//------------------------------// // 1-1 The Old Soldier // Story: The Sparrow in the Storm // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// The mare sat on her bedroll in the predawn darkness, staring off into the east as she waited for the sun to rise. She made not a sound as she waited, nor moved a muscle. Instead, she kept her feathers close against her sides, warding off the chill of the early spring morning. A cold breeze tugged at them, but other than a blink into the face of the wind, there was little indication that she felt it at all. She only sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Almost an hour later, the dark twilight sky turned from purple to blue, then to yellow, a creeping color that started in the east and slowly inched over her head. Only when the first sliver of the sun poked up above the horizon did the mare let a slow breath out of flared nostrils, and stood upright. Her motions were slow but purposeful, as much a blend of age as they were of practice and habit. She dropped a bundle of sticks she’d amassed the night before in a ring of stones left by some other traveler long ago, but instead of lighting it with a tinderbox or a match, she put the tip of a feather into the wood and closed her eyes. A moment later, a spark of flame grew from her wingtip, crawling over the wood and slowly twisting the twigs into black and gray scraps of charcoal and ash. She flicked a bit of ash off of the feather and tucked her wing back against her side. Fire had never been her strong suit, but she’d had her practice over the past few years. It came easier to her than it did in her youth, though she knew she was no master over that school of pegasus magic. The flames illuminated her features as she worked, cooking her breakfast on a tin pan she kept with her personal belongings, the few she had left in the world. Age had begun to turn the buff coloration of her muzzle white, and wrinkles had started to set in under ruby red eyes. Her mane and tail, once colored like the leaves of autumn, looked more and more like the snows and bare stones of winter. Even her feathers had started to grow crooked, despite the meticulous care she gave them—a care matched only with the attention she gave the pile of metal plates and blades sitting by her side. When breakfast was finished, the mare stood up once more and spent the next fifteen minutes attaching that metal to her body. Without a squire or a traveling companion, donning the armor took much longer than she would have been used to thirty or forty years ago, but now, for a single aging mare on an unnamed road between a forgotten village and an undiscovered town, she may as well have been meditating. Each piece was attached methodically, the ancient straps of her cuirass fastened to a snug yet comfortable tightness, each piece tested to make sure it didn’t impede her range of motion or impinge on any of her joints. When she was finished, a shake of her limbs rattled steel plates trimmed with gold—though the gold had begun to tarnish, and in more than one place, the aging steel was flecked with rust. Two strips of metal scales fastened to leather straps were next, and these the mare attached to her wings. The bones of her wings fitted comfortably into the grooves under the scales, and the scales flexed and twisted with their motions. Finally, the mare unwrapped a sword from a cloth bundle, and when she parted it a hoof’s width out of its scabbard, blue metal let loose a small cloud of white mist which quickly dissipated into nothing. The armored mare hooked the scabbard to the left side of her armor, just under her wing, and set about packing up her camp. It took her only a few minutes with what scant possessions she owned, and when she was finished, she kicked dirt over the remains of her fire, smothering the flames. Then, setting her eyes to the south, the mare closed her eyes, took a deep breath, held it for a moment… Another moment… A moment more… She opened her eyes as she let the breath out, and then she began to walk. ----- There was smoke on the southern horizon. A dark cloud, heavy and black. The mare paused along the dirt road as she emerged from the grove of trees and looked up, squinting into the sky. She knew what it meant—she’d seen it too many times in her life. Only two questions came to her mind as she watched it drift over the pristine countryside, casting a foul shadow on the ground below: how long ago had it started, and how many ponies would she find underneath it? Frowning, the mare loosened the latch on her scabbard that kept her sword in place and spread her wings. A few flaps were all it took to get her armored body into the air, even despite the gaps and notches in her feathers and the weight of steel on her back. Old instincts were hard to change, and soon she was flying for the smoke, almost drawn to it, while her eyes scanned the countryside below for any armed ponies. It was almost like old times, only this time, she flew alone, and not with a company of soldiers surrounding her. Once she was high enough, the source of the smoke was easy enough to spot. A couple of miles to the south, a small hamlet stood on the bank of a shallow, meandering river, with simple houses of stone and thatch scattered around a horseshoe in the river’s path. Several of the houses had been reduced to smoldering timbers and ash, though there were still a few yet untouched on the far side of the settlement. A stone mill stood strong along the river’s edge, and surrounding it were several figures, little more than dots from so far away. But experience told the mare why they were surrounding the mill, and what exactly they wanted. It only took her a couple of minutes to close the distance to the hamlet, and by then, she’d descended enough to fly under the smoke. Rather than land on the outskirts of town and approach on hoof, the armored mare chose instead to aim directly for the mill and land just outside of the ponies clustered around it. She counted twelve ponies as she landed, each of them armed with something sharp and a few wearing scraps of armor as well. They were dirty and skinny, and altogether it told the mare everything she needed to know, and everything she suspected from the moment she first saw the smoke to the south. Bandits. She didn’t need to announce her presence; the stomping of her hooves on the ground and the rattling of her armor plates garnered the attention of a couple of the bandits, and a few shouts quickly raised the alarm. Soon, the mare found herself staring down all twelve of them, their attention turned away from the mill they were trying to break into to the intruder who had landed in their midst. “Who are you?” one of the bandits asked her, a unicorn who brandished a soldier’s sword in her magic. “She’s gotta be a soldier,” another observed. “She’s Legion! Can’t you tell?” exclaimed a third. That exclamation brought worried looks to some of the bandits, and eyes immediately turned skyward, wary of other pegasi about to descend on them. But the unicorn with the stolen sword turned on her companions and growled at them. “If she was with the Legion then there’d be more than just her! She’s just an old mare in armor!” “That’s Cirran armor,” somepony in the crowd said. There wasn’t any missing the worry in his voice. “And she’s got some kind of freaky metal hoof. Boss…?” The armored mare narrowed her eyes on the unicorn’s sword. “That’s Legion property,” she said, her voice even and flat. Then her red eyes shifted to the unicorn’s face. “Drop your weapons and lie on your bellies. I won’t ask again.” “There ain’t no more Legion, birdy,” the unicorn sneered. “Your unicorn queen in Everfree got rid of them. Everypony knows that. Even out here on the frontier.” The mare raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?” “Sure as I am that somepony’s gonna die today.” The unicorn flourished the stolen sword in her magic and took a step forward as if she was about to charge the pegasus. In response, the pegasus lowered her right wing until the tip touched the ground, and the moment the unicorn took a second step, she bared her teeth and twisted to the left, dragging her wing along the ground with the motion. When she raised it from the dirt, the metal scales covering it shimmered with ice and frost, and a trio of icicles left her feathers at blinding speed. By the time the unicorn took her third step, the three icicles had already struck home at the soft flesh and muscles of her neck, and her eyes bulged out in surprise as she lurched forward. There was no fourth step—the bandit leader hit the ground with a thud, the sword clattering into the dirt by her side, and her red blood soon began to seep out from under her crumpled body. For the rest of the bandits, it was all they needed to see. A few ponies cried out in surprise; a few more cursed. All of them took startled steps back, and when the armored mare glared at them, what little resolve they had left broke like a dam of sticks trying to hold back a great river. They tossed their weapons into the dirt and fled, each pony galloping away as fast as they could, outrunning the icicles they imagined to be pursuing them in their hasty retreat. The armored mare watched them run, and only when they were all gone did she turn her attention to the stone mill. Stepping around the dead body of the bandit leader, she picked up the Legion sword in her feathers and raised her voice. “You can come out now. It’s safe.” Slowly, hesitantly, the great wooden door on the mill was unbarred and opened. A couple sets of nervous eyes peered out, but when they saw the armored mare standing over the body of the bandit leader, the door opened much wider, much quicker. “You killed her?” a stallion asked, stepping out from the mill. He looked up and down the street, looking for any bandits that might appear from around the corners of smoldering buildings, but when he didn’t see anything, he turned his attention back to the stranger. “Thank you! Thank you, soldier, you saved our lives!” “I doubt they were interested in your lives,” the mare remarked, and she rolled the bandit’s body over with her hoof, though unlike the other three, this one was made of metal, and a sheen of frost clung to the steel. “Your food seems more like it.” “Explains why they wanted into the mill. That’s where we keep our winter stores, buried in the ground.” He shook his head. “Last year was a bad harvest. Drought killed a good number of crops, and the river almost dried up. We’ve all had it a little lean ever since.” But then he brightened up and held out his hoof. “Name’s Peppercorn. Thanks for helping us, Miss…?” But the mare didn’t answer. Instead, she took his hoof in her natural one and gave it a shake. “Who’s she?” she asked, gesturing to the dead bandit. “And where did she get a Legion sword?” “I don’t know nothing about who she is. Not like it matters now,” Peppercorn said with a shrug. “As for the sword, well, there used to be an old Legion fort ten, maybe fifteen miles north of here. It hasn’t been occupied in years. Not since some trouble happened back in Everfree.” He hesitated, then took a step closer. “Was she right, though? The Legion’s really gone?” The pegasus’ nostrils flared as she took a deep breath. “The Legion’s gone,” she said with a small nod. “But not the legionaries.” “Well… I’m glad there was at least one legionary looking out for us today.” Peppercorn smiled at her. “Those bandits burned down a couple of houses, but nothing we can’t rebuild. The important thing is that nopony died. Well… nopony except her, I suppose.” Behind him, the rest of the hamlet’s denizens had slowly trickled out of the mill, warily looking around them just as Peppercorn had. “Do you think they’ll be back?” the mare asked him. “After what you just did to their leader? No, I think they’ll go somewhere else. They won’t be our problem anymore.” He shook his head, then looked back at the mill. “We, uh, can’t exactly offer you much in the way of payment or reward for our thanks. Is there anything we can do to repay you? Even if they didn’t kill us, if they took all of our food, we might not have made it to the first harvest.” “Food would be nice, now that you mention it,” the mare said. “And maybe an ale, too. Garuda knows that I haven’t had an ale in too long.” Peppercorn eagerly nodded. “Hey, you saved it for us today. You deserve at least a little of it. I’ll go get some for you.” He turned around to go back into the mill, but he stopped when an elderly pegasus mare stood in the doorway, her jaw agape. “Erm… Whistling Wind? Are you okay?” Whistling Wind only walked past him on knobby knees, her wings still somewhat raised over her shoulders in surprise. She didn’t find words until she was almost face to face with the armored mare. “Commander Typhoon?” she asked, her voice but a hoarse whisper. “Is that… Mobius, is that you?” The mare locked eyes with her fellow pegasus for several long seconds. “No,” she said, and she bowed her head before stepping around Whistling Wind. “The Legion is gone. And so is Commander Typhoon.”