Two companies of the Fifth Territorial were drawn up on the airship field outside of Trottingham in the chill of an Isles winter afternoon, dressed in their full crab-back march fineries. Turul feathers bobbed over their war-bonnets, and blue-chased yellow brocade shone over their half-armor in the weak winter sunlight. The uniform almost kept Gilda warm. One of the companies standing at ease was Gleaming Shield's; the rest were deployed in the area in bits and pieces distributed on outer perimeter duty. The whole battalion had been extracted from their various assignments - including the guard-detail at the 93/1st in Tinker's Alley - for this special duty about which nopony was saying anything, and nogriff knew anything about.
Except Gleaming Shield, and she wasn't talking.
There was a griffon or a pony at the bottom of every tree in line of sight of the airship grounds and along the planned procession route back into the city. There was also detachments guarding the other routes into the city, spread out as to not give the rebels any clues as to what was really going on. A good quarter of the garrison was deployed for this greeting; only a select hoof-full of companies would actually lay eyes on the VIP.
Gilda had endured Gleamng Shield's dizzying marathon of preparations over the past week and a half between Lady George's delivery of the mail, leading up to this moment standing at attention on Trottingham's emptied-out airship field. The usual courier barques and heavy lifters had been sent on runs to the outer islands in some cases, or on unscheduled supply runs to Manehattan or Hayward, in others.
Speaking of Hayward, the Fifth Griffish Territorials were facing two companies from a regiment from that city, the Third Hayward Dragoons. Despite the name, the unit had nothing to do with dragons. The studied arrangement of the companies, one file of pegasi separated by two files of earth-ponies, repeating for the length of the formation, said something about the mixed composition of the unit. These Dragoons had left their three-pony air-rigs back in garrison with the rest of the regiment in a market-town which housed the governing officials of the least secure of the outlying districts. This was about as close to Trottingham as the garrison staffers liked to see the Dragoons deployed; they didn't trust those ponies to not burn the capital down. Barracks rumor held that the general staff had made them leave their flamethrowers in armory back in Hayward before they were allowed to board the troop-ships to the Isles, but rumor said that they'd quickly found other expedients that made up for the lack of their preferred weaponry.
It was almost impossible to keep the madponies of Muskratonic from constructing their infernal incendary devices; Gilda had heard that there were at least a round dozen industrial chemists enlisted or commissioned among the ranks of the Third Dragoons. Ensign Minuette and Lieutenant Slapshot's oddball friend Zippo Raid was a lieutenant with the Dragoons, but he wasn't present on the field. His company was part of the quick reaction force which had been pre-positioned as a precaution in case the rebels managed to put together a main-force assault against the procession back into town. Nopony actually thought the rebels were capable of such a feat, but the humorless General Staff officers who had shown up with the advance party had insisted on the turn-out.
It took some work, but Gilda managed to take her eyes off of the flamboyant flame-helms of the Haywardian Dragoons. One of them had wrapped a novelty foam hat around her helmet. Gilda knew exactly enough about cloudball to recognize 'The Flaming Weasels' as the local team from Hayward; she wasn't sure if it was a major league team, or the local university's. She would have resolved to talk to one of their sergeants about the ill-advised and undisciplined display of home-town spirit, but she was fairly sure that it was a sergeant wearing the hat. She squinted down-range, trying to see if those dots in the distance were birds or the ships they were expecting.
Somepony was coming, that was all that anygriff knew, and whoever it was, was important enough that they were doing their best to maintain absolute secrecy. If Gilda didn't know that whoever it was, it was close to Gleaming Shield, she would have put her bits on the Princess's chief minister, Fancy Pants.
The Dragoons and the Fifth Griffish Territorials weren't alone on the airfield. Also drawn up were shivering, representative companies from the Marezonian Provincials, the Ninth Pony Territorials, and the Third Griffish Territorials. It wasn't snowing, but the stains on the northern horizon promised otherwise before dawn, possibly before twilight.
They had run about like madponies, getting Shield's anti-gonne shield perfected, making arrangements with Rarity's guild unionists to take over the anti-hijacker patrols in parts of the city, checking on their (irritatingly fruitless) surveillance operation against the carriage theft ring on the pony side of the city, and trying to keep the great turul from going stir-crazy waiting for whatever visitor or visitors were coming. Gleaming Shield refused to talk about it, and everypony in the military hierarchy seemed to know someone was coming, but nopony would say who or why.
Ensign Minuette's unicorn friends had been instructed in the witchcraft which produced the anti-gonne shield, which Gleaming Shield had christened the Slug Shedding Super Shield, and everypony else just called 'the anti-gonne shield'. Nopony was quite as good at it as Gleaming Shield, but when Minuette's irascible friend 'The Great And Powerful Artillerist' showed up with several barrels of gonne-powder, they all got plenty of experience testing out the new spell.
Gilda and the old birds had been kept busy digging three new sandbag pits, extending the back-wall and clearing a fresh firing line to the appropriate length. They didn't have enough gonnes to supply the entire company Gleaming Shield had wanted on the firing line, not even after the Dragoons and the Marezonians had brought their own captured weapons, but it sufficed for the training day they'd managed to squeeze in between everything else.
Until they ran out of lead slugs, of course.
Gilda hadn't seen her bunk in three days. By the the time the flight of airships appeared out of the faint beginnings of what promised to be a truly spectacular sunset, she was about ready to fall asleep on her paws. As the ships glided into sight and began their curving descent towards the mooring-grounds, it became obvious that one of the four ships was a Royal yacht, chased in the Duchess of Trottingham's family colors, as well as Princess Celestia's sunburst cutie mark. Cream and white, gold and orange, streaked lightly with the colors of the aurora. It looked like it cost more than the entire city.
As secret visits go, this was proving to be less than subtle.
As the yacht settled into its berth, a number of pegasi leaped out of hatches, trailing mooring-lines. They fluttered down alongside their ship, tying her into the mooring berth even as she settled beside them. Earth-pony crew appeared in the yacht's main hatch, and efficiently dropped a gangway down into the provided slot, one of them sliding on his knees down the descending gangway's high sides, his weight forcing the portable stairway into its place with a thunk that echoed across the field. The three escort warships circled overhead, shedding dozens of armed ponies to gyre in a protective swirl like a kicked beehive.
Gilda stared at a flight of pegasi as they raced overhead. Not Royal Guard colors, that was for sure, although she'd never seen them except in woodcut illustrations. She'd had the color schemes explained to her by veterans and ponies who knew about these things.
Not from Gleaming Shield, though, even if her dead brother had been an officer in the Royal Guard. Some things weren't to be walked on, not if you knew what was good for you. Gilda got her information from sources who weren't quite so heavily mined with dangerous associations.
Gilda thought those ponies were from one of the Cloudsdale regiments, the Chasseurs or maybe the Kitewings. She'd heard more about the elite pegasus regiments than she'd seen, aside from that exceptional night the rebels had gotten their beaks kicked in on the Boulevard of the Corvids. The squadrons of pegasi assigned to the Isles kept busy, kept moving, and, for the most part, kept away from Trottingham.
These flying ponies were, like the squadron that had made a dry sky rain over Gilbert Square, as multi-colored as their ground-bound kin, bright and gem-like as songbirds in flight. You barely could see their sharp-edged blades and armor as they flew by at speed. The one thing you could give ponies - they didn't all look alike. They were as colorful and assorted as the candies and pastries their bakers delighted in.
While Gilda had been distracted by the VIP's aerial color guard, the VIP herself had fluttered over the gangway, ignoring the convenience offered her by her ship's crew. Gilda turned her eyes front and center, and discovered her officer marching forward, swagger stick tucked tightly to her side, to meet the delegation, the majority of which was working their way down said gangway.
Four of the VIP's entourage hurried in the wake of the large pink pegasus, richly dressed earth ponies with brilliantly white coats and blonde manes so similar to each other that, even to Gilda's eagle eyes, they might as well be carbon copies of each other. Ponies! It's as if they conspire to mock all expectations at every turn. The moment you peg them as 'colorful and distinct', they throw something like this at you.
The rest of the delegation streamed behind the four identical mares, a much less uniform mass of equinity that struggled to not overwhelm the straining gangway, or fall too far behind their impatient VIP. That airship had seemed enormous, but to see so many ponies come pouring out of it, one had to marvel at how much the ship had been carrying.
From the back of the enormous yacht, the crew was lowering a heavy cargo hatch, from which Gilda could see emerging the ornate nose of a massive touring carriage, no doubt for the VIP's personal use. Gleaming Shield's fellow officers had collected additional black-chased civilian carriages ahead of time , sourced locally for the rest of the VIP's entourage and delegation. These were now drawn up on the tarmac beyond the mooring clamps that held the yacht. Gleaming Shield had handled those arrangements - Gilda suspected her lieutenant of not trusting her to succumb to the temptation to 'disappear' one or two carriages to be re-painted as ambulances and shuffled off for the use of the 93/1st.
The VIP herself stood out among her entourage like a burning brand among tinder, and it was obvious which one was the Very Important Pony. For one thing, she stood a good half-head above the tallest of them. She was as striking in her own way as Trottingham's resident mad tactical genius, and like Major Pie, was a bright, almost toxic pink, that pony blend of red and white that just screamed to predators, 'dangerous and probably poisonous to eat'. A little tiara poked up out of her long, mildly curling mane, which was streaked in a lovely non-rainbow tumble of magenta, canary-yellow and pale purple. Her face wore the habitual drawn expression of a kind pony who had seen nothing but sorrow in her life. She wore black and grey, widow's weeds as if she had been born to them.
Gilda recognized the 'unicorn' from Gleaming Shield's sepia-tinted memento of her late brother. The wings hadn't been visible in the photograph, nor had it done justice to the mare's face, her sheer animal presence. Gleaming Shield had never talked about this- this princess who was - what was she to Gilda's officer? Clearly the answer to why a lowly lieutenant of the Territorials had been so central to the planning of a VIP's grand 'secret' visit to the city.
"Princess Mi Dolente Cadenza," boomed Gleaming Shield, her reedy voice enhanced ahead of time with a projection cantrip, a spell with which the lieutenant's practice-sessions had kept both Gilda and half the company awake on more than one sleepless night. "Contessa di Skye, Lady Protector of Cloudsdale, Baroness of the Lonely Mountain and Dame-Baronnet of the Crystal Reaches, greetings and welcome to Your Highnesses' Duchy of Trottingham and the Kingdom of the Griffish Isles. We here offer and extend your loyal subjects' welcome and love, and to give promise that your stay will be a safe and pleasant one."
The pink alicorn settled on her golden-shoed hooves, and nodded gracefully to the purple unicorn. Gleaming Shield bowed deeply in response. Gilda's eyes were riveted to the new royalty standing before them, her mind racing.
Lady George might be the daughter of a queen, and half of Gilda's family might have been of royal descent, but this was a princess. Say what you will of the ponies, but they did royalty with a vengeance.
Then the alicorn princess scanned the ranks behind Gleaming Shield, making eye-contact with each griffon standing quivering at attention. She didn't smile, but when she met Gilda's eyes, it was like the bat-hen had stuck her beak into an electric main, or licked an active spell-stone. She felt her feathers separate, each from the other, a literal static burst that traveled down her body and left her tail-end a puff of excited fur.
The princess's eyes were dark and deep, like a well she'd once seen outside of Griffonstone, into which Gilda had dropped a stick, from which no sound had ever returned to report of bottom, water, or end. Gilda felt herself falling, she found herself drowning like she once had in the sea off the coast of Skye. She burned. She froze.
She gasped as the princess's gaze turned away, and the world and the companies in formation came back to her.
She thought to herself that she needed a cold shower, as Gleaming Shield and the other lieutenant shouted their orders. The airship grounds teemed like a kicked-over anthill as the companies formed their individual columns, and the officers began jostling to see who went where in the march-order for the escort into the city and the awaiting garrison. The VIP and her delegation headed towards their respective carriages, around which the procession coalesced.