XV. Valley Foal, Equestria. February, 1252
He wrapped his old blanket tightly around his body.
Caramel could tell that the air wasn't as cold as it had been, and the wind didn't blow quite as hard as it had. But he was still as cold as ever. He knew part of it was that he simply couldn't hold on to body heat, given how thin he was, but then...well, there was the matter of his clothes and his blanket. He simply didn't own clothes any more; months of dirt and wetness and wear had turned them from comforts into embarrassments into useless strips of rags. All he had left was his blanket. And though he hated to admit it, even that was headed down the same road. It was filthy. It was ragged. And it was the only bit of protection he still had against the winter.
He felt a sudden stinging. It must be the damned lice; the blanket and his fur were teeming with them. As if he wasn't miserable enough already. He scratched himself through the blanket with a hoof, and then drew his legs closer to his chest. It would be another hour before marching drills, and he wanted to stay as warm and as still as possible.
---------
One week later
The gryphon sat in his makeshift cage, cradling a broken wing, glaring out from between the gaps in the gnarled planks. His feathers were broken where he had been beaten, and blood leaked out of torn bloodfeathers and split skin. Derpy stood in front of him, on the other side of his prison.
She spoke, gently. "I honestly don't want you to be hurt."
He gestured to his crippled left wing. "Yeah, thanks, crosseyes. Clearly."
"I didn't say I wasn't going to let you get hurt. There's a difference. If you cooperate with us, we'll send you back to your friends."
"Yeah, you'll send me off with a kiss, won't you? Like I'm going to believe that knowing what you do to gryphons who surrender? Look, sister, I'm not one of your hooves-for-brains ponies. I'm not that damned stupid. Once I talk, I'm useless to you, and we both know what you do to gryphons you have no use for."
She remained conciliatory. "I'm not going to defend our resistance to your invasion, and I'm not going to ask you to defend your invasion. I'm offering you a deal, which you can take or not. If you don't take it, you get beaten until you give up or your body finally breaks and you die. If you take it and I'm honest, you get released. If you take it and I'm a liar, you're painlessly executed. Either way you gain nothing by silence."
He wiped his beak with his claw. "I'd rather die as a gryphon than as a traitor."
She looked him over in silence. Her attention lingered on his face, where defiance burned behind a ragged curtain of blood and swollen bruises. This one wasn't going to break. It was hopeless.
She took a step closer, and spoke just above a whisper. "I understand. I hope your ancestors forgive both of us." The gryphon scoffed.
She turned and walked over to the guard post. A large light-blue stallion saluted. "General," he said curtly, "are we to resume interrogation?"
She shook her head sadly. "No, Sgt. Lucky. No, we're not. He's not going to break. Not ever. Schedule him for dawn, please. There's no point in hurting him any further."
Lucky paused on the edge of speaking, then looked over at the cage. "You...you know what they do to captured ponies, right? With the white-hot spikes? I'm not saying we should, y'know...but it just seems like a waste to kill an enemy officer without finding out what he knows."
"We're not going to do that," Derpy said flatly. "A quick death is one thing. Torture is another. And I am not going to torture."
Lucky tossed his head towards the cage. "And what do you call this interrogation? It isn't 'torture' to beat him until he dies? Torture's just a word, General, a word that's keeping you from getting anything out of him."
Derpy drew herself up as tall as she could. She was physically far smaller than Lucky, but somehow still towered over him. "No, Sergeant. We are not going to torture him. I need to draw the line somewhere. I've drawn it."
Derpy saluted and began walking back to the commandeered house she used as her headquarters. The stallion saluted as well. As Derpy walked out of sight, he signaled to the other ponies on guard duty.
-------
The ponies dug in the frozen dirt, their hooves scraping against the rocklike ground. Caramel worked, sweating in the chill, digging with the rest. He didn't mind the work; the army needed new latrines, and somepony had to dig them. Besides, it was invigorating. Usually. He shook his head a bit. He was feeling a bit off, though, and it didn't feel like it was just hunger. No, it couldn't be hunger. They had each gotten to eat a generous amount of fresh bread that morning: part of a gift from the nearby community of Saddlebourgh, they had been told. Nice of somepony to support the ponies fighting for their freedom. Anyway, he still felt a welcome sense of fullness in his belly. But something else clearly wasn't right.
He noticed the dull pounding in his head. He wasn't sure how long that had been there. All day? No, maybe not. No matter. He kept digging. It was getting hard, though. He coughed. He kept digging. He coughed again. It wasn't to clear his throat through. He paused, and realized he was a bit short of breath. Could he really be getting weak from hunger? No, no, he'd eaten better this week than in the past few. Maybe...maybe...
He was a bit lightheaded now. He felt an oncoming sense of panic. This wasn't right. He was fine an hour ago. No. He was fine now. He was just tired. Just a bit tired. He had been working all day.
He could barely stand. He sat down, his neck bent forward, breathing quickly and shallowly.
-------
A shaft of morning light shone through Derpy's window, illuminating the nearly barren room in which she slept. Sitting in front of her little desk, she sipped her mug of hot water, and picked up her brush again. She carefully guided it, moving her head, lips, and tongue, deftly swirling brushstrokes across the page. Another stroke. And another. A broad swirl. A flurry of little dashes.
She pulled back her head and looked at her work, rolling the brush in her mouth. A rough likeness of Dinky looked back at her. She smiled. It wasn't the same. But it was something. She leaned forward and blew on the slightly misshapen face of her painted daughter, then leaned a bit closer and kissed it softly.
And she closed her eyes, and exhaled, and sat silently, her head bowed.
Suddenly, a rapping at the door. She jumped up in surprise, then walked over the the door. She opened it. A familiar tan face looked gravely at her.
"Lt. Davenport," she said warmly. "Do you have something to report?"
"General Hooves," he said in an even tone. "A 'Sgt. Lucky' has some information to report regarding a prisoner."
"Hm?" she replied. "We've only got one, and he should have been executed hours ago."
"He insisted this information was for your ears only, General. Shall I send him up?"
"Er, sure." Derpy turned and returned to her desk as Davenport went down the stairs. She had just finished cleaning up all evidence of her attempt at art when there was another rapping at the door. In the open frame, Lucky stood saluting.
"Permission to enter," he barked.
"Granted," she said, saluting back.
He bounded up to her. "We know everything, general. Everything. This guy must have been pretty high up, because we know all the roads their supply trains are taking next month, and their approximate defenses. We've got 'em by the balls, General. Er, if you'll forgive the expression, ma'am."
Derpy felt sick. "He...he didn't just tell you all that."
Lucky smirked. "Of course not. But he talked. We saw to that."
"You...you tortured him."
"I got information out of him. Information that can help us beat these bastards."
"You tortured him."
"Yes." Lucky raised an eyebrow. "And now we know where their supply trains will be. We can cut 'em off."
Derpy nodded silently. "Um...all right. Can you write?"
Lucky shook his head.
"All right. Was anyone else present at the interrogation?"
"Two other guards. Privates Bluebell and Sundrop Dew. They heard everything he said too; you'll see. They'll back me up. He talked, all right."
"Is...is the prisoner still alive?"
"You did order his execution, General. We obeyed the order."
Derpy nodded. "All right. Thank you. Get Bluebell and Sundrop Dew. Bring them to this house, and dictate to Lt. Davenport everything you know. Everything. And dictate the techniques you used, in detail. I want to be able to better adjust our interrogation regulations and guidelines; I see now that our previous standards were not adequate to the situation. Thank you for your loyalty to the good of our young army, Sergeant. And rest assured I will do everything in my power to ensure the good of our army as well."
Lucky smiled proudly, saluted, and trotted back down the stairs. Derpy sighed deeply. There was only one thing left to do.
She walked downstairs and met Davenport at his desk.
"Lieutenant," she began. He looked up from his paperwork. "In a few minutes, Sgt. Lucky and two other ponies will arrive to detail their unlawful interrogation of a prisoner last night. Please write down every bit of information they got out of the prisoner, no matter how incidental or contradictory. On a separate sheet of paper write down their admission of the techniques used. When they have said all they can, blow your whistle three times. Guards will enter to arrest the torturers. They will be tried, imprisoned, and possibly executed. Do you understand?"
He looked uncomfortable. "You're going to use the information they got and then kill them for giving it to you?"
"No, Davenport. I'm going to use information I have been given to advance our cause. And then I am going to enforce our legal code in a just and lawful manner."
"Yes, ma'am."
She saluted and walked out of the house. She would have to pick the guards she used for this with care; she had the feeling that this kind of operation could lead to mutiny if handled rashly.
------
Caramel shivered and sweated under his blankets. All around him, dozens of ponies did the same. The army hospital--a repurposed barn--was full of sick ponies, each with the same chain of symptoms. A sudden onset. Headache. Exhaustion. Muscle pain. Fever. A rash covering the skin, visible through thinning fur. Delirium. Stupor. Death. Or recovery. But often death.
Typhus, it was called. He had heard the word before. He didn't know what it meant. He still didn't. He was just cold, and he hurt, and he couldn't think straight. He floated in a haze of misery.
He had felt better that morning. Well enough, in fact, that he could think straight for the first time in days. Well enough that he was able to appraise his situation and feel fear. Well enough that he had begged Nurse Redheart to tell him he'd live. But not well enough to prevent him from relapsing into the dull haze within two hours.
----
Lucky spoke to the audience of fifty-some ponies in the little sawmill, now repurposed to an impromptu courtroom. He spoke in a halting, nervous voice, but it wasn't his voice Derpy was concerned about. Two ponies, per custom, were writing down every word of the proceeding. Rather than punish them outright, Derpy had elected to try Lucky, Bluebell and Sundrop Dew under Equestrian law according to the Equestrian rules of order. That, she thought, would make clear the moral necessity for the sure-to-be-unpopular act of punishing soldiers--who had just recently been volunteer militiaponies--for uncovering valuable intelligence. But that also gave the defendants a public voice. And that could be dangerous. He reached the end of his final argument.
"I should like to direct my final remarks not just to the court, but to my fellow volunteers. This courtroom and this trial are laughably hypocritical. There is no legal precedent for declaring a sawmill a courtroom. But yet we are here. Why? Because the nearest actual courtroom, in Fillydelphia, is the winter quarters of the Army of Gryphonia. The necessities of war forced General Hooves to redefine what was right and legal given our extraordinary circumstances. Along similar lines, it is the standard procedure of this army to execute uncooperative prisoners of war, or prisoners the General feels would be inconvenient to care for. This is contrary to Equestrian law as well, but yet we do it and we are right to do it, because the necessities of war forced General Hooves to redefine what was right and legal given our extraordinary circumstances."
Derpy watched impassively. She knew this would be their argument. She had mentally prepared for it by now, yes; it was obvious this would be their case from the first hour of the trial early this morning. Still, she knew this argument would resonate with many ponies. She felt a few tugs of doubt--about whether this trial was a good idea. About whether punishing the torturers at all was a good idea. But it was too late in the game for doubt. Lucky continued.
"And the necessities of war forced Bluebell, Sundrop Dew, and myself to recognize that what is right and legal must be reconsidered when an enemy--an enemy who destroys and murders freely throughout half our country--holds information that could save the lives of thousands of ponies. What this trial comes down to, I am afraid, is whether it is more important that soldiers be free to fight this war, to repuse the gryphons, and to save their sisters' lives, or whether it is more important that the utterly inconsistent personal moral principles of our esteemed general be unoffended. Thank you."
Lucky's voice echoed in the cold, dusty chamber. He bowed awkwardly, and then sat down. Bluebell whispered something in his ear. He nodded, and smiled faintly at her. Sundrop Dew hugged him gently. Then all three defendents sat rigidly behind their table as Derpy took the floor.
She spoke plainly and simply; there was no point in trying to rabble-rouse a small jury of ponies with legal training, and all the emotion she could muster wouldn't change the way her army read the transcript.
"The defendants have built their case on their belief that law and war are fundamentally incompatable. The legal and moral case against their crime is unambiguous, and on that basis your vote to convict is mandatory. However, they claim that they have the right to declare the law fraudulent in times of war. They have said we as an army can only survive if we exploit every expedient, if we mortgage every principle, and if we sell our souls to obtain any possible advantage, no matter how small or illusory. I do recognize and appreciate that, at times, necessity forces us to do things that would have been unconsciable and unimaginable to us a year ago. We are all aware that I have ordered many things that weigh heavily on my conscience, and that may weigh heavily on the conscience of all Equestria. I will likely order many more such crimes to be committed, for failure to commit them would be consent to the commission of still greater crimes. But that does not make such actions right.
"The defendants claim that because of the extreme circumstances of war, questions of 'good' and 'evil' are irrelevant. They could not be more wrong. It is true that we must often do what is evil, but such necessities do not invalidate the very notion of morality--not even from a practical perspective. For we, as ponies, do not draw our strength from sheer brutal strength as gryphons do. We draw our strength from our souls and from our relationships, in a very real and very powerful way. If we were to fight as a gryphon fights, we would lose the war utterly, for a pony cannot be a better gryphon than a gryphon could. But if we fight as a pony should fight, we are indestructible.
She stopped to think about what she was saying. She was operating without notes, and while she had plotted out the argument she wanted to make, she felt it beginning to slip away from her.
"So we get to the core of the issue. Is torturing a prisoner to extract information about enemy logistics a necessity that must be reluctantly pardoned to ensure our survival? Or is it simply an expedient by which we may sell our ponyhood for a gryphon's knowledge? If it is the former, then this trial is misguided and the defendants should be pardoned. But if it is the latter, the defendants have put the very foundation of this army at risk, and must be punished.
"So ask yourself. Are there no other ways by which information can be acquired? Would our Fillydelphia spies not have found this? Would our pegasus scouts or informers in the countryside not have noticed a train of 300 wagons rolling through Equestria? Knowing that most prisoners have been cooperative, would no other prisoner with that information have talked? And is the danger of not knowing the specific route of a certain supply train so great? What the defendants have done is expedient, yes. But what they have done was not necessary. And as a necessary evil is still an evil, an unnecessary evil is an evil as well--it is an evil that must be punished.
She paused again. This wasn't going as well as she had hoped. Even she wasn't entirely convinced in herself. Without the energy of a crowd, she wasn't sure what was effective and what wasn't. She continued, her eyes closed.
"Because we are ponies. And we fight because we are ponies. We do not fight simply because we prefer hooves to claws. We fight to rule ourselves because we believe that ponies do what is right. If we cease our struggle to do what is right, simply because there have been times when we could not do what was right, then we have forgotten why we fight."
Derpy exhaled deeply and suddenly, and returned to her table and sat down. The courtroom was silent. She felt a sense of ease. It was out of her hands now.
-----
Caramel slept a waking sleep, his eyes and mouth hanging open, his mind empty. He became vaguely aware of a whitish pony standing in front of him. He tried to tell her...something. He needed something. But he didn't know what he needed. Or who she was.
He tried to speak. His words didn't even sound like words to his own ears. She shushed him gently, and wiped his forehead with a small towel. He wondered briefly who was standing in front of him, but as she moved out of his sight, the memory of her faded into the fever mist.
-----
Derpy painted halfheartedly in her office, her mind wandering back and forth over the hundred things she had to consider.
It had been a week since the execution of Lucky and the imprisonment of Bluebell and Sundrop Dew. There hadn't been the mass backlash she had feared, but as she suspected, it wasn't a win for her either: Lucky's argument was more popular than her own. Of course it was. His was simple. It resonated. Hers was overcomplicated and yet simplistic at the same time; it was a mistaken attempt to appeal both to a jury and a crowd.
Still, she enjoyed enough of a personal reservoir of trust and affection among the soldiery that public opinion mostly stayed with her. Not among everypony, of course. Some soldiers had deserted. Many had filed protests with their officers. Some officers had accused her of putting the enemy before her ponies, or of holier-than-thou hypocrisy. Some of the guards had threatened to quit rather than accept the new regulations she had issued mandating harsh punishments for 'crimes against pony conscience.' But the reaction to the entire affair was minor and quieted down entirely after a few days. And, truth be told, she barely even noticed the controversy at the time. In her scattered free moments, she simply took delight in the fact that Big Mac was returning her smiles again.
But she knew dwelling on Mac wasn't healthy. She narrowed her eyes and worked on painting Dinky's little mane. And she tried to think about the war. She had the information she needed, and she had three weeks to get the army ready to use it. It would take a week to get to the ambush point she had laid out. There was just the matter of preparing the army to fight. They had only 1100 ponies of all kinds, and it would be a month before they could afford to feed new recruits. The caravan they were targeting--300 wagons full of supplies--would be pulled by 600 enslaved cows. They could be discounted; they wouldn't fight. But there would be at least 800 gryphons. Not lions, no. Gryphons. Derpy had fewer than two hundred pegasi, all undisciplined; there was no chance they could win an cavalry battle.
Derpy sat, painting, racking her brains. This information was a gift. But they obviously couldn't take the supply train without taking out the guards...and they couldn't take out the guards in the air. She looked out the window, at the grey and miserable February afternoon. She sighed. Hopeless. A gust of wind blew dead leaves and grass down the dirt road. Her wings instinctively pulled close to her body.
And she got an idea. She couldn't fight the gryphons in the air, no. But perhaps...perhaps she wouldn't need to. She set down her brush and called for Davenport. This would take a bit of planning.
--------
Nurse Redheart made her morning rounds, changing blankets and giving food and water to the sick. As she went through the tent, she placed red ribbons on the end of the cots of those who didn't survive the night. As she left the barn, she clicked her tongue. It was a bad night. There were seven ribbons on seven cots. One was on the end of Caramel's.
His tent was checked for items that could be reclaimed and reused. His only possession, a blanket, was determined to be unhealthy and unsuitable for use. It was brought to the burial pit. And before Caramel was tossed into the hole, he was gently lowered to the ground, on top of his old, ratty, louse-infested rag of a shroud.
They wrapped his old blanket tightly around his body.