In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Reivers on the Border

SBMS012

The charioteers' corps played "wolf, goose and grain of sack" with us and the ground-elements, hopping us into position onto the next road southwards going clockwise around the borders of the province. The second and third customs posts were considerably softer targets than the first two, we had apparently hit the major garrisons to the eastwards, and now were sweeping up the minor posts as we moved away from the trade routes in that direction. I justified our presence on the expedition when a pegasus caught a spearhead through her wing at the second custom post, and then an earth pony was hamstrung on his right rear leg by an unexpected blow by a customs officer no-pony had expected to be armed at the third barricade. Hamstring repairs are horrible, invasive bits of surgery, and I was quite proud of having pulled off that in a field surgery. I stitched up and stabilized both brothers, and they were evacuated back to the infirmary at the forward base, which grew increasingly distant as we worked our way along the border.

The fourth custom post was literally abandoned, and we burned the facility to make a statement, then rushed deployment to the fifth target so as to not waste the night. At this point we were in serious danger of catching up to the section of griffin scouts who the Lieutenant had finding our targets, evaluating them, and playing pathfinder for the main body of the raiding group.

We were starting to feel the rush, as the Company was running out of autumn, and the last harvest of the season was racing us like the proverbial hare catching up on the tortoise. The Captain *needed* our equipment and ponies for the projected granary raids, which had to hit before the millers started milling their harvest. We had been using under-utilized ponypower and resources while other scouting sections were busy exhaustively mapping the targets for that phase of the campaign and pre-caching equipment and corps of observation for the right moment. And that moment was not now, but it was approaching rapidly.

So we rushed the fifth custom post, expecting to take it at the gallop like the fourth post had been taken. My orderlies and I didn't even unload the mobile surgery from the vehicles, and instead we just stood by the grounded chariots and waited to see if we were needed. The security detail and ground reserve force were likewise clustered around the grounded chariots. Some of these were brand-new, hacked together out of green-wood and pioneer supplies, manufactured on the cheap back at the forward base. It turns out, once you start using the chariots for air-mobility, it's like a bad drug. You need a bigger and bigger fix to get the same rush, and we were converting more and more of the first cohort's ponies to aerial taxi duty. We hadn't yet started eyeing the griffins and measuring them for chariot harnesses, but I somehow suspected that moment, likewise, was coming.

This was the point at which a pillar of flame interrupted our reverie and turned night into day. This caused the security detail and reserves to scatter to their proper posts, galloping into the darkness around the impromptu chariot park on the packed earth of the roadway. My orderlies and I yanked my supplies and tent out of the supply chariot, and trotted to the roadside, where we rapidly kicked the tent together and I set up my table.

"We'll use the chariot beds as cots if there are multiples," I directed. There was a second flare of light, and then a third, smaller one. This was bad, we hadn't committed any serious casters to this campaign, for all of its flash, it was a glorified diversion. All we were supposed to be doing was putting the skeer on the rebel and drawing his forces to the edges of the province to defend against border-raiders and imaginary invading armies. The witches-coven was busy back in camp putting together nasty surprises for the main effort that was coming. All of which meant that we didn't *have* any warlocks to be lighting up the countryside like that. Which meant that we just drew the attention of rebel firepower, probably a rune-caster. Possibly rune-casters, plural, in which case we were boned.

A pegasus runner flew back to the chariot-park, and half-spiraled outwards until she hit the reserve corps, which had started walking cautiously forward towards the big noises and bright lights. I couldn't hear what she said to the sergeant in charge, but they broke into a gallop towards the fires, and I pulled my lance out of a chariot and set it beside my surgery table, ready for rebels, or to start stabilizing wounded, whichever the road delivered to me first.

I could hear the roaring when the reserves reached the fighting, which meant the entire countryside should have heard it as well. This customs-post wasn't like the first few barricades to the north, which were in wooded areas along the verge of the agricultural zone. Here we were surrounded by darkness and fields of nodding corn, ripened and drying in the fair autumn weather. There were farming hamlets in the near distance, on side-roads joined to the main route by crossroads every half-mile or so. This put at least four hamlets within sight and hearing of the cauldron of pyric runes and the first cohort's retaliatory firebombs.

The distinctive blue-green shimmer of a Company chorus shield lit up the night, which meant that our unicorns were still in the fight and organized. None of them were warlocks, and they couldn't really take the fight to an experienced rune-caster, but they could keep the fire off of an advancing battleline. Rune-casters weren't nearly as flexible as warlocks, and if you could get close enough to them without being burnt down by their runic fires or their curses melting your bones right out of your hides, they folded up nicely once you cracked them over the skull or spitted them on a lance.

A big burst of flame bloomed off the opposite side of the chorus-shield, like an orange-red fungus growing off the side of a half-deflated hoofball. Then… nothing. Maybe some screaming and clashing of blades, but it's easy to imagine that sort of thing in the silence after a deafening tumult like that. Then, ten minutes later, the chorus-shield dissipated. That either meant that the chorus had been broken, or that the threat was taken care of and they'd simply stopped casting the spell.

We waited in the silence, and eyed the lights of the neighboring hamlets in the near distance, looking for that distinctive flickering that would tell us that enemy reserves were approaching from their farmhouse quarters, or possibly farmers with pickaxes and hoes looking to pick over the wreckage of a losing fight for salvage and booty.

A clopping came from the direction of the now-incinerated customs post and barricade. We leaned forward on our forehooves, ready for anything.

The first figures came close enough for us to see them, and see that they were ponies carrying wounded in improvised litters. Three litters emerged from the darkness, and I sighed, and got to work.

I worked on those I could save. Two pegasi were too burned to survive and were triaged, so I could concentrate on the donkey with only third-degree burns on her forearms and right barrel. That jenny was lucky I had sufficient plantain and linseed oil ointment. I washed out her burns with alcohol, and then we covered them with the burn ointment and wrapped her in clean bandages, and dosed her with laudanum, enough to keep her from screaming every time she was jostled. There's only so much I can do about burns, but what I could do, I did, and I believe that immediate battlefield treatment saved her, because she survived the trip back to the infirmary at the forward base. In my mind, it justified all the nighttime standing about I had inflicted on my convalescent orderlies and myself up to that point.

We gave the two dying pegasi far more laudanum, enough to kill them if the burns weren't already doing that job for free. But they died peaceful, not screaming their burnt lungs out from the agony of their mortal wounds. Dead that night was Steel Wing, Updraft, and Little Wind, the last of whom died immediately on the field, and whose litter-carriers took her charred remains directly to the chariots for eventual sky-burial.

The Lieutenant pulled me aside along with the commander of the aerial detachment and the reserve force, two sergeants named Long Haul and Chestnut Shell. The gist of the debrief was simply this: this barricade had been defended by a full company, with a caribou rune-caster in command, or possibly on an inspection tour, who knows? We could pick over the battlefield and see if we could find more evidence – and at this point, Long Haul waved a wing at a waiting corporal, tersely ordered scouts back to the burned barricade to see if they could pick anything out of the rubble before any reaction force arrived on scene - but we clearly had hit a section of the border which was getting more resources than the air we'd been punching the last few nights.

This was the point at which the griffin scouts that had been busy evaluating the next road on our itinerary – an actual branch of the Bride's Road leading south-west towards the river-ports of the northernmost province of the riverlands – arrived to report on the enemy forces on that line of advance. It was not easy news – it was an actual fortress, and they reported at least three regiments with proper entrenchments and well-built walls fronted by abatis and cleared kill-zones.

That took all the wind out of our wings. We barely had any night left, and we decided to burn what little darkness we had left in withdrawing to the neighboring province to regroup. As we pulled out of the battle-zone, the charioteers quickly and rapidly staging us mud-ponies out as quickly as they could, the ponies who had been sifting through the wreckage of the battlefield flew up, reporting the approach of a rebel reaction force.

The orderlies and I quickly packed up the tent and table, and I hefted my surgical supplied onto my back as we balanced the bundled tent and table over their backs. We started hoofing it towards whatever non-rebel town lurked to the southeast along this road, and hoped we were found by a charioteer before a rebel patrol overran our flightless flight. It was a close-run thing. We saw, quite clearly, the dim dust cloud rising over a galloping herd of rebels as the last chariot lifted us into the rays of the rising sun.

Comments

[CaptainPipsqueak]

We hadn't yet started eyeing the griffins and measuring them for chariot harnesses, but I somehow suspected that moment, likewise, was coming.

"After the third messenger we sent to suggest the topic was returned to us partly-eaten, we decided 'Fuck it; pegasi are good enough.'"

[CaptainPipsqueak]

I mean seriously though, why would you want to waste creatures whose front ends are practically knife sets on something like carrying cargo?