In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Brass's Ring

SBMS074

I found the Captain being pestered by an expensive-looking lunatic in a nice hat and an impressive pea-coat. She was pacing back and forth in the main hall, eyeing the operations room across the way and fuming while the earth pony in the pea-coat went on and on about - tin mining and bolides and ‘atypical lode deposits'. She brightened upon laying eyes upon me, and before I could talk to her about my reports from upcountry and about maybe moving the foals and recruits down to Dance Hall, she jumped all over the opportunity to drape her annoyance across my withers.

I was forcibly introduced to Brass Tones, a land owner and an obsessive with mining interests in the duchy. Well, I should say, his family had the mining interests, Tones from his mark clearly had extraneous interests that aligned oddly with those lost mines in central Pepin. His continual jabber about the Deep Mines complex was technical and annoying, but the general gist was that there was an improbable deposit of tin, copper, lead and zinc in a tangle of gorges beside the river between Pepin City's agricultural district and the ruins of Caribou City. It had supported a dozen mining communities in that hill-complex by the river, all of which had been evacuated by the third year of the infestation, those that hadn't become part of the infestation. Second cohort was starting to clear the region as part of the agreement with the Duc to open up the lines of communication with his isolated corner of Pepin, and to relieve the still-pressed farming hamlets under the Duc's protection.

Major Gorefyre and her ponies had been working with the third cohort to perfect cooperative techniques in ghoul capture and thrallification in the pacified regions. I realized that I wasn't going to get anything else done with Brass Tones sounding in my ears, so I didn't so much as interrupt his continuous flow of chatter, as guide it towards the 93rd's camp and stockades.

They had set up shop on the far side of the Trollbridge, building a flimsy palisade protecting some tents that would be damn cold come the onrushing cold weather, and a rambling series of stockades and pens stretching eastwards up the gorge of the Withies on the far side of the watershed. There were already a half-dozen pens full of undead laying on their hocks, motionless, being guarded in a subtly anxious fashion by a half-dozen armsponies of the 93rd. You could see that these slackers wanted to slack off as was their nature, but the proximity of a good hundred and fifty pony-eating monsters was not conductive to the playing of cards and sleeping on post. Those rows of silent rotting shamblers doing nothing but staring stolidly at the walls of their pens even silenced Brass Tones for a few moments.

Each thrall had an iron nail driven into their brainstem or spinal column - you could see the lacquered fetish attached to the nail-head projecting from their tattered manes like macabre filly-bows. I thought of what would happen if the thralls rubbed their fetish-heads off of their nails, and shuddered in horrified anticipation. Supposedly they were reliably docile in this state, and could even be sent into battle, used to assault heavy fortifications, and not run out of control, but that seemed like a story for the stage to me.

The stockades were about a quarter full, but they could build more if they needed it. The Major and most of her troops were out with the third cohort when we visited, I was told that there was an expedition up the nearby gorges to clear out the Crystal Cave which kept getting infested, as the thought was this would be good practice for the Deep Mine complex. They were expected back tomorrow, it wasn't a short hike up the hollows. It probably wasn't worth the expected yield, excepting the opportunity for training in tight quarters.

The ongoing Imperial domestication project was an unstated element of that training, of course. Smooth Draw was handling that project for now, but would trade off with Fuller Falchion when the time came to clear the Deep Mines. Which we would tell Brass Tones when he stopped talking as if we were doing all of this out of the goodness of our black hearts.

As we walked back from the thrall pens across Trollbridge, which had acquired her own collection of grotesque charred decorations while I was on my country jaunt with the fillies, I continued my conversation with Brass Tones, or rather, I terminated his monologue, and initiated a dialogue.

"Mr. Tones, do we look to you like a charitable organization? a public works or volunteer service association? Do you think these guards' barding and arms are provided by the open hooves of an altruistic world? We are a mercenary association of armsponies, united by our own self-interest and the ongoing expectation of recompense. We are not the Perchertons, nor even if we were, would we agree to secure your alleged property without proper remuneration. Have you talked to the Duc about this alleged ownership interest? I've been told by his ponies that these were extensive and… unconsolidated workings back when they were in operation." I had been told no such thing, but my mama didn't raise no gormless zebra, I know how these kinds of operations work in normal economic conditions.

"Of course I've talked to the Duc! He's a reasonable donkey, knows which side of his toast is taxable. And the Coppers have bought out the other owners. Most of them were glad to dump their ghoul-infested white elephants. We believed in the future of the Deep Mines region." Probably at sous to the denier, I thought.

"And who was saying anything about charity? We're a proper respectable operation, of course we'd be funding the clearances. I can't offer cash deniers, all of our capital will be tied up in retrieving the surviving miners and making sure they don't starve their first year in the digs. There were massive losses, of lives and sunk capital, when the monsters overran our mines and the towns. The bankers almost made us write the whole thing off, take an enormous loss, and look to other opportunities. But I repeat, I believe in this project! There are no other sources of tin within two thousand miles of Rime! Do you know how rare this sort of thing is? It's a madness and a puzzlement that the Deep Mine Deposit is where it is, madness I tell you! Every other such vein is in old, old mountain country, rugged and on the back-end of feral nowhere!"

I looked around at the blasted wasteland we had made of central Pepin, and the barbaric display of the trophies along the ramparts in the distance, and asked, "What about Pepin today does not qualify as the feral back-end of nowhere?"

"Well, yes, ghoul infestation. It's apparently easier to exterminate the undead than to take a mine in deepest Bullevia fifteen hundred miles from the nearest port and get tin ore shipped cross-country."

"Mr. Tones, the Company is the only reason that there is any sort of ease to this extermination campaign. The Imperials have spent seven years nibbling around the problem, taking a tithe of the herd, leaving the rest to multiply by EATING THE COUNTRYSIDE DEAD. We, the Black Company, are the instrument by which your mines can be safe and operational. We want paid, in proper deniers. We need actual cash flow, not next spring, not tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, but on the barrel, on the nailhead, now."

He rolled his eyes and brushed some dust off his pea-coat. "Oh, fine. I'll have my family's bankers talk to your bankers. Get me your information. Now, excuse me, I have to secure some rooms in your nearby town."

Well, damn. We probably need to get some bankers, don't we? I kid, I kid. The Company isn't that unsophisticated, although sometimes I like to give that impression.

That night, the usual string-band music floating over Dance Hall was brightened by the happy tones of a brassy trumpet belting out the usual standards. Brass Tones had apparently made friends among the musicians of Mondovi.

Author's Note:

I swear to Celestia, Brass Tones invaded my dreams last night, babbling about all sorts of mad things, which I stripped down to matters likely to be of relevance to medieval Tambelon. I mean, I doubt esoteric jabber about fantasy novel structure, cybernetics and modern recording technology would make any more sense to Sawbones than it did to dream-me. Sometimes I don't think I dream so much as I tune into public access television, as varied and perplexingly dull as mine often are.

Comments

[Dorath]

Wait, so the mercenaries may see some actual coin after almost two years under contract? What is the world coming to?

[Mitch H]

7674854 Put promises in one hoof and spit in the other, and at least you'll have spit to your name.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

7674854
I believe it's a sign of the coming Ponyocalypse. It should be reported to the air farce

[Bookeater_otaku]

" Sometimes I don't think I dream so much as I tune into public access television, as varied and perplexingly dull as mine often are."

Mines are not dull. They are wide marvel of engeneering, perfect setting for a DnD session and dangerous as heck in good condition. Every mine have an history and none is quite like the others. I almost expect Diamond Dogs to have reconquered the mine with their tunel and continued the exploitation for themselves. Even jewel obscessed canine need ordinary metal. Man that could be a good setting for a story...