//------------------------------//
// Sinsear 
// Story: Courts of The Magi 
// by Airstream 
//------------------------------//

Vino woke to the hiss of ice and the sensation of gentle rocking, which did no wonders for his throbbing head and aching joints. After a moment to compose himself, he opened his eyes wide, hoping for a small mercy. The bright light of sunlight refracted and reflected off of ice caused him to close them again with a hiss of pain. There was apparently no mercy to be had here. His mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with dirty cotton, and his belly felt full of burning snakes. He recognized the symptoms of a hangover, though he’d never felt quite this horrible, even after a night of heavy drinking. The swaying underneath him, which he felt sure wasn’t entirely in his head, wasn’t helping matters, either.
 
He opened his eyes again, this time only a crack, and was rewarded with the sight of a wooden wall, curving up and away from him. His mind, still partially addled by drink, took a moment to realize the wall was in fact a bulkhead, and for a brief moment, he thought he might have been on a riverboat, though the chill wind that seeped into him, even through the blanket, proved otherwise. 
 
He got to his hooves with a groan, opened his eyes a bit more, and blinked in puzzlement. Around him, lines fastened themselves to tackles, canvas snapped, and around him swirled snow blown by a strangely warm wind. The combination of movement and bright light together with the unrelenting swaying of the floor beneath him brought him forward and over to the side of the ship, where he began to immediately retch, expelling the contents of his stomach onto the rapidly moving ice below.
 
“Morning, sailor!” a cheerful voice from behind him said. Vino spun around to see Cobblestone, a rag tied around her eyes and her horn burning blue, the same shade that he could now see dancing around the ropes. He attempted to ask what was going on, but was cut short when his stomach violently contracted again.
 
Cobblestone grimaced. “I don’t know why you decided last night was going to be a good night to get sopping drunk, but at least it kept you from asking stupid questions. There’s water in the bottom of the boat.”
 
Vino, finally having nothing left to throw up, turned to the hold of the boat. It was, as he had expected, an open-air ship, with a single mast and square sail. It swayed back and forth, cradled by two runners on either side that scraped against the ice with a sound like a burning fuse. The ship wasn’t large, but it was moving quickly, and Vino could tell at a glance that it would require only a few crewmembers.
 
He took a swig from the waterskin that he found in the bottom of the boat. “I didn’t know you knew how to sail,” he croaked, feeling like garbage. “Unless you were a pirate as well as a thief?”
 
Cobblestone snorted. “I don’t know how to sail,” she said, “But we have two other crewmembers who do.” She pointed to the prow of the ship, where two more figures were huddled. 
 
Vino peered blearily at the pair, and realized that one had to be Rota, clutching her staff, and administering to another pony. “Serale?” he called hopefully. “Is that you?”
 
The pony in the prow turned around, revealing familiar pretty features, a clear horn, blonde mane, a pair of purple eyes. But the face held no emotion, her mane blew across her face without being pushed aside, her eyes held no glimmer of recognition. His heart sank.
 
“She’s awake, Vino,” Cobblestone said from behind him, much closer now. “I can see her soul burning in her chest. She just needs a while, she’ll come back to us. But in the meantime, I need somepony to take the tiller.” She indicated the post behind her, cocooned in a azure glow. “I can’t keep the tiller straight, the rigging up, and the wind blowing us for much longer. The only reason I’m not unconscious right now is that I’m still drugged to the gills and using some of the energy from the Horn.”
 
Vino glanced behind them and saw the monolithic peak behind them, looming over the ice like cold judgement. He shuddered with the cold and looked even closer. Behind them, spread across the ice, were a dozen other shapes, moving towards them. They were gaining.
 
“They’ve been catching up to us for the past hour,” Cobblestone said quietly. “I managed to get you into the boat with Rota’s help before dawn, and it was about an hour after dawn that we first caught sight of them. There’s probably going to be a fight.”
 
Vino nodded weakly, tasting bile in his mouth again. “I can help,” he said. “I know sailing like I know fighting.” He limped over to the tiller, taking it in his hooves. “Tighten up the portside lines, the ones on the left, and start shedding ballast. We’ve got about fifty pounds of stuff we don’t need. Dump the water casks first, if they manage to catch us then we won’t need to worry about finding fresh water, and if they don’t, then we’ll have a couple days to figure out where to get more.”
 
Cobblestone raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t peg you as the sailor type,” she said, as she did as Vino asked. Immediately, the ship began to sway less, and the hissing of the runners climbed in pitch. The hull began to hum as wind flew past it, Vino angling the ship to take full advantage of the stiff breeze Cobblestone was calling up. His head still throbbed, but the brisk wind in his face, tugging at his mane, gave him energy he hadn’t had before.
 
A crate containing dried meat flew over his head, smashing to splinters on the ice behind him. He set a course for a small dip in the ice, a low canyon formed by a field of rocks, and hoped to put some distance between him and the pursuers, now close enough that Vino could hear war drums echoing strangely on the shifting winds.
 
“I grew up wanting to be a sailor,” Vino said. “Airships never held much interest to me, but the riverboats carrying Hedera goods always fascinated me. I actually considered taking a commission in the Navy before I decided I wanted to follow in father’s hoofsteps and became a knight.”
 
“Fascinating,” Cobblestone said. “But we can swap childhood aspirations when we aren’t being chased by bloodthirsty minotaurs and your psychotic pegasus girlfriend.”
 
“Wait, what?” Vino asked. He set the tiller, which pulled the ropes on the sail taut and locked their course in for the moment, and turned to examine the boats behind him. Sure enough, he could see a few pegasi hovering around the masts of the iceships in the distance, and one of them was an easily identifiable shade of cold blue. 
 
As he watched, the group of pegasi attempted to pull ahead in an arrowhead formation, but they veered off about two hundred yards short of the ship, spreading back out to hover above the iceships once more. One or two of them touched down in the ships, at which point they were replaced by an equivalent number of rested pegasi. Arctia was one of the few who still flew.
 
“Every time they do that, I can feel the wind almost die. They’re getting better and I can’t hold the wind forever anyway,” Cobblestone said, tossing a few more barrels of water over the side, strewing the ice behind them with barrel staves and a few boxes of what looked like jerky. She tossed a slender band of metal at him, which he almost fumbled, but he managed to hold onto it long enough to see it was a bladeband. “I’d put that on.”
 
Vino turned back to the tiller after doing so, feeling the metal pulse warmly against his coat. “Keep the wind up as long as you can,” he said. He made a slight adjustment to the iceship’s course, veering towards the dip in the ice and the field of rocks. “I’m going to try to lose them in the rocks ahead.”
 
Cobblestone froze for a moment. “Are you sure that’’s a good idea?” she asked. “It’s going to be really difficult to escape the minotaurs if all of our bones are broken.”
 
“I don’t know if you noticed,” Vino said calmly, “Probably not since you’ve been unconscious for the past week, but the minotaurs have bows. And arrows, the size of small spears.”
 
As if on cue, there was a whistling hiss from overhead, and a large stave of wood, tipped with a cruelly barbed arrowhead, buried itself in the deck, quivering slightly. Cobblestone, though she couldn’t see the arrow, jumped at the sound and vibration. Immediately, she turned to the front of the boat.
 
“Get down!” she hollered to Serale and Rota. “Stay low, don’t put your heads up. And prepare to get thrown around a bit!”
 
Rota did as Cobblestone asked, taking the still-sluggish Serale down with her just as another two arrows hissed past, one punching a small hole in the sailcloth while the other landed less than a foot to starboard.
 
“They’re good shots,” Vino said through gritted teeth as he juked the boat right to avoid yet more arrows. “I saw them hunt. If we can keep moving and keep them from getting a good shot, we run a better chance to maybe wrecking a few boats. They won’t bother chasing us forever if it means losing iceships.”
 
They entered the rocks at top speed. Vino felt his world narrow to a tunnel as he focused intently on the path ahead. He couldn’t yet see the end of the rocky expanse, but he knew, deep in his gut, that if he could make it to the valley ahead, they would be able to gain a substantial amount of distance. His head sang with pain and the vague fuzziness of drink, and he realized that piloting a ship on skis through a field of stones while hungover and half-drunk was likely to get them all killed, but it was also, somehow, their best option. The bows had ridiculously long ranges and could bring down caribou sprinting a hundred yards off with a skilled archer. The comparatively slow and bulky ship would prove an easy target.
 
Another arrow, this one on fire, narrowly missed the sail, plunging towards the deck. Cobblestone reacted on instinct, knowing without seeing that the dart meant for her was inbound, and quickly reduced it to ash with a small bolt of lightning from her horn. There was the crack of thunder a moment later, and the quickest whiff of ozone before it was borne away on the wind.
 
“If you could,” she shouted to Vino as she tossed yet more of the ship’s cargo behind them, “Try and move us around a bit more!”
 
Vino’s only response was to yank suddenly on the tiller, sending her to the deck as he narrowly avoided a massive low outcropping of stone that he hadn’t seen until the last minute. He was going to get them killed, he thought. This was idiocy of the worst kind, only going to end in terribly painful death. But he kept his grip on the tiller, and swung them backwards and forwards through the jumbled stones as best he could, and every moment still alive was another small success.
 
The first of the pursuing ships reached the edge of the stones behind them, and tried to emulate Vino’s maneuverings with some success. Unfortunately for the passengers, their ship was not nimble enough, nor was their helmsman skilled enough to avoid the stones for long. With a long, shivering crack, the ship was sheared in two by a particularly pointy rock, spilling its contents onto the ground. Vino heard rather than saw the screaming minotaurs hitting the ice behind them, their cries of pain and panic cut horribly short as they hit more rocks, or worse, were hit by the few iceships who could still pursue their little craft through the rocks.
 
The iceship barreled down the hill into the canyon like a shot from a rifle, kicking up a trail of snow in their wake. Vino was amazed that the wind that had carried them so far was still at their backs, and though he wasn’t paying Cobblestone much mind, he made a note to commend her later on, regardless of the outcome, on her outstanding spellcasting. 
 
Thunder rumbled overhead, and Vino glanced up for a brief moment. A storm, an actual icestorm, was rolling in from seemingly nowhere. It was heading directly for them, and with it, he could see a black shadow covering the ground ahead. One they were underneath that cloud, he realized, not only would they have to deal with the deadly cold and wind of the storm itself, but they’d have to do it in complete blackness.
 
“Cobblestone!” he shouted to the apprentice mage, who was tossing the last of the boarding hooks over the side, “Get rid of the storm! I can’t maneuver in that!”
 
Cobblestone turned back to him. “What storm?” she screamed back as she seized a tightly bound pack of skis and threw them off the port stern. “I’m almost spent keeping the wind up!”
 
Vino’s heart sank. He looked around desperately for options, finding precious few. They would be out of the depression in the ice soon, back out amongst the rocks. They’d be in bowshot of the few remaining ships unless he could do something daring, and quick. His eyes fell upon the end of the valley, and an impressive rock formation at the head. Quickly, he hit upon an idea.
 
“Hold tight!” he called, and as soon as they cleared the valley edge, he hauled hard to port on the tiller, causing the runners beneath the ship to skitter dangerously, losing some of their precious speed as he began to carve a divot into the ice. He’d have to conserve as much energy as possible in the turns for this to work. “Cobblestone!” he shouted. “How much energy do you have left?”
 
“Not much, if you want me useful if they catch up!” she said. “I’ve got another minute at the most.”
 
That ice storm, which was moving incredibly quickly, would be there well before then, and with it the darkness. The minotaurs would probably be there right about then, or soon after, Vino estimated. 
 
“Right,” he called. “We’re near the end. Give it everything you’ve got, hold nothing back. Can you give me gusts of wind on my mark?”
 
Cobblestone was quiet for a moment. “I can do that,” she said, finally. “Give me the command, and I can give you a few extra gusts.”
 
Vino nodded, bringing them back around towards their original point of turning, right before the canyon. He waited until he could see the deep grooves on the ice coming up alongside them before he shouted “Now!” and hauled hard to port on the tiller.
 
The gust of wind that caught them almost spun them around completely, but Vino kept the tiller steady and strained against the ship’s desire to pirouette. The runners skittered again, leaving another set of rough divots in front of the first, spreading a good forty yards off to the right. Vino immediately tacked diagonally into the wind, preparing them to swing back around in a long loop to conserve energy. As they came back around, Vino waited until they were parallel with the other divots before he hauled to port on the tiller and shouted.
 
“Again!” he cried, and this time he could see flecks of ice spraying up as the skids dug into the ice, leaving large, jagged holes in them. The ship groaned in warning, and fishtailed as they came back into their next pass. Vino strained as the tiller pushed against his chest, trying to fly free. With a great effort, he kept it true, and they started back into another loop. They sped back across the mouth of the valley, and this time, before they turned and dug another divot, Vino could see three iceships, no more or less, speeding down the valley after them. His heart raced. They might actually be able to survive their pursuit.
 
He turned them at a shallower angle, taking them back out toward the outcropping of stone. It was their that they’d be most protected from the storm, now mere moments away. The sky began to darken, and Vino could suddenly hear the drums of the minotaurs clearly behind them, a sign that they had freed themselves from the confine of the valley. He checked behind them and saw that they were angling straight for them, two smaller skiffs their size and a larger vessel, atop which was perched Arctia, garbed in armor and furs. 
 
Vino cursed as they sped towards the rock, their skids making an odd growling noise that he supposed must be from the damage they had taken digging the small trenches into the ice. He knew instinctively that they would not be getting anywhere fast on this ship while the rails made that noise. They had one chance at survival.
 
There was a terrible screeching crack from behind them, and the light vanished just as Vino caught a glimpse of the first iceship hitting the trenches they had dug behind them, causing it to tip onto one side. Shouts of alarm rose from the ship as the skids rattled menacingly, and then, with a dull screech, one of them came loose. 
 
The ship was swallowed up by the darkness just as it listed to port, hull splintering on the ice and crew spilling over the sides with terrified shouts, and Vino felt a thrill of victory as he heard another of the iceships hitting the divots behind them, with a similar cracking noise.
 
“We did it, Cobblestone!” he cried, turning back around. His eyes widened, and he hauled desperately on the tiller. The ship, finally passing the edge of its endurance, shuddered. A rail came loose from the bottom with a terrible howling crack, and the ship began to spin, no longer balanced on the ice. The rock, which Vino hadn’t paid much mind to, came up fast. Vino had a split second.
 
“Brace!” he called, letting the now-useless tiller swing wildly. He lunged for Cobblestone, who, surprised, was getting ready to pitch over the side of the ship. He hit her in midair, hoping Rota or Serale could do the same to one another at the bow, and curled around her in a defensive ball. The entwined pair hit the ice hard, and Vino felt something in his shoulder giving away as they skittered across the slick tundra, spinning sickeningly toward a rocky outcropping. 
 
He felt Cobblestone shift, and cry out a few words in a language he didn’t know. There was a rush of warm air, and he felt the ice beneath them melt, and their momentum was cut immediately. The spinning slowed, the skid became a controlled tumble, and Vino, dizzy as he was, closed his eyes until he felt the motion cease. He stumbled to his hooves, wincing in pain. One of his shoulders was definitely sprained or torn. He held out his good hoof to Cobblestone, hauling her to her hooves. 
 
“Are you alright?” he asked. There wasn’t much time, they needed to find a defensible position. He knew that there was at least one iceship that had survived his impromptu rough patch, and that didn’t bode well at the best of times.
 
Cobblestone nodded. “Serale and Rota,” she said, pointing a short distance away. “They’re over there. I managed to cushion them with a bit of air.”
 
Sure enough, Vino could see a pair of figures straightening up not twenty paces from him. He left Cobblestone to collect herself, rushing to the elderly Gryphon and the dazed young Lady. “Rota,” he said urgently. “Lady Serale. We need to move quickly. If we find a choke point, I might be able to hold off the survivors from those ships.”
 
Rota sighed. “Of course,” she grumbled. “I’ll just climb the rocks, shall I? Not like I’m four hundred years old.”
 
Serale’s eyes met Vino’s. “I…” she said, her voice dreamy and drowsy. “You are...I know you.”
 
Vino nodded. “I am your knight, Lady Serale.” He checked over his shoulder, our past the long spars of rock that seemed to make something of a natural harbor. Beyond, he could see a large iceship, one that had to carry at least fifty, striking its sails. There was no hurry on its decks, no rush. Vino knew in his gut that Beraz was on board. And Beraz would know, as any hunter, that he’d cornered his prey. He could take his time with them.
 
He turned back to Serale. “We have to go,” he said. “Lady Serale, assist the Gryphon. We’ll find a place in these rocks to make a stand.”
 
“Vino!” Cobblestone shouted. She staggered towards him, her blasted eyes peering sightlessly. “I’ve just lost my magic!”
 
Vino’s shoulders sagged, an action that caused him pain. Dammit, he thought. Damnation and ruination. We’re not going to make it out of this. A thought occurred to him, a thought that turned his stomach. I never took part in the escape attempt. I could run to the thane’s ship. He might spare my life.
 
He turned to Cobblestone, to Serale and Rota. They’d be defenseless. If he turned them back over to the thane, he’d probably be spared. He might be punished, but even though the thane was a brute, he wasn’t an idiot. He’d have to know that Vino couldn’t have had much to do with an escape attempt if he had been passed out drunk not an hour before. It’d be easy to convince him.
 
And capture didn’t necessarily mean death or torture for everyone. Hay, with Serale awake, she might be able to argue her case to the thane and protect them all. It could work. The alternative was death, certain death, for him, probably for Cobblestone and Rota. Maybe for Serale, as well.
 
He sighed. He was only justifying giving up, and he knew it. Not exactly knightly, he thought. And let’s be honest. The thane would probably torture us all to death anyway, if Arctia doesn’t get to us first.
 
He stared towards the rocky mound ahead, some dim part of him noting its resemblance to some great, hulking beast, crouched against the cold, or perhaps crumpled into an eternal icy slumber. He took a deep breath, thinking as quickly as his pounding head would let him.
 
“Right,” he said. “Rota, head for that gap up ahead.” He indicated a crack in the stones that would probably shield them all from the elements for a time while also affording cover from the sky. “You’re going to need to lead Cobblestone and Serale, I’ll buy you enough time. Find a place that we can defend.”
 
Rota stared at him. “You’ll die if you stay here,” she said. “And we soon after.”
 
Vino shrugged. “We all die eventually,” he said. He squared his shoulders, and with effort, called the bladeband from around his hoof, the steel shimmering a reddish hue as it turned from a simple bracelet to an arming sword. “Go,” he said. “Keep my Lady safe.”
 
Rota, to her everlasting credit, did not bother with a response. She simply nodded, turned, and began shepherding Serale towards the rocks, while dragging Cobblestone along by the remarkably simple expedient of placing her tail in the blind pony’s mouth.
 
Vino spared them only a glance before looking towards the ship. He felt a twitch of warning as he watched several minotaurs begin vaulting over the sides, forming ranks in good order. Unsure of what was the cause, he simply flicked the sword up over his head. There was a dreadful clang and a feeling of impact, and Vino heard another one of those massive arrows, fired by a minotaur in the back of the thane’s iceship, clatter to the ice behind him.
 
He took a step back, moving his sword without thinking once, twice. Two more of the darts were swatted out of the air. Vino felt a strange sort of energy rush along his spine, and there was the odd sensation of candyfloss and cherries and vanilla, and a rush of pearlescent blue fire.
 
And then a voice spoke to him, a voice that was entirely unfamiliar. It was high pitched, obviously feminine. It bubbled over with abundant cheer, even though the words it spoke were subdued and serious. And oddly enough, Vino felt a grim tugging at his lips, exhausted and injured though he was. He rested one hoof on the ground, and found that though the pain was still there, he was able to somehow ignore it.
 
Well, look at you! I’d wondered when another one would show up!
 
Vino’s brow furrowed as he watched a few pegasi take to the skies overhead. He’d finally cracked. He was hearing voices.
 
That’s not very nice, the voice continued. And you’re a tiny bit too serious for a member of MY family. But hey, sometimes you’ve got to put the toys away, right?
 
Vino realized he didn’t feel cold at all anymore. He felt good. Really good, actually. He felt like he could jump ten feet in the air and waltz quickly enough to melt the ice beneath his hooves.
 
It took me awhile to get here, but then you had a party, and anypony who’s anypony knows I don’t miss a party! So let’s you and I show these meanies what a good, old fashioned Pie pounding looks like, huh?
 
Vino nodded. He snickered, feeling the blood rush underneath his skin, and began to bounce lightly in place. The minotaurs began to advance at a jog. He backed up another step. The rocks around him, fanned out like ribs, made a perfect arena. He’d show these minotaurs what it was to fight a knight of the Evening Kingdom. And if it meant having a bit of fun, then he’d be glad to laugh while doing it.