28 March, Y.C. 970
Blackacre Forest
“Keep close,” barked Sand, with more confidence than he felt.
He didn’t need to say it twice; none of them particularly felt like getting too far apart from the only other ponies in earshot who they knew weren’t trying to kill them. By the dark and gloom down here it might as well be midnight, even if sunset wasn’t for another fifteen minutes.
They had started the push at the beginning of the day, when it was mostly bright and sunny. Still wasn’t particularly warm, but it might as well be full-on summer as compared with a few weeks ago… though, judging by the snow on the ground, it might as well be mid-January.
It was the snow that got him, really. Ponyville had wrapped up a day behind schedule, but by now, they were entirely sunny-skied and snow-free. So was everywhere else north enough to warrant a wrap-up. Everywhere, that is, except for Blackacre.
Sure, the river was swollen enough with snowmelt from the Canterlot mountains. And all of the wintry traces along the trench line had been cleared off; no sense keeping snow around just for fun. But they had done that, done it with their own horns and hooves. Out here, in the depths of the Blackacre Forest….
Nopony had cleared this snow. Nopony had cleared the winter clouds, recalled birds, broken the ice. At first they had thought it was simply a matter of personal safety — who in their right mind would go out to clear snow off a battlefield, or waste magical energy to do so? — but now, ten hours into their advance, they had realized it was tactical. All the Canterlot ponies had prepped for early spring combat, and down here in the deep forest it was still frozen.
“Hudson! Newt! Hightail it to that tree, get me cross-light!”
“Sir!”
A pair of unicorns detached from the forward cluster and sprinted off to a nearby oak. The thing must have been two hundred years old; they both fit behind it with room to spare. On a three-count, they popped out on either side, scanning ahead for a few seconds. Satisfied that all was well, one of them tuned his horn as a searchlight, illuminating the underbrush for thirty yards in every direction, supplementing the main force’s lights.
Main force. There were thirty-three of them now. Marty and Quim and Darryl and Scott, and that was just in the first ten minutes, pushing over the first line of Blackacre trenches, and that was after the Canterlot front line had supposedly cleared it….
Sand pushed the names from his mind, moving forward at a steady pace, the sound of snow crunching under a hundred hooves the only thing keeping them company. That, and the growing sense of unease as they drew farther and farther from the other platoons. Theoretically, the front line had already combed through here and established a forward beachhead on the other side of this little chunk of forest, and all they were doing was combing the ground for booby traps, tunnels, perhaps some abandoned equipment.
In practice, though, they were moving through what had, until some point this afternoon, been enemy territory. Regardless of what the sun said, it was night down here under the branches, night and cold to boot.
Patting at his cross-harness to make sure the knives were still there — new habits died hard — he trotted up to the captain.
“What is it, Sand?” he asked, without so much as turning around.
“Uh,” he said, flummoxed.
“Unless it’s some other pony come to talk to the bitter vet?” he offered without a trace of humor.
“Right, sir,” he said.
They stepped over a log. A fairly large one, maybe a few seasons old; it had started to decompose, but any progress had been frozen by the winter. Given that no one had changed seasons around here, who knew how much longer it would be frozen?
“What’s our ETA?” he said after a moment. “You’ve studied the maps more than me.”
“You mean, are we there yet,” rephrased the captain.
“No, not at all, just —”
“No,” he said simply. “We’ll get there when we get there.”
Sand licked his lips. Right. Of course.
“Two more miles, by my numbers,” he said. “Assuming we don’t run into anything.”
“Assuming.”
“By the time we get there, the Eighty-Fifth should have cleared our accommodations. We’re heading for what used to be a farm, so there should be some buildings for shelter. I want triple guard. We can afford to lose some sleep tonight, because we won’t have a perimeter locked down yet.”
“Understood,” he said. “I’ve got teams ready.”
“No you don’t.”
Sand blinked. “Sir…?”
“Now that we’ve lost ponies, you’re going to need to rebalance the shifts.”
He deflated slightly. “Right, sir. Sorry. I… I forgot.”
“Try not to,” said the captain tightly. “And get some light on that ravine.”
“Hudson! Move up!” called Sand, gesturing towards another large tree on their right. “Burke! Hicks! Break left, cross-light!” He paused for a moment. “Keep moving and your eyes on the ball; go for the cuts.”
A pair of ponies to his left flashed smiles and slipped past a pair of bushes, off to the flanking position so they could shed some more light on the terrain ahead. As they move, the captain gave a low chuckle.
“Sir?”
“I used to play too, you know,” he said, with a hint of… was that warmth in the captain’s voice? “Before boot. Small forward. How’d your team do?”
“Second place,” said Sand, a bit surprised that the captain had ever done anything besides growl at fresh recruits. “Got upjumped by a team running a Pranceton offense.”
“Flash in the pan,” muttered the captain. “Doesn’t work unless you’ve got your fundamentals, and nopony’s got time to train during boot. Only works if you’ve got a solid team coming in.”
He frowned. “Thought your colts were going to light this place up.”
Sand blinked; the light coming from the position on the right was gone. They had enough of it, especially with a half-dozen ponies lighting the way from the middle, but the crosslight was good for the uneven ground.
“Vascolt, Drake, break right,” he ordered. “See if Hudson fell into a hole or something.”
“On it,” said a burly mare, reshuffling her pack and moving off, accompanied by a pale blond colt. After a few moments they disappeared behind a bush, then popped back out, their own bobbing light heading towards the flanking team’s position.
“Maybe they fell asleep,” offered another pony in the line.
“Newt slept like a foal last night,” chimed in another. “I’d know. Ass kept snoring.”
“Loves his sleep, so maybe he went back for more?”
“Hah! That’ll be —”
“Quiet!” snapped the captain, stopping short. “You hear that?”
A hush fell as they immediately turned out to scan the forest — and heard nothing.
“No, sir,” said Sand, shaking his head slightly. “What —”
Two things happened at that moment. Which of them came first, he wouldn’t be able to remember. He might have been able to remember at the time, had he the presence of mind to try and connect the dots in that manner. With a bit of jogging, he might have even remembered the order after a day or two. At the moment, though, he wasn’t exactly thinking about the future, because the light from Burke cut out entirely, and the forest was pierced by a blood-curdling scream.
“The hell was that?”
“Vascolt! Get over —”
“— to back! Back to —”
“— above, almost from the sky!”
“D’you see that! In the trees, like —”
“Shut up!” roared the captain. “Circle up! Outriders, pull in!”
“Vascolt!” shouted Sand. “You see —”
“No sir!” she called back, bounding over a shrubbery. “No sign of ‘em!”
Vascolt sidestepped a largish rock, stepped behind a tree… and didn’t step back out. A half-second later, a black blur shot past against the forest, too fast to see.
“Lights! Everypony!”
In a moment the thirty-three — scratch that; twenty-seven — of them were bathed in light like the sun, a score of horns burning colors into the dark. Sand strained at his own horn, but it didn’t do any good; the more they shone, the more the forest seemed to eat it up, absorbing all traces of light deep within.
For a few tense seconds, no one moved so much as a muscle, the silence complete and total.
Another black blur between the trees, maybe fifty feet out; as one they turned and planted to face it. Then another, behind them. A third; a fourth; was it the same one? Who knew. The forest was full of shapes, whirling through the dark, cloaking themselves in it.
The ponies of the three fifty-first might have no idea who or what they were, but each and every one of them was now terrified for their life.
“Sixteen miles to camp,” said the captain through gritted teeth, his quiet voice painfully loud in the still air. “Two to the rendezvous.”
A pool of inky blackness shot from one tree to another not twenty feet in front of them.
“If the eighty-fifth is still there,” muttered a pony.
“Stow it,” shot the captain. “Only one way to go, and that’s forward.”
They were back to back now, a ball of ponies bathed in what little light they could summon in the darkness. Every one of them had knives out, with the odd assortment of spears, javelins, and even a claymore or two. Whatever they felt most comfortable with. Nopony was going to cite regs about standard weapons at them now.
Another moment passed, marked only by a pool of black shifting from tree to tree in the distance.
“Let’s go,” prodded the captain.
“What — now?”
“The longer we wait,” he hissed, “the longer we’re waiting.”
“Understood,” said Sand, “but what about —”
“We’ll be back tomorrow at daybreak,” he snapped. “If they’re alive, they can hole up for twelve hours.”
And if they’re not, then it didn’t matter, did it.
The forest was deathly quiet, broke only by the heavy breathing of twenty-seven heavily armed ponies. It sure didn’t sound like any of the others were alive. But what if… no, no sense asking that. They couldn’t rescue anyone else until they rescued themselves. Priorities.
“All right,” said Sand, keeping his voice low. In vain; it rang out uncomfortably loud in the icy stillness. “Battle buddies, two by two. One looks forward, one everywhere else. Captain in the middle. Let’s go.”
Slowly, the ball of ponies reassembled into something resembling a formation; even more slowly, they started moving forward.
One step. Then two, three, five. After a minute, Sand found himself crunching through what seemed very much like fresh snow. They were making progress, slow and halting as it was, with every pair of eyes staring into the black outside, straining to catch the sight of something, anything.
He kept seeing motion. Just a flicker, out of the corner of his eye, but there was something out there… wasn’t there? Maybe it was his mind playing tricks on him. Maybe not — but either way, tricks hadn’t killed his six outriders. Or had they? Maybe they had tripped, were sitting in a ditch….
All six of them. Yeah, right. Sand stumbled over a rock, snapping back upright. He dared not take his eyes off the forest, not even for a moment.
He wished they could take off at a full gallop, burn hard for the encampment that had to be close ahead. The eighty-fifth wasn’t too much larger than they were, but there was something to be said about strength in numbers against a night dark and full of… something.
They couldn’t do that, though. Couldn’t even think about it. The moment they bolted, they’d be vulnerable. Not as a herd, no, but each individual member would be at risk. The slow ones, the ones at the side… some of them would survive, but they would guarantee losses. Even if they eased into it in total control, completely cognizant of each others’ positions, keeping flank to flank as they wheeled at full bore through the frozen underbrush, there would still have to be somepony at the back, somepony on the far side.
Somepony in a perfect position to be picked off. Given how the rest of this night had gone, that was something they couldn’t risk.
“Easy…” somepony was whispering next to him. He risked a glance; it was Gaitman. He had always been a flighty one, with more bravado than brains; looked like this time around he was reassuring himself. Normally Sand would clamp down on the chatter, but… well, they could all use some reassuring right about now.
“Got a little ridge coming up,” said the captain in a tense and level voice. “Fifteen feet. Take it slow and easy, we’ll get over it just fine.”
Not to mention that, for a moment, they’d hold the high ground. For what that was worth out here. Still, any advantage was worth taking, even just for a little while; maybe they could follow the ridge towards their destination.
Sand shifted slightly to get his eyes forward, looking towards the ridge. It wasn’t too high, and the slope leading up to it was refreshingly clear of debris, though there did seem to be some patches of ice under the drifts, which was to be expected. And, along the top, a lithe black form —
He shouted a warning, but it was gone, slipped away into the night without a sound. Instantly they circled up again; nopony was risking anything this time. For a few moments, the forest was silent, holding its breath just like the ponies, waiting to see who made the next move.
Then, ever so gently, a sound from the black.
It wasn’t a growl, not per se. It was farther back, throatier, with a dash of whistling wind and an undercurrent of snap to it. It didn’t sound like a timberwolf, but then again who knew what they would do to secure the kill. Under no circumstances could the sound be interpreted as anything resembling ‘friendly.’ And then, just when he thought every hair on his body couldn’t possibly rise any straighter —
A second noise.
Then a third.
Then — many of them, in synch, overlapping, circling them like hunters who have their prey surrounded, like a pleased cat toying with its latest catch before the final blow.
These weren’t mice, though; they were ponies. Heavily armed ones, at that; between knives and swords and spears and armored warhooves and the occasional grenade they had enough firepower to raze a small village. No, if these shadows in the night, these destroyers in black wanted to take them, they would have a hard —
As if on a signal, the noise stopped, the night falling again like a black velvet bag over their heads.
“Hold!” roared the captain. “We hold! To the last! And —”
Whatever inspiration was coming was abruptly interrupted by a blood-curdling scream behind him. Gritting his teeth, Sand kept his eyes bolted to the forest, tracking a pool of shadow as it slipped between trees, hiding then coming back out, faster than he could think. The shadow went back and forth and back and forth and suddenly he noticed a pair of eyes on it, slits reflecting the pale hornlight, and then he was raising his daggers and the eyes were coming towards him —
What little light filtered through the forest was swallowed whole as Sand’s field of vision turned into a mouth with dozens of pearly-white and athame-sharp teeth.