In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

The Dog-House

SBMS097

The muster of the Sixth was no more orderly nor violent than those of the Second or Fourth. It was merely… less interesting. I had grown tired of the militia's tiresome and immiscible suspension of youthful restlessness within a broth of stodgy self-interest. My speech for the Sixth was far shorter than that of the previous regiments' musters, and my examination of the subsequent volunteers was likewise perfunctory. The prisoners observed from their placement in the old caribou holding-pen barracks, watching curiously the goings-on in the main marshaling yards. None of it concerned them, and that makes for the most consequence-free of entertainments.

I sent the bulk of the would-be corporals back with the eighty-two volunteer-recruits, along with Forlorn Hope and the guidon. She was up for a sergeancy, and couldn't be wasted helping me iron out the bull-calves. Honestly, I wasn't much for training, it was out of my core competency, but I couldn't justify wasting any of the Company's resources other than myself getting these children pointed in the right direction.

The Duchesse wasn't thrilled with my 'solution' to her dilemma, and pointed out quite heatedly that dilemmas didn't get solved, they got managed. I told her to her face that she wasn't managing the problem by cutting its balls off and shipping it out of sight. That Rennet had long waxed fat and wealthy on the back of the dairy-herds and the province's famous cheese. It was time to do right by the bull-calves who suffered the most for that prosperity. That went over about as well as you might imagine, and I was sleeping in the cells with the calves for the better part of a fortnight after that particular meeting.

It had been a productive two weeks in the cells, there's a lot you can do with a regular diet and a roof over your heads. They just didn't get to stretch their legs all that much. We got in a lot of wrestling and close-drill training. And I got a good look at these calves in close quarters, under stress, and unable to get away from other bulls.

By and large, they took it about as well as any other herd of foals their ages might have. I came out of my little tour of gaol with a reinforced view of the universality of ponyhood. Thrown into crowded dark holes, we were all still ponies in the dark.

I may have provoked that fight with the Duchesse, and maneuvered myself into being arrested. If nothing else, it gave me an excuse for being essentially AWOL.

I spent those two weeks talking to the calves, in between the training and demonstrations. I told them what I expected of them, told them that they had been given an inestimable gift. They knew in their guts that the world didn't owe them anything, and would crush them like their less fortunate older brothers and uncles' ball-sacks if it could. I told them to recognize a chance when they saw it, and to grab it when it came. To hold on with every last tooth. And to give others a chance when they saw the opportunity. Ponies wouldn't be grateful, but somebody had to start somewhere. The other way was to follow in the hooves of their bastard fathers, or father - I never did get a clear answer on just which herds they had all come from. Which was good, if anypony knew who they came from, that would have weakened their legal standing.

I told them how to offer themselves to the Duchesse, how to look her in the eyes, and how to appeal to her stubbornness, her bloody-mindedness, without letting her think she was being sentimental.

Thirteen days in, she came down to the cells, and took them out calf by calf to talk to them. I didn't hear anything of the interviews, or interrogations, or whatever it was she did with them. But calf by calf, they were taken away, and they didn't come back. In the waning light of that late-winter evening, the Duchesse came back to the cells, where there was nopony but me and my gaoler, and she stood there, massively pregnant, and said nothing. Then she turned around and left me in the darkness for one last night.

They let me out the next morning, and there was a note left for me with the gaoler. I had a visitor. Or more accurately, a messenger from the Company had come seeking me. I found the two pegasi with their chariot waiting in the central courtyard of the palace. Bound Codex was waiting just inside a side-door, standing in the warmth of the hall. She came out when she saw me coming up out of the dungeons.

I asked her if the calves were to be spared. She told me I had gotten everything I wanted.

I told her she had no idea what I wanted. Then I went to catch my ride.

---

Companies from Verdebaie and Hydromel had just shown up on their own, appearing first at Little Ridings, where they were told that it was no longer a Company property, and then before the gate at Plateau Palisades. They had no proof that they had been 'recruited', but their respective captains had paperwork from their militia-colonels claiming to represent that they had been detached to Imperial service, and directing them to present themselves to the Black Company in Pepin.

When I arrived, the Palisades were crammed to overflowing with recruits from three provinces - two hundred and forty or so from Rennet, and another hundred each from the other two provinces. Stomper was dead on her feet, and there were about a hundred and fifty Company cadre running the training-camp, on top of the swarm of new non-coms running with the recruits every step of the way.

Rye Daughter and the oxen were keeping a lid on the training injuries and camp diseases, which were rampant. As many as a quarter of the recruits were down at any one time with sprains or the trots. It was a real struggle, keeping them from shitting themselves to death before they recovered, but the oxen were seasoned by this point. First thing I did when I got back, was to call a corporals' meeting, and gave a grouchy speech on the vital necessity of beating proper hygiene discipline into the recruits. There were so many of them, that there was a real danger of bad habits being acculturated into the new 'sections'.

It was company policy to break up recruits into mixed sections of veterans and recruits, to maintain heavy cadre, so that the recruits learned from the veterans, and didn't develop unhelpful short-cuts and barracks-traditions. With a group of recruits this large, that was impossible, but they compensated by bringing up veteran Company to at least leaven the loaf, as it were. The goal was to give each corporal at least one, and hopefully two cadre in their sections.

Five recruits died in training accidents or from the trots before I arrived in camp. Apple Tun, earth pony mare, and Feu Brousse, jack, from Verdebaie; Esteban, Bruce, and Jacques, jacks, from Hydromel. The specifically recruited ponies from Rennet managed to not kill themselves off before I arrived. At that point I took charge of the effort to keep them all alive, or at least, to give the Company's actual enemies the honour of ushering their names into the Annals. I went back and forth over whether to include these volunteers in these pages, despite their not having been properly inducted under the pike, and came down on the side of generous memory. They meant to be Company, which was good enough for the Annals.

I sent the messenger down to Dance Hall to retrieve the standard-pike and its standard-bearer. With so many new recruits, we'd have to hold staggered ceremonies. But even if I did something foolish like trying to induct all four hundred and forty or so of them in a single marathon ritual, I'd still need the pikestaff.

Two days later, the standard presented itself to the main gates, with two Cakes in tow. I gave Corporal Carrot what-for for bringing the spy with him all this way, by their lonesome. He reminded me stiffly that I had expressly included his presence in the terms of her parole, and that his interpretation of his orders required he accompany her everywhere she went, and vice versa. So, here they were, as ordered.

The spy went into the kitchens, where she amused herself wasting our sugar stocks. Apparently she had spent the winter inveigling herself into the good graces of the Company's cook-staff, and practiced the dark arts of her people. Horrible, eye-strainingly colourful pastries and wasteful, empty calories tarted up in all hues of the rainbow. Vile stuff, truly.

When the time came for the first of the induction ceremonies, I had to pry my standard-bearer out of the kitchens, where he had been helping his parolee bake her eponymous confections, disgustingly coloured in their two coat-colours.

Over the next two weeks, I inducted the recruits in batches of forty new brothers and sisters each night. I was thankful for my eidetic memory, because I had left my Annals down in Dance Hall, and the occasion required eleven separate, distinct, and appropriate readings, one for each ceremony, each night. The first night mostly confused the bulk of the recruits, and I wasn't quite sure why any of us were there, to be honest. These were barely volunteers, and many of them seemed to confuse us for a common Imperial regiment. Very frustrating.
By the third night, I think the ritual and repetition had gotten through to them, and I think this because three ponies stood up afterwards and came forward to inform their trainers and myself that this was not what they thought they were signing up for, they wanted out. I was, frankly, relieved. I was starting to worry that we were going to induct unsuited ponies into the Company by simple herd psychology. I was glad enough to see them go. We had two more drop out before the inductions were complete.

The spy started sitting in on the induction ceremonies after the third one. I have no idea what she thought of the whole thing, but she listened intently and intensely during my readings, and stared stony-eyed through the actual dedications before the pike-staff.

A couple days after the last induction ceremony, I was going over promotion lists sent up from the Hall by the Lieutenant and the Captain. The thundering herd of recruits meant that we needed to add a new cohort to the Company. A ground cohort, obviously, which meant preferably a ground-pony. The problem was that the obvious pony was winged; Gerlach had taken over the aerial cohort when the Lieutenant had been elected. That meant that Long Haul was the senior sergeant, but, as I said, pegasus. The only other options were meat-heads like Octavius or raw, barely promoted sergeants like Forlorn Hope.

While I was wrestling with this conundrum, I got a notice from the front gates. A messenger had come down from Rennet. The Duchesse was ready to foal, and despite it all she still cared to have me present for the occasion.

Comments

[Mitch H]

Hurrah, I've got cover-art, thanks to Circus-Cinnamon. Only ninety-seven chapters in; but hey, art!

I gotta go unsubscribe from that seeking-art group.

And hey! I was wondering how a grouchy smartass like Sawbones managed to sweep a proper lady off her hooves like that. Apparently he's got a face for the movies!

[totallynotabrony]

Whoa, check out that art.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I have to love how Sawbones finds Equestrian pastries as repugnant as any Tambelonian institutional atrocity. Everything's relative.