In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Culling The Herds

SBMS095

The muster of the Fourth Rennet was if anything, more chaotic and violent than the Second's had been. At least the Second hadn't broken up into open internecine brawling in the ranks half-way through the officers' address. And not a big, organized, faction-versus-faction sort of fight, but rather, small little knots of ponies doing their level best to kick in each others' skulls at close range. It took half the morning for the officers of the Fourth to make their way into the mess and separate the quarreling militia-ponies.

I amused myself while waiting my turn chatting with Bound Codex, and thinking about the dynamics of the last muster. The ranks had damn near rioted at the prospect of recruitment by the Company while they were in assembly, and then something had happened in the company meetings, and then - a rush of eager volunteers that nearly maxed out the regiment's paper quota. Which I had had no intention of accepting, quota or no quota, but it took a pretty strict hoof to keep the numbers down as it was.

"What is it that you don't understand," asked Bound Codex, "the yelling or the volunteering? Because it wasn't the same people doing each. Oh, there were a couple bucks in there yelling with the crowd, and then came over to you anyways. But for the most part? It was the masters, senior journeymares, and farmers who were making all the noise. You got the juniors and the fieldhooves after they got away from their employers. Basic social dynamics. The old mares want to keep the cheap hooves down on the farm, and the cheap hooves want to get out while the getting's good, see something of the world before they get old. Farmwork, especially - farmhooves get old, fast. Nopony with any sense wants to work soil that doesn't belong to them. And no farmer wants to work their land with only family to hoof, it's back-breaking work."

The last of the screaming fights were finally broken up on the far side of the market square, and the frazzled officers were busy keeping each company split into uneven halves or even thirds across the length and breadth of the open, windswept space. A bit of a warm spell had melted the snow into a miserable slush, and might have had something to do with the muster's disorder. If it had been colder, they might not have had so much fight in them.

"This, on the other hand, is local politics gone septic. The local bright sparks decided that they needed to do something about unifying the quarreling factions, so they tried to paper over the fights with a massed set of arranged marriages between their children. Most of the children did not take to the idea, to put it mildly, and that's why we've got parents fighting with parents, their own children, and their opposites' children. Thankfully no priests have been willing to officiate at spearpoint ceremonies as of yet, so it's all hypothetical. I think I'll have some long hours sitting down with the offending parents; it would be good if you could abscond with exactly half of the unwilling betrothed. "

I rubbed my aching eyes, damn near blinded by the noon sun. "And how am I supposed to separate out the pairs? Make 'em fight for the right to join the Company? Not exactly our style, but better one knock-down drag-out here, than months or years of sniping in the ranks."

"Up to you, mercenary. I just want this mess untangled."

I squinted, looking at the sullen, slouching clots of militia just standing around, waiting. "You know, I've been meaning to ask, where are the cattle? They're clearly not keeping out the caribou, despite the fall-out from the rebellion, and we've got the donkeys and earth-ponies represented in their natural proportions. But everypony tells me of the famous cheeses of Rennet, which means there has to be a lot of cows around here somewhere. But I never lay eyes on 'em."

"That's a political tangle of another colour entirely, and I don't want to talk about it in public like this. Hey, looks like they're ready for your pitch."

My speech was less fraught than the one in front of the Second, although I had to keep turning about to address the whole of the assembly, as I found myself shouting at over a dozen little audience nodules scattered all around the edges of the square rather than a nice, compact assembly in ranks. I added a bit about the Company not taking paired couples, especially not those passionately in hate. It didn't really affect matters much, but at least they were prepared for the sorting when it came time to deal with the prospects on a pony by pony basis.

Some of them even made the choice themselves before presenting themselves to me and my new-minted corporals. The ones who refused to choose, well, we told them to wrestle for it. For some of them, that sorted it out, and we took the ones who could make a pin.

Three couples let it get a bit more heated than I expected in that chilly, slushy mess. Those couples we told to goddamn go home and find a priest. Some ponies just like the drama, like to playact. The Company has enough narrative on its hooves, without importing star-crossed lovers looking to play push-pull in the ranks.

We left the muster with another seventy-eight volunteers. I traveled with them as far as Rennet City, and then sent the corporals with their charges on south towards the training camp at Plateau Palisades. Bound Codex and I stopped by the palace so that she could check in with her peers in administration, and I could look in on the Duchesse and see how she was progressing.

Her due date was rapidly approaching, and she wasn't getting around much anymore. In between her audiences and meetings - which never seemed to stop coming - we talked about her condition, how things were going with the recruiting drive, and some political matters. Namely, what she'd been up to with the cattle. I honestly had had no idea of the lay of the land in that regard. The herds had barely been involved with the war of the rebellion, aside from an isolated massacre towards the end of the fighting.

The status of the herds in Rennet was similar to those in neighboring provinces in the northlands, but complex and difficult to parse from an outsider's perspective. They lived in a state of doubled servitude, being owned both by their bulls, and the bulls in turn by their contracted hosts. Those latter 'contracts' were immutable, lifetime, and vigorously, enthusiastically, tyrannically enforced by the district courts. It was a matter of course that the bulls were sapient property, and their cows and calves, chattel of the owned bulls. This was a little less one-sided than it appears at first glance, as bulls' ownership of their herds terminated upon their deaths or defeat at the hooves of a younger bull, and bull-calves were not automatically contracted to the owners of their dams' bull. A herd could shift from one farmstead to another by the challenging of an old, sick or feeble bull by one of his sons, or even the son of a rival bull.

This is why early castration of bull-calves was a very common, even endemic practice among the herds. I wasn't sure what was worse, the sheer inequinity of it all, or the fact that it was largely practiced within the herds. The cows were constantly calved, because it kept them producing milk. Which meant a lot of bull-calves to be managed for the economic benefit and political stability of the herds. How did they manage it? I'm told that trains of bullocks were regularly sent down into the eastern Riverlands via the Rime route, to act as labour for the armies. Many would end up inducted posthumously into the necromancers' undead hordes.

The Duchesse had been thinking about these matters for decades, she told me, and still hadn't come up with any truly clever solutions. She had started experimenting with targeted manumissions and was trying to push through a conversion of the lifetime contracts to yearly renewables, but there was opposition on both sides of the existing contracts. The bulls largely liked things the way they were, and the cows had no say whatsoever.

I thought about those coffle lines of castrated bullocks shuffling towards the cauldron, and felt sick. Every time I thought I had plumbed the depths of this world's depravity, a new abyss opened up beneath my hooves. I wondered how the paradises handled such catastrophic collisions between biology and cultural necessities? What did our Lady's Equestria do with their surplus bull-calves?

The Duchesse wanted to set up some schooling so that there were at least some cattle to handle their own affairs in the courts, rather than relying on donkey or earth pony advocates, but there wasn't enough money available yet. Especially since somepony was engaged in a campaign of sabotage against the dairies. Smashed milk storage vats, destroyed churn-halls, an occasional fire. There was unrest among the herds. It had started before the rebellion, and continued right alongside the fighting, completely independently, and invisible as far as the Company had been concerned. I suppose the White Rose's excise-ponies must have known about it, but it never came up in interrogations. We'd never thought to ask.

We left behind the depressing subject, and returned again to small-talk and more cheerful subjects, such as the prospective issues with foaling twins. Some mares and jennies can guide their foalings, and choose when they wanted to bring their foals to term. We had hopes that her grace was one of those. I made plans to be in Rennet City for the two weeks she was aiming for.

The third batch of new corporals met Bound Codex, Skinflint, and I outside of Rennet City, and we set out for the muster-town for the Sixth Rennet in the eastern districts of the province, in Lait Blanc. We were about half-way between Rennet City and Lait Blanc when the pegasus flying security over our little column came flitting back to report a possible ambush about a mile ahead of us on the Road. There were four ponies - two earth-ponies and a pair of cattle - standing in the centre of the roadway at a crossroads. Hidden poorly in the woods on either side were several dozen armed ponies. Bluewing wasn't sure what exactly they were, although he said they didn't 'smell like caribou'.

I told the two pegasi to take high station overhead, and prepare to intervene if it looked like the trap might close on us, and detailed two ponies to watch our six and make sure there wasn't anything sneaking up behind us to close off retreat. Then I hooved Forlorn Hope forward with the guidon and advanced to speak with the four at the crossroads. The bowmare with the detail followed closely enough that Higharc could support us with ranged fire if sevens went to eights, but not so close as to get caught with Forlorn Hope and I.

I got within shouting distance of the four at the crossroads.

"Hey, you! Why are you blocking the Bride's Road? Looking to play bandit in broad daylight?"

"We're waiting for you, mercenary," said a tall, clever-looking cow, stepping forward. "We hear you're recruiting. And we're running out of places to hide."

Author's Note:

The question of the cows has always bedeviled me about MLP:FiM. Applejack's relationship with her herd of cows is distinctly paternalistic. The cows are portrayed as more than a little dim, easily led or stampeded, and live on the Apple's property, presumably being milked for all the dairy products we see being consumed all around Ponyville. What is Applejack's relationship with those cows? Are they renters? Some odd legal form of symbiosis? Or are they flat-out owned, like the pigs? I've joked in the past about cattle and slavery in Equestria, but the question is wide open as far as I can tell. I can only hope that in a high-magic environment like Ponyville, Applejack's keeping her cows producing via magical stimulation, and not having them constantly calving like you'd expect.

And where are the bulls, anyways?

I'm not entirely comfortable about how dark things get when it comes to sentient dairy herds, but this is where the train of logic leads.

Comments

[Minalkra]

We've only seen male minotaurs and female cows, mind. Sexual dimorphism is strange sometimes.

Not to say that's what I think but it'd be an interesting look at things.

[Mitch H]

7731404 More to the point, we've only seen *one* minotaur, and for all we know Iron Will might be *The* Minotaur, singular - a one-off monster. What militates against that is the fact that he has a name, and speaks, and MLP 'monsters' tend to be voiceless, while species tend to have speaking lines. And without minotaurs as a race, we'd never have gotten Water Pony, and that'd be a shame.

But yeah, there could be no bulls. But that's not the way I'm betting.

[ponygrad]

Applejack must be to the cows what celestia is to everypony else.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

I'm not entirely comfortable about how dark things get when it comes to sentient dairy herds, but this is where the train of logic leads.

Read "In the Barn"
Short story in Anthonology by Piers Anthony

No spoilers, but it was first published in Playboy magazine.

Hefner had a magazine
Which first shocked many folks.
With color pics of naked girls
and sort of dirty jokes

But now we're bombed
with raunchy filth
and pornographic swill
which makes poor Hefner's magazine
seem more like Jack and Jill.
Mad Magazine

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

I thought about those coffer lines of castrated bullocks shuffling towards the cauldron, and felt sick. Every time I thought I had plumbed the depths of this world's depravity, a new abyss opened up beneath my hooves. I wondered how the paradises handled such catastrophic collisions between biology and cultural necessities? What did our Lady's Equestria do with their surplus bull-calves?

cof·fle [ˈkôfəl]
NOUN
a line of animals or slaves fastened or driven along together.

[Mitch H]

8629705
Sigh. Thanks. This is what comes of rumbling along without prereaders. First story and all that.

[Bookeater_otaku]

That's why I an always hesitant to comment on an already finished story or a really long one I am now way near finish. I never know if what I bring up will be brought up later. Oh well, look like the Company will get their Oxen like I wished.

The local bright sparks

For a second I thought we transitioned into a Girl Genius crossover .

Hummm... the Company COULD use the service of a Mad Scientist. Flamethrowers are useful against the undead.

[FanOfMostEverything]

And then there's the question of the sheep...

[Robert Noxon]

Well, in the show female ponies outnumber males 3 or 4 to 1. Could just be that males produce more X sperm than Y sperm so the odds favor female foals.

But yes, some species do seem smarter than others.

[Mitch H]

11069727
That changed over the course of the seasons. The early seasons, most of the background ponies were mares, and they re-used the same models again and again, leading to certain mares showing up everywhere, including a lot of nominally Canterlot students who constantly showed up in Ponyville crowd scenes.

Later seasons, the models had accumulated, so there was a lot more variety in the crowd scenes, and the weird sexual imbalance was much reduced, at least according to the guys who sit and count instances with a spreadsheet.

This often means that the early-years fanfics put a heavier emphasis on weird genetics & herding and harems and suchlike, in comparison to people like me, who came to the show late.