//------------------------------//
// In The Trenches 
// Story: Blackacre 
// by Princess Woona 
//------------------------------//

27 December, Y.C. 969
Blackacre

Mal hadn’t signed up for this. Two year tour of duty, they said. Hard work, but you saw Equestria, did some good work, ended up with some bits in your pocket. And everypony loved hiring a veteran. Even if all you did was stand around and follow orders and yessir, right away sir to anypony with anything more than a yellow bar on their forehoof, you were a veteran, and apparently that meant something. Fine by him; as long as he got a job out of —
He felt the explosion first, the cold earth under his belly rumbling at him a split second before the shockwave rolled overhead, sending little rivers of dirty snow into the trench. A few came to rest against the shovel in the corner — how was it buried up to the hilt again?
Mal shook his head and hunkered back down into his greatcoat. He still had a quarter of an apple left, and he was damned if he wasn’t going to savor every last bite.
No, he hadn’t signed up for this. And the kicker was that he wasn’t even supposed to be here. This was supposed to be his last month, and was supposed to be on patrol over in White Tail Woods. It wasn’t warm out there, but at least it wasn’t cold. And there were no damned trenches, either.
At this point, he didn’t harbor any illusions about whether or not he’d be getting discharged in three weeks like he was supposed to. Didn’t look like anyone was getting discharged, at least not any of the usual ways. Discharged out of a cannon, maybe, but the good old papers and pat on the back as you walked out of camp in civvie scrubs for the first time in years, forget about it.
He took another bite of the apple. Tasted so good. Wasn’t fresh, not by a long shot, and there were odd little splotches of brown all around, little postmarks from shipping the things up from Las Pegasus. It was food, though. That kept him going.
Another slight rumble. No shockwave from this one, though; must be farther down the line. They didn’t come too often, now. He didn’t know how Blackacre got party howitzers — that information was way above his pay grade — but the Royal Army had a lot more. Ponies could move away from incoming fire, but it was a bit harder to protect artillery emplacements from saturation bombardment. The treetops had detonated most of their shells prematurely, but those that came down straight on top of the Blackacre emplacements detonated, taking the damned things out of commission.
It had taken too long, though. Far too long. At first, they had been glad that the river wasn’t frozen over, because the river was a wide and totally exposed crossing. After a few hours of having the west bank torn to shreds by incoming fire, a strip of black and broken earth as long as their entire line and a hundred yards deep… well, there was something to be said about risking it with a charge across a frozen bank.
As it stood, they could only cross with the bridge. Somehow it had managed to survive the attacks, and though at this point it was little more than a charred frame, they crossed nevertheless. The railroad tracks were a forgotten memory; the way across lay on boards and planks laid end to end over the exposed truss. Most of them made it across, but every once in a while a colorful lance would shoot out from one of the bushes on the east bank, unicorn snipers doing their best to harass. If the poor sod who got hit was lucky, he would fall onto the superstructure below, snapping his neck on contact. If not, though….
Everypony in the Army had to pass a water endurance test as part of boot. Treading water for a few minutes in a tank with all your buddies laughin’ it up next to you was one thing. In that river, though, everything changed. The outside of a greatcoat might be waterproof, but once the river touched the inside it might as well be lead. Freezing lead, so cold it knocked the breath straight out of you, and then you breathed in and it was water, and then suddenly you’d be under a patch of ice and not know which way was up….
The alternative to going over the bridge was an airlift. Mal had been in one of the lucky companies that got to cross over after the saturation bombardment took out most of their river fortifications. Pegasi were quick enough, but add in an Earth pony as cargo and you doubled their weight, if not more; they could only turn so fast.
Enough of that. He had made it; that was enough. He hadn’t slept in the better part of two days, the trench was cold and clammy against his coat, his mane was more brown than blue with all the dirt matted in it, but he was alive. Now all he had to do was stay that way.
Absently, he realized that he should be reacting more strongly to the situation. Here he was, munching on an apple, wondering about all the other ponies that didn’t make it across, while not even five feet away from him lay the corpse of the pony who, until last night, had been giving the orders. He regarded the sergeant carefully. His coat might normally be a tan, but it now had a distinctly bluish tinge. Most of his left foreleg was missing, along with a good chunk of the top of his head. It was all frozen in position where the artillery shrapnel had gotten him; he hadn’t been moved from where he had fallen, and the cold of the night did the rest. It didn’t even smell.
This was not the first time he had had the thought, and so he carefully packaged it away, filing it with all the other horrors he told himself he’d deal with later.
Mal finished off the last tiny bit of apple, savoring it far longer than felt reasonable. Now that they had the beach, they could probably bring over more supplies. That would be nice. The little crate that held what was left of their provisions was nearly bare; maybe he could pick up a new one when he was over there next. Normally the sarge would get one of them to do the run, but… he wasn’t about to tell anypony anything.
A part of his mind realized that he was alone, at least for the ten or fifteen yards of trench he could see down in either direction. That didn’t particularly bother him. Nopony else here meant nopony to give him orders, and that meant he could just sit here. If he heard a sound from the other side of the trench, he might throw a grenade in that direction. Certainly had enough of them; they were supplied for a six-pony team, and it was down to just him.
His eye came to rest on another one of his squadmates. He hadn’t known any of them for very long — had only been assigned to the team for the past three days, once he got to Ponyville — but she had seemed like a nice enough pony. He couldn’t even remember her name; knew her only as Half-Smile, because she always seemed to be smiling to herself. She even wore that expression when she slept, apparently, because her face had frozen that way last night, along with the rest of her.
Mal shivered. He wasn’t looking forward to tonight. The small white naphtha cubes would light anything on fire, even the frozen deadwood they had piled in a corner, but the fire only did so much. Maybe they would send more ponies down to this part of the trenches before night. It would be nice to have some company.
His hoof instinctively snuck inside his greatcoat, slipping into the breast pocket just to make sure the tattered piece of paper was still in there. He considered taking it out to read it, but that wouldn’t do anything. He knew it by heart, anyway.
Dearest Malachus, it started. She always wrote like that, with his full name, even though she never used it face to face. That’s why he loved her; she was full of little quirks like that. Her letters were always fun to read.
This one, the latest one, was dated a day before they deployed out to Ponyville. She didn’t know where she was going, and at the time he didn’t either. Who knew? Maybe they were on the same front right now. Maybe the same trench. Maybe she was dead —
I love you more than you can possibly imagine, ended the letter, the same way as all the other ones did. You are my sun, you are my moon. And no matter where we are, we look to the same stars.
It was as full of corn as the yellow field where they had first met a few years back, but it meant something to them, and that’s all that mattered. Whenever the sun set, wherever he was, he knew he could look out at the first night’s stars and know that she was looking at them too.
Instinctively, he glanced up. The treetops were no longer white but a brownish black, leaves burnt off as collateral damage from artillery fire and countless magic blasts. Far above them, the canopy layer was mostly intact, if charred, with only a few gaps where shells had detonated on branches instead of punching through. There was no sky up there; it was all a grey haze, even though it was probably well into the twilight hour.
He hunkered back down against the trench, his eye catching on the shovel. He should probably take a few minutes and clear the snow back out of the trench before nightfall. It wasn’t supposed to snow, at least not according to the two-day-old predictions, but you never knew. Shovel out the snow, light a fire, pray he survived the night. Okay. That was a plan.
Forcing himself up, Mal rubbed his hooves together for warmth. Even through the thick gloves the shovel felt like ice. It was in fact encrusted with the stuff; it took a few good pulls to clear it out of the edge of the trench. He would also have to figure out a way to get rid of the bodies. Maybe… maybe tomorrow, though.
Tomorrow. If he wasn’t one of them.