In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

The Traditions Of The Service

SBMS169

The operating theatre was the facility of my dreams, quite literally. The pure white plastered walls reflected the glaring lamps, whale-oil burners as close to perfected full-spectrum light as the imagination could conceive. The operating table was made of burnished plated-steel, with restrains to hold the subject square and still, the lights focused upon the table-top and a clever little tray holding perfectly sterilized tools and scalpels. One of my students hovered beside me, hoofing to me what I asked, when I asked. The volunteer, nerves deadened, laid etherized upon the table, opened up for the demonstration. The rest of the class peered over the high walls overhead, looking down from the darkness of the observation platform, listening to my explanation.

The victim-pony's fur had been shaved to the hide, exposing the skin to the gaze of the observers. Likewise exposed, was the hide, peeled away from the flesh, and the flesh, parted neatly by razor-sharp scalpel-cuts, exposing the blood vessels along the bone of the limb.

"As you can see, following the Interosseous and plantar ligaments, here and here, are where the network of arteries and veins come closest to the surface of the hind leg. Proper barding is designed to cover these vulnerable points, and prevent the victim from bleeding out from a casual swipe of a blade. You don't need me to tell you how often barding is properly designed. I know for a fact that your standard barding was no better designed than the average, and we lost far too many of our prisoners due to this defect in design…"

As I continued to lecture on anatomy, barding design, and emergency field-medic technique, the night's students leaned ever closer to the volunteer and myself, until some of them seemed like to tumble right over the wall into my dream-theatre. There should have been twenty-eight students listening to my presentation up there in the half-darkness, half-hidden by the glare of my perfect lighting. The other two students, my assistant and my subject, made the thirty would-be medics, one pair for each battalion in the Order. Some of them had prior experience, but only a few. Most of the White Rose's Third Army medics and doctors had died in the fighting, in the rout, or with their officers in the long retreat. These were a batch of new volunteers, plus the five surviving medics – and the whole were now receiving some quick and dirty training, Company-style.

The dream-theatre was modeled on a university setup I had seen while visiting a city-state's pride and joy during a brief contract, the city before Openwater Bay. That training-theatre had not been nearly this clean, nearly this well-lit or well-appointed, but by my standards it had been a revelation. My own training had been in a filthy second-story walkup, never cleaned except by my apprentice hoof; cheaply lit, when it was lit at all, by nasty tallow wicks, reused as necessary. The old bastard who trained me had at least granted the need for well-cleaned sanitized tools and blades. For that, if nothing else, I was grateful for his training regime. For the rest of it? May nopony ever have to work under those conditions.

There were considerably more than twenty-eight heads up there, and I could see that almost half had ears considerably longer than the typically short-tufted earth pony protuberance. Why were there donkeys in my teaching cadre? I didn't think it important enough to slow down or interrupt the night's plan. Our nights were terribly, amazingly long – but they were not infinite. And a few subjective weeks training was hardly enough to get these ponies up and running by my standards, before Cherie and her conspirators pitchforked them back into the cauldron.

We covered the subject-matter I wanted to get nailed down for that session. The night might last forever, but the pony mind can only absorb so much information, concentrate so closely for so long, before a time for a pause, for a rest would make itself known needed. They didn't have dream-bladders to drain, or dream-eyes to overstrain, but still, the mind wanders, loses focus, finds something, anything else to concentrate upon other than the droning of the instructor. I sent them out to find a dream-beach, to find dream-balls to toss at each others' heads. A little play sufficient to work out the joggies and the eye-twitches, and they'd be ready to play sponge in a subjective hour or two.

I would take my own subjective time, to find out why my training/operating theatre was full of salty old sea-donkeys and other disreputable scum. Such as a wayward, hollow-eyed apprentice Annalist, looking considerably under the weather.

I exchanged glances with the Filly whose bourne was this dream-shard within which we had conjured my theatre. She was god and demiurge within this place that was not a place. But even still, this little godling listened me, as all good fillies listen to their elders. Although who can say how old we all will be, after endless seasons of dream subjectivity and variable concentration and experience? Were the various incarnations of the Filly all one experience, one self experiencing everything in the rapidity of the long subjective nights? Or were they just mayflies, leaving nothing but impressions and knowledge to be passed along to her sisters in the Spirit, and her template-Cherie, the original herself? Either way, she was pretending that she didn't know what all of these strangers were doing in my dream-class.

"What the Tartarus are you doing here, jenny my girl? If you had any reason or interest in medical training, we could have accommodated you any time in the last few years, Feufollet. This training class is for the dedicated medic staff that Stomper and Cherie demanded, not for you to entertain yourself watching the blood drip, and the flesh come apart. Find somewhere else to be morbid!"

"Sir, uh," she equivocated, eyeing the grim older donkeys that stood around her in a box-formation, as if they were her guards. "I didn't know you were in here. Uh, maybe not use names? These gentlecolts and mares are not precisely read-in to the general order of discipline, as it were. Uh."

"WHAT? What the hay are they doing in here? How are they in here? Is the Spirit just letting any old passers-by into our sacred mysteries? Free entry with three sou and a hoof-full of bottle-caps! You, eyepatch, who in the name of the Peacock Angel are you?"

"Harumph, faugh. Call me Itch Meal, you great buggering striped 'orror. I beint a salt late offen the ault Jumant, hault down 'ere by her Majesty's bully-colts to play cadrer forint the Seventy-Faive, maint her damnable builders drown unsanctified, the poxy lot of 'em."

"Well, bully for you, Ser Meal. Why do you look like you've bulled into my cult's inner mysteries by taking my apprentice-understudy there hostage? Feufollet, blink once if you're here of your own volition, twice if they're up to no good."

"This… isn't something to make fun of, Sir. They're here because of me, and the Mistress has given me into their custody as a punishment for the irregularity and the presumption of my methods. We have come to a sort of…"

"Accommodation, waren't it tha word youint used? Good enough, heft to it, 'accommodation.'. Wevent a hard service, tha salten. Haint none of us evern beent gift the easy path, nor the soft, nor the sweet. Tha jenny wouldna have taken us, if we were sweet, nor soft, nor easy. Hard burros, we are, and thus, we beint often wooed 'arshlike such. But the grand terror tha you folk cut bread with, she gave us tha options, and tha rights, and by her starry mane and her moony flank, we'll have what we were promised, belike."

I blinked at this farrago of gibberish and truculence.

"Fair enough, I guess," I said. "If the Nightmare has signed off on whatever the hay this is, I can't say no to it. Feufollet, are you OK?"

She was a little skittish looking, to be honest, uncertain and strange. Like a dog that's been beat too much. It worried me. It is possible to do a great deal of damage to a pony in the dreamworld, and heal it, and do hurt again, and again, without any sign other than the twitch of the victim from the memory of the harm.

"I am good for my word, and my obligations, Sir. I am making my peace with them for my irregularities."

"If that's so, that's fine, jenny. But we will talk later about this irregular business. But why are you here?"

"Thank of it as a sert of tour, belike," said one of the other donkeys, a raddled old jenny covered in hide-tattoos and balding fur, so manged that she was more naked than not. "We needent ta be seeing what wickedness has claimed us, all unknowint in our cups. If it beint a workmarelike kind of conspiracy, well, then. We've served evil all our lives, haven't we not? Good enough, if another suchlike evil claims us in thas time and thas season. Any port with breakwaters high enough to keep hout the storm tha'll be blowing, sayent I."

An actual earth-pony strod up, and clapped my startled apprentice-Annalist on the flank, and laughed. "Hiyah, forsooth and all tha rot. I bloody well like thisn one, hi do! A reglar goer, she his. Dinna even flinch belike. Don' you fash yerself on herint accountin', she keeps pretty accounts, she daws."

He came in closer, and away from Feufollet, leaning so as to whisper out of her hearing, in a slightly less thick accent, "We warnt be doing that much more damage. Tha great terror within all tha fangs, she gave tha sign, and we went her paces for tha sake av tha both of 'em. Nawt twa much of tha traditions of tha service, hi swearnt. Nawt more thant she's hup fer. Hi've been sarprised whart she's been good fer, sa far. She rawly wasn a gower, she hwas."

I fumed at this roundabout talk of naval brutality. "I know damn well what you sea-ponies consider the 'traditions of the service', we worked with sailors often enough on Openwater Bay. You keep your damnable hooves off my apprentice-"

Feufollet held out her hoof, and stopped me in my tracks. "No, sir. I opened myself up for this. I will trot my paces, and take my blows as they come. I will be sound at the end of it, so the Mistress has promised me. And look, we really were listening in on your lecture. It's been mostly this, and the like, for a while now. They really did demand a full tour. Hardly what I expected when I got dropped in the deep end, to be honest."

I gave her a skeptical stare.

"Well, yeah, and that too. But I can handle a little rough hoofing. It wasn't as if the Company was all that soft of a berth itself, coming up."

I sighed. "It wouldn't have been, with Uncle Blade involving himself in your training. Damn him."

We both paused to spit. And then I facehoofed when I realized I had just expectorated upon my nice, clean surgical floor. I went over to the cleaning-supplies so thoughtfully generated by the silent Filly, and began to clean up after our reflexive mess-making.

"However they got in here, and however you ponies are settling your differences over the conditions of your entry, you all are here, in our inner sanctum. Congratulations! You have, however technically, been brought into an ancient order of well-armed cultists and diabolists. Filly, my dear, give a proper greeting to your new worshipers."

And with that, there was a Filly for each of the glowering, sour-faced donkeys, and they fluttered up and gave each and every one a simultaneous kiss and nuzzle, sweetly embracing each with their soft bat-wings.

"Welcome, you salty old grouches, to our congregation," the Filly-horde chorused in what sounded like a six-part harmony. "We might be the abyss, but we're a loving sort of Pit. Now wipe off those frowns, and be happy! Life's too short to spend it grimacing! Smile, smile!"

And then the Fillies tried to get the sea-donkeys dancing. It was something else, and I've seen caribou and spooks and goblins trying and failing to waltz in my time. The sort of thing that sailors consider a dance, is something I recommend seeing at least once in your life. But definitely not twice.

Feufollet sagged as if she would have just laid down and watched her recruit-captors caper about with the little incarnations of the Spirit. But another Filly snatched her up, wings blurring as she dragged the weary jenny off the ground and into the heart of the jig and the shuffle.

My actual students trickled in as the sailors spun about the floor of the operating-theatre with our thestral-semblanced Spirit in a multiplicative, dancing mood. Some of the Order ponies climbed up into the viewing-platform, and began clopping out a rhythm for the dance, singing some dreadful western shanty of their own. I could see more than one salt-donkey's ears and eyes cant upwards, catching the cultural clues of that particular contribution to the impromptu celebration.

My lesson-plan hijacked by the Filly and Feufollet's victims, I gave up any pretense of controlling what was going on. My lessons weren't the most important thing going on that night. I summoned the shade of Stomper, and that of the Captain, and when the two oldest, saltiest donkeys in the dance spun past my seat by the improvised dance-floor, I pulled them down to talk.

And we talked, the Captain, Stomper, those salt-ponies, and I, about what it meant that they were here. They had been twice-stolen from their lives, but they could take some control over their destinies, if they were willing to become complicit in their own self-theft. And these two donkeys, who were both ship-masters and vessel-captains in their own right, would give us an in with the rest of the crewponies.

Feufollet wasn't wrong, after all. The fewer crew the Order had to subdue, kill, or throw into the river to fend for themselves, the smoother things would proceed.

But we needed to get Feufollet under control. If she was left to her own devices, half of the Housa Valley would be bladed into the cult before the year was over. Somepony would have to ride herd on our wildling jenny, to keep a controlling hoof on her reins, lest she make of Nightmare-worship a mass, evangelizing cult.

Comments

[Dorath]

Okay, I think I'm just not catching some of the connections here ...

This whole Order mess sprung from Cherie's idea of a land that actually loved Luna/Nightmare back in chapter 194, but the Order has made it quite clear in chapter 201 that they were only paying lip-service to the Spirit, so how the hell is this supposed to create an adoring nation?

And what exactly is the Order supposed to do? Yes, they have insider knowledge about the White Rose, but not the numbers to break the rebellion. So what is the plan? Wave Cherie and the tale that the White Rose is lead by undead horrors in everyone's' faces and try to create a schism? (And did we ever find out if the White Rose leadership was Legates playing both sides, or a different batch of liches?)

And if the Order does split/overthrow/whatever the White Rose, what then? What we've seen of the White Rose's people paints them as too fanatical (as a whole) to lay-down arms and return to the Empire, so we'll have just traded one banner of rebellion for another. Only this time the Company will be traitors and oath-breakers for having developed and trained the original Order.

Does anyone have any idea (or even a guess) of what the plan for all this horseapples is? 'Cause I'm rather lost ...

[Mitch H]

8231693
There is a reason that I've seeded a version of the Yezidi story of the Peacock Angel throughout this. That bitter trope of the prodigal daughter - returned to the seat of power after a great fall, and given regency over a fallen world by a resurgent but distant sovereign - is part of the theological and emotional furniture of Tambelon. Cherie plans to bind the Company and their Spirit irrevocably to Tambelon. She plans for the Spirit a sort of ascension. And they're already part-way there. The Spirit's dream-palaces are but a first fruit of what is to come. Fatinah's once-employer - the Old Mule of the Mountain - had nothing on what the Cherie and the Spirit will be, when it comes to seducing the skeptical.

Even if that living paradise only comes stocked with dancing, giggling innocent fillies in the place of that old pervert's hareem of houris.

[Neece]

8231836
The trice faced goddess of Tambleon. Oh boy, diplomacy with post Luna's return equestria will be awkward as fuck

[Dorath]

8231836 If that is Cherie's plan then why the hell are the Company and Nightmare/Luna playing along?

Tambelon is just another contract. The Company belongs to The Spirit, not to any single nation or world. Binding them to Tambelon is a violation of one of the Company's central precepts.

And both Nightmare and Luna have voiced their desire to return to Equestria (if my memory is correct), which they can't very well do if they are "bound" to miserable little Tambelon.

And since when is having Cherie's approval better than having the Company's leadership's approval?!

I'm curious where you're going to go with all this, but from where I'm sitting it currently looks like the Company is just going to tear itself apart and Tambelon is going to wind up even more bucked over.

[TheStratovarian]

8233690

And thats the best part of this, you see something entirely different than I in this. I see the nightmares actions as part of the whole here. While you see the same as the exception. Is one right, not really, we see the different angles out of the same particular.

But do you see blade giving them any choice for his 'conscripts' at all for clarifications sake?

We can disagree till the bulls get back from pasture, and neither be right or wrong on this.

[howard035]

Somepony would have to ride herd on our wildling jenny, to keep a controlling hoof on her reins, lest she make of Nightmare-worship a mass, evangelizing cult.

It's either almost or entirely too late for that.

8231693

What we've seen of the White Rose's people paints them as too fanatical (as a whole) to lay-down arms and return to the Empire, so we'll have just traded one banner of rebellion for another. Only this time the Company will be traitors and oath-breakers for having developed and trained the original Order.

This is definitely in keeping with the Black Company. I don't know how things will shake out with the Bride. But I feel pretty confident a scenario where the Company of the Night happily waves goodbye to the Legates as they jump through a portal to Equestria is not on the table. Either the Company will not leave until they have wiped out the litches, or they will not leave at all.

The followers of the Spirit of Nightmare/Luna who actually think of themselves as mercenaries are a tiny minority at this point. If they want to leave Tambelon with the Standard, they're going to spark a civil war in the company.

[ponygrad]

FF has had such a weird childhood that she got how hazing works backwards.

[Dorath]

8234037 Sorry for the delay, my computer didn't let me know about your reply.

And no, Blade gave his conscripts no choice in the matter (to be honest, I'm even starting to wonder just how many of his actual "followers" are still with him of their own will). This has been confirmed in story (hell if I can remember which chapter right now).

But (and this is where personal beliefs get involved) I see no ethical or moral difference between "I used magic to take away your free will and force this choice upon you" and "I used magic and drugs to make you think this choice has been forced upon and that you have no ability to refuse it -- while technically still leaving you the ability to refuse."

But hey, that's just me.

And, to be honest, I'm rather glad that there are folks who can look at what Feufollet and the rest are doing and still see a potential bright side.

[TheStratovarian]

8246788
No worries, its done this to me as well.

But in that, the realm of the spirit, they are given clarity. The realm of dreams won't be clouding choice from them. Yes, the means of getting them is so very underhanded. But while its possible to consider the words that way. I can say its possible how that it is taken. Words are fickle things with meaning, inferred and stated. But I view such as a pass, you have the time and choice to be the master of your vessel, or in the nature of tradition, be a part of an older tradition that values what you have lived your life with.

Not the stick, but the carrot and the stick well and truly out of the hand if the carrot is refused. I see it that way. But given the stance and view you present, it's certainly one way of it being.

[FanOfMostEverything]

We might be the abyss, but we're a loving sort of Pit.

"Welcome to the Dark Side. We have cookies. Ask for Cup Cake."