POV: Mystic Gem
When the report of Pillbox’s death reached Canterlot, they sent a carriage with three coffins for him and his two officers to be brought back home. At least, what was left of them. The fire had done quite a good job at making sure that none of us knew, which of these bodies actually belonged to the General, so we just made sure that there was a body per coffin and hoped that nopony would notice. The captain then ordered a short minute of silence in respect to the fallen General, even if we didn’t really like him.
Then, as soon as the carriage departed, the captain ordered us to move. Our target was the encampment further to the north-west that we had attempted to secure a few days prior. This time, however, there were far fewer Gryphons around than before and the Captain intended to use this to his advantage.
He let us take up position around the camp, completely surrounding it, before he then made use of our Pegasi again and let them attack the camp from above.
The camp immediately fell into absolute chaos. Those few who managed to take up arms offered what resistance they could before they were gunned down, while others tried to flee only to be taken prisoner by the rest of us.
All-in-all, we didn’t suffer a single casualty, while we captured seven Gryphons and killed twenty more. We then went into the camp and thoroughly searched it from top to bottom. To our pleasant surprise, we found our four missing ponies, out of which three were immediately taken back into our ranks.
However, the fourth, Private Lightning Rod wasn’t so lucky. He was tortured by the Gryphons to the point where he couldn’t even move his muzzle anymore, for risk of ripping the few shreds of skin he had left. The captain immediately requested assistance from the fifth, who were still nearby and who brought a carriage for him to be transported. Lightning Rod was then brought into a medical ward close to Ponyville, where he remained for the rest of the war.
I truly hold deep respect before this Stallion. Not only because he actually held tight, even though the Gryphons had basically reduced him to a bundle of flesh and bones, but also because of what came afterwards.
Lightning Rod was honourably discharged during his stay in hospital and offered a doubled pension for his deeds in the line of duty. However, he… refused. Instead he appeared in my ‘office` the day after he was released and slammed an application form onto my desk. He has recently been promoted to ‘Sargent’ and is now the leader of squad 4 of Charlie platoon.
But… I’m getting sidetracked… anyways: after Pillbox had fallen, General Shining Armor had taken direct command over our regiment and placed the captain as his deputy commander. This came as a surprise to all of us at first, seeing as they didn’t really like each other, however we came to the conclusion that this was purely due to his rank.
See: normally, a unit with the size of ours is led by a 1st Lieutenant like I was at the time. This meant that all the other companies were actually led by 1st Lieutenants, which made the captain the highest ranking officer directly after the General.
What didn’t come as a surprise was that we were released from the chain of command and given complete freedom of choosing our course of action. Obviously, they didn’t want to have to deal with one another, so they avoided having to contact one another.
The Captain was quick to utilize this freedom. As soon as the camp was cleared and garrisoned, he led us further into enemy territory and behind enemy lines. We then spent the following two to three days laying ambushes along their supply lines or attacking their defences from behind. Not with the goal of actually breaking their lines or capturing an important position, but to stir them up a bit.
In the end, it actually worked. Our attacks caused the Gryphon army to completely fall into chaos. In some places entire armies left their positions to defend another where we had previously been, but were long gone already. This caused massive holes to appear in their front lines, which our armies quickly pushed through.
After those three days, the entire Gryphon Army was on the retreat. We pushed them northward further and further back towards our original borders.
When we reached Stalliongrad, we prepared ourselves for a siege. A siege that never came. The local population had noticed their captor’s retreat and taken up arms against those few that were left.
When we reached the gates, we were greeted with cheers and smiling faces. Laughing foals came to bring us flowers and young mares came to greet our stallions with kisses and hugs. The captain gave us a few hours to indulge in the spoils that we were given before we continued our march to not lose too much of our momentum.
We pushed them back further and further into the north and it seemed as if our advance couldn’t be halted anymore. Sadly, we were wrong.
We reached the Northern Stalliongrad Mountains only about two days after we had passed Stalliongrad, but as we tried to cross them we were greeted by a flying wall of arrows that rained down upon us.
It turned out that the Gryphons had used the mountains as a defence line, which they had fortified. Nevertheless, we tried to keep our momentum and just wash them away like we had done the week prior, however the Gryphons were far too prepared for that and easily fended off our attack.
Thus, our advance came to a stop and the Stalliongrad Siege began – when I heard that they called it that, I actually found it quite amusing, given that Stalliongrad was never besieged.
Anyways, the problem with this whole siege was that General Armor was in Canterlot at the time and a few of the 1st Lieutenants refused to listen to Captain Becker’s orders, which is why the first attack ended in such disaster. When the second attack was planned, the captain emphasized quite clearly that in order to win the battle, we had to rely on each other’s cover, so breaking formation would essentially be a death sentence.
A plan was formed, where the heavy companies would make another advance towards the enemy positions to try and create small holes in their defence. The light companies were to then utilize these holes to break through their lines and attack them from behind.
The other officers agreed to the plan, however they had a condition: They found that our company had already earned far too much glory and that it was their time to shine now. This was fine by the captain, seeing as our company wasn’t really made for sieges anyways, so we stood back and gave fire support.
However, I knew that the plan would fail. How did I know? Well, there were multiple signs that luck clearly wasn’t with us that day.
The first sign was that a stray ballista bolt just so happened to pass through a hole in our shield wall that was barely wide enough to stick your hoof through and gave one of our ponies a long, deep gash along his barrel, while two others were knocked off their feet from when it impacted the ground beside them.
By that point, we officers had earned the nickname ‘blank flanks’, as we were the only ones left without any scars. Even the Captain had this giant scar across his face and according to Twilight, there were a lot more beyond that uniform of his.
Anyways, the second sign was that a wild raincloud suddenly rolled over the mountain range which the Pegasi couldn’t deal with as every time they tried, they came under fire from the Gryphon ballistae.
The third and last sign was that as soon as the rain came down on us, the left flank broke formation and charged in, followed by the right flank and lastly the rest of the formation. Needless to say, they soon found that simply charging in did not work in the slightest.
The captain called for a retreat and after some hesitation, the other officers followed his orders. We waited out the rain before we then sat together in another meeting.
All of them tried to find some explanation for their actions, though completely in vain. To the captain, it was already clear that a coordinated attack was unfeasible due to heavy reliability issues and thus, a new plan had to be thought of.
The new plan was to not attack. At least not in the conventional sense. Instead, we tried something similar to what we did almost two weeks prior, when our counter offensive started.
The captain ordered the heavy companies to dig in along our front line, while the lights, including us, would skirmish the enemy position in irregular intervals. Said skirmishes could be carried out whenever the corresponding officer saw fit and did not have to be reported to the captain. The only thing that they had to do was to retreat in time, as to not risk unnecessary losses.
Thus, we slowly ground away at the enemy positions. We ourselves attacked multiple times, each time coming under heavy enemy fire and retreating as soon as the resistance got too strong to handle without losses.
After four days of assault, a gap formed in their lines, one large enough to push an entire company through. The captain was reluctant to use it at first, as he found that it was unlikely that we had caused enough casualties already to cause a gap of this size. What was more likely was that they wanted to lure us in so they could then cut us off and get rid of some of our strength in order to then start an assault of their own.
But the captain had an idea how to use this trap against them. He ordered Bulkhead that his earth ponies shall leave their weapons behind and instead take as much food and supplies with them as they may carry. The remaining unicorns of his platoon, as well as Platoon Charlie and my Platoon, Bravo, were to then form up in a spearhead shape around them to keep them safe on the ground, while the Pegasi would keep the skies clear.
When the preparations were done, we stormed the gap and broke through it and just as we thought, as soon as we passed, the gap was quickly closed again. Though, they probably thought that we would try to come around and assault them from behind in order to get back, but we didn’t. Instead, the captain led us further, deep into enemy territory, with enough food to last possibly multiple weeks.
According to our plan, when the Gryphons caught on to what was happening, they would panic or at least try to catch us by sending troops from their garrison. This would then hopefully leave enough of a commotion for the other companies to make their push and break through.
Meanwhile, the captain had already sought out a goal for us: The Gryphon Capitol. His reasoning was simple: no matter how dangerous the beast, if you cut their head off, they are dead… well, except hydras but they are just an exception.
Anyways, we marched through enemy territory for about four days, sometimes encountering an enemy patrol which we quickly shot down in order to keep our route concealed.
We didn’t march directly towards their capitol, as it would have been too predictable. Instead, we took a zig-zag course through the Gryphon countryside, resting in forests and sometimes even encountering a Gryphon civilian or two.
I must say, those few who dared talk to us and didn’t run off the moment they saw us were actually quite nice. Some of them even offered us food, which we had to refuse for risk of poisoning… well and because some of it was meat. Every time we encountered civilians we also had to change directions, as we couldn’t be sure if they wouldn’t report our position, even if they were hospitable.
We finally reached the capitol in the night from the fourth to the fifth day and snuck around to the north gate. Our unicorns used their magic to set the guards asleep and we got in. We then slowly and quietly made our way to the palace. This is where our uniforms came in handy, as the loud clanking and the bright colours of the standard armour would have definitely given us away, while our darker colour scheme combined with the quiet nature of soft cloth made us very hard to detect.
Still, that didn’t change that we were 62 Ponies and one human sneaking through Gryphania. In order to stay hidden, we had to rely on side-alleys and dimly-lit, narrow streets to move through. Every time we encountered anypony, be it guard or civilian, they were knocked out in melee.
We soon reached the main avenue, leading directly to the palace. However, instead of just following it, there was something else that caught the captain’s attention. There were multiple rope-like things running from house to house, before vanishing into a small shop, the sign of which read ‘telegraph’.
We moved to it and found an open window, through which we could see light. We moved closer and a regular beeping sound became audible. However, after we heard a few of these sequences, the captain suddenly froze in place. His eyes went wide in a display of shock that I had never seen from him before and what he said next made me show the same reaction.
“Canterlot has fallen…”