SBMS054

"Do i look like a reformatory schoolmarm to you, Sawbones?" asked the Captain as we met in front of the gates of Charred Horton, and she left the van of the convoy running supplies down to the blockhouse from our digs in the Menomonie castra. Heavy wagons groaned on past between their armed guards. Mad Jack's new reinforced wagons traded off protection for weight and carrying capacity. The Company's legs had been shortened by the heavier equipage, but then, we weren't planning any more flying-columns, not in this campaign season, at any rate.

'Cherie' was flitting about overhead, with three pegasi and a griffin flying a lazy box around her. I thought she was warming to the other pegasi, but I hadn't had a chance to observe what she had made of our cat-bird brethren. Overall, she was being remarkably cheerful for a pony who had spent months or years in total isolation from equine contact. If the mood-swings continued I would have to get worried, but for now, I was willing to write it off as youthful resilience. It was probably for the best that she was spending time with the Equuish-speaking pegasi, though. We needed her speaking Equuish sooner rather than later. At least Feufollet had understood some Equuish, she just didn't speak it when she fell into out collective laps.

"In the midst of death is life, Captain. Do you have any idea how rare pegasi are on Tambelon? The Crow tells me they don't breed true here. Everyone just has earth ponies when they're foaling."

"We're on a clearance mission, mèdicu, not recruiting new apprentices. You know, recruiting suppliers, negotiating passage, killing dead things, finding the enemy if he's anywhere about. How does bringing home yet another orphan for the Spirit to drool over factor into that? I don't care if she's some sort of miracle bird-pony, she's not my problem!"

"The Company was founded by thestrals, Captain. Think of her like a mascot, she'll do wonders for morale, I guarantee it. The pegasi are all over her as it is. We'll have to find her a knight to squire for, what do you think of Tickle Me or Long Haul?"

"I think I don't need you and your obsessions distracting my first cohort commander. Talk to Long Haul if you must. Don't we have something scheduled here?" She looked up at the barred gate, and the suspicious eyes peering down from the squat tower next to it.

"Y'all best get your boss down here to talk to us, bar-gate! I have hundreds of cranky mercenaries behind me, and I don't have much patience for useless merchants quivering behind thin walls. They might suffice to keep out the galloping dead, and they might not, but they won't keep out the Company if we get any crankier than we already are. Make a cloud of dust, arrusu!" The eyes disappeared from their viewing-slot, and you could hear the drumming of shoes down a ladder inside the wall.

Other ponies might find the Captain intimidating in her preposterous pickelhaube chaffron and black-chased heavy barding, but I always saw the tuffs of purple fur sticking out around the edges and had to resist the urge to snicker. I suppose I was designated to be her eternal hoofmare, or at least, for the duration of this campaign. The new Lieutenant had taken over the Captain's old role as commander of the van, the pony who led the charge and from the front. The Captain was now demoted to "pony with impressive hat" who did all the threatening and negotiating. The old Captain was able to pull off the role through his superior height and impressive white crest of feathers. The new Captain had to rely on stage-barding to project authority. Admittedly, she had been a terror on the battlefield, but that didn't really translate to personal presence.

A pair of donkey heads poked out over the ramparts, their ears poking up through their impractical kettle-helmets. It was very clear they weren't soldiers, or even municipal guards.

"I swear to the Peacock Angel, if either of you starts talking about elderberries or what my mother smelled like, I'm going to burn your town down around your ears!" yelled the Captain. I don't think they got the joke, but their long ears bent down over their polished helmets submissively.

"Milady, we mean no disrespect to your august person, but you have to understand, we owe it to our citizens to preserve them against all threats. We've never heard of you or yours, and we just want to be left alone!" sniveled the older of the two.

"What, you've not heard of the reivers of Rennet, the Black Company? Did you not notice that cavalcade of defeated caribou that streamed past your gates last winter? I made that happen, I drove them from their castles and homes, I butchered them wholesale! We are the blade of the Bride, the scourge of the Rebel! I've come to trim your hedges and weed out the rambler Rose!"

I leaned over and muttered into her ears half-hidden by her silly helm.

"Oh, and while we're at it, we're cleaning up your undead problem. Something I've noted seems to have slipped your notice in the course of your city's duties as the first fortress of this district! I'm told that the surrounding farming communities have been left to their own devices 'gainst the ghoul menace! How do you plan to feed your huddled citizens when all the surrounding farms are ghoul-infested wilderness, and your trade-routes too hazardous to travel? Get those damnable gates open and talk to my people! I don't aim to leave a feckless void in our wake when we move on!"

The gates opened, of course. And the negotiations that followed hardly featured any violence at all. Though we did end up putting a new mayor in charge; the last one just couldn't stop cringing.

***

The Captain continued south to inspect the progress of the forward base forming around the Beans blockhouse. Cherie, I, and our pegasi honor-guard continued northwards to Menomenie, the castra, and our temporary home. I had spent the entire trip from Burnt Horton thinking about what I was going to tell Gibblets, the foals, and most importantly, the Spirit. I had avoided deep sleep the night before, and thus barely dreamed. But I had a more-than-half-mad haunt to placate, and a cute little reminder of the treasured bad old days for her to lose her ectoplasmic mind over. She might adopt the child on the spot, she might try to eat her soul, and worse, I strongly feared she might try to do both at the same time. The Spirit was the dream-world's very Bold Chasseur, of whom satirical legend told was always ready to charge off in every direction at once. The problem there being that one of those directions featured the spectral equivalent of the cannibalism I had promised was not an option with the Company.

I had hopes that the little thestral was our insurance against that alarmingly prominent possibility. She smelled like Company to me. But they say I'm biased, so, well.

I had to bring it before Gibblets and Shorthorn at the least. And Tickle Me as well, though the Captain was insisting on my not distracting her cohort commanders. The pegasi had an interest in this, in little 'Cherie'. There were reasons beyond simple terrorism and pageantry that they preserved and maintained the spelled thestral helms. There was a sense that they had lost something to the friction of time and world. This was not what we were supposed to be.

As I trotted up the metalled Road, the pegasi flitted back and forth overhead, anchored to my position by their nominal duty to keep me from being eaten by a random revenant or, I don't know, starveling hedgehog. As we approached the castra, the various aerial patrols seemed to converge on our path, and when Cherie settled onto her spot on my back between my saddlebags, tired and sleepy, the pegasi dipped lower and lower, until I trailed a veritable thunder-head of thestral-helmed pegasi, armed and giddy with fatigue and wonder. In the end, I ended up sweeping the entire patrol-shift behind me, and when the guards opened the gates for me and my snoozing burden, the bird-ponies swarmed over the gate like a cheery invasion-force. It was anything but subtle.

So I grabbed a random non-com to go alert Gibblets, and another to gather the foals, and made for the mess-hall we were using to store the war-lance and our standard. If we must be mad, we would be mad according to tradition and by ceremonial propriety.

Coming in from the gathering twilight outside, the warm lamps of the mess-hall and those ponies enjoying their collective commissary dinner made a sort of homely glow, like a Miklagard mead-hall roaring with the happy violence of thanes and kerns enjoying their lords' open-hoofed generosity. The hub-bub awoke my pegasus princess, and she looked around at the aimless tumult as attention and order spread like a wave of wonder in the crowd.

"Monseiur Sawbones, Où sommes-nous actuellement? Quel est cet endroit?" Where had I taken her now?

"Mon Chérie, c'est à la maison. Je tu ai apporté à la Company. Cherie, this is the Company. This is home. Pas l'endroit, mais les poneys. Not the place, but the ponies." I spoke louder with the Equuish explanation, projecting to the crowd, but the Prench was just for her ears.

"I've brought you here to be presented to my brothers, the ponies of the Black Company - Je tu ai amené ici pour être présenté à mes frères, les poneys de la Black Company. Tu avez vu comment les autres pegasi ont pris pour tu. Tu êtes quelque chose de spécial pour nous, à Company en particulier. I've also brought you here to be presented to the Spirit which is our patron. Et d'être montré à l'Esprit qui est notre patron. Elle peut être effrayant. Ne pas montrer la peur, elle recèle quelque chose d'amour en elle, mais votre peur peut garder que de venir en avant, et elle peut être dangereuse."

I did not advertise my further warnings to the entire assembly; the donkeys in the crowd might hear my muttered Prench, but I was willing to take that chance. I was managing multiple expectations and anxieties in this little performance, and my lack of sleep was leaving me little margin for error. Gibblets and most of the foals appeared at the rear of the mess-hall, along with Tickle Me and a couple of the senior non-coms. And the Lieutenant, wonderful. She had even less of a sense of humor than the last Lieutenant.

I turned to the impromptu assembly, slanted so that they could see the filly on my back, and she could look them in the eyes, slit-pupiled stare to myriad pony eyes. Although a few were already taking their thestral aspect as I spoke, and more joined in as the understanding swept the crowd. The pikestaff was behind me.

"From the second volume of the Book of Fatinah: In those days, we were in the service of al-Telekker and our own vengeance. The Company when it came out of the wastelands was a broken wing, a flock of beaten pegasi and thestrals, a rabble. When they landed in Fatinah's village, they were a beaten drum, a torn banner on a long black war-lance, and not much else. Fatinah seized that war-lance, and it seized her. She turned to the beaten ponies, and reminded them of what they were, of what they were then, and what they would be again. She called forth her family, and succored the wounded, rallied the broken, and found one particular thestral. She clouted him across the poll with the war-banner's pikestaff, and told that pony he was the new Captain. Then she sat down, and started to write. This was the second founding of the Black Company. Pardon." I turned to the little Prench-speaking thestral on my back, and gave her the absolutely barest-bones summary I could think to formulate, in a loud whisper: "Avant que l'entreprise était présent, il était un warband des poneys comme tu, thestrals. Savez-vous ce qu'est un thestrals est? Tu vas apprendre. Ils ont été battus, mais un cheval leur ont appris à être eux-mêmes, et la Company ont continué, en se rappelant le meilleur de lui-même. Vous êtes ce souvenir dans la chair." More loudly, "As I told our new friend, she is the living remembrance of that which Fatinah reminded her first Captain, Jugular Grip, the best of what the Company could be, that it was its past as well as its present, and that the future must honor the best of the past remembered."

"After generations, a thestral has returned to us. Please join me in welcoming the past to our present, for the sake of our future." I turned to her, and lifted her off my back, onto her own four hooves.

"Nous avons besoin de vous, et vous besoin de quelqu'un. Poneys ne sont pas élevés pour vivre seul. Vivez avec nous, ma chérie." I did not translate this for the assembly, That was strictly between us. But the next was public :

"Can you swear to the Company, to live with your brothers, to die with your sisters, and to remember our dead as we will remember you when you pass from this vale of sorrows? Pouvez-vous jurer à la Company, à vivre avec vos frères, pour mourir avec vos sœurs, et de se souvenir de nos morts que nous vous rappeler quand vous passez de cette vallée de douleurs?"

She looked up at me with those big green slit-pupiled eyes, so familiar, so unsettling-thrilling in the face of a little white-coated foal. She simply said 'oui'.

Then she turned to the pike-staff, and put up a hoof to the shaft, and without prompting, leaned over to kiss the lance.

And the world went away.

Author's Notes:

Damnit, Sawbones, we're both losing control of this situation!