In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Mucking Out The Stables

SBMS139

The crash militia training program absorbed most of the Company's attention in a comprehensive and busy fashion that crowded out most other concerns for the overwhelming balance of the ponies of our brotherhood. Even Cup Cake was so busy snooping around the camps of the militia-regiment that Carrot Cake managed to keep her out of trouble. Rye Daughter and I were run off our hooves putting the militia-ponies back together after Bad Apple flash-fried them, or Gibblets broke their limbs, or Obscured Blade cracked their skulls, or they just ran themselves off their shoes in the mud and the muck. Tambelon in the spring was a tartarus of chill, mud and brisk winds. More than a few weekend soldiers just plain collapsed from the unaccustomed exertion and exposure.

Better to shake them out now, in friendly country nearby friends and family, than halfway across the world, in the face of the enemy. But sometimes it felt like we were filling up every farm-house parlor and townhouse garret with coughing militia and recovering burn-victims, from Great Dame to Little Ridings and back again. Getting all the sick-list militia back to their units after those units shipped out for their further destinations was going to be a significant bureaucratic headache in and of itself.

I had to track down and ask General Knochehart herself which of her interchangeable herd of lieutenants she had chosen to be her personnel staffer. She looked at me like I had two heads, clearly irked at being distracted from her micro-managing of the second tranche of field training, and put down the field glasses she had been using to spy on the fumbling of the Verdebaie regiment that had replaced the IV Hydromel.

"Your G1. Pony Resources? Personnel? I've got nearly a hundred convalescent Hydromel militia stashed around the circuit, who will need to be forwarded to where-ever you shipped their regiment once they're done being unfit for duty."

"What the hay is a G-1?" asked the general.

"Well, you need a pony to keep track of these invalids and detachments, you've got regiments scattered across half the ports of the north."

"Yes, I got that much. Why G-1? Doesn't that infer G-2s and G-3s?"

"Eh, something I picked up somewhere. G-1, personnel, G-2, intelligence and communications, G-3, operations and planning. Er, I think?"

"Huh. OK. Major Hardhoof! You just became my head of equine resources. Take this damn mercenary off my hooves, now, thank you."

The crustier of the general's two majors looked askance at me, and I shrugged and gestured him aside to a slightly drier patch of mud under a tree away from the increasingly loud field exercise churning the mud in the near distance.

"So, I kind of assumed that you all and the General actually had some sort of plan in place?"

"Of course we have a plan, don't be absurd," said the peach-coloured stallion. "What exactly is the problem here?"

"The casualties from last week's training are still here, some of them. And I need to make arrangements to forward them to their units when they're ready to travel. Said unit or units being – where-ever the IV Hydromel disappeared to when this new regiment showed up?"

"Shipped down to Rime on the same ships that the II Verdebaie came down on, of course. We've got a couple of staffers down there working on getting the forward base set up, IV Hydromel will be the first ponies in position."

"Some of these invalids will need to be, I don't know – invalided out? You know militia, there's always some that just weren't fit for the field. I've got most of them on my hooves now. Camp sicknesses mostly, but some broken bones."

The major sighed. "Right, it sounds like I've got a new chore to add to my schedule. I'll figure out a way to evaluate your problem cases. Can you get me a map of where these invalids are being stored? Is there any way to get them all together in an actual hospital in Grand Dame?"

"They're mostly plopped down wherever they fell out along the circuit. I can get ambulances to start shipping to a depot in town if you can get me a building. But we need to be careful to not build ourselves a camp-crud exchange. Sanitation will have to be ruthlessly enforced."

"Hmph. Speaking of sanitation, we're already getting word of outbreaks in some of the camps uplake."

"Bedamn it. Aren't these militias supposed to have their own damn medical personnel? The Verdebaie militia had a thundering herd of them back during the campaign in Rennet?"

"Some more respectable than others. Verdebaie's fine, but some of the other provinces' militia…"

It turned out, the major and I got along like a house on fire. I made arrangements for him to tour the invalids circuit with Sack, and he made arrangements for me to fly up to the various training camps along the west shore of the Inland Sea. The General had taken to our charioteer's corps like a drunkard to an open bar, and the pegasi were flitting all over the north that spring, carrying messages and Imperial lieutenants at the speed of flight.

I had wanted to use Rye Daughter for my liaison with the major, but I needed her to run the mobile hospital while I was off trying to beat hygiene into the outlying militia camps. What I found in some places was truly disgusting. Some ponies, who lead lives of probity and cleanliness within the confines of their family homes and under the eyes of their watchful neighbors and peers, turn into rutting swine when they escape those bonds of community. Filth everywhere, lack of discipline, poorly sited or non-existent latrines, disgusting cooking facilities.

I wish I could say that I took the opportunity to play tourist as I was shipped like a parcel by the charioteers from picturesque lake-port to picturesque lake-port, but frankly I spent most of my time in the air sleeping, and my time on the ground in the camps, yelling at militia medicos with more theoretical training than common bloody sense. Three years at a college or a university, and never learned how to site a latrine, never got taught basic medical hygiene! No wonder this world was so death-haunted, the only question was why everypony wasn't dead of the plague twice over.

I wasted three weeks straightening out that mess. Half the training cycle, spent away from the Company and its endless march around the training-circuit in Vallee du Pierre. When I finally returned, I found a different outfit, almost strange. All fat marched off the rankers, everypony hard-sinewed and dark-eyed, signs of exhaustion and overexertion everywhere. There were actual Company training casualties in the invalid hospital, which by damn should not have been happening.

I pulled the Captain and the Lieutenant aside, and had a knock-down, drag-out about letting the militia and the General run us off our hooves. The Company would be exhausted and wiped out by the time we got into the campaign season if they kept running everypony flat-out in training.

The flat fact was, the Company wasn't a training command, and our ponies didn't seem to have the proper attitude for the task. Too eager, too serious, too willing to march a mile in their trainees' horseshoes.

Time to train smarter, not harder.