Knights of Night - Chosen of the Moon

by vadram

Chapter 17: Wood and paper

Chapter 17: Wood and paper

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There a lot of things that can be bad for a recruit during basic training, but nothing is worst than the hatred of the drill instructor .

Given that it is his job to make every recruits life as miserable as possible, and train them, one can only imagine what he can do to a pony that managed to get under his skin. Since the incident on day one, drill sergeant Clashing Lance made it his sole mission in life to be the bane of Starry Night’s existence.

If an exercise had to be done, Starry Night would have to do finish it twice as fast, or resist twice as long, or carry twice as much. If he failed he would be punished. If anypony else failed, Starry Night would share in his punishment. If something needed to be done, he would be the first to volunteer, whether he wanted to or not.

Guard Duty? Starry Night knew he had the shift that will caused him the most lack of sleep.

KP Duty? Starry Night knew that he was the first one the sergeant would “suggest.”

Latrine Duty? Starry Night knew every the weight and feel of every last barrel he had to dispose of.

Armory duty? Starry Night knew that he had two exhausting hours every single night, right after lights-out, to look forward to.

Fire Watch Duty? The same as Guard Duty, the more sleep lost the better.

And yet the drill sergeant never pushed him hard enough to break him. He just bent him until he was snapping, then let him go, before bending him again.

Aside from combat and physical exercise, weapon and armor training, basic survival skills were taught during training. While equestria’s population was over three quarters rural, there were many ponies that did not possess even the most basic survival skills.

For these ponies the instructor would explain everything from what wild fruits were safe to eat, to how to build a shelter or make a proper latrine, to something as simple as chopping down a tree and starting a fire without magic or flint.

One day, during basic survival training drill sergeant Lance took the thirty recruits, out on a march to a nearby forest where he would teach them the proper way to cut down trees, make and collect firewood and get a fire going.

After almost three hours of marching, lunch, and a some more marching the platoon reached their destination, and the instructor taught them how to use axes, picks and sledgehammers.

Regardless of what tool they were using all the recruits had to practice their swings. There were two problems though. Standing orders said that many of the trees there were not to be cut, for ecological reasons. A team was sent the day before to prepare logs that the recruits would practice their swings on, and only one or two trees were marked to be cut by the instructor, for demonstration purposes.

Everypony had the proper tools, but even after cutting the two trees down there were still not enough logs for everypony to practice on, so they were forced to do it in turns, and all were forced to do it, even those a pony worked as lumberjack before joining.

As the sergeant searched for more logs, or knocked down trees for the recruits to use he came across a dead birch tree. And since the reasoning for not cutting trees down were enviromental, he thought that cutting down an already dead tree would not conflict with the order.

Birch trees don't die like most trees. Most trees die, weaken, sometimes split, and then fall over. A dead birch will break off above a point and lose its branches, but the trunk will remain.

Birches also have a funny kind of bark that works well for tinder, or even paper. The stuff's remarkably rugged, many layers thick, and holds up much better than the rest of the tree after it dies. But their insides are a fairly light wood that decomposes pretty quickly after it dies, the paper-like bark remains, but the wood inside turns into this wet, buggy, dusty pulp.

The drill sergeant measured the tree with his eyes, walked around it to find the best place to start chopping so that when the tree fell it would not hit many neighboring trees. He grasped his axe firmly and was lining up to chop it down when the ex-lumberjack pony happened to see what he was going and spoke to the sergeant.

"Sergeant, you don't want to do that," the recruit warned him.

"Shut up, Private, I know what I'm doing," the sergeant replied ticked off by the recruit.

He took a swing, and the axe just kind of destroyed the trunk in a violent explosion of damp, rotten sawdust. The sergeant stood there, blinking and coughing, in this cloud of rancid dust for a minute before looking at the private and saying.

"You knew that would happen, didn't you?" With a clearly visible expression of anger hidden underneath all the sawdust.

“Starry! You and mister know it all will carry all the axes back to camp!”

“Sir yes sir!” Starry Knight said from a couple of feet away, dropping the sticks he had been fiddling with while waiting for his turn to come. While the other pony just stood there and looked in confusion at the angry sergeant.

Carrying fourteen extra axes for miles was not by any stretch of the mind the worst thing Starry had to endure at the hooves of drill sergeant Lance.

That night, after finishing Armor Duty, two hours after lights out, Starry finally dragged his tired husk into bed. With his weapon of choice, his sword, placed beside him, Starry pulled his covers above his head, and let a little light flow from the tip of his horn. He reached under his pillow he pulled out a book that and opened it at a folder page.

“… the breast. The large fleshy mass in the...” Starry only managed to get a few words read when a loud banging sound was heard coming from the outside. He immediately turned the light from his horn off and slid the book below his pillow, pushing it all the way until it fell in between the straw matters and the bed frame.

“Wake up meatbags!” the drill sergeant yelled while banging a wooden club against an iron pan. A unicorn instructor walked behind him and used his magic to light all the candles in the room. “Surprised inspection time!”

The recruits jumped to their feet and rushed to the front of their beds, opened their footlockers and awaited for the inspection. He picked up five ponies at random and take a quick look through their stuff searching for contraband. Of course that was only an excuse the real reason for the inspection is to get the soldiers ready for the next week of the training which included among other things learning how to deal with sleep deprivation and hunger.

Five ponies lockers were searched and nothing was found.

“Private Night,” the sergeant said with a smile on his face as he started rampaging through his locker, tossing everything out as he conducted his “search.” When he could not find nothing he moved onto his bed, something he did not do to the other ponies whose belongings he searched.

First he threw away the standard issue white blanket with a blue stripe, then came the white sheets followed by pillow. Starry was just about to let out a sigh of relief when sergeant Lance flipped his matters off the bed frame, causing it and the book he had stashed away to fly a onto the neighboring bed.

“What have we here?” the sergeant asked as he picked up the book. “Pegasus Pony Anatomy,” he read the book’s title out loud.

Noticing the folded corner bookmark the instructor quickly opened it there to see what warranted the pony’s attention. He opened the book and saw a two page spread of a female pegasus, her wings stretched up, and the various muscle groups highlighted.

“Well, well, well, looks like I interrupted you before you got to the good parts,” the instructor said as he browsed to the rest of the book searching for more pictures and drawings.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked gently at first before getting into Starry’s face and yelling “DO YOU?” at him.

“Sir, a book sir!”

“A book? No this is not a book, this is contraband. And do you know what we do to ponies who are in the possession of set contraband?”

“Sir, no sir!”

“We punish them!” he said with a smile on his face. “But I am a merciful stallion and I am going to let you chose. Permanent Latrine Duty, or ten lashes with.”

“You have till morning to decided. The rest of you back to bed!”

As the drill sergeant flapped his wings to put out the lights, Starry Night gave his response.

“Latrine Duty sir!”

“Next week is all bean week,” the general said as he slammed the doors behind him.