//------------------------------// // XVIII. Alleluia! Don't Bend! Ascend! // Story: The Night is Passing // by Cynewulf //------------------------------// XVIII. Alleluia! Don’t Bend! Ascend! Amaranth No retreat is ever simple. Choosing to abandon something, anything, is always a loss. A pony becomes attached to places, even places that she hates. Simply stepping backwards is, in a small and insidious way, horrible. To watch somepony take what is yours and touch it with their filthy, muddy hooves and rub their bellies and their filthy faces on your beds and walls, to imagine their impunity as they eat the food you gathered and overended your most private and sacred scraps and keepsakes. No, retreats of any kind were never simple or easy. Evacuations? Evacuations were worse. Amaranth was not surprised. “Hard” did not begin to describe the experience of forcing a pony to flee their home for their own good. ‘Impossible,’ she decided, was a far better word. And yet she had done it. She had looked into the eyes of the retirees and the young couples and the shut-ins and the bachelors and told them that there was no hope. Their little cottages were doomed, and nopony could do anything about it. They always argued. Surely, an earth pony couple had tried to reason with her, surely the Guard can repel a few disorganized thugs. There are more than a hundred of them up in that old ruin! Hundreds, in fact. How many of those ruffians could possibly have gotten this far up the mountain undetected and with enough strength to fight? This was all an overreaction. Those two, the couple, had hit a sore spot. None of the ponies she’d been trying to get out to the town’s antiquated square had been willing to face the facts, but they had at least known the wisdom of fear and how to know when a pony was serious. But the couple had just looked at her as if she were not a pony at all, but a poster on a wall. A picture of some other place. Things like that simply didn’t happen here, their blank faces insisted. She had been so angry. But then as quickly as her fury had jumped up to bite, it died away. Amaranth had only sighed. “Come to the center of town,” she’d said, her voice flat. The evacuation would begin, and then she told them as bluntly and as honestly as she could that if they did not leave, they would die horribly and after much suffering, and that nopony would be coming back for them. And she had said she was sorry. And had left. Now, she sat on the roof of the old Morningvale Library. It had been built at least a hundred years before she’d been born, inhabited by only one librarian, an elderly mare who had clung to life with a cheerful obstinance that she’d found refreshing when first she had come to Castle Watch years ago. It was bizarre, really, the kinds of things the mind would recall in the most inconvenient moments. The feel of the sun on her cheeks as she counted raiders in the early morning, watching for their campfires like wayward stars reclining. Or perhaps a memory of the first time she had visited the village, sitting on its library, scanning the desolate mountain pass for signs of life. She had been young then. To be honest, she had been a year too young to officially join the Lunar Guard, but the rules of the Duskwatch were different. They were older than the modern guard. Quieter. More willing to bend the rules and work outside of the lines. And so she had trotted into the village in the morning, fresh out of her fillyhood, as the ponies of Morningvale had been sleepily congregating at their bakeries and their benches and around the well in the center of town. A pouch in my saddlebags with my first month’s pay and enough room for a book, she thought with a smile. “See something?” She glanced over at Ice Storm. His cool blue eyes were like the flowers her mother loved, the ones in the cave gardens at home. How strange. “Lieutenant? Amaranth, are you alright?” The Captain cocked his head to one side, furrowing his brow. Amaranth shook her head. “I’m fine. Sorry.” “It’s fine. Did you see something?” “No, sir. Nothing to report.” “Ah.” Captain Ice Storm looked back out over the pass. “I thought I caught you moving out of the corner of my eye and assumed you had noticed something. I imagine it’s simply nerves.” She smiled. “Or you just got tired of it being quiet.” “Perhaps.” “You know, Castle Watch was my only stationing outside of Canterlot,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Oh?” He turned away again, casting his ice blue eyes over the patchy Morningvale pastures. Amaranth looked back out as well. She was grateful for the lack of trees near the village. There was a forest between them and the raider base camps, but it was far enough that it would be useless as cover. The enemy would have to cross more than two miles of open ground. He’s doing that thing again, the one where he pretends that you’re making unnecessary chatter. Absurdly, she briefly considered sticking her tongue out at him, but not even she felt like it at a time like this. But to her surprise, he spoke again. “You don’t seem perturbed by this.” “Castle Watch? No, it’s not so bad.” “It seems like a terribly boring assignment. Tolerable, and not particularly taxing.” He yawned, and Amaranth blinked and stared at him. “But frankly, I think I would probably die of boredom here after a two-year tour.” “If I didn’t know any better…” Amaranth shook her head. Let him loosen up. It was better than him being Mr. Icicle-Up-His-Ass. “It’s not so bad. Yeah, there aren’t any bandits or manticores or zebraharan separatists causing trouble. No, you don’t get to do much but look at dirt and rocks and a few awkward pine trees. But… I don’t know.” She shrugged. The wind picked back up. She had wondered if it would return, and she closed her eyes for a moment. She loved the wind, how it ran through her hair and stroked her face and ran over her wings. “So what appealed to you?” “It’s a good place to live,” she said, finally. She could almost hear him raising his eyebrows at that. “Live.” “The Duskwatch garrison at Castle Watch is probably the most laid-back unit in Equestria,” she explained, licking her lips. As much as she liked the wind, it joined forces with the cold air to dry her out. She wanted to drink from her canteen, but she needed to space her intake out to make it last longer. The well was too slow and too distracting. She’d have to vacate her post. “We guard the pass, but it’s in the middle of the country. There was never really anything to guard it from. There are a few diamond dogs in the warrens across the valley, or, at least, there were. A couple of Rocksnakes that would come north off the mountains looking for an easy meal, but nothing too terrible.” “Rocksnakes?” “Oh yeah,” she said, gesturing with her hooves, not really caring if he could see or not. “They can get big. They’re beautiful, actually. Like… it’s hard to describe. They’re magical. Literally. Some are just, like, rocky, but others look like they’re made of crystal. Not exactly friendly, but if you show them you’re not just some dumb critter, they’ll wander off.” Amaranth chuckled. “They’re kind of lazy.” “Sounds like a worthy adversary for the illustrious Duskwatch.” “Hey, watch it,” she shot back, smiling. “The biggest part of our job wasn’t military at all. We were kind of the only government presence in the valley. We’re just there to help. Foals who wander into the woods or up the mountain, digging a new well for the farmers on the east side, stuff like that. Sometimes we just hung around in the square, a squad of us. We’d wait and see if anybody needed help, but mostly we would just chat.” “Sounds… taxing.” “Oh, come off it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It sounds like nothing, but we did have an important role.” “Which was?” “This village and the castle are the remnants of the original Canterlot. You know that, right?” “Of course,” he replied tersely. “The ponies who live here are kind of our history. We’re the ones who keep them connected to the outside world. It’s really easy to forget about everypony and everything in this little mountain bubble, Captain. It’s easy to feel alone, too. We worked more at fighting off that than any young diamond pup looking for some mischief in town. The Duskwatch is the representative to remind these ponies that the Princesses didn’t just forget about them.” There was silence for some time as the captain processed this. For her part, Amaranth returned to the memory of her first visit to Morningvale without her armor, the strangeness of being a batpony in the world of grass and sun, on the surface. That never entirely went away. “I don’t want to abandon this place,” Amaranth said at last. “I know. I saw it when you flew up here.” “They shouldn’t be able to take it from me.” “I know.” She bit her lip. Ice Storm spoke again, different than before. “They’ll pay for this place, Amaranth. I promise you. I won’t leave until they’ve paid for it.” Golden Field Trenches are impossible to describe in a way that does them any sort of justice. No brand or style of picture-painting with words will convey the feeling of sitting in it, waiting and waiting and waiting. The sketches in his infantry manual told him the ideal dimensions of an ideal defensive entrenchment in ideal conditions, but they forgot to mention what it was like to dig one or how much like a grave a trench looked or how cold they were. His hooves were soaked. His coat was soaked. Every part of him was filthy. The carbine he’d been drilled to treat as an extension of his body was pressed to his matted fur like a newborn foal, cradled in his hooves. Its smooth wood was cold against his legs, but the iron barrel was colder on his cheek. He was glad for the cold. The rest of him was uncomfortably hot. Golden Field had found that there was rarely any true silence. Born and raised in Canterlot, last son of a family of eight, and now a riflepony. There was always some background noise, some indiscriminate chatter. This was true even in a trench on the edge of nowhere. The manipular engineer, Clunker, cursed and kicked his ragged, rusted gatling. Rifleponies fidgeted. The manipular scouts watched through binoculars over the lip of the trench, waiting, their bodies as still as the marble statues of High Canterlot. He thought at first that he waited for them to give some sign, but he found that the thought did not move him. Not yet. His eyes rarely left the little section of mud before him. Roots snaked through the fecund earth, roots that had been there longer than he had, that had done nothing to no one, attached to the grass and the weeds that had missed destruction by an inch. He was sorry, but not very sorry. Mostly, he thought that if he had to wait to die somewhere, he might as well do it in the mud. Random associations kept his mind moving. The unicorns down the street who called him “mudpony” as a foal. The time he’d tried to dig a tunnel in one of the parks to the palace and been brought home by an amused guard. Colorful memories. “You’re never going to get that piece of shit working,” a riflepony said, his voice flat. “Watch,” Clunker shot back. Golden didn’t bother to glance over at the engineer. He would fix the apparatus, or he wouldn’t. He would sit in the little compartment and fire the gun, or he wouldn’t. Golden did not immediately find a reason to care. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was more accurate to say that he couldn’t. It was too big to care about adequately. He was simply too small. It was just a matter of ratios, really. Numbers. Things that could be grasped and considered. The trench had been carved with magic and hooves along the entire length of the valley. The infantry assigned to the watch to bolster it had been spread thin along a mile long fortification, rifles ready. Ammo was low. He’d heard that one of the maniples of the third regiment, the pegasi, had been grounded and given ancient model shootsticks with just one shot each. Golden hadn’t seen that in person, but he believed it. He had already seen as much of the world above his hole as he wished to when he had been digging. He had always liked digging. It made sense. At least two miles of open ground stretched out before the trench, broken up by a few errant trees and farmhouses. Rock outcroppings provided a bit of cover, but not including that, there was nowhere for the raiders to hide. It was a perfect setup for slaughter. At least, that’s what they were planning. Golden didn’t know about such things, even if he could think about them, and didn’t care. That was the future, and he had the present, and the present was the feeling of malleable mud on his back and the calming cold of the rifle barrel that kept him focused and alert. Metal clanged on metal. Golden spared the noise a look. The gatling emplacement was a barrel-shaped contraption with three metal legs supporting it. They dug into the mud, and so the whole structure sank, but its long three-barreled gun still stuck out over the shivering rifleponies. Inside the barrel were controls. Golden did not care for the machine. “Are you done?” he asked. “You’ve been hitting that thing for an hour.” “Twenty minutes,” the machinist answered without turning to look at him. “Maybe twenty-five. Regardless, it’s done. It was a problem in the hydr… nevermind. I’ve fixed it! We’ll have some cover.” “Already have cover,” the riflepony who had griped earlier pointed out. “You have mud,” Clunker said. “You have a hole. Cover? Perhaps, but not the kind you need. A well-placed grenade or mortar could flush this whole place out. And you better bet on those dirty whoresons cobbling together a few mortars. I could’ve done as a kid; I’m sure they can.” Golden looked around the bulk of the emplaced gun and saw that the complaining riflepony was Fallow, the mare with the shaved mane. “Yeah, and that thing can explode on us pretty easy.” “Hardly!” “But you didn’t say it wouldn’t, now did you?” Fallow asked. Golden looked back at the mud wall. Fallow was spiteful, and she hated Clunker because he’d transferred from the Frontier. She’d called him a coward, before the collapse, but beyond simple information, Golden found no substance to this. It was hard to think of anything in the trench as real. Time crawled like a dying dog. He experienced hours, and a moment limped by his nose. Days would pass, it felt like, but only an hour would slump into the dismal mud of his trench to die. Waiting was the hardest part. The manuals that showed how to dig a trench, how to fortify a house, how to set up a crossfire—the ones that did not mention that digging was muddy and awful—had neglected to mention that the worst part of battle was the waiting that preceded it. Because, any moment now, the scout could slump down, and Golden would look at his face, and he would know that the waiting was over. No, he supposed that was not entirely true. The waiting to wait was over because then the raiders would make their trek across the field like revenants. It was about this time, as he contemplated what it would look like to see them marching in ragged lines, that a scout stirred. Her name was Rosebud, and the two of them had been together since the first day of basic. He trusted her keen eyes. So when she ducked down, he knew she’d seen them first. He didn’t ask her what she had seen. He already knew. What he did do was sit up and shake the mud out of his mane. “Movement,” she hissed, and all of the little noises and disturbances in the hole stopped dead. Two dozen pairs of eyes in both directions burned into her own, looking for some doubt to cling to. Golden did not join them. He already knew she was right. “How many?” whispered one of the rifleponies to Golden’s left. “Shut it,” growled another voice. “Centurion!” Rosebud saluted briskly at somepony behind Golden. The Centurion of the rifle company was fat, old, and a unicorn. His voice was reedy and creaking. As he brushed by Golden, the young riflepony caught the strong scent of cigars and port. Indeed, the stallion had perhaps the fattest cigar Golden had ever seen clenched between two teeth. He supposed they all dealt with things in different ways. “Now, how many?” Centurion Halftrack asked. “Not sure. I can try to get a count, but they’re bunched up tighter than I expected. Company strength at least.” The centurion took a drag on the fat cigar then used his magic to pull it away as he blew smoke towards his scout. He did not answer. Instead, he gestured towards her binoculars, and she gave them to him silently. The centurion mounted the ridge slowly, almost comically, grumbling into his cigar as at last he cleared the dug-out earth and lay on the grass. Several of the rifleponies stood and watched, and Golden supposed he might as well. He would be at the wall soon, regardless. Before the trench was a series of small ridges of packed dirt left over from digging. In front of this embankment was a shallow trench, only a few centimeters deep and somewhat shabbily dug. If a charge wasn’t broken up by rifle fire, the dike would trip up any assailants. They hoped. Golden watched the obese unicorn grumble and smoke into the binoculars until his own eyes were drawn past his commanding officer and out into the field itself. And at long last, he saw the enemy. They were like ants, a dark cloud of ants, swarming out from some disturbed nest amongst the trees. They moved fast, chaotically, without any semblance of order. Except that soon he began to realize that this wasn’t true. They did have order. It wasn’t the parade ground maneuvers or the well-oiled machinery he was used to, but as the cloud dispersed into smaller packets, he realized that they were being far more cautious than he’d expected of barbarians. Centurion Halftrack grunted and stood straight up. Somehow this seemed insane to Golden. None of the antiquated weapons the raiders and bandits carried could reach this far, yes, but still it was strangely reckless for a stallion who always seemed so unimpressive. Halftrack looked down on them, cowering in their hole, and then he grinned. “Lot of ‘em,” he said simply and waddled back down into the mud. He brushed off his barding and then looked around, puzzled. “Well? What are you lot standing about for? Sharpshooters, up on the embankment! Get off your lazy asses, all of you!” The silence broke, replaced by chaos. All around Golden, rifles were loaded and set against the ground. Ponies ran and jostled each other in preparation, yelling and reporting and ordering, and all the while, Golden simply reared up on his hind legs and leaned against the opposite wall of the trench, resting his carbine against the earth. And then came more waiting. The centurion rambled on. Only the Lunar guard had centurions, and most of them were stoic, stone-faced veterans. It seemed fitting that Golden had landed himself with the only talkative one. “Sharpshooters, I’m expecting you to make those shots count! Look for leaders, heavy weapons, anything of importance. Unicorns. Look for spellcasters.” Golden tried not to cough as the stallion moved by, filling the already foul-smelling trench with his new noxious smoke. “If one of you blighters so much as wastes a single shot on a damn shield, I’ll beat you senseless later. Can’t afford that. Not at all.” The enemy drew closer and closer. They’d be in range of the sharpshooting ponies soon. Any moment now. Somehow, he dreaded that happening. They had the advantage now, and these pillaging wastes of space couldn’t hope to break through. Not without about three times as much cannon-fodder. It was simply impossible. Rosebud rested in his peripheral vision, using one of the embankments to steady her aim. Golden watched her, and for a moment, he forgot about the small horde. He had always admired how still she was, how careful. Her rifle cracked. It cut through the chaos. It shattered the low whistle of the breeze that now blew over the top of the hole. Like some capricious hammering smith, Golden thought hazily, uncertain. Like a fearsome god. More reports of rifles. He thought he saw a few figures fall, but it was hard to tell which were struck by lead and which were simply dodging out of the way, looking for cover. He didn’t blame them. But then something emerged from the dark alpine woods. Something large and hulking. Some great familiar shape lurching towards the line. Somepony down the line saw it too and cried out, “Centurion!” “I see it,” Halftrack answered, looking out over the top. “Damn. Never thought those halfwits could snag a manticore.” The rifleponies waiting for the order to fire began to talk amongst themselves. Manticores usually kept to the Everfree in the Central Province. Few of the ponies on the line had ever seen one. It was one hell of an introduction, Golden thought sourly, seeing the beast led on chains. “Holy Tartarus, if they let that thing loose—” Halftrack growled, not bothering to see who had spoken. “If they let it loose, it’s just as likely to turn on ‘em as it is to come over here, so calm yourselves, my young bucks.” He paused for a drag. “Well, probably more likely. Golden! You got better eyes than me. They got that thing on chains?” Golden squinted, trying to be sure. “I think so, sir,” he mumbled. “Thought so. Well.” But it was curious all the same. That they had captured a manticore was in itself a feat and one that left him a bit more impressed than he had been as to their capabilities. But they were brigands, and that sort were known for toughness. No, the odd thing was not that they had caught it, nor that they were foolhardy enough to attempt to use it in battle. The odd thing was that it didn’t seem to mind. Golden scratched his mane. “Centurion, I—” “Raider skirmishers separating from the main body!” Rosebud shouted. While her right hoof stayed on the large trigger, she hurriedly worked the bolt with her teeth. Golden grimaced, thinking about the cold metal. But he supposed it worked. “Spit it out,” Halftrack said. “They’ll be in range soon.” “That manticore, sir—” The centurion waved his hoof. “Speak nothing of it. I’m sure it will turn on them, and if they try to get it too close, we’ll simply shoot the handlers.” He removed the cigar and turned to the gatling. “You! Blasted mechanic! Is that starsforsaken thing working?” “Yes, sir!” Clunker answered from inside the turret’s body. “I’m feeding the belts in n—” “Good, I’ll take your word for it.” Halftrack turned to Golden. “See? No problems. Now, look downrange, boy! We have a village to protect! Carry on.” The centurion walked away, whistling as if on some midsummer lark. Golden stared at his retreating head with gaping mouth. But he had little time to wonder at his centurion’s manner. Already, the Sergeants were giving firing orders. The rifleponies formed up, pointing their carbines downrange, not bothering to really pinpoint specific targets. That would come later. The men of the line went for a volley, same as they had since the earliest days, with shootsticks. Sergeant Black Powder had made his way down the line to Golden. He passed, his booming voice assaulting the ears of the waiting troops, his presence like the rush of air before a storm. The wind picked up. In the narrow trench, it sang and blew, dragged at the fringes of Golden’s woven tunic. All at once, he saw the manticore advancing, getting bigger and bigger by the second, and he felt something. It was a hot feeling, a tightening of his chest, like the skin on his cheeks was being peeled back, like the hair of his coat was going to fall out. He was grinding his teeth without realizing it, shaking without meaning to. “Ready arms!” He pulled the hammer back with a shaking hoof and tried to control his breathing. He had been so calm, so serene. His eyes watered, and he had no idea why. The sharpshooters kept up pressure on the front line of the raiders, but fewer fell than Golden had expected. He could see them now, really and truly see them. Maybe a hundred and fifty meters out, maybe a little more, but still close enough to see. He had expected monsters, and he was not disappointed. Huge, small, ragged, armed to the teeth—they were as motley as promised and just as menacing. They returned fire now, and with amazement, he saw that they had shootsticks and arbalests and everything in between. Every weapon under the sun, and he felt like they were all for him. Something whizzed over his head, and he flinched. His eyes focused on a huge stallion with a tall mohawk. The raider’s barding was cobbled from stolen guard equipment and civilian wear, but the spikes that jutted from his helmet and shoulders were original and sharp. On his shoulders he bore a battle saddle, a mounted weapon that Golden recognized just as the stallion readied it to fire. “Oh Celestia,” he whined. “They’ve got a gat—” The stallion’s machine gun was deafening, like a thousand thunderstorms right in Golden’s ear. Bullets cut into the ground all around him, tearing the grass and mud as well as catching ponies. They cried out, in shock more than pain, caught by surprise and plummeting back into the mud to writhe and let the agony catch up with them. He was panting. No, he was hyperventilating, shaking like a leaf. “Fire! Luna fuck me with the moon, fire!” The sergeant pushed by him, almost toppling Golden as he ran furiously down the line. “Fuck! Fuck it, they weren’t supposed to have heavy weapons! Where’s the starsforsaken—” Golden couldn’t hear the sergeant anymore. All he heard was gunfire, and all he saw were ghosts through the black powder fog. He fired, but their old weapons shrouded their movement. Over and over again he fired, pulling at the lever on the carbine, firing the five rounds in his first clip in seconds. He released the metal casing, and it fell useless on his hooves. He flinched and whined as it burned his coat. Tears and mud stung at his eyes. They weren’t supposed to get close. They wouldn’t get close. They’d said they wouldn’t get close. He tried to shove another clip into the large hole in the stock of his gun but missed entirely, dropping it on the trench floor. He cursed and stooped. This saved him. The ground shook, and he stumbled forward, burying his face in the dirt. He felt heat on his back, and his ears rang. Golden turned over, blinking against the washed-out sunlight through the clouds, but the sun was moving back and forth in hazy circles. Everything was. He was. He tried to rise but stumbled again and lay facing the gatling turret. Clunker was inside, yelling. Golden heard things, but not distinctly. There were roars, like distant waves hitting the rocks or a crowd far away cheering at some parade. It was a lot like a parade. They had those in Canterlot all the time, didn’t they? His head hurt. It hurt badly. His face was hot. His body was hot. Everything was hot. The gatling shook, and at last, noise came screaming back to him as a pony kicked him from behind. “Get up! Oh, Tartarus, get up!” “What?” Golden rolled onto his hooves. “For fuck’s sake, give me your gun, or shoot it!” It was Rosebud. Her forehead was soaked crimson, and one eye was shut. Blood and mud mixed and matted her coat. She shook him. “My gun is broken,” she said, grinding her teeth. “Give me yours!” He nodded dumbly, and she let go of him, scrambling for his carbine. He gave her a clip, feeling almost absent, and she yanked it from his hoof. And as she went back to the trench wall, the ground beneath him rocked again, and he stumbled towards the gatling. Clunker would be a safe pony to be with. They were already winning. There was no way anyone would come close. As if out of the ground itself, the centurion was back, levitating a revolver in front of him with magic. Miraculously, against all odds and in defiance of each and every god and Song, the cigar was still lodged firmly in his mouth, and he was still grinning. “It’s a hell of a show!” he called, levitating the revolver up above the trench to fire from cover. “Hell of a show! Where’s your rifle?” he asked, prodding Golden. “I—” “Nevermind that! You’re with me! Got a problem down the line. Can you hear? Stand? Bleeding? No? Good!” Golden felt himself enveloped in magic and pushed along. His hooves sunk into the mud, and in numb shock, he realized that there was a small rivulet of fluid running through the center of the trench, at the lowest point. He didn’t want to know what it was. “Manticore! Gatling gun!” the centurion continued on. “Gods, can you believe they dug up an old mobile mortar? It’s insane, lad! Capital work, but not enough. We’ll—” And at last, Golden saw the source of the shaking ground. Fire and shrapnel bloomed out of the ground like a flower of death, ripping a hole in the field and showering the trench with dirt clods. “We’ll get hit!” he whined. “Nonsense! But Song, that was close,” the centurion said and let loose rousing laughter which sounded like the onset of madness. He sounds almost happy, Golden thought. He gaped in stupefied amazement even as he was dragged along. “I’ll need somepony to hold the mortar! The cohort’s got one, you know! Capital I found you useless in the muck!” Bullets flew over their heads and were answered as rifleponies began to gain their footing again. Again and again, the carbines of the Lunar guard cracked like whips, like lashes for the sins of trespassing, and yet the fire out of the black powder fog seemed not to waver. “But they have a manticore! We can’t stay here! They’re too close!” Golden yelled over the fire as they pushed their way through another wave of Equestrians armed with pikes. “We’ll just have to!” the centurion yelled back as he let a riflepony pass. “By Luna, we’ll just have to, young buck! Hell of a business!” There was another shell, and they reached the mortar at last. As dirt rained on his back, Golden pushed the body of a dead Equestrian soldier to the side and set the tube back on its bipod as his commanding officer found binoculars on the dead pony’s companion. The centurion, still working on his cigar, grinned. “Welcome to Tartarus, young buck! I hope you’re liking it so far!” And that was when the roaring started. Spike The Selene, Luna’s private airship yacht, plunged down from the heights towards the rocky valley below. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” Spike called from the prow. He gripped the deck rails tightly, baring his fangs without intending to. He had waited too long. Luna had said do what he felt he needed to do, and he had just… waited. The reports had come in, and he had stared at the dossiers and hesitated. But now he saw the need. Down below, tiny explosions blossomed along a thin line the hapless guard had dug in the cold ground. The delayed sounds reached him high up in the sky, and he clenched his teeth. “We need to save the boosters!” the pilot yelled over the wind. He was one of Luna’s Duskwatch, a younger stallion named Ossite. Spike glanced back at him, scowling, and he shrugged from the pilot box. “I’ll do what I can, but if you wanna get out of here without us being shot full of holes…” “Yeah, yeah,” Spike groused. “We’ll be there soon! I promise. Just hold on!” And so Spike waited. There were more explosions down below, and one of the houses in the little village was ripped to shreds. Timber flew in all directions, and as the home collapsed, the dirt it kicked up floated over the roiling fog of battle. When he’d heard the village of Morningvale was to be evacuated, it had been impossible not to think of Ponyville. The evacuation of his own adopted hometown had been chaos. Ponies in the dirt streets, gathering their belongings, struggling to take with them the markers of some kind of normalcy. Foals crying on their doorsteps, the houses filled with bullet holes and boarded-up windows, the guards watching the horizon with fearful eyes. And it was happening again. Beside him, strapped to the rail, was another pony of the Duskwatch. The mare’s ears were pressed back to her skull, her eyes hidden behind dark goggles. Spike was mostly glad for the long barrel on the saddle strapped to her back. Some cover fire would be nice. As they got closer and closer, Spike made out individuals running through the village streets, most of them streaming away from the front line. The line of wagons heading towards the Iron Gate and safety were not far removed. A few moments of hard running, and a raider could make it from the line to the evacuees. Things were falling apart. But he wouldn’t let it happen again. Not another town. “What’s your plan, Companion?” the Duskwatch mare asked. “What?” Spike yelled back. “Your plan!” “No, the companion part!” Spike waved one clawed hand. “It’s what you are, Companion! Your title! The Princess gave order for all of her personal retainers to assist you in any way possible. It’s why we let you borrow the Selene!” “Right,” he grumbled. “But your plan, Companion?” she pressed again. “I’m…” Spike growled. “Look, I’m not sure. I need to know what’s going on first, Amaryllis!” “Fair enough.” she answered and shifted her weight. “How about those stragglers?” Spike saw them now, a handful of fleeing civilians pouring out of houses on the far side of the village. They had no direction, scattering to the four winds. “Where are they going? Why are they so behind?” Spike called back to the Duskwatch. “Panic!” she barked, and Spike heard metal clang on metal. He looked back, but she was signalling to the pilot. The ship slowed and stabilized over the caravan. Before Spike could ask what they were doing, she had already loosed herself from the ship and flung herself into the open air. “Companion! I’ll use my scope to see ahead. The pilot can bring you down at the edge of the village to collect the stragglers.” “Will you just meet us midair?” Spike called as she flipped the sniper’s scope down over her eyes. “We’ll see!” Amaryllis answered, and then she was gone. As soon as Amaryllis had cleared the starboard side, the Selene’s engines roared back to life, and they soared towards the embattled settlement. An explosion tore up the ground in the distance, and he could hear something big in the smoke and haze. Something familiar. “Is that—?” He didn’t finish, for as he the airship settled down to a low hover, a bullet sailed past his head, and he ducked down. Ahead of him, through the rails, Spike could see the dust cloud parting. At last, the battle was arrayed before him. He saw everything, all of it—struggling rifleponies in the mud, two dozen individual duels, and a manticore reaping earth ponies left and right. As Spike watched, the beast trampled a screaming mare in argent armor. His horror was interrupted as Ossite shook him. “Spike! Companion, I need you to hear me!” “Gods!” Spike shied away. “Gods, he just—” “The line is gone! I need you to keep those ponies away from my ship!” And with that, Spike stumbled forward off the deck and into battle. He saw what Ossite meant immediately. A raider charged from an alleyway with a griffon falchion in his mouth, headed straight for the Selene. Around him, a few panicked civilians scattered, but he had no time for them. It was the yacht he wanted. Spike drew his longsword, stepping to the side to block his path. But the raider would not be turned aside. He charged anyway, reckless and without bothering to bring the sword up. Spike raised his own, ready to impale the attacker with his own momentum, but his hands shook. Oh Luna, he’s not turning. He’s not going to— And then the raider lunged at him, screaming around the falchion handle, and Spike’s sword lodged in his unguarded chest. Spike shook like a willow in a gale. The raider squirmed on his sword like a bug on a pin, trying to get closer, his falchion fallen to the side and his teeth snapping wildly. The mad pony’s blood ran down the blade and gushed on the ground and on Spike’s clawed feet, and the young dragon panicked. He threw both the sword and the raider down. The pony twitched, finally falling still and silent, matted in mud and his own lifeblood. “No… Oh L—” But Spike stopped and looked around. The civilians who had been scattered by the brigand’s charge huddled against the ship, staring at him with saucer-sized eyes, with gazes that asked questions and demanded succor. Ahead of him, in the streets, guardsponies in light barding tried to beat a fighting retreat through the short village byway. And he knew, then, in a flash, that he could not panic. Those eyes told him that he could not falter, not even for a moment, because he was not alone. He saw in them Twilight’s eyes. In Apple Bloom’s eyes. For a moment, painted across his senses, he saw Luna looming over the huddled refugees, her wings surrounding them like an aegis, her eyes glowing with a thousand years of isolated, exiled fury, He grabbed his longsword by the hilt and pulled it free. He cringed as the blade scraped bone, but he did not shake as badly as before. When next he looked to the civilians, he could speak normally again. “Get on board. I’ll keep them away. Hide down in the cargo bay, and stay there until I or the pilot get you!” He gestured, and the spell over them was broken. Ossite was already lowering the gangplank, and as soon as it touched down, the ponies scrambled up it. A foal rode upon his frightened mother’s back, and he stared at Spike. But Spike turned back to the battle. Ossite called from the deck.“There are more in the fields behind us!” “Go!” Spike yelled at him as he began to walk headlong into the chaos. “I’ll be back!” The ship sprang to life behind him, heading back for other stragglers, and Spike charged into the village. Already, some of the cottages burned. Smoke poured into the alleys on either side, masking combatants from one another. On his right and left, a few riflepony guards were loading carbines, and Spike saw a huge raider descend on the one to the right, shoulder pad spikes bared to stab. Spike met him first, plowing into him with his shoulder. The charging raider went sprawling, hitting the wall of a house with a thud and falling limp. Spike didn’t spare any time to finish up, as another emerged from the smoke. But the riflepony he had rescued had already reloaded and shot past Spike, hitting the new attacker square in the center of his face, blowing their head clean off and sending their lifeless body tumbling back into the black. Spike stepped back. “What happened here? I thought everyone was supposed to be out!” “They were!” the riflepony answered, and already Spike could see that the stallion was beginning to crack. He was shaking as bad as Spike had been. “Oh, Luna, they were! I don’t know why they’re here! I have no idea.” Spike had nothing more to ask, which was just as well, as he did not have space. The manticore roared again, assaulting his ears. “How in Tartarus did they get that thing here?” he asked the air. Already the riflepony was backing up, but Spike held him by the shoulder. “I need you to stay here,” he yelled over the din. “If you see any other villagers, I need you to send them towards my ship, got it?” The pony just nodded, his mouth wide and mute. Spike let go and took a deep breath. The manticore had to go, and he was the only one with fire. Twilight always said they were afraid of fire, he thought, and then before he could think twice about it, he had charged into the smoke. It was blinding, but he could breathe. What was fire and ash to a dragon? Nothing. Nothing at all. If anything, he felt comfortably warm between the immolated buildings, more at ease now that he was in his literal element. Another raider stood, coughing and looking about. Spike had no pity on his blindness, balling up a fist and smashing it in the pony’s face as he ran on. And then he was out of the fog, and the manticore was before him. Its paws caught another guardspony and pinned her to the ground. She screamed, trying to crawl away, but the weight was too much. Spike took a deep breath and released a pillar of flame. It poured over the manticore, and the beast stumbled backwards, roaring. One of its legs caught in the trench, and it fell. A great cheer went up around him, and before Spike could react, there was a volley of deafening gunfire. A whole wave of charging attackers fell like felled trees. Most were still, but a few tried to crawl away, only to be set upon by the counterattack of charging guards that poured out of the trench in all directions. The manticore struggled to rise, and Spike saw that it had broken its leg. It could do nothing to flank the defenders. But it could still reach. It flailed and roared, knocking a pony back as he tried to finish it with a shot to the head. Spike sprang forward, preparing another blast of dragonfire. The wounded animal kicked at him, but Spike dodged its kick by a hair and then cut into the limb with a powerful strike. He roared himself, and the fire blew everywhere in an indiscriminate cone of heat. The leg burned. Fury and adrenaline burned in his mind and in his heart hotter than the dragonfire that he called up again and again, draining himself as he flooded the trench with flames, hitting the manticore over and over again. It squirmed, it screamed, and Spike saw its whole body racked in green light that was not from the fire. The manticore’s body exploded into a cloud of black ash, but not like the ash and smoke of the burning homes. The cloud moved as if it were alive, forming up above Spike’s head into a swirling dark mass, like a final revenant of the monster’s undying fury, and then it hurtled itself towards him. Spike threw himself down, and the cloud went over his head. He rolled to the right, springing up to face it again, but it was gone, disseminating into the air. Around him, the raiders began to flee like birds scattered by a foal. The ones who had weapons or firearms that encumbered them dropped their arms and ran on without them. The guardsponies who had charged out from the trench stopped and let out a ragged cheer. For a moment, a shining moment, Spike smiled. Every fiber of his being sang. They had won. And then the mortars began to fall again. The house to his right exploded, and Spike staggered forward. The gaurdsponies caught out in the open retreated back in disarray, scurrying like mice for their hole. Some fell, and now Spike could see past them as more charging raiders came, another wave of death and chaos. His heart lodged in his throat. It was too much. It was too many, far too many for dragonfire and sword. Spike took a step back, and that was when the pegasus landed in front of him. He was a guardspony, but not one of Luna’s. His armor was gold like the sun itself, gold like the hair he wore in a ponytail that cascaded between two outstretched white wings like clouds. Spike stood transfixed, for the pegasus wasn’t running at all, even as another mortar crashed into the ground. He didn’t even flinch as Spike drew away from the blast, feeling the shockwave in his chest. The white pegasus held up a hoof, and from the skies fell dozens of pegasi and batponies, short lances attached to their backs by saddles. They hit the new wave of attackers like sledgehammers, knocking back several at a time, impaling them instantly and then kicking in all directions with lethal hoofblades and steel-shod hooves. The polearms and shootsticks were no match for batponies at close range. Every time a raider tried to level one, he found it batted out of his grip and his face kicked in. Spike stared in disbelief even as the pegasus turned to him. “Dragon! Spike, is it?” “I…” “Ice Storm, Captain of the Solar Guard, liaison with the Duskwatch. I’m afraid I’ll need your help. I’ve no time to explain. Follow me!” He flared his wings out and hovered before heading off into the village. Spike followed, running with his sword up. They passed dozens of embattled pairs, ignoring them all. Spike watched as a guardspony was taken by surprise as he loaded his weapon, a lance catching him from the side through the shoulder, but he couldn’t stop. This pegasus needed him, and he wasn’t going to slow down a bit. Ice Storm stopped at last in a small square, landing in front of a little well. Around him were cowering civilians in torn clothes, covered in filth, a few with light wounds. There were almost a dozen at least, all of them behind an overturned wagon. “What are they doing here? Why did the caravan leave them?” Spike asked, clenching a fist. “They had to. These wouldn’t leave,” the captain explained, gesturing to the civilians. “They’re safe for now, but the Lunar guard is not doing well. None of them will get this far in, but…” Spike looked around, noticing the batponies on the rooftops for the first time, and the lunar guardsponies aiming carbines down all the streets. “But… they need to go,” Spike finished. “One lucky mortar, yeah, I understand. I’ll get them back, but I’ll need someone a little faster than me to help keep these bastards off of them.” Ice Storm looked up at the rooftops. “Amaranth!” Spike followed his gaze and saw one of the batponies trot to the edge of a roof and leap off, her wings opening up as she glided down with surprising grace. “Reporting,” she all but sang. “Manticore is down. Nice work, big guy. We tried to keep them from retrieving the mortars out there, but the smoke from the houses on the other side of town is getting picked up by the wind, and it’s hard to get a good shot. At least it works both ways.” “Agreed. Good work. Spike, this is Lieutenant Amaranth of the Duskwatch. Amaranth, this is—” “Oh, I know who the Moon’s Companion is,” the mare laughed. “It’s an honor to be of assistance.” She bowed swiftly. “What do you need me to do, Ice?” “Captain,” Ice Storm reminded, but without any force. “I need you to help Spike move these ponies out of the square. I saw your ship coming in, Spike. I would’ve asked you to use your flames on the manticore, but you were quite ahead of me. Now that it’s gone, we have a hole to get these poor ponies away from this hell. But it’s a small hole.” “Yeah, and they’ll fill it soon,” Amaranth groused. “Moon above, I thought there were fewer of them.” “We both did,” Ice Storm said glumly. “Well, time’s short, Spike,” Amaranth said quickly and began to trot over towards the wagon. “Lets get these ponies moving. Up! Up we go, come on! Everypony up on your hooves!” Spike watched after her, blinking. “She sure is unfazed,” he commented. “Hardly,” Ice Storm replied. His voice was rough. “Nopony is unfazed by this. We all handle it in different ways, or we don’t handle it at all. Take care of her. She’s a good soldier.” With that, the captain took to the sky again, heading back towards the front line. Spike followed Amaranth. Already, she had the refugees standing and milling about, looking every which way. When Spike approached, a few of them backed away as if he were yet another horror. Spike sighed. “I’m here to help,” he said, though he knew it would be useless. “Look, we need to move. Luna’s sent her own yacht to help the evacuation, but I can’t call it this close without us getting shot down, so we’re going to run for it.” “But they’ll shoot us!” one of the civilians yelled, his voice cracking. Spike snorted. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” he answered, trying to sound confident. “They’ll just shoot you!” Amaranth stepped in. “Please. I’d rather you move on your own accord, but so help me, I will push you the whole way there, you understand me?” The ponies said nothing. “Right.” Spike spoke quickly. “Let’s move.” He strode out in front of them, and Amaranth took up the rear, hovering. He heard their hooves beat against the earth behind him, and knew that there was no more room for error. He remembered how the others had scattered. These would do the same. One false move and they would lose stragglers to fire and smoke. “Stay close!” he called as he picked up speed, clearing the sentries, who ran alongside him, carbines strapped to their backs. “The smoke is going to be bad, but I need you to try to keep up!” “Dragon!” one of the running sentries said from his side. “The line is broken everywhere. We can’t guarantee that we’ll be out in the clear once we leave this place!” “Figured!” he yelled back. The two sentries and Spike came to a crossroads, where he saw the truth of the riflepony’s warnings. A dozen carbiners using the buildings for cover fired down one street, and an answering volley tore past Spike’s face. One of the guards fell from a second story window and hit an overhang, crashing through to the patio below. “Go!” he called, stepping into the breach and blowing a long cone of dragonfire down the street. He heard somepony crying out in panic, and behind him, the crowd of refugees charged on. He kept the fire up, pushing it out with agony, his mouth hot even by a dragon’s standards. But then Amaranth tapped his shoulder on her way by, and he stopped, gasping. His vision swam, and he rocked back on unsteady feet. A bullet whizzed by his ear, and panting, Spike took a shaky sprint the rest of the way across the intersection. The refugees were out in the open, and Spike could see the Selene swoop down from the sky and come to a hover a hundred meters away from the fleeing herd. Ossite parked the vessel and came running out onto the deck. The batpony pilot pushed the gangplank off and set it against the ground and then bent down low at the prow to do something out of Spike’s line of vision. Spike had no time to wonder what it was, for the sight of easy targets had riled up a hornets’ nest. Behind him, he heard yells and spun to find the rifleponies struggling to get their guns up as a handful of quick raiders fell on them. Spike charged, his longsword up and ready, but not before a blow to the head sent one of the sentries sprawling. Spike struck back, catching the offending raider on the shoulder and lodging his blade deep. The shock of impact went up his arms, but he was firm, fighting through the shaking as he pulled the blade free. The other sentry succeeded in freeing his gun and avoiding a raider hoof and fire once, twice, pulling his bolt back with his teeth, hitting another raider with both shots. But there were more, many, many more. Above the village he saw pegasi taking to the sky and meeting enemy fliers head on, rolling and dodging, some falling onto the rooftops below, but blessedly few. Another mortar and almost as if it were on queue, guards began to stream back from the village as raiders followed them. The raiders didn’t even bother with firearms. They charged right into the heat and the wall of singing lead death, larger bodies absorbing multiple shots before they succumbed, shielding others behind them who got further and so on until the fighting retreat began to waver and stand at the tip of full-blown rout. A unicorn centurion with a crested helmet wielded two revolvers, blasting away until his ammunition was spent, throwing the cigar from his mouth into the eyes of the stallion who finally gored him with a horn, and even then he flailed, kicking at the other charging raiders until a hoof crushed his face. The pursuing raiders came ever closer, and before Spike could meet them, Amaranth swooped out of the side, doubling back from the Selene. She crashed into a cluster of earth ponies, knocking three of them flat and carrying a fourth several meters with her momentum before pushing him off and taking back to the sky. When she was clear, the remaining sentry spent the rest of his clip and then began dragging his companion. But he was too slow, too weak from exertion, and the armor on the unconscious sentry was too much. Spike stopped him, sheathing his sword on his back, and scooped the stallion up in his arms. The weight was nothing to shrug at, not yet, but he could bear it. “I’ll take him! Just keep falling back! If Amaranth is here, the refugees are safe. Get on the ship! We’ll take you!” “I can’t just leave!” the riflepony argued, and yet he reloaded his weapon as if on the verge of panic, as if any moment he would lose his sanity and fall back to animal fear. Spike roared at him. “It’s an order! Under Princess Luna’s authority! I need you to move.” And the sentry did, running alongside Spike as the dragon carried his companion back towards the waiting Selene. Ossite had set up a deck gun, and it fired now over their heads, the sound like some god’s revolver ringing in Spike’s ears. Fifty meters. Forty. He was sure they were being pursued, but it was just a bit longer, just a few more seconds carrying all of this weight and then they would all be safe. He had done it. Ossite only stopped firing when Spike held the pony up, and between the two of them, the sentry was rolled onto the deck. Ossite carried him back, and a refugee helped the pilot get the sentry below deck. Amaranth swooped overhead. “Companion! Spike, I think that’s all we’re going to get! The unicorns are getting ready to raze the town once the raiders have taken it! We need to get out of here now!” “Couldn’t be happier!” he called back and climbed aboard. He looked back at the burning hamlet just in time to see Amaranth land twenty meters away, maybe more. The guard was formed up properly still, their discipline hanging in there at the darkest hour as volley after volley began to push the attacking flood back towards the cover of the houses. She landed next to a crawling Duskwatch flier, pulling at him. Spike leapt over the rails, knowing she wouldn’t be able to do it fast enough. “Amaranth! I got it, co—” Before he could finish, the world burst into flames right before his eyes. Where Amaranth had been bent over pulling at her comrade, there was a crater of torn earth and charred vegetation. Guardsponies screamed, but others took their places, keeping up the fire. Spike stood there, his mouth open, frozen. But then he saw her, covered in dirt, crawling in the mud. He ran, and he saw nothing else but her, struggling. He no longer saw the firing line or the ship or even Morningvale. He only saw the pony, the defender in the dirt, the only one whose name he knew, the only one whose name he would have to know when Luna asked him about this. He needed no thought. He was at her side, and she was groaning like a drunkard, trying to string sentences together. She bled everywhere, her coat cut open in a dozen places or more, her wings still intact but at odd angles as if she had been caught in a spotlight. “I can’t… I can’t feel my legs…” Spike ignored her. He couldn’t think about what she said. He had to move—she had to move. Another mortar hit between the guard and the village. They were probably out of the range of all but the luckiest shots, but he could take no chances. He lifted the sobbing batpony and cradled her in his arms like a newborn foal, and then he ran. “Luna! Luna!” She beat at his arms. “Luna! I can’t feel my legs! I can’t…” Spike pressed on even as he heard another shot whiz by, even as Ossite fired right over his head into the village, tearing the houses to shreds. He leapt, and adrenaline and ancient dragon strength gave him an edge, for he gained the rails and landed on the deck easily. “Spike! She’s in no condition to hang on!” Ossite yelled as he fired again, unleashing another spray of fire. “I think she’s—” “It doesn’t matter! Another good shot and that mortar will rip this airship in half!” Ossite said and stepped away from the gun. Spike held the comparatively tiny mare to his chest, which heaved with the effort of running and dragonfire. Ossite shook him. “Get her below deck! I need you to use the gun while I get us back to the city.” But he would not give her up. There was no conscious reason in it, just blind, raging instinct, a dragon’s instinct to never let go. He bared his fangs, and Ossite fled without a word to the pilot box as Spike strapped himself and Amaranth along with him to the rails. One clawed hand held onto the deck gun, and he squeezed the firing mechanism, built for much larger pony hooves, and rained death upon the village as the airship took to the sky. When they were high enough, he let go of the gun and slumped. The sentry who had evaded injury was huddled against the rail on the far side of the deck, strapped in. His face was pale, and he seemed to be ill with the sudden movement, but Spike couldn’t find it in himself to care. The mare in his arms moved, but only her front legs. She sobbed, and Spike began to come to himself again, and he looked down at his own legs, which moved and were fine, and then to her legs, which were still. They were so deathly still. As they left the chaos behind, she kept trying to move, kept trying to squirm out of his grasp but he held her firm, still looking down at her legs, still looking down at her tiny, wounded form. That could have been me. That could have been me. And it could have been. Maybe it should have been. He shifted his legs, wishing he could hear the sound of his claws scraping against the metal deck. Just to be sure that they were scraping. Just to be sure that they moved.