty-First Griffish Territorials split to either side, fanning out to cover the approaches, leaving the guild-griffon core to advance through their wings, up to where Gleaming Shield, Sergeant Major Gary, and Gilda stood awaiting the masters wrapped in silent dignity. Overhead, clinging to the roofs and barely-finished buttresses of the cathedral, the earth ponies and goats of the Rock Valley Pioneers looked down over gutters and the gaping holes where gargoyles once had sat, staring curiously at the pageantry below. The little mobs of street enforcers surged across the square as it became apparent that the guildmasters would be admitted before them, possibly without them. The trailing companies of the Twenty-first that had followed in the train of the guild-column about-faced, and joined their fellows in forming a front against the approaching not-quite-a-rabble. "Only the invited and duly designated councilors of the Griffish Council of Trottingham will be admitted to the Cathedral today!" Gleaming Shield bellowed over the rumbling crowd and the heads of the guildmasters, her voice enhanced by magic. "Entourages will be encouraged to await their principals' pleasure elsewhere. Order will be maintained at all times, by the standing orders of the Duchess of Trottingham, pursuant to the Riot Act of the Hundred and Twenty-Sixth Year of the Fourth Era of Our Duchess, Celestia, First Of Her Name. Any invited and duly designated councilors shall present themselves immediately to the Duchess's troopers for ingress to the meeting chamber at this time!" Gilda stood to her captain's right, the text of the Riot Act in her talons. The full reading of the Act was an act of ceremonial importance, that any griffon or pony of the duchy should be well aware of; its reading meant that duly authorized official violence would commence until the streets were clear and the gutters ran red with blood. Gleaming Shield's voicing of the name of the dreaded Riot Act was not in itself a reading. It was merely a reminder that the cannons were in the vicinity, and could easily be wheeled out onto the flanks of the crowd in the time it took a leather-lunged officer to read the text of the Act to a tumultuous crowd. A friendly reminder, of course. (The 3rd Light Artillery was not anywhere near Ironmonger's Square, anyways, not that anygriff was eager to inform the onlookers. Gleaming Shield had not been able to guarantee sufficient infantry support deployed in the streets to satisfy that commanding officer's demands. Instead, that battalion was standing by along with the rest of a quick reaction force built around the Fifth Brigade, which was at least a half hour's notice away, on alert, but still in in garrison.) The gentle detachment of the street bosses from their retinues proceeded, gingerly, as the guildmasters disappeared into the guts of the Cathedral, led by Sergeant-Major Gary and one of his corporals. The individual bosses joined the rear of the guild-procession as they passed through the ranks of the Territorials holding back their followers from, well, following. From the east, the thrum of many wings heralded the approach of an additional set of principals. Gilda looked over the heads of the councilors as they queued to pass through the portal. Two full squadrons of pegasi in ceremonial war-gear was a sight rarely seen in Trottingham. The negotiations for that had been even more controversial than the discussions with the guilds over the militias, or the inconclusive negotiations with the brigadier of the Fifth Brigade and the artillery ponies . In the end, the Governor-General's office had scurried to detach a naval squadron of fliers from the flotilla refitting in the port. A naval squadron whose best finery was nothing more than tinsel in the face of Princess Cadance's Chasseurs. The resulting flight looked rather as if someone had put unicorns and oxen in the traces of the same carriage-team. Within the flight of battered marines and elite chasseurs, flew the princess herself, along with three carriages bearing the White Sisters and the Governor-General's representatives. They flew rapidly into the airspace controlled by the troopers of the Twenty-First and the Marezonians. Gilda's eyes narrowed as she registered the absence of the Governor-General. A bad sign, that. Gilda helped one of the White Sisters bring the materials into the nave. A set of handsome couch-chairs had been set on the raised dais, deliberately and blatantly not thrones of course, but comfortable and suitable for the derrieres of the privileged and pampered. There were only enough benches below the dais for the councilors themselves, as most of the seating for the masses had been shattered wreckage, and had not been deemed necessary to the proceedings in any event. Nor had anygriff felt the need to haul more benches out of storage than was absolutely necessary. There were surprisingly little in the way of walls inside the great nave, which had been designed to be mostly window, rising in long, interrupted sheets to the narrow clerestory far above. The original stained glass was long gone, of course, victim to the shelling which had wrecked the cathedral in the riots that had brought down much of the old building. The ponies of Colonel Pie's Pioneers had filled the empty holes with modern sheets of transparent screening. It wasn't decorative or dignified, but the glittering of the sunlight passing through the cheap plastic turned the vast space into a well of warmth and clarity. Like the glowing heart of the sky, imprisoned within a jail-cell of delicate stonework. The Pioneers had done a good job, piecing together the fine tracings of thinly carved granite masonry, patched so neatly with cement and sealant that Gilda could barely make out the spiderwebbed cracks where it had all been smashed into rubble by the ponies' cannonfire in the riots of '73. The benches were arranged lengthwise, perpendicular to the couches on the dais, facing each other across a space two spear-lengths wide. Garrick had led his procession into the space, and taken a seat in the benches to the left of the dais, at the fore nearest the dais itself. His griffons had followed his lead, mostly seating themselves along that left-talon side of the floor, shuffling about as they rearranged themselves in some pecking order Gilda couldn't quite discern. The bosses were quarrelling over the seating on the right side of the floor, and their arguments had spilled out into the floor itself, almost filling the space entirely, and crowding the guildmasters on their own side of the aisle. Lady Livery looked down at the chaos, her face not shifting in the least, as was the White Sisters' way. But Gilda had the feeling that if Livery was capable of frowning, she might have, confronted with the quarrelling, petty guttertrash making a mockery of the dignity of the occasion. Gilda gestured with a wing, voicelessly, at the narrow but open aisle between the back benches of the guild-side of the chamber, and the curtain of plastic sheeting and stonework which passed for a wall in this place. The bat-hen led the White Sisters carrying their load of materials around the commotion, quietly passing behind the guildmasters. The sisters climbed up on the back of the dais, and gathered behind the couches, putting their boxes of paperwork, supplies, and the big roll of butcher-paper where it would be close to hoof for whichever ponies would come to sit upon the ceremonial couches. The commotion rose in volume as Gilda and the sisters sat, and waited, and watched Sergeant-Major Gary fall into the role of chief bailiff. He interceded in squabble after squabble, sending the respective disputants to this side or that of the bosses' benches, directing his two corporals to go here and there to forcibly guide the undisciplined counselors to their arbitrarily-chosen but now-proper places. Gilda looked out at the scene, and saw a phalanx of guildmasters to her right, their left, dressed in their dignity as much as their robes of office. To her left, their right, she saw a sort of order emerging out of the rabble, a flock full of erratically-dressed individuals. Some wore finery above their station, far better-made and fitted than anything to be seen on the guild's side of the floor, even among the garment-trade masters. Some wore barbaric, slashed doublets, stained by what fluids Gilda knew not. And some dressed flashily, like the flamboyant street gangsters they were, daring anygriff to say anything about their presence here, at the start of something new, at the start of a new order. The Governor-General's aide arrived first, his brown mane ironed flat, a set of conservative bakelite-rimmed glasses making him look far older than reports indicated he actually was. He had with him a long wooden stave, clearly intended to be his staff of office, his ceremonial mace. But its head... Is that… a carved chicken-head? Behind Cheese Sandwich strode Princess Mi Dolente Cadenza, Gleaming Shield, a number of ponies whom Gilda vaguely recognized as Sandwich's assistants, and Prince-major Blueblood and his valet. The pony delegation stopped at the back of the aisle of benches, and waited patiently for the Sergeant-Major to finish seating the last of the bosses, and for the rest of the chamber to resolve into some semblance of silence. As soon as that silence had broken out, Sandwich interrupted it with a sharp rap-rap-rap with his chicken-mace, tapping out a rhythm on the nave's stone floor. "OK, here's the deal!" the earth pony sang out, "We're here to try to educate ourselves! Familiarize ourselves with that old nomenclature! Reviving this old- legislature! Recall the ancient definitions, of representations, among the wild griffons and tribal rulers, without descending into paired-off duelers! And so I call now, from the flocks of Trottingham, elders and the respected, to our pilot program! Toms and hens, this charge I've been given, to summon you to conclave unshriven, resolve this rebellion we're driven, lest we all die unforgiven!" The newborn silence thus assaulted, recoiled astonished, as the chamber full of griffons stared at the lunatic with his chicken-mace. Gilda wondered if someone had bleached a zebra and dipped him in chocolate and caramel. "Uh…" the earth pony said, looking sheepish. "So, yeah, not a heartsong crowd, I take it. Right. OK, you old birds, the Duchess wants to see some representation returned to this dump. You're all we've got. Got it? Simmer down, and let us get the Duchess's own ponies seated up there in those couches over yonder, and we can all get out of here without any blood on any of the fancy new stonework, yeah?" Cheese Sandwich looked around, as if he expected an actual response to this… speech? Garrick eventually stood up from his bench, and put the silence out of its misery. "Mister Sandwich, the guildmasters and elders of Griffish Trottingham stand assembled as requested. We welcome the Duchess's representative, and await the Duchess's pleasure. Ah… without the rhymes if you wouldn't mind." "Princess, the elders are assembled. Could ya follow me?" Cheese Sandwich said, and waved his chicken-mace towards the dais. He wobbled three-legged down the aisle, rapping his mace as he lurched forward. Princess Cadance followed in his wake with all the dignity she could muster, Gleaming Shield, Blueblood, and the others trailing behind. While waiting for her captain and the others, Gilda got the butcher-paper scroll ready, standing it up on its end, ready to be rolled out. Mirror, one of the younger White Sisters, stood beside the scroll, ready to hold it in place when the time came for Gilda to unroll the rest of it across the back of the stage. Cadance walked up to her couch, and stood before it as Cheese Sandwich took his place before her on the first step of the dais, beside where Garrick stood in front of his bench and his guildgriffons. Gleaming Shield and the other minions joined Gilda and the White Sisters at the back of the stage, and Gleaming Shield bent beside the butcher-paper scroll, fiddling with the lowest leaf of the taped-together mess, attaching the big leather-bound book she'd brought with her to it with yet more tape. Gleaming looked up at her bat-hen, and nodded. Gilda began unrolling the three-lengths-tall scroll across the back of the stage, carefully holding it stiff so that it didn't bow over or fall back. Inside the scroll was a foreshortened pikestaff which gave the whole vast sheet of butchers' or blotter paper a stiffness that kept it from folding in on itself. Mirror held the pikestaff's twin on the far side, so that the great cobbled-together sheet stretched across the whole back of the stage. Gleaming Shield's horn glowed as she activated the carrier wave matrix built upon the entangled magic of the correspondence journal. Cheese Sandwich closed his gaping jaw, which had fallen slack in astonishment at the unplanned antics at the back of the stage. They hadn't wanted to give Pie's people time to readjust to their own contributions to this farce; let the Special Party Plans ponies react to someone else's surprise for once. "Ah, OK, folks, this is it! This is the first and inaugural meeting of the Duchess's Griffish Tribal Council! Hear ye, hear ye, gather round and listen, there was an old mare from Hooftucket, whose life could hardly fit in a bucket, poorer than cow-" "Mister Sandwich, please confine yourself to the contents of the agreed upon script!" Princess Cadance projected over the earth pony's interrupted limerick. "I don't know why, nopony else is sticking to the script…" muttered Sandwich. "Mister Sandwich!" "OK! Listen up, you skells! The big white horse wants you all to be good to each other! Quiet up, and listen to the voice of the Pr- er, the Duchess!" And Gilda's captain's horn lit up again, activating the cantrip which made the words appear across the top of the butcher-paper scroll. CELESTIA, DUCHESS OF TROTTINGHAM, LADY PROTECTOR OF THE GRIFFISH ISLES, FIRST OF HER NAME, it said in bright neon-yellow letters against the brownish butcher-paper. And then beneath this proscenium of glowing text, an enormous black-inked sketch of a towering alicornic princess appeared, moving slightly as if it was alive, her eyes moving back and forth across the gathered griffons and the few ponies standing in front of the drawing. "GOOD AFTERNOON, MY LITTLE GRIFFONS. IT HAS BEEN FAR TOO LONG SINCE I HAVE SEEN ANY OF YOU. THANK YOU FOR COMING TOGETHER. I DECLARE THIS GATHERING A DUCAL COUNCIL, AS WE HAVE ASSEMBLED HERE THE ELDERS OF THE REALM AND MY SELF, IN CHARACTER AS YOUR DUCHESS AND SOVEREIGN. LIVERY, PLEASE BEGIN THE OFFICIAL RECORD, WE HAVE HERE GATHERED, THE DUCHESS IN COUNCIL."