//------------------------------// // 45. Weary Trails // Story: The Atlantean-Dominion War // by The Atlantean //------------------------------// Sarge held a telescope with one hoof as he jotted down notes with the other. He and a few scouts stood on a bluff overlooking the Harmony Run Delta, where the river spread out across the northern end of the Mega Peninsula. Half a day’s hard gallop west-northwest of them, an extremely weary AREA camped in the rocky highlands that stretched from the Whispering Mountains to the bluffs encircling Nautinia. They’d been going so long and hard that all of them, Sarge included, had fainted of exhaustion at least once. Medical was constantly busy dealing with heat stroke and dehydration, both camped and on the move. “Tomorrow, we camp here. Private Grassfield, relay that, will you? There’s plenty of shade in the trees in the area and we’ve got ourselves a good view of the peninsula. Make sure you get water when you get there,” Sarge said as he put the scope down and closed it in on itself. “The Harmony Run falls off the highlands about half an hour’s walk to the east, so we’ll have clean fresh water and the boys can take a swim. That’ll raise morale by a long shot. Corporal Terra, how are we looking on supplies?” “Food’s low, sir,” Terra said as Grassfield hurried back to the main army. “Water as well, but the Run should fix that. Medical needs clean bandages and new surgical tools fast. The ones they have are all but gone. As for their ice packs, they’ve all thawed. Again, the Run can help us with cold water. Ammo’s down to sixty rounds per, including officers. The repeaters Queen Atlanta sent us never arrived where she said they would; in fact, the party sent there never came back. That supply round was supposed to get us back to full on ammo.” “Damn. Are communications spells still blocked?” “Yes, sir,” the green Unicorn replied. “Does Silvercrest even know we’re coming? Did our scout get to Atlanta? Where the hell is Treetop? I have so many questions that can’t be answered because the Doms can block us!” Sarge stomped his hoof down in frustration, leaving a horseshoe-shaped dent in the dirt. “Sir, we can only hope Private Temporal made it.” “I know.” Sarge gestured to the delta before them. “If it wasn’t so damn hot around here in midwinter, I would never have left for the army. The climate around Starsong was a lot more forgiving.” A day later, a full third of the army was sleeping, another third expectantly awaiting the end of their shifts, and the final third goofing around in the river. So many were playing, in fact, that Sarge had no possible hope of disciplining them if things went haywire. Sarge walked into the tent reserved for Medical to check on the tired doctors and field nurses. Unsurprisingly, only half of them were on duty, one of them being Nurse Lieutenant Thorn. She’d practically run Medical after they lost their chief at Emberforge Valley. Even with all that paperwork, she was still able to find time to do her duty as a medical officer, treating the wounded and comforting the dying. Luckily, it was usually the former. “Good morning, ma’am. It’s gonna be another hot one today.” Rose Thorn looked up from her old, battered tools. “Indeed, sir.” She picked up a scalpel and ran a stone down the notched blade, sharpening it. “You need something, sir?” she asked when he didn’t leave. “Not really, Lieutenant. I’m simply doing my job.” “I see. Do you know when we can expect new tools?” Sarge shook his head. “Sorry, Thorn, but I don’t think your request even made it to the Nautinia supply depot. If it did, they haven’t come through.” Rose Thorn nodded and put the scalpel down. They both stood where they were for a few minutes, letting an uneasy silence grow. “How’s Watermelon?” Sarge asked out of the blue. Rose picked at the ground. “He’s not doing too well, sir. His leg has healed fine, but his fever won’t drop. I’ve narrowed the probable causes down to either malaria or a really bad case of influenza. I really hope it’s not the former. Pepper should be back with her analysis in a minute or so; she’s been looking real hard at it.” Another quiet minute, and a spotted mare opened the tent flap to the “emergency care” section of the hospital tent. She had the white, gray, and black of a salt-pepper mix, and her gray mane and tail were thin and frail. Her worried eyes were a light salty gray, still in their prime after twenty-five years. She smelled faintly of spice, as was her special trade, with a light sprinkling of perfume that fitted her spice-leaf cutie mark well. Her pointed ears were low as if she carried a heavy, sorrowful burden, and her eyelids nearly caved in to sleep. “Lieutenant Thorn, I have the final analysis,” she said with notable thickness in her voice. “Private Watermelon won’t live the day. His fever broke one-ten earlier this morning and we just barely brought it back down in time. He has a severe case of somethin’ I ain’t never seen before, ma’am, and I can’t do nothin’ about it.” Suddenly, a nurse-in-training popped her head through the tent flap. “Ma’am, it’s Melon. He’s spazzing out!” Rose, Pepper, and Sarge hurried into the mostly empty emergency care, past a stallion sleeping off a healing spell fixing his dented skull and the nurse who watched over him. They reached the seventh bed on the left, where Private Melon jerked around and strained against imaginary straps holding him down. Sarge stood back to watch the two professionals do their thing. The nurse who’d told them stood next to him, unable to help, unwilling to get in the way. Pepper prepared a small bottle of sleep medicine; this was her last one. She administered to Melon while Rose held him still. Once she was done, Rose popped a thermometer in her patient’s mouth to take his internal body temperature once more. It was dropping down to eighty Marenheit - too low! She cast a heating spell, bringing him back to a good ninety-eight. After he stabilized, they both sighed in relief. “He’ll have a helluva headache when he wakes, but he’ll live,” said Rose. she ignored Sarge’s wondered staring at her sides, where it looked like pink wings had formed for a split second as she cast her spell.” “Did you… grow wings, Lieutenant?” “No. That was just a particularly costly spell in the way of magic, so my sudden, intense concentration may have made it look like I have wings for a brief moment in time. But no, sir, I did not grow wings through my jacket in those five seconds.” “Tell me when you do.” “I will,sir.” After that harrowing experience, Rose spoke no more to anypony about the possibility of her sprouting wings. She simply did her job and let the matter die. But that night, as she crawled into bed, Rose shedded her medical jacket, letting it fall to the tent floor. She stretched out two wings the color of her coat and felt them pop a crick here and there, relieving tension and making her whisper “Ahhh.” They’d been folded uncomfortably under her jacket all week, where there were no special pockets for them to stay snug. Her preened any loose feathers, which there were extremely few of, and folded them once again in a way that concealed them as she climbed into her sleeping bag and went to sleep.