Colonel Beryl de Topaz cursed and slapped her wing against a mosquito gnawing at her flank. She was sick and tired of being eaten to death day and night, sick and tired of waking up too early every morning and going to bed too late in the evening, sick and tired of walking miles and miles every day to a new campsite, and sick and tired of having to write orders for patrols to search for an enemy that was long-beaten.
The Royal Army was camped east of the Bitissippi Delta, a stinking, mosquito-ridden hellhole of a swamp where the Kelpie Creek and the Bitissippi River met and discharged into the Mulian Gulf. When that glistening expanse of mud, and the endless vastness of blue beyond, had at last appeared on the horizon, a cheer of “The Sea! The Sea!” had gone up, and many in the Army had thought that the next morning they would be turning around to go home.
As she stalked through the camp that afternoon, Beryl de Topaz knew already that it was not to be. They had left the Kelpie Creek battlefield littered with the corpses of thirty-four thousand Changelings. Twelve thousand of them had burned to death in the village itself, which had been left nothing more than a smoking pile of ash and blackened bricks. At that point, everypony there had thought that the war was over for good. Everypony except for Shining Armor. He had marched them south, chasing ever fainter trails in the pursuit of Changelings, until they had reached the coast. The Army had followed Shining Armor to the end of Equestria, but now he seemed determined to march them beyond even that.
The camp was indeed quieter than usual, she noticed, as she trotted past lines of tents, ranked baggage carts, and draft buffalos settling down under awnings to devour pies. Soldiers stopped their conversations and rose from cookfires to salute as she passed, but behind it all was a pervading silence.
They had dealt the Changelings a shattering defeat on the banks of the Kelpie Creek, but the cost to them had been dear beyond words. Four-and-a-half thousand ponies had died, close to a tenth of the entire Army. Nearly eight thousand more had filled the medical tents that night. There hadn’t been a battalion or squadron that had not charged at least four times. Nearly every ten-pony tent now had an empty space, and NCOs and officers’ tents were occupied by new, unfamiliar owners. Even in Topaz’s field officers’ billet, there were gaps.
She turned left down the lane of tents occupied by the Imperial Crystal Hussars. She had been feeling particularly vindictive when she wrote these orders. That it had been his squadron’s turn for patrol duty had just been a bonus.
Topaz fluttered to the ground next to a battered wooden sign painted in the regiment’s colours of blue-and-indigo. On it, below the badge of a winged Imperial Snowflake, were the words:
No. 7 Squadron
10th (Imperial Crystal) Hussars
O.C: Captain Flash Sentry SSM: Sergeant Major Bright Ice
Her eyes flicked up and down the line of dull-brown leather tents. Bright Ice was sitting outside his tent reading a book. Other than him there wasn’t a pony to be seen. He jumped to his hooves and saluted. “Ma’am!”
“Afternoon, Sergeant Major. How’s the squadron?”
“Catching up on some much-needed sleep. I took watch for them.”
“They’re going to need it. I’m afraid I’ve got recce patrol orders for you. Where’s Captain Sentry?”
Bright Ice looked like he was struggling to form words, but his eyes told the story. Topaz’ gaze swung towards the largest tent, which she now noticed was grunting and rocking rhythmically. Every camp!
After a minute the flap opened and a grinning, glaze-eyed Unicorn mare in an unbuttoned blue-and-green Supply Corps jacket exited the tent, her shako totally askew. When she saw Topaz she froze utterly.
Behind her, wearing a rumpled dolman and carrying his bicorne under his wing, issued a smiling Flash Sentry. “Oh, hi, ma’am. Anything up?”
Topaz gritted her teeth as Bright Ice desperately tried to conceal a grin. She turned to the Unicorn. “Dismissed, Corporal.”
She hastily saluted and galloped off down the tent lane. Topaz swung a steely gaze back to Sentry. “Who is she?”
“Not certain. Does something in Supply.”
It was an effort not to scream. Since they’d left the Crystal Empire, Flash Sentry had obeyed Topaz’s command to keep away from the regiment’s mares, but as if to compensate he was working his way around the entire army. He was a lecher, a cad, and, if the rumours of him being in a bar fight with a brother officer were true, a chaser of other stallion’s wives.
Yet however how much she might wish it, Topaz could not get rid of him. As Sentry never ceased to remind everypony in the mess, he had fought gallantly at Maneden, Tailwald Wood, Silvestris and the Kelpie Creek; he had brought the Lynx Territories into the war on their side; and he was quite possibly the hardest-charging officer in the whole regiment. What was more, his squadron loved him. Flash Sentry was “one of the lads”, and his reputation among them had been raised to ever-more heroic proportions after it had been whispered that he had the admiring eye of a certain princess.
“Well I hope you still have some strength left,” snarled Topaz. “You’re on patrol tonight.”
Sentry’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “Patrol?! We haven’t seen a bloody Changeling in three weeks! The damn war’s over!”
“Look, Sentry!” exploded Topaz. “I don’t care how many sluts from the Artillery you have lined up for tonight...”
“Four. And they’re in the Life Guards, actually.”
“Shut up. You’re on patrol from sunset. I don’t want to see you back here before midnight, and if you know what’s good for you, don’t find anything!”
She thrust the patrol orders into Sentry’s hoof and stormed off. Flash Sentry sighed. “Damn it. Going to take me weeks to get that kind of totty again...”
“You’ve never considered her, boss?” asked Bright Ice.
“Nah, our beloved Commanding Officer isn’t my type.”
“Too senior?”
“Too single.”
***
Brigadier General Sword Knot examined his tumbler of whisky appreciatively. “How the bloody hell did you get this down here?”
Major General Neigh poured himself a glass of the rich gold liquor. “Thank-you present from Brigandine. He packed wisely.”
Lieutenant Colonel Brigandine had been gored by a Changeling’s horn when the Shetlanders had charged at the Kelpie Creek. In the confusion, his regiment had left him for dead. He had survived the night by tearing up his kilt to use as bandages and drinking hoofuls of blood from his dead soldiers lying around him. Neigh had found him the next day during a sweep of the battlefield and had dragged him to the field hospital, where Brigandine had spent an hour vomiting up the blood he’d drank.
Neigh carefully wrapped the bottle in a spare pair of trousers and returned it to his hooflocker. As the light outside the tent faded, Sword Knot nodded his horn at Neigh’s hurricane lamp. Flickering light filled the tent.
Neigh sat down heavily at his trestle table. “Thanks. So, what should we toast? The 3rd Division? Victory? Finally going home?”
“Not the last one at any rate,” sighed Sword Knot. “I saw Warning Order in the mess this morning. Shining wants plans from him for marching either west to the Broken Leg or east to Bitaly depending on what the patrols find.”
Neigh stared at him in disbelief. They had arrived at the former Felinia capital of Purrillies five days ago and had swept through a deserted ruin of a city. There hadn’t been a Changeling to be found, nor even a shred of intelligence that might indicate where they might have gone. Since then they had sat here, with Shining Armor pushing patrols further and further out in a desperate attempt to find them.
“The Broken Leg?!” he demanded. “Why wasn’t I told about this?!”
“Apparently it’s to be kept secret until we know Chrysalis’ location.”
“Doesn’t bloody surprise me! Does Shining Armor want to march us all to death?! How are we going to get there?! There’s no roads! What about our supplies? Our tail’s long enough as it is!”
Sword Knot nodded grimly. “The Artillery hasn’t been replenished since the battle; it’s taking so long to get supplies down from Equestria. The protestors aren’t helping, I’m told. I hear the plan is to load the heavy equipment on to the barges and follow the Army along the coast.”
“Those barges are river boats. If the wind picks up they’ll be swamped. And if we commit to battle...!”
A laypony might have seen the Army’s losses at the Kelpie Creek as heavy but endurable. What such a statistic didn’t reflect was that the losses had been disproportionately borne by the infantry and cavalry: there was scarcely a company or squadron that wasn’t understrength and consequently the two combat arms between them were twelve percent fewer in number than they had been two weeks ago.
Assuming something resembling an army even reached the battlefield, of course. Neigh looked out the flap of his tent. The nights were definitely getting cooler, and the days slowly but surely getting shorter.
“Three-quarters of this army are farmponies looking for a bit of adventure,” growled Neigh. “If they hear that they won’t get home before the harvest, we’ll lose half of them to desertion immediately.”
“And the other half will die in the Wastes,” muttered Knot. The herds of the Elephant Hills were said to be friendly enough, but beyond was an arid wasteland of shattered rocks ridden with Chimeras, Orthrosi, and worst of all, the predatory Tatzlwurms. They would feast well. “And if Shining Armor marches us east to Bitaly, well, you’ve heard the stories.”
Neigh nodded grimly. “It won’t just be desertion. We’ll have a full-scale mutiny on our hooves.”
Sword Knot nervously contemplated his whisky. “And if we do, sir?
Neigh drained his glass. “Shining’s had his war, the Changelings are gone, and he killed enough of my ponies to do it. If he wants to die in the south chasing Chrysalis’ ghost, he can. Anypony who doesn’t, I’ll lead them back north. Celestia can court-martial me and send me to the moon for all I care; I’m not going to see Shining kill anymore ponies uselessly.”
***
“Yer turn, Dashie!” laughed Applejack. “Wha’s the firs’ thing you’ll do when we git home?”
Rainbow Dash took a hearty swig from the cider bottle. “Fall asleep on my cloud and not wake up until noon the next day!”
“So basically what you do every day, and still not turn up to the weather team?” laughed Thunderlane.
Applejack’s Light Infantry section and the Ponyville troop of the Royal Cloudsdale Greys sat around a cookfire in the 8th Regiment’s tent lane. Mixing regiments was technically forbidden, but after five days in the same camp and the war as good as won, discipline was getting a little lax, and they hadn’t seen each other since the Kelpie Creek.
“Now you, Hayseed,” said Rainbow, passing him the bottle.
“Ah’ll jus’ be happy ta get back on the farm,” said Hayseed Turnip Truck simply. “Word is some farmers ain’t doin’ so good, an’ ah wanna back before winter ta git the harves’ in.”
“Should we be so lucky...” muttered Blossomforth, who’d already had a little too much cider.
“Wha’ d’ya mean?”
“Scuttlebutt says we’re keeping marching,” sighed Rainbow. “East or west, depending. Shining Armor’s determined to see the Changelings beaten.”
“But the Changelings are beaten!” protested Lemon Cherry. “We haven’t seen any for weeks! What’s to be gained by chasing them?”
“I don’t like it, but we committed to seeing this through to the end,” said Rainbow loyally. “Even if we have to march to the end of Bitaly.”
“You might,” said Bulk Biceps quietly. Even across the fire Rainbow could smell the drink on his breath. “Me though? Celestia can banish me to Tartarus if she wants, but I ain’t going to Bitaly.”
A silence fell over the fire. Rainbow and Applejack exchanged glances.
“Now Bulk,” said Applejack sternly. “Ah’ll be the firs’ to admit ah don’t like it, but ah’m goin’ where I get tol’ to go. You know Rainbow an’ I can’t hear stuff like that.”
Bulk Biceps looked at her oddly. “You haven’t heard the stories?”
“Wha’ stories?”
Bulk Biceps pulled his greatcoat tighter around him. Everypony leaned in closer.
“Couple of years ago I was working with my cousin on the airships. We were running a cargo down to Braysilia. On the way south we spotted a life raft in the water and set down to pick it up. The poor bastard had been in the ocean for days.”
Rainbow glanced at Applejack. The Earth Pony’s expression said; Is this going anywhere?
Lemon Cherry, in contrast, was enthralled. “What had happened?”
“He’d been a mate on a wet freighter. His captain had tried to save time by sailing up the Bitalian coast. No smart sailor does that, not until you get past the Badlands. The shoals and storms are too dangerous. They’d been caught in one of them and been driven up on the Blood Beaches.”
“I read Daring Do for names like that, Bulk,” said Rainbow Dash dismissively.
“Well it’s the right name: the place is covered with ships and airships that have wrecked there. Some of them have been there for centuries, and none of the crews have ever come back.”
“Except your castaway?”
“All I know, Rainbow, is that he saw something on those beaches that made him run away so quickly that he took a life raft on his own with barely any food or water. When we brought him breakfast next morning he’d put a knife through his heart in the night.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’d just had too much seawater.”
Lemon Cherry stared at Bulk Biceps, her eyes as wide as saucers. “Why?
He shrugged. “You hear stories sometimes. None of the aviators really like to talk about it, but give some of the old salts a few and they’ll start telling you. About their airships that were blown off course and ended up over the Dark Fence. About the torches of great caravans they saw moving through the hills to the Slave Shore. About black ships with no flags and moving without sails taking slaves across the Thousand Islands Sea. About how they race away faster than anything in a cloud of black smoke when naval ships try to follow them.”
Eyes fixed on Bulk Biceps, Rainbow leaned closer to the fire. It’s just the autumn night...
“They say fifty years ago the Mulelicans sent a fleet to the Black Harbour,” the Pegasus continued quietly. “It’s a port just east of here, but no ship ever goes there. They meant to find and destroy the black ships. Ten ships went out; one came back, and only because it had been kept back to bring news of the victory home.” He smiled grimly. “The captain said five ships were destroyed instantly by pillars of fire and smoke from far outside their range. The rest didn’t last much longer. They waited two days trying to get closer to pick up survivors. The fire kept them out, but even from there they could hear the screaming.
“So,” Bulk Biceps finished, sweeping his audience with bloodshot eyes. “Now you know. Army or no army; I’m not going that way.”
Silence fell over the crowd. The only sound was the crackling of the fire. Then Thunderlane roared with laughter.
“You do talk some dung, Bulk!” he laughed. “I think we’d best stow that cider, boss!”
Rainbow Dash said nothing.
***
Flash Sentry frowned at the monolith that crouched at the side of dirt track. The ground circling it was as worn as the road. The grass had long since been trampled away. The road itself snaked away across the plain, disappearing behind a scrubby rise half a mile away.
“What is this thing, boss?” asked Bright Ice quietly.
“Milestone, maybe?” In the cold night Flash Sentry could not see any markings on it. He ran a hoof over the monolith searching for graven marks. He grimaced. The dark stone had a greasy feel.
And it wasn’t just dark, he realised. It was black. So black that it stood out even in the night. It seemed to drink in the moon and starlight. It was like a hole in the air looking into nothingness. The very sight of it seemed wrong.
But people have walked around it – you can tell that from the grass. What did the Felinia use to do here?
The monolith made Flash Sentry profoundly want to turn around and head back to the camp. The promise of fires, hot food, warm tents and, most importantly, their beds, was like a siren song.
He turned to face his recce troop – twelve picked stallions, the best in the squadron – who were shivering beneath pelisses buttoned up to their necks. “We’ll carry on to the top of this rise; that should put us in sight of the Black Harbour. We’ll watch for an hour then head home.”
The troop grunted in assent and got to their hooves, walking rather than flying to save the strength of their wings in case they needed to rapidly break contact. With Bright Ice taking point, they slowly climbed the rise.
Every step filled Sentry with more and more unease. The dirt track was pitted and potholed, and there were none of the signs of a retreating army or the distinctive Changeling hoofmarks. But there were ruts from wagon wheels: old ruts, but not so old that the wind and the rain had had time to obliterate them.
This road is rarely used, Sentry thought. But when it is, there’s a lot of traffic. It was marked on their maps as the Dead Road, and the hussars had scoffed at such a ludicrously melodramatic name, but right now Sentry was thinking that he wouldn’t go down this road again with the entire army at his side.
Sentry’s heart was pounding and his breath was roaring in his ears as they approached the top of the rise, and it had nothing to do with climbing such a gentle slope. We just need to get to the top then we can go back. I’m sure there’s...
Bright Ice crested the rise and froze. “What the...?”
Then he collapsed backwards, clutching his foreleg and screaming, and the air was filled with roaring, banging and buzzing as shot snapped past like furious bees.
“SKIRMISH ORDER!” roared Flash Sentry, lurching forward to grab Bright Ice. Sentry dragged his Sergeant Major off the crest as the troop spread out behind him, leaving a dark, shining trail along the path. A huge dark stain bloomed on Ice’s sleeve.
This isn’t right, Sentry realised. These shots aren’t magical: I can’t see them, and magic doesn’t sound like that. A chill suddenly filled him. If these aren’t Changelings, what are they? Sliding on his belly, sword waving in front of him, Flash Sentry dragged himself up over the crest as shot snapped over his head.
Beyond, he saw a ruined city so black that even in the dark he could make it out: the tumbled buildings stood out even below the cloud-strewn night sky. And on the plain before him were two lines of figures advancing up the hill.
Sentry had seen a minotaur once at a motivational talk in Canterlot. Though they were not so built, these creatures moved exactly like he had; on two legs, clutching something in their forelegs. They looked like spears, but they fired nothing like them: after they had fired, one line dropped to one knee while the second line advanced through them and fired in great explosions of noise and smoke and fire.
And each of them fired at least four times the rate of any pony soldier equipped with a spear.
Then an explosion of pain erupted up Flash Sentry’s leg. He felt like he’d been hit by a baseball bat. He rolled off the crest and looked down at his foreleg to see a great black rip across his sleeve, blood welling through the ragged fabric.
“FALL BACK!” he cried, through tears and gritted teeth. “FALL BACK!”
***
Shining Armor slammed the folder shut. “This plan is unacceptable.”
Lieutenant General Ration Bag and Major General Air Freight exchanged glances. Shining Armor had demanded logistics plans from them to sustain a march either east or west when they’d arrived at the delta. The two of them had spent the better part of a week trying to make the impossible possible, and they hadn’t succeeded. They’d known from the moment they’d entered the staff tent that Shining Armor wouldn’t like what they said, but they’d hoped that a rational analysis would at last convince him to turn around and go home.
“Sir,” said Ration Bag in measured tones. “We’ve considered every option available to us. We simply can’t maintain high-intensity operations this far from our railheads. Given the protests along the railway and the turmoil in the Lynx territories, it’s going to take two weeks minimum to get supplies from Equestria to the delta. That time will only increase if we advance east or west. Our best bet is to wait here and stockpile to our maximum carrying capacity. That will sustain us for a week’s march.”
“What if we were to replace our rations with hay?” demanded Shining Armor.
Then we can have a massive collapse in morale! thought Air Freight. “That would stretch our supplies out to about seventeen days, sir. Maybe to a month if we supplement it with grazing; but that would disperse a large amount of our strength when we’re in camp and the pasture in both Bitaly and the Broken Leg is going to get progressively poorer as we advance. The further we march also means the longer we have to wait for resupply, so we’ll have to keep supplies aside for while we’re waiting in camp. That means that our real time on the march will be much shorter than it initially appears and will get shorter and shorter as we go further.”
Shining Armor flicked through their planning document again until he found the page. “You seem to have understated our carrying capacity here. I remember it being much higher when we were marching down the Kelpie Creek.”
“Much of that loss is because we need to carry a larger fresh water supply,” said Ration Bag. “When we marched into Froud Valley we had the benefit of the river. In the Lynx territories we had good connections with the Canter Creek and a much shorter supply line. Down here, rivers are few and far between and so little of it has been properly mapped that we can’t chance it.”
“We’re marching along the coast. Can’t we distil seawater?”
Ration Bag stared at him, disbelieving. Would he kill us all if he thought he could kill just one more Changeling? “Not in quantity, sir. Boiling water also means using up firewood, and the forage for fuel down here is also poor.”
Shining Armor stood up and thrust the folder at Ration Bag. “I cannot accept this plan. Our patrols may encounter the Changelings tonight and you would have us sit here and wait for more supplies. Hardship is part of war. If we must march undersupplied, then so be it. In the mean time, I want this redrafted.”
“Sir, said Ration Bag desperately. “What you’re asking of us can’t be done.”
Shining Armor glared at him across his campaign desk. “Time Target tells me his guns can’t fire. Dagger von Steel tells me his troops want to go home. Thunderbird tells me that his cavalry’s swords are blunt. I did not expect their defeatism from you as well, Ration. I don’t want to see you back here until you’ve found your spine again. Dismissed.”
They said nothing as they left, but Shining Armor could see from their faces what they thought of him. It was the same thing that was plastered on the front pages of the newspapers strewn across his desk. They told a sorry tale. On the day the stories about Valneigh, the guns and his policy of destruction against the Changelings had broken, Radical Road had made a motion of censure against him in the House of Commons that he had barely survived. Anti-war protestors carrying signs that named him “murderer” and “genocide” now thronged the railway lines running up to the Diamond Dog Pass, and it was taking the Coltorado State Police hours to move them off the tracks to get the trains moving.
The victory at the Kelpie Creek had improved things only a little, he thought, as his eyes swept over the mass of headlines. Some had been supportive: IRON HOOF: HERO 2ND DIVISION BREAKS CHANGELING LINE AGAIN proclaimed the jingoistic Equestrian Mail. VICTORY AT LAST trumpeted the ever-royalist Manehattan Telegraph. But even they had asked whether the war would end soon, and the Parliamentarian press had pulled no punches when it came to casualties: BRILLIANCE OR BUTCHERY? demanded the News of Equestria. WE ANALYSE THE KELPIE CREEK STRATEGY.
As the days had worn on the headlines had soured further, and even the royalist press had become less and less supportive. TODAY WE TELL SHINING, thundered the Sun and Moon from three days ago. YOUR WAR’S OVER! BRING OUR FOALS HOME! His eyes fell on the opinion piece in the Sun and Moon written by Blueblood himself, that somehow he just could not stop reading.
Shining Armor has been exposed as a stallion of supreme egoism and utter lack of scruple, the traitor bleated piously. To his overweening ambition, he has sacrificed thousands of ponies and has kept tens of thousands more separated from their homes and families when his war is clearly over. He has gained his ends by trickery and by violence of a kind that is not only immoral but criminal. At the earliest opportunity I shall be putting forward an Early Day Motion in Parliament to terminate this war immediately and return Shining Armor to the only place he is fit to belong: a sentry box outside Canterlot Castle.
Shining Armor swore and swept the newspapers off his desk. Did none of them understand?! He was fighting to protect them! Did they really think that Bugs like the Changelings would ever stop to negotiate? Could you negotiate with Parasprites or the Feather Flu?! He had to wipe them all out! He had to make sure Chrysalis could never hurt anypony again!
The staff tent’s flap pushed open. He looked up, fury in his eyes. “WHAT?!”
Colonel Beryl de Topaz stood there, breathing heavily, a shocked expression on her face. “Sir... my last patrol has returned.”
Shining Armor stood up so quickly he knocked over his camp stool. “Did they find them?!”
“No sir,” said Topaz quietly. “But they found something.”
“Are you a soldier or a Power Ponies character?!” snarled Shining Armor. “Did they find the Changelings or not?!”
Topaz was more surprised that Shining Armor knew what the Power Ponies were than she was at his attitude. “Sir, they don’t know what they found,” she said seriously. “They took casualties.”
Shining Armor frowned. “Show me.”
The empty central square of the camp, kept open so companies could practice drill, thronged with ponies trying to see what was happening. A crowd had formed around the entrance of the medical tent: the sight and chaos of injured soldiers being brought in had been something everypony had rapidly and gladly forgotten about in the past two weeks.
Shining Armor pushed through the crowds with Topaz at his heel and pushed through the red cross-marked tent flaps. Sleepy-looking medics in rumpled, hastily-donned uniforms were rushing everywhere with bandages, splints, tourniquets and saline bags. “What’s happened?” he demanded loudly.
Surgeon-Lieutenant Colonel Redheart stalked past him. “Recce patrol came in with two casualties,” she said tersely. “One serious.”
“I need to speak to them.”
“Well you can’t!” snapped Redheart venomously. “Not until I’ve had to tell this poor Sergeant that he’s going to lose his leg when this morning he thought the war was over!”
She swept away into one of the screened-off operating areas. Silence filled the tent as the orderlies desperately tried to avoid the Field Marshal’s gaze. Shining Armor stood alone, quite still and his mouth quite dry.
“Um, sir?”
Shining Armor looked down to see one of the medics staring up at him. “Yes, Captain?”
“We’ve stabilised Captain Sentry, sir,” squeaked Surgeon-Captain Snowheart. She blushed a little at his name. “I think he wants to talk to you.”
She led him into one of the recovery wards, connected to the main tent by a canvas corridor. It was mostly empty now, but a few of the most serious cases from the Kelpie Creek were still there and looked up sleepily as they entered. Sitting up in a bed at the far end of the tent, with a thick dressing around his right leg and an IV of blood in the other, was Captain Flash Sentry.
“Sir!” he gasped. “Thank Celestia! We’ve gotta get out of here! That thing they pulled out of me! It’s... it’s...”
“Calm down, Captain!” snapped Shining. His horn glowed and the privacy curtains slid closed around the bed. “What does he mean?”
Snowheart nodded at a dolman and pelisse hanging by the bed. There was a ragged, blackened tear across both jackets’ right sleeves. “He was hit by something while on patrol. Whatever it was only grazed him but it was carrying enough energy to cut halfway to the bone. He’d lost a lot of blood before his troop got him back here.”
She picked up a kidney dish from beside the bed. “It caught in his sleeve. It didn’t actually go into him.”
Shining Armor took the dish. Rattling in the base, still spotted with Flash Sentry’s blood, was a small, slightly-flattened, acorn-shaped piece of lead.
Just like the one we pulled out of Gold Aurora.
Shining turned slowly to look into the rolling eyes of the Pegasus Captain, still half-delirious with blood loss. “Sentry,” he said quietly. “What did you see?”
The Field Marshal left the ward five minutes later. Flash Sentry’s words rattled in his mind, along with the dying words of a Diamond Dog that he had read months ago in a report that was now buried beneath multiple layers of classification in the Imperial Archives:
The hairless. Walkses on two legs, but never on four legs like Dog or pony...
Ration Bag was waiting for him when he left the medical tent. A ring of soldiers hovering anxiously just within earshot surrounded them.
“Break camp,” he told Ration Bag quietly. “The entire army is to stand to at the palisades. We return north at first light.”