SBMS011

While I was hock deep in stitching together the broken ponies of the Company, I hadn't paid attention to what was going on outside of my infirmary doors. When I finally emerged from my hermitage, it turned out that the Company itself had had its own sabbatical, or at least, was busy not being seen. Command had decided that giving the impression that the attack on the regiments in Lait Blanc had been a raid was in the best interests of the campaign. The first cohort's agent within the town itself managed to get word back that no-pony had any good idea who we were, or where we had went.

Somepony had the bright idea of following up on this idea by sending aerial-mobile strike forces to wipe out the rest of the known excise stations on the secondary roads and other main Roads leading into the province. The tactical chariots could carry a hoof-full of sections, enough to act as the anvil to the aerial sections' hammer. I was glad that they had held the meeting until I could attend – because I had objections to this course of action. It struck me that they were resting an awful lot of weight on a hoof-full of ground-pony sections in case a raid went sideways, and that any serious casualties would be doubly difficult to get back to base if they had to haul them by chariot. We managed to lose one pony in the ambulances, and I had been on-hoof to do emergency stabilization on the survivors.

"Well, Sawbones, it sounds like you just volunteered for a supporting role. How do you feel about inserting ahead of time with a portable field setup?"

"Like you're proposing to dangle me off the side of the cliff, and taking bets on how wide the splatter ring will be when I fall. Can we at least ship in some more sections as a reaction force and rear security?"

So, at least I got them to not play reivers-of-the-borderlands with the bare minimum of forces. But this also meant that I needed to slap together a chariot-portable surgery tent and minimum supplies. I couldn't take Sack with me, the oxen were too damn large to waste hauling their bulk through the air in a tactical chariot. We'd exhaust our pegasi. Then I had the bright idea of claiming a few of our more mobile convalescents as orderlies, and Hyssop, while being bigger than your average unicorn, wasn't exactly sending an ox upwards on a see-saw. A jack-recruit with matching stitches on either stifle named Boardwalk was also claimed from the infirmary to complete the set for the Lieutenant's little jihad against tax-ponies.

Three nights after the raid on Lait Blanc, my mobile surgery team and the first installment of the rear security detail/reaction force was launched from the forward base for the provincial border, and the next major road southwards from the stretch of the Bride's Road we took into Rennet. I still wasn't thrilled to be packed into a rickety airframe held aloft by wishful thinking and pegasi gravity-witchery, but at least it was in proper darkness, so I couldn't see the vasty deeps between me and a shattering sudden stop to that inevitable drop. We were put into place within quick gallop-range of the border post's barricades, with enough armed ponies to make a fighting retreat if a sudden rebel patrol caught us in the dark. Honestly, it wasn't anything I'd expect of what they'd shown us so far, but we might have spooked them with the first raid, it had been a bit over the top.

Just in case, I and my freshly-dragooned orderlies found a copse of trees well back from the road, and set the table and tent-parts so that they could be swiftly raised up if there were casualties, or packed away if we had to make a run for it. Just as I was re-arranging some brush to obscure our new position, a commotion on the road heralded traffic from the direction of the border post.

At a half-hour to midnight.

We were expecting the chariots with the assault elements at any moment, and now suddenly there was unexpected activity on the road. I waved my convalescent orderlies back into the copse, and eased forward to see what was going on. My lance was leaning against my half-disassembled surgery table back in the woods, and all I had with me was a scalpel set strapped to my left forearm. At least I had an ensorcelled medallion which let me see in the dark as if it were broad day-light. Which is how I could see the half-dozen caribou in half-barding striding down the centre of the packed-earth roadway, without any lights. They didn't seem to be in any hurry, but the one in the lead certainly had her – her? Hard to tell at that distance even with the aid of the medallion, but I thought so – head on a swivel. My natural dark coloration hid me from view in the darkness, and they passed my position without incident.

They also passed the security detail, which had gone to ground at the same time I did. We were all experienced enough to expect the second half of the patrol, which arrived right on schedule with mirrored lanterns to sweep both sides of the highway, another half-dozen caribou, armed and alert. They might have caught one of our guys, I gave it about a fifty-fifty chance, but they, like most land-bound sentients, didn't generally think to look overhead.

The aerial sections earmarked for the assault had arrived overhead in a soft susurration, alerted by the bright lights casting beams across the rendezvous point. They knew how to evaluate and envelop an unexpected threat. But they needed a diversion to attract the attention of the targets, something to fixate their beams so that they could get into position.

So I started stomping through the underbrush, drunkenly singing a filthy song I'd heard a few of the recruits singing, a paean to the lady-parts of the Bride.

Och the barrowlord made him a wifie
The barrowlord rose him a wife
But no matter how deeply he plowed her
Her earth he never could bring ta' afterlife

It almost made my coat crawl to voluntarily rhyme, but I let that wash over me like the panic bubbling under my chest, under my crazed sudden decision to expose myself to a rebel patrol.

An' she wailed at the pain from tha dry poniard
And she snipped it right off at the stub
And that necromancer now haunts every boneyard
A huntin' a tool to part his sweet wife

All the lanterns were focused on my shuffling hide as I wandered aimless through the brush, trying my best to play blind drunk and lost, all while singing that stupid song at full volume.

Oh won't you offer up a pizzle ta' her lordship
Some dagger to cleave her in twain
For her lordship is still to this day unable
And never her marehood hav' slain!

The caribou were now shouting at me, demanding I halt and come out of the brush immediately, pointing what I could only imagine were weapons at me, I was too busy holding a forearm across my dazzled eyes and not even acting anymore, I was seriously disoriented.

"Which is it, guv'nr? Shall I halt, or come out there? Where am I, anyways? I went out back to drain the pipe and I'll be damned if this looks like the front of the tavern."

"Vat? Vat tavern? You're two miles from the nearest town mit a tavern! Vere did you come from?"

"What's it to you, guv'nr? Am I disturbing the town's peace?"

"Dere hain't no town, Is vat I'm saying! You're half vay to Grosbach in next province over!"

"Well, I thought I was in Grosbach. Must have gotten turned around. Can you point me the way? Or maybe your friends?"

And that was the cue. I gestured in the opposite direction as the wing-blades swinging out of the darkness, lining up my rebel friends' windpipes perfectly for the sweep of the steel in the reflected light of their lanterns. It was the sweetest setup you'd ever seen, and every single caribou jack of them went down choking on their own blood.

At that point the security detail and the rest of the professionals took over the situation, waving me back to my corner. I watched them put their heads together, and then the security ponies grabbed the dropped lanterns, and galloped off to find the first half of the patrol. With the lights out of the battlefield, the charioteers, which had been flying a holding pattern overhead, coasted in to unload the actual assault elements. The Lieutenant stomped up to me, fuming.

"Sawbones, what did you do? We could hear you singing from a thousand feet!" The mare was pretty damn loud her own self.

"Well it's a good thing we're well out of earshot of the border post, isn't it? But they seem to be running nightly long-range patrols now. Hopefully they can catch one or two of the other rebels, see if we can figure out how heavily the border posts are reinforced, because we've seen more ponies here than there should have been in the entire garrison of that post."

"I don't see a single pony here," she said, looking around at the cooling caribou corpses, "but I take your point. It still might work, and we need to give the impression that we're here anyways."

"I'd say a half-dozen unexplained dead in the middle of the road on the other side of the provincial border makes a pretty bold statement. Don't need to burn down the barricades to make that clear."

The lights dancing in the distance suddenly stopped as we argued, and a few spun around. We couldn't hear any noise, but it looked relatively close.

"Seriously, you heard us at a thousand feet? Those ponies are that far away from the looks of it, and I can't hear a blessed thing. Is that fighting?"

She narrowed her eyes at the distant glare, one of the lanterns clearly having broken and burning out its brief life in a puddle of fuel.

"Yes, that's fighting. Hopefully we can get some answers."

"Hopefully nopony comes back with a lance through their brisket that don't have antlers on their nobby skulls."

Twenty minutes later, they returned, dragging a struggling young buck, bleeding from a messy but superficial head-wound. One of them yelled at me, "hey, ‘Bones, do your witch-doctor thing, get some answers out of this guy."

I bent down to examine the buck, damn near still a calf. "It's an art, not a potion you can just pour down a pony's throat. He won't be useful for another half a day. Well, not the usual way."

I reached out and clipped him across the wound, causing him to shudder.

"Hey! Calf! Want to live? Tell us what's at the barricade, or die ugly! Give me a reason to let you live, because at this point I'm inclined to cut your throat and my losses, leave this nonsense for some other day. Whatever's waiting for us at the custom post, they can find your fly-covered corpse sometime tomorrow, no hair off my dock. Or you could be the sole survivor, get to tell a hell of a story, maybe even to your own calves if we don't kill you first. What say, calf?"

The caribou shivered in the darkness, I don't think he could see anything. I was just a shadow among shadows in the starlight, a yelling, murderous shadow with the night air starting to stink of loosened bowels and blood. He must have gone three rounds with his conscience, because I was getting out my second-worst scalpel from my kit to end the "interrogation" and resume my argument with the Lieutenant, when he saved his life.

"Fu-fu-full kompanie. T'tird battalion fifh regiment"

"*Very* good, that's almost 'name, rank, regiment'. No!" I held out my hoof before he gave me his name, "I don't need your name or your rank. Where's the rest of the battalion, the rest of the regiment?"

"Detached, battalion bak in town."

I looked up at the Lieutenant and the pegasus sergeant in charge of the aerial sections attached to this night's debacle. "Sound about right people?"

"Matches what we've seen on overflight. If they're hiding more than a company up there, they're really good at it. Enough tents behind the customs post to house that many."

I looked down at my victim. "Son, you did good. Well, not by your lights, and your surviving fellows are going to hate your talkative ass. I recommend you light out for the territories after you wake up." And I reached out with my rag full of ether, and put him out of our misery. I yelled for Boardwalk, and he came out to tie up our drugged prisoner and haul him somewhere out of the way so that the stubborn horses I worked for could plot their assault on an enemy position an order of magnitude larger than we'd planned for.

And they thought I was being overly cautious. Foals.

Still, they managed the attack on the customs post without any Company casualties. My presence turned out to be utterly unnecessary. We packed up the mobile surgery into the chariots and marched out of the province. We had run out of time to ferry the entire force back to the forward base before dawn, so instead we were going to give the burghers of Grosbach a show. The aerial cohort ponies could meet us on the road to ship us to the next target further south the next night. In for a bridle, in for a bit.

Author's Notes:

Sawbones is just a big ol' softy. Look at him generously not murdering a helpless prisoner!

Well, you know. Foal steps.

BTW, originally, the song was a slightly altered version of Dylan's "Tombstone Blues", but I took a long look at the site rules about copyrighted lyrics, and it was ambiguous whether they allowed for legal parody, so I erred on the side of caution, and composed something appropriately filthy and original.