In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Barber, Baker, Soldier, Spy

SBMS128

Feufollet and I waited inside the Bride's Gate as Brass Tone's ore and ingot convoy crossed the great drawbridge into Dance Hall. The heavy-laden wagons swayed as they rolled off the bridge and back onto the pavement of the Road. The guards made quick work of inspecting each wagon as it passed, not even stopping them, just trotting alongside and lifting each wagon's covers with their lance-heads to check that they were loaded up with crushed ore, ingots, and odd-lots of stone and metal fixings. The guards converged on the corporal of the guard, who held the waybill, and as the last wagon crossed the bridge, I walked over to talk to the corporal. The last guards came round, the corporal nodded, and hoofed over the waybill to me, and I galloped ahead to find the convoy-master. Feufollet followed in my wake.

I wasn't quite exactly 100%, but I could get up at least a brief half-gallop without tearing open old wounds, or straining the healing bones in my rear leg. And really, it wasn't much of a gallop. Earth ponies and donkeys can be pretty hale and mighty when it comes to hauling heavy loads, but even they can find it a strain to haul tons of zinc, tin, copper, and even lead in wagon-loads.

We found the convoy-master hitched side-by-side with another pony at the head of the column, hauling a wagon half-full of lead ingots. I knew Swing Shift from my several visits to Tone's work-camps and re-opened mining villages up in the Deep Mines. They were just as exposed up there to seasonal camp-sickness and flu as we mortal mercenaries, and my services against that eventuality was part and parcel of the Company's agreement with that wealthy business-pony.

"Morning, Master Shift! The corporal passed your paperwork over to me, to keep the traffic moving. You know how they like to keep you all rolling while you're inside the ramparts." I hoofed over the papers to Swing Shift, who grabbed them with his mouth and tucked them into a set of saddle-bags.

"Hey, you'll get no arguments from me. I have no desire to camp-out beside the Road somewhere in a dark gorge halfway to nowhere! I plan to sleep behind walls up on the plateau!"

"That's a long haul for ponies carrying all this dross. Look at it! Your springs are going to fuse solid if you're not careful!"

"Hey, at least we have springs! I remember when we had to haul in leather-strap suspensions. No Grogar-damned give to them at all, and unlucky as all tartarus as well! But we only had to haul down to the docks in those days, so there was that. This road-haulage is for the birds."

"At least you have good Bride Roads to carry over, don't you think?"

"Yeah, which means it's only fifteen times more expensive than shipping by river! Look at all of these mouths and bellies tied up carrying a few dozen tons worth of material! If it were bad roads, you'd be talking sixty times as expensive! Oh, Doc, give me a fair river, and flatboat-mares to pole my loads downstream, and then I'd show you proper profits!"

"Tell me how to make the White Rose disappear, and I'll give you the river back again, dear sir. Until then, you're as road-bound as the rest of us."

"Damn them all to tartarus, sure enough. Hey, what are you doing on the road?"

"Oh, there's this militia conference thing scheduled in a few days up at the Palisades. Feufollet and I need to be up there to show the flag. Supposed to be a couple other ponies coming along, but I think they got a late start of it, and they'll probably join us on the road somewhere once they get their flanks in gear."

"Ha! Give ‘em what-for, Doc! You can't let the slackers goldbrick, gives the good workers ugly ideas, either they start enforcing discipline themselves, or everybody starts cutting corners!"

As we talked, the northern gate passed overhead, and I drifted back along the convoy, followed by my jenny-shadow. As we walked through the mid-winter thaw, I paused now and again to talk to this carter and that along the long convoy. I knew many of them, for few were professional or dedicated carters. There were far too many ponies at loose ends this winter in central Pepin, adventurers and would-be farmers and sooners waiting until spring and solid ground for their projects and reconstructions and recovery of abandoned cropland. Many of the sooners had wasted their seed, or found that they hadn't brought enough, or found their supplies not sufficient to a long winter in Dance Hall's shanty-town, and had found seasonal work hauling carts for Brass Tones. More than one of the carters had been before the Caribou Trust the fall before, arguing their families' case before the legal-ponies and myself. I didn't know them well, but well enough to exchange a friendly word or two.

Dancing Shadows and Heavy Bucket were hauling a wagon full of zinc ore about three carts from the end of the convoy. I pulled up next to them, the same as the other carters, and exchanged dull pleasantries with those two wayward Company-donkeys, everypony pretending to not know each other, but not exactly, you know? Faking a casual acquaintance was far harder than simply cutting a friend dead, I find. We ended up waggling our eyebrows expressively at each other. I'm pretty sure Heavy Bucket was trying to make me laugh, but more fool he - everypony knows I don't have a sense of humour!

As we passed their swaying cart, the tumbled walls of Durand hove into view at the bend in the gorge which that doomed town had once dominated. There was a side-road on either side at the cross-roads which had once been Durand's reason for existing, each road curving up into hollers or coves which held numerous homesteads and family farms, which had been abandoned after the destruction of the town, and the dispersal of the populace into exile. Durand hadn't been rebuilt, but many of the homesteads had been re-occupied in the last year. There was a little cross-traffic here, and overhead came a pegasus patrol, five ponies in formation, plus Cherie with her new-forged wingblades.

"Monseiur!" she greeted me as she flew down, showing off her new 'toys'. "Oh, and Feufollet! They're letting me go on patrol now! We were just talking to the ponies up in Darkside Hollows! ‘Mazing, how fast they're putting it all back into shape!"

"Well, you're growing up now, aren't you? Patrolling's part of a Company pony's life. And Gerlach surely needs every available pair of wings - they're not really making more pegasi in Tambelon, are they?"

"I guess not, Monseiur. Oh! Have you seen my mark! It came in, the morning after that big dream-meeting with the Captain! Isn't it neat?" She turned around, mid-air, and showed off her flanks, which now showed her 'cutie-mark', a living rose half-covered in pure-white snow. I didn't tell her I'd seen it before, weeks before in fact, because I hadn't come to her coming-of-age party, and really hadn't had time to exchange words with her in far too long. There had been so many things to take care of, and Rye Daughter had gotten sick, and all the work I'd been putting in with the witches and Feufollet's studies and… I was a terrible mentor, I admit it.

"It's beautiful, Cherie, just like you. Hurry on now, your corporal's giving me the stink-eye."

"Oh! Hahahah! Sorry, ma'am! I'm coming!" and she flitted off, like a shot from a sling.

Feufollet, who hadn't said a word all morning long, just rolled her eyes at me, and pointed a hoof back to the convoy. They had gotten away from us while I was humouring Cherie, and we were now behind the last cart in the convoy. I trotted to catch up with our tail-check carters.

"Whew, don't you love these winter thaws? Just warm enough to not catch a chill, but the moisture in the air really gets the flem going, don't it?" I burbled at the two earth-ponies hauling a load of unworked brass ingots.

Cup Cake, not even wearing her old 'spy' disguise, just rolled her eyes at my performance. I guess that day was my day to test the patience of the ponies that know me. "Hey, there, Sawbones. Haven't seen you for a while. How have you been doing?"

"Can't complain, can't complain. Quiet time of the year for most ponies, but you know my business. It's when everypony's constitutions decides to take a bath, and sickness! Everywhere!"

The other earth-pony, a brown stallion with a black mane, asked in a strong Rime accent, "What business is that, that you're worrying about sick ponies? You an apothecary?"

"Oh, I do all sorts of things. When the timing's right, I harvest herbs, sometimes I make liquor, sometimes I make up potions and suchlike. When it's needed, I stitch up ponies and cut off limbs before they go rotten. Rich children of rich ponies go to university and take fancy degrees and call themselves ‘doctors' to do what I do, but I've always liked to call myself a barber. ‘Barber', from the Alogakioi for ‘foreigner'. Or so I'd like to think. What do you do?"

"Oh, I'm a carter, like most everypony here."

"Come on, now! Almost nopony in this convoy is a carter by trade! Carting is too dear for the professionals down here at the end of the supply-chain! Swing Shift, the guy at the front of the caravan, he's a head forepony for the guy who owns all of these rocks and slabs of metal. I passed a half-dozen unemployed farmers carrying loads to fund their farm-recovery efforts. More are ponies looking for excitement down here among the ghouls, you just can't convince ponies that the undead problem's under control. Or maybe they understand it, and are getting their excitement after all the killing and dying is done. Seems safer that way, don't it? I don't understand the adventuring type." I took a breath.

"Oh, and Cup Cake here is a baker, aren't you Cup Cake?"

"Don't you know it, Doc. But refined sugar don't buy itself, and my employers are too damn cheap to import it their own damn selves. But still they whine and they snivel about their danishes being all sticky and covered in bee-snot. So I go upcountry and make a few sou while I can, and maybe find some sugar cheaper up-country."

"And even Feufollet, here - she isn't a carter! What do you do, Feufollet?"

"I am an apprentice, Master Sawbones. I someday hope to be a soldier like my own master Octavius."

"Apprentice isn't a job, it's a status, so yeah! Soldier. So - what is your name, anyways, Mr. Mystery Pony?"

"Ahh, call me Earth Listens. And really! I'm a carter. Got my guild membership and everything. Although they're going to fine me five ways from hearth-day if they find out I've been working a non-guild gig."

The earth-pony stallion's attention was entirely upon me, and he hadn't noticed the veil of obscurity which had drawn across the road just ahead of us, and behind the next-to-last cart in the convoy. It wasn't blackness or darkness or a mirror or anything flashy - it was just a glamour that averted the eye and kept a pony from noticing anything beyond it, or hearing anything for that matter.

"Feufollet, why don't you show our new friend Earth Listens, why it pays to listen to other ponies when they ask a simple question."

And Feufollet showed him her new spell, and he collapsed in his traces, unconscious.

"Finally!" barked Cup Cake, glaring at her unconscious hauling-partner. "I thought you were going to play with him all day long. Can you get him out of the traces and into the back? I'm going to need another partner if we're going to get this Celestia-damned heavy load and that blasted spy's carcass up to the Palisades before dark falls!"

"You're positive he's another spy?" I asked.

"A pony comes along and recruits half my network, yeah, I know a spy when he trips all over me and mine. Took too damn long to get him to recruit me into his little conspiracy. What a waste of time!"

So we unhitched the new spy, and Feufollet pushed him into the back of the cart as I got myself hitched up to finish hauling our new load into the highlands.

The rest of the Company contingent caught up to us just before we were ready to get back on the road. I glared at the lot of them - nopony ever shows up when there's actual work to be done, damn it all.

Author's Note:

Do you know how long I've been sitting on this chapter-title?

Sorry for the pause in updates - a bit of a dry spell, and some headaches at work. Well, and visiting folks on New Years.

Comments

[The_Skraeling]

Oooh another equestrian spy. Fun fun fun.

[Jacktank10]

All the spies.

[IceHawk]

And this is why you always do spychecks.

[Minalkra]

We sure he's Equestrian? Could be Bride or White Rose or even one of the liches ... lots of players in this part of the Chain.

[Dorath]

I'm pretty sure Heavy Bucket was trying to make me laugh, but more fool he - everypony knows I don't have a sense of humour!