Sparrow looked back at the dark trees behind her as the sun began to rise, weighed down by her armor, a long canvas bundle on her back, and the burden of her mission. In the lightening blue of the early morning, the first wisps of smoke from Camp Stratopolis’ cookfires climbed into the sky, preparing rations of fresh food for the soldiers within its walls. Given everything that had happened yesterday, Sparrow wondered how long it would take the camp to notice their only unicorn was missing.
The young unicorn had slipped out of the camp that morning at the change of the guard, posing as the sentry’s replacement before disappearing into the darkness. Though she didn’t like it, the deception was necessary; Typhoon knew that the legate and the centurion would be opposed to Typhoon seeking terms with the legion they called traitors holding Dry Fens, and if they knew that Typhoon wanted to bring them to the negotiating table and hear their side of the story, there was a real risk they would do something rash. Given the training and strength of Lost Winds’ legion and the defensive posture and fortifications of the ponies holding Dry Fens, if the two armies came to blows then the carnage would be indescribably bloody. That was something the old mare desperately wanted to avoid, and if it meant Sparrow had to play deserter to accomplish it, then the young unicorn was willing to do it.
Besides, Sparrow was sure that Tern would be happy to have her out of his mane. She only hoped that he’d be satisfied with that and not be vindictive enough to send out a flight to kill her before she got to Dry Fens. Even as she thought it, she was really starting to reconsider agreeing to going to the occupied town by herself in the first place, all on Typhoon’s hunch that what was going down on the frontier was a lot grayer than Winds and Tern made it out to be.
She stopped under a tree and gave her head a rough shake. “Less thinking, more walking,” she grumbled to herself, and after a moment to take a bite out of the chunk of bread she’d managed to hide away during last night’s dinner, she turned herself toward the northwest and started out once more.
The quiet melody of the early morning seemed to sing out to her, and Sparrow had to remind herself to keep up the pace and not let the soothing sounds of nature slow her down. She’d spent so much time in the hectic and regimented drill of legion training that she had briefly forgotten what it was like to travel through the wilderness of Equestria’s frontier and appreciate the untouched splendor at the edge of civilization. The country could be beautiful this far away from Everfree, and even in her short and troubled history, Sparrow could appreciate that. If only it wasn’t so dangerous in the aftermath of the War of Silk and the dissolution of the Legion.
Still, she made good time. By the time the sun had fully revealed itself and burned away the morning mist, she’d already put a few miles between herself and Camp Stratopolis. Now her worry was less about the pegasi behind her and more the pegasi in front of her. If she got caught by a patrol from Dry Fens, what would she do? What would they do? Word had to have spread throughout the soldiers holding the town about the arrival of Commander Typhoon and her blue-and-pink-eyed companion and the uncertainty that added to the fighting by now. And even if they were bandits, then surely they would see the value in holding Typhoon’s traveling companion for ransom rather than just killing her outright. It was a line of thinking that left Sparrow feeling surprisingly bitter—rather than having any respect of her own, anything she had was derived from Typhoon and the soldier’s legacy. Her name and her story meant nothing to the ponies of the frontier… but maybe this was her opportunity to start changing that. Ending a war, no matter how small in scale, had to do something for her legacy, right?
What would not be good for her legacy was a sword in the back—and so when Sparrow heard the sound of wind under feathers suddenly appear uncomfortably close behind her, the mare let out a startled yelp and yanked on her sword with her magic as she whirled about in place. The awkward grasp at her weapon stopped the blade from sliding out of its scabbard and instead pried the scabbard off of the hooks on her scrap of armor, and when she came to an abrupt stop after her spin, the sword let go of its protection just in time for the scabbard to come flying off and strike Chinook in the nose as he came in for a landing.
A surprised snort and grunt came from Chinook that turned into a groan as he flopped onto the ground in an awkward mess of feathers and limbs, his graceful landing ruined by the abruptly launched scabbard. Sparrow flinched as she recognized her friend, but as he crawled back onto his hooves, she swallowed hard and kept the point of her blade aligned with his nose. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“Ugh… what are you doing here?” Chinook asked back, and when he rubbed at his nose with the feathers of his wingtip, his eyes narrowed on the steel point hovering in front of his face.
“That’s none of your business,” Sparrow said.
“I’m starting to think that it is, though.” The stallion cautiously took a few steps away from Sparrow’s hovering sword, and he warily glanced at it before shifting his gaze back to meet the young unicorn’s. “I went to your tent to see if you were up and wanted to get breakfast, but you weren’t there. I happened to cross paths with Cattail and she said that you relieved her for sentry duty, but when I took a look, you weren’t there.” He glanced around before adding, “This is a long ways away from camp to be watching for the traitors, Sparrow.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I was scouting?” Sparrow asked, and her magic flickered as she let the tip of her sword droop.
“No.”
“…Would you believe me if I told you Typhoon asked me to send a message to Dry Fens?”
Chinook blinked and shook his head. “What?” he asked. “No! You expect me to believe that after all the time and effort she’s put into helping shape up Lost’s legion, she’s going behind the legate’s back to talk terms with traitors?”
“They’re not traitors,” Sparrow insisted.
“How do you know that?” Chinook’s wings partially opened at his sides, and the scaled blades along their crests caught the morning sun as they flexed. “They captured Dry Fens and hold the town hostage! Legate Winds is the only one fighting to save the town and bring peace back to the frontier, and he can’t do that so long as the traitors hold that town!”
He sighed, and when he took a step toward Sparrow, he hesitated when the tip of the mare’s sword raised back up. “Sparrow, just come back with me and we can pretend this never happened, alright? We’ll make something up so Tern doesn’t suspect anything.”
“I can’t,” Sparrow insisted, and she swallowed hard at the hurt look in Chinook’s face. “I told you, Typhoon asked me to do this, okay? You can either come with me or go back to camp, but I’m not stopping.”
Chinook looked away and his wings drooped until the feather knives at the tips of his bladed wings touched the ground. “I really don’t want to do this, Sparrow,” he said, and after another moment of thought, he put his teeth around the hilt of his sword and pulled it out of its scabbard with a frustrated tug of his neck. “So don’t make me.”
“Nopony’s making you do it but yourself, you fucking idiot!” Sparrow growled in frustration, her uneasy trepidation bursting into rage. She bared her teeth for a moment, and her horn flashed as she tightened her grip… but ultimately, she stuck the tip of her sword in the ground and frowned at Chinook. “You know what? No. I’m not going to fight you, and I know you don’t want to fight me. I’m going to Dry Fens because Typhoon asked me to. Fly back and ask her yourself if you don’t believe me. I’m sure you could fly back to camp, get an answer from her, and come back and get me with more ponies if I’m lying to you. But if you actually want to do something to save lives out here, then put your sword away and come with me.”
The stallion hesitated and his face twisted with confliction, but ultimately he slapped his sword back into its scabbard and sighed. “Fine. I still think you’re either wrong or lying to me, but when a patrol from Dry Fens comes after you, two swords will be better than one. And maybe then you’ll realize what the rest of us who have been fighting out here already know.”
“Or maybe you’ll learn something that’s not what the legate tells you,” Sparrow said, and though she tried to stop herself, she couldn’t help but flash Chinook a relieved smile. “Can I have my scabbard back, by the way?”
“You can’t pick it up yourself?” Chinook asked, though some wary levity had returned to his voice, and he scooped up the scabbard with a wing and tossed it back to Sparrow.
“Sheesh, chivalry really is dead,” Sparrow teased him, and she caught the scabbard in her magic. Then, prying the sword from the ground, she wiped the dirt off the tip on the scrap of red cloth at her shoulder and mated blade and sheath together before reattaching the pair to her armor.
“I’m offering my services as a protector, that has to count for something.”
“Right after you threatened me.” Sparrow gave her head a little shake, and then she pointed her horn back up the road, adjusting the bundle on her back with her magic to resettle it in a more comfortable position. “Come on. One pony missing might not be noticed, but if Tern notices both of us are gone, he might send a wing looking for us.”
“And if they ask, I’m trying to stop you from doing something stupid,” Chinook said, chuckling when Sparrow stuck her tongue out at him. Nevertheless, he fell in at Sparrow’s side, letting her lead the way up the road while he kept his eyes and ears trained to the sky.
Now that they weren’t about to cross swords, Sparrow let herself relax a little bit, feeling rather relieved to have Chinook’s company on the road. Having another set of eyes and ears keeping a lookout, as well as another three blades should they need them, was a comforting thought when faced with the uncertainty of the kind of reception she was going to get in Dry Fens. Plus, she simply enjoyed having Chinook around. Perhaps more than anything, she was relieved she didn’t have to fight him for her mission and ruin their friendship.
“So…” Chinook began after a minute of silent walking, “…what kind of message did Typhoon ask you to send to Dry Fens that was so important you had to sneak out of camp to deliver it?”
“She wants me to ask the legate of the legion in Dry Fens to meet with her to put a stop to the fighting,” Sparrow explained, and she glanced aside at Chinook to gauge his reaction. When he raised an eyebrow in interest, she continued. “Typhoon wants to resolve this stupid standoff with words and not swords. But considering how… well, to put it simply, important it is for Lost Winds to have Typhoon in his camp and not in Dry Fens, she knows that if she tried to visit the town herself, then Winds would bring you all with him and attack. Or something like that.” She shrugged mid-stride. “I don’t get all the politics going on, but considering Typhoon used to be a triumvir, I guess she’s more in tune with that sort of stuff.”
“I guess,” Chinook agreed. He bit down on his lip and frowned as they walked, his focus momentarily stolen away from the sky by his own thoughts. “I still don’t think she’s right, though. It’s a bad idea. There’s nothing to gain from talking to traitors and murderers except a knife in the back, or if you’re lucky, in the front. They can’t be trusted.”
Sparrow rolled her eyes and flicked her tail. “Okay, if they’re bandits, yeah. But do you know they’re bandits and traitors? Or do you just say that because everypony else at the camp does?” After a moment, she added, “Have you even fought them? You were in recruit training just like me.”
“No, I haven’t,” the pegasus admitted with a small shake of his head. “But everypony knows that they took Dry Fens hostage and are holding the ponies there against their will.”
“Yeah, like how everypony in Boiling Springs knows that the Lost Legion is a bunch of bandits that attack traders on the road and steal their supplies.”
“We are not—!” When Chinook saw the corners of Sparrow’s muzzle curl into a smug smirk, he sighed and glowered. “Okay, fine, I see what you’re saying,” he fumed, though he tried to push it away with a deep breath. “There might be more to it than what the officers say. But we’ve been fighting them a long time. What makes you think they’ll even want to talk things out with us if they think of us like how we think of them?”
“Because Typhoon asked them to,” Sparrow claimed. “They recognized her when we interrupted that skirmish. They know she’s at your camp. If she says she wants to meet with them, then they’re going to agree.”
She could tell Chinook was trying to agree with her, but his body language made it abundantly clear he was still skeptical, and his wings were restless against his armored sides. “And how are you going to convince them that Typhoon actually wants to speak with them and that it’s not some sort of trap?”
“I’ve got something for that,” was all Sparrow would say, a sly smile curving her lips, and her magic touched the long, canvas-wrapped bundle on her back. “Irrefutable proof.”
“Oh yeah? What is it?”
“You’ll see, don’t worry.”
“That just makes me more worried,” came Chinook’s reply, and he gave the canvas bundle a wary look.
Sparrow chuckled and spared him a wink. “If it makes you feel better, it was Typhoon’s idea.” Then, with a shake of her head, she focused back on the windy dirt road ahead, where the thin line of brown retreated from the encroaching grasses on either side after weeks of disuse. It wasn’t hard to imagine the road disappearing entirely in a few months’ time as the war between Camp Stratopolis and Dry Fens dragged on, preventing travelers and caravans from visiting the town until both the camp and the town itself vanished from the devastation to the countryside. What would it all have been for? Neither side would win, but both would assuredly lose, along with the ponies in Dry Fens forced to endure the siege.
It wasn’t that much longer before they drew within sight of their destination; what was a lengthy walk by hoof was less than an hour’s flight by wing, impressing upon Sparrow just how much ground a legion could cover in a day, and how far the devastation around the town ranged. Though the pair of ponies had walked by fallow or sometimes scorched fields that had been stripped for food or torched in the fighting, that devastation was nowhere more concentrated than around the settlement of the fighting itself. In the distance, a grouping of no more than sixty or so wooden buildings sat along the curving slopes of grassy fields, but it was obvious that the town had been subjected to assault and probing attacks by Legate Winds’ legion that had inflicted serious damage to it over the weeks of fighting. Many of the buildings were charred husks, and those that weren’t had lost their roofs to canvas that flapped and fluttered in the wind. Sharpened wooden spikes protruded from building frames and overturned wagons blocked streets or offered shelter from above. It painted a picture of an embattled and struggling farming town, but one that had been turned into a makeshift fortress that had seen an abundance of carnage. The bodies left lying in the fields around the town spoke to that.
Sparrow grimaced at the ugly sight and tried to keep her eyes away from the fallen littering the grasses around the town. “You’ve been trying to take that for weeks now?” she asked Chinook, incredulous. “What’s left to take?!”
Chinook winced at the carnage and his ears folded back on his helmeted head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’ve heard stories from some of the legionaries who went on raids. They put spikes on the rooftops to stop us from landing on them, and they stripped away the thatching so we couldn’t drop coals on them and set the thatch ablaze. Supposedly they have archers in those wagons to shoot at anypony who flies too close. They’re… accurate.”
“Sounds like you two are going to kill each other off before that town falls. No wonder Typhoon thinks taking it by force is stupid.” Sparrow frowned, and after a moment, she shifted the bundle on her back and pressed forward. “Come on. Let’s introduce ourselves.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Chinook asked, and after warily glancing around, he hurried to catch up to the unicorn. “I still don’t think this is a good idea…”
“Yeah, well, too late to back down now,” Sparrow said, and she squinted into the distance as a group of four silhouettes dropped out of a low-hanging cloud and began to fly towards them. The unicorn stood her ground and took a deep breath to steady herself, while she heard the sound of Chinook cautiously unlatching his sword from its scabbard. A look from blue-and-pink eyes and a shake of her head stayed the stallion, but the young soldier let his wings hang open just enough to have the blades along their edges ready in case he needed them.
They were on the pair in moments, though to Sparrow it felt like minutes as she stood on the road and waited. When they arrived, two pegasi stayed high and circled above them, while two dropped down in front. The taller of the two, a lanky mare with long legs and a long neck that gave her a slight height advantage over Sparrow, fixed the two with wary eyes that carried a spark of hate in them, and she bared her teeth before she spoke. “What business do Lost Legion traitors have here?” she challenged, and she dropped the tips of her wings to the ground for emphasis to let the entire length of blades shine in the morning sun. “Come to surrender? Come to die?”
“Come to talk,” was Sparrow’s response, and she returned the soldier’s glare with a harsh frown of her own. “On behalf of Commander Typhoon.”
The name perked ears, and the stallion of the pair of defenders turned to his tall companion. “This is the unicorn that was with the Commander!” he said in an excited yet hushed voice that altogether failed to be discreet. “Parlay told me about her eyes!”
The mention of her eyes made Sparrow cringe ever so slightly, and though she did her best to hide it, she knew the tall soldier saw it nonetheless. Even still, her glare only sharpened, and she took a step forward, pausing when Chinook flinched his wings. Her focus slid to him for a second, then up to the pegasi circling above them, then back to Sparrow. “If that’s so, why isn’t she here to speak to us herself? How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
“She couldn’t,” Sparrow said, answering the first question, and then very slowly, she reached for the bundle on her back, making sure not to make any sudden movements as the soldiers across from her tensed. When she removed it from her back, she untied the knot with her teeth rather than her magic, already feeling a chill settle on her lips. When it was done, she laid the bundle on the ground and began to unwrap it, and continued. “And to prove it’s the truth, she gave me this.”
As Sparrow pulled away the last fold of canvas, a cold frost billowed forth from the item inside, making the other three ponies step back in alarm. But as it cleared with the help of a breeze and Sparrow’s waving hoof, the unmistakable icy blue metal of a curved sword glistened like melting ice under the morning sun.
“Hiems…” the soldier mare murmured, and after a moment, she took a cautious stride forward and put the feathers of her wingtip along the flat of the sword. A heartbeat later, she gasped and drew back, eyes widened in alarm and a fleeting flash of fear as she pulled her wing away from the sword’s hateful magic. After a moment to breathe and compose herself, the soldier gave a shaky nod of her head. “Alright. If you’re here to talk on the Commander’s behalf, then the legate should be the one to hear it. I think we’d all like to know why Commander Typhoon pitched her tent with the Lost Legion and not with us.”
She motioned with her head for them to follow, and after wrapping Typhoon’s sword back up in the canvas bundle, Sparrow returned the legendary weapon to her back. As she did so, she spared Chinook a wink and a simple, “Still worried?” under her breath.
“Yes,” Chinook said, and he tucked his wings back against his sides, but the tension in his shoulders didn’t dissipate. “And now I’m also confused. But I’m going to stop asking questions because you’re not going to be helpful, are you?”
“Nope!” Sparrow sang, and just like that, she started cantering after the defenders of Dry Fens, leaving Chinook to sigh and follow along behind her, apprehension weighing down every hoofstep.