//------------------------------// // Stay The Course // Story: Cartography of War // by Daetrin //------------------------------//         By the time morning came again, she had decided to try walking. Gérard hadn’t complained, or even showed any particular strain even if they did stop sooner than usual, but it wasn’t fair to expect him to carry her until she was comfortable again.  He had his own injuries and, if nothing else, it would be far better to walk into the camp under her own power.  That was still weeks away, but for all she knew without direct unicorn intervention the burns would last that long.  She wished Mercy were still with her.         She gritted her teeth as she crawled out of the tent, wobbling to her hooves and taking a few experimental steps.  The scab pulled alarmingly but held, and each time her shoulder flexed it felt like a hook was being dragged across it.  Her neck wasn’t much better off, but it didn’t seem like it would knock her off her hooves this time.         Her limp matched Gérard’s, and she had a renewed respect for his endless days of following her with only a bit of inadequate stitching for his shoulder. Gérard himself watched her with a tilted head and bright-eyed curiosity as she circled the tent, but forewent comment until she began to pack the tent.  “Is it healing, then, Rose?”         “Not much yet,” she admitted.  “But enough to get me walking, at least.”         “And sooner is better,” Gérard agreed.  “Events seem to conspire against us.  I would rather be back among gryphons, where I know what the dangers are.”         “I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet,” Rose said, taking out her maps for the daily ritual.  “I know I’ll have to soon enough, but I’m not quite up to other gryphons.”         Gérard came up beside her to study the map, a close presence at her shoulder.  “You do have time, but I think you underestimate yourself.  We have gone at least two days without upsetting each other.”         She glanced sideways at him to see the glimmer of humor in his golden eyes and laughed softly.  “I don’t think that’s it. It’s more...before I met you, I just thought of gryphons as the enemy.  Some distant monsters we were fighting.  And when I try to imagine your camp, that’s still there.”         “I understand, Rose,” Gérard said.  “You and I - and our races - have had poor introductions to each other.  My first reflex is still to think of other ponies as prey, which is no more fair than calling us monsters.  Yet I do not know if we could have started any differently.”         She put away the maps and started off again, considering the idea as a distraction from her shoulder’s constant complaints.  “I don’t think so,” she said at last.  “We wouldn’t know how to deal with the idea of testing strength, and without marks we wouldn’t know how to trust your roles.  Something would happen eventually.”         “Tch.” Gérard clicked his beak behind her.  “I do not like to think these things are fated.”         “I don’t think it’s so much fated as just the way we are.  Just like I find paths and you keep the peace.  Gryphons and ponies are too different to just get along without knowing each other.  And neither of us can know each other in the way we’re used to.”  In fact, she had to admit that the pony reliance on cutie marks and community wasn’t likely to work well with any other race.  Not that the gryphon method would fare much better.         “Then we shall have to change what we know.  Or the way we are.”         She glanced back at him, moving her head only the smallest amount.  “If I’m going to convince the other gryphons to do either of those things, you’re going to have to teach me more Alce.  And tell me what to expect when we get there.”         “Yes.”  Once again he let the single word stand for a multitude of replies and began to tell her, in Alce, about where they were headed.         When Gérard had called it a camp, or even encampment, she’d been thinking of something like what she and her friends had made.  Something small and a little bit makeshift.  But this was a military camp, and it had over eighty gryphons in it.         Most of them weren’t actually warriors, but rather the sailors for the ship that had brought them there.  Now they served as support and foraging parties, turning a bare beach into a liveable, if temporary, town.  They had only carried sixteen military gryphons, two wings, though of course now there were four fewer than that.         “Gryphon warriors operate in pairs,” he told her as they reached the end of the fire scar.  “We trust each other to guard our blind spots and follow through for each other.  Then these pairs are arranged in pairs, and so on.”         “Kree was paired with you, wasn’t he?”         “Of course.  He is quite competent, and it might have salved his ego.”  Gérard shook his head. “Tch.  It did not, but I am not certain what else may have worked.”         “You could have left him at the camp?”         Gérard laughed.  “I was tempted.  But I could not.  I needed him for the mission.”         “Which you still haven’t told me about,” she pointed out.         He sighed.  “I would like to, Rose.  But I still think it is better that you are not involved, even if it may not matter in the end.”         “Traveling with you for a full month isn’t being involved?”         “Not yet, no.”  Gérard’s eyes glinted.  “Especially as that full month is only retreading two days of flight.  None of the mystery is nearby.”         “You’re nearby.” She rolled her eyes.  “But if you think I shouldn’t know, then I won’t press.  What about the things I do need to know?”         “If Kree is in charge, as I expect he is, then we may expect little in the way of hospitality.  Not because of his opinion of either you or I, but because he will have the encampment strained to its limit to create forward posts.  Beyond that, there is little I can tell you about the disposition of either forces or individuals until we reach it.”         “Hmm.”  Rose nodded reluctantly.  A month could change almost anything, and he’d already told her more about gryphons in general than she could have imagined.         “Though.  They are somewhat unrefined.”  His ears flicked briefly, back and then forward.  “Good gryphons for the most part, but still soldiers and sailors.”         “Finally something that’s similar between gryphons and ponies.”  She smiled and shook her head, remembering the short time they’d actually been out near the front.  “Our soldiers and sailors can be pretty unrefined themselves.”         “I suspect that says more about fighting and sailing than it does about gryphons or ponies.”         “You fight.  And more than most of your soldiers, I imagine.  But you’re not unrefined.”         He made a soft, amused, feline noise.  “The expectations of others can drive us to become better than we thought possible.  And I have had many things expected of me, over the years.”         “I can imagine.”  It seemed to fit with the gryphon ideal.  But she had to wonder how well it applied to ponies, especially as ponies already had their cutie marks to drive them.  But then, she’d never really felt changed by any of her work, despite having been all over Equestria. This time when she got home, she wouldn’t be the same at all.  The more she considered it, the more credence she had to give Gérard’s idea of her shape.         As before, the day’s journey was somewhat abbreviated by her injuries, and she was barely able to stay up long enough to see Gérard return from his hunting.  But at least he was back before full dark, which had to count for something.         The early morning sun broke through a sparse canopy, a red ridge of sandstone showing itself in glimpses through the needles.  The land was coarser here, folding up into small ridges and valleys and forcing her to pick her way more carefully than before.  She was more than ready to leave the pines behind for, according to her map, a scrubby plain.         She was still mulling over Gérard’s comment of expectations when she stumbled, almost literally, over a patch of furrowed ground.  There had been trails here and there, cut by whatever lived in the wilderness, which made travel easier, but they hadn’t yet actually run into anything.  Presumably the sound of voices and the scent of gryphon was enough to scare them off.  But this was fresh and she even recognized it.         “Gérard,” she said, and he cocked his head at her.  She swallowed, and then swallowed again, hesitating on the precipice of something she knew she couldn’t take back.  “This is fresh trace of pig.”         “Pig?”  He raised his eyebrows at her.         “Yes.”  She narrowed her eyes at his blank look.  “They don’t have pigs in Eyrie?”         “No.  We hunt moa, and the occasional bear.  Seals, in the proper season.”         “Oh.”  She tried to consider hunting a bear for a moment before abandoning it for the topic at hoof.  “Well, wild boar are nearly my size, so I thought they might work for a hunt.  But I don’t know if I can do anything when I’m like this.”  Rose tilted her head a touch, grimacing at the burn.         “Tch.”  Gérard regarded her speculatively, clicking his beak once.  “You are capable enough, Rose, injury or no.  But of course, you have never hunted like this.”         “No.”  And she had no idea what was even involved, beyond a few hazy concepts.  After all her experience with Gérard, she knew that anything beyond that was likely wrong.  All she’d learned about gryphons had avoided the issue, since Gérard had kept his hunting well away from her.  And she was grateful for that.  But if she wanted to really know them, she could no longer avoid it.  “I don’t even know if pigs would work for hunting.”         “We shall have to see.”  He flicked his ears, cocking his head as he focused ahead of them.  “First we must find them.”         She nodded, stomach tight.  Past pointing out that sign she was entirely lost, something that was more common of late.  It still wasn’t something she was used to.  “How do we start?”         “You have already begun tracking them.”  He clicked his beak. “You need only continue.  We cannot decide how to do anything if we do not know the terrain.”         “True.”  She tried a smile, but it was shaky.  The thought of hunting gnawed at her and, though she was committed, she was glad the start was so simple.  She continued along the trail, with Gérard pacing patiently behind as she cast about for any fresh evidence of where the pigs might be.  Sharp Eye would have been better at it, or even Gérard.  Though he had to be used to seeing things from above.         Sure enough, it was quite a few minutes later that Gérard stopped, his ears twitching.  “I hear something.”         “Nearby?” She whispered, straining her own ears to discern something useful beyond the occasional birdcall and the hiss of wind through grass.  There was plenty of noise, but nothing she could pick out as belonging to pigs.         “About half a mile east.”  He clicked his beak.  “Downwind.  We shall have to circle around so my scent does not frighten them off.  It would be easier if we knew the terrain.”  He cocked his head at her hopefully.         She laughed at the coltish gleam in his eyes.  “I’ll see what I can do.”  Half a mile was much further away than she could manage with most of her spells, but if she strained a bit she might be able to manage a general idea.         Rose closed her eyes, trying to ignore the background ache of her side while she focused her magic, casting it out in front of them.  Bit by bit, she built up a coarse idea of the lay of the land, the ripple of hills and dells, building a map in her mind.  It took longer than she had expected, but Gérard waited patiently until she opened her eyes, taking out the third map.         It was mostly blank, but it was meant as a working space.  She cast the results from her spell onto it, filling in the rough lines of terrain with what trees and grasses she could see while Gérard peered over her shoulder.  It was far from the usual exacting detail her maps provided,  more of a sketch, but that didn’t seem to bother him.  He traced a talon outward from the unicorn-and-gryphon marking at the left of the map over to a tree-lined ridge that sloped down to broad meadow.  “I think they are here, in this shady draw.”         Again she wondered at his hearing.  Being able to pinpoint the location by sound alone at that distance seemed impossible.  But then, she’d made a map of it without being able to see it, so it shouldn’t have surprised her.  Perhaps gryphons themselves were subject to the same magic as their tools, and over time became something more than just experience could explain.  “So how do we approach them?”         “The wind is from west and north, so we shall circle south so I am not upwind of them.”  He looked over at her.  “You are not a problem for them, but I expect my scent might startle them.  Or…”  His ears flicked thoughtfully.  “You are injured, and that might serve for what I have in mind.  So we shall both take that route.”         She added the prevailing direction of the intermittent breeze to the working map and drew an uncertain line of travel around to the other side of the draw.  “So it won’t matter that I’m not as quiet as you.”         “Not at all.” He clicked his beak.  “In fact, it is all to the better, since it will mask any noise I make.  Prey is not so spooked by one they do not regard as a predator.” “Have you done this before?”  He raised her eyebrows at him.  “I can understand that you know how to hunt, but that’s not the same as how prey react to non-predators.” He chuckled and flicked his tail in lazy insouciance.  “I have used one form of prey to distract another more than once, both on a hunt and on the battlefield. But I admit this is the first time I have employed a stalking-pony.” A smile tugged at her lips.  “And what exactly should this stalking-pony do?  Surely something more than standing there and watching.” “Certainly.”  He tapped the map again with his talon.  “I will find a place for ambush here, at the end of the draw, and you’ll circle around to the top.  Then you just need to walk toward them.  You won’t panic them like I would, but they’ll still want to shy away from something wounded.  That might draw hunters, after all.” “Of course.”  The smile turned into a grin, then vanished again.  “This is a lot simpler than I thought it would be.” “That is because of this map.”  Gérard tapped it again.  “It is much, much more complicated when you must decide all of these things on the wing.” Rose nodded.  She found it hard to consider what not having a map was like, sometimes, since she’d been carrying one all her life.  If not in her hooves or bag, in her head as second nature.  She swallowed.  “Then I think I’m ready.  As I’ll ever be, at least.” He nodded back at her, suddenly solemn.  She was grateful he understood, at least in part, how difficult this was for her.  Even if she were only walking, the intent to hunt was there.  “Lead the way, Rose.” She took point once again, following the line she’d drawn for them on her map.  Even though it wasn’t strictly necessary for her to be quiet, according to Gérard, she still found herself trying to tread as lightly as possible.  Beside her, the gryphon made no noise that she could hear. They stepped out of the tree cover, wading through the tall grass of the meadow.  Rose kept her ears pricked for what Gérard might have heard, but couldn’t pick out anything in particular.         Eventually they drew near to the treeline that marked the pigs’ location, circling downwind as Gérard’s ears twitched and swiveled, his golden eyes fixed on something only he could see.  He tapped her with one talon and pointed at a hillock nearer to their target, and she obediently changed course to guide him to it.  Once there he hunkered down in the grass, pressing himself against the ground, and waved her onward.         She continued without him, pacing anxiously around to the northern end of the draw, where the trees marched out of the forest along the ridge.  Even though all she had to do was walk, she was still worried about making some mistake, scattering the pigs off in the wrong direction.  That worry even drowned out the part of her that quailed at setting up some poor animal for death at Gérard’s talons.         Her burn ached as she climbed the hill where the ditch of a wet-weather stream began.  Here she could see more disturbed earth where pigs had rooted around in the soft, damp earth, and she began to follow the traces back downward.  She heard the first grunts soon after, more annoyed than anything, and then she finally spotted them, spread out in a brief widening of the ditch.         It was a small sounder of young boar, ten or twelve of them with rudimentary tusks, and Rose breathed a sigh of relief.  There was no doubt of Gérard’s abilities, but Sharp Eye had told her stories of how dangerous a full grown boar could be and she didn’t want that risk.  Even the younger hogs she could see had to weigh nearly as much as she did, and were probably a lot tougher and meaner.  But, fortunately, no more eager to fight than she was.         She stood on the slope above them as they grunted and snorted, milling about before sidling away from her, slinking down toward the meadow.  Toward Gérard.  She couldn’t see even a trace of his white and blue amid the grass, and she even knew where to look.  Rose took a step forward as the boars filtered away and then immediately danced back again as one of them grunted at her, tossing its head in unmistakable warning.         “Sorry,” she apologized by reflex, as if it could understand.  And watched it trot after its companions, down toward the ambush.  Her gut clenched as she waited, tensing for something she knew was coming, but didn’t know when.         Gérard pounced.         She was expecting a roar, or shout, or a cry of some sort, but he simply appeared in a silent, blurred streak.  He landed on the back of one of the boars, his talons sinking in just before the forelegs, almost as if it were a hug, his head dipping down and around in a quick, sharp movement.  She stared, frozen, as in the next instant his head jerked back and blood fountained out, spraying the grass and the animals ahead of it, and all became chaos.         The hogs screamed, forcing her to flatten her ears as they bolted in all directions, one rushing by on her left and another on her right, close enough for her to feel the wind of their passage, as Gérard vaulted off his target.  The boar gurgled ghoulishly, wobbling forward three steps before collapsing onto bloodsoaked grass.  The last rustles of the fleeing boars died away, leaving a deafening silence in their wake.         Gérard spat a chunk of flesh from his beak, and Rose took a few steps sideways before emptying the contents of her stomach onto the ground.  She found she was shaking, even though all she’d done was watch, and her guts churned uneasily as unwanted visions of the ruined camp pressed down on her.  All she could do was close her eyes and breathe deeply, focusing on the expression’s Gérard’s face had held in the moment of the kill.         There was no joy or exultation in it, but neither was there sorrow or shame.  His was the face of someone performing a task, no more and no less.  It was at the same time comforting and disturbing, a final confirmation that there was no monster lurking somewhere inside Gérard, but there was also something a pony could never be.   Of course, she’d already known that. She opened her eyes and tottered her way over to where Gérard stood, his face smeared with blood and bits of cut grass stuck in his mane.  The sight made her hiccup as a compromise between laugh and scream.  A few feet away the boar continued to twitch in a macabre parody of life, but Gérard ignored it and focused on her, his feline tongue flicking out absently to lick at his beak.  “That was well done, Rose.” “Thanks,” she managed, her voice shaking.  “I don’t think I did much, though.  Just walked.” He cocked his head at her.  “A hunt is more than the final kill.  It was you who found the traces of prey, and you who made the map, and you who flushed them out.  On balance, you did more than I.” “I...hadn’t thought of it that way,” she said, her eyes shying away from the twitching corpse nearby, the smell of blood choking her.  Yet she still felt an odd glow of pride.  “I’m glad we were successful.”  And she was, for Gérard’s sake, though she never wanted to have to watch him kill again. “We were,” he agreed cheerfully, then sobered.  “I know it was difficult for you, Rose.  But I think it was important.”   “Yes,” she agreed.  It was something she had to know.  No matter how much she hated it, she could never understand gryphons without understanding a hunt.  “Important, but I’m glad it’s over.” “It is not over yet,” he disagreed. “No?”  She couldn’t help but cringe. “The kill is not the end.  A hunt yields sustenance.” He clicked his beak.  “Or at least something, if it is not a physical one.  But a corpse is not preserved meat for a journey.” Rose found herself nodding.  Her idea of a hunt had shifted once, and it did again, expanding past the one moment that had preoccupied her thoughts.  It was impossible to ignore the death, with its stink filling her nostrils, but now it was simply an inevitable part of a hunt rather than its purpose.  “I’ll get firewood.” “And I shall take care of this.”  He looked over at the steaming, twitching pig carcass.  “There are some things that are best eaten fresh, as well.” “Such as?”  Morbid curiosity prompted the question as she stepped away from the swath of blood soaking into the ground. “Liver,” he said.  “Tongue and brains.”  His eyes glinted at her.  “And I won’t even have to share.” “I’m sure it’s good.”  She smiled weakly and stepped away to breathe some fresh air and try to stop trembling.  The simple process of gathering up deadwood, sticks, and twigs helped Rose recenter herself and give her space to think.  In some ways it had been as bad as she expected, but the unpleasantness, the death, was removed from Gérard himself.  And she had to admit that distance only came from knowing him.  If the first time she had seen a gryphon had been on a hunt, she may never have been able to look past it. By the time she’d put together a firepit, Gérard had the corpse gutted, and she gagged at the sight before looking away.  “Death is never pretty,” he said, not chiding, simply observing. “Then why -” She stopped herself as she considered the question she had been about to ask.  “No, that is why death is important, isn’t it?  Because you have to deal with it so much; you have to kill to survive.  So you have to understand it better than ponies ever would think to.” “That may be true,” Gérard said thoughtfully.  “It is not something taken lightly.  The effects of a kill extend past the moment it happens, and you are responsible for that.  To hunt, to kill, is to be responsible.”