In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

A Sodden Intermission

SBMS076

The Spirit's luck ran out for the Company a few days before the late autumn rains came to the province of Pepin. Second cohort rushed the introduction of Major Gorefyre and the 93rd into the clearance operation against the Deep Mines district, and the implementation was rocky, even shaky. The little necromancer couldn't be anywhere, so the sergeants of the cohort treated her like a fire-brigade, rushing her from point to point to bring penned-in wildling ghouls under thrall. She had assigned squads of her ponies to various sections of the second cohort, and because the units had not been working in tandem with each other as the ponies of the 93rd had done with the aerial and third cohort, there wasn't that sort of fellow-feeling which makes ponies move as one, react properly to threats without pause, without thought, to act without thinking.

The squads and the sections thrown together, rushing against the weather that everypony could smell on the breeze, rushed separately, and not always in the same direction. Major Gorefyre, clinging to a warlock-gig and shuttled back and forth across the slopes and draws that led into the mining district, was effectively out of control of her ponies, who, having been slapped together from random donkeys and ponies whose common quality was that they were to be found in Imperial replacement depots at the same time as the recruiters' cadre forming the 93rd, had no common espirit de corps. Most of the squads in the field did the rational thing, and clove to the Company sections with whom they had been brigaded, and if they accomplished very little in this brief campaign, did little to endanger themselves or their accompanying Company sections.

One squad, on the other hand, got into trouble, the sort where half the ponies were down under a rush of ghouls before their assigned Company section could catch up to their vagrant charges. The entire squad was incapacitated or killed before the Company section was able to recover the situation, and half the section itself was wounded to one degree or another. They popped off a flare, retreated on a rally point, carrying the surviving members of the squad of the 93rd out of danger. One such survivor did not actually make it to the evacuation point, and turned on the back of Amber Waves before that earth-pony mare was aware that her burden had gone ghoul. It managed to get through her caparison, and killed her. I wish I could say it was quick, but from my examination later, it looks like it got to her spine, and then did worse before the rest of the section noticed that she was missing.

The charioteers brought the wounded from that encounter to my infirmary at Dance Hall, and I was busy for the next several days establishing quarantine and trying my best to keep the rest of the wounded troopers of the 93rd from expiring and adding to Major Gorefyre's enthralled ranks. We kept her enchanted fetish-nails to hoof just in case, but my new anti-ghoul potions seemed to do the trick, once they got the afflicted into my care. Shame that sumu utami is so rare on Tambelon; it made that component almost as expensive as the jiwe busara and aqua regia which were the other major active ingredients. The whole mixture was almost as expensive as its own weight in golden deniers. Possibly more, I'm not sure how to price Rye Daughter's and my time.

We lost two more of the overrun squad of the 93rd, but they did not turn, and we burned them along with Amber Waves in a common ceremony. I was not sure if the Major was pleased or enraged, I found her expressions difficult to read at times. The further operations were truncated by the onrushing rains, and we had to end the clearance operation until the slopes and fields dried out once again. Total haul for the 93rd proved to be a hair less than five hundred thralls.

Gorefyre and her sergeant-major did not try to ride out the rainy season, but rather got their thralls and their troopers on the road through Le Coppice a couple days into the season. I can't say I was sorry to see them go, my argument with the Spirit had left me feeling low and compromised, and I did my best to keep busy with the wounded and the recovering. The Company had seen more than a quarter of its number pass through my infirmary and recovery wards during the long campaign season, and although more than half of them had passed out again, it was still a mighty strain on what was, in truth, a small medical section. I used the services of the charioteers to shuttle up to the Palisades to check on Rye Daughter, the oxen, and the upper recovery ward during this period, but it did not make me popular among the pegasi, I'm afraid.

There was a sensation of waiting, of anticipation during this rainy season. We were still a Company divided, as there had not been time to displace the wounded, the recruits, and the foals down from their perch on the edge of the plateau, and the miserable weather kept the musicians of Mondovi indoors and Dance Hall languished in unaccustomed silence. I started to think about maybe starting up a musical education program for the armsponies, if only to liven up our future encampments and garrison lives.

Not that we could possibly afford the instruments given our perpetually cash-poor existence.

Gibblets and the rest of the adult warlocks came down to Dance Hall for a series of conferences with the officers and Mad Jack to plan out defenses in case the legates arrived to contest our control over central Pepin and their undead hunting preserve, whatever was left of it by the time they arrived in theatre for their winterly cull. Gorefyre had left with a quarter of the supposed tithe that the legates allegedly took from this territory every winter, and we thought that perhaps we could flush out another couple coffles of thralls of like size given time, the support of the 93rd or a similar outfit with a similarly powered necromancer, and a free hoof to make the collections.

The one question was, what would be our stance if the legates showed up on their own authority, without legal warrant from the Imperial authorities? In one sense, a legate was an authority all of their own, and could force the issue without reference to legalities and documentation. In another sense, this is the same mind-set that killed tens of thousands of civilians in this region, and nearly provoked a ghoul apocalypse which had shown all the signs of spilling out across the northlands.

Mad Jack's Trollbridge project had stumbled forward during the last stages of the long campaign season, but had not made much headway. There had been some progress in steepening the northern banks of the Withies, and building up a bit of a rampart along the edge of the banks. The blockhouse complex had likewise been expanded to meet those rudimentary ramparts. A wooden palisade had been thrown up across the gap between the guard-tower at the end of Dance Hall's long southern rampart and the Trollbridge blockhouse. It was reinforced in places with dugout ditches and earthen mounds built up into firing-platform bastions. But overall, the complex wasn't really in any sense defensible against a serious force, let alone the sort of pressure a powerhouse mage like one of the legates could bring to bear against it. At best, it would cause a pause while they incinerated the Trollbridge and its outworks. And we simply did not have the time or wherewithal to create a Dance Hall-style defensive work around Trollbridge, let alone a truly modern one that could hope to fend off a monster like the Marklaird.

Speaking of whom, it had been nearly a year since we or anypony else had laid eyes on our nominal employer. Its bankers had finally coughed up our back-wages – without penalty, damn them – which were immediately garnished by every holder of Company debt from Tonnerre to Pythia's Fell. We swung from bankrupt and in debt up to our primaries to impoverished and of merely shaky credit. Which is the usual state of a mercenary corporation, so there was that to be grateful for. The bankers were noncommittal about whether we had any current or future wages upon which we could draw credit – apparently even they had not been in contact with our common employer, who had just vanished like the morning mist as far as anypony could figure.

My road-friend and apparent spy had lingered about the neighborhood for as long as she could milk her rather dubious tinkers' wares, and had spent some time moonlighting as a baker's assistant in Mondovi, to supposedly rebuild her finances, which had allegedly taken a hit from the Mondovans' disinterest in her useless trinkets. This gave her an excuse to lurk about the gates of Dance Hall, and to stroll about the neighborhood like a lost tourist. Eventually her excuses ran thin, and “Cup Cake" packed up her wagon and followed a voyageur's caravan southward over the Trollbridge and deeper into the Riverlands. I almost felt sorry for her, and had a word with the Company armsponies playing guard for the voyageurs, to keep an eye on the hapless spy and to make sure she didn't stumble into trouble on her way to whomever she was supposed to be reporting back to at the end of her wanderings. I still wasn't sure who she was working for, but it seemed unlikely that she was the sort of cut-throat you'd expect to be in the covert employ of one of the Bride's lawless legates.

Three weeks into the rains, a sodden Dancing Shadows arrived at the northern guard-tower with a guest, having bypassed the Palisades entirely, and marched through the chilling rain a day and a night since they had left Charred Horton. Her guest was an equally soaked earth pony, of surprising height. I had never seen a mare of that stature, whose height exceeded even that of our towering giant unicorn, Hyssop, who was still up at the Palisades along with her partner in crime, allegedly on the disabled list. Goldbricking as usual.

Dancing Shadows had summoned the inner council, and asked that we meet in the mess hall, without guards. I and the Captain awaited Gibblets' arrival, and we eyed the big black earth mare, whose eyes were knowing and large, as if great knowledge had been given to a clever foal, who had then grown up into a mare of great privilege and authority. Our mystery guest was clearly incognito, but I was growing increasingly wroth with Dancin- no, with Dior Enfant, for having brought a mystery to our doorstep without prior notice. The mystery mare was investigating the Company standard, in its pike-rest at the back of the mess hall. The doors and the kitchen dutch doors were barred, and some effort had been taken to keep the rest of the Company from overhearing our conference. As if Dior Enfant was protecting the identity of the mystery, and not the security of the Company. Damn her.

Gibblets arrived, and stopped, horrified, in the door behind Dior Enfant, who continued inside.

“Warlock, thank you for your time," said the mystery mare, stepping away from the Company's battle-banner. “I have need to confer with you all." An unknown magic field, darkest purple in hue, closed and locked the door behind the gobsmacked goblin.

And the Bride of Tambelon dropped her earth-pony glamour, and stood before us in all of her tattered and dark glory.

Author's Note:

And now steps onto the Company's small stage that colossus, in whose lengthened shadow lies the Imperium.

Comments

[MoNNgol]

> earth pony, of surprising height

> the big black earth mare, whose eyes were knowing and large, as if great knowledge had been given to a clever foal, who had then grown up into a mare of great privilege and authority.

This is real appearance Bride of Tambelon? So she look before Grogar make a alicorn from she?

[Mitch H]

7996517 Could be. I'm not at all sure if anypony is still alive who remembers the Bride when she still had a name. Other than the Barrowlord sleeping uneasily under his imprisoning seals. And Lord Grogar was such that he never cared for the names of his puppets and experimental supplies. Not for him the magic of true names. The Bride was lucky to not labor under the burden of 'Successful Earth Pony Subject #1'.

[ponygrad]

An aside before we get into the deep stuff. I love Sawbone's realization a few chapters ago "we may have underestimated how little the government cares about the people". I love how there is a bureaucrat weighing whether to pay the Company or keep it for his lich employer he hasn't seen in a year. This particular world is so uniquely fucked up in a way I can't easily compare to any other story.

[CaptainPipsqueak]

Ooh, are those road apples I smell?