Gilda tried to not stare at the smouldering fire in the rigging overhead, threatening to set alight the brand-new envelope which Gleaming Shield's family's own fiscal reserves had paid the Tenpenny Collective so many bits for. Martin Gale and a mixed pick-up crew of riggers and baffled-looking griffish troopers were wrestling with an impromptu wisp of damage-control cloud, wet and new, pegasus magic strange in the talons of toms and hens not born to the use of any of it.
The club in Gilda's own talons was heavy and filthy, and she tried to not think about the idiot rating who'd charged the major as they'd come off the chariots. Everygriff's blood had been up in the midst of the cannons' roar and the smoke and flash and fire, and Gilda had been obliged to percussively discourage the pony's excessive enthusiasm with two judicious taps.
Now that mare's blood was on Gilda's clubbed stick, and the care of the pegasus herself was in the talons of the surgeon, who was down in the new infirmary that had been, in another life, the Daddy Longlegs's captain's quarters, triaging the various battered and perforated casualties of this allegedly bloodless exercise.
Gilda stood guard behind her major, behind and to the right. The 'prize crew' had command of the ship's wheel, the great ship's sail-wings, port and starboard, were furled and out of sight from where they stood, and the ship was turning on her great beam, slowing in the midst of her own smoke and filth.
Most of the squadron, and all of the undamaged troopers of the line platoons were either on the deck below the forecastle, or were descending, the fire in the rigging having just gone out. Martin Gale was leading her griffons into a sort of formation as they touched down onto the deck among their fellows. There was Lulamoon over there, supervising one of her gunners, who was hammering at one of her peculiar munition-flinging devices which had caught a wheel on one of the assault carriages and was jammed up around a hinge.
Lyra Heartstrings, who had ridden into battle like a damn fool on the offending assault carriage like a mere private, was talking to Captain Bell, both of them standing around the wreckages of said broken cart.
The two batpony platoons - with one very pink hippogriff in their midst, like a burnt-over field of purple, grey and charcoal with one wayward poppy bobbing head-and-shoulders over the ashes - were coming into formation to the right, while the griffon platoons were still finding their places. The ranks of the third troop were thinned, between those detailed to the signal team with Purse Strings, those left back at the garrison with Ping, guarding the squadron's effects and prisoner, and several aloft with the damage control crew, who were still pulling down smouldering ropes and canvas.
And behind them all, the gunners of the regimental battery, their gun-carriages parked somewhat haphazardly at the back of the erratic, still-organizing formation.
The sound of pony cheers arose from far below, indicating the location of Battery Garner as they passed over that fortification. It was pretty much the only way Gilda knew where they were, sight and smell having been blinded by the billowing sulfur clouds of colored stink and flare, the brief battle having created an astonishing amount of smoky chaos in the skies over Trottingham's sea-roads.
The 'captives', that part of the crew not engaged in making sure the engines didn't seize up, or aloft smothering the sparks and coals of that near-disastrous fire, as well as the troopers detailed to reinforce the crew as 'marines' and thus 'captured' along with the rest, sat cordoned in corners of the tumbled deck by 'guards' from the third troop. In between the 'squadron proper' and their 'captives' were an expanse of deck cluttered with weapons and detritus, tumbled here and there by the disarray of those last few wild moments in the career of the HRHS Daddy Longlegs.
It occurred to Gilda that they had all gotten far too deep into their roles in this cock-eyed performance. As Gilda looked around, she counted the winds' blessings that nogriff had gotten fatally spitted by spear or blasted by gonne or carronade.
Wait, Lulamoon had called the brass things something else? Not falcon, that was the big carriage guns. They'd have to make sure that everything had gone right with the artillerymare's ensigns-
At that moment, they came out of the sulfur-clouds, and the bright sunlight lit up the assembled squadron and the ship under their talons.
With the sun and its light, returned the Trottish world below, the city and her forts and her port and her citizens, arrayed in their rapt thousands and tens of thousands, perched on rooftops and battlements and even those bleachers Purse Strings' hoodlum partners had built down by the harborside.
Gilda's unicorn took their return to the world as her cue.
"Ponies and griffons of Trottingham!" bellowed the major's thin, clear soprano from the vast panels of the envelope above, pre-arranged by ensorcellment and a clever little farspeaking spell of Gleaming's invention.
"Thank you all for coming out this fine morning to observe the final training exercises of her Royal Highness's newest household regiment, the Sixth Guards, First Squadron! We were so happy to have all of you fine people to watch our final evolutions, here, in the skies over Equestria's most valued friend and ally, the Duchy of Trottingham and the Griffish Isles."
The ponies and griffons on the forecastle around them, and down below on the major decks, came to attention, victors and captives, ratings and riggers, troopers and gunponies, guards and sailors.
"This new unit is Equestrian, as Equestrian as any provincial regiment from Baltimare or Marezona or the Vale, and yet! We have been organizing, and recruiting, here in battered, proud Trottingham, where every pony and every griffon knows in their bones that while they are our friends, they are not the Princess's, neither her subjects, nor her people. These guards you see before you, beside you, are free ponies, free griffons, come to the standard by their free will, by their own accord."
Well, most of them.
Still, Gilda looked down at the troops in their varying orders and disorders, ponies and griffons and that blasted goat and even that silly hippogriff mare. The crew were a mix of Trottish and Equestrian, yes, but even the guards themselves were a tumble of thestral and Trottish griffon and Trottish pony and winds only knew what else in between. This was the moment. This was it. Either they had them now, or they never would.
"And Trottingham is the only place where we could have brought into the world a band such as this! Where the service of a princess wasn't a foregone conclusion, a thoughtless emanation of fellow-feeling, national pride, or affection for the mother of our people! For the Equestria of our heart isn't a growth of blood and soil, flesh and fruit, family-love and mother-love. Equestria is, it can be, it ought to be, it must be, an- an-
"An idea!
"An ideal. A belief in the spirit of harmony, a belief in concord, in comity - a generous and hopeful desire for that faith, that love that can bring us together, in spite of difference, in defiance of tribe, and against all those other loves - for species, for tribe, for family and soil and blood - which pull against that harmony, that concord, and that unity.
"Because love of family, and love of soil, and love of the great who govern our soil and our lands and our families, isn't enough when we step beyond our front doors! Love of one's own nation can not be enough, not be sufficient, when we step out to face all the nations, on their own front stoops, on their own soils, before their families which are not our own!"
Gleaming Shield paused, and looked around at the sun-dazzled troops in their half-dressed, half-disordered ranks. And she smiled like the sun, a wicked and confiding grin.
And she spoke for the townfolk below, who couldn't see clearly anygriffon, any pony on that half-crowded deck.
"Oh, my friends below, and my friends before me, I look around at my troopers' smoke-smudged faces, and see they're not having any of my political speeches. It's a good thing I'm not running for city council, isn't it? And nopony ever goes off to war for silly philosophies, or political speeches. Or rather, they shouldn't.
"We go for a promise, and we stay for the friends we find along the way.
"A new regiment is no better than a promise, a parchment assertion from a distant princess; an assertion that this particular paper so establishes one Sixth Guards Regiment, that it shall be subject to military discipline, and that it shall be governed by honor, and worthy of loyalty. The parchment can't do anything. It's only paper! It is only the promissory note! And anypony who has dealt with banks knows what value to put on paper money!
"No, my friends, every pony and every griffon knows that you only put your faith in coin, the true metal, good, honest gold. The bit on the barrel! This is why, when a pony or a griffon enters the service, we call it taking the Princess's bit! We give the recruit a proper coin, and she puts it in her purse, and we call her a soldier! Or a sailor! Or a trooper of the regiment!"
And the deck was washed by the sound of filthy ponies and griffons roaring their approbation of this well-planned applause line. She and Gilda had war-gamed this bit, long into the night.
"Which brings us to today's exercise. The Sixth Guards is a household regiment, but it will not be bound to house or hold! We have no homes! We will have no walls to hold, territory to command. By design! Few but scholars of ancient history remember anymore, but the Sixth Guards of legend was once the household cavalry of the almost-mythical Crystal Empress, and the Sixth's home was a legendary palace of diamond and quartz and other precious fruit of the deep mines of the north. The Crystal Empress, Princess Amore, whose great dominion over the North now lies today five hundred miles to the northwest, beneath more than a thousand yards of ice and snow.
"So, now, re-established, we required a new home! Or rather, a perch from which to be what we will be. Ambassadors to the world! An armed host for the ideals, well-wishes, and hopes of Equestria for the world outside our door. Harmony Militant! But to be that, we needed a ship.
"Well, we found one. Built of Equestrian ironwood, and ensorcelled fabric, and thunderforged steel. Rebuilt and modernized by the industrious workers of the mighty arsenal that is Trottingham!"
Gleaming Shield waited for the distant cheers of the griffons now visible below, on the factory rooftops, and in the cheap stands lining the side of the harbor, and, more closely, the ponies covering the battlements of the batteries and the harborside port behind them. The filthy, colored clouds had been left far behind, and even the smoldering in the rigging above was hardly putting out any smoke. The whole of the city was focused on the now-nameless airship come to a stillness above her harbor, between land and sea, an airship with Shield's soprano broadcasting across the entire city.
"But there was a problem! Every good sailor knows that you can't rename a ship - can't make her truly yours! - without offending the goddess of the waves, in whose fearsome respect we bow our heads, humbled by the wrath of the seas. It is to challenge that nameless goddess's ire, to invite her fury, to just buy a ship off the shelf, like you were purchasing a hat, or a cloak.
"Oh, we could have had a keel laid, a ship built from the ground up, for our future career through the upper airs. And we will, some day, when the griffons of the Pennies can supply for us the great argosies of the air we all know they are planning! But that day is not today, and we have obligations, duties, which call us abroad!
"No, no. We couldn't wait. So, instead, today, as our first act as the Crystal Guard reborn, we took a ship. Took her like the griffons of old, by force of arms, and the bravery of my toms and hens and mares and stallions, here bloodied before me!
"Because that is the escape clause. That is the exception before which the respected guardian of the registry of the deep bows her seafoam head. That captured ships give the conqueror the battle-won right of renaming!
"And so, we stand before you, battle-scarred, besmirched, and bloodied-" and Gleaming Shield's horn-magic reached out, and drew the blood from Gilda's stave, and twisted it into a gyre, a helix of gore that caught the sun's light, sparkling crimson and bright, clear enough to be seen from below. "We stand upon the decks of our dear-purchased, captured ship!
"Because, in the end, a ship can't be bought. She can only be taken! The more roughly, the better. We stand before you soldiers, who now know something about taking something precious from monarchs. Because it's the only price worthy of giving our everything in return! Not promises, not words, not assertions, not ideas. The coin itself! The bit!
"Well, we've taken our Princess's Bit, and we aim to take her into the shadowy places of this world. She's a bit smudged at the moment, but just you watch. We'll have her shining like a piece fresh-coined out of the mint before we both sally out into the black to light up the dark! Thank you, and Harmony bless the Princess and her beloved ally the Duchess, both!
"I give you all, Her Royal Highness's Ship, the Princess's Bit!"
And the roar of hundreds of troopers and sailors drowned out the distant cheers of the civilian crowds below.
"So what did you think, Gilda?"
"Very good, ma'am. Much better than the last speech. I was particularly moved when you told them that a ship's name can't be purchased, but a soldier-hen's honor can be bought for a bit."
"Harmony damn it, Gilda!"