//------------------------------//
// Chapter 0:4 - Long Winter 
// Story: Camaraderie is Sorcery 
// by FireOfTheNorth 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 0:4 – Long Winter
Year 986 of the 4th Age



            Applejack scrunched up her nose as she stared down the apple tree straight ahead of her.  Digging her hindhooves into the ground, she tensed her body and took off like a shot in an ungainly gallop.  As the tree’s trunk loomed up before her, she dug her forehooves in and spun her body around.  As she completed the twist, she struck out with her hindhooves . . . and went flailing, falling on her rear and sliding across the grass short of the tree.

            “Phoo,” the filly said as she picked herself up and brushed the blades of grass from her braided tail.

            “What’re y’ doin’, lass?” her father asked as he strode up.

            The filly had to crane her neck to look up at her father, as his muscular form towered over her, blocking out the light of the sun.  A heavy cart filled with apples was parked nearby, only recently detached, and Bright McIntosh’s coat was matted with sweat from doing all morning what his daughter had been attempting.  He was amused with the young filly’s antics, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but there was also a spark of pride in his eyes.

            “I’m apple bookin’,” Applejack said, “Well, I’m tryin’ anyway.  I’ve got t’ practice if I want t’ help like Big Mac ‘n’ Jona!”

            Bright Mac looked through the trees of the orchard at where his son McIntosh (lovingly dubbed “Big” Mac by his younger sister) and his nephew Jonagold  were hard at work.  Of course, they may not have realized they were hard at work.  As colts of their age were wont to do when left to their own devices, they’d turned their appointed task into a competition and were now madly dashing around bucking the trees.  Well, at least there was a productive outlet to it, and the trees could withstand the beating given them.

            “There’s no need for you t’ worry about that yet, m’sweet,” Bright Mac assured his daughter, “You’ve got plenty o’ time afore you’re grown enough for that task.”

            “But I want t’ help!” Applejack protested.

            “I know, I know,” Bright Mac said, scooping up Applejack and depositing her on his back, “Y’ help out plenty around here with all th’ other crops, so there’s no need for you t’ fret about this.  You’re just not grown enough for a job like this yet.”

            Bright Mac’s head turned sharply as he caught the sound of a horn from the direction of the Apple homestead.  Six blasts, long.  An emergency!  A chill breeze sent a shudder down his back, and his eyes widened as flakes of snow blew past.

            “Run!  Everyone home, now!” waiting to make sure Big Mac and Jonagold had heeded his warning before galloping off behind them with Applejack clinging to his neck, “It’s th’ White Procession!”

            The temperature rapidly dropped as they galloped over the Apple lands.  By the time the protective wall around the homestead came in sight, frost was visibly covering the ground.  Bright Mac cursed himself as he saw the gaps in the palisade he’d been meaning to fix.  There’s no helping it now.

            Once they were within the wall, Bright Mac dropped off Applejack and checked to see that everypony was accounted for before pulling the heavy gates shut.  Jona ran off to where his mother was waiting outside their cottage, and Big Mac and Applejack sped to their home, where their mother Buttercup was waiting nervously, the signal horn dangling from her neck.

            “How’d y’ know they were comin’?” Bright Mac asked his wife after embracing her.

            “You’ve got a wizard guest,” his brother-in-law Jonathan answered as he trotted out of the house, carrying both his own short sword and Bright Mac’s claymore .

            “What’re y’ doin’ with those?” Bright Mac asked, looking at the weapons disdainfully, “Y’ cannae mean t’ fight them!”

            “I mean t’ defend m’ family!” Jonathan replied, shoving the claymore at Bright Mac.

            “Against th’ White Procession?  Have y’ taken leave o’ your senses?”

            Their argument was interrupted as a loud bang came from the main gate.  A second later, the gates crashed open and an armored centaur strode through, knocking a gate aside with his fist when it swung back at him.  Windigos bounded in around his hooves, leaving trails of ice across the ground.

            “Jona!  Goldie!  Get inside!” Jonathan yelled to his family before taking up his sword and stepping forward.

            “Get inside,” Bright Mac told his own family, though he took up his weapon with much more reluctance.

            “Bright,” Buttercup said plaintively, reading his fears as clearly as always.

            “Get inside,” he said again, “I’m goin’ t’ pull Jonathan in as soon as I can.”

            The centaur had taken notice of the protective fathers, but as they didn’t seem to pose much of a threat, he was devoting little attention to them, instead directing the newly arrived bat-ponies to the granaries.  Jonathan charged forward, swinging his sword at the centaur’s abdomen, but his armor didn’t give way in the slightest.  He went rolling across the icy yard as the centaur stuck him with the back of his hand, the spikes on his gauntlets tearing into the pony’s flesh.

            As the centaur moved to finish Jonathan off, Bright Mac rushed in and swung his claymore effortlessly, sinking the heavy weapon’s blade into the centaur’s more lightly protected armpit.  Giving a grunt of pain, the centaur drew his own sword, which was nearly as long as Bright Mac’s claymore, and swung it at the stallion.  He managed to deflect the first and second swings, but was then pushed back.  Without the height and balance of the centaur, Bright Mac knew it was only a matter of time before he made a fatal mistake.

            That moment came as he was nearly back at the farmhouse; the centaur struck with a blow that left Bright Mac unbalanced, allowing the centaur to swipe away the claymore with his free hand.  Exposed, Bright Mac had no way of deflecting the slash that cut open his shoulder.  Tumbling back onto his haunches, he awaited his fate as the centaur raised his sword for a killing blow.

            When the sword came down, though, it did not strike Bright Mac.  From the ground between him and the centaur, a patch of twisted roots suddenly rose that deflected the sword and knocked the centaur back.  While the centaur was reeling, Jonathan rushed up to Bright Mac, blood dripping from the gashes on his face, and dragged him to the farmhouse door, where another set of hooves pulled him the rest of the way in.

            “Don’t go,” Bright Mac said as Jonathan headed back after the centaur, but his request went unheeded, and the door closed off his view of what came next.

            “Good, it’s not deep,” a voice said as the strange hooves that’d pulled him in examined his wound, “Now, this may hurt a bit.”

            Bright Mac screamed as a sharp, fiery pain blazed from his wound and somepony put a spoon in his mouth to keep him from biting off his own tongue.  Specks flashed before his eyes as the pain subsided and the world returned to normal.  Looking at his shoulder, he saw that the wound was completely closed up, leaving a knotted scar to match the others on his body.

            “Well, not my prettiest work, but it’s the best I can do safely,” the voice said again.

            Rolling onto his stomach, Bright Mac finally got a glimpse of the pony that had healed him.  The honey-colored stallion was rifling through the pockets in his simple brown robes.  Spectacles perched on his nose flashed in the candlelight as he looked up, and the wide-brimmed black conical hat on his head tipped back, the bent end bouncing up and down.

            “Golden Oak?  What’re y’ doin’ here?” Bright Mac asked as he sat up.

            “I came to ask your permission to test out an alchemical powder I’ve developed to ward off frost on some of your trees,” Ponieville’s resident sorcerer explained as he stared at the frost-coated windows and stroked his long, chestnut beard, “It appears I may have arrived too late.”

            “You knew they were comin’?” Bright Mac asked.

            “What?  No, of course not.  Not even Celestia can predict the White Procession’s movements.  I detected the rift opening, but I was already here then,” Golden Oak said as he looked at Bright Mac’s shoulder, “I hope I’ve healed you properly.  Ponies are so much more complex than plants.  It’s the same basic principle, but I can reattach a fallen branch far more easily than I can knit flesh and bone back together.”

            “Jonathan!” Bright Mac exclaimed, talk of his wound bringing his attention back to the struggle outside.

            “Don’t go back out there,” Golden Oak commanded as Bright Mac moved toward the door, “This home is under my magical protection, but I can’t spare any more magic to aid or heal the two of you.  If he has any sense, he’ll have run for shelter.”

            “He hasn’t got any sense,” Bright Mac protested.

            “Then I’m sorry, but going out there and getting yourself killed too won’t accomplish anything.”

            At 'too,' Bright McIntosh snapped. How can he give up on Jonathan’s live like that so easily?  

            “I can’t just do nothin’!” the farmer exclaimed as he grabbed Golden Oak  by his robes and lifted him up, “What kind o’ world is this?  How can we hope t’ fight against these creatures from beyond, who can twist our seasons an’ wear armor that makes our weapons naught?”

            “For now, we can only survive,” Golden Oak said in a measured voice, “I know it’s difficult to accept, but think of your family here around you.  You can’t just abandon them.”

            Bright Mac looked around at the others packed into the farmhouse.  His wife, Buttercup, and his son and daughter standing near her, fearfully reacting to every shift in the wind and creak of the cottage.  Granny Smith, the great matriarch of the Apple family, sleeping through the storm as if nothing were more natural than for six-limbed barbarians and pegasi with leathery wings to shift the seasons at their whim and steal peasants’ crops.  Bright Mac dropped the wizard to the floor and bowed his head in resignation, as the wind howled outside and snow coated the summer ground.


***


            After the storms ended three days later, Bright McIntosh stood where the other cottage on the Apple homestead had been.  Jonathan, as expected, had died in the yard, cleaved apart by the centaur soldiers, and the snow had preserved his corpse admirably.  Of his wife and son there was little to bury.  The White Procession had put the building to the torch , and both Bright Mac’s sister Golden Delicious and his nephew Jonagold had burned alive in the inferno .  Now all that remained were ashes and memories.

            It’s not fair.  Why did they have to die . . . and we were allowed to live?  There are so few of us left now.  How can we ever hope to get by?  The number of Apples here has decreased so much recently.  First the McLeans scattered across Equestria, then the McLellans headed south for the promise of fresh land.  And, after the war, most of the McIntoshes went north to the homeland, only for so many of them die at the Battle of Caignwall.  Then more returned to the Haeldmark, until only we two families were left.  And now it’s just me and my kin.  

            Bright Mac straightened.  They would mourn Jonathan and Golden Delicious and Jonagold, but then it would be back to work.  The Apple family had always survived and managed here, and that was as constant as the cycles of sun and moon.  They would get by; they would find a way.  As long as the five of us remain together, we will survive.  As long as we five all remain …