Hinterlands

by Rambling Writer


4 - Predatory Notions

When Catskill woke up, she felt tired. Not physically; she could still run a mile in under three minutes. Very much mentally, the kind of tired where you crawled into bed not because you wanted to go to sleep, but because being in bed meant you didn’t have to do anything. Like life itself was weighing her down. With a groan, she instinctively tried to push herself up, and froze.

She didn’t hurt. Not at all. Not even a tiny bit sore.

She rolled one shoulder, then the other. A bit tight, but perfectly functional. She put weight on one leg. A mild protest, like she’d run ten miles eight hours ago. She stood up completely and felt a tightness around her trunk. She was about to wiggle a hoof beneath her furs before she realized her furs had been stripped off. She looked beneath herself; a bandage was wrapped around her body and bulged with dressings where the earth had tried to stab her. Well. Lucky the unicorn knew first aid. A thin slip of parchment was tied around her fetlock with a bandage.

Catskill looked around, deliberately turning herself with her legs rather than moving her neck to keep her legs moving. It was… about two and a half hours before noon, she guessed from the sun. She was at the bottom of a small cliff, barely seven feet tall, and the forest clustered tightly around her. A fire was crackling next to her. The snow had been swept away from the surrounding area. And next to the fire squatted the unicorn, mumbling angrily and rocking back and forth, her head in her hooves. Served her right, the way she didn’t handle that bear. When Catskill cleared her throat, the unicorn flinched and looked up.

“Hey.” The unicorn forced a smile. “You’re awake.”

“I’m awake,” Catskill said flatly. She raised a hoof-

“Wait!” yelped the unicorn, jumping up. “You’re, you’re gonna break the circle!”

Catskill slowly put her hoof back on the ground and looked down. A chalk circle had been scrawled on the dirt, runic patterns scribbled around its circumference. She moved her hoof to almost touch the chalk and the energy contained in the circle made her coat stand on end.

“You see that parchment on your ankle?” said the unicorn. “Pull that off and leave it inside when you step out. And it’s gonna be cold.”

Shooting a Look at the unicorn, Catskill carefully undid the bandage and let the parchment flutter to the ground. There was something written on it, but she didn’t look. She pushed a hoof outside the circle and sucked in a breath as the cold stabbed at her like a coat made out of needles. Gritting her teeth, she pushed her way into the cold.

“Here.” The unicorn pulled Catskill’s furs from the other side of the fire and laid them at her hooves. She smiled sheepishly. “I needed to pull them off to get to-” Her voice faltered under Catskill’s withering glare. “…to, to get to… the wound and…” She folded her ears back and looked away.

Catskill pulled on her clothes, mercifully warm from the fire. They were battered from the fall, but still good enough, and the unicorn had even been decent enough haphazardly patch up the hole in Catskill’s coat. She walked a few steps. The cold still gnawed at her bones, but she still wasn’t sore. It felt like she’d just been sleeping, actually. She did a small circuit of the campfire.

“Are you, um, feeling okay?” asked the unicorn. “I’m… pretty good with healing magic, but-”

“I’m fine,” said Catskill. “Thanks.”

And then she slugged the unicorn in the jaw.

The unicorn’s head snapped to one side and she staggered several steps. She nearly overbalanced but was able to stay upright. “Gaow!” She massaged the side of face, glaring at Catskill. “What was that for?”

“For nearly getting yourself killed, you idiot,” growled Catskill. “For nearly getting me killed!”

The unicorn opened her mouth, paused, and rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine, I get it,” she muttered. “Whatever. Please don’t hit me.”

Punch.

“Ow! Sweet Celestia, that- Ow ow ow…” The unicorn rubbed her cheek. “I saved your life, you know.”

“And if I hadn’t needed to save you, I wouldn’t have almost died in the first place!”

Catskill’s mind told her that that was enough, that the unicorn hadn’t intended to stumble in the path of a rabid bear, that she was being unfair and cruel. Catskill’s emotions told her mind to zip it. “I was following that bear, you know. I could’ve followed it and surprised it and painlessly shot it in the back of the head, but nooooooooo, you need to come along and I need to rush to save you, because it a ranger’s duty to protect people, and then everything goes so frakking south we’re past the sunblasted equator and it’s getting cold again! Mother of…” Catskill shattered a rock against the cliff face.

“You’re. Welcome,” said the unicorn tightly. “I didn’t just-” She cut herself off and looked away. “Well, goodbye. I’m heading for the Crystal Empire.”

Catskill’s nerves jerked as she whirled on the unicorn. “You? The Crystal Empire? Alone? It’s like four days’ travel away!” Just what she needed. A ranger’s obligation to escort this… idiot… through the North for half a week. As if life wasn’t hard enough out here already.

The unicorn stared at Catskill in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you want to go with me!”

“I don’t, but you couldn’t even handle a wimpy old bear!”

“Wimpy- old- That sunblasted thing was rabid!”

“And you’re a unicorn! You have range!”

For some reason, the unicorn looked especially put out by that. “I- I was surprised and- Look, you really don’t want to travel with me. I’ve…” The unicorn rubbed one leg against the other and looked away again. “There’s a- There are probably ponies chasing me,” she said. “I- made somepony mad, and- and she’s nuts. If she sees you with me, she’ll probably go after you, too. Just- keep yourself safe, don’t worry about me, g’bye.” She began smudging the chalk circle, one rune at a time.

“I’m a ranger, I can’t just leave y-” And then Catskill realized something that gave her pause. “If ponies are chasing you,” she asked in a slow voice, “why’d you stay and help me?”

The unicorn went silent at that. One of her ears twitched. She looked up at Catskill and blinked slowly. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“I-” Catskill realized she’d never been taken aback for as long as she could remember. Part of it was because she’d avoided ponies for so long, but she’d never tried to say something and just had nothing. “I was close to dead. I mean, how long did it take to save my life?”

“Including moving you? Abo- A little under forty-five minutes.” The unicorn went back to smudging. “The circle helped a lot.”

Catskill blinked twice. Less than an hour. “W-well, you could’ve used that time to keep running. I was a lost cause.”

“I couldn’t just leave you to die. You saved my life.”

“Like I can’t just leave you to wander through these mountains,” realized Catskill. “You saved my life.”

The unicorn froze in her smudging and tensed up, like she was bracing for some sort of impact.

Maybe they could meet halfway. “How about this,” said Catskill. “I’ll help you for the next… two days or so, and you can get some distance on whoever’s chasing you. Once we’re out of the mountains and the land levels out a bit, you can keep running for the Empire and I’ll go back to ranging out here. Deal?”

The unicorn looked over her shoulder at the snowy forest. When she turned to Catskill, she raised her hoof halfway. “Deal, on one condition. Keep the snipes to a minimum, okay? I’ll do the same.”

“Deal.” They bumped hooves and quickly went about disassembling their camp.

When Catskill pawed through the pile of her stuff, she was surprised to find that all of her things were there — or at least, the things she’d been carrying with her. Even better, most of it was still intact, even the blunderbuss and its shells. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. As she adjusted her blunderbuss’s straps, she said, “Name’s Catskill, by the way.”

“Amanita.” With the chalk circle completely smudged up, the unicorn tossed the single scrap of parchment into the fire. It exploded minutely in a puff of purple-blue smoke. A quick spell put out the fire and covered it with snow. “Um, quick question. What’ll you do if we’re caught? By the ponies chasing us, I mean. That might be chasing us, I don’t know if-”

“That,” Catskill said casually, “depends entirely on whether they’re willing to behave.” In spite of there being no shell in the breech, she clicked back the hammer on her blunderbuss. CHKT.

“W-what?” whispered Amanita, taking a shaking step back. “Y-you’d- You’d be okay with shoo-”

“Short version. Some animals in this area are protected by Equestrian law. And I have zero sympathy for poachers.”

Amanita cringed slightly. “I- Don’t you think that- that it’s, ah, a little-”

“No, I’m not some trigger-happy maniac. If they back off, I’ll back down. I just won’t think much of shooting them if it comes down to that. Seriously, what did you think? I’d kill them just ’cause they annoyed me?”

“Well…” Amanita looked away and scuffed the ground. “I, I wouldn’t… It’s not that…”

Catskill stared at Amanita. What was her problem? Ordinarily, Catskill would’ve spent a few minutes reaming her out for being so stupid. Ordinarily, Catskill wouldn’t have made a promise to keep verbal jabs to a minimum and wouldn’t have been chased (maybe) by ponies. So instead, she said, “Anyway, all set?” Amanita nodded. “Then give me a yell if I’m going too fast.” She took off into the forest.

She started out going slower than usual, slightly worried that her apparent well-being was just skin- and sensation-deep, and the second she put herself under some actual stress, she’d fall apart. But to her surprise, her legs beat at the ground in the same way they always had, like pistons, without the slightest crink. Her breathing was slightly restricted from the bandage, but that was it. She sped up to her normal rate, only to fall back to a trot when Amanita yelled out.

“I’m-” gasped Amanita, “-a- unicorn! I don’t- have your-”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Catskill, grinning a little. “How long can you hold this speed?”

“I’ll- manage.”

Catskill’s little grin was replaced with a little scowl. “That’s not what I asked. How long?”

“Don’t- know. Two hours? Three?” Amanita coughed.

“Good. We need to keep ahead of your pursuers. What’d you do, anyway?”

“About a mare,” said Amanita breathlessly. “Long story. Tell you later.”

Mares. And stallions, for that matter. What was it about significant others that so consistently brought out the worst in ponies? At times, Catskill was very glad she’d never gotten involved in that. If it made others happy, good on them, but she’d never seen the appeal. Honestly, at times, the speed with which ponies could turn on each other over the simplest of things made her practically ecstatic she lived alone.

Defying Catskill’s expectations, Amanita did manage to keep her pace up for three hours, and then a little more, even if she had to keep silent. When Amanita started wheezing, some time after noon, Catskill slowed them down to a walk, letting them rest a tiny bit and listen to the leaves crunch beneath their hooves and the snow, to the birds in the trees. Catskill considered trying to convince a bird or two dozen to do some scouting for them and to look for Amanita’s hunters, but decided it wasn’t worth it. Birds were too flighty.

One of the subtler benefits of living out in the northern wilds: since the Crystal Palace was so tall and glowy, it made a nice, convenient landmark. Once you knew the mountains a little, you could triangulate your position, wherever you were, just by checking your location relative to the Palace. And of course, if you were heading for the Empire itself, well, all the better. At the moment, the very tip of the Palace was poking up above a mountaintop. It’d disappear toward the end of the day, but would reappear once they were around the mountain.

Taking stock of their situation, Catskill looked to the north and frowned. Dark clouds were gathering just below the top of one of the mountains. Probably a blizzard, but the weather out here was too unpredictable. Still, trying to find some shelter wouldn’t be amiss, and luckily, they were heading in the right direction for said shelter.

They kept walking, but Amanita’s wheezes slowed to gasps slowed to regular, if somewhat labored, breathing. Catskill didn’t even need to look at her to know that her hooves were falling less heavily. It wasn’t long before she half-trotted up next to Catskill, staring up at the Palace. “You’re sure the Crystal Empire’s four days away? It looks a lot closer than that.”

Catskill chuckled. “Trust me, it only looks that way because the Crystal Palace is so huge. Ever seen it?”

“No. Not in person, I mean.”

“That thing’s practically a skyscraper. It’s…” Catskill gestured vaguely at the Palace. “To be honest, it almost looks like something’s wrong with the city at first. Like having just one tower means the Empire’s unfinished or something.”

“Right. Um, listen…” Amanita rubbed the back of her neck. “Thanks for, uh, sticking around and, and pushing me. I probably-”

Catskill looked forward so Amanita wouldn’t see her roll her eyes. “Yeah, I know. Don’t get all mushy on me, okay? I’m just doing my job.”

“…Which is more than you can say for a lot of ponies.”

She didn’t say anything, but Catskill chuckled softly.


“Scatter!” screamed Artemis. Every bounty hunter immediately shot away from the undead bear in a different direction. Bitterroot just went straight up and hovered ten feet above the canopy. She didn’t see where the others went.

The bear reached where their group had last been together and started sniffing at the ground. Bitterroot weighed her options, none of them particularly good. She didn’t have anything in the vein of ranged weaponry, always counting on her speed to close any gaps. She wasn’t much of a melee fighter and only carried a single battered sword and a knife more suited for carving. And that wasn’t even taking into account that her opponent was a zombie bear.

The bear suddenly roared, a surprisingly raspy sound, and took off down one of the trails. “The bear’s turning east-northeast!” Bitterroot yelled to whoever was out there. “I don’t know what it found, but-”

To her right, a flurry of greenish sparks soared into the air and exploded. Bitterroot shot off in that direction and dropped through the treetops, landing right at Trace’s side. Trace was pressing herself to a tree, breathing deeply. “It’s not coming towards us, is it?” Trace asked quickly.

“No, it’s headed that way.” Bitterroot pointed.

“Artemis,” said Trace. “It’s going after Artemis. Son of a…” She began pacing, staring at the ground, and muttering fervently.

“Do you know any anti-necromancy magic? Any at all?”

Trace’s head snapped up, her ears rigid. “Know any- I’ve never even seen a necromantic thrall before today! I’m not versed in the anti-dark arts!” She ran a hoof through her mane. “But if, if I had to guess, silver or fire. Silver’s related to purity on an arcane level and fire simply burns everything. That’s what I remember from college, at least.”

“Okay. Good.” Bitterroot didn’t have any silver, but fire was easy enough to come by. But before she could do that- “I’ll see if I can find Artemis and Gale,” she said. “You- I don’t know what you can do. See if you can sneak up behind the bear, maybe? Look through your pack and find silverware?” She grinned sheepishly and shrugged.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Not even even a hint of sardonicism. “And I’ll send up flares so you can find me again, yes? Green for normalcy, red for danger.”

“Sounds good.” Bitterroot zipped up over the trees again, listened for the sound of crashing wood, and followed that. A strange thought ran through her head: did thralls get tired? There was no reason they should. Which probably meant the bear was effectively a perpetual-motion monster and they’d have to completely destroy it for it to stop unless Trace pulled a miracle spell on opposing necromancy out of her butt. Why oh why was information on stopping dark magic just as hard to find as information on performing it?

The bear was smashing through trees with little to no concern for its own well-being, and protruding branches tore at its flesh. Bitterroot wondered if thralls even had any sense of self at all, much less self-preservation. She flew further in the direction the bear was charging and hollered, “Artemis! You out there?”

“Down ’ere!” And Bitterroot dropped to the ground again. Artemis was running through the forest, deliberately taking the tightest routes to give the bear as much grief as possible. “Figures it’d go after me,” she growled.

“Anti-necromancy. What do you know about it?” Bitterroot kept flying, zipping around the trees. Artemis would outpace her if she was on foot.

“Not much ’sides spells. Silver ’urts thralls, fire destroys ’em. Nothin’ else.”

“Trace said the same thing.” Good sign. Maybe-

“Glad she knows somethin’,” snorted Artemis.

Maybe Bitterroot would’ve defended their best tracker under normal circumstances, but now, all she had time for was, “Were you or Gale carrying silverware? I mean silver silverware?”

“ ’Oo carries crap like that through lands like these?” It was hard to miss the derision in Artemis’s voice.

Bitterroot jinked around a particularly large tree. “‘No’ would’ve been fine. Keep running, I’ll see if I can find Gale and we can work together.”

“Sure!” yelled Artemis. “Just leave-” But Bitterroot was already gone.

As she soared up, a green flare flew into the sky to her left and popped. She couldn’t tell if Trace had changed position at all. Was she thinking of a plan? Was she still looking for silver? Bitterroot almost flew over to ask, but first, she had to find Gale.

She was lucky; Gale’s trail was as clear as the others and a lot shorter. Gale hadn’t gone far before stopping and was rummaging through her bags, her arquebus lying on the ground beside her, when Bitterroot found her. She looked up when Bitterroot landed, her eyes wide.

“Trace and Artemis are both okay,” Bitterroot said. “The bear’s chasing Artemis. They both think silver and fire can stop it. Do you have any silver?”

Gale shook her head.

“Sun blast it. Any weapons? Swords, knives, crossbows?”

Gale nudged the arquebus and pulled a dinged sword from one of the bags. She tilted her head and frowned at Bitterroot.

“Okay. How good of a shot are you with that gun?”

The frown grew more pronounced. Gale pointed into the forest and drew a hoof across her throat.

Praying she was interpreting Gale correctly, Bitterroot said, “I know the bear’s undead-” (Gale nodded, still frowning.) “-but maybe you can, I don’t know, distract it or something if you shoot it.”

Gale shrugged helplessly and half-grinned. Her good wing flared slightly.

“I’m making this up as I go, okay?” snapped Bitterroot. “Trace is that way and she’s sending up green flares. See if you can meet up with her. We need a plan.”

Gale nodded and began pulling her bags back on with surprising speed.

“One last thing. Where’s that rope?” Just in case. Gale tossed a coil onto Bitterroot’s withers. “Thanks. Stay safe.” And the two pegasi went their separate ways.

As Bitterroot tracked the bear down again, her mind began working. She could buy Artemis some time. Get the bear chasing her, let Artemis get away, then take off into the sky. One safe earth pony, one confused zombie bear. Easy.

Artemis was still running and showed no signs of slowing. She looked at Bitterroot the second she descended, but Bitterroot was already talking. “Gale’s fine, meeting up with Trace, over there, follow the green flare, I’ll distract the bear, okay?”

“I- Okay.” Artemis promptly changed directions and took off into the forest.

Bitterroot dropped to the ground and slid through the snow, her wings flared for braking. She turned around; already the bear was close. It moved with a lolloping gait that was no less speedy for its ungainliness. Bitterroot flared her wings and yelled, “Oi! Bear! Over here!” She jumped up and down, flailing her legs for attention, and took off the second the bear was within ten yards of her.

But the bear completely ignored her. It kept following Artemis’s trail and didn’t even twitch in her direction. Bitterroot began streaking back and forth in front of the bear, yelling, screaming, cartwheeling, every attention-grabbing action she could think of short of actually hitting it, all to no avail.

Bitterroot could vaguely hear a voice ahead of her. “I think I hear- Artemis? Over here!”

Stop the bear, screamed her head. The others needed time. How? She had the rope, didn’t she? She flew above the trees, uncoiled a long length of it, and wrapped parts around each of her front hooves, making a nice, long loop almost six feet across. She plunged beneath the treetops again. The second the bear’s head passed into the loop, she flew to one side. The bear roared and slipped as its head was yanked sideways and the loop constricted like a noose; it fell, its feet sliding out from under it.

Her teeth clenched in exertion and her wings beating like a hummingbird’s, Bitterroot pulled at the rope to keep the bear distracted. The bear growled and thrashed at the rope, but its actions were too uncoordinated and the rope was too tight. Bitterroot kept tugging.

The bear slapped at the rope and suddenly Bitterroot was yanked forward and down. Her head smacked against the ground; she saw stars and didn’t know which way was up. Dazed, she let the coils around her legs loosen as she rolled over and saw the bear standing over her.

With slack available, the bear managed to get the rope from around its neck. It looked down at Bitterroot as if it was unsure of what to make of her. It tilted its head. Its eyes burned so blue, Bitterroot felt colder just by looking at them.

Then the bear continued after Artemis’s trail.

For a moment, all Bitterroot could hear was her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Was it still chasing Artemis? Only Artemis? Why? Was it just not interested in her for some reason? Had it eaten ponies in the past and decided earth tasted better than pegasus? Or-

A smack, a “Now!”, and suddenly something was burning. The sensation of heat, although slight, instantly banished all wooziness from Bitterroot’s mind. She jumped to her hooves and flared her wings, ready to be off at a moment’s notice. A big, flaming shape was thrashing around ahead of her, banging against the walls of a unicorn’s shield. The smoke coming from it writhed unnaturally through the air. Bitterroot took a few tentative steps forward.

“Hey!” Trace yelled from around the shield. “Come on, Bitterroot! It’s safe!”

By the time Bitterroot was up close, the shape — now easily recognized as the bear — had stopped moving. Trace didn’t drop the shield, though. Trace, Gale, and Artemis all looked intact and were sitting in the snow as they stared at the inferno. Bitterroot squinted through the bright fire and the heat at the bear’s charred remains. “Is it dead?” she asked. “And if you say what I know you’re going to say-”

“It ain’t gettin’ back up,” said Artemis. “Fire musta burned the spell away.”

Bitterroot looked questioningly at Trace, who nodded. “You don’t hear about it much,” she said, “but there’s much more to magic than equations and unicorn horns, particularly in the more esoteric branches. Such as, ehm, necromancy. Fire is responsible for a surprising amount of spells failing.”

Either way, a dead-not-undead bear was a dead-not-undead bear, so Bitterroot wasn’t complaining. She sat on the snow next to the others. Her wings suddenly felt a bit sore. “Hey, Artemis?”

“Yeh?”

“I got tangled up trying to distract the bear, and it ignored me, like it was aiming for you. Any idea why?”

Artemis clenched her jaw and flicked her tail. “No.” Her ears were folded back.

“No idea? None at all?”

No,” Artemis snapped. “ ’Ow’m I s’pposed t’know ’ow a thrall works?”

Bitterroot glanced at Artemis and frowned. “Look, I just think it’s a little weird that it’d be so focused on you.”

“And I sure as ’ay dunno why!” Artemis punctuated the sentence with a stomp. “Maybe I’m jus’ the first pony it saw!”

Why was Artemis reacting so strongly to a simple question? “So it wouldn’t think to-”

“Thralls don’t think,” Artemis said flatly. “They don’t got minds ’r wills. They-”

“I know that,” snapped Bitterroot.

“Y’know, but y’don’t un’erstand! If that bear was told, ‘kill th’ firs’ pony y’see’, it couldn’t do anythin’ else ’cause it don’t know anythin’ else! I don’t-” Artemis groaned. “I don’t think you’re followin’ the facts,” she whispered loudly. “Y’say you know thralls don’t think, but y’know what that means? They can’t plan. They can’t go ’gains’ their master’s wishes. They can’t change their course ’t all!”

“And you think it’s-”

Trace awkwardly cleared her throat, ending Bitterroot’s rant prematurely. “For the record,” she said quietly, “I’m, ah, on Artemis’s side.”

Bitterroot stared at Trace.

“W-well, think about it,” said Trace. She self-consciously took a few steps back. “Artemis, Amanita knew you were on her trail, right?”

“Prob’ly.”

“But not necessarily you and me, Bitterroot. So Amanita thinks she’s only being followed by two ponies. And, and ‘kill the first pony you see’ is, well, it’s not really a complex order, is it? So-”

“But why the first pony?” asked Bitterroot, sweeping her hoof for emphasis. “Why not any pony? Is-”

“Well, I assure you,” Trace said huffily, “I do. Not. Know. What goes on inside a necromantic thrall’s head. I am simply making assumptions based on what little I have seen. Personally, I think we should ignore who’s trying to kill whom for what reason, unless one is ‘us’ and the other is ‘Amanita’. So.” She tossed her head back, getting her mane in some semblance of order. “I’m going back to where we first saw the bear in the hopes of picking up Amanita’s trail again. And if you want to find her, please shut up.” She walked off, too angry to even stomp.

Artemis walked into Bitterroot’s personal space and pressed their muzzles together. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” she whispered, “or maybe I’ll cut you outta the reward.” She followed Trace without another word.

Bitterroot rolled her eyes and took one last look at the bear. She knew she ought to ignore it, but something kept nagging at the back of her head, asking, “Why?” Why Artemis? Why only Artemis? Was it really just a coincidence? Was she running around in circles trying to find out how a black box worked? Probably. She sighed and walked after Trace and Artemis.

She glanced at Gale, walking beside her. “Thanks for your words of support,” she said.

Gale chuckled and nodded.