In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

The Baneway

SBMS101

The voyageurs and their guard left the walled compound outside Le Coppice in the morning. There was a certain frigid distance between the voyageurs and their Company armsponies; previous caravans had been easy partnerships, but this last one had gone bad somewhere on the back-leg towards Mondovi and home. The guards had wasted a great deal of road-time searching for a lost pony, and quarreling with each other. By Le Coppice, the voyageurs just wanted quit of their protective detail, despite their prior good record.

Two pegasi listening posts hid in the partial cloud cover over the by-way turn-off just north of the Coppician drawbridge on the Bride's Road. The caravan passed under their watchful eyes, and the composition of the advanced guard and rear-guard was noted, as well as the arrangement of the loaded wagons and positioning of the various voyageurs.

Also noted was the advance guard of the 93rd Rear Support Battalion passing through Le Coppice in the wake of the voyageur's caravan, hurrying through without pausing to make camping arrangements with the Road-master of that resilient town. Thirty ponies and donkeys of the alleged allies of the Company scampered towards the turn-off, staying just out of eyesight of the Company rear-guard.

---

"I said nothing when you came back from your unauthorized trip back into Rennet, covered in dried blood, and put yourself under arrest. We all have our situations, and what was I gonna do, put you under double-arrest? Have you flogged before an assembly? Don't answer that."

The Captain was not taking my emergence from house arrest with equanimity.

"And you've done everything we've asked of you since, fine. And maybe I have a warrant now for your arrest, but since when have we paid attention to civic warrants and so forth unless it was in our interest to pay attention? I need a doctor, you're a doctor, you stay, and cu nfernu their fermi warrants. But y'know? I thought maybe you chiudiri yourself, maybe I don' have a second captain runnin' about, giving my ponies orders, makin' plans. Doin' my nferu job for me, y'know?"

"Captain-"

"No, no, le' me finish. I'm not real' mad, just kinda sad. I thought maybe you and me, we final' have an understandin'. OK, go now."

"The Spirit has a plan for us. Well, a problem, and a plan to deal with it."

"Ah, alicorni e padrone di armonia ci preservano, the Spirit again!"

"This would all be so much easier if your dreams weren't so iron-clad prosaic that She cannot find a hole to crawl through. There is such a thing as being too much of this world, Captain."

"Bah, you and your Spirit. What does the great bird of th' 'eavens want with prosaic leetle me, Sawbones?"

"We're sure that the corporal of the voyageur's guard has been killed and replaced, and-"

---

The pegasi stalked their respective targets, while a messenger winged her way back to the Company to report. The returning guard's reception was suitably adjusted, to take into account the morning's road-order.

By mid-afternoon, they were on the approaches to Trollbridge, and the turn-off to the temporary quarters of the 93rd when they were at Dance Hall. A beaten mud-track led between those quarters and the bypass, whose half-rotting planking was being systemically torn out and replaced with proper Bride-compliant metaling by a sweating construction crew. The construction ponies had worked their way across the fortified bridge, and were spreading steaming asphalt composite across the three hundred or so yards between Trollbridge's outer defenses and the little crossroads. The planking at and beyond the crossroads had been torn up, and the gravel underneath had been disturbed by the work-ponies. An annoyance, and an impediment to the heavily-laden wagons of the voyageurs, but nothing more than that.

Which is why the vanguard let the wagons fall behind a bit as they crossed the heavy ground, opening up a wide gap in the caravan.

And none of the voyageurs were anywhere near the scene when the three veterans of the vanguard, having passed a red construction-flag stuck in the disturbed earth by the side of the roadway, turned without warning upon their corporal and plunged their sharp lances deep into her neck, flank, and barrel. A great flash tore the late spring day asunder, and a bowl of black-light swallowed the apparent betrayal from view.

The covers from a dozen trenches surrounding the roadway on both sides were tossed into the air, and the ponies hiding underneath swarmed the voyageurs and their wagons, Feufollet among them, her blood-slick shoulders and glowing eyes declaring, to all observing, her magic in full operation. The voyageurs were separated from their wagons, as the little jenny quickly examined each in turn. She barked out a warning over the third cart, and the rest were hurriedly dragged off the bypass beyond the slit-trenches, leaving the single wagon to stand, abandoned and alone in the road.

Meanwhile, within the black-lit shielding, the three veterans struggled to keep their target under control, and it pulsed and shook, flesh rippling as it gave up the pretense of semblance, letting the mask of Backsword, unicorn mare and sister of the Company, melt away like a wax candle left carelessly by the roaring winter's-hearth. First one, than another of the ponies were thrown from their hooves, tossed about like rabbits fighting a timberwolf.

This was when the reinforcements arrived, Gibblets and the Crow converging from both sides to spray fire and acid in the face of the skinwalker, the last veteran desperately keeping her shaft buried in the flank of the bucking horror. Three bow-ponies converged on the target, and fired their quivers dry into the thing, first bolts and arrows, then a hoof-full of blooded thralling-fetishes left behind by the Major of the 93rd for emergency use by any bloodmages the Company could find to hoof. Feufollet had primed them for the ambush, but Obscured Blade had, rightfully, ordered her to keep away from the heart of the ambush. I cannot say whether this distance lessened the effect of the fetishes, but from all accounts they had no greater puissance than the conventional projectiles. The aggregate slowed the thing sufficiently that the last of the veterans was able to keep it subdued and impaled upon her lance.

Long enough for the standard-bearer to arrive in the melee at a gallop, the banner-lance leveled and aimed true for the skin-walker's heart, if it kept that suppurating mass in the same locale as mere mortal equines have been known to keep them.

Carrot Cake struck true, and the banner-lance pierced the protean, burning, melting horror, plunging so deep into its flesh that the point nearly emerged from the other side of its mass. We had been prepared this time, the reinforcements had been properly outfitted with protective goggles, and the road-guards had been warned to look away from the impact if and when it happened. Obscured Blade's black-light shield even absorbed the flare before it blinded any of the voyageurs.

The old warlock's shield broke, however, like a dropped dinner-plate in the process. And the entire countryside within eye-shot saw the Spirit, three times the height of a mortal pony, laughing in triumph over the collapsing hulk of her defeated foe. She was black as the pit and jagged-toothed, and the feeble sun faded before her victorious aura.

She bent over the quivering mass, and began to feed.

Our Lady was not a dainty eater, and many an observer lost their lunches from the sickening display. Later, when the slit-trenches were filled back in, they say you could still smell the vomit.

The only distraction from the Spirit as she devoured her second lich, was Bad Apple's destruction of whatever surprise the Walker had planted in that voyageur's wagon. Whatever it was supposed to do, it exploded with great fury after she and her pegasus minder buzzed the cart in her warlock's gig and dropped magefire on the trap/backup/alicorns knows what. The conflagration was such that the flames caught some of the other voyageurs' wagons on fire, and queasy Company ponies had to scramble to put out the smouldering canvas before the entire caravan was lost.

It was during this spectacle, as exposed as exposed could be, that the vanguard of the 93rd trotted into view. It was for this that the rest of the sections of the Company were in place, and their corporals and sergeants galloped out into the muddy fields to surround the ponies of the 93rd, and bring them into custody.

It might have degenerated into a full-fledged battle, except the Spirit raised her bloody head from the remains of her meal, and flapped her great wings, and launched herself at the shocked Imperials. They broke and ran, scattering. She landed over one of them, trembling and weeping as he lay in the mud by the side of the bypass, and sniffed him. All around her, the Company bayed and coursed, running down their prey and pummeling them into submission. None of the Imperials were killed, but many were dragged away afterwards, badly beaten, and more than a few suffered from broken ribs and bad sprains from the rough hoofing.

Gibblets walked up to the Nightmare, and interrupted her playful terrorizing of the poor, incontinent Imperial. "Your Highness, is the lich subdued? Is it… sufficient?"

"Oh, yes, my faithless pierrot. I have her deaths-blood within me now. It will never take another one of my ponies, the thief that it was." She turned her baleful gaze away from her toy. "What a marvelous exercise you have all offered me! If only it were night, that I might stay even longer! See you in your dreams, goblin…"

And She was gone like the passing of a cloud overhead.

Later interrogations revealed that a round dozen of the Imperials of the 93rd's vanguard had been agents of the Walker, including the commander of the vanguard herself. They had been hired to infiltrate the rear support battalion and support their mistress in her infiltration. Another two dozen were flushed out of the main body of the 93rd when it arrived. The officers got into quite a nasty fight with Gorefyre and Whitesmith over what was to be done with the traitors; I eventually gave my voice to the Imperial's side of the affair - the legates were themselves agents of the Bride, duly authorized and legitimate. The infiltrators were only doing their duty. We wouldn't be able to keep the lid on the affair, given all the ponies who had seen it, in broad daylight, and the entire vanguard of the 93rd in full view. Only a massacre could have shut it away, and that would have only made a bigger mess.

The construction-ponies continued their metaling of the road to Le Coppice. After that afternoon, it became known as the Baneway.

Comments

[Dorath]

And in a land where magic, especially death-magics, lingers longer than it should, I wouldn't be surprised if that stretch of Road had ill effects on ghouls and the other lesser undead ... <evil laugh>, maybe even make the Legates uneasy as well

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

She bent over the quivering mass, and began to feed.

Last time, someone she ate disagreed with her.

[CaptainPipsqueak]

8630049
No, it disagreed with being eaten.

[FanOfMostEverything]

And the entire countryside within eye-shot saw the Spirit, three times the height of a mortal pony, laughing in triumph over the collapsing hulk of her defeated foe.

And I'm willing to bet that the Captain still missed it.