In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Chaos At The Front

SBMS063

The pegasi flew a search pattern overhead as we cleaned up our mess. There had been fewer ghouls than it had seemed in the heat of the moment. I'm told the original pack split between when it was spotted and it hit our hasty barricade. Lucky for us, I suppose. There wasn't room or time to burn the corpses on the Road, and night was rushing on faster than the dead with blood in their eyes. I went about, and put my axe to good use on the corpses, removing the heads from the bodies while the oxen and the guards got the wagons back up on their wheels. The bowmares trotted from body to body, retrieving their darts and bolts, and flinging the severed heads into one of the carts while they were at it. After all the wagons were upright, everypony helped sling bodies into the empty beds. The teamsters and other civilians had been coaxed out of their carts by then, and the sun was kissing the horizon.

Four miles to go, and twilight fading as we wasted time. The rear-guard stood to the side, and the vanguard and the three wagon-loads of dead meat kicked off down the Road. We were now in a tearing hurry, and the oxen scrambled to get back into their traces on the ambulance. It was especially awkward, because I belatedly remembered the ghouls crawling all over Tiny, and I was trying my best to check him over for open wounds and anything that would kill him, while he was trying to push me away and take his place next to Sack. I couldn't find anything that was leaking too badly, so I just walked next to him the rest of the way, keeping one eye on him, and the other on the Road.

That last leg of the walk into the valley was a darkened blur, and I barely registered the overgrown fields and the scorched foundations passing by in the dying light. We knew we were close when we reached the end of the the refused ramparts beside the Road. A section held the tower that anchored the ramparts, which had been built up on the side of the roadbed itself rather than across the ditch as they had planned. Looking at it in the darkness, I could see why - that damn drainage ditch was deeper than Tartarus, and it was better to have it in front of you than behind you. But the new ramparts took up half the roadway, and it turned a nice, wide military highway into something of a goat trail, and slowed down traffic fiercely. But the ramparts were a great comfort to the whole of the convoy, and you could hear the sighs of relief pass down the train as we rolled around the tower's base. The boom was nowhere in sight, I don't know if they hadn't brought the materials out yet, or if they had just decided not to bother.

The ghoul-pack had done an end-run around the ramparts, and climbed up onto the Road well north of the tower. The construction was already making a difference.

When Mondovi's ramshackle walls rose up in the darkness, the gates were closed for the night. The fires of the Company's positions were bright across the bypass, and the convoy went into laager in that open space behind the earthen ramparts. As soon as we pulled into our place in the laager, I climbed up on the ambulance and pulled out a table, and slapped at Tiny until he got out of his traces.

He had fought a battle, and dragged the ambulance four miles with five serious ghoul-bites leaking blood and other fluids all over his ill-fitting caparison. Well, I call the heavy burlap the ox used a ‘caparison', but really they were roughly-stitched doubled flour sacks that some of our Rime donkeys had stitched together for our oversized brother. Tiny's vitality was simply unbelievable. I got Sack to pin Tiny down, and I used up a third of a bottle of antiseptic on his bite-wounds. I had Tiny drink the rest of it, dosed heavily with laudanum, before I dared start debriding those ugly wounds and stitching them shut. Tiny was murder on my medical supplies. I was already planning on sending a chariot back to the Palisades to retrieve my emergency supplies, along with a note for Rye Daughter.

I went to sleep in the back of the ambulance next to Sack, fairly positive that we wouldn't lose Tiny to his disinterest in his own physical well-being.

Morning revealed the chaos and disorder of the construction zone. Tents were scattered about higgledly-piggledy, and as far as I could tell, ponies were using the drainage ditches as latrines, because I couldn't find properly dug ones anywhere. Everything was covered in dried mud and piles of wreckage were scattered here and there, even though we hadn't had a serious storm in over a week. There were burn sites scorched every hundred to two hundred yards along the surface of the bypass, and the guards from last night's convoy were busy burning the remains we had tossed into the empty Company wagons.

The night's fighting had produced another crop of wounded among the defenders of the line. I spent the early morning cleaning out bites and stitching up cuts. Nothing too serious, and at least we weren't getting any dismemberments or crushing trauma, or the like. Only one broken bone, from some damn fool tripping into the half-cleared fosse of what would eventually be the star-fortress. I performed surgery with my caparison rolled up and tucked under my petryal, with my chamfron sitting near to hoof. I had been warned that there had been more than one break-out in the last week, and didn't care to get overrun without barding.

By noon I was sweating like a mule.

Every cart and wagon in the convoy, including my ambulance, had gotten their wheels coated in the nastiness that had leaked out of those carrion-wagons as we rolled down the Road to the front. We must have left a hell of a trail behind us, ghoul ichor ground into the metalling for four long, filthy miles. The stench in the laager would have been remarkable if the entire construction zone didn't already stink of burnt, rotten flesh and corruption. I wondered briefly if the ponies of Mondovi would let those stinking wagons into their fastness or not, but it really wasn't any of my business.... By evening of that first day, my sense of smell was comatose, and thank the Peacock Angel, because if not for that, I might have gone mad. I could handle anxiety, and the terror of battle, but that horrible stench was enough to send a zebra around the bend.

I couldn't figure out how the camp was organized. Nothing was where it was supposed to be, and sections of every cohort were scattered here and there, without any order visible to the naked eye. I found out later that three of Mad Jack's caribou recruits were missing. Some damn fool suggested that they had deserted, as if any lunatic would desert in something like this. The first day or two some ponies had been fool enough to go into nearby brush to "do their business". This is probably what happened to those recruits.

In fact, the morning the convoy set out from the Palisades, one of the missing had been found half-eaten under a bush a half-mile beyond Mondovi by a patrol; we were pretty sure that body was the missing Hartschalenkoffer, who stepped behind a tree to do his business just before a ghoul pack burst over the bypass and distracted everypony with a scrambling fight. The absence of the caribou recruit wasn't noted until much later. I'm told that there was an amulet around the corpse's throat which matched something the buck kept with him, and the body hadn't risen again, which might be the sign of a deceased brother of the Company, and not just some random subject of the Duc.

The buck Mutter Sohn and the doe Schlaukind had likewise disappeared in the daily chaos of the construction of the fortress before Mondovi, but their bodies were never recovered. I strongly believe they were taken by the undead in one of the swirling skirmishes that marked those mad days and nights, or just pulled down while they were making water in the bush. We can only recall them for the remembrance of the Company, their sacrifice was as important as those of ponies like Chestnut Shell and Far Horizons.

When I finally tracked down the Lieutenant in an unmarked open-sided tent no-where near the star fortress's foundations going up, she had aged ten years in the last ten days. The construction zone was her battle, and she barely had a grip on it. At least my face gave her a laugh, heavily bandaged and laboring under an oversized chamfron and petryal.

"Don't laugh, Lieutenant. I've fought ghouls with barding, and without barding, and it's a lot more fun not getting cut to ribbons."

"Good to have you down here. Maybe now we can keep more pegasi on station instead of hauling casualties halfway across the province. We had more wounded last night - have you looked at them?"

"It's part of the reason I've been so long tracking you down. Well, that, and nopony knows where anything else is down here. You need Broken Sigil, somepony needs to bring the anal-retentiveness."

"Captain still needs someone to co-ordinate the defense of the rear zone. It's actually complex up there. It's just disordered down here."

"Lieutenant, I've seen the rear zone, and I've gotten a good look at this place, and let me tell you, you need help down here. This is a mess."

She looked away, blank and tired. "It's better than it was. We're getting somewhere. Nopony died last night. Uh, they didn't, did they?" She asked, realizing I had been working on patching together the night's wounded.

"No, Lieutenant, nothing life-threatening. But seriously, ask for help. We're going to start getting camp-disease casualties at this rate."

"I can't, we've already stripped them to the bone here. I've got seven hundred armsponies protecting eighty construction-ponies. They've barely got anypony left to do the sweeps and hold down the blockhouses and our lines of communication. Look what happened to your convoy! We nearly lost you to a random band of trotters!"

"It really wasn't that close of a fight, Lieutenant. Worst thing that happened was one of my oxen got a little shop-worn. He barely even registered that he had been hurt. But my point is that you have most of the Company down here, and if you're not careful, they're going to get sick in these conditions. We need somepony to organize proper drainage and sanitation, and organize in general. Get Sigil down here. Look, you're doing fine, better than we should have expected given how heavily you're getting hit. You'd almost think the damn things were being organized and driven by a thinking enemy, the way they've been hitting you. Never be afraid to ask for what you need to turn a mess into a success, filly."

That got her ire up. I was ten years younger than the Lieutenant. "OK, surgeon, that's enough of that. I hear you. You want to see some organization? Go grab a section and start marking out proper latrines and sanitation."

I smiled, happy to be delegated. Officers who were too scrambled to dump work on other ponies were officers far too close to the edge. Got to remind them who they're supposed to be.

Comments

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

When I finally tracked down the Lieutenant in an unmarked open-sided tent no-where near the star fortress's foundations going up, she had aged ten years in the last ten years. (days?) The construction zone was her battle, and she barely had a grip on it. At least my face gave her a laugh, heavily bandaged and laboring under an oversized chamfron and petryal.

[Mitch H]

8629021
I swear these things creep in months afterwards... fixed. Thanks.