FFMS013

"A reading, from the only book of Desecrated Temple, the third known Annalist:

The Golden Company is gone, is broken,
Dead on the field laid its golden Captain,
The broken back of our pride
The singer sang out her heart
Impaled upon love's sharp shards
Betrayal, betrayal, the death
That love returns to love
Whose love betrayed by that
Which refused to live longer
Than survivor's love.
al-Hazar! Your love and your pride!
Broken on the wheel
Of your misplaced faith!
Faris al-Dhubabi, fool's gold
Which lied in never having been
Eternal or wise.

"Thus the despair of that era, in the voice of the Annalist of hatred, of despair, and unfaith! His mistress, his master, who folded away the black banner of the Black Company, and marched the victorious now-Golden Company in the fore of every battle for the glory of the faith, the might of the Caliph, the legend of their triumphs. They loved, the second Annalist and her mighty Captain, far too well, and not nearly wisely enough."

My sermon, mine. This was nothing that soft-souled Sawbones would have said to his fellow armsponies. There are certain things too harsh for the old and sentimental to say without blushing. For that task, they had turned to young, fanatical me.

"Al-Hazar the glorious, and her Golden Captain. Her half-dozen books read like romance, like love-letters to the Faris al-Dhubabi. Of his conquests, of his piety, of his wit. Of the nations who submitted to the will of the Caliph and her government, of the two-and-seventy sects subdued, their endless confutations beaten into abeyance. The Annals of the Golden Company, of our Golden years, they read like the history of the Dar al-Hisan. For a hoof-full of decades, to speak of the arms of the Caliph, was to speak of the Golden Company."

Lurking in the distant darkness were members of other battalions, other regiments in the Middle Division. They watched, their eyes glittering in the flickering torch-light. The Middle Division had settled into the increasingly use-battered castral camping ground outside of New Coltington. The Reserve itself was in New Earth, taking a night to shake loose limbs left aching after days on the road. The Left Division herself was in the field, posted in the fields around Dover, and eastwards along the Road to Beech Grove. Two day's march west of here, the mobile half of the Right Division was on the march, the Fourth Cohort leading the last two regiments available to the Army of the North. When they arrived here in New Kensington, that would be the signal for the advance, and the fighting to begin in earnest. After this sermon, one more, for the Fourth when they reached the camping-grounds one day west of here.

"But we were never that golden banner," I continued. " We were never truly the Golden Company. That was always the dream of those two lovers, a folie à deux, shared by the fools whom they led astray with their false, golden banner."

"When the Captain fell, as he was always fated to fall, as all great captains are fated to fall, he took his worshiper with him, he took his Company with him. For he, and they, had forgotten this one truth of the Company: that it is not our Company, our possession, our pride – but rather it is we who are the Company's, it is we who are the pride of the Company. And it is we who will disappoint our Company, will fail our Company, if we bring to her that which will not sustain what she truly is, what she must be, and still remain, the Company."

I took a breath, my head dizzy with lack of air, my mind buzzing with the power of the text. From cohort to cohort I'd been flung by command of the Lieutenant and my master, the Annalist, to spread the word, to lay down the command. The night before, I had given the sermon to the Third Cohort, in a scrambled sort of fashion, huddled in a muddy field behind the field-fortifications around battered Dover. The day before, we had burned the dead of the battle outside of Dover, and buried the remnants of the slaughter. Now, in that moment, a few hours later, I was repeating my performance in a cleaner venue, a sweeter field to sow. Standing before this Second Cohort, standing in the darkness before the witching hour, I repeated the reading, refined the sermon.

"Earlier this week, a pair of lovers, sacred in their bond, brought with them the loving Princess into the battle-line. The loving Princess, who would only be a Mother to the regiment, a protector of her foals, was carried like an ikon into the clash of spear against pike, of blade against chamfron, of bone against steel. One lover died, and the other despaired, and raged, and, somewhere in the shame of her betrayed soul, hated. Because love cannot but feel betrayed to be left behind! And the Princess followed, as she must, because she hath no defense, against the loving heart!"

This cohort didn't know the lovers, didn't have to be drawn away from the blame which had already fallen on that poor jenny's withers. I feared she would not survive the next battle, at the rate that she and her section-mates were coming to terms with their failings and losses. But not for the Second Cohort, the heartbreak of the Third.

I took another deep breath, feeling something stronger than lungs gathering behind my voice.

"The sister, the second sister, the mothering sister, she broke in the breaking of the lines. The Princess is not for the battle-field! Her kindness and her generosity cannot stand hock-deep in mud and filth and gore, not and stay herself, stay true to what she is!"

Deeper, louder, darker my voice grew in the gathering, and all the torches went out in a sudden gust of wind.

"For the battle-line is the other sister's domain! The thread-cutter, the gatherer of souls! The sharp-toothed hag, the black-winged carrion-bird! The only sister for the slaughter, the only queen of battle! For you, when you step forth onto the hungry soil, it is not meet to carry love for the present, or dreams of the future! Carry with your lance, your spear, your axe, your sword - a shield of spite! Become one with the fury of the past, the onrushing rage! Carry terror in your hearts, and tartarus in your eyes! Not love for your mother, nor your foal a-fostered, nor your hope for the future, nor your love for what can be. The pony to your left! The donkey to your right! The caribou at your back, the griffin above your ears, the unicorn speeding her bolt overhead, the pegasus raining his javelins upon those below! All of you, grist for death's mill! Dead in an instant, mangled in a second – or, in your turn, to fulfill your duty, to slaughter and butcher those that are the Company's right and true enemies, our victims, our quailing opponents!"

All about us the darkness glowed with her own blackened light, star-lit terrors crawling over the swaying audience.

"You must be the storm in his fury. You must be the river in her flood and torrent. Be her long black wings! Be her sharp-tipped lance in the darkness! Be the sharpened fang, the terrible eye, the howling scream! Carry with you nothing, but Nightmare! On the wing! Say it with me, brothers! Sing it with me, sisters!"

Fuller Falchion beside me, his arrayed sergeants and corporals, a scattering of pegasi stooped upon the fences and roof-tops, the rankers and the veterans and the carters pulled up behind the circled mass of the Second Cohort - they all drew breath with a single lung, and exhaled into the night:

"THE STORM IN HIS FURY! THE RIVER IN HER FLOOD!"

"THE NIGHTMARE ON THE WING!"