In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

A Jaunt In The Country

SBMS072

A week later, I was walking up the Road towards the Plateau Palisades. The caribou of Gustavbank had taken over their lost neighbors' fields, and plowed in dozens, even hundreds of acres of winter wheat in the shortening work-days of the aging season. The ponies of Guilliame's Ravin and her foreshortened skirt of straggling walled hamlets had likewise gone on a small grain rampage, filling fallow fields with rye, wheat, rapeseed and other late-season crops. They were making up for lost time with those minor crops which could be grown over the cool season, on a hyperactive tear since the shamblers had been beaten back from their walls and doorsteps. Fill every last moment with sixty seconds distance run…

What do you do after the world fails to end? You pick up your plow, and you turn over the fallow forty, or four hundred, and when you're done with that, help your neighbor plow hers. Pepin in the hollows and the gorges was coming back to life.

The Plateau Palisades were even more empty than the last time I had been up there, many of the pegasi had moved their kit down to the expanding barracks at Dance Hall, no more inclined to extend their travel-distances than those of us who had to hoof it. The Palisades were now occupied by the foals, the recuperating wounded, and a corporal's guard, along with the new recruits and their sergeant. There weren't enough new recruits to really rate more than a single training-sergeant. Actually, it wasn't even a sergeant, they had left Stomper to train the adult recruits, since she had to be up here to keep herd on the foals anyways. So the commanding officer of the Palisades was now a corporal brevetted to sergeant for the duration.

When I came through the gate, the recruits were storming about the marshaling yards, lancing at the quintains and hacking at posts with blunted axes. Some of the foals were kibitzing, and some of them were having a go at the training-equipment themselves. The Dodger was leading a half-section of the orphans in a dash back and forth between swinging quintains, clipping each with a heavy hoof as they passed, knocking the casks back and forth between them as they passed on alternating sides. Not exactly the prescribed use of the equipment, but it was a sort of training-play I could endorse. As I watched the river of foals roar by, the marshaling-yard rang with the bursting of a quintain, and water sprayed across a wall.

One of the new recruits pulled around out of his successful charge, his intact lance darkened with the quintain's watery life-blood. He looked sheepish at having destroyed his target, as if he was more embarrassed by his success than proud of an attainment.

"Damnit, Carrot, that's the third in three days. Yes, we know, you've got it down cold. Stop breaking my equipment! Go find the coopers' tools and put that thing back together and re-fill it from the wells." The scrawny orange stallion shoved his lance into its sheath by his side, and grabbed the burst cask and dragged it off towards a building across the way.

"You know, Stomper, that's actually the purpose of the exercise. You can't blame the colt for doing what he's supposed to be doing."

"What are you lot looking at? Get to it! Hup hup hup! I can blame him because he's an idiot and he's messing with unit morale. He doesn't belong here, he knows everything before I can teach ‘em. Something about a town militia and training days. Or maybe he's just a natural."

"Make up your mind, Stomper. Is he an idiot or a natural?" I scoffed.

"Why can't he be both? Either way, I want him out of my mane so that I can get the rest of these dorks trained properly. When can we go down into the Hall? We're growing moss up here. From what I hear, it isn't even dangerous anymore downcountry. The locals are making noise about maybe getting their militia reassembled. Everypony's got experience coming out of their ears, after all. The 'unorganized militia' in this duchy are only a bit of organization away from being a proper lot. I mean, look at Carrot Cake, the colt could out-charge half the cohorts, and he's just an alicorn-damned baker! Sawbones, take him off my hooves, please! And find out for me when I can get back to my unit! Dodger! Leave off that noise, and get the brooms! Hey! Hey! HEY! Form ranks, you lot!"

I left her to her drill-sergeanting, and went off to find Rye Daughter and my recovery-wards. I found her with the booze, diluting fresh antiseptic supplies, looking bored out of her skinny mind. Every time I laid eyes on her, she had grown another half-hoof, it seemed.

"Rye, have you been eating properly? You're practically a hide pulled over a skeleton. Come on, leave that be, let's get some food in you."

"Boss! Wie gehts? Good to see you! Are we going home now?" She leapt up and corked her cask, and put away the flasks she had been adulterating. We did a quick pass through the wards, as she hoofed out the various patients, and gave a run-down on their individual condition and status. I had left far too much on her shoulders, but at least she had the oxen with her. Two of the ambulance-drivers had turned out to be excellent orderlies, and had helped Rye keep order and track of the patients throughout the long summer months. And both had turned out to be far better at their letters and general organization than I had ever expected of them. Tribalist of me, I know, but then there was the counter-example of Tiny to keep in mind. Nopony thinks of the great hulking oxen, and expects them to harbour the quiet potential for organization, literacy, and detail-work that both Skinflint and Angus now proudly displayed.

Rye Daughter continued to prod me as we ate at the half-empty commissary which rattled around in the now-overbuilt mess hall that Charleyhorse and his knight kept running for the few Company ponies left in the Palisades. "Rye, if we took you all out of the Palisades, who would show the flag up here? We could come back up here one day and find the ghouls holding our own gates against us, and wouldn't we look silly then? No, you are all protecting our vital lines of communication with the world!"

"Don' be silly, Boss. We're all going stir-crazy. I've heard so much about the rest of the province! Stomper's been letting us patrol the edge of the plateau and some of the fields around here, but we want to explore! Nopony's even seen a ghoul in two months up here!"

I laughed and put her off, but one of the reasons I was up here was to evaluate the posts, and to prepare to shut down services and consolidate to Dance Hall for the end of the campaign season. I invited Rye to join me for the trot up to Little Ridings, which was going to be shut down this trip. She enjoyed the chance to stretch her lengthened legs, and the bison summer weather. I noticed a shadow following us as I looked back a few miles after we left the Palisades, and looked up to find a little thestral floating above us as we moved up the Road. I bellowed at her, and Cherie circled within shouting distance.

"Cherie, where is your knight? What are you doing out here by yourself?"

"Monsieur! Throat Kicker's somewhere… around here. Maybe dat cloud over there? We're patrolling! We never see anyting, but we patrol, eve'yday! We're bein' bien!" She laughed at herself, and did a little loop-de-loop over our heads.

"Boss, don't mind Cherie. She's always here and there. Throat Kicker flies her wings off chasing after her. Look, over there. Here she comes."

"Damn you, batling! Don't leave me behind like that! Come back over here, and leave the Annalist be!"

"Ah, corporal, we don't mind. It's a lovely day, and we could do with some company. Going up to Little Ridings. Cherie's Equuish is impressive, if I didn't know she hadn't a word before the spring, I'd think she's been speaking it for years."

"Yeah, well, she's a little sponge. Puts her teeth into it, and just sucks it up. Don't swear around her, seriously. Or talk about matters not for foals' ears."

"What, like making the beast with-" and the little thestral continued to chirp cheerfully about things that I certainly didn't want Rye Daughter hearing about.

"No, no, no! We've talked about this, no, stop!" yelped the overmatched pegasus, eyeing my furrowed brow and dangerous glare.

"Should I be talking to sergeants about loose talk around foals? Are you letting her hang around listening to barracks-room talk like that?"

"Sawbones, you can't keep her out of the barracks! I turn around, and she's disappeared and found her way into the rafters somewhere, or something like that. She lurks! Constantly!" Throat Kicker let her barrel droop from her wings as if she was being held up by her pinions overhead, a picture of defeat.

"Cherie! Are you minding your knight properly? You can't be doing this to poor Kicker! Look at the mare. Be a good pouliche."

"Oui, Sawbones, I will essayer."

The company made the long miles pass quickly. And truly, there wasn't much to do in Little Ridings. I met with Dancing Shadows, who was down from Rennet and Hydromel, and we talked about the headache of the discovery of the 'hunting preserve' situation, and I explained the new arrangement with the 93rd Rear Support Battalion, which had turned out to be an easy fit with the clearance sweeps. They were assembling a first coffle of thralls while I was up-country, and hopes were that we'd start seeing some cash flow from that direction soon.

Our credit situation in the Northlands had improved somewhat. The convalescent houses in Hydromel were properly funded, and Dancing Shadows even suggested that we might be seeing some of the Marklaird's oft-promised back-wages, which never seemed to actually materialize. The legate's bankers had spent three whole seasons trying to treat our battle-seizures of the White Rose's cash reserves as advances against our contracted payments promised by the legate. It took threats to bring action against the Marklaird's agents in the Bride's courts to scotch that one, and they had played legal chicken until the last damn moment. Dancing Shadows was fairly positive that the agents had been profiting by illicitly lending out the escrowed funds for their own enrichment.

We met with the corporal's guard that was holding the gate at the blockhouse at Little Ridings, as well as the teamsters who would be hauling the Company's effects out of the encampment. The last of the Company's materials has been shipped out of the Menomenie base and down to the Palisades or Dance Hall a month earlier. This was now the northernmost outpost of the Company, and I was shutting it down. There was a little celebration that night, but it was a little dry and dull without the house bands of Dance Hall to add that little note of liveliness that I had grown accustomed. At least Rye Daughter and Cherie were there to make everypony smile.

In the morning, we emptied out the blockhouse into the waiting wagons as the guard awaited the Beans and their militia-officers. They took the keys to the gate, and loaded up our spare wagons with the fruit of the rich harvest the furthest northern fringe of Pepin had enjoyed during our summer campaign season. I hitched myself to one of the overloaded wagons in tandem with one of the guards-turned carters, and we rolled southward with our Company on our backs. Our escort was a small thestral and her frazzled knight overhead, and a half-grown caribou doe pronking in the vanguard, and all was right with the world for an afternoon.

Author's Note:

And the hermit-crab drags his shell further down the beach.