"The streets hain't safe no more," the supply corporal confided as Gilda's griffons helped his assistant unload the kitchen supplies, crates of crabmeat and assorted staples from the cart. They were standing in the alleyway behind the big guildmaster's house which dominated the entrance to Tinker's Alley, which boasted the only kitchen on the whole block big enough for the cook staff to operate out of without getting in each others' pin feathers.
"It's Griffish Trottingham, of course they're not safe. They never were 'safe'. But by Griffonstone standards, it ain't bad."
"You 'aven't been out 'ere, mum! She's in a mean mood, Our Lady of Th' Cobbled Mudholes. It's worf your life to stop for a breffer in some of these back ways!" The squirrelly little earth pony outranked Gilda, but he'd taken one look at her and it was nothing but mum, mum out of his mouth. Bubblesqueak had decided she 'looked like an officer', and that was that. The little pest was a pony, yes, but he was a ghetto pony, and he spoke like a born crab-back. Which he was, right down to the matching coat and mane.
"Not this one, though, right?" Gilda's troubles were more than sufficient, she didn't need the supply ponies refusing to do the hospital run, too. There were too many prisoners and Territorials and medicos here, they'd go hungry quick if supply cut them dead and they didn't have the transportation to go fetch it themselves.
"Oh, no, mum, you've got this block and 'er neighbors right and tight, you do. I feel as safe as 'ouses. But the moment I get Bertie 'ere out past June Street, the stump-jumpers will be looking for me dock, they will."
"Stumpjumpers?"
"Gentlemares of the road. Th' stand and deliver brigade. It's like they're having a family booze-up, it is." Hijackers, the little stallion was talking about hijackers.
"I thought the Crab Bucket would have taken the wind out of those sails."
"Nah, more like opened Three Stringed Lute's own box, it did. Every fifth corner has somegriff standing watch, and the sixth will 'ave a brace of plug uglies with sharpness and, if you've been especially behind in your praise for 'armony, one o' those slug-throwers. You 'ave to 'ave been 'earin' those pop-sticks goin' off?"
Gilda had. The noise was unmistakable, and had kept the detachment's guards on their pinions and claws, jumping at shadows. So far no rebels had taken a shot at them, but it felt like a matter of time.
"Yeah, that. I think, me, they cracked open th' crates with their new deaf-dealers, and nogriff wants to put away their 'earthswarmin' gifties. Like foals and fledglings wif new toys, they is."
"If there's still that many rebels out there under arms, we're in hades' own pickle-barrel, aren't we?"
"Aw, I don't know that from Apple, mum. That's offercer business. 'ubcap and me we gots to be goin'. The 'alf-dozen blocks between 'ere and the Boulevard are good-griffon territory in daylight, but I don't trusts them after dark." The blue pony took a deep sniff of whatever the cooks inside had started baking, or broiling, or - Gilda wasn't sure, it smelled a little like sewage to her.
"Ah, that's a damned shame. They're makin' peat mash soup! Smells like 'ome, it does."
"I thought you were a city pony, Bubblesqueak," Gilda observed.
"Don't mean I don't love me the 'omeshire peaty goodness, mum. Toodles!" The supply pony, his underling hooked in their cart's traces, cart, grabbed up his spear and helmet, and yelled, "'ya, 'ubcap!"
They went tearing off down the alley towards the main road.
Gilda took up her own helmet, and turned to the next item on her check-list. Life with Gleaming Shield was a busy one, but at least there was always somepony keeping track of what needed doing. Even if the ponies did insist on cooking what smelled like raw sewage in the kitchen.
Lieutenant Brick managed to disappear into the aether the moment she found the excuse. That excuse was leading the first big caravan of prisoners out of the city to the new prisoner of war camp the EUP had established beyond the suburbs. Because the 93/1st had lost all of their assigned transportation, the transport had to be done with Fifth Territorial vehicles, which of course required the supervision of a proper officer.
Gilda hadn't been surprised when the carriages had returned short one, under the command of Corporal Gustav. She was more irritated that Brick had absconded with Corporal Guillaume along with one of the heavy carts. The first load of prisoners were hardly the last, after all, and now they were even more short-taloned.
The disappearance of a third of their supply of officers, as well as a precious vehicle, meant that Gilda couldn't keep holding back. They needed more mobility, and they needed it now. Bubblesqueak's tales of highwayhens and hijackings had given her some ideas, and all she needed was the acquiescence and, if Gleaming Shield was feeling helpful, the aid of Gilda's own, personal officer.
"Out of the question. We can't go playing military police. The real military police are out there, on the job!" The lieutenant was sitting in the crowded 'dining room' which they'd made out of the common room of the journeygriffs' hall that stretched along the west side of Tinker's Alley, opposite of the guildmaster's house. The dining room was full of tired-looking nurses and orderlies from the medical squadron, having their morning breakfast. Gleaming Shield had chosen to eat with her fellow equines for a change.
"The real military police are busier than bugbears. It's a madhouse out there, lieutenant ma'am!" Gilda tried to not blanch at the disgusting mess her lieutenant was digging into.
"They detached the MP companies from Division, and put them under the Provost Marshal. He's a family friend, a good one!" Gleaming Shield waved her spoon lazily around, emphasizing her point. The crusted grey-green goop she was devouring dripped messily on the table all around her plate.
Oh, Celestia, she kept eating it! "Your clutch uncle may be a fine stallion, but you know how useless our MPs are - the ponies at least know what they're doing! Half my bribes went to those boars' tits in the griffish MPs. I've been too busy to check on our supply routes, by the way, we've probably lost most of that business, we'll have to rebuild it all from scratch."
Gleaming Shield swallowed, then replied quickly, "Can't be helped, we've got our actual jobs to do."
"Which is why I want to do this! We can't wrap this project up without additional wheels." Maybe the lieutenant was done, she'd cleaned her bowl, the scullions would barely have to disinfect it, let alone wash it out.
"It's risky." The lieutenant grabbed the pony who was running past with a fresh bucket of the grey-green gunk, steaming and filling the dining-room with the smell of well-broiled swamp. The cook poured more peat mash into Gleaming Shield's empty bowl
"Which is why I want you there, backing us up." She was doing even more damage to the fresh peat than she'd done to the first serving.
"I'll stick out like a sore hoof."
Gilda needed fresh air, badly, she felt like she was turning almost as green as the unicorn's breakfast. She swallowed, and then offered, "I've seen you practicing with that disguise spell."
"Practicing. Not perfected. Also, what am I going to do, pretend to be a griffon MP?"
"Exactly!"
"I'd have to break out the wings spell."
"Y-yeah. You'd have to." Gilda gulped. "Do that."
"I think I got it down the last time." The last time Shield tried to fly, she’d bounced off the parapet of Casemate #7 in Battery Giuseppe and they had to get Lady George to fish her out of the harbor.
"Maybe you could pretend to be an MP sergeant? I haven't ever seen one of those use their wings." The lieutenant polished off her second bowl of stinking peat. Maybe they were finished?
"Hrm. Maybe. I think I could do with another bowl. You sure you don't want any peat stew? It's glorious, I swear. I can't understand why we never got it in - oh, I'll see you outside, Gilda! You make the arrangements, right?"
The first hijacking didn't go as planned. It took all of Gilda's persuasive power to convince the rankers they'd recruited to not dress up in barbaric splendor. The Stinging Needle had left behind a mixed collection of flamboyant rags, which some of the rankers had found in a crate they'd accidentally brought with them to the 93/1st. Grant had been particularly discontent that he wouldn't have the chance to dress up like a Parrot buccaneer attending a fancy-dress ball.
Instead, Gilda had gotten them to dress down in their armor and helmets, with badges hung on their gorgets defaced to look sort of like MP brassards. A bit of magic from their disguised unicorn, and they had the general look of a squad of Territorial MPs.
The key was the 'supply cart' they were using for bait. Gustav and Gump drew the cart, while a disguised Gleaming Shield drove it. The back was full of crates loaded with random tinkers' cruft, and two hidden rankers crouching for close support if any of the hijackers' ambushes they triggered went sideways.
Gilda and the rest of the volunteers followed a half-block behind the bait, doing their best to look like a military police patrol.
They didn’t move quickly enough, and that was why the first ambush they triggered almost didn't go off. The damn lookouts had left a stay-behind to watch for exactly what Gilda and her griffons were planning. The stay-behind was a little griffon, not quite old enough to call 'hen', too old to call a fledgling.
The overgrown fledgling lookout's desperate squawking, flailing, and dodging about frustrated Gilda and Grant's attempts to grab her. When they finally caught her, Gilda raced ahead to catch up with the now-blown 'bait' part of the team, while her fake MPs wasted their time beating the tar out of the loudbeaked little brat. The commotion had done the lookout's job for her, because by the time Gilda arrived at the ambush site, the rest of the hijacking crew was swarming the bait cart.
She arrived to find Gleaming Shield holding off two angry-looking griffs with a magenta shield while she repeatedly kicked a third on the ground caught inside the shield with her. Gump was down, and Gustav and the two griffs who had been hiding in the cart were trying to keep the rest of hijackers from doing to Gump what Gleaming Shield was doing to their buddy.
Gilda and the 'military police' contingent put an end to all of that, once the latter caught up with the bat-hen. They even managed to get their talons on the rest of the lookouts. It would have been a clean sweep if they were actually military police.
Since they weren't, the surviving captives presented a problem.
Gleaming Shield was pacing back and forth as Gilda did her inexperienced best to 'convince' the most responsible looking hijacker to tell them where their cache was.
"Where" slam "are" slam "you ‘iding" slam "your stuff?"
"Awk! Awk! Awk!"
"Sergeant, stop that. You'll just give her a concussion." They were still pretending MPs, and the MPs didn't have lance corporals, they had sergeants, the poncy prats.
"I don't care what I give 'er, as long as she gives up her bits, mum!"
"We don't care about bits, right? Supplies. The supplies hijacked on this route yesterday, and three days before that. And most importantly, the carriages the supplies were in."
Wham "You 'eard the first serjent. Where's the 'ades-damned, 'armony-bedeviled CARTS?"
In the end, the bandits gave up their hideout. But there weren't any carts, or gigs, or carriages. Just a pile of bits, a lot of booze, and some weapons.
They ended up returning to the hospital with nothing to show for that first night's efforts but a pile of trussed-up would-be hijackers, sharing their crowded heavy cart with said weapons and booze. Halfway home, Gilda looked at their cart-bed full of battered, bleeding, tied-up city-griffons, and she suddenly found herself wondering what had happened to the journeygriff tinkers and tinsmiths the mobile hospital had displaced.
She didn't know how to even begin to ask whether any of their captives were out of work tinkers.
The doctors of the 93/1st were glad to get their appendages on the booze, and the battered hijackers were patched up and added to the general population of damaged rebels. After the ambush, the hijackers were not in much better shape than some of those rebels. Gilda kept an eye on them, but none said a word about where the Territorials had found their prey.
Gilda took the next batch of prisoners and hijackers out to the new POW camp herself, and used the hijackers' own bits to pay off the guards at the camp to take them as if they were just more victims of the Crab Bucket.
Which, in a way, they were. Even if they loudly insisted to anygriff that would listen that they weren't damned rebels. As far as she could tell, none of the missing tinkers were in the catch she delivered to the ponies of the POW camp.
But they could have been.
All Gilda heard from the hijackers was a lot of cawing about how loyal they were to the Duchess of Trottingham. It might have been a tough bit of gristle for the bandits, but that was what bandits deserved, wasn't it? Disturbing the Princess's peace was a sort of rebellion. Whether you called the immortal white alicorn the Duchess or the Princess, peace was peace, the law was the law, and they'd all be transported together when the time came. It was the new territories for the lot of them.
The new territories would be a better place than Trottingham during the troubles, Gilda told herself.
The next hijacking went much more smoothly, as did the one after that. They collected more hijackers, and more booty which they shared liberally with everygriff they encountered. But they only found one sad, rattle-trap mule-cart, and things were getting worse.
Because the casualties from the real war kept pouring into the 93/1st, and the Territorials couldn't empty out the wards fast enough. The slug-throwers had filled the streets of Old Griffish Trottingham full of bleeding bodies, and far too many of them were arriving in the immobile hospital, to lay groaning in the beds of the absent tinkers and tinsmiths of Tinker’s Alley.
Gilda heard the moaning of the patched-together wounded in her dreams.
When the third ambush produced a bit of intelligence about where the hijacking crews were selling off their stolen carriages, Gilda was hot to chase it down. She was tired, and nightly nightmares about maimed tinsmiths weren't helping matters. Even if it meant that she and Gleaming Shield would have to play another round of dress-up.
Wait, I just realized.
Remember how I keep complaining that ponies – often, Rainbow – use the phrase “for Pete’s sake” – and someone suggested they must mean “peat”.
Well, here they probably do.
Until they stumble on the whole of their co's selling off carts for war profiteering in order to drum up more supplies for what they want.
So... is Pinkie's plan peace through mutual slaughter? Things are going to heck in a handsome variety of handbaskets. Still, those carts could offer up a lot of answers.
9268004
It really isn't. "mutual slaughter" used to be the default method of warfare and it worked REALLY FUCKING WELL.
Turns out, when the everyone on the enemy side is dead, you win.
9268065
Well, given that Pinkie ostensibly arranged the Crab Bucket to maximize the welfare (or at least minimize the sorrow) of both sides, I'd say this isn't going according to plan. Unless, again, she's going for the "peace of death" route.
9268084
In the 1840s, the English government praised the Great Famine or Ireland as an act of God and made the situation worse by forcibly taking away what little food they could grow.
Pinkie is giving away the greatest welfare of all, death!
9267989
I'm imagining a brick of overstewed spinach here, and trying not to vomit.
9268084
Just think! When there's fewer people, they won't have to fight over jobs, AND they'll all be glad to be alive!
Judging from the author's note, I'm assuming the "peat stew" is made-up for the story. Peat used in or as food strikes me as odd anyway, especially after I found no real reference of it being used as a food source ever in real life by any mammal, let alone equines. Still, that research gave me what I was looking for--a mental picture of what such a dish must be like, and why Gilda couldn't begin to stomach it.
Now that's something I hadn't thought of last chapter but totally should've...
More importantly though, it's oddly pleasing to me that this same thought is clearly starting to bother Gilda a bit. In her line of work, it's something she needs to be keeping in consideration, even if it ultimately proves there's little she can do about it.
So Gilda is growing some empathy from seeing the wounded and the people they displaced to make the hospital?
My poor baby kitty/chicken is growing so fast! In some kind of traumatic way...
Comparing Gilda from the beginning of the story, who wouldn't have blinked at the misery of another and the one right now, she probably wouldn't recognize herself. She would probably have a few interesting words to say to her older self.
But now the army is beginning to fight the locals almost as much as the rebels, it's a really bad sign and things will only go from bad to worst.
But even more worrisome in the lack of carts. The theft of all the regular carts is making all the different divisions of the EQ army pilfer from each others... well more they usually do.
But there are some questions that need to be asked here. Is the lack of transportation a plot by the ennemy? Rather than attacking hard points, you subtly sabotage their logistics? Slowly but surely the lack of carts will be felt: less supply, taking more and more time to transport the prisoners, the hospital getting more and more crowded, raising the risk of a plague starting... That somehow, the ennemy manipulated the locals in doing their bidding? Organized crime having a go trying to get their cuts of the prise?
Is it a case for the MP like Gylda and Gleaming think it is? Too much corruption in the ranks undermining the campaign?
Or does the Logistics Division having problems having enough carts for everyone? Or they are simply unable to supply new carts at the rate they are loosing them? Or, top of irony, the carts manufacturer can't make their ware because they are waiting for parts normally made on Tinker street?
All of the above? At least Gilda instinct is telling her that something is wrong here.
A good chapter once again but maybe you could had more detail about the fighting going on in the combat theater? The whole thing feel a bit detached from the global events going on. Or maybe it's the goal here, Gilda point of view only beginning to widen to the wider scope of the conflict.
I’m pretty sure those are M*A*S*H references I spy before me here
9268084
I'm going to have to disagree with people here. This doesn't seem like Pinkie's plan; Yes she clearly wanted the rebels to expose themselves on mass to slaughter them all, but sabotaging relief efforts/ sending the survivors away to a new place seems counter productive in that it ties up and inconveniences pony resources.
Gleaming is kinda taking a backseat of late. She has mellowed quite a bit.
9269595
Squints. Yeah, this is the chapter where she beats a griffon senseless, an almost classic curbstomp. You think this is mellowed?
Looks again. Well, yeah, Gilda isn't concentrating too heavily on what happened to that poor hijacker stuck inside Gleaming Shield's, well, shield. Cues pony Rohrschach.
9269610
She has a full conversation with Gilda without a single insult against her or her race. That is mellowed. Also she is going along with Gilda’s plans as opposed to making her own, thus taking a backseat.
I saw something on YouTube from a group called Extra Credit that make small clips that explain and simplify certain subject about History. In one of the series, they mention that around WW1, train schedule were everything. From getting your troops to the front line first to when you can get supplies to where, you needed to be able to coordinate train schedules of different lines or else your army was toast.
This made me think of this story in particular because of the level of technology. Equs, is still at the age of steam trains, steam boats and dirigible (air ship in this case). The later does change the possible logistics in this story but I thought it would be very interesting seeing Gleaming and her organizational skills, Gilda craftiness and the rest of the division having to handle such situations.
The way I see it, the train could still play an important role in this conflict.
9269618
I too saw this as Gleaming warmed up to Gilda and the lack of insults towards Griffon in her units was due to Gilda influence. But the in way I saw it, Gleaming doesn't even realize what she is doing.
9270983
Fair, though the progress seems a touch jumpy given how few conversations the two of them have in more recent chapters. If nothing else it still feels odd that Gleaming hasn’t wanted words with her concerning Lady George.
9271023
Ah, true, it does seems there should have been a bit more insults thrown around and the sub-plot with Lady George and Rarity wash suspiciously absent since the battle. As well as that political officer lurking around.
Maybe it's because the story shifted in another direction with the division being assigned to the medical facilities and we lost some stuff in the transition. The new problems took the front and center while the relationship between characters took a background seats.
9271038
Does make sense. Armed conflict kills discussions with some alacrity.
9271043
And beside, I think Gleaming Shield was able to see how the soup was making Gilda disgusted and made show of truly enjoying it just to upset her caporal.
So here is your 'I hate griffins and enjoy seeing them suffer'.
9271051
Yeah I’d buy that.
Interesting ruminations of a cynical griffin in such grey times and conflicts.
New territories? Thestralia?
9294961
Ha! Don't tempt me.
Pretty sure that ambushing and hijacking carts counts as banditism... And that's traditionally considered the same as open rebellion.
That opening was so British that I just about got up to make some beef tea. Skillfully done but wow.
The line about being behind in your praise for 'armony really stood out to me. Darn fine wording. Three Stringed Lute is a Pandora reference, I assume, and "don't know from Apple" later is a clever spin on "don't know from Adam." Magnifique
What a very British opening.
9268245
Eh. People eat Sauerkraut. Seems just as disgusting to me
10406290
Gotta agree. The kraut was not alright with me...eesh. Didn't sit well going in or out.
I prefer sauerkraut with meat myself.
Gildan better watch out... she's starting to actually turn into a good NCO. Knowing how to properly point her officer in the right direction and get things done.
Very much expecting a Maxim 2 moment at some point.
Also... she's growing to see the complexity of things and unfairness that can drive things to get worse.