The bear’s tracks were as clear as day, so Catskill kept running through the snowbound forest, the blunderbuss bumping at her flanks in its harness, the bandolier bouncing at her chest, her breath getting forced through her balaclava and almost steaming up her goggles. The problem with rabid animals (particularly in the disease’s later stages) was that they were unpredictable. This bear, for instance, kept swerving from side to side, doubling back on itself, taking the long way around, that sort of thing. Luckily, the bear was a bear, so its tracks were clear as day.
Ahead of her, a squirrel scrambled down a tree, onto the remains of a branch, and bounced up and down, waving its little legs and chattering to get her attention. Catskill skidded to a halt right beneath it and pulled part of her balaclava down to expose her mouth. “If this is about the bear,” she said, “I’m taking care of it.”
But the squirrel pointed in another direction, chittering madly.
Catskill frowned. “You’re sure?”
Squeak-squeaken squeak squeaker-squeakity.
“Daggit. Thanks for the heads-up.” Pulling her balaclava back into position, Catskill veered in the direction of where the squirrel had pointed. What was a pony doing out here? The only one who lived out here (besides herself, obviously) was Polar Sun several hours away, and she didn’t come down from the pass much, if at all. Whoever they were, it meant she had somepony to rescue. She didn’t have much experience rescuing ponies, so she hoped it’d be easy.
Catskill ran, as she had been doing for the past hour. Her blood rushed and her heart pounded and her lungs wheezed and her earth pony constitution meant that was all negligible. She’d redouble her speed if she weren’t already running as fast as she could. The wind pushed her hood down; she pulled it back up. Branches crunched underfoot as her hooves broke through the thin layer of snow on the ground.
Although the land was rocky and uneven around here, Catskill nearly flowed over the ground and around the trees. Her hooves picked out the few level areas with ease, and whenever there weren’t any, she adjusted her posture accordingly. Most ponies would be restrained to a fast walk, not the canter she was moving at. But it was all a basic part of fieldcraft; what sort of ranger could only move over level ground?
Eventually, Catskill took a second to slow down and lean against a tree, breathing heavily. She wasn’t tired — not very, anyway — but she was warm and almost sweating beneath her furs. She unbuttoned her coat to let the wind whisk at least some of her heat away. If she sweated now, she’d be frigid when she woke up tomorrow.
Snap.
Catskill’s head shot up and she slowly pivoted her ears, listening for- Crunch. -that. That sounded like the bear. Not too far from where she was heading. Daggit. She took several forceful breaths and bolted off again, same direction.
There were cliffs not too far from here. They were relatively short, a mere thirty or so feet compared to the hundreds of Khuuramch’s, but plenty high enough to kill you if you fell from them. The squirrel hadn’t said anything about the pony falling off, or even attempting to climb them, but animals rarely knew the kind of information ponies wanted to know. This particular pony could’ve been a pegasus, perfectly capable of avoiding the bear altogether. But Catskill didn’t know, so she had a duty.
Another loud snap, closer. The bear had probably smelled the other pony by now and was chasing her. Ponies could only run a little faster than bears, and then, not for very long. That would only be aggravated on this terrain. Normally, this wouldn’t matter, since most bears were annoyed by ponies, but since some of the symptoms of rabies included heightened aggression and a disregard for natural predators…
Catskill ran, her ears peeled for sounds, either equine or ursine. Nothing except the wind, not even birdsong. Something at the back of her head told her this was going to be close.
Then she heard it, so faintly she almost missed it. “Hey! Hey! I-I mean it! Back!” Same direction she was heading in. Closer to the cliffs. Daggit. Catskill sucked in a deep breath and ran as fast as she could. Every time her hooves struck the ground, a shock ran up her bones, into her spine. But she barely noticed.
“The bear’s rabid!” she yelled. “Put it down if you can, but don’t do anything stupid!” It was probably pointless — whoever was out here didn’t sound like they could do much against a bear — but it was worth a shot.
“Who’s there?” the pony called out. Catskill could make the voice out more clearly now; it was definitely a mare’s. “I need- BACK! I need help! Please!”
“Coming!” Catskill bellowed. Trees whistled past her, blurring into each other.
She saw it in the distance, a tree too misshapen to be an actual tree. The bear looked like a grizzly bear, a male, and a big one, probably bordering on nine hundred pounds. Catskill’s heart skipped a beat; a monster of that size might take more than one shot from her blunderbuss to go down, leaving her with a predator that was furious on top of already being rabid. The bear roared and clawed at the tree; it tilted dangerously. “HOLD! TIGHT!” Catskill screamed.
But the weight of the bear uprooted the tree and it fell, shaking the ground with its impact. A vaguely pony-ish shape staggered up from the debris and began legging it. The bear roared again and charged. In a stroke of luck, the rabies had progressed enough that its movements weren’t very coordinated and it moved more slowly than it normally would.
“Hey! Urso!” Catskill hollered, hoping to divert the bear’s attention. “Over here!” No good. The bear was single-minded in its pursuit of the pony. Catskill slowed down just enough that she wasn’t constantly bouncing up and down to examine the pony. She was a unicorn and she was… She wasn’t exactly limping, but her gait wasn’t far off from it. It was like she was in pain, but a mild one rather than anything debilitating. At least she was making good time.
The trees started thinning ahead. The unicorn broke out of the forest and ran for another few moments, only to come up short and scream in frustration. The cliffs, Catskill guessed. Of all things, the unicorn’s howl sounded like, “Not again!”
“Sideways!” Catskill screamed as the bear staggered out of the forest. “Sideways!”
The unicorn promptly shot along the ridge, the bear clumsily turning to follow. Catskill turned, too, leading the target. Her blunderbuss was effective, but it had a severe drawback. It was impossible to miss anything closer than ten yards, and impossible to hit anything farther away. And ten yards seemed like a lot, right up until you had an angry mountain lion bearing down on you.
The unicorn was still running, keeping up a decent pace. The bear was following her doggedly, stumbling a little but not dropping back. Catskill was galloping, aiming for a good place to intercept. She was close, close enough to see the foam dripping from the bear’s mouth. She was already running through the sequence of actions needed to unholster her blunderbuss and fire it.
And then the unicorn tripped.
Catskill didn’t see what the unicorn had gotten caught on, but she suddenly realized the unicorn was rolling across the cliff, her legs flailing every time she went on her back. She screamed in pain. In seconds, the bear was almost on her. It pounced, but the unicorn had managed to get a shield up. She curled up on the ground, head beneath her legs, as the bear’s first blow bounced off the shield. Thanking whoever was listening for the few extra seconds, Catskill changed direction, hoping to reach the unicorn before-
Another hit. The unicorn spasmed and the shield shattered. The bear raised a paw just as Catskill reached them; with no time to ready her blunderbuss, she lunged for the bear, driving into it with all her earth pony strength. She hit hard and turned the beast from the unicorn, if only for a second. The bear reeled, staggered toward the edge of the cliff, and swiped at Catskill. She ducked beneath it, spun, and bucked the bear as hard as she could. Ribs cracked as the bear stumbled and teetered over the ridge, claws flailing.
One of those claws hooked into Catskill’s clothes and she went over the edge.
Before she knew what was happening, Catskill slammed into the cliff face. Something cracked and agony filled one of her legs. She bounced off into a spin as the wind whistled in her ears, then fell back and hit again. More things broke, more legs hurt; some of her coat was ripped off when her face hit the rock wall. She landed on her side on an upthrust rock. Her head smashed the ground hard enough for her to see stars and she screamed as she felt the stone’s point tickling her guts. She forced herself off it and to her legs even as the world reeled beneath her. But the pain was already shrinking as her body shut it down for the moment. Hopped up on her fight-or-flight instinct, Catskill spun around, looking for the bear.
She felt like Tartarus, but the bear didn’t look much better. One of its front legs was crooked, large patches of its fur had been scraped off, and it flailed its legs like it didn’t know how to work them. For a second, Catskill hoped the fall would do it in, but then it managed to stand up. Any other animal would’ve limped away to lick its wounds, but not a rabid one. It noticed her and roared mightily; flecks of foam flew from its jaws.
By some miracle, Catskill’s blunderbuss was still intact. Her legs attempted to protest as she pulled it forward to a firing position, but she wasn’t in any mood to argue. Driven by rabies, the bear was already moving on her. On one of her fetlocks was a metal clip; she swiped it across her bandolier, only to miss as she lurched to one side thanks to overbalancing and panic. Her next try snatched up a cartridge, so she pushed the cartridge into the blunderbuss’s breech and slid it shut.
The bear pounced at her. Catskill rolled to one side, oblivious to the rocks digging into her back. She spun around, facing the bear at the same time it faced it. It reared and roared in a dominance display. Catskill blinked blood out of her eyes, aimed for the upper chest, and chomped on the trigger bit.
BOOM.
The blast could be heard for miles as its echos flew between mountains. Not that Catskill could hear that; all noise in her ears cut out, displaced by the buzz of tinnitus. She staggered a foot back from the recoil; the harness dug at her chest and her sides even through her furs. The uniquely burned stench of black powder filled the air. Through the haze of smoke, though, Catskill could see the important thing: the bear, its chest reduced to a bloody pulp and worse, suddenly still. It blinked plaintively at Catskill, as if asking her a question, and toppled to the ground. It didn’t move again.
Catskill grinned. Scratch one less rabid bear.
And the second she was out of danger, the adrenaline wore off and pain hit her like a freight train. Her side felt like it’d been sawn open with a drill and every single one of her legs felt like something was out of place. Third-degree burns would’ve been less painful. That wasn’t even getting into the cuts on her frogs, on her face. She tried taking a step, but her fetlock throbbed and her legs gave out, on the verge of snapping like balsa wood.
Catskill lay on the ground, futilely attempting to replenish her oxygen. She was suddenly aware she was lying in a warm puddle. When she felt it, the gash on her trunk was hideously wide. She swore; she still couldn’t hear her own voice.
She didn’t know how long she was sprawled there, her heart twinging in her chest, but sound slowly returned. A shadow passed over her and the first thing Catskill heard was a voice. “No no no… Not again…” The unicorn hovered over Catskill, unable to keep her hooves still for a second. Funny; from this distance, she almost looked like a lost city slicker, prepared for anything except actual effort. “Don’t… Please don’t… I’m low on-”
“Burn the bear,” wheezed Catskill. “Or at least… head.” She coughed; a few specks of blood came up. “Kills virus. Can’t… survive… outside… saliva.” She tried to stand. A mixture of pain and her legs refusing to respond sent her back down again. She cursed, a few pain-induced tears falling from her eyes.
The unicorn looked at the bear, twitched, and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, okay.” She skittered towards the body, then back to Catskill. She hastily rummaged in her bag, muttering. “Come on come on com- Ha!” She pulled out a bundle of herbs and shoved them at Catskill. “Fast-acting painkiller,” she said. She scrambled back to the bear’s body.
In spite of her situation, Catskill rolled her eyes. That was supposed to help? Better than nothing. She reached out for the plants, groaning at each additional inch she extended her leg, and slowly scooped them into her mouth. Their bitter taste made her gag, but Catskill chewed them even as her out-of-place jaw ground against her skull. She swallowed, and immediately a dull numbness overtook her. She was only vaguely aware of the way the rough rock beneath her felt, how cold it was, the way the wind pulled her tears of pain away. Well, she didn’t feel the pain anymore. She didn’t feel much of anything. Except tired. She was so very tired.
The unicorn scuttled back over. She looked around a little. “You, you took them. Good, good.” She half-grimaced, half-grinned. “You’ll be okay. Just, just try and get some rest. I can move you alone. Magic.” She made that same strange face and went back to the bear. Why didn’t she have the fire going yet?
Catskill tried to stand up again, but her legs were even less responsive than before. She tried to think, but her head wouldn’t let her organize her thoughts. Yeah, sleeping would be nice. What the heck. Catskill closed her eyes, stopped moving, and drifted away.
Bitterroot did her best. She really, truly did. But it was hard to not get annoyed at the way everypony else took so dang long at something that she could do in ten seconds.
“There’s an outcrop right below you,” she said to Artemis. “About a foot down and a few inches to the left. To the left, that’s-”
With the rope in her mouth, Artemis couldn’t say anything, so she settled for shooting Bitterroot an angry glare. She mimed zipping her lips shut. Bitterroot sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Shutting up.”
Bitterroot was hovering some ways away from Khuuramch Pass’s cliff, slowly gnawing her tongue away in frustration. Normally, she could tolerate marehunts with groundbound ponies. In more open terrain, she was usually the scout for whoever she was working with, able to spot the fugitive from miles away. In forests, she shrugged off being confined to the speed of a trot. But nopony here seemed to be a climber and it was taking them far too long to get down.
“I could carry you,” Bitterroot said to the group, forgetting her promise of silence. “Really, I don’t mind. It’ll just take-”
But Artemis waved her off and Gale shielded her face with her good wing. Trace, however, paused in her descent, then stomped on the cliff face twice. Bitterroot hovered up to her, and before she could ask a question, Trace nodded. Bitterroot hooked her hooves around Trace’s forearms, and they descended to the foot of the cliff in seconds.
On the ground, Bitterroot couldn’t miss that Trace was shaking slightly. “Thanks,” Trace said, wiping her forehead down. “There’s nothing quite like being in the middle of climbing down a cliff to find that you’re a tad afraid of heights, right? Heh heh…” She exhaled deeply, then added defensively, “Merely a tad, mind you.”
“I’m not judging,” said Bitterroot. And she wasn’t. Height was a thing some ponies were scared of. So what? She’d known royal guards who were afraid of needles. One of them had it so bad he didn’t even like looking at sewing needles. Honestly, if you weren’t a pegasus, heights were one of the more reasonable things to be scared of.
Trace looked suspiciously at Bitterroot, but didn’t say anything. She glanced up and muttered, “Taking their sweet old time, aren’t they?” She shook her head and started examining the ground. Almost immediately, she grinned. “A-ha. Our little necromancer wasn’t so good with heights, either. Take a gander.” She pointed at a few spots on the ground; Bitterroot didn’t need to look hard to see the flecks of blood inside the hoofprints. “Tender frogs plus rough surfaces equals bleeding soles,” Trace said. “Surprisingly common. I’d put good odds on finding her camp from last night soon.” She walked alongside the tracks for a few yards, matching their spacing as much as she could. “Hmm. Her pace is a touch smaller than usual, but that might just be fatigue.”
When Artemis and Gale finally reached the bottom the cliff, Trace led them into the trees. Near a large one that provided some semblance of shelter from the wind, they found a large patch of snow that had been crushed down and the remains of a crude firepit. Trace waved them away, paced around the campsite, and frowned. “Hmm. Not a single false trail. Amanita’s either too stupid or too short on time for that, I suppose.” Her horn glowed; the logs pulsed through a rapid series of colors, which seemed to disappoint her. “Shame. She seems to be good at darkness magic, so-”
“ ’Course she’s good ’t dark magic,” snorted Artemis. “She’s a necromancer.”
“Darknessss magic, my good mare,” sniffed Trace. “Lack-of-light magic to shield the glow. We won’t be spotting her fire in the night. Sorry, Bitterroot, but you’d best stay grounded after sunset.”
Bitterroot just shrugged. She’d been expecting that. Flying through the forest at night was a suicide wish, anyway.
Trace looked the campsite over one last time, kicked a log over, and set off along the trail. “Come. We’re only a few hours behind her.”
“Full o’ ’erself, ain’t she?” Artemis muttered to Bitterroot as they walked.
Bitterroot grunted noncommittally. In her opinion, Trace had earned the right to be full of herself, but it didn’t do to disagree with your employer. She’d learned that a long time ago.
They walked. Bitterroot glanced back at Gale. In spite of keeping watch all night, Gale’s behavior wasn’t any different. Bitterroot had once heard that too little sleep could kill you. She’d also heard of a stallion (she couldn’t remember his name) who claimed to have gone without sleep for years. And she knew that certain animals — some breeds of shrew, for starters — didn’t sleep at all. Sleep was one of those weird things neither science nor magic had been able to figure out yet. Maybe there was more to the “wing paralysis” story that Artemis let on — or Gale was letting on to Artemis.
They kept walking. Bitterroot decided to broach the question from last night. She cleared her throat. “So,” she said to Artemis, “what did Amanita do for such a large bounty?”
Artemis looked like she was ready to protest for a second, but instead, she sighed. “Aye. Best if’n you know.” She took a deep breath. “Killed a ’ole village. Used ’em for… dunno what, some kinda sacrifice. Ev’ry last pony.”
Bitterroot’s throat suddenly went dry. She was very glad her usual targets were simply ponies who skipped out on their bail rather than renegade warlocks. If she needed motivation beyond money to bring her target to justice, that was it. “An… An entire village,” she said tonelessly.
Artemis nodded gravely. “Saw it, too. Ever ’eard’a Grayvale? Nice town, or so I ’eard. Got there a few days back, an’...” She sighed and shook her head. “Stars above, ain’t seen nothin’ like it. Was like a sunblasted abattoir. Bodies piled ’igh, black magic sigils paintin’ the walls, blood stainin’ the snow, busted buildin’s ev’rywhere, an’ not a single pony livin’. Never felt somethin’ so… empty.”
In spite of her pegasus constitution, Bitterroot shivered and pulled her clothes tighter around herself. “Why do ponies do things like that?” she muttered. “You take ten steps outside Equestria and suddenly it’s a-okay to treat others like animals.”
“Eh.” Artemis spat on the ground. “We’re all animals, anyways. We just got ’igher ’pinions of ourselves’n others.”
Privately, Bitterroot thought that, as an earth pony, Artemis would’ve said that calling those actions “treating others like animals” would be an insult to animals. But whatever. Even with her sometimes-low view of people, Bitterroot had never liked this sort of nihilism, so she made a token effort at argument. “That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”
“Nope,” Artemis said. “Lookit Equestria: we need laws an’ al’corns movin’ the sun an’ moon t’keep us in check. Then we get out ’ere, outside society, nopony to look up to, an’ lookit our lives: nasty, brutish, an’ short. ‘Animals’ is prob’ly givin’ us too much credit.”
Bitterroot was about to respond, but then Trace raised her head and looked back at them. “Hey, Artemis?” she called out.
“Aye?”
“Shut up, you whiny philosophy undergrad.” And she went back to the tracks without another word.
Bitterroot giggled quietly, but Artemis looked like she’d been slapped in the face. After a moment, she managed to spit, “I. Beg. Your. Pardon?”
Trace cleared her throat. “Shut up. Verb phrase. Imperative. A request for you to cease your talking and remain silent. You. Pronoun used as a term of address. Indicates following noun phrase is in the vocative. Whiny. Adjective. Descri-”
“I know what y’said.”
“Then why’d you ask what I said?”
“I…” Artemis picked up her pace to stand in front of Trace. “I was a-”
Trace walked around Artemis without a pause. “Would you please mind not walking on the trail that is currently our only lead on the target? You’re the one who wanted us to come, so you would do well to not disrupt our progress.”
“D’you mind makin’ sense o’ what yo-”
“You’re blindly quoting Cobbes, a favorite of anypony who thinks themselves profound,” Trace said blandly. “And you’re only going for the famous part, since the full quote would require effort. Of a world with no government, he says,” — she cleared her throat — “‘In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building-’”
“We get the idea,” groaned Artemis.
Trace blindly plowed on. “‘-no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of ponykind, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.’ All things considered, at this rate, I should probably be pleasantly surprised you actually managed to get the context half right.”
“And you… just… happen to know all that?” Bitterroot asked, half skeptical, half intrigued.
“I took a philosophy elective in college, and by Celestia was Cobbes the epitome of an angsty teenager. I memorized his main points to refute them better. Whereas you, Arty, probably don’t even know what bellum omnium contra omnes is.”
“Don’t call me ‘Arty’,” growled Artemis, her ears back.
“I shall call you whatever I please, Arty. I’m the one you need.” Trace glanced at Bitterroot. “Would you like to say something? I apologize for talking over you.”
Bitterroot twitched, not expecting to be put on the spot like that. “Well-” she mumbled as Artemis squinted at her. “I- I wasn’t really-” A brainwave. “Yes. You say life out here is nasty, brutish, and short. That’s more the environment than any lack of government, isn’t it? Barely anything grows out here, so, yeah, life’s hard. But you saw the mare up on that cliff, right?” She waved a hoof back towards Khuuramch Pass. “She was old. She was living in a shack that wasn’t much but she probably built herself. And all that without much government.”
“She ain’t most ponies, y’know. ’Ow many other ponies did we pass? None, ’cause nopony survives long out ’ere. ’Sides, the second she opened up ’er ’ouse, what ’appens? Bam! Dead.” Artemis chuckled humorlessly. “Sure, I’ll admit she was doin’ fine ’til them, but face it. She ain’t the rule, she’s th’exception.”
“She’s the exception? You found us in a town! A town that had no real government and still existed.”
“Sure, maybe,” said Artemis, “if you’re bein’ gen’rous an’ call that mess o’ stone piles a town. It ain’t like they ’ad much o’-”
BOOM.
Everypony froze. Birds flew into the air some distance away, squawking at the disturbance. Low frequencies ricocheting between mountains rattled their bones and their teeth. Trace had her head up, her ears twitching. “That way, I think,” she said, pointing in the direction they were already heading. “Yes? Less than a mile.” They started a fast trot down the trail.
“More like three or four, maybe even five,” said Bitterroot. Her wings were already twitching, but she couldn’t leave her group. “Did you hear that bass? Probably from a blunderbuss, and those things are loud. And sound carries further when it’s cold.” She flared her wings. “If you want, I can see if I can find-”
“No,” Artemis said promptly. “Y’ain’t facin’ a necromancer ’lone, ’specially not if she’s got ’er ’ooves on a firearm. Stay ’ere.”
Which was what Bitterroot had been expecting, unfortunately. Worth a shot. She briefly wondered if it would’ve been worth it to corner Amanita alone, but then she remembered what it truly meant that their target was a necromancer. If she died (which was entirely possible), then her corpse could be used to attack the others. Yeah, not a good thing.
But in spite of their speed, three miles could be quite the distance, especially on uneven terrain like this, and the minutes stretched painfully on as they passed one mile, two, three, without any indication of where the blunderbuss had been fired. Bitterroot dimly reflected that, technically, they didn’t even know the shot was associated with Amanita at all. By the time they reached the location of the shot, Amanita was probably going to be long gone.
“Still on the trail,” panted Trace. “Looking strong, but she suddenly picked up her pace. It’s like she saw something that scared her, and-”
“ ’Old up,” said Artemis. “There’s somethin’ ahead.”
The group quickly slowed. It didn’t take long for Bitterroot to see what Artemis was talking about: a big, somewhat misshapen thing loped through the forest in the distance, pacing back and forth. Almost immediately, Gale stepped up to the front of the pack, her ears back, pawing at the snow.
“That’s a bear,” whispered Bitterroot as they crept a few feet closer to it. “A big one. And it looks pretty beat up. It almost… it looks like its chest was pulped by… something.”
“Why are you whispering?” asked Trace. “It won’t-”
The bear’s head snapped toward them. Suddenly, it roared and charged them. And as it approached, Bitterroot saw the sickly blue fire burning in its eyes.