In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

The Night Witches

FFMS016

After my testimony about the previous night's chaos, I found a quiet corner in the operations tent, and fell asleep in a chair pulled up against the canvas. The arguing collapsed into a background murmuration and the Princess rocked me to a dreamless sleep without fire or flame or a griffin writhing and burning in the void between heaven and the darkened earth.

The Lieutenant awakened me not long after, it seemed, but the light dying told me otherwise. She pulled me outside, and there in the impromptu yard outside was the other two witchlings, a slightly scorched-looking Bad Apple, and a Cherie nothing more than soot and powder from hoof to dock, and from dock to poll.

I looked at Cherie, and I could only ask, "Are the showers not working again?"

"Bah, I barely had time to clean. This one, they don't want to fly her anywhere anymore, the elders they say!" She gestured at a rather down-cast Bad Apple, who had the grace to show the embarrassment she had brought upon the withers of the witch's coven. She had always been somewhat reckless, and unconcerned when it came to bodily harm, but the last year or so, she had lost all prior inhibitions about time, place, and enemy action. The raid on Falaises du Conseil had been something of a breaking-point between Bad Apple and her drivers, when her mad daredevil behaviour over the waters of that embattled river-port had nearly gotten her hapless pegasus charioteer flash-fried, and had, according to some pegasi in the aerial cohort, contributed to the deaths of Hailstorm and Tempest. She was anything but popular among the aerials after that stunt, and her half-wrecked witch's gig had been offered again and again by Gerlach and the Lieutenant as an example of why the witch's section needed to re-train in the aftermath of that bloody raid.

Cherie herself should have held a grudge against Bad Apple, because her knight had lost her wing retrieving her battered gig and her wounded charioteer in the retreat from Falaises du Conseil. My own issues earlier in this campaign had been largely due to the misplaced ire among the pegasi against all witches, all gig-charioteering jobs in that aftermath. It had taken some considerable work with Whirlwind before I had convinced her that I wasn't the same kind of pony as Bad Apple, that I wasn't a mad and reckless fire-swallowing lunatic witch like my friend the earth-pony.

Well, that and some serious sweet-talking, but Sawbones doesn't like us to write about that sort of thing in the Annals. Still and all, I rather thought that last night's performance, and my work the night before that, might have gone a fair distance towards papering over the problems that existed between the warlocks and the pegasi, or at least, between me and individual pegasi. And Cherie showing the signs of having drawn a gig for Bad Apple strongly suggested that any détente between the warlocks and the pegasi hadn't included BA herself.

"Seriously? You're playing charioteer for us now, Cherie? You know you're better than that. You're more than half a witch yourself, we have better uses for you other than playing bus driver to a pyromaniac."

"Oh, stuff it up your plot, little miss bloody-shoes," sniped Bad Apple. "Cherie's been getting up to more pyromania in the last couple days than I've ever indulged in. But yeah, she was the only ride I could catch up here. I don't think you understand how short-hooved we are now over westwards. All these damn weather-witches playing with clouds up this way, there aren't any pegasi to spare down towards the last battlefield."

She looked around at the quiet depots, and the distant main line of resistance. "There's barely any battle here, anyways. I keep hearing about this great battle brewing up your way, but there's not a single White Rose in view other than the one hidden under all that soot and fried flour on Cherie's flank."

"And buck you too, you smartass of a mud pony!" sniped the suddenly irate thestral. I think that's the only time I've ever seen the endlessly bubbly Cherie snap back at a pony. How badly had BA been behaving, I wondered.

"Bad Apple, they aren't here yet, because we've been doing everything in our power to keep them bogged down, confused, and scattered," I said, echoing the Annalist in my best pompous-zebra-manner. "Which is probably why the Lieutenant pushed me out here. We still gotta shut down the open left flank, haven't you heard? All these beautiful fortifications, and they're gonna be worth nothing but the waste to the irrigation works, if the damn rebel just steps sideways and flanks us out of position!"

The Lieutenant, who had been listening to our foalish quarreling with a slight grin on her muzzle, stepped into the conversation. "Exactly, my little witchlings. We're going to be trying to flood those fields this evening and tonight."

She strode away from the tent-entrance, and gestured to the north and east. "The pegasi are fully concentrated tonight, over High Earth, and the hamlets south of New Equestria. See all those fluffy clouds over there?" She pointed into the airy distance, and indeed, the skies were full of strange, baroque cloudlets like nothing I had seen in my short life, like horse-tails and stonework in the heavens. "That's what you get when weatherponies start messing with the waters and the winds and the clouds. We've got something really big building, but we need to keep at it, you know? Tonight especially. Tonight's the key, for soaking the three districts north of here. If we do it right, those roads, those fields will be impassible. Mudholes and mires, from here to the Bride's Road, that's what we want."

She turned on her rear right leg, and gestured to the east. "We can't have any of the enemy getting close enough tonight to harass us, to fire those damnable rockets into our delicate cloud-scapes. Somepony needs to brush those starving desperadoes back. You three and the griffins are gonna be the broom-handlers, the night-janitors. Can I put my trust in you all?"

We all nodded, enthusiastically. Nothing like being told you're vital to a plan, to get you to agree to something stupid and dangerous. The surging hormones of youth might have had something to do with it, though, because when I turned around, I found Whirlwind holding her muzzle in her hooves like she had a headache.

"Uh, sorry, Whirl. Didn't think that I might be volunteering you for something dangerous. Maybe we can pull it off from the ground?"

"Don't be daft, filly. Only an aerial pony can get you out of that sort of danger fast enough to keep you from catching a face full of tartarus-fire. Just let me… collect myself a little." She looked over at Bad Apple and Cherie, chattering happily, whatever quarrel that had just blown up, having already blown over. "And the pyromaniacal pair as well? Won't this be a glorious evening to be a Company mare?"

Later that evening, as the sun dropped below the western limb of the world, we gathered in a field to the north of the sprawling, growing depots of the rear, along with what looked like all the griffins of the aerial cohort. Gerlach was there, as was his one griffin sergeant and the two griffish corporals. He came over to our gigs, and laid a waterproof pocket map over Bad Apple's black-scorched gig's rail for us to look at. He gestured to where we were going, the region we were protecting in front of the weather-chorus's area of operations, and the line of limitation beyond which we weren't to wander. And he emphasized heavily that it wasn't a night for running ahead of our supports, staring angrily at Bad Apple and Cherie, already wearing her traces in the front of the gig.

We rose slowly into the air above the rear depots, curving slowly to the north and east, and then back south and west again as we spiraled for height and elevation. The battle-lines hove into view as Whirlwind and Cherie labored behind their traces. I could almost read the great runes the General had dug into the face of the final line of resistance, as well as the intermediate line. If the White Rose gave us enough time tomorrow for the General to enscribe the final, advanced line with that same set of defensive runes, well, really. They'd deserve every last terrible thing we'd do to them with that sort of time to prepare.

All that work put into the narrow, if rich district stretching across the north end of the Wirts like a hat on a fat, self-satisfied cat, and it still left that wide-open terrain to our gathering army's left. Westward stretched the marching regiments of the Left-Division, making every use of every last moment gifted us by the laggard enemy, struggling in the muck and confusion the pegasi had made of the great plain to our east. Tonight, the plan was to extend that muckworks right up to the gates of High Earth and New Coltington, to make mud a watch-word for all the districts of the eastern Baronies, and some of the southern expanses of the duchy of New Equestria as well.

As we spiraled ever higher, the darkness spread westwards from the low-lying hills of the eastern range, towards the fleeing sun, over our fortifications, over the unknown west, over the enemy in her muddy tartarus. I focused, and clipped my cannon on a fresh quarter-inch of my hide, feeding my magical sight, extending it into the distance as the whole of the griffin contingent of the Company surrounded us. I looked down, and searched for the enemy caterpillars, failing to find any of them at first.

I looked up at Cherie, and realized something, something worrisome about our shadow-walker, our dream-weaver. I shouted into the wind towards the two of them a question, "Hey, Cherie, can you shadow-walk with that damn gig hanging over your withers?"

"I think so? Dunno that I've ever had the opportunity, not many shadows up here in the open, you know?"

"I think I can do something about that, hold on a second." I concentrated, using the trickle of power making its way down my fur. Two discs of darkness formed in the air nearby, one in front of Cherie and Bad Apple in their doubled contraption, the other behind us, on the far side of the coasting flights of griffins. Distant to the north, lightning began to light up the horizon as the pegasi began their own night-witchcraft.

Cherie let out a gleeful battle-cry, and dove into my disc of darkness, disappearing as she surged forward, drawing the witch-gig and the startled witch herself behind her. I glanced backwards, and spotted the two of them surge out of the other disc, headed the complete opposite direction they had been flying before, as if the momentum had been continued, in all proper obeisance to the demands of physics, only inverted and mirrored backwards, westwards rather than eastwards.

All four of us, even Whirlwind shouted in triumph at the minor experiment's success, and the two retrograde shadow-dancers arced about, converting their backward momentum into an upward curve, placing the thestral and her earth-pony load above us in the forming formation.

Eastwards, eastwards we beat, with all the winds of the forming northern storm driving us southward, pushing us off of our course. So we tacked, driving into the eastern quarter of the wind, and below us the landscape inched by, yard by yard, field by field, homestead by homestead.

Then the griffins began gesturing, and I looked down, reminded again of our purpose and our goal, and spotted the battle-worm whose advance was our reason for being out in this stormy night. Struggling through their mud and their muck, an enemy formation was still moving in the gathered darkness below, lit here and there along its length with torchlight, or, perhaps, magelight.

They were far forward. They were nearly into the open flank, in fact. If that enemy column had those death-blossom rockets with them, they could make a real mess of the pegasi and their blackened clouds, who were blowing closer and closer to us as time, time ticked swiftly away. I stared down, frustrated. They weren't stopping.

I tapped on my reins to Whirlwind's traces, and she nodded, pitching over in a steep dive. I sliced myself up again, and from that pain I formed a flight of horrors, lit with glow-worms crawling, like an ugly series of parodies of the Nightmare herself, hideous green and blue glowing details over their phantasmic wings and smooth barrels and long, terrible-hooved legs, sharpened spurs, jagged fangs. I could hear the screams from far below as we stooped, dropping like we were carrying a full load of bollards and night-terrors.

The rocket-battery opened up when we were nine hundred yards overhead, almost terminal velocity. I howled at Whirlwind at the top of my lungs, my words lost in the wind of our descent. Thank tartarus for the Nightmare, who had locked the two of us in perfect disharmony, and she spiraled away from our false dive-bombing arc, nearly throwing my magical donkey ass out of my own chair. I sent my phantasms onward, diving directly into the scattering White Rose battalion below, as my eyesight went blood-red and my consciousness clung to the world with weak-frogged hooves.

Thank the Nightmare indeed, but the rockets didn't seek us out, didn't spiral and search for us, didn't try and hunt us out of the sky. Five of them lanced straight through my phantasmic parodies of the Princess, tearing the images to shreds by their passage. They, and the rest, continued upwards until they burst in their own good time, far overhead, spawning their foolish hard-light flares under floating parachutes. More importantly, floating nowhere near our griffin escort and Cherie and Bad Apple. I could feel, like an itching in my Princess-lobe, the enemy rocketeer seeking us out for a second barrage, and I quickly doubled and then tripled our image, matching our twins, our triplets to our own gravity-defying arcs of arrested descent.

He fired his death-blossoms at two of the Whirlwinds, drawing their phantasm-witch-gigs behind them as they flew.

Such a shame that one of those Whirlwinds was the real one, carrying my very real self with her. I doubled our image again, and then again, but the rockets were too stupid to know that this or that image was what they were to search for. I didn't have the time to figure out how their guidance operated, and I just started cutting like mad, spraying blood all over my gig, trying to get a hold of one of those damned witched rockets, until one got close enough I could see the rune-etchings.

Then I knew how to seize them, and she was mine. She bent away as rapidly as that magic could fly her, and I did my best to find a return course to the original bow-mare, to return her bolt to her. No such luck, sadly. My bolt, she blew before she returned to her owner, and the skies over that offending battalion was now full of ces petits bâtards. Four of which immediately intersected other flying seeker-heads, and blew the whole lot to perdition with a chain-reaction which would have been marvelous, if Whirlwind and I weren't so damn close to them when they blew. Whirlwind barely kept to the skies, but the ground was far too close a companion when we recovered and cast away, barely just over the tree-tops. In the distance behind us, I could see another series of flares, explosions, hear the screams as Cherie and Bad Apple repeated our little coup.

Whirlwind and I exchanged glances over the traces and the reins, and I knew through our merged selves, that she could feel the madness in me, and I could feel the draw of the named death in her wild heart.

And we started to climb again.

Behind us, the landscape erupted in explosions, and I turned around, trying to see what had happened, what was happening. I spotted the zig-zagging witch's gig, as it nearly spun around itself, trying to dodge the great swarm of gently rising petits bâtards rising all around them. I reached out, nearly tapped from this current vein, and placed the shadow-disc before the distant fleeing Cherie, and echoed a second one above us, a hundred yards above.

And like that, she was through, one petit bâtard following her so closely that it slipped through the fault in the shadows she cleaved as she walked from one slice of the world and another. BA spun, suddenly oriented by my visualization and shout through the Nightmare of the narrowed threat, and blew that little monster away, shredding the remnants of the shadow-disc above us in a pyroclastic flare.

It attracted another volley of rockets in this direction, of course, but all we had to do was break away and run for it, and the rockets just ran out of charge before they reached us. I grabbed two before they quite died out, and held them in my negligible levitation. I can do that, just not often, and not well. I brought them into my gig's carrying shelf, and gestured Whirlwind to rejoin the daredevil twins as soon as we could match courses with them.

"Did you spot where ces conneries they were coming from?" I screamed across the distance between us and the other witches.

"Yeah, I think so, we missed them though. And now they're scattered. How are we gonna bomb 'em?"

"I gotta couple live ones, I think I've got my magic on the trigger, keeping 'em from blowing us out of the sky. Think you can guide me where I can put shadows in the right place, deliver ces petits bâtards 'return to sender'?"

"You say you think we are the madmares? Good Peacock Angel, Feufollet!" yelped Bad Apple. "Get those monsters out of your gig before you both detonate!"

"I have it! Under! Control!" I insisted. "Show me, where can I return 'em?"

She gestured, and a little distant flare raised in the dark distance, the darkened plain roiling with the scattering troops of the enemy scrambling in all directions below, far too close below. At least a couple of those White Rose were stopping to fling stones upward in our direction, having heard our conversation. Far, far too close to the earth below.

"That's our position, that's our guide?" I demanded, suddenly anxious as a pair of rocks from clever slingers arced over our heads. "Why aren't you just incinerating her supply of rockets there and then?"

"I don't know if that's it, I'm burning anything I sorta saw, filly! I don't have that sort of distance control! Make it happen! Now!"

I cut myself yet again, feeling a little light-headed, and opened up another pair of shadow-discs, one in front of me, one distant next to where the flare in the distance had glowed, feeling through the Nightmare BA's visualization of our target. "Oh, goddamnit, Cherie, tell me you can pass through inanimate objects, here!"

I flung the two deactivated death-blossom rockets, their fuses suddenly re-lit by the abrasion of my hurry and my scratching them along the side of my gig as I tossed them in the direction of that shadow.

They flashed, and then they were through the shadow, and then they were gone. I dispelled my near-darkness before anything returned in turn.

A distant flash where the far shadow-disc had been projected, and then a lot of flashes, Explosions, rather. Secondaries, even. And then the rumbling, the sound of a lot of gunpowder going off at once. Even, after a second, a sort of counter-wind that pushed us northwards a bit, into the teeth of the gathering storm.

Then came the furious storm, the mad storm, upon which a screen of pegasi floated, fighting it every flap of the wing, from the sodden outskirts of High Earth and New Coltington, to wind-swept here, on the southern expanse of the storm. The storm that, trapped in the wings of the pegasi, came so far south, and then no further. Before that great feathered wall, nothing but wind flowed. And those winds blew us southward, and we left behnd us the griffins, who had accomplished little up to that point, stooped steeply downwards through those terrible storm-gusts, and delivered their javelins and bombs against whatever targets they found upon the naked earth below, those scattered victims now stripped of the protection of rocket-batteries and witchcraft.

The storm raged all night long, constrained before the Company-witchcraft of the pegasi, who kept the rain and the sleet and the hail north of the Clearances, our protected corridor, the only passage left to the enemy, as our winged ponies reduced the districts to the north to a trackless wasteland of bottomless mud.

Comments

[TheStratovarian]

And yeouch for a rough night, and more than a couple days of fixing that kinda bloodloss, but well, seeing them countered is a good thing.

[ponygrad]

No notes from Sawbones recently. I wonder if he's too busy to look them over or if he gets a kick out of the subtle jabs.

Either way, I like the multiple perspectives. There's no Rashomon silliness, but Feufollet has no compunction to hide how the sausage is made.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

8008144
Selling plasma for $, you can donate a pint 2x a week. Whole blood, I think it's 1 a month. You need iron in your diet. Grapes/raisons & spinach. Liver if you can stand to eat it.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I do like the term "weather-chorus" as a counterpart to shield-chorus. From Feufollet's perspective, it's all weird foreign pony magic that they don't even need to blood to use, which is hardly fair.