In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

The Rear-Echelon

SBMS140

As the fifth week of field training approached, I returned to the bosom of the Company to find they had effectively taken over the ducal seat of the province. The long circuit to and from the port of Grand Dame took a flat bend just to the west of Jenny's Rock, along a long, moderately narrow valley surrounded on two sides by low but rocky hills.

Jenny's Rock sat in a cleft within the eastern hill-range, where one of the Bride's Roads had been driven westwards from the Inland Sea towards its eventual juncture beside the great river at Harmony's Root. This was the southern edge of the great raked-over country, and the giant's rakes had cut deepest and hardest here, leaving in places little topsoil, and less groundwater. Districts to the north were rich and well-watered, and to the south beyond the moraine country, the vast and flat plains around Rime stretched for three hundred miles of prosperity and plenty. But around Jenny's Rock, the mud was shallow, the farmers hard-scrabble, and the bones of the world were close to her hide.

Of course, some mad-jenny of a duchesse had, in the depths of time, decided to place her stronghold among these rocks and hillsides. In its recommendation, however, was its central location, easy access, and highly defensible position. The province's inbred ducal family hid from their subjects inside the high and well-crafted walls of the fortified palace, barely communicating with their own militia, let alone us outsiders or the General and her staff. But they had tolerated our occupation of the castle-town's many under-utilized buildings, and this was where Major Hardhoof had established my central hospital and infirmary, and where the increasingly well-ponied rear echelons of the mustering grand army had fetched up in somewhat comfortable facilities.

Asparagus and her small corps of carter-cooks were mostly busy running out to the field-training troops, and in putting the militia-of-the-week's own logistical support ponies through their own version of tartarus week. This left the growing crowd of camp-followers under the effective control of an increasingly flustered Broken Sigil, who was not really trained, or suitable for, riding herd on a tumultuous pack of civilians, rear-echelon militia and Company hangers-on.

My last stop on my tour before heading home had been up to Tonnerre, just in time to catch them as they were breaking down their training-camp and filing onto the troop transports for the quick run down nearly the whole length of the western reaches of the Inland Sea, effectively reversing the Company's own journey into the northlands. So, instead of breaking heads and rattling skull-pans on the subject of poor camp hygiene, I had ended up lecturing in vague, general terms, and spent a quick day trying to make sure the damn militia wasn't riding a fleet of plague-ships by the time they made Grand Dame.

As it was, they'd be a day or two late for the training-circuit's expected schedule. I stopped in the western tavern which had become the General's rear staff headquarters, and closeted up with Hardhoof. We agreed that it was as good a reason as anything else for a couple days' breather for the trainers. We discussed the progress of the medical-leave program that Hardhoof and Rye Daughter had set up in my absence, as well as the alarming number of trainers who had fetched up in infirmary.

Once my duty to the General and the army had been discharged, I trotted off to find the Company's temporary quarters, such as they were. The Company itself was greatly outnumbered in the rear echelon by its own camp-followers, mostly for the sad reason that the Company had never really possessed nearly as much tail as its teeth should have required. Those that were in temporary quarters, were mostly our smiths, our farriers, and other support-staff whose presence weren't required in the field, or to support those training in the field. In addition to this mere hoof-full of Company ponies, as well as a double-hoof-full of 'colony' ponies come down from Hydromel to help in carrying the burden of the Company's expanded responsibilities, was a swarm of hired farriers, sadlers, vendors, peddlers, merchants, and associated hangers-on. Many of these ponies were here as much for the militia as for the Company, if not more. A surprising number had followed the banner out of Mondovi when we left Pepin; I thought the Mondovans' wandering years were behind them, but apparently for some the road was an addiction not easily broken by a year or two of peace in the province.

The farriers in particular were doing a land-sale business, as the hoof-wear on the militia was beyond the expectations of the usually garrision-bound volunteer military. As I walked down the residential lane towards the tavern and rental cottages which was the Company's current home-away-from-home, the affrighted air of Jenny's Rock rang with the hammers of half a hundred farriers re-shoeing armsponies, the victims of Vallee du Pierre's inestimably greedy mud. It might not be particularly deep in places like Jenny's Rock, but what it lacked in depth it made up for with tenacity and avarice. What the mud claimed, it did not let go. Including, infuriatingly, field-shoes, if not the occasional ranker stuck barrel-deep in the miserly mud.

I found Throat-Kicker holding down the fort in the witches' coven's quarters, full of cases, trunks, baggage, and a half-dozen restless, rambunctious brush-weasels. She was in the process of feeding the little horrors, tossing out hoof-fulls of chopped-up woody matter. I came up to her, and looked inside her basket. "Rose-bushes?" I asked.

"Rose-bushes. Bad Apple and Gibblets decided they wanted their little terrors to be, I quote, 'full of thorns'. As if they don't do enough damage just as they are. Yes, yes, here you go, you greedy-guts." She tossed another hoof-full of green-budded rose-stock at the most insistent of the pack, as it bounced on its rear legs like a wood-springed jack-in-a-box. "Not that they seem to have guts to speak of. At least, as long as we feed them like this, they don't bite. Something of an improvement. Although I've yet to find a way to keep them from scratching and biting at the trunks."

"They haven't been chewing on the Annals-chest, have they?" I worried.

"Of course they have! Every time one of them gets into Feufollet's room, really. Apparently they like the taste – like a salt-slick, I swear." She grinned at my horror, reveling in her success at getting me spun up. "Oh, relax, your magic box has survived all attempts to chew off bits by Gibblets' little horrors. Apparently its magic is harder and tougher than their own life-magic. For now, at any rate."

"So," I drawled. "I'm seeing a lot of ponies down from the colony out there on the street. Anypony left in Hydromel?"

"I have no idea of the numbers – go ask Steel Shod, she's more-or-less in charge of the colonials. It's a fair lot of them, though. I guess they came down with one of the Hydromel regiments as camp-followers, and then peeled off once they got here? I've heard some grumbling about Languid and her insufferability, though. I can't imagine what she's been up to over there that she's made herself more obnoxious than Uncle Blade, of all ponies."

"You're the first old-Company pony I've found who's ever been willing to bad-mouth the old toad-sticker. Everypony else seems to worship the ground he trots on."

"Ha! What's he gonna do now, take my other wing? Give me nightmares? Ah, horseapples. I've made my peace with the Princess, what do I fear from Uncle Blade?"

I looked at the jacket she had over the stump of her ruined wing. "You've been doing well? How about you show me, I've got time for a quick examination. No galling?"

She frowned, and shook off the jacket, letting me un-wrap the stump while she continued feeding the brush-weasels. "No, really. It's almost completely healed-over now. It's not like I'm doing any work with the useless thing. Just has to sit there, out of the way of my saddle-bags or what have you." It was nicely scarred-over, no redness, no swelling.

"Very good, you're right, that's a good long-term colour." I wrapped up the stump, and grabbed her jacket up off the chair she had laid it upon, and hoofed it back to her. "I just wanted to check when I had the chance, no time anymore for special trips for this or that. Speaking of which, I saw Cherie a couple days ago. She's looking happy, being in the field. Wasn't giving her wing-mate any problems best I could tell."

"Yeah, I know," laughed Cherie's knight. "I see her in my dreams most every night. Daily updates, in detail. She's not happy about the glamour-spell, but still, it lets her play arms-pony to her heart's content without anypony getting, ahem, 'all weird about it'."

"And," she continued after a moment, having emptied her basket of rosebush cuttings, bent down to rub one of the brush-weasels behind its leaf-tufted ears, "The Princess pretends to be her so often around camp and out in the field, it's like Cherie never left. Dream-report-Cherie says she remembers everything anypony says to the Princess-Cherie. That it isn't her when you see her, but it will be at some point afterwards, the next time the Princess checks in with our filly.

"I don't know what to think about that. I can't imagine living like that. But Cherie seems to find it amusing, and I suppose that's something, isn't it?"

Author's Note:

The common-ponies of the Vallee call Jenny's Rock by its original name, 'Madjenny's Folly', but the signs all say otherwise.

Comments

[Bookeater_otaku]

Chérie is getting quite a peculiar education with charing memories/experience with the Spirit masquerading as her.

Glad to see Throat Kicker still kicking around.