SBMS106
We had displaced forward on the Baneway with the ambulances in anticipation of casualties, and we were sadly not disappointed. The chariots had offloaded their load of unicorns and witches to defend the nearest east-bank landing against pursuit, and the drivers collected the worst of the wounded into their rigs. They beat east with their heavy, bleeding loads, and Rye, I and the oxen raced northwards to rendezvous with the charioteers. The rest of the aerial cohort coasted and gyred above us as we transferred the wounded into ground transportation, and Rye and I scurried from armspony to armspony, triaging and checking tourniquets, retying those coming loose, loosing those that were likely to take the limb.
All the ambulances were filled, and Rye and I started working on the worst of the wounds in the backs of the moving carts, emergency surgery to save the worst of the worst, tying off arteries and re-opening closed airways while the oxen drove their vehicles as gently and smoothly as they could over uneven and rotting planking. We could feel when the ambulances reached the fresh metalling, the janking and jerking of the ambulances turned sweet and smooth. Nopony died from our rough field expedients.
We collected a coterie of volunteers from the guard and lookie-loos at Trollbridge, who Rye and I delegated to sit with the worst of the stable, to make sure none of them drifted away as we worked through the gift the Lieutenant had left crushed and bleeding upon my doorstep. We rolled right up to the hospital front door, and the volunteers started carrying the broken inside, and I had Rye play traffic-gendarme while I went in and started washing up for serious surgery.
I cut away limbs and wings without compunction; I performed risky thorax surgery to repair those ponies who had caught ballistae bolts in their guts or barrels. I soaked everything in sight with antiseptics, and dosed my patients liberally with alchemical potions reputed to protect against shock and infection. If we didn't lose anypony to infection, we still would be losing more than a dozen ponies to their wounds, career-ending losses of limbs and lung capacity. And they were armsponies we could least afford to lose, our precious, almost irreplaceable fliers. Removing the ruins of a shattered wing felt like blasphemy against… something.
Late, late afternoon saw the last of the patients put away asleep and doped up in the sadly crowded wards. Their friends prepared to stand vigil over them, and promised to come get Rye or me if any of them got through all the potions I had poured into them and went into shock or crisis. The oxen were asleep in their quarters, and Rye and I stumbled over to the main mess hall to fill our stomachs before finding our own beds and rest before the next round of work. With so many amputations, there would be a lot of intensive wound care in the days ahead.
When we arrived, the hall was mostly empty, just holding Carrot Cake and his baker, talking quietly. The standard-bearer had been among the volunteers waiting at the southern bastion, and had rode back into Dance Hall holding the hoof of Throat Kicker, who would never again fly frantically behind her apprentice-charge, failing to keep the little thestral out of the trouble she found like a guided missile. Cherie was sleeping beside her one-winged knight in the infirmary, having cried herself out.
As I devoured a plate of warm sausage, and Rye her fried hay and lentil soup, I listened to Carrot telling the baker of the losses, and the distraught little filly. "At least she didn't lose her entirely this time," I interjected. "This time about two years ago, she lost her entire family to the ghouls. Filly buried her own mother. Throat Kicker is probably headed into the convalescent homes when she recovers. It's the end of her active career, but there's a lot that a one-winged pegasus can do in the supports. Learn a new trade, something like that."
"You know that children don't think in those terms, Sawbones. They think in symbols, and stories. Hmm. I've got an idea. Come on, here's some take-out. Filly will be hungry by now, and she likes those vile sausage-buns you have me make you. Still warm from the oven."
The filly was awake when we returned, staring angrily at the unconscious Throat Kicker's bloody-bandaged stump. While I looked at the bandage, and gestured for Rye to help me replace it and check the drainage ties, the baker pulled the filly aside and tried to hug her. Cherie shrugged off the contact, and snarled.
"The Princess, all she can say is that Ma'am was brave, and knightly. What good is that? Valiant dead, pfeh. She's not dead, is she? Just estropié. We had un infirme, un retraité in the back house, cleaned the house, when granmere wasn't beating her 'pour être une flemme'," the little filly said this last in a growling, harsh imitation of some long-dead relative. "I don't want Ma'am to have to be like Kallie!"
"There, there, dear heart. Where there's life, there's hope. You may be locked away, but there's always a key. You may be trapped in your body, but even broken bodies can be made a home with the right spirit."
"What story could fix this?" spat the angry little thestral.
"Stories don't fix anything, they can only help us understand ourselves, and see how we can live with what we can't change. That last bit is the hard part, isn't it? Did I ever tell you of the story of Dragonheart?"
"No, I don't think so. Isn't the time for adventure stories, Miss Cake."
"Oh, Dragonheart's story isn't an adventure, although she was an adventurer in her own way. Dragonheart was an angry, greedy little filly. She was the youngest foal of ten, in a family of very minor mages. She was always the last at the bowl, the last in line. She had to scrabble and grasp and cheat to get even half of her fair share from her hungry and larger siblings." The earth pony calmed down the squirming filly, stroking her disheveled mane into something resembling order.
"Dragonheart left home as soon as she possibly could. The little unicorn was more likely to find a full meal working for her hay among the earth ponies in the countryside, than in her parents' disordered and crowded house. She did little feats of magic for those she met, and grew out a bit from the extra food. But she was always going to be short, and scrawny, no matter how much hay she gobbled down, how many pastries she pushed down her throat. There was a hole in her, that food couldn't fill.
"Dragonheart became a bit of a trader, carting worthless stuff away from one village, and finding another village where they needed that sort of trash for whatever. Not many bits in it, not initially, but she scraped together a little bankroll, and started trading in lower-volume, higher-value goods. She developed a reputation for being sharp, for knowing a deal when she saw one, knowing when the prices were low, when she could buy that low and bring it somewhere where the prices were high.
"But that little, grinding business wasn't enough for her hunger. If food couldn't fill her hole, a few copper bits certainly wouldn't." More ponies were awake, and listening.
Some of the anesthetics were wearing off. I left for a moment, to collect painkillers and my kit of potions. When I returned, Rye and Cherie were still listening to the story, and as I made my rounds in the wards, I listened to the story with one ear, while I did my work.
"…and she truly thought that the donkey had sold her a bad tip, but it was too late for Dragonheart. She couldn't return the way she came, but she could retreat deeper into the dark woods. And, ahead and overhead, was a slight haze of smoke. She followed the fumes, to where it was trickling out of a hidden crack in the earth, half-obscured by black, tangled branches.
"Inside the cave opening, she found it opened up into a cavern, brightly lit by the beams of the sun shining down through a crystal-lined fissure in the cavern roof. A great pile of fineries and wealth was just sitting there, sitting in the middle of the floor of the cavern, gems and gold bits shining in the reflected light of Celestia's sun."
"Just sitting out in the open, without anypony guarding it?" asked Rye, skeptically.
"Yes," said Cup Cake, "Dragonheart was no more of a fool than you are, dearie. She sidled around the obvious trap, or illusion, or whatever it was, looking for the spider or monster lurking to snap up an unwary and greedy pony. Whatever it was, it hid deep in the shadows beyond the beam of light, and she could not find it, though this was not a cavern of infinite depth or volume. Whatever lurked and guarded that trove, did not want to be found.
"Dragonheart was greedy, almost as greedy as her namesake, but she was not a fool, and she knew that nothing was so expensive as 'free'. She sighed, and trotted back to the exit into the world beyond, to try her luck with the timberwolves. Perhaps they had gotten bored, and had found something else to torment.
"But, as she went to leave the cave, she heard a great, deep voice beg her, 'oh, please, please don't leave without taking something. Anything!' She froze, as the echoes surrounded her, buffeted her with almost physical force. When sound goes deep enough, you can feel it in your barrel, a deep throb. This was the force of the plea that stopped her in her tracks.
"From a crack she had not found in her brief search, snaked a great scaled head, the vast red eyes opening above her. 'Please take something, anything. I don't want it anymore, I don't want any of it.'
"'How could you possibly not want all of that?' she asked. 'Look at it all! It's a princess's ransom!'
"'I know, for I stole it over many years,' said the loud voice. 'From ponies' homes and castles, from griffins almost as greedy as I, from industrious minotaurs and humble donkeys. This, this is a dragon's hoard. I do believe that no dragon in Equestria holds a hoard the like of mine!' The great wyrm - for that was what was guarding the treasure-trove, a vast and mighty dragon of great size - that dragon's eyes narrowed in pride, earned pride. 'And yet - it is, perhaps, too great. I feel the call of the gathering, the migration. But I cannot leave here, for I have grown too big. And I've been so for longer than you might imagine. This is the third calling I will have missed.'
"For the thing about dragons, is that their stature is driven by that which they own. As far as we lesser mortals go, we grow as great as our foalhood and our feeding allows, but once one becomes a full adult - well, that is it. In your adulthood you are as large as you will ever be. There are no limits to the growth of dragons, for they say that a dragon is as great as her greed. They say that one great wyrm once put claim to an entire world, a complete pearl upon the Chain of Creation, and that wyrm grew so great that her head laid upon the eastern limb of the world, and her tail curled around the western, and that between the sun and moon lay more wyrm than world.
"For the problem is, that when dragons grow so great, they become slow, and inflexible. Sometimes, the holes they made into lairs grow too tight, and they find that they cannot crawl out of what they climbed into. They trap themselves with their own greed. It was this very fate that had befallen the dragon of the treasure-trove. Here he was, hidden away from the eyes of the world, and not even greedy adventurers could save him from himself, for all of the greed in the world could not advertise to an unknowing world that this hillside hid a dragon's hoard.
"Dragonheart, who despite her name knew nothing of dragons, was rightfully suspicious. 'What, I should trigger your curse? Will it turn me into something tasty, a mint to season your dinner? Faugh, my dam foaled many children, but not a one of them was a fool.'
"'Oh please, little pony. If you would not take something, at least tell someone else of the vast wealth that lies in this cavern, that someone else would steal from me, and make me small again. I would like to see the sun unreflected through crystal once again.'
"This actually touched the small, shell-like heart of little Dragonheart, for she was not made of stone. But she was still stubborn, and insisted, 'What wealth? Wealth is that which makes us prosperous. This is nothing but a pile of trinkets, the wrack and ruin of a great house, torn out of its mansion and strewn out across a cavern floor. What good are luxuries, laid out on a damp stone surface? Wealth is a snug home full of family and friends. Everything else is bits, and reputation. And my reputation would be horseapples if I told ponies that there were great piles of gold and gems up here in the woods, and didn't warn them of the mad dragon hiding with his hoard!'
"'Oh, I promise not to harm any of my thieves! How would I escape if I were to eat the very ponies would otherwise allow me to grow small enough to squirm out of this trap I've made for myself?'
"The two stared each other down, stuck in this impasse between Dragonheart's greed and her caution, for she truly was desperate for the dragon's stuff, and lied in least in part when she denounced it as trash and refuse. It might have been trash, but it was glittery, golden trash, and she could make her fortune with the wonders hidden within that hoard.
"Finally, her resolution broke, and she agreed to fill her saddle-bags, as proof, she said, of his willingness to not eat his thieves. She would return afterwards, and they would discuss the matter further, based on the premise that she would not, ever, be eaten.
"She left the cavern, her burdened bags heavy upon her withers, and she had quite an adventure escaping the attentions of the timber-wolves, who were the very by-word for patient, and laid in wait for the little unicorn. But somehow she found the fire inside to fight off the wood-wrought monsters, and scared them off, scorched and smouldering. Apparently crisis had helped her get over her incapacity with fire-throwing, because she had found the fire-spell suddenly came to her as if it were second-nature.
"Dragonheart sold off her prizes, and banked her gains with the money-changers she did business with, but she didn't tell a soul of the bonanza in the forest. She returned to the dragon's cave, trusting in ponies' fear of the dark wood and the monsters that guarded it, to keep any other thieves from following her to horn in on her new business. She made two more trips, and by the second trip, the dragon was giddy, gleeful at the results of his hoard-diet. He was once again thin, and lithe, and nearly small enough to fit through the narrow crack in the world through which he once had crawled.
"Dragonheart, on the other hand, had found some strange late growth spurt, and trip by trip, had gained hoof after hoof of height, and weight, and breadth. By the third trip, she was as tall as any unicorn in the eastlands, and as strong as any she knew. Her hooves had grown sharp, and a little serrated - that means jagged or toothed, dearies - and her eyes had grown strange and flecked with red. She had encountered some difficulties finding buyers for her last consignment, the once-little unicorn was now scaring her customers with her somewhat smoky affect.
"When she returned for another load to the dragon's cave, she looked and she looked, but she couldn't find her dragon. She eventually searched around the entrance itself, and there she found scrapings of scales along the walls and on the floor - the dragon had squeezed out of his trap while she had been gone. No note.
"Somehow, this made Dragonheart sad, that her dragon had left without waiting for her to steal from him one last time. She curled up on his abandoned hoard, and went to sleep. And she slept for a long, long time. They say she slept for years, curled upon that mound of artwork, of fine furnishings, bits and gems. And every month she laid sleeping on the hoard, she grew more dragon-like upon her dragon's hoard. She didn't need food, she didn't need ponies, she didn't need the sun. She had her dragon's hoard, and she had her dreams of the dragon.
"She might have laid there forever, to this very day, dreaming of dragons and great piles of glittery stuff, if the dragon hadn't returned one day, for what reason I cannot say. He found another dragon laying upon his hoard, and sighed, saying to himself, 'well, leave a hoard unattended for a decade, and some other dragon will claim it', and turned away from what was now the other dragon's hoard. There was etiquette for this sort of thing.
"Harmony must have smiled upon Dragonheart, because something awoke her as the dragon turned to leave the cavern for the last time. 'Oh! Dragon!' cried Dragonheart. 'I fell asleep waiting for you! You left without saying goodbye! Oh, I feel strange. How was the sun and the outside world?'
"His eyes wide, he asked, 'Little thief, is that you? It is your voice, but you are, you are not a pony anymore, I believe?'
"Little Dragonheart was more than a little put out by her sudden transformation - well, sudden for her. But nopony can be too grouchy after a nice, long nap like that, and the two of them made the best out of a strange situation. The dragon had fell out of the social swirl of things in his long absence in that snug cavern, and had found that he didn't really relate to other dragons anymore. And Dragonheart found that that cave had almost become homelike after long residence within. It was barely damp at all, and once you dressed up the walls a bit, almost ponylike.
"They divided the ownership of that hoard, and made sure that neither of them grew too great to get out and about when they had to leave the cave. And between the two of them, they found that there was a considerable business to be done in incinerating timber-wolves and beating back the dark magic of deep forests and dark woods." Throat Kicker had awoken at some point while Cup Cake had been telling sad-eyed Cherie her story, the little filly curled up in the earth pony's lap beside Throat Kicker's bed. The pegasus's eyes glittered as she listened, a little spacy from the lingering effects of the laudanum.
"They hung the medal, given them by the Crown for their service in the recovery of the heartlands, over the great bassinet Dragonheart built, where their hatchlings could bat it about as it were a toy."
Cherie looked up at the end of the story, and saw her knight was awake. There was a great deal of tears, but that was their business. I let the Cakes out of the infirmary, and returned to my bloody business.