Equestria: Total War

by emkajii


XXVII. West of Manehattan. May, 1252.

West of Manehattan. May, 1252.

The soldiers walked in near silence, the soft patter of hooves in damp dirt and the creak of wagon-wheels the only sounds the army made. A stiff night wind whipped around them, and the pre-dawn light was greeted only as a reminder that they had indeed been marching for an entire night. The pine trees made it impossible to see the rugged hills that surrounded them; the ever-worsening rise and fall of the road under their hooves was Derpy's only reassurance that the terrain would have the cliffs and ridges the map promised. That paltry reassurance didn't help much. The ground was only one of dozens of phantom terrors swirling in her exhausted mind, thoughts ricocheting off the walls of the golden helmet she might be wearing for the last time.

The plan was difficult for any army, let alone one as raw as hers. A night march to the west followed by a battle against a superior gryphon force. Then six hours to reorganize the army, count the losses, and prepare to march again. Then another night march westwards and another battle. Then a day of rest. Then another battle, most likely--and a march northeast if it was necessary to make it happen. Then a forced march westwards to the main highway leading to Gryphonia. And no sense planning beyond that.

If she was perfect, she would have demolished three armies, taken twenty thousand gryphons out of the war, and captured eighty cannon--including the entire New Equestrian Army artillery, which according to her spies would be arriving at the westmost gryphon army over the past three and next two days. And she'd have done it with her 800 veterans, 3000 reasonably trained ponies, and 7000 recruits--who would all be veterans by then.

And if she wasn't perfect, she would have lost the war in one throw of the dice. She would die. Her soldiers would die. Her friends would die. Her country would die. Her daughter would die.

She hadn't slept well in a week. She hadn't slept at all in two nights. She couldn't calm her mind down enough. She had been haunted by the thought of defeat--of helpless flight and massacre; of claws and teeth and ripping, tearing death. She had always been nervous before battles, but the fear had always vanished once she passed the point of no return. But now the die had been cast: the battle was perhaps an hour away, and given the quality of gryphon scouts, the enemy was almost certainly aware of their presence. The terrain would only allow her one effective deployment. The gryphons would certainly order an attack. And the only decision she would have to make would be which flank to reenforce and when. Everything else was out of her control at this point.

She and Equestria would live. Or she and Equestria would die. And either would be her fault entirely--but either outcome would grow entirely out of the decisions she had already made, with little room for decisions yet to be made. Her fate was her own doing. Her fate was entirely out of her hooves.

And that went for everypony else's fate, too. Everypony.

"Mac," she said quietly.

"Yup," Big Macintosh said after a brief hesitation. She turned her head to look at him; he was handsome as ever in his armor. He looked melancholy, as he usually did.

"I just want to let you know," she said, quiet enough that only he could hear. "That...I know I haven't always treated you well. But that I appreciate everything you've done for me. And I know I've done a lot of wrong things. But if I die today...well, at least I found a little bit of peace with myself in this hell before I died. And I did because of you. You've given me a lot. And...I know I took a lot you didn't want to give. But I appreciate it. And I'm sorry for all the times I hurt you."

He didn't respond at first. Then he spoke, his voice shaking. "I know. You're a good pony. I believe you are. And when you act bad, it's because you need to in order to win. And we all need you to win."

"I know. But...I'm still sorry, Mac."

"So am I."

"...I still love you."

"I know."

There was a pause.

"And I still love you too," he continued.

She walked on, then suddenly looked back at him.

"Kiss me. Please. Just a little one."

"We're in public. Everypony can see us."

"See us? If they don't already know about us then they're blind. So kiss me."

He did.



---



A narrow valley with two wide mouths, separated by 400 yards. High walls and curves in the valley providing plenty of cover from artillery. One thousand soldiers in front of fifteen hundred recruits in front of four hundred veterans in each mouth. Two thousand recruits as her reserves. And the rest--the pegasus ponies--in close formations directly above and behind the twin lines of battle to countercharge any gryphon attacks. She also had seven cannon, positioned back near her, which would have little impact beyond the inherent psychological effects of artillery.

They were deployed. They were ready. The chokepoints would ensure that the extra power of a lion would be nullified by their larger size; for every lion in combat there would be three or four ponies, given the body sizes involved and the close ranks her soldiers kept and the loose mob charges the lions often broke into. It would also make it near impossible for gryphons to maneuver; there would be exactly one possible angle of attack. Her soldiers were untested, for the most part--but they knew exactly what to expect. There was only one direction the enemy could come from. And retreat was nearly impossible in tight quarters with the veterans in the back.

Before her army, the enemy marched in parade formations, preparing a joint attack. If they were smart, they would have refused battle until the ponies attacked. There was, after all, nothing forcing them to attack an enemy with so many advantages. Nothing, that is, but their hatred for apparent cowardice, their disdain for her mob of ponies, and their eagerness to be the one to capture the Grey Mare. Derpy had talked to many, many gryphons. She knew what a gryphon wanted. And she knew they would want to attack, even--especially--if the ponies had presented a strong defensive position.

And as the sound of foreign drums and horns rattled through the crevice, she knew that was exactly what was about to happen.



The attack began as expected. Gryphon cannonballs caromed harmlessly off the walls, as each impact against the soft rock bled off their once-deadly speed. High-angle shells exploded fruitlessly on the rock above, causing showers of dust and warm gravel but little worse. The gryphons made a few halfhearted charges, but each time were repulsed; the pegasus ponies were low enough that a proper charge was too dangerous. And still the ponies stood their ground.

They stood their ground though the lions came. And they stood their ground through the carnage. They stood their ground as they repulsed wave after wave of charging muscle and teeth. And they stood their ground though they died by the dozens.

Derpy watched it all, her stomach twisting. She needed to wait just a little longer. She needed to wait for the gryphons to commit to a larger lion charge--one designed to break her lines. She needed to wait until one side of the battle repelled it. And then she could order the charge. Her entire reserves would the successful defenders in a countercharge that would flank or even encircle the rest of the committed lions. And then the proper battle would be over, and it would just be a matter of hunting down the fleeing enemy.

But she needed to wait for the right moment. She needed to wait for the gryphons to launch an attack they thought might succeed. And so far, they were content to simply test her forces with little jabbing attacks. Perhaps they hoped to humiliate her by showing that ponies would break under light pressure. And perhaps they were right. But every minute the battle continued meant more losses she couldn't afford. She had to win cleanly. And that meant the enemy had to be rash.

She wasn't planning on them being rash the entire campaign, no. But it was a necessary part of the first ffffffseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEpingthunk. She looked up in startled surprise. It sounded like a shell. It was a shell: a round ball with a clear welding mark around the middle, now half-embedded in the ground. Her eyes went wide. She held her breath. She felt a sudden thrill. And then she felt nothing at all.





Bon Bon stood in the dust and noise and fury. She was still unable to kick, and was still unwilling to abandon the front lines. She now commanded the Ponyville Guard of veterans--the fifth pony to have held the honor, and as of this week the one to have held it the longest without dying. Before her, she could hear ponies and lions screaming in rage and shrieking in pain. Yet all she could see were vague shapes in the dust--the dust kicked up by the fighting and the dust blown around by the artillery fire, the dust that kept the bloody ground from becoming too slick to stand. There were five ranks of ponies in front of her. Beside her, Lyra stood, steadfast and composed. And behind her was the empty valley, and behind that were General Hooves and her reserves. The fight sounded brutal. She clopped her front hooves impatiently. She certainly didn't enjoy carnage, but she felt awful knowing that untested ponies were bearing the brunt of it. She remembered when the prospect of battle was nightmarish. It was still a horror, but it was a horror she knew she could face. The same couldn't be said of the ponies in front of her.

As Ponyville veterans, she and Lyra were held in high esteem. They had nearly died several times. They had nearly left the army many times. But they had stuck with the army. And they had stuck with the General. To be held out of battle while wide-eyed recruits were slaughtering and being slaughtered by trained lions? That wasn't fair to anypony.

A pegasus wearing a recruit's sash came fluttering up behind her. "We've lost," he shouted. "The General has been killed!"

Bon Bon and Lyra immediately turned to face him. "No," they said in unison.

"The General has been killed," he repeated. "Artillery strike. She's dead! Retreat!"

Without thinking, Lyra immediately tackled him. "No. Shut up. Shut up."

"She's dead," he shouted again, to nopony in particular.

Lyra began slapping him with a hoof. Her eyes began to sting. "Shut. The. Buck. Up."

Bon Bon stepped forward, shouting all the while. "If the General's dead, she died fightin'. So I'm not gonna die runnin'. And neither are you. Neither are any of us. Go back. Go back now. Get 'er whistle. And blow a full charge. I'm doin' the same right the buck now. And no, I'm not gonna wait for ya, so unless y' want to let us all die, you better do as you're ordered, mister. Lyra, gimme a Full House. I gotta say somethin'."

She turned to face the soldiers in front of her, nearly all still focused on the battle going on right in front of them. She felt Lyra's magical aura embrace her and tingle her throat. And she spoke, her voice ringing over the din of the battlefield:

"Listen up you guys. This is Bon Bon of the Ponyville Guard. Word is the General's been killed by a shell. I ain't got any idea if it's true, but ponies ain't liars so I'm thinkin' it's real. But if she died, she died doin' her job. She died fightin'. She died so we could win this battle and win this war. And it's up to us to make sure she didn't die for nothin'. So we're gonna win this now. Full charge. All ponies. Don't stop till there ain't a single feathery bastard in front of ya. And don't worry none 'bout dyin', 'cause the General sure as buck didn't. On my mark. Now."

She then grabbed her whistle between her teeth and blew: a sharp, amplified, piercing wail that carried across the entire field.

And then, to Bon Bon's satisfaction and Lyra's wonder, the entire army charged.



---



The first thing she noticed was a stabbing pain in her eye. The second thing she noticed was a headache that she could somehow feel even in her hooves. The third thing she noticed was a swimming, dizzy sensation. And then she opened her eyes.

Or her eye. Her vision didn't seem right. She tried the right eye. She saw a white light drowning out all shape and form. She closed it again. She tried the left eye. It didn't even feel like there was an eyelid to open. She lifted a hoof to her face. It was wrapped in bandages. She let the hoof rest on her chest. That was wrapped in bandages, too.

She was thirsty. By Celestia, she was thirsty. She tried to ask for water. She felt a dull rasp came out. A blurry pony immediately came trotting up to her, smiling eagerly. Nurse Redheart, maybe. She couldn't make out a word the other pony was saying. All she could hear was a deafening ringing: a thousand pure tones blending at once in a symphonic roar that replaced everything else.

Derpy closed her eye again. And she slept again.



---



She woke with a start. The tent ceiling was brightly lit--and shockingly clear. She immediately tried to sit up, then regretted the attempt: moving at all felt like a hammer to the chest. "Mac," she said, her voice dry and quiet. "Mac, where are you?"

"I'm here, Derpy," a dim and distant voice said. She rolled her head to the right, despite feeling like her neck might snap in half from the effort. She saw him there, smiling weakly. "Welcome back. We all missed you. And you came back just in time, too."

"No," she muttered, "we need to charge now. Left side."

"Bit late for that, Derpy. We did that. Once everypony heard you had died, they all charged. It took the gryphons a bit by surprise, 'specially since it sounded like Bon Bon announced it to everypony in a ten-mile radius. First they heard of your death, and I imagine they thought they had wrapped up the war. They sure didn't expect that killin' you would turn a bunch of farmponies into bloodthirsty warriors. 'Course, you didn't die. Kinda had our pie and ate it too, if'n you ask me." He chuckled.

"We...did we win?"

"Five thousand taken prisoner and three thousand dead, most of 'em cut down as they tried to flee. The rest scattered like dandelion seeds. And that's their losses, mind you. We lost about seven hundred all told. You didn't win, Derpy, you demolished them. Like you said."

"So we won this morning. Good. We can move out tonight, then, right? Meet the westmost army tomorrow morning?"

"Derpy, you've been awake about twenty minutes over the past day and a half."

She sat up suddenly, disregarding the crushing pain it caused. "What?! I told you we had to move! That the plan meant we had to go fast!"

"You're the plan, Derpy. We can't do much anything with a KO'd General. And we had plenty of wounded and prisoners to take care of."

She fell back on the bed, sending another wave of pain through her body. She grunted involuntarily. "I told you we'd have to leave most of the wounded, and we'd have to cripple the prisoners and leave them too."

"Like I said, you were out of it. We figured there wasn't any point in leavin' a bunch of hurt folks lyin' 'round a bloody crack in the ground if you weren't even awake. We recovered 400 wounded who we were able to at least get back on their feet, not to mention the soldiers got plenty of sleep last night. They're ponies, Derpy. It's not a bad thing to treat 'em like ponies now and again."

She raised a hoof to her forehead. "Mac, I've been doing almost nothing but keeping them alive and fed and healthy for half a year. Now I need them to fight. And you're telling me you didn't let them fight. Don't you care about me?"

"Derpy," he said sternly. "You were unconscious, you're the only pony who can lead us, and the gryphon armies were days away. We weren't going to wander blindly at them in the hopes we'd stumble into doing what you'd have done."

"Okay," she said placidly. "Okay. My head really hurts and I'm dizzy."

"I know. That shell hit pretty close."

She did nothing but breathe for a minute.

"Why are there bandages all over me?" She asked calmly, as if she were asking the time.

"You got shards of metal all over your body. Redheart pulled out most of them and then sterilized the wounds with a hot iron, but that'll leave scars. You're lucky none of 'em cut open anythin' important."

"Did I get one in my eye?" She asked the question as calmly as the other.

"Yup."

"...Did I lose the eye?"

"...yup. 'Fraid you did."

"Heh."

"What?"

"Do you know what that means?"

He was silent. She grinned impishly.

"I'm not cross-eyed any more! Isn't that great?"

He chuckled nervously. She laughed until the laughs devolved into chest-wracking, rib-cracking coughs.



---



She looked at herself in the mirror. There were fine scar lines all over her face, but the fur would grow back over them. The wide gouges all along the left side of her body were pretty awful looking, and the fur could never cover those completely, but armor could cover those. But her eye. Her eye. Her eye. It was a pit of charred flesh. She shuddered and slipped the eyepatch back over it.

And as she looked in the mirror, she was amazed at what she saw and how she saw it. She saw a mare like any other--a mare without ridiculous crossed eyes that made her happiness look moronic and made her anger look laughable. She didn't see an awkward mailpony. She saw a veteran who had long since surrendered her beauty to war. She didn't see Derpy Hooves. She saw the General. No. She saw the Grey Mare.

And she saw her reflection clearly and effortlessly, for perhaps the first time in her life. Her eyes had always pointed in different directions, except through exceptional force of will. And that meant her vision was always blurred. She could choose to see mostly through one eye or the other, but she'd always get hints of the other eye's field of vision, and if she saw something surprising she'd always have to spent a heartbeat wondering whether she really saw it or whether it was a trick played by something drifting into her other eye's line of sight. But now...everything was clear. It was clear like she had closed one eye, but she didn't have to spend energy holding either eye shut. It was effortlessly clear and perfect. She saw one world now. Only one. And yes, that world was maybe a bit smaller than the world she saw with two eyes. But it was sharp and stark and it made sense. Everything was clear now.

"They charged because they thought I was dead," she said to the mirror. "A pony who dies fearlessly inspires others to not fear death."

She blinked.

"The gryphons ran because they were surprised that we didn't run away when faced with my supposed death. No. Not surprised. They were terrified that my ponies did not fear my death. An enemy who does not fear death is terrifying."

She blinked.

"There are now two gryphon armies within a day's march of us. One has fifty artillery pieces capable of flinging 9-pound shells. And we have almost no artillery. One has thousands of Gryphon hussars. And we have few competent fliers. They will join up. We cannot stop it. And we will be outnumbered."

She blinked.

"We have little artillery. We have few cavalry. But we have hundreds of wounded ponies dying of infection. And a pegasus in nearly any condition can fly. And a pegasus who can fly can carry a hundred pounds of explosives."

She blinked.

"A few pounds of explosive and a few pounds of iron, a good distance away, did this to me. A hundred pounds of explosives and metal shards could destroy entire formations."

She blinked.

"We have hundreds of ponies who will die anyway."

She blinked.

"A pony who dies fearlessly inspires others."

She blinked.

"An enemy who does not fear death is terrifying."