Pathfinder shuddered when Rain folded his map of Altus across the table, with every eye in the Rainstorm watching the parchment rustle. Then he jumped when Mary slammed into one stubborn corner, keeping the map from rolling back up and pinning it into the grain of the dense wood beneath.
“Mares. Stallions.” Rain’s eyes swept across the group. “Get used to this map. For most of us, this is going to be our graveyard.”
“Damn, Rain… Nopony ever taught you how to give a speech, did they?” Carver asked.
It was obvious the mammoth mare was in no joking mood when she drove a hoof into the stallion’s chest, just below his ribs. As Carver heaved for breath, Rain gently massaged her fetlock. “Anyone else feeling like a comedian?”
Silence reigned.
“Good. I want you to all know what we’re looking at. No illusions, no lies. We are going to save Cirra, and short of Mobius himself dropping out of the sky, we’re going to die doing it. Magnus sent his temple guard here. The ‘Gottlichewache’. They aren’t expecting a real fight; they think the good soldiers are all up north making a last stand with the Emperor at Stratopolis. They’re here for civilians.”
Rain placed a hoof on the portion of the map for Altus’ docks district, if one could call the few dozen piers and jetties a ‘district’. “I’ve put the Emperor’s wife and Summer’s father in charge of wrangling the civilians, since they’re both useless in a fight right now.” Under her breath, she added “Trust Hurricane to fuck me out of a good spearmare.”
“So why aren’t we launching sky chariots already?” Haze asked. “We could have a quarter of these civilians gone by morning.”
“Because the griffons are already here,” Rain answered, reaching under the collar of her armor. A single feather, long and white and harshly pointed, fluttered onto the table. If it belonged to a pegasus, it was the largest pegasus who would have ever lived. “Yngvilde is waiting for me.”
“Yngvilde?” Summer asked.
“Magnus’ daughter.”
“Is she… like him?” Thorn asked.
Rain lifted the feather on the tip of her wing. “This came to me on the wind this morning, along with a letter.”
“Shit…” Haze muttered. “What’s she want? Surrender?”
“‘To share a mead with me, apparently,” Rain answered with a snort. “Since she can control the wind, she’s… whatever the hell Magnus is. And if you send the civilians off, she’ll blow them out of the sky with storm winds.”
“Then what hope do we have?” Summer asked. “Do we go with you to drink and just try and assassinate her?”
“A bloody beak doesn’t kill a griffon,” Rain answered. “We all know that. We’d take a helping of them with us, but it wouldn’t save what’s left of Cirra.”
“But it would stop the wind,” Windshear notec. “We should just rush her and pray to Garuda somepony gets a stab in. Hope she doesn’t completely laugh off losing an entire limb like Magnus did?”
The medic rose to her hooves. “We either need to kill some fucking griffons, or I need to start spiking the civilians and deny them the pleasure.”
“Sit down, Summer,” Rain ordered with a barking snap. “You’re making the same mistake I did when I fought Magnus. It’s the same mistake we’ve been making this entire war. It’s the same stupid mistake I’ve been making since I tried to get Gold Moon to let us pierce behind the griffon lines and kill Magnus at the beginning of the war. Looks like the old bastard was right.” Rain shook her head. “We can’t win this war killing griffons. But winning doesn’t mean killing off all the griffons. It means saving Cirra.”
“That’s well and good,” Thorn muttered. “But we’re still dealing with a demon-griffoness and an army. We’ve got no walls, no fortifications to control the skies.”
Iron Rain paced behind the map. “We won’t use the skies. We’ll use the sea.”
“Um… what?” Finder asked. “I mean… most of those ponies can’t even swim.”
“The griffons will assume we’re going out in the air,” Rain explained. “Straight off the shore. They’ll be watching the skies. We’re going to bring down a heavy fog. Then we launch the poorest wagons we can spare, loaded up with straw effigies. Fly them out as spread as possible, so it looks like we’re desperate, and just trying to get a few ponies out. That’s where our fastest fliers go.” The gray mare frowned. “We’ll lose them too. But in the time they buy us, we’ll get the real civilians and the real chariots out on boats. See here,” her hoof gestured to a cove a few stadia down the Cirran coastline. “The coast is too rough for the griffon forces to see us from anywhere near Altus. Once we get the boats here, we can launch to the air and the fog will cover an escape.”
“What good is a fog against a wind god?” Summer asked.
Rain answered by tapping the patch on her eye. “Magnus couldn’t use the wind for two things at once. He stopped blowing himself around for speed to dodge every time he had to stop to catch Mary. That’s how I got his leg. I’m betting the same is true of this Yngvilde. That’s why I’m going to fight her.”
“Rain!” Finder shouted, standing up. “You can’t—”
“I damn well can, kid.” Rain sighed. “I’m not going alone. And unlike Magnus, I’m not going for a kill. I’m going to stall her, long as I can. Keep her winds focused on me and not on the fog.” Rain nodded. “Before we go any further… are you all with me?”
It was quiet at first, but only because Stonewall was the first to move. He stepped forward one stride, nodded firmly, and bowed his head until it nearly touched the ground.
“To the bitter end,” Thorn noted.
“It’s been an honor, Lady Rain,” Windshear continued.
Haze chuckled. “It hasn’t been an honor yet. But it damn well will be soon.”
Carver turned to Summer. “You in?”
“Like we’ve got a fucking choice,” Summer answered. “Let’s make it hurt.”
Then it grew quiet. Every eye turned to Pathfinder, who hung his head at his side of the table.
“Why do you have to go, Rain?”
Carver stepped toward his young friend. “Pathfinder, don’t—”
“No,” Rain answered. “Let it be, Carver. It’s a fair question.” Then she frowned. “Pathfinder, believe me, I wish it was something different, but it’s not. This is just the only way..”
Finder’s face wrinkled, choking on that bitter root. “Then I’m with you.”
A weight fell off of Iron Rain’s shoulders. “Good. Gods know we need you the most. Here’s the plan. Windshear, you’re with me. We’ll be taking a century off the top; the best we have to work with, as shoddy as that is. Haze and Thorn, you’ll be managing the weather team. Your role is crucial, so you’ll have as many soldiers and civilian volunteers as you need. The rest go to Carver, Summer, and Stonewall; I need you to trap the city. Ambushes, pits, whatever you can do to delay the griffons. The longer it takes them to get to the docks, the more it seems like that’s still the priority target. You’ll be fighting in the streets; no grand movements. Fight dirty. Use your heads. And Pathfinder… you’re with the civilians.”
“What?” Finder shouted. “After all that—”
“I need you to guide the ships in the mist,” Rain interrupted pointedly. “Your skill with maps and your… weird memory, they’re the key to this whole thing. If we scrape a ship up on the rocks and the griffons hear it, or if one drifts out of the fog, everything’s lost. There’ll be no visibility, and no torches or lanterns. Everything hinges on you getting the boats to the cove, Pathfinder. Can I count on you?”
Finder nodded once.
“Then you have your orders. If the griffons move, I’ve ordered our watchponies to fly straight into the sky with lit torches. We start the plan immediately when the cry goes up. If they wait long enough, we launch tomorrow at sunset. May Garuda be with us. Dismissed.”
When the grim ponies of the Rainstorm moved to leave the command tent and set about their tasks, Rain’s wing settled on Pathfinder’s back. “Hold on a minute.”
“What?” The colt snapped. Rain could see the tears on the corners of his eyes, but his gaze was cold. It was what she had been afraid of; she saw the betrayal in his expression.
“You know I have to go, right? I know you’re a kid, Pathfinder, but I have to believe you understand.”
Pathfinder said nothing.
“Even if I sent one of the others to fight Yngvilde, even if we somehow won that fight… The fight’s all I’ve ever known,” Rain’s tone dropped to almost a whisper, and for a moment there was almost a trace of sadness to her words. “Fight, advance. Fight, retreat. Either way, all I know is the fight.” Closing her eye, Rain took a deep breath which she let out in a long sigh. “Whatever world comes after this war, I have no place in it. I have nothing without the fight.
Pathfinder said nothing.
“Kid…” When Pathfinder’s eyes ran away, Rain frowned. “Finder...Talk to me.”
Pathfinder shook his head. “It’s stupid.”
“Almost everything is.”
Pathfinder let out a laugh in the form of a huff and cocked a half-smile. The smile was empty, though, and his golden eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Three days ago was my birthday.”
“Really?”
“It’s not… I didn’t have any clue before you taught me to read,” Finder answered. “But then I saw the date on the corner of one of the scout reports when we were working on plotting the map out.”
“So how old are you?”
“Fifteen,” Pathfinder answered.
Rain couldn’t help but wince. “I… I’m sorry.”
He shrugged.
“You don’t look it, you know. I peg you at thirty.”
“Summer said the same thing when she was looking at my wing.” Finder smiled the saddest, frailest smile that Rain had ever seen. “She says it’s all the gray hair.”
“Yeah. It looks good on you, though. Shows off some of your wisdom.” Rain ran a feather through his mane slowly, wistfully. “Someday you’ll find somepony who likes it.”
“I’m not going,” Finder answered.
Iron Rain staggered. “What—”
“I’ll guide the boats,” he interrupted. “I’ll help the others. But I can’t leave you all behind, Rain. I just… I can’t.”
“Pathfinder, you promised me. You made an oath.”
“Because you’re counting on me,” Pathfinder replied. And there was a bitterness in his swift reply. “That’s what you said. Because my brothers and sisters need me. Carver. Summer. You, Rain.”
“And we need you to survive—”
“I can’t lose another family!” He shouted straight into her face, and then seemed all at once to realize where he was, to see what he was doing. Finder curled forward, wrapped his wings over his face, and started sobbing.
“Kid…”
He shook inside his little cocoon of wings. Rain extended a hoof to pat his shoulder, and then thought better of it. Instead, she turned back to the map in the tent, sitting down on the cold earth, feeling grass and dirt brush her tail and her flanks. “I wish it were another way too. Believe me, I do.”
“I don’t.”
Rain winced hard at the little voice that fought through the tears. “What?”
“If it weren’t this way…” Pathfinder stumbled in his speaking, and a whimper sliped from between his wings. “I… I wouldn’t have met you. Or Carver, or Summer, or Dawn…” Pathfinder shook violently at the mention of that name.
Rain took that moment to stare at the gray-maned colt. Fifteen years old… that was hard to believe. But underneath the stress of war, and the wrinkles burnt into his muzzle from long nights tossing and turning, too drunk to think but far too sober to ignore the pain, and the scars the made him look like the eldest and most seasoned of Nimbus’ heroes… underneath all that was a fifteen year old colt. A peasant, from a little fishing village. The youngest son of two noponies, too poor to bother learning to read and too concerned with putting food on the table to practice anything like war.
Who was he to Katagismos Sidero? To Iron Rain, the heir of Nimbus, the greatest warrior in the entire Cirran Empire? To the mare who fought a god and lived?
Gods, was that who she’d become? Rain shuddered at the thought. “Kid…”
“What?”
“Tell me something,” Rain answered, and she turned to fully face him. “Look at me.”
“Huh?”
“What do you see?” Rain asked. When Pathfinder’s eyes wandered away, she sighed. “Honestly, Finder.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m just… curious, I guess.”
Pathfinder sighed. “Well,” he squeaked out after a very long hesitance. “I… You’re… beautiful,” he admitted. “Even with the eyepatch. And, um… well, I think you’re kind, and—”
That was it? Nothing about a warrior? A commander?
“Do I have to keep going?” Pathfinder asked awkwardly. That question, at least, snapped Rain out of her thoughts—at least, enough to notice the tiny hint of a blush creeping onto his muzzle.
She let out a tiny chuckle. “I’m sorry, Finder. I wasn’t trying to embarass you, I promise.”
“I know,” he told her. Then he wiped his tears away with the lead feather of his good wing. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Rain answered, nodding in his direction. What she meant by it, even she hadn’t decided. Zweihufer slid from its mount on the tentpoles by the tent flaps with ease, and before Finder could say another word, she was gone.