In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

A Quadrille In The Dark And Damp

SBMS064

It was easier in the end to track down the cohort noncom and help rearrange units back into their own constituent parts, than to try to dig latrines for each cluster of sections wherever they had happened to bunk out. They worked out a way to cover the sections striking their gear and re-distributing themselves, while the sun shone and the ghouls were taking their noon-time siestas. They took most of a day for the reorganization.

The process helped the sergeants take stock of their ponies, and discover problems and overlooked issues. Many of the troops had missed too many meals, and were barely on their hooves. Entire sections were one more night from just lying down and not getting back up until the ghouls came to turn up their sheets and collect the laundry. Everypony was filthy as well, but there wasn't much we could do about that until our own wells were dug and a convoy with the broken-down shower-stalls made it down the Road. What fresh water was available on site was hauled out by the ponies of Mondovi in barrels now and again, laboriously pumped from their towns' spring-fed fountains and wells which were the reason for the town's location in that karstland, that soaked up flowing surface water, and sucked down pools and ponds before they could puddle.

But the pervasive filth meant that every wound was a potential suppurating infection site. My antiseptic was going to go fast. I made a note to send for a second ambulance full of every last jug of antiseptic Rye Daughter could dilute out of my concentrated stocks.

After everypony got reunited with their own cohorts, then we got the trench latrines dug in their proper places, to their proper depths, and properly covered so that nopony stumbled into them in the dark. That killed the day, while the carter-ponies got everypony properly fed from the perishable stocks on the chuckwagons. The bulk of the supplies on those carts were preserved to last for another ten days or more in high summer, but the cooks had included some decent food as a bonus. It had barely kept during the long journey and the chaotic greeting of that first day, and everypony gobbled up what they were given before it went off.

The irony was, most of the earthworks had already been dug, and the kill-zones had been cleared. It was the logging and the construction work that had lagged under the strain of constant attacks from the brush and the woods. The makeshift walls of Mondovi had been constructed from the nearby woodlots and the torn-down abandoned structures in the neighborhood, so there wasn't much available loose and close to hoof, as it were. The very source of our construction materials was both often infested in the first place, and in addition was the favored lines of advance for the enemy, insofar as ghouls had favorites or intentions to speak of. Logging parties had to range far out of the protection of the main body of the forward deployment, and it was those parties which had been attacked again and again. It was in an attempt to clear in advance of once such party that Chestnut Shell had caught his fatal wound, and it was from ambushed logging parties that we had lost all of our missing caribou.

That evening, as tents from the supplies went up on the verge of the bypass highway, the sound of a zydeco band struck up over the walls of Mondovi, and torch-light glowed against the clouds blowing in on an unseasonable cool breeze. They were greeting their returning ramblers with their precious wagon-loads, with a surreal jig so utterly out of place on that muddy, darkened waste. A huddled market town, its sagging, aging walls slapped together out of mismatched lumber and salvaged materials - the roofs and second storeys of Mondovi's precious homes and shops and municipal buildings were barely visible through the gaps and over the sagging ramparts, like glimpses of a better life, a better world. This was the last stand of civilization, this was life in the face of the things getting ready to try our arms-ponies again. Dancing ponies behind failing walls, their players shifting from 4/4 to 4/3 time and back again.

They played throughout the night and the fog, and after a sweet while, we realized they were playing for us as much as for their returning stallions and mares. The music carried strangely on that peculiar night, warm ground-mist combed by cool, wet breezes overhead, and the stomp of the quadrille interspersed with moments of swirling waltz.

The Company found its second wind under that cheerful, buoyant sound. One of the wagons we had hauled down had been packed with Feufollet's special charms, fresh-sorcelled. A number of sections, well-fed and armed, wearing the little blood-mage's favour on their barding, fanned out into the growing darkness and a rising fog. They found the streams of ghouls in the mist making for the light and the music in the distant town, and merged silently with those shambling, drooling abominations. The dead didn't see the living step into cadence with their loping advance, nor did they see the blades gleaming in the damp and darkened dew.

It wasn't really a fight; it was more of an exercise, or an unpleasant duty – a night-shift on the slaughterhouse floor, to the distant melody of the quadrille contredanse. Many of the ‘pounders had found on their own what I had discovered, that pioneer axes were of more use against the undead than lances or pikes. And they hewed their quota of timber in the darkness to the ‘Pretty Doe Waltz' and the 'Jambalaya'. Trails of dismembered, rotted meat were laid out through the brush and the overgrown fields westward toward the distant ruins.

Of the few which found the defensive lines along the ramparts and the construction-zone which might eventually become a fortress, those ghouls found a bolt or dart in the darkness and the distant town-light glowing against the fog rising into a low cloud canopy above. The bow-mares high on the ramparts, their eyes slit-pupiled and glowing, saw through the rising fog, and, dancing in place to the rhythm of the distant snare drum, swept the cleared fields with the refreshed contents of their quivers. Their supports crouched at their knees, awaiting the charge with couched lances and swords at the ready, tapping counter-rhythm to the music with their weapon-hafts against their petryals and crinieres.

The caribou slept safely the night through under dry canvass, dreaming of square dances and the work of the day to come.

A light rain greeted the morning, brought an end to the night's dancing, and washed away the night's fog. The construction-crews formed their work-gangs, and the night-crew traded off their charms with the day-sections assigned to keep the ghouls off the logging parties. The anti-undead charms made the difference in the daylight as it had in the night and fog; the stink of rotting meat was the only assault the loggers suffered.

A bait-section broke open the deadly contents of the charms designed to attract the ghouls, and the section ran its pattern through the rain and the muck. Surprisingly few undead were baited out in this first attempt. Later experimentation suggested that the rain had suppressed the effect of the charms, and indeed, the no-living-ponies-here charms themselves suffered a large number of failures after the first day or so. Wet and damp were apparently murder on Feufollet's amulets. You can believe that Gibblets gave the cohorts the business over this shameful waste.

A convoy of empty wagons was sent back upcountry the next morning, and it passed another full convoy coming down from the Palisades, including my ambulance full of the requested jugs of antiseptic, and the broken-down shower-stalls. The latter wasn't of much use without the wells being completed, but their presence certainly advanced that priority on the list, and we marked out well-sites for the drillers and the diggers.

Slowly and surely, the work was getting done. And we grinned through our filth and ignored the endless stench of death and rot.

Author's Note:

Goodbye Joe me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun we'll have big fun on the bayou

Comments

[Bookeater_otaku]

Those No-Living-Pony-Here amulet/charm are a wonder and a game changer. You did a nice balancing job so they won't be too OP by making they have to be recharged and that rain and humidity are clear weaknesses.

Maybe a coating of wax or some lacquer could do the trick?