//------------------------------//
// Know The Risks 
// Story: Cartography of War 
// by Daetrin 
//------------------------------//

	Gérard’s limp was far more pronounced.  She was privately surprised he was walking at all, given what he’d been through.  Beneath those feathers and fur had to be more bruises than she could count, and the first wounds were only getting worse.  He had to be near his limits, but he seemed more grimly determined to press on than ever.

        It was the conversation, of course.  She had heard his peculiar calm tone last night, and knew that he was deathly afraid.  Panicked, even, though he’d never show it.  Which brought her around to considering him as she picked her way through a blessedly mundane swamp.  He had to be terribly important, of course.  They wouldn’t send just anyone on a secret mission deep into Equestrian territory, and she doubted every gryphon soldier had Gérard’s speed.

        Nor, did she imagine, was every gryphon’s wife target enough to begin a war.

        And there was his certitude that this war was all but over.  It wasn’t just an opinion - he knew.  It was a pain that wounded him as much as the gouges in his wing and side.  Somewhere in there was whatever drove him to keep going, making her wonder how sane he really was.  She could still hear that hysterical laugh from when he first saw her maps, the sound of someone tottering at the edge of their breaking point.

        Rose really did not want Gérard to break.  Not while she was around, certainly.  Every few minutes she glanced back, expecting each time to find him stopped or collapsed, but he stuck with her as she led him south, the swamp turning more boggy than muddy.  Still his beak was closed tight, and his focus seemed to be on the horizon rather than her.

        Eventually she couldn’t take it anymore.  She stopped and turned to face him as he slowed to a halt, blinking at her.  “You should take a break.”  When he didn’t reply except by clicking his beak, she tried again.  “You can’t possibly go much further without collapsing.  You won’t do any good if you can’t move at all.”

        He said something in his native tongue, then shook his head.  “It is a saying.  I can rest when I die.”

        “Are you trying to kill yourself?  Because you’re going to.”

        “My life does not mean much.  Nor does my death.”  He sighed.  “But my duty...I do take your point.  But I will have time to rest once we are on the raft.  Until then I will not.”

        She snorted in frustration before turning and heading off again.  He seemed to flip between irritating and sympathetic without any warning, every time she ran up against one of the unseen walls in his mind. Gérard reminded her more of a particularly difficult foal than an experienced soldier.

        He was silent the rest of the day, and therefore so was she.  Her friends tended toward the rambunctious, with story and song being their constant companions, so Gérard’s reticence gnawed at her constantly.  Silence did little for her state of mind.

        By the time they halted for the evening her nerves were jangling. It didn’t help when she turned around after setting up the tent to find him gone, having silently vanished into the wilderness despite the injuries.  She scowled at empty air and busied herself picking mushrooms, muttering nothing in particular under her breath.

        But as time stretched on and the sky grew dark without any sign of him, she began to worry.  It was hardly safe out there, and in his shape he might have simply dropped from exhaustion somewhere in the wilderness.  As alarming as Gérard was as a traveling companion, it was better than being alone.  She lit a fire and puttered about, tidying up what little there was at the camp, and was just about to go looking for him when he limped into the circle of firelight.

        Gérard was wilted and spattered beak to tail in mud, and underneath the stench of bog he reeked of blood and death.  The smell mostly came, though, from what was on his back, a bloody hide bundle tied with creeper.  Any relief at seeing him evaporated as he dumped the bundle by the fire, sending her dancing a few steps back, gagging at the charnel scent.

        “My apologies,” he said tiredly.  “I will need supplies and it takes a fire to preserve them.”

        “No, I understand.” Rose said, breathing shallowly.  “You...you do that.”  She retreated into the tent, shivering convulsively.  She hated it, and yet she knew she’d have to get used to it eventually.  With how far they had to go, even if Gérard decided to give up and head back to civilization with her, the gryphon would have to eat more than a few meals.  And he could hardly survive on fruits and mushrooms.

        Wrung dry, she hunkered down at the back of the tent and tried to put all the images of death and violence out of her head until morning.   But all night the bundle on Gérard’s back kept transforming into the corpses of her friends, watching her accusingly.  Eventually she staggered out of the tent in the early morning, dry and muzzy and aching, only to nearly trip over the gryphon where he lay sprawled out next to the fire.

        He opened a weary eye at her as she rebounded and headed in the other direction, half to get away from him and half to dunk herself in water until she felt more equine.  By the time she returned, Gérard was up and about, disassembling something he’d built over the fire out of the remains of the broken tent.  The strips of meat, now devoid of butcher’s trappings and smoked to a uniform brown, still made her queasy but not as disturbed as she’d been last night.

        The gryphon looked like she felt, worn out and dirty and not at all ready to face the day, but he hauled himself off to the stream without a word as soon as he’d finished stowing his supplies in his saddlebags.  Eventually she thought to start packing herself, after looking blearily around the little camp for far too long.  She still wasn’t awake.

        “How far do we have to go?  To the river.” Gérard’s hoarse voice made her twitch, her body too drained to properly startle.

        “Five or six miles?”  The snake had, for all its danger, brought them further than they would have managed by hoof.  “The map won’t be accurate until I’ve been there.”

        “Yes, of course.  You make them.”  He rubbed his beak.  “Perhaps we will make it today, then.”

        “Maybe.”  She had doubts.  They were both at their limits, and while Gérard was willing to press on until he dropped dead she certainly wasn’t.  But at least riding a raft wouldn’t be half as difficult as slogging through mud and bramble, pathfinding skill or no.  She struggled back into her saddlebags while Gerard kicked dirt over the remains of the fire.

        He blinked as she headed away from the trickle of water, but followed obediently.  “Would that not join with the river we are looking for?”

        “Hmm?”  She glanced back toward the remains of their camp.  “Oh.  Yes, but not for a while.  This will be shorter.”  She didn’t even need to be awake to know that.

        “Ah.”  That was only response, but his voice came again after a few minutes of tromping through the early morning cool. “Rose,” he began.  “Would you tell me about another of your friends?”

        She blinked, fighting back images of her nightmares before remembering the conversation from a few days ago.  It seemed like it had been longer.  “I don’t -” She said, swallowing as her throat suddenly tightened.  “Not right now.”

        “Tch.”  His beak clicked and she glanced back at him, only to find he wasn’t watching her at all.  He was staring at the sky, and she followed his gaze, wondering if Kree had returned.  But apparently he was just thinking, because after a bit he followed up on the noise.  “Than I shall tell you about Kree, if you care to listen.”

        “Yes,” she said, in spite of herself.  It wasn’t entirely true, but some conversation was better than wearing silence.

        “Kree,” Gérard began.  “Is Aida’s oldest son.”

        Rose nodded vaguely, but it took a moment for that to catch up with her.  The hair all along her back prickled as she realized they were being hunted by the son of the most powerful gryphon alive.  That was all. She had no more room for worry or fear; she’d already reached her limit on that.  But she did pay closer attention to Gérard’s words.

        “He inherited much of her talents but his father’s temperament.  So yes, he brought great honor to his family and yes, he is one of the greatest fighters and flyers in a generation, but he never learned to lead.  Only order.” Gérard clicked his beak softly.  “Perhaps I am partly to blame.  We flew together, in those early days, and I often took on the tasks he had no interest in.”

        “Nopony is responsible for anypony’s actions but themselves,” Rose protested.  Again.  Though now she was starting to see why he might feel he was.

        “You’ve never been in command,” Gérard said mildly.  It wasn’t a reproach, just a fact.  “And neither has he, not really.  He was able to hunt and kill and fight and win, but never to hold the respect and obedience of soldiers by his own talon.  Not that his talents went to waste, but it grated at him.”

        She looked back at him.  “He was jealous of you?”

        “Perhaps.”  He considered.  “Not of my power or position, for those he had, but of my happiness, I could believe that.”

        A thought struck her.  “He was jealous of your wife?”

        Gérard made some sort of noise and then snorted a laugh.  There was no humor in it.  “No,” he said.  “She was his sister.”

        “Oh,” she said faintly.  There was too much in that to even try and think about.

        “We were never really at odds, not even during the War of Houses.  Not since Aida commanded us both.  But after…” His beak clicked.  “I suppose being placed under my command was too much of an insult.”

        “Why would it be an insult?  I mean, whatever you were doing...it’s important, right?”

        “That is exactly the point.”

        She looked at him blankly.

        “Tch.  Perhaps I will try to explain it later.”

        She waited, her hooves squishing in mud and her saddlebags catching on undergrowth now and again when the path she’d chosen closed in more than it should have, but apparently he had nothing else to add.

        Neither did she.  First she had to digest what he’d just told her, not so much about Kree as about himself.  He was uncommonly calm about being nearly murdered by his brother in law, and oddly self-effacing about his relationship with Aida, Wing-Commander of All Armies.

        Rose hadn’t managed to decide on anything before the sound of running water filtered through the sigh of wind in the leaves of stumpy trees.  She found herself trotting faster, following the sound ahead, and Gérard grunted as he matched her pace.  It wasn’t long at all before canopy, such as it was, broke and the noon sun shone down on a broad, glittering expanse of lazy water.  With it came a breeze and clear air, for once not smelling of mud and bog.

        She flopped down on the grassy bank, closing her eyes and basking in the sudden slice of unexpected paradise.  Gérard joined her, a rustle of grass and the faint sound of breathing.  But it didn’t last.  All too soon, his voice came.  “We must get a raft together.  There will be time to rest when the current is doing most of the work.”

        Rose groaned and wobbled to her hooves.  As much as she didn’t want to move, Gérard was right.  Or at least, reasonable.  Though, as her mind caught up with her actions, she wasn’t even sure of that.  Until, turning, she saw the position of the sun and realized she’d had a good hour’s nap without even noticing.

        Gérard  followed her as she scavenged appropriately-sized fallen logs and branches from the surroundings, the gryphon dragging them back to shore one by one.  She had to grit her teeth as she watched him limp back and forth, but she could have hardly moved the logs faster.  She was no Goldy.

        It took a few false starts to make the raft, even if the principle was simple enough.  But they didn’t have any rope, and had to make do with the last bits of the ruined tent and whatever creeper Rose could find nearby.  Really it was quite simple, just a row of wood lashed together and braced with a pair on either end.  But at the same time it seemed more than a little rickety and wobbly.  Still, once they pushed it into the water, it floated, even with both of them aboard.  She’d still be getting her hooves wet from time to time but that couldn’t be helped.

        Gérard pushed them off from the bank with his pole.  The current caught the raft and sent it slowly floating past the grassy banks, and the gryphon slumped down on the logs, looking wan and strained under the fur and feathers.  Rose felt the same way, aching and tired all over, but at least she could sit now.  Even if the logs weren’t the most comfortable perch, with the sun and the breeze the river was almost pleasant.

        “Do you feel like talking now, Rose?” 

        She twitched at his voice, jolted out of a half-drowse.  As nice as it would have been, she couldn’t actually sleep, since the raft still might bump into the bank or rocks if she didn’t ply her own pole properly.  Though she didn’t feel much like discussing her friends with Gérard, it might help.

        “Goldy,” she said, since he had been on her mind anyway.  “Golden Glimmer.  The orange Earth Pony,” she added after a moment, since Gérard couldn’t possibly know.  “He was fun.  Funny.”  She took a deep breath, finding her voice shaky all of a sudden.  “He and Sky and Scarlet would have running pun conversations for hours.  And he knew all the songs.  Even though sometimes he’d invent new words for them.  Usually to tease Sharp Eye for something.”  Rose smiled in fond recollection.  “Mercy kept us healthy but it was Goldy who kept our spirits up.”

        “You said he had a wife and foals at home,” Gérard murmured.

        “Yes.”  Her smile faded, her hooves hefting her pole to give the raft a shove.  “I met them last winter, during a stopover at Trotvale.  Adorable little fillies.  Well, not so little.  They take after their mother and Anvil Ring is nearly as large as Princess Celestia.  And they loved their father.”  She gave her pole another shove, sending the raft into a lazy spin.  Gérard said nothing, simply correcting their spin with a push of his own, the water splashing against the logs of their raft.

        The river burbled as it curved its way toward the mighty Baltimare, the river slowly narrowing as they drifted along it.  The gryphon was so quiet that she half expected to find him asleep when she looked over, but he was simply watching the skies.  For a moment she thought he was scanning for Kree and Ganon again, but then her gaze dropped to his ruined wing.  He hadn’t mentioned it much, but he had lost something that was as essential to him as magic was to her.

        Rose wanted to say something, but couldn’t think of any words that would help.  It was too profound a pain, and there was just too much between them.  Even if she worked up to offering him a hug it would probably startle him right off the raft, as it had last time.  So she left him to his reverie as the river swept them onward.

        It didn’t take much effort to keep the raft properly centered, and that gave her a chance to rest her much-abused muscles.  Instead she took out her maps, carefully altering the course of the tributary and drawing the line of their journey another few miles.  It was still pitifully short compared to the length they had to go, but it certainly felt like she’d tromped there and back.

        As it grew darker, Rose began poling them toward the bank.  Even though the river had held no surprises so far, she didn’t want to navigate it in the dark.  Gérard stirred and helped, nosing them up against the grassy shore under the shade of a hanging willow.  “This was an excellent idea, Rose. How far can we travel by raft?”

        “I don’t know.”  She blinked, trying not to feel too pleased by his words.  “It depends on the river.  I do know that the Baltimare is dangerous near the Hayseed Swamps.”

        “Too rough?”

        “The pegasus scouts said it was too angry.”

        It was Gérard’s turn to blink, but after a moment he nodded.  “Ah.  Like the swamp was angry.”

        “I don’t know.”  Rose grimaced.  “We couldn’t spare any scouts for a better survey recently.”  Then she frowned at him. “Didn’t you see it on your way in?  You said you followed the river.”

        He closed his eyes briefly, clicking his beak, then shook his head.  “Tch.  It was early, and cloudy, and we were flying high.  I can tell you very little, Rose.  All I remember from the flight is that it looked like a river.”

        Rose frowned, but of course Gérard was no cartographer.  Most people didn’t pay close attention to the land they traveled over, other than noticing the occasional landmark.  They would just have to find out when they got there - and if the swamp was any indication, go around.

        She slept far better that night, and by the time they launched the raft in the morning she felt almost rested, even if everything still ached. Gérard, though, was even more wilted, though there was no sign of it in his voice.  “Was all this pony land?” He asked, waving a talon at the wooded banks passing by.

        “We don’t really know.”  Rose reached for her maps by habit, holding them tight against the breeze that rippled against them.  “It may have been before the demon of discord broke the world.  But even if it were resettled...we lost so much during the Winter of Nightmares.”

        “Yes, forgive me.  You said that before.”  Gérard rubbed at his beak, looking around at the grass and willows and flowing water.  “It is just that this swamp by itself is larger than the whole of our island.”

        “Really?”  Rose was doubtful.  He was used to flying everywhere, after all.

        “Two hundred miles from tip to tip, and not much more end to end,” he confirmed.  “It always seemed large enough to me, but now…”

        “I would have thought it would seem larger, having to walk through it like this.”

        “It is not that,” Gérard said quietly.  “I am thinking of how much room ponies have to expand.  You won the war, with what you have now.  In five or eight or ten generations, with all this yours, we will exist only by your leave.”

        “That’s not true.”  She frowned at him, thrown by the sudden reversion to his political interests.  “We don’t want to fight, or invade, or take over, or anything.  You know that.”

        “Tch.”  The gryphon ran his talons over the wooden pole, pushing at the muddy river bottom.  “You would not have to.  That much strength would be enough.”

        Rose shook her head.  She just couldn’t see it.  The only time she had even seen Princess Celestia was when Rose had managed to attend an address to the soldiers, at the beginning of the war. She could still remember the tone, the quiet pain in the princess’ voice at having to fight.  But she wasn’t sure she could convince Gérard.

        “Do you - ack!” Rose cut herself off as her pole struck a rock at the bottom of the river, nearly shivering it out of her hooves, and she pulled it up, finding that a few inches of the bottom had been sheared off.

        Gérard snorted softly.  “I suppose we should pay closer attention.  Neither of us are used to sailing.”

        “You need a sail for sailing.”  Rose dipped the pole back in the water, pushing them closer toward the center of the river.  “But rocks are good.  It means we might be out of the mud for a while.”

        “That would be welcome.”  His ears, which had been drooping, pricked up.  “I come from a mountain country.  I had never imagined so much mud and dirt.”

        “Gryphonia?  What is it like?”

        “The Eyrie is...all sky.”  He looked upward, his accent thickening as he spoke.  “We have rivers, yes, but they cascade down and down, and in the mornings their mist cloaks us, wrapped around our isle.  In every pocket and fold of the white mountains there are deep lakes, ringed in green and teeming with fish.  The air is always clear and crisp, and the wind snaps and dances along the slopes.”

        “It sounds beautiful,” Rose said, and meant it.  It wasn’t just what he described, but the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes. Gérard loved the island.

        “Yes.”  He closed his eyes and let out a slow breath.  “Perhaps one day I will see it again.”

        “I hope so.” Especially since if he got to go home, so did she.

        This time, it was Gérard’s turn to have the wooden pole nearly pulled from his talons, and he clutched at it before it escaped.  “Tch.”  He pulled it out of the water, laying it crossways on the raft.  The river was straight enough, if flowing faster than before, so Rose followed his example.  

        But not for long.  The noise of the river became louder and ahead of them patches of white began to appear, spume from some hidden rocks.  “Perhaps we should go to shore now,” Gérard suggested, looking ahead of them. “Before it gets too rough.”

        “All right,” Rose agreed, reaching for the pole.  It really didn’t look too bad, but she was hardly a mariner, so it was best to err on the side of caution.  Gérard was faster, dipping the wood into the river to push them off to the side, but the moment it struck the river bottom it was torn from his talons, sent bobbing and floating off out of his reach.

        The gryphon regarded it mournfully.  “Tch.  I am sorry, Rose.”

        “It’s all right.  Maybe…”  Her horn lit as she tried to reel it in toward her, but her grasp on it was tenuous at best.  Still, she managed to pull it to almost within reach before the raft itself struck something, a sharp jolt that nearly toppled her over the side.  It was only Gérard’s grip that kept her on board, his hind claws dug into the logs.

        When she looked around again, the pole was gone.  The froth of the river was building about them, washing into full rapids as it slid down toward the Baltimare.  “Rose!”  Gérard had to raise his voice.  “We must get to shore!”

        “I know!”  The rapids had crept up on them, somehow, and the rickety log raft was starting to spin, the foam that rolled over the raft soaking her hooves.  She shoved at the rocks as they swept by, trying to push the raft closer to the steep and rocky banks, but the current was too strong.  A few tries later, the pole got wedged in something as she pushed it, whipping out of her hooves to strike Gérard full across the beak before vanishing behind them.

“Sorry!” She said, but he didn’t seem to really notice, his head rocking back and then forward again as he clung to the raft.  

“It’s coming apart!” He shouted at her. The bindings were stretching as the raft jolted and bumped, the logs rattling madly against each other. The rough rapids were too much for it.

        She did her best to brace herself against the wobbly logs as she scanned the river ahead, looking for something, anything that would help them.  “There’s an island!”  She shouted back, waving at a green-brown smudge further downstream.  It was more promising-looking than the carved-out rock that had replaced the banks.  And closer.  But the raft was far from washing ashore.  “We’ll have to swim for it!”

        “I cannot swim.” Gérard’s voice was low and level, barely audible over the river.  She turned to stare at him, meeting his calm, resigned gaze a moment before the raft smashed into something, the logs scattering and plunging them both into the tumult.

        Gérard sank like a stone.