//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 - The Princess has the Final Word // Story: Rules for Bodyguards // by ShiningBeacon //------------------------------// Shining Armor trotted up to Barrel Roll on the aft castle deck. “I got your message.” He pulled his own binoculars out and scanned for the enemy. It didn’t take long. The hulls of the ships were visible now, their sails run out to full size to allow for maximum speed. All six vessels were approaching in a reverse U formation that would let four of the six ships pepper the Ambassador with their broadside ballista while the last two come close enough to grapple and board her. “Is that all of them?” “I’ve got pegsai running recon on the fleet. We haven’t seen any more than these six.” “How many combatants are we looking at?” Barrel Roll did a quick calculation in his head. “No less than seven hundred, though they can only board us with two ships at a time.” “Versus our three hundred, and two hundred non-combatants.. Not the kind of battle I’m a fan of.” “Sure you are, you just prefer the numbers to be flipped.” Shining Armor gave him a grimace. “Got me there. So, who are they? Griffins? Zebras? I can’t imagine you could find that many pony pirates across the entire coastline.” “You’d be surprised, but no. Best we can tell these guys are from Klugetown, a pirate haven south of Equestira.” “Klugetown, huh? Never heard of it. Maybe I’ll pay it a visit someday.” “Not many have. It’s a wrenched place, full of scum and villainy. Stay away if at all possible.” The sound of many sets of hooves on the stairs behind them caught Shining’s attention. He turned to see his unit all standing attention, not looking at anything in particular. “Standing by for your orders, Sir,” Stone Wall said. Even now, in the face of a deadly engagement the stallion looked completely unflappable. “Sergeant, alert the princess that we are expecting to engage the enemy in...” he glanced at Barrel Roll, hoping he knew how long they had to wait. “About eight hours, if the wind holds up.” “...Eight hours. We'll go to full alert status soon and she’ll need to remain in her stateroom when that happens.” A thought crossed his mind. “Actually, belay that order. I need to head down and don my armor anyways; I’ll deliver the message myself. You all get some rest, then meet me in the mess in six hours.” The nine bodyguards saluted and marched back down the stairs, the two lieutenants watching them go. “Why did you tell them to rest?” Barrel Roll asked in a low voice. “Because they don’t have any damage control duties, and they’ll just be in the way when we go to full alert. Plus, I want them as fresh as possible. The way this fight is shaping up, we’ll need every advantage we can get.” “I think you misunderstand the power dynamic here, Lieutenant." Cadance chided. "You don’t get to confine me to my quarters.” She made a point to lounge against his doorframe as she spoke, watching as he girded his armor. “Cadance, staying in you room while the sailors do their work is the best way to keep you safe, and with you safe, I can focus on doing what I do best to help everyone.” She glanced at the floor, biting her lip as she considered her words. “What if I offered to surrender? Just me. Alone, I’m worth the ransom of an entire kingdom. They’d be fools to turn down an offer like that when they risk everything trying to capture the ship.” Shining suppressed the urge to laugh. He knew she wasn’t joking. “It could work, if not for the fact that Princess Celestia would skin every one of us alive when she found out we handed you over to pirates to save ourselves” Cadance looked indignant at his words. “Celestia would never do anything so remotely barbaric!” Her expression softened, “Though she probably would turn all of you into stone in her rage.” “Yeah, like the statues in her garden, right?” He expected her to refute the urban legend, to bluster and correct his false assertion. Dead. Silence. He turned to look at her. “Right, Cadance?” He asked in a small voice. She shook her head slowly and raised a hoof to her lips, signaling him never to say a word. His jaw dropped and he stared at her, dumbfounded. She held her pose for a few seconds, then a smile cracked though her facade. "You should see the look on your face right now!” She giggled, letting out another unladylike snort. Shining Armor flushed. He tried to play it off, to tell her he wasn't in the mood for her jokes, but he started to giggle along with her. His reaction egged on her on, and she laughed so hard she lost her balance, slipped down the doorframe and flopped onto her side, her wing jutting out at an odd angle which caused her to laugh even more. Shining couldn’t help it. He started to giggle like he was a colt again. Soon enough both of them were on the floor laughing at the absurdity of it all. For a few minutes they weren’t a Princess and her Lieutenant, or a Bodyguard and his Charge, they were just two friends trying to survive a terrible situation. Despite the circumstances, it was a moment both would remember fondly for the rest of their lives. The ships were close enough to make out the individuals running on deck, clearing them for action. On board the Ambassador, five hundred souls sent up silent prayers in hopes of seeing another sunrise. It would be dark in a few hours, dangling a faint hope of escape for the survivors, but Shining suspected that the battle would be decided one way or another before that happened. He knew Cadance had appraised Princess Celestia on their situation, and that the Princess had sent the only help she could, a message that read “Good Luck.” Now he stood alongside Barrel Roll and the Captain of the Ambassador, watching the enemy inexorably make their way closer. In minutes they would be in the outer engagement envelopes for the ballista, and then the fight would be on. The three unicorn bodyguards stood behind him on deck. He'd sent his six non-unicorns to guard the Princess’s room. Ostensibly he’d put them there as the last line of defense if all else failed, but their true purpose was to ensure she made it off the ship if the battle took a turn for the worse. “I guess this is the part where we make a heroic speech to the troops,” he said. “Now’s about the right time for it,” Barrel Roll agreed. “As the military commander of the mission, I differ to your seniority.” “Ah, but as the personal bodyguard to the Princess, you speak with an authority no mortal could possibly match.” “Oh, for Celestia’s sake, just flip a damn coin, will ya?” the Captain gruffed. "You wait any longer to get started and you'll be able to give you speech to the enemy as well." The two looked at each other. “Winner gets to do the next one?” “Agreed.” A coin was procured and flipped, and both lieutenants crouched over it, trying to gauge how it would land. “Damn.” Shining muttered. “Don’t worry, buddy, you’ll be great. Doesn’t your lesson plan include some public speaking? Maybe this will count towards that.” “Shut up.” Shining stood at the rail overlooking the main deck of the ship. Everywhere on-board soldiers and sailors alike looked to him with baited breath, waiting for him to tell them everything was going to be okay, eager to believe the lie. He wanted to give them that desperate hope, that promise that the enemies were weaklings and cowards that would run as soon as they encountered serious resistance, that all they would make it home to their families. But he couldn’t. So he told them the truth. “Soldiers of Equestria, Hear me! In a few minutes, we shall come to grips with the enemy, a foe that has us out numbered and out matched three-to-one in numbers and equipment. I want to promise you that their superior firepower is meaningless, that we will cut through them like a scythe through a harvest, but I think too much of you to tell you such transparent lies. This will be a difficult battle, one with opponents who possess serious advantages over us, but that is not where the heart of the matter lay. The fact is this: In the hold of this ship rests one of the most precious beings on the face of the world, Your Princess! “It is our privilege and sworn duty to protect her at all costs, and to send any who would harm so much as a hair on her head to an early grave. For her sake, we will fight to the last. We will kill all who stand against us, and as we fall, we shall drag down our foe to Tartarus with us. Who’s with me!?!” There was a murmur of agreement and a few cheers, but overall, the effect was underwhelming. Not quite the reaction I was hoping for. “Also, drinks are on me when we get to Roam!” With one voice the crowd roared and brandished their weapons, ready for anything. Note to self, lead with the promise of free alcohol next time. He walked back to stand beside his closest friend. "Is it bad if I kinda hope we lose now?” he muttered. Barrel Roll shook his head solemnly, but didn't even try to suppress his grin. The battle began when the four flanking ships fired a volley of ballista bolts, each one as long as a pony nose-to-tail. Against a lesser vessel they would have been devastating, but the Ambassador was no ordinary ship. She'd been reinforced with both magic and metal plating so the deadly spears simply glanced off the sides or burrowed harmlessly into the deck. Thanks to the their own battlemages smaller shields, there were no serious casualties from the barrage. The ballista onboard retuned fire, aiming for the enemy portholes and sails to force them to slow down or fall behind. This went on for several minutes, with the Ambassador’s ballista crews knocking out several of their counterparts. After multiple volleys with no discernable effect, the enemy switched tactics and began loading canasters with hundreds of ball bearings and darts in an arching shot to fall at lethal velocities on to heads of their hapless victims. This was what Shining had been waiting for. When he saw the cloud of projectiles coming, he conjured a shield to cover the entire deck from above, deflecting any that would have landed among the crew. Because he had waited for the switch, all four ships had fired in a single attack, which meant Ambassador was free to rain down fire on its enemies while they reloaded. A second volley was fired to similar effect, prompting the enemy to change tactics once again. The hostile vessels moved closer to the Ambassador, angling their weapons to fire across the deck trying to sweep it clear of defenders, rather than the plunging shots meant to scatter across the deck and rob the crew of effective cover. Their next shots were staggered, with the ships to Ambassador’s port side launching the first attacks. Because the attack had lacked coordination, Shining Armor was easily able to deflect fire from each ship in turn. When it became clear that they had yet to be any damage beyond the cosmetic to their target, there was a brief pause as the captains of the encroaching ships conferred with signal flags, then the attack was renewed, this time with all four ships firing in unison. This time some shots landed, as Shining Armor was forced to pick a side that he judged as a greater threat and angle his shield to deflect those shots. Projectiles began to strike the hull and deck of the Ambassador, making a sound like hail striking a roof top if the weather teams had decided to dump all of the hail at once. The lower angle meant that the crew aboard the Ambassador were still able to effectively utilize cover to avoid harm, but anyone not under shelter was in peril. One of the sailors was hit as she was climbing a rope ladder on the main mast and fell over the edge of the ship, screaming as she tumbled into the waves below. Cries of “Mare overboard!” rang out across the deck as rescue teams scrambled to recover her before the next volley could be fired. Sailors who had been hit in their limbs cried out and medics moved from pony to pony, checking each for serious injury and attending to those they found. There was a pause in the fight as the enemy crews moved more ammunition from their holds to the decks and the Ambassador took the opportunity to move it’s wounded below. Barrel Roll ran up to Shining, noticing the dozens of pockmarks forming a perfect circle around him. “The other guards are shielding me so I can focus on stopping the worst damage,” he said in answer to Barrel’s bemused expression. Barrel Roll nodded. “You’re doing well. So far, we don’t have any killed in action, though we’ll see where we stand when the rescue team fishes that poor soul out of the water. How are you holding up?” “My wellspring is fine, I don’t lack for magical energy, I just can’t protect more the one side at a time. Ideally, I’d be able to cast a bubble shield over the entire ship, but there are some fancy-smancy rules about the volume of shields that prevent me from doing so. Not even the Princesses could shield something this size.” “Just do what you can, and we’ll get through this in relatively one piece. What about the-” Whatever Barrel Roll was saying was lost to Shining Armor as Cadance trotted up the battlement staircase. “What in Tartarus are you doing up here!?!” Shining screamed, catching Barrel Roll off guard. “I came to see how I could help.” “We talked about this-” “No...” Cadance stomped her foot onto the deck, “You told me what to do and I told you to stuff it. Remember?” “I don’t have time for this Princess! Get back to your stateroom! Where are your guards?” “Oh, you mean these guards?” from behind her the earth and pegasi details floated up from below the aft castle railing, looking rather sheepish about their predicament. Shining groaned in defeat. “What do you want?” “I told you, I want to help.” He shook his head. “Unless you have a crack weather team hidden away in your luggage to whip up a twister, I don’t really know what you could do to help us.” He looked around the deck. "I suppose you could summon your own shield, but you don't need to be up here for that." Cadance stared at him for a second, then smiled gleefully. “I don't have a weather team, but I know the next best thing. You hold them off, I'll need a few minutes to get everything ready.” The ponies she was carrying in her magic suddenly floated to the deck as she flared her wings and launched herself into the sky. “Princess, Come back here!” “Rule Zero, Lieutenant!” she called back to him as she continued to fly higher. “CADANCE!!!” Damn it all to Tartarus. He turned to the pegasi bodyguards. “Get her back down here now!” The three guards took off after the wayward princess, calling out after her as they flew. “Look out!” The crew of the Ambassador dove for cover as Shining turned and saw that while he had been distracted, the two ships chasing them had closed to within spell range and had lined up their forward ballista, called the chasers, to aim directly at the aft castle. Everyone on the deck dove for cover as the four oversized crossbows unleashed death into the stern of the Ambassador . At the last instant a blue shield formed behind the guardrail, foiling the surprise attack and giving the crew the opportunity to evacuate. As the other four ships closed further, the leeway he had to deflect each attack shrank. Time was lost to the blur of life-and-death split-second decisions as wave after wave of ammunition washed over the Ambassador. It seemed like only seconds had passed when one of the pegasi he’d send after Cadance suddenly appeared at his side. “Sir!” “Report, solider! Is the Princess back below deck?” “No sir, she-” “Why not!?” “Sir, she has a plan-” “I don’t care what her hairbrained scheme is, just get her down here!” “But sir, its good plan! It could save the Ambassador!” Shining Armor looked at the ships closing in around them. Soon enough they would be close enough to grapple, and if it came to down to close combat, the battle would quickly degenerate from desperate to hopeless. “Alright, I’m listening.” The bodyguard explained it as quick as he could, dodging ball bearings and shrapnel as he did. When he had finished, Shining shook his head. “I don’t like it, but it’s a chance. Get back up there and help her.” As he spoke, over a hundred assorted creatures took off from the six ships around the Ambassador, flying towards a growing cloud bank that was forming above the battle. They must have spotted Cadance up there. Leaning over the banister, Shining shouted to the deck crew who were still fighting. “Pegasi of Equestria! Your Princess needs you, rally to her!” he pointed up at the bank. Instead of following his orders, the crew looked to Barrel Roll for instruction. “Are you deaf?” he screamed, “Get your flanks up there NOW!!” Following their commander's order, each and every pegasus on deck dropped what they were doing and took off towards the roiling clouds. Shining watched as the flying creatures came to a sudden stop just below the cloud layer. To his eye, it looked like that were speaking up to someone in the clouds, but he couldn’t be certain at this distance. This far out the sea, the weather was wild and untamed, lending itself to fits of unpredictable behavior. As he watched the clouds began to spin and grow darker, giving the battle an eerie, malevolent atmosphere. The next time his attention was drawn skyward, it was to see the flying creatures drifting back towards their ships, though it didn’t look like they were in any particular hurry to get there. A minute later, the cloud bank, now a dark, threatening looking blob began to drift downwards as well. It went unnoticed by most of the combatants until it was less than a thousand paces above them. There was a pause in the action as everyone waited to see what would happen next, then, from the center of the cloud came the largest bolt of lightning Shining Armor had ever seen, followed by a titanic boom, and the main mast of one of the ships shattered into a million splintered fragments. From his position on the Aft Castle, Shining Armor began to laugh. Panic was spreading in the enemy crews now as there was a second flash and another mast shattered. Some of the sailors began jumping out of their ships and into the water, others scrambled below decks to get away from the cloud. There was a third bolt of lightning and this time two mast split down the middle and fell into the sea. One of the ships to Ambassador’s port suddenly moved away from the line of battle. Another one that was chasing slowed down and began to follow the first one that had fled. Minutes later it was over, with all six ships either retreating or stranded with their masts destroyed. The Ambassador was in an uproar of post battle excitement as Cadance and her escorts returned to the deck. Ponies cheered, slapped each other on the back, and openly wept. Everyone was grateful to be alive. Cadance flew down to the castle and landed facing Shining Armor and Barrel Roll bearing a smug grin from ear to ear. “Not bad for a prissy princess, eh?” she asked while fanning herself with a wing. “I have to admit, it was an impressive show,” Barrel Roll said. “Those lightning bolts were massive! How did you get them to target the enemies masts?” “I just used a little lighting rod charm with the protective elements removed. I figured that a million volts would destroy pretty much anything it touched.” “Well, it worked, they’re gone. We’ll still need extra watch stations on duty tonight but I don’t think they’ll be back for round two anytime soon.” Barrel Roll walked up to the banister and told the crowd that in celebration, tomorrow he would open the alcohol taps for the evening, as well as a putting everyone under his command on a light duty schedule for the day. This brought another round of cheers as the crew set to work cleaning up the aftermath of the battle. “I’d like to volunteer my unit to stand watch tomorrow night.” Shining Armor said. “They did very little other then get dragged around by the princess today, they can stand watch just fine.” “In fairness, Lieutenant, being carried around like a sack of apples isn’t exactly the most pleasant experience.” Cadance said soothingly. “Maybe they could be allowed to join for a little bit?” Shining Armor's eyes narrowed. “I thought you of all ponies would be peeved with them for trying to keep you confined to your stateroom.” “Oh, Shining, as if anypony could keep me in that room when I didn’t wish to be there. I can leave whenever I please, and besides, they were only following their orders.” She slipped him a mischievous grin. “My ire is reserved for their commander.” Shining turned away from the group, his mood souring rapidly. “As you will, Princess. By your leave, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired. I’d like to turn in for the night.” He left without waiting for her response. If he had bothered to look, he would have seen her smile slowly fade as she watched him walk away.