In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

The Recruiting-Detail

SBMS094

We met with a representative from the militia-companies of Rennet in Menomenie, as I had arranged beforehoof. Said captain, a beefy earth-pony named Long Halter, accompanied us in that last long leg of our journey back to the Company proper. I'm not sure what he made of the juvenile recruits and Uncle Blade, but he kept his counsel to himself.

I did little but fight with Uncle Blade. If I was against the Company taking in an entire cohort's worth of militia-recruits, he was for it. If I was for arming new recruits according to Company standards, he thought that new recruits ought to prove they could survive without barding, before they should be trusted with expensive Company assets.

I drew the line at his reflexive, absolutely uneducated bigotry against caribou recruits. Expressed without censor or tact right in front of Rye Daughter, damn his mangy old hide. The old fool hadn't even been within five hundred miles of the fighting in Rennet.

He insisted on touring the remains of the White Rose's ghoul-trap in Menomenie while we were there. All he asked was why I had been with the warlocks when Shorthorn triggered the trap. I talked around the substance of 'why', and told him flat-out we could talk about it if and when he put together a reliable set of privacy wards, and I refused to say anything further. Never can tell who is listening, outside of the immediate safety of the Annals-chest. I promised him a look at my book-in-progress, when we got back to Dance Hall. Someone would have to be assigned as Annalist-assistant if I was going to be tromping all over the northlands detached on recruiting duty.

And I knew if we ended up doing it, I'd be the one sent out. The Captain still had some grudges to work out from the last few years. Among other things, my tendency to act as if I'm the one in charge of the Company.

Whenever I managed to get away from the old goat, I tried to keep pace with Rye Daughter. She was feeling the weather, something about the bracing cold put her in a pronking mood. She was constantly casting away from the Road, to investigate this and that wherever she could get across the drainage ditches and along parallel tracks. Every night, we had to comb the thistles, burrs, and random detritus out of her coat. She found a few useful herbs along the way; good times.

And of course Obscured Blade had nothing good to say about the blockhouses and palisades. Over forty years out of the field, and he still was full of opinions about our sloppy engineering standards and slapdash construction techniques. By the time that Dance Hall's northern watch-tower hove into view, I was looking forward to locking him in a quarantine chamber with Mad Jack until only one of them came out.

Rye and I checked in at the infirmary, and went through the cases which had cropped up during our absence. Little had happened that the oxen couldn't handle - a trickle of influenza, a few broken bones. I found it necessary to re-break a miss-set leg, and while that wasn't fun for me or the poor pegasus in question, it was hardly a challenge. A runner came for me the next day, from the Captain in regards to our guest the Rennet militia-captain. I set Rye and the oxen to putting together a cart-load of medical supplies for an intensive recruiting drive, and headed over to the meeting and my doom.

Of course she chose the most annoying and inconvenient response to the challenge. I was on recruiting detail.

I collected a demonstration-section from the three cohort-commanders, a balanced set of pegasi, unicorns, earth ponies, a donkey and one caribou. A positive rainbow of diversity, to demonstrate without having to say anything about the matter. And calculated to scare the crap out of any tribalists, hopefully before they got past my sense for such things. Each of them had been chosen by their commanders as veterans ready for promotion, and they'd become corporals w/ their own training-sections once the moment came. Skinflint came along to haul the medical supplies and other materials in one of the ambulances.

Two of the other oxen and Rye accompanied us up to the half-mothballed Plateau Palisades, which we were sharing with a hoof-full of Pepin militia-ponies still trying to get their organization up and running. I had to track down their captain at her family's homestead a morning's trot away from the blockhouse, and negotiated with her the winters-use of the Palisades for training, quarantine, and housing of a significant influx of new recruits. The new aerial-cohort commander sent relays of pegasi across the northlands on logistical errands, sending out orders for fresh supplies. The Company's depots had been heavily drawn down in supplying the previous waves of Tambelonian recruits, and we were short on pretty much everything - caparisons, barding, winter clothing, weapons, tack, everything. The Bride's credit would be given a proper exercise by the drive to outfit that many recruits.

The training and housing of the recruits wasn't my business, and I left it to Asparagus, Broken Sigil, and the cohort commanders. Medical oversight was. The heaviest mortality among large influxes of recruits was in the early days, as they exchanged illnesses with their new friends like ponies at a swap-meet. It was particularly bad among rural ponies, which is why military recruiters have traditionally preferred recruiting from big cities if we can get them. Sadly, most worlds on the lower stretches of the Chain are just not heavily supplied with sprawling metropolises or other cosmopolitan milieus full of scrappy ponies with well-exercised immune systems. More often than not, we had to work with the farm-ponies, whose exercise in the fields often left their bodies robust, but their immunities feeble and under-developed. Rye and two of the oxen would return with the first company of recruits to the Palisades, and oversee the inevitable wave of camp-sickness, hopefully with no fatalities.

I would have liked to have brought Carrot Cake and the real banner with us on detail, but we couldn't spare the asset for that long. Never could tell when Dance Hall might receive another visitor, or some other crisis. So, instead, we made due with a pike fished out of the depot, and a guidon bearing the proper Company sigil. A tall, taciturn mare named Forelorn Hope carried the guidon for the detachment.

Three days after the argument with the Captain and Uncle Blade, the recruiting-detail marched out of Plateau Palisades towards the first of the militia muster-towns at the height of winter. A cold, bitter wind bit through our uniforms and the caparisons we wore underneath. Rye was doubly bundled up, being not yet in her full adult growth, and thus not fitted with a caparison. The oxen traveled at the fore of the column, to help break the wind and any drifts that formed across the Road.

---

The first muster-town was a modest little market-town a morning's trot north-east of Menomenie. The militia armory was a good-sized building next door to the re-built granary and up the road from a mill which had once had its miller hung from its store-house by a Company column. Also next door to the grange headquarters for the district, but we hadn't had occasion to burn or otherwise desecrate that symbol of provincial authority. An odd place to offer a volunteer company for the ponies who had despoiled their district.

I was a little surprised to find Bound Codex herself greeting us. The Duchesse had sent her south to liase with the Company on this strictly military matter. The former mayor of Lau Crosse was now a ducal aide, technically speaking a seneschal, although here she was, far from the court itself. The nobility and its loose regard for the technicalities of their job-titles, you know?

We arrived well before the bulk of our militia-audience. The captain and officers of this district were still scattered to the four winds winkling out their ‘volunteers' from hamlets and homesteads across the breadth of the military district, which wasn't at all the same thing as the province's administrative districts. This slowness had been a big part of how the insurrectionists had been able to raise and organize their regiments before the ducal levies could mobilize against the uprising. Many of the ponies with whom we would be meeting were those laggards, who had by and large kept their heads down during the domination of the White Rose. The militia officers had either gone into exile or died; some of the ponies out rousting farmers and their fieldhooves had returned from exile, some of them were new hires or replacement volunteers.

We killed days waiting for the muster, kicking our heels in the grange's public pub, playing endless hoofs of poker and drinking that district's excellent, nutty stouts. I made sure to limit Rye to one beer a night, and pretended I was teaching her how to gamble.

She damn near took the caparisons off of our collective withers. Is everypony I know a better gambler than I am? Well, Bound Codex, but it felt like even she was getting my measure by the time that the last of the militia drifted into town. The grange, the militia armory, and every spare room in town would be full of militia-ponies bunking out that night.

In preparation for the muster, I had sent Barrel Roll down to the Palisades with a message for the pegasi. My composite section fully armed themselves, suiting up in full barding, axes at their belts, lances and swords at the ready for the ground pounders, javelins and wingblades for the two pegasi. They were, in point of fact, more heavily armed than Company arms-ponies generally went in the field. The purpose was display, not combat. Everypony had their thestral helms on, glowy-eyed and fierce. I left my amulet in the medical cart. We were ready to scare the manure out of the farm-ponies.

The muster was gathered in the wind-swept square of the town, where the stalls stood when market-days and summer came. They were as well-armed as a barely-reconstituted militia could afford, which meant an assortment of kettle-hats and heavy winter coats in the place of proper caparisons, aside from two or three of the officers. Only the captain of the ‘regiment' had any barding to speak of, a well-polished but ancient peytral and a chamfron that had clearly once been split in twain and then re-forged by a smith of indifferent skill.

Their spears were in good order, though. No scythes. And there was even a half-company of donkeys in the rear of the loose formation with pikes. Not being held in the proper order for assembly, mind you, but they had the weapons.

We stayed out of sight while their captain addressed his ponies.

"Thank you all for coming to the first annual winters-muster of her grace's Second Regiment of Rennet Volunteers. Your neighbors and families appreciate the sacrifice you make of your time, and the grit that coming out in this cold and wet, far from the warm hearths of your homes, requires. You are the spear that guards our doors, the shield that holds back the night, and all that creeps through that outer darkness! Your service is noted, and applauded." The Company was what crept through the outer darkness. Not a great opening.

"Her Grace had been asked by the Imperium to offer up a tithe of that good service to the greater good of the realm and the Phalactary. Although rebellion has been extinguished here at home, it continues to ravage the provinces of the Riverlands, and every district owes it to the realm and posterity to aid in that great pacification. Our district, and our regiment, has been required to muster a full company for active service under the Bride's banner."

Completely understandable, predictable, and anticipated grumbling broke out in the ranks. Militias weren't generally known for assembly-discipline, I'm afraid. The Company isn't much for spit-and-polish rank-dressage, but everypony knows better than to chatter in assembly like that. And the Imperial regiments from all reports were much more strict on the subject. Outbursts like that in the Bride's active service would have led to a spate of punishments, starting with bucking and gagging, and probably going further before the practice was beaten out of the recruits.

"Yes, yes, we completely agree. It has not gone past notice that previous levies mustered into Imperial service never seem to return to their militia districts. Nopony is more concerned by this pattern than our new duchesse, believe you me. Which is why we've found an alternative. A way to satisfy our muster quotas without sending a tithe of you into the cauldron never to return. We can raise a volunteer company for a regiment already in service to the Bride, a regiment we know and trust to manage our people with prudence and care. An organization which the entire province has observed in operation, some few of us in battle, and all of us in victory." Not the greatest speech ever made, but as far as I could tell, this captain was the second daughter of one of the lesser noble-families, not a politician or a lawyer like most other militia-captains.

The grumbling ceased, as wide-eyed alarm spread through the assembly.

"Yes, folks, I'm talking about sending some of you into the Black Company."

The grumbling turned into outright pandemonium. The officers had lost control of the assembly. I gave a high-sign to the double-section of pegasi and griffins lurking on the rooflines around the market-square, and they formed up out of sight of the yelling mob of armed farm-ponies, and quickly climbed out of sight to build up some speed.

Rye stayed prudently inside the pub, while I and the ground-pounders formed up in the alleyway, and then came out in tandem with the aerials buzzing the mob at velocity, three of them letting loose with a brace of logs they had been preparing for a demonstration, but in the situation served to focus the attention of the militia as they impacted violently into the packed dirt between the officers and their disordered regiment.

The crowd of ponies hit the dirt, startled by the impromptu bombardment, and the pegasi came around for a second pass as I led the ground element into the gap between the startled militia and their hapless officers. I drew my axe, and viciously drove it into the side of one of the logs protruding from the packed dirt at an angle, like an oversized studes along one of Dance Hall's ramparts.

"IS THIS THE VAUNTED DISCIPLINE OF THE NORTHLANDS?" I bellowed. "IS THIS THE FURY WHICH BROKE THE REGIMENTS AT MENOMENIE?"

Now that I had their attention… "Or is this the laggardly sloth that let the insurrectionists seize your standards and homes, and hung banners of shame and capitulation from every town-hall and grange in the duchy? Show me your training, you ponies of the north! Show me a regiment in muster, tu les guerriers de la Tambelon!"

My ponies supported me in a disciplined line to my left and right, lances couched, swords out, Fletchsong holding a pair of arrows in tension in her magic, aimed slightly over the heads of the crowd which almost had decided to be a mob. I gave them the rest of my speech in the midst of what was almost an armed standoff, but not quite. Blah, blah, Black Company, stories and legends, bane of the undead, promise against the blasphemous resurrection of the body, yadda, yadda. I barely heard what I was saying, I can't be sure if anypony else was listening.

But they certainly were watching, and I gave my best mummer's-show, standing as tall as I get, mane bristling, nostrils flaring, the nine yards and then some.

"…and that's what we promise you, that your ponies will not be spent in vain, or foolishly, or at all if we can possibly avoid it. If we take any of you, it will be for you, and not for your duchesse! Mind you, we have nothing against the jenny, she's a fine old mare. But a brother of the Company is his own justification, her own reason! The Company does not do patriotism, or blood and soil, or any of the other tinsel they used to put you ponies in your ranks, the cobwebs they spin around you to keep you from turning those spear-heads against each other or your betters. The Company rests its honour and virtue on a very low base: money, and self-interest. Yes, we will pay you. Eventually. And we will always operate with your well-being in mind. Because the Company is its ponies, and nothing else," I lied.

"We only want volunteers, healthy ones, without serious attachments. Heads of households and ponies with young families can pack up and go home! We don't want you. In general, if you're married, we don't want you. Unless you're looking to abandon a spouse, in which case, we definitely don't want you, because oath-breakers make for bad mercenaries. I trust to not find anypony sickly or underweight here in a militia-muster, but if you're obviously unwell, we don't want you."

"This is not a short-term commitment. Ponies do leave the Company, from wounds, to raise families. But it's not especially common, and it's never simple. Expect a long enlistment. Don't expect to see family or friends for a long time. There are few furloughs in the Company. But there is danger, and a purpose. I can promise you that, in wands."

We let the officers pass through our line, and they reasserted control over their muster, and broke the assembly up into company meetings, which drifted out into the corners of the market-square, each company muster finding a patch of open square to hold their little gatherings. I thanked the corporals of the aerial sections who had provided the flying display, and helped break up the demonstration before it became a riot. They stayed in the vicinity in case of further disturbances, but generally out of sight.

My ground-section took a position back by the grange-pub, and I went to talk with Rye Daughter, who had hung out of the pub foyer, watching the chaos and my speech. A wroth publican had just kicked her out into the cold, apparently quite irate at having lost most of the warmth to the winter air as she stood in the open door. I told her she had gotten exactly what she deserved, and to not waste hearth-heat like that.

Some of the companies completed their meetings more quickly than others, and squads of 'volunteers' started drifting over to the grange, waiting their turn. I and the prospective corporals started the long process of evaluating each group of volunteers, to see who would be recruits, and who would be going home.

A surprising number of them passed muster. I ended up taking a herd of eighty recruits back to the Palisades myself. They were mostly farm-hooves and the younger colts and fillies of the townsfolk, but there was more of a market for what the Company was selling than I had expected. The first 'company' absorbed all of my new corporals, leaving me only with floor-sweepings for the next muster. I sent back notice with the aerial ponies that I'd need more new corporals than I had hoped.

I'd have to up the bullshit at the next muster unless I wanted the Company awash in gormless volunteers.

Author's Note:

I thought vaguely about combing through the Falstaff-goes-recruiting scenes from Henry IV for material, but frankly, I never found those all that funny or amusing. Shakespeare's slapstick comedy can be pretty hit-or-miss, especially in the histories. I know Falstaff is supposed to be a titan of comedy, but eh.

Comments

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

According to Isaac Asimov, comedy is the hardest genre to write.

[Bookeater_otaku]

I collected a demonstration-section from the three cohort-commanders, a balanced set of pegasi, unicorns, earth ponies, a donkey and one caribou. A positive rainbow of diversity,

forgot to add a griffin in the lot.

Edit: forget that, they were actually in the lot, just wasn't in the initial description.

I expected caribou in the lot bu I guess they weren't really popular in Renet anymore. But the Company could do with more strong Oxen thought.