Roanan awoke on the beach, covered in sand and strands of kelp, still clinging to the shattered bulkhead from the galley upon which she had been a slave for these past few months. She was most fortunate; the oar master had enough mercy at least to unlock the chains of the miserable rowers when the slaver Sea Hinny started taking on water in the gale that cast her upon the shoal and then battered her to pieces. The salt in her mouth and throat cried out for pure water to cleanse it, but first she needed to get her bearings.
A tropical sun blazed down on her square-cut black mane and blue roan coat, and the black markings on her legs were chafed from the manacles of her imprisonment. She stood, still strong and sturdy despite the night riding on the storm, following the months of bad food and horrific conditions, due to her preternatural barbarian endurance. She shook off the flotsam of the beach and surveyed her surroundings with eyes that burned like molten sky-blue glass.
She was on a broad, white beach littered with planks and broken oars. No other ponies stirred on the beach. She looked back to the surf and could see no sign of the ship, nor of any survivors clinging to the wreckage. Perhaps others survived to make landfall, but none were yet apparent. If she spotted the Captain or that foul swine of a first mate, they were dead ponies, she swore, but she would spare the oarmaster for his late kindness despite the whippings she had to endure at his hoof.
She tuned inland and saw before her a broad riot of green jungle a hundred yards from the beach. Fresh water! There must be a spring, or perhaps there are highlands further inland and clear running streams. She searched along the verge for a path into the dense verdant sprawl, and shortly spied an area where the vegetation had been beaten down. She also noticed fresh hoofprints leading up from the beach, and signs that somepony or ponies had been dragged as well. She took up a broken oar and snapped it over a rock, making an impromptu staff, and followed the track.
As she entered the rainforest, the beating of the sun was immediately relieved, but a different kind of heat set in; a dense, still, moist warmth that smelled of vegetation and rot. She heard and smelled small animals all around her, and she felt the touch of eyes, but could not tell from whence she was being watched. She followed the track with her usual savage caution, constantly expecting attack from any quarter.
Not for the first time in the past few months, she regretted that night of drinking and toasting with the sea-blue mare in that nameless seaside tavern. She had plainly been drugged, only managing a dozen tankards of ale before she lost consciousness, and awoke the next morning, groggy and in chains, in the hold of the slaver. That selfsame mare, the first mate of the Sea Hinny, was standing over her with a boathook, prodding her to the bench where she was destined to work until death came for her in his mercy, but destiny for Roanan was a fickle mistress, here casting her down and there raising her up, or in this case, spitting her out after chewing upon her ship.
The landform was rising; there were indeed interior highlands she could not espy above the treeline from the beach. She paused and listened and could make out the faint sounds of water above here; still she walked cautiously. Water could well be a scarce and fiercely defended resource on this island. Then she spied what must be a fresh hoofprint, and a scrap of seafoam green hair, perhaps from that Chrome-damned mate. The trail turned from where she deduced the water ran, so she left the track, pursuing instead the absolute necessity of water.
She crept towards the brook, staying low to the ground and moving as silently as anypony not a native to tropical jungles could. Slowly, she made her way to the life-giving waters, and in ten minutes of slow progress she could smell the fresh mineral odor of the stream and feel a slight cooling of the air. Ten more cautious steps and she knelt next to the stream, washing her mouth out and spitting before drinking deeply. Still, she felt eyes upon her, but as yet felt unthreatened. Perhaps the watchers were merely curious, or frightened by her. She filled her hooves with the delicious water and washed the salt and sand from her muzzle and mane, relishing the cool. The stream was shallow and narrow, else she would have immersed herself.
Refreshed, she took fresh stock of herself. The iron ring she had won those years ago was still in her possession. The slavers thought it a valueless trinket, not reckoning the rarity of the starmetal of which it had been forged, otherwise it would have been taken from her along with all her other possessions. She was marooned somewhere on an uncharted isle of the Buck Coast. Somepony watched her from the Forest, but did not attack. She was armed with a crude staff, and somepony had dragged a body or bodies, alive or dead, and had taken them up into the hills. This was all she knew; her first objective of finding water was complete. Now she needed food, though perhaps not as urgently as she needed to discover who spied on her.
She stood and dropped her staff. She decided to try the trade speech of the coast. "Who is there? Come out, I will not hurt you!" She turned and looked about. "Do not be afraid!"
With a suddenness that almost stunned her, a small mare, little more than a filly, stepped out of a bush no more than five feet from her. She was a mottled green and brown from top to tail, and smelled of earth and vegetation. She carried a slender spear tipped with bone, but made no move to threaten her with it. Green eyes regarded her with fascination. "Your floating island was broken in the wind, yes?"
"Yes. My floating island sank and I was cast upon the beach. I am called Roanan." The islander was coverd with daubs of mud and green dye, Roanan could now see. Her natural coloring was a light tan and she had a reddish-gold mane.
"I am known as Fleet Track. I too am wrecked here. My war canoe was lost to the sea a month ago. I am one of the Invisible Ponies. We have the misfortune to be on the island of the Emerald God. Were those your shipmates the Laughing Ponies dragged to their village?" Fleet Tracker's eyes were full of sympathy.
"I was a galley slave, so I had no shipmates, just jailors and fellow slaves."
The Invisible Pony nodded. "Well, whoever they are, they will die tonight. The Laughing Ponies prefer to boil their meals alive. The pain and fear are said to make the meat more savory, though I cannot credit that." She looked solemn. "It grieves me that anypony must die like that."
Roanan had seen many horrors in her rangings, and was no stranger to the idea of cannibalism, though the Jacks of the savage north only ate the hearts of the slain. This seemed far crueler. "Can you describe the ponies they took?"
The islander nodded. "One blue mare, with an anchor cutie mark, a dark stallion with pale blue eyes, and three scrawny specimens go must have been your fellow slaves; the way they looked it was a wonder they survived the surf."
"The mate, curse her, boiling would be a fitting end, and the oar master. He's a bugger too but I owe him my life." She scratched her chin. "Do you have a plan for getting off this cursed spit of land?"
The camouflaged mare shook her head. "I could make a dugout, but the Laughing Ponies would see and smell the fire I use to burn it out. I was biding my time, hoping for a rescue, and when your ship sailed past I would have set a fire to get their attention and then swum out. Even a life as a galley slave is better than winding up in the belly of a Laughing Pony."
"How many are there in the village?" Roanan was weighing her options and for her, attack against any odds was an option worth considering.
"It is not a large village, perhaps fifty ponies, but the real danger is from their foul god."
"I do not fear gods. Chrome is my goddess and she has given me the strength I need to fight and win, and that is all that matters in this life. All else is trickery." Fleet Track considered this.
"Perhaps, but does your god call the very jungle to life? I have seen it; a raiding party from the Ponies of the Shark landed here two weeks ago to make war on the Laughing Ponies and their god woke the vines and trees to bind and trap their foes. They just finished cooking and eating the raiders last night.
"Hmm, Chrome does not care, she just sits in her mountain watching the gray hills and mists of Cimmareia."
"Doesn't sound like much of a god if you ask me." Roanan grunted. If Chrome noticed the blasphemy she wouldn't much care about that either.
"Is there a place where we can observe the village without being seen?"
"I could sit in the chieftan's hut without being seen, but for you... Yes, there is an outcropping of rock. Follow me."
The small mare led the giantess up a barely discernible path to a group of stones about a quarter mile from the stream. She gestured and Roanan looked out over a small valley and saw a dozen or so huts huddled around a central circular area. In the center she saw a great cauldron hung over a great firepit. The skulls of dozens of ponies were mounted on poles, grinning at a cage made of bamboo which sat across from the cauldron. Within that cage were five huddled, miserable figures. Then she heard a peal of mad laughter from somewhere behind a hut. She turned to face Fleet Track.
"The Laughing Ponies laugh at nothing and anything, Roanan. They are cursed among even cannibals, because they alone eat the brain. Other tribes, while no less savage, have a taboo against eating that part of a pony. The Laughing Ponies consider it a delicacy." The hardened warmare felt her stomach turn over, suddenly glad it was empty.
Roanan watched as a group of filthy ponies with matted manes and coats brought piles of firewood from stacks elsewhere in the village. The savages would stop to laugh at random, or at least make noises that sounded like laughter, for it seemed utterly devoid of humor or context. She counted heads at about thirty five adults, and half as many fillies and colts.
In terms of numbers, it seemed an impossible challenge, thirty-five against two. But numbers can be adjusted.
"If I were to draw them away with a diversion, could you sneak in there and get to the cage?"
"I pride myself on my sneakiness, as do all Invisible Ponies."
"When you are there, can you get it open?" Roanan saw no lock; the cage appeared to be bamboo tied together with vines.
"The edge of my spear is quite sharp, but once I've opened the cage, any guards will be alerted."
"How many guards can you handle?" She raised an eyebrow at the islander.
"My folk are not warlike. I don't know, I've never fought a pony before. How many can the released prisoners handle?" asked the island pony, with a termor in her voice.
"Four or five. The slaves are weak, but all will be desperate. Get them out of the jungle and down to the beach, then get them armed as best you can with oars or boathooks or whatever else may have washed up on the shore. I will kill as many as I can and wear the rest out in pursuit before I come join you. Then we shall make a stand well away from their Emerald God." The Invisible Pony nodded. "And one more thing. If you must sacrifice one of them, choose the blue mare. In any case, win or lose, she will not be leaving this island." The islander shivered at the finality of Roanan's tone and nodded again.
"Very well then. Stay here until they have pursued me, then do your part." Roanan grasped her staff in her mouth and charged down the slope, straight into the village. Fleet Track stared in amazement and fear as she closed with the ponies bearing bundles of wood for the cookfire, and suddenly she was among them, breaking bones and skulls, crushing ribcages with her forhooves and wreaking great panic and slaughter among the grown ponies.
The shrieks of the Laughing Ponies rang through the village, along with wet crunching sounds as Roanan barreled into a stallion here, kocking him down to crush his skull with a forehoof, and there brained a mare with her staff. Finally she was alone with eight still forms, the remainder having fled to all corners of the village. Then a horn sounded, a conch with a hole drilled into the end, and a pony came out of one of the huts, a pony who was plainly important, and angry. He bore on his brow a headdress with green and red feathers, at the center of which was a great emerald. Six ponies accompanies him, stallions and mares of larger size than the ones who had been bearing sticks to the cookfire. Roanan saw them and stuck out her tongue while touching her hoof to her throat, a gesture well known on the Buck Coast.
The priest, for surely the pony in the headdress was the cleric of the Emerald God, gave a great cry of rage and the six warriors ran towards Roanan, as well as several dozen lesser tribesponies from elsewhere in the village. The priest followed as Roanan turned and fled, leading them directly away from Fleet Track's position, up the other side of the valley. Within a minute, she was out of sight, the savages giving chase with terrible laughter and cries of vengeance.
Fleet Track looked at the cage; there were two ponies of lesser stature who remained in the village center. Both were looking to the other side of the valley, after Roanan. It is time, she thought.
Moving with unnatural grace, the Invisible Pony swept from bush to bush, using the contours off the land to minimize her profile, moving quickly and silently. Even if told where she was and how she was moving, only one pony in a hundred would have been able to see her. The two Laughing Ponies saw nothing and then she was down at the cage, slicing at the thick vines holding the door closed. The prisoners didn't even realize she was there until she opened the door.
The five ponies looked at the islander in amazement as she brought her hoof to her mouth to shush them. The slight mare crept away, hoping to avoid a fight, and the five survivors of the wreck followed suit, but unfortunately, one of the galley slaves tripped going out the cage door, and the noise alerted the savages.
"Ekkibettu wenti utaga! Aiye! Aiye!" A cream-colored Laughing Pony with a shaved mane and his teeth filed to points cried out as he charged the prisoners, a dagger in his teeth. The second guard ran to a drum at the edge of the village and started to pound on it.
The attacker did not see Fleet Tracker, but instead rushed at the unarmed oar master, Steady Stroke. A slash across his foreleg sent him down with a grimace, and the Laughing Pony reared back to finish him.
It's just like spearing a mango on a high branch. The small, camouflaged mare launched her bone-tipped spear and caught the cannibal in the throat. His eyes opened wide as he saw the Invisible Pony standing no more than ten feet in front if him, and then he went down, choking on his own blood.
She stood still, watching the life leak out of the savage, the thick red blood staining her white spear. Steady Stroke recovered and grabbed the villain's dagger, then reached and yanked the spear out of his throat. He handed it over to Fleet Tracker, who was wobbling on her feet. "Your first kill?" She nodded dumbly. "It was well done, and thanks, but we must be away!"
She took the spear and stared at the red bone tip for a second, then came back to herself. "Yes, get to the beach! Roanan is leading them a merry chase; she plans to wear them out and then bring them to us there, tired possibly fewer in number. You can arm with oars or whatever you can find on the beach. It's a better end than the cookpot, at least!" The drum pounded urgently and the six ponies followed Fleet Tracker back up to the outcropping. Once there, she sent them down to the beach and told them to wait for her, then she vanished.
______
Roanan slid down the hillside, her roan coat covered with mud, followed by dozens of screaming cannibals. Three of the savages had come close to capturing her, and now would not capture her or anypony else again. She rolled to the bottom of the slope and stood, sprinting through the jungle when she glanced behind herself and saw the priest standing at the crest of the hill. He sneered and raised his forelegs, and the jungle around Roanan writhed.
A dozen vines reached towards her, squirming and dancing obscenely as the servant of the Emerald God weaved his forelegs, glittering with gems at his wrists and studding his hooves. The questing tendrils reached for Roanan as superstitious dread filled her heart with ice, but they stopped short of her, recoiling. The priest looked down, confused, and wove his attack anew, but the same thing happened. The star iron! The god's magic could not touch her.
Roanan laughed at the priest as he cursed from his hilltop, but then he spied the iron ring as well. A shrewd look stole upon his countenance and he changed his dance, now shuffling from side to side where before he had been moving his arms in a serpentine fashion. The forest around her writhed anew as she ran towards the verge, but then she found she was blocked by a wall of vegetation woven from the vines. He could not capture her, but he could slow her. He grinned as he pointed and gave a great cry as twenty of his minions hurled themselves on the Cimmarean.
They shall pay in the taking of me, by Chrome! She reared back and plunged both forehooves into the skill of the first savage to close with her and the mare's brains splattered her tribesponies. A red stallion to her right licked his lips and tittered, the light of madness showing in his eyes.
She lashed out with a buck as one of the villains tried to get behind her; the popping of a dislocated knee and a cry of pain rewarded her. She fended off four others with her the staff in her teeth, her powerful neck forcing the smaller foes back on the wet, slippery soil. Six more ponies launched themselves over the first row at her; she battered around with the staff, breaking teeth and knocking savages senseless, but two of them managed to land on her back. One scored her deeply with a stone knife and the other bit her on the neck. She rolled over on her side, sending them flying.
They backed off from her. She whirled the staff around in a figure eight pattern, then she saw an opening in the green wall and ran for it. In seconds she was immobilized as tendrils studded with thorns cut into her flesh. She looked back at the priest, who took the iron ring from one of his minions, both of them laughing with that horrible, humorless exhalation. Roanan struggled, but the stronger her exertions, the tighter the vines bound her. She howled in frustration and anger, a barbaric cry from the north which boomed through the jungle like a blast of arctic wind in a hothouse.
The priest grinned even broader and made gestures with his hands and arms, and Roanan found herself being dragged to the village.
______
Fleet Tracker silently watched all this transpire from concealment, but could do nothing. The Emerald God's miracle! Since there was nothing to be done, she watched carefully. The mass of savages followed the priest as the vines dragged the thrashing warmare towards the village, but one ran up the hill on the other side of the valley after a quick word. Hmmm. The Invisible Pony followed.
She followed the cannibal up a path on the side of the hill where the Laughing Pony made his way to a pile of vegetation. He moved it aside, revealing a cave entrance, and entered. Fleet Tracker followed quietly. She crept quietly behind and saw the villain stop before a small shrine. There, she saw a fierce pony head that had to be carved from a single emerald, and sitting in front of it were three glass cylinders that seemed to be set into the earth itself. The had lines marked on them, and in them were three liquids; one green, one brown and a clear liquid that seemed oily. The pony dipped a ladle into a jar and carefully poured green liquid, filling it up carefully to a specific line on the cylinder with green liquid. He did the same with the other liquids, each time using a different ladle, then bowed to the idol and left, passing the hidden Fleet Tracker.
She waited while he replaced the vegetation at the cave mouth. It was quite dark, but Fleet Tracker remembered the layout. Besides, what she planned didn't require much precision. She picked up each jar and poured some of whatever was in it into each of the cylinders, then smashed the jar against the wall of the cave. When all three jars had been emptied and smashed, she scooped up the emerald carving and exited, carefully replacing the mat of vegetation on the cave mouth. Then she crept stealthily back to the village.
When she got there, she saw Roanan bound with vines, sitting in the cage, while the priest was organizing thirty or so of the cannibals into a warband. The priest was using the vines from the jungle to toss Roanan's victims into the pot. Waste not, want not, I guess. Suddenly, the vines stopped their dubious culinary activities and started to writhe around, seemingly at random. The priest made various complex gestures, surprised and frustrated when the vines continued their contortions. His barking laugh sounded out as he clashed his wrists together, to no effect. His eyes widened with fear as one of the vines slashed past his head.
A brown pony with a green mane made a squawking sound as one of the vines wrapped around her waist and raised her thirty feet in the air. She shrieked as it released her and she fell screaming to land with an awful crunch, her legs and back broken. A blue pony with red and blue streaked hair was grabbed by two vines. His cry was cut short as the powerful vines pulled in two opposite directions and his guts sprayed across the horrified warband. The useless gestures made by the priest were becoming more frantic and random, as his panic claimed him.
Fleet Tracker stole towards the cage, keeping her distance from the chaos around her. She cut the vines binding the cage together and quickly did the same for Roanan. The great warmare grinned as Fleet Tracker cut her bonds, then both were running towards the beach as screams and cries followed them. They passed the rock outcropping and then ran down the slope, the beach visible between the trees. Tendrils whipped angrily past their faces and then they were out, the maddened jungle behind them.
Roanan grabbed up a cast off oar as she ran, following Fleet Tracker who was following the footprints that led to the top of a dune, and there over the crest were the five castaways, waiting with oars and boathooks. Roanan looked with hatred at the mate, who looked down, ashamed.
"Are they close?" The oarmaster stood with the slaves in a line, all four holding oars. The mate had claimed a boathook.
"They may be delayed. Something seems to have happened to their emerald god." The island pony removed figurine from her rude satchel and held it up, smiling as comprehension dawned in Roanan's eyes.
"Ha! I had wondered why the vines went mad! Well done, my friend!" Roanan's mood brightened. "Now all we have to do is kill everypony who comes to the beach! Come, let us watch." Roanan crawled to the crest, followed by the others, and watched the line of trees.
Presently, their patience was rewarded as ponies emerged from the forest, individually or in small groups, not as an organized group but as refugees, fleeing for their lives. Colts and fillies were among their number, many of them making the laughing barks that distinguished their tribe. Most of the tribesponies were unarmed, but some had spears or stone daggers. They gathered on the beach, about hundred yards away from the castaways, milling about, laughing and crying, many obviously distraught that their god had abandoned them.
Finally the priest made it out of that green hell with several of his warriors, covered in sap, leaves and bits of severed vine, a dark frown of rage upon his face. He started haranguing the milling mob and shortly he was sending individuals out, searching the dunes. "They'll find us soon. Be ready!"
A silvery-gray mare with a sandy mane, braided with bits of bone walked straight up their dune. Roanan struck out, quick as a snake, taking her in the temple with an oar, and she fell without a sound. The Invisible Pony crawled over the top of the dune and pulled the stunned mare behind the dune. She rolled the savage back down the dune to the other castaways. There were soft, wet sounds and Fleet Tracker could feel the bile rising in her stomach. But worse would come soon, for certain.
After a few minutes, the other scouts returned, but the mare who's brains now covered the reverse slope of the dune was missed. The band formed, twenty five strong, with perhaps a dozen armed, and struck out towards the escapees, with the priest with his warriors in the middle. Roanan grinned; she had survived worse odds than this.
The mob advanced with no order and no tactics. They spread out as they approached and the first three ponies arrived, unarmed, a full ten seconds before the next six. They crested the dune and Roanan broke the knee of the first one, who fell, tripping the other two. The mate caught one in the throat with the boathook, and he died, drowning in his own blood. One of the slaves, a green mare with a yellow mane who's name Roanan never learned told for the third, knocking her teeth out with an oar. Then the rest of the savages reached the crest, and the green slave died with a bone tipped spearpoint in her eye.
Roanan unleashed her barbaric wrath on the three ponies facing her, laying about with her oar, smashing a skull and breaking a neck. The third opponent leaped up and landed on her back, a dagger in her teeth stabbing for Roanan's kidneys, when a boathook hauled the savage mare off of the barbarian. Meaty sounds followed and the Cimmareian glanced to see the mate crushing a skull under her hooves. Then the next wave struck and her focus was limited to the three feet of ground in front of her.
Ponies died all around. The defenders were wounded by stone knives and bone spears, but the savages were not well used to fighting, perhaps from having the jungle do it for them for many years. One of the trained warriors appeared before Roanan and she crushed his larynx with a quick forward kick. Then the priest himself stood before her, his jeweled bracers flashing.
He reached into a crude bag and produced a flask, and made to throw it at Roanan. She shuddered at the though of whatever vile substance might be in it, but then the boathook flashed again and the vial was smashed in his hooves. The priest's eyes opened in horror as a gray cloud burst from the vial, enveloping him and four other ponies in the front rank. They fell back coughing, then all looked around in terror, suddenly beating themselves on the head, screaming, rolling around in the sand as though they were covered in biting insects or on fire. The started biting at their skin, and the priest himself took a dagger from his bag and started to peel off the skin of his face, gouging out his own eyes, sounding that horrible, humorless, mindless laugh as he cut out his own tongue.
The mate was next to Roanan, the boathook in her hooves, staring in disbelief at the scene before her. The dozen or so of the savages remaining fell back from the dune, terrified by the sight of their priest and warriors mutilating themselves, and fled back to where the fillies and colts cowered, a hundred yards up the beach. "Gray lotus dust, by the gods, or I'm a seapony's auntie!" The mate, a hardened slaver, turned to vomit what little was in her stomach onto the sand.
Fleet Tracker could stand no more and ran forward with her spear, stabbing the pathetic savages in their hearts and ending their nightmarish suffering. She returned to the crest of the dune and looked back, her bloody spear dripping on her coat, at the Laughing Ponies huddling miserably on the seashore. "Will they try us again, do you think?"
"No, that priest of theirs was their glue. They are done with us, I should think." Roanan motioned to the horrific sight before them. "They will not approach us again, but we must stand watch nonetheless." She looked at the dead former slave and the other two rowers bent forward, dragging her back down the slope as they fell back from their hill. As they dug a grave for their benchmate, Roanan approached the mate. "I have sworn to kill you, you know."
The mate stiffened, but showed no fear. "I but did my job, Cimmareian. But kill me if you will, if you can. You will find Fishfang no easy prey." The mate, a sea blue mare with white and green mane and tail and sparking green eyes dug her hooves into the sand to find better purchase.
"Nay, not now. You have saved me not once, but twice. I am still angry with you, but that could have been me tearing my eyes out. I don't like you, and I don't trust you, but I'll fight next to you. Drinking with you however..." The two belligerent mares nodded to one another. "Now, how do we get off this sandbar?"
"A signal fire. Should be somepony along in a few days. We can scrape together enough driftwood to make a decent blaze."
______
Three days later, a ship did come along. A corsair, called the Bloody Mare found some useful new crewmembers, who had among their possessions a certain number of gemstones, and Roanan, an iron ring on her breast, took up the life of a reaver on the Buck Coast. But that is another tale, .