When Shining Armor wrote his memoirs many years later, he called it the Changeling War. For decades afterwards, scholars would never cease to argue what that referred to: whether the war should be dated from the Changeling conquest of the Felinia Matriarchy in 1002, their invasion of the Lynx Territories on March 25th 1004, or the march of the Royal Army south on June 2nd 1004, no two historians would be able to agree.
But at the moment, not one soldier, from the lowliest Private to the Commander-in-Chief himself, cared much for what to call the war. For them, it was simply “the war”, though most felt that the war hadn’t really started yet, and just called it “the march”.
“You’re one of the Element Bearers?” whispered Private Lemon Cherry, amazed.
“Sometimes,” said Lance Corporal Applejack, taking the cider bottle and taking a swig. “Most o’ the time ah’m just an apple farmer. Ah sell apples and apple accessories.”
“But you know Princess Twilight!” gasped the Private. “And Princess Celestia! How did they let you come down here with us?”
Applejack frowned. “Ah ain’t gonna use any connections to stay out o’ this. Let’s just say ah got mah own reasons for being here.”
“But the Elements! What if you get...?”
“Ah don’ think ‘bout that, an’ neither should you,” interrupted Applejack, sternly. She handed the bottle back to Corporal Viridian.
“So, what about you, Private Hayseed?” asked the Unicorn Corporal, extending the bottle over the campfire.
Hayseed Turnip Truck shrugged. “No work in Canterlot no more, now that those Mules are gettin’ all the jobs. Ah moved to Ponyville ta help out Applejack here before ah started up mah own business. But ah wasn’t gonna let mah cousin go off ta war alone.”
The camp kettles hanging over the fire suddenly whistled. “Dinner time,” announced Corporal Viridian.
Grim glances were exchanged as four ponies gingerly lifted their kettles off the tripod they’d erected over the fire. Army food wasn’t bad, they conceded, and it was always good to get some hot food inside them, it was just dull. Applejack thought of the unappetising, processed and plastic-wrapped thing that the Army called an apple turnover that was nestling in her saddlebag and was supposed to be her dessert. Her supplies from home had long since been devoured, and right now she couldn’t help but crave one of Granny Smith’s legendary apple pies.
Hooves protected by her emergency edible boots, she took the lid from the scalding-hot kettle, removed the meal in its boil bag, dug a spork from her pocket, and began to eat.
Applejack had endured days of eating Pasta with Alfredo Sauce, and had felt ready to vomit when she’d been issued the same meal each time, before realising that she could swap meals around her tent section. Hayseed seemed to love the Pasta, and he’d swapped a Manicotti with Vegetables with her for it.
“Two weeks and still nothing,” muttered Lemon Cherry, opening a foil boil bag and pulling out a Black Bean and Rice Burrito. “Can’t we just get it over with?”
“Get what over with, Private?” asked Corporal Viridian. He chomped on a Cheese and Vegetable Omelette. “We’ve got to find the Changelings first, and I’d rather find them rather than they find us.”
“But we know where the Changelings are, Corp,” said Lemon. “Why aren’t we going straight there?”
Applejack shifted on her haunches, trying to give relief to her aching legs. “‘Cause if we do, we’ll get massacred,” she said. “Those Changelings have twice our numbers. If ah wan’ ta get rid o’ a Timberwolf, ah don’ do it so ah end up goin’ into the lair!”
What Applejack didn’t say was that she sort of agreed with him. They’d been marching for over a fortnight, from Dodge Junction across the Badlands. The sun had beat down on them, and Applejack had been grateful for her wide-brimmed hat, though she’d had to quickly swipe it off whenever a Sergeant approached. The thirst and dust had been awful, even though the officers and NCOs had made sure that their ponies take on water every hour. She’d heard that every battalion had lost roughly twenty ponies to heat casualties.
Then, after two days ascending the Macintosh Hills, they’d crossed the Appleloosan Mountains through what the planners were calling Pass Alpha, but everypony else called Shining’s Pass. Ponies said that the Commander-in-Chief had had a hunch about there being a pass there, and had been proved right. Nevertheless, it had been incredibly steep and narrow. It had been an exhausting climb, and at the top ponies paused to rest with sweat steaming off their coats, only to be roared at to keep moving lest the wind and altitude chill them. Drums and music by the battalions’ bands had kept them going, and at the top of the pass, everypony had received two sandwiches, a cup of tea and an apple to keep them going.
Shining Armor had moved among them like a demon, racing up and down the pass, encouraging flagging ponies and giving praise to those who kept going. He’d walked next to them, asking their names; why they’d joined up; if the food was good; whether they thought changes needed to be made... Applejack had seen him galloping down towards them as they climbed, bellowing encouragement. At that point, she’d felt as though her lungs were hanging out her mouth, and she’d had no idea a Unicorn could have so much energy. At first she’d chalked it up to Shining Armor using his magic to keep going, but as he’d come closer, she’d seen no glow around his horn, and his coat had been slick sweat and great clouds of breath blew from his nostrils.
After another two days descending they’d at last reached the banks of the Canter Creek. They’d marched west, the snow-capped peaks of the mountains on their right, and across the Creek, the thick dark mass of Fetlock Forest.
Everypony had been a little jumpy at that stage. Fetlock Forest was cursed, it was said. Like the Everfree Forest, it was untended by ponies. The trees grew so thick that light rarely reached the ground. Ruins and monoliths built by unknown builders in ancient times dotted the forest. And savage, barely intelligent Monkeys were said to live there, hopping silently from tree to tree, before descending on the unwary traveller, screaming and shrieking and tearing them apart in search of valuables. Kelpies were said to swim its rivers, appearing beautiful to lure in ponies before drowning and devouring them.
The stallions in the Army, though, had been more worried about what lay to their south east. In a clearing at the end of a narrow trail between the Fetlock Forest and the Swamps of New Horseleans lay the Gelding Grotto. Nopony who had gone there had ever returned: the half-stallions who were said to live there would murder any mare they came across, but they would take any stallion and make him one of them. Applejack had heard Hayseed and Viridian saying they would rather die.
Several nights had passed with them being woken by nervous sentries firing wildly into the dark. The treatment their comrades had meted out to the sentries who’d put them on stand-to in the middle of the night to fight off ghosts and shadows had eventually reduced the number of incidents.
Applejack reached up to scratch an itch behind her ear. She winced as her hoof touched her mane: it was thick with grease. Shower units had been brought up after they’d crossed the Badlands and Shining’s Pass, but otherwise she hadn’t washed for days. Her uniform was probably nearing the end of its usable period without cleaning: she had a clean spare folded in her saddlebag, and another in her hooflocker, which was on a Buffalo cart somewhere near the back of the battalion column.
Applejack stared out over the camp. Dozens of other cookfires were burning amid the gloom, with ponies huddling around them. Tents were going up. Their supply wagons were laagered around the camp as a makeshift wall, with a palisade of stakes thrown up in front of them. Sentries patrolled between. She felt safe enough, but somewhere out there, she knew, was Rainbow Dash on night patrol.
She sighed as she finished her dinner. She didn’t feel up to eating that apple turnover. “Ah’m going ta bed.”
***
Across the camp, General Shining Armor frowned silently across the map table. That evening’s staff session was long since over, but he couldn’t help but stay.
The staff tent was the largest in the camp, almost as big as a circus tent. And like a travelling circus, everything had its place: the camp tables; the map holders; the trays of brass compass dividers, protractors and rulers; the boxes of red, blue and green unit symbols; the reams of notepaper and bundles of grease pencils; the brass lanterns filled with fireflies; and most important, the kettle, teabags and sugar bowl. All of it had to be placed meticulously when the tent was put up at the end of each day, and packed away with extreme care when the tent was taken down the next morning.
His army was a long, spread-out cluster of blue rectangles, sitting on the map in a narrow patch of white between the red contours of the Appleloosan Mountains and the green blob of the Fetlock Forest. A few other blue rectangles with single diagonal lines through them were projected further up the valley: the Royal Cloudsdale Greys were out on patrol tonight. They were to conduct reconnaissance sweeps up to five miles from the camp, looking for potential route for the next day’s march, Lynx villages or refugee bands, and of course, Changelings.
And that worried him: his officers were telling him that the reputation of the Fetlock Forest was such that the scouts on the Canter Creek’s southern bank were staying as far away from the tree line as they felt they could get away with. That, Colonel Crystal Thought had said, left a narrow corridor along the tree line that was unpatrolled. A Changeling force might easily slip through there.
That force would not be big enough to challenge his army, of course. No, it was his supply line that he worried about. The further he marched west, the longer it became, and by the time he broke out of the Canter Valley to engage the Changeling army at the Diamond Dog Pass, it would be dangerously overextended.
With his ponies marching in double-file, 12,000 going over a day, it had taken them just over four days to get over Pass Alpha. It had taken another four days, however, to get their artillery and supply wagons over the mountains. The pass was their sole supply route, and it slowed things down terribly. The Equestrian Railway Service had been contracted to lay a new track across the Badlands, and it was working heroically, but the track was only halfway done, and no train could ever get across Pass Alpha. Everything had to carried or pulled by muscle power, from Supply Depot 1 in the Macintosh Hills to Forward Supply Base Pansy in the Canter Valley beyond. Given the time required to send a Pegasus courier over the mountains, and then get a supply convoy over the pass and to the Army, any resupply would take over a week at an absolute minimum.
The Changelings, meanwhile, had a safe, heavily defended supply line running up the Great Trunk Road. He’d had a report from Amber Spyglass three days ago: the Changelings were launching deep raids into the Lynx lairs along the Road to keep them destabilised and acquire fresh captives. Hundreds of Lynxes imprisoned in gelatinous green shells were being moved up the Great Trunk Road, to be drained by the army at the Diamond Dog Pass, commanded by one Lord Cocoon.
Cocoon, fortunately, still believed that the Royal Army had to come across the Diamond Dog Pass, and Shining Armor had done everything he could to support that notion: the Equestrian Railway Service was building another track from Appleloosa to the northern entrance of the Diamond Dog mine, and mock reconnaissance flights by Pegasi were making themselves very obvious over Cocoon’s army. Shining Armor’s plan was to keep Cocoon waiting in the mountains while keeping his own march west as secret as possible. His cavalry screen had orders to kill any Changeling they came across, as well as intern any Lynx refugees to prevent them from being interrogated by the enemy. With any luck, he could get out of Canter Valley unseen, throw down a fort there to secure his supply line up to that point, and from there march to cut the Great Trunk Road. If he lay across Cocoon’s supply line, then the Changelings would have no choice but to meet him on his terms.
It was risky, but geography and politics demanded it. He needed a big victory soon if he was to win public support for the war, and that was shaky already. The ponies of Equestria were incredibly polarised over the war, and the longer their colts and fillies were away from home, the greater opposition would grow.
He sighed and scrubbed his face with a hoof. His legs were still aching after his run up and down Pass Alpha, and he had a blister on his leg that, despite being swathed in zinc oxide tape, was still bothering him. There was no point staying up to worry. He had given his orders for the night and was going to bed.
It was an effort to get his uniform off. He staggered over to his camp bed and fell asleep instantly.
***
Cornet Rainbow Dash yawned and dug a hoof into her pocket for another boiled sweet. She couldn’t see what flavour it was in the dark, but then again, she could barely see the cat’s eyes reflectors on Sergeant Crimson Spray’s flank in front of her.
She tore it from its plastic packet and popped it into her mouth. Yuck, blackcurrant. She needed a sugar boost to stay awake. She had half a mind to reach for the heavily-caffeinated energy gel in her belt pouch, but if she took that, she’d be bouncing off her tent walls when she got back to camp, and with only a few hours sleep, she’d need it for the march tomorrow.
Hooves barely off the ground, she and nineteen other Pegasi fluttered up the slope of a hill, wings beating gently. They were on the Canter Creek’s north bank, with the rest of the regiment spread out in fifty troops across the valley. As they approached the crest of the hill, something loomed large out of the darkness. A great, straight-sided pyramid, crowned with a mass of broken wood.
Rainbow smiled. They were approaching Valneigh, once a pony village in Southern Equestria, now a ruin that had been long abandoned. In a free moment, Rainbow had read the historical profile of Southern Equestria the Home Office had provided to every soldier. Virtually the entire area south of the Appleloosan Mountains had been abandoned after the Reign of Discord.
As Crimson Spray approached the ruined windmill at the top of the hill, he suddenly waved his hoof furiously and dived to the ground. Rainbow and the entire troop followed. She rolled over and pulled the short cavalry spear from the bag on her flank. She tapped her hoof on her head before crawling up the hill. Troopers Green Splash and Amber Lake, her best shots, retrieved their own spears and followed her up the hill.
Rainbow crawled up next to Spray and peered over the brow of the hill. She gasped. In the valley below, amid the ruins of Valneigh, were hundreds of fires. She retrieved a pair of binoculars from her belt and peered in closer. There was no doubt about it: she could see their silhouettes against the fires and the light shining through the holes in their bodies. It was a Changeling encampment.
She rapidly made a rough count of the number of fires before crawling back off the crest. Then she assembled her troop.
“Okay, everypony, we’ve got a pretty big group of Changelings over that hill. I’d guess over a thousand of them. There’s too many for us to take, especially in the dark.”
Worried glances were exchanged. Nopony doubted that they could get away safely, but the question on all their minds was the same: what about the advance? Might this blow everything?
“Cloud Kicker,” said Rainbow. “I need you to fly north and find Colonel Spitfire. Tell her what we’ve found and where. Blossomforth, you head south and round up the rest of the regiment. The rest of us are heading back to the camp. General Armor needs to know about this right away.”
***
“General Armor! Your Highness!”
Shining Armor felt somepony’s hoof on his shoulder shaking him awake. His head stuffed full of sleep, he sat up groggily. “Ration? What is it?”
“One of our scouts has returned, sir,” said Lieutenant General Sir Ration Bag. “You need to hear this yourself.”
Shining Armor wriggled out of his sleeping bag and staggered across the tent to seize his uniform jacket. In a moment he’d donned the red jacket and his uncle’s old crossbelts. “Let’s hear her.”
Ration Bag pushed through the canvas and led Shining Armor into the main part of the staff tent. Everypony there braced up as he entered. A handful of his aides-de-camp in heavily-decorated Hussar uniforms stood there, along with a sleepy-looking Crystal Thought, her uniform rumpled. Major General Neigh, now commander of the 3rd Division, stood there was well, frowning. Shining Armor glanced at the clock sitting on the map table: half three in the morning.
In the centre of the tent was a Cornet in the uniform of the Royal Cloudsdale Greys. Shining Armor recognised her rainbow mane at once. “Rainbow Dash, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir! Cornet, 2nd Dragoons!”
Twily had told him all about her friends, and he could see in her the shades of the mare that had aspired to join the Wonderbolts. “Make your report, Cornet.”
“Sir, five miles west of here, in the ruins of Valneigh, there’s a large Changeling force. I couldn’t count how many exactly, but we saw nearly five hundred cookfires.”
Crystal Thought sucked a breath in between her teeth. “Sounds like an entire legion. Five thousand Changelings. I’d guess they’d just made a deep raid on a Lynx village and are planning to fall back tomorrow.”
“Did they see you at all, Cornet Dash?” asked Shining Armor.
“No, sir. We pulled back under cover of darkness. While my troop was pulling back, I received word that Colonel Spitfire pulled the rest of the regiment back as well to form a screen two miles from Valneigh.”
One of the aides-de-camp rapidly rearranged symbols on the map table. “Here, sir, Valneigh.”
Shining Armor frowned at the map. Valneigh was five miles west with the Canter Creek to its south and not particularly troublesome hills to its east. The terrain to the north was fairly open. “Thank you, Cornet Dash,” he said thoughtfully.
“We should split the army, sir,” said Neigh immediately. “Detach my division and the 7th Brigade with some cavalry units and batteries, and we can surround them from the north while we still have cover of darkness.”
“Our soldiers and commanders don’t have the skill to march at night like that,” said Ration Bag.
“We need concentrated fire for this,” said Shining Armor. “I don’t want to disperse our artillery in bit boxes.”
Neigh frowned.
Shining Armor thought for a moment. “Nevertheless, encirclement is the best option if we want to preserve secrecy.” He nodded at his aides-de-camp. “Recall the staff. Colonel Thought, what time is first light?”
“Quarter past five, sir.”
“Wake the troops at half past four. We march at dawn.”