“The gryphic two-town is, as its name suggests, two towns, sat one over the top of the other. Now, you may ask: if they require more space, why not expand horizontally? Why go to all the trouble of digging caverns, tunnels and whatever other warrens you require to mirror the surface polity, when you can just expand the hoofprint of the city? The answer is, as it is with many perceived oddities concerning gryphic society, to do with the fine balancing act the King and his people play.
Under threat of death, the local chiefs, barons and other assorted members of the landed gentry on whom responsibility for inhabited regions rests, must furnish the King with a certain number of new recruits for the national army per year, as well as a tithe in gold or silver. This number is worked out by means of the Five Claws Tariff, which is, in turn, mostly derived from the total acreage of the town or city in question. Why this is, even our most brilliant scholars have yet to deduce. However, since the establishment of the modern language of the Five Claws Tariff, circa 1400AN, no gryphic city has grown, on the surface at least, by more than the space of a few houses. The underground aspects, on the other hoof, have never failed to expand, ever further downwards and in more complex fashions.
An unusual case of excessive taxation quite literally driving the populace underground.” - The Yearling's Guide to the Gryphic Polities, Their Practices, Traditions, Culture and Politics, Associated Canterlotian Press Society, 1992AN.
*
By dint of her initial velocity, much of the spray of plasma that was now Celestia ended up going in the same direction. She had angled flight toward the horizon in the last few moments and, knowing the inevitable results of physics and wishing to avoid any attempts at interplanetary flight, aimed at the moon. Even as repulsive forces and the heat of that plasma threatened to scatter the incandescent ionised gas, the thaumic recombinations produced by her divinity were tugging her back to full corporeality. She experienced a confused moment of awakening, and of a monochrome lunar limb approaching very rapidly, then another where the mares and hard shadowed walls of craters blurred into a far too close swirl of impossibly quick motion. This is going to leave a mark, she thought, then the void of discorporeation swallowed her once more.
*
Something flickered and flashed in Hywell's peripheral vision, and he looked up from his supper of preserved sausage and roadbread toward the western horizon. The sky was all aglow, as though someone had poured luminous ink across it, which was now slowly spreading. There seemed to be an epicentre, but placing it in his mental map of the world was impossible. Over the course of about a minute, it got brighter and encompassed more of the firmament, adding to the light of the moon until it took on the appearance of the coming of dawn. Then, the pure white faded to an orange, finally ochre, lambency, before fading again. In its stead, trailers of aurorae, which Hywell recognized well from his childhood trips into the northern parts of his father's then-domain, began to drift across the zenith.
How curious, he thought, hewing off chunks of the sausage, then he gave a gryphic smile likely recognizable only to those of equally beaky stature. Surely, an auspicious portent for my trip.
*
“It's not possible, is it, darling? Please, tell me it isn't...”
Emboss sat on his haunches in their little cabin, tapping his right hoof nervously on the thickly carpeted floor. An entirely new species of fear now stalked around in his head, one mostly unrelated to fears of predation.
“I'm sure you're just imagining things,” Truth said, though she sounded unconvinced.
“Not this!” he whispered through clenched teeth, glancing over his shoulder at the locked door.
“It can't be,” she said, shaking her head. “It's the wrong time of year.”
“You know I can always... tell before you can,” Emboss whispered, unable to meet her gaze.
“It's impossible,” she stated, in the tone of voice that she used to say that the discussion was over.
There was a short, awkward silence, in which all they heard was the gentle creaking of the boat and the trampling of paws and hooves above, as well as the shared, cross-species expression of cheerful laughter that could only mean the 'business' between Astrapios and the customs officers had gone swimmingly.
“Because if you are, what we did--”
“I know what we did! We've had two foals, did you think I didn't know where they came from?” she snapped, then glanced at him, bit her lip and sighed, looking away. “Sorry, I didn't mean to raise my voice. I'm just tired. Like I could sleep for a thousand years.”
Emboss climbed up onto the bed and curled up beside her, withers to withers. They touched horns gently.
“Not like it'd matter anyway, I suppose,” he said, calming himself with rationality. “It wouldn't even be until next year. By then, this will have sorted itself out, or else, we'll all be dead.”
“What a cheery thought!” She snorted and threw her head in mock disgust. “And don't count your chickens!”
“Sorry.”
*
The port whose smoke they had seen earlier was called Bad Gutz, and it was far smaller than he had imagined. Emboss supposed that he had been spoiled by the largeness of Port Dauphine and the rambunctious, predatory air of Pronto. There were a few iron-black fishing boats moored in the T-shaped harbour, which was about a quarter of its maximum capacity, as well as a scattering of small, flat-bottomed littoral and river-delta craft, so the Barely Eagle had no trouble securing a berth.
The stallion watched from the deck as Astrapios jump-glided down onto the wharf, landing beside a bedraggled looking gryphon wearing oilskins, whom he supposed was the harbor master, or some junior of the same. Despite the fact that some difficulties with tides had meant they'd drawn in at a weird hour of the night, lights burned everywhere, casting pools of warm orange beneath and around them. All the paraphernalia of the fishing industry – pots for crustaceans, interminable lengths of rope, crates of many different sizes, various hooks on poles, spears with backward-facing barbs – were therefore shown in odd illumination, with shadows taking on vague forms where it failed. The arcane nature of much of this equipment, at least in Emboss' eyes, lead to it taking on an air of fearful mysticism, like he was seeing the forbidden tools of some taboo mage.
“Here we are then,” Truth whispered, slinking up beside him. “Gryphic lands.”
“Indeed,” Emboss said, gravely. “I shall be glad to get off this boat. It feels as though we've been cooped up in here for a thousand years.”
“It's only been a few days.”
“Ponies just aren't meant for this sort of thing. It's not natural.”
“Natural? Then we should all go live outdoors, never clip our coats, and mount each other in full view whenever it takes our fancy.”
“You know what I mean, you troublesome mare.”
Truth laughed impishly then, with a keening of magic, placed a set of panniers over her husband’s back.
“I have fetched our luggage,” she said.
“So I see,” Emboss said, chewing his lips thoughtfully as he secured the panniers' woven hemp straps, never taking his gaze off the view over the side.
“I also discovered where they keep their herbivore rations.”
“Is that what the smell of oats is?” He sniffed the air purposefully, which captured all the stinks of a working fishery, and wished he hadn't.
“Yes. We've enough to keep us going for half a week, perhaps longer.”
“There are vegetarian gryphons, you know. Astrapios is one of them. It won't be hard to find our kind of food.”
“You never know, dear,” Truth said, in a tone close to admonishment. “So, what's our plan of action?”
“I don't know yet, not exactly. I'm waiting on our newfound guide.” Emboss peered down at Astrapios, who was gesticulating wildly as he negotiated some deal with the harbour master, who was equally animated.
“Ah, yes. I hope that turns out to be a good idea.” Truth rested her head on the guardrail, still fighting the lingering effects of her exhaustion.
“He seems an alright sort of person, doesn't he?”
“Well, would you trust him to foalsit?”
“Skies above, no!” Emboss actually managed to look away for a moment to shoot her a look of horror.
“Quite.”
“That's besides the point,” Emboss said, shaking his head. “He knows this place, and he probably isn't going to try and eat us. Poor bugger likely has to deal with enough discrimination as it is, what with him being half pony, so he must know how to skirt the bigger dangers. Plus, he has a zebra on his crew.”
“What does that have to do with it?” Truth’s brow furrowed.
“Gryphons and zebras aren't exactly the best of pals. Weren't you listening to Dunya?” He sighed and waited a beat for signs of an answer before continuing “They don't regularly try to wipe each other out anymore, but that's entirely to do with logistical problems, not because the gryphons have decided they don't want to eat sapient food. Astrapios must have a fair grip on how to keep his crew safe from that sort of thing.”
“I suppose,” Truth admitted.
Presently, a muted and disgruntled looking gaggle of stevedores appeared in spits and spots on the wharf. They had obviously been roused unexpectedly from sleep, as they were all in various states of bedragglement, and engaged themselves in preening and grumbling in gryphic as they waited for their full number. Then, they set about tying up the Barely Eagle, at which point the debate Astrapios and the harbour master were having came to its conclusion. Coinage was exchanged for paperwork, which the hippogryph promptly began filling out as the gryphon counted the money.
All of a sudden, illumination filled the western sky. At first, Emboss thought that he'd somehow lost track of time, and that dawn was now upon them. It was too bright, though, and the wrong colour. Where the usual sunrises held their orange and gold wonderment, rising up from the black horizon in an inevitable progression, this was an unyielding white. Everyone on the deck and on the wharf watched in unknowing, mute silence. The glare unfolded, eating up the horizon.
“It's too late,” he whispered, half a minute later, when rippling streamers of aurora appeared and began to march across the heavens. “She's begun it. The Thiasus is underway...”
“It's more beautiful than I thought,” his wife mumbled. “Do you... think that happened over Equestria?”
“Where else would it be?”
“Then the foals...”
“No.”
Emboss turned to look directly at her, which succeeded in breaking her fixed gaze at the conflagration. Her face was a study in terror and fear; eyes wide, lips trembling.
“You mustn't start thinking like that,” he said. “Dunya will keep them safe. She would not let harm come to them.”
Truth gulped and stilled herself, tail low between her back legs, everything about her posture wrong and painful to behold. He couldn't stand it. The stallion embraced her, laying his neck over the back of hers. Her muscles, previously tense like violin strings, stayed that way for a moment before relaxing.
“We don't even know if that...” She nodded toward the west. “...really was the Thiasus, do we?” she said, after a moment. “Celestia didn't mention anything about giant flashes in the sky, did she?”
“She didn't say much about the actual schedule of events, no.” Emboss nibbled gently behind her right ear. “But we should hurry. Accelerate our own schedule.”
“Agreed.”
*
Bad Gutz was just going through the motions of waking up by the time Emboss, Truth, their hippogryph guide, his twin gryphon employees and the zebra finally finished decamping from the Barely Eagle. Of course, since Bad Gutz was primarily a fishing port, it was still a few hours before dawn. There was a chill verging on the bitter in the air as the party drifted away from the harbourside. Emboss' breath left him in long plumes, made orange in the glow of oil lamps. Nobody was saying very much, even the usually talkative Astrapios, whom in another life might have been a tour guide. Though the illumination they cast that actually reached the ground had long since ebbed below the visible, traceries of aurorae still hung high overhead.
By the power of mutual, unspoken consensus, they ended up in a pub again. Bad Gutz had, apparently, only a single place for such premises, because it was currently in the process of serving breakfast. The narrow, four story building was invitingly lit, with many merry signs, all in the weird chickenscratch of gryphic, plastering chalkboards on the outside. Apparently, the pub's customers hadn't seen the huge explosion in the western sky not a few hours before, or else, it bothered them not a bit.
Inside, it was wonderfully warm. Emboss hadn't realised how cold he had gotten, and he let out an involuntary whinny of relief. The thick, hazy air smelled strongly of smoke, coffee, hot bread and something that reminded him of floor cleaner, or the solvent his wife used to remove lacquer and polish from her hooves. There were about thirty gryphons in the pub, clustered in fours and fives around low, altar-like tables, which appeared to be little more than flat, smooth slabs of rock. Most were sat upright on their haunches, though some were more comfortably arranged, laying on their bellies or curled up before the grand, roaring range.
There was a lull in conversation when the other customers noticed the smell of ponies, as well as a few curious looks but, even with his fairly limited understanding of gryphon body language and expressions, he knew that they were curious, surprised and non-aggressive. There was little of the suspicion he'd been expecting. After twenty seconds had passed, the chittering, melodic chatter of conversing patrons kicked in again.
Whilst Emboss had been keeping a watchful eye on the customers for signs of predation, Astrapios had, apparently, ordered drinks and found them that most magical of items: an unoccupied pub table. Emboss sat down on his haunches, but was already feeling itchy. There was no time for this, really. Events had clearly taken on a new urgency back home, and it might now be the case that every second would count, in the end. Glancing at his wife, he could see she felt the same. The mare seemed barely able to sit still.
A tray of the little shot glasses that gryphons drank basically everything out of, as well as a veritable bucket of coffee with a handle and crooked spout, was dropped off at the table a few, silent minutes later. Astrapios merely studied them and drank shots of the coffee, which the twins and the zebra shortly began to tuck into as well. This little ritual performed, Astrapios spoke.
“I am not a paranoid sort of person,” he began, swallowing another slug of coffee. “I left all that horsepiss, racist atavism back here, in the homeland.” He gestured at his crew very slightly with a roll of his shoulders. “But what I am, is an avid observer of the equid form. In fact, I have become so proficient that some of my clients have developed the notion that I can read their thoughts. However, even a blind gryphon could have spotted how bloody terrified you were just then.” His accent had dropped away from the faux high-bred Canterlotian, exposing a more forthright mix of south Canterlotian and west coast gryphic that was probably his native 'lect.
“We--” Emboss began, but Astrapios raised a hoof.
“I haven't finished.” He poured coffee, drank it, clicked his beak a few times as if savoring the taste. “Notice that I said 'terrified'. Not shocked, not surprised. Awestruck would also have been an appropriate response. But you were terrified, as though you knew pretty much what was going to happen, and had just had your worst fears confirmed.”
“I thought you said you weren't going to ask us our business,” Truth said, flatly.
“Usually, madam, when someone is in such a hurry to get away from a place, and eager to pay so much gold, it is because they are involved in some sort of criminality.” He toyed with the coffee bucket, tracing a hooftip delicately over its inlaid designs. “Murder is usually a good one. Tax, that's a given. But you two are the least criminal people I have ever met. So, what are you running from? Why do you need to get to this place in the mountains so urgently?”
“Princess Celestia,” Emboss blurted. “She's trying to end the world, so she can invite all the evil spirits that lurk beyond the threshold into our universe, allowing her to so honor an ancient compact and get roughly covered into the bargain.”
Astrapios choked on the coffee he'd just swallowed, spraying a fine mist of vapour out of the tiny holes in the top of his beak that served as nostrils.
“I've been a senior civil servant for the last three decades, but when I was only a junior I helped cover up a gigantic scandal for Celestia,” Emboss continued, getting faster and louder. “Ever since then, I've felt so guilty.” He couldn't hold the hippogryph's gaze, looking away and closing his eyes. “When she told me what was coming, I had to do something.”
“We're on our way to meet a contact in the zebric kingdoms,” Truth said, easing over gently to touch withers with her husband in hopes of calming him down a bit. “They need to be told what's going on. They... know people who might be able to do something about it.”
“Then what was that light in the sky?” Astrapios said, not missing a beat. “Have these evil spirits gotten in?”
“We don't know,” Truth said, shaking her head slightly. “Celestia called that event the Thiasus, but we've no idea if what we saw was a portent, a herald of its happening, or merely a side effect of the chaos spreading through Equestria at this very moment.”
“Seemed peaceful enough to me,” Astrapios said. “I assume that's not quite the case in Canterlot?”
“It's all gone to Tartarus. There was no sign of it getting better. I wouldn't be surprised if half the city is in ruins by now,” Emboss said, dipping his head. “I can't imagine how many people have died.”
“What's causing this chaos?” Astrapios had pulled out a satin 'kerchief from somewhere on his person, and was busy using it to clean himself up. “Are the other Princesses in on this too? What are they doing? You know, what's-her-smell, Luna and Twilight, the pink one...”
“Drunkeness, without end and without having drunk anything in the first place,” Emboss said, trying not to flee with the intensity of the recollections. “The inebriation only gets worse and worse, spreading to more and more ponies like a plague. The guard were overwhelmed. At first, it just felt like a bad riot, but they didn't stop. Fires, looting, violence and more violence...” Emboss whinnied softly and shivered. “Stallions, suffocated under the weight of mare's unmentionables, still grinning, even as they got cold.”
“We saw nothing of the other Princesses, or Celestia. We got out of Equestria as fast as we could, on this mission,” Truth said, sighing. “We had to leave our foals behind.”
Ensire, or Erisne, Emboss couldn't really tell which of the gryphon sisters it was, bowed her head at this and said, in that slow, word-perfect gryphic accent: “Our sympathies. I hope you get back to them soon.”
“Why would Celestia tell you all this, anyway?” Astrapios said, throwing a glance at his crewmember before fixing his gaze on them again. “She of the Alabaster Buttocks isn't a fool. If she thought there was any conceivable way you could be the breezie in her ointment, so to speak, wouldn't she have kept quiet?” The hippogryph's strange, beaky smile widened a notch. “Or arrange it so that you speed off on a mad quest halfway around the world, availing yourselves of nothing?”
“We were concerned about that too,” Truth said, before Emboss could answer. “In the end, if we are paralyzed into inaction with second guessing, worrying about whether or not we have free will or if Celestia is just that devious or, worse, falling into nihilism, then we've already lost.”
“You've been practising that, haven't you?” Astrapios chugged down a further measure of the coffee, just as a comely-looking alce, wearing a combination bib and cape that seemed to be for food hygiene purposes, slunk over and delivered a tray of oily, silvery things on toast drowned in butter. “Who is it that you're meeting, anyway?”
Ensire and Erisne began to attack the whatever-it-was on toast without any of the decorum they'd shown with the coffee. Emboss watched their beaks snap and slice, grabbing up chunks of the butter-drenched bread before their owner's swallowed them whole. It reminded him immediately of pelicans, or some other wading bird.
“There's a zebra in--” Truth began.
“No, what I mean is, who is it that you want the zebras to help you contact? The ones who can help?”
“I think I know,” iYut said, in a small voice, his first contribution to the discussion. “But it will be no use to try. They have been in repose for the last twenty years. Nobody has even made it past the Night Gate in fifteen.”
“Dunya wouldn't have sent us if she thought there was no hope,” Truth said, shaking her head.
“Who's that?” Astrapios said.
“Our housekeeper, and the one whom we left to look after our foals,” Truth said.
“I hope she's alright,” Emboss said, biting his lip. “What will they have thought of that blast?”
“She is a zebra, your housekeeper, yes?” iYut said, smiling softly. “Your young are in safe care, no doubt about it. We zebra are canny folk, we have to be! It's in our blood. We would never have survived so long here, and out there in the world, if we were not.”
The zebra grinned around at the gryphons, as if to emphasise his point. Considering the enmity between the two races, he wasn't attracting much attention at all. Emboss could understand why the ponies in the room weren't of particular interest. No fewer than four protracted, extraordinarily costly, conflicts, underpinned equestrian-gryphic diplomatic relations. The magical triskelion constructs allowed the ponies an immense strategic advantage. Who really wanted to risk provoking the enemy that held a blade against your throat at all times? The zebras were another matter entirely.
Officialdom in gryphic lands, for what it was worth, didn't even recognize the zebric kingdoms, those below dominions, as states. As far as Emboss knew, they were considered a particularly tasty sort of vermin, to be obtained for the larder if possible, but otherwise eradicated or kept out.
“Our stripey friend here has a few sly tricks up his mane,” Astrapios said, casually, but with a hint of pride. “Those rocks of his aren't just for show; he's casting a mild charm spell as we speak. As long as he stays fairly innocuous, folk won't notice him.”
“Never wondered why we two nations haven't wiped each other out?” iYut licked his lips and seemed to be giving the toast genuine consideration. “We are too slippery, and they are too large to fit in the cracks between rocks. Big, fat birds get stuck in holes.”
“I did know that,” Emboss said, nodding. “About the conflict between your peoples, that is. Not how the detente is maintained.”
“So, who is it that we’re talking about here?” Astrapios said, seeming irritated at the diversion.
“It’s the centaurs, boss,” iYut said, almost in a whisper.
There. It had been said. Until now, it hadn’t quite seemed real to Emboss. The word, and all that it really meant, hung heavy in the air, despite the softness of its saying. Astrapios opened one of his eyes wide, which Emboss took to be analogous to the Equestrian raised eyebrow. There was a lull in the conversation, which lasted for an awkward thirty seconds until the hippogryph spoke again.
“The centaurs,” he repeated. “I see.” He unmantled his wings and rolled his shoulders in an approximation of a shrug. “Are we going to need to run this past the fairies, too?” He maintained the deadpan for a moment, then laughed. “Ooh, and maybe the merfolk and the kelpies should be brought into the loop! And we wouldn’t want to leave out the wihwhinny.”
“We are very bloody serious!” Emboss whispered. “Look, I thought it was a windup at first too, and I really don’t have any hard evidence to the contrary--”
“They are entirely real,” iYut said. “When I was a little foal, I was taken to see them in repose. I have seen them with my very own eyes, smelled them with my own nose.”
“Let me get something straight; you two, so-called responsible adults,” Astrapios said, peering at them with a smirk on his beak, “abandoned your duties, and your offspring, and your jobs, and ran off in order to deliver a message concerning the most benevolent entity in the world’s imminent plans to bring about a global existential crisis to a species confirmed as mythological and entirely fictional by no less than six successive academic generations?”
“That… that’s about the long and the short of it, yes,” Emboss said, after a moment. “If you don’t want to be our native guide anymore, I understand.”
“My dear colt,” the hippogryph said, taking a glance at each of his crewmembers. “I don’t think you could stop us if you tried.”
*
They left Bad Gutz on hoof and paw just after dawn, having first swung by the Barely Eagle to pick up some personal items. All the time, Astrapios had been getting more and more excited, and it struck Emboss, not for the first time, what a strange and contrary creature he was. But contrariness was, perhaps, to be expected, in the chimera of two opposing races whose biologies and cultural outlooks were so radically different.
It was the fate of the ponies, and the zebra, to end up carrying the largest shares of the load. Astrapios was about the same size as a pony foal, and the gryphon sisters seemed not to want to ruffle their prim feathers with such things as pannier straps, nor mar their brows with such things as sweat, or whatever passed for the gryphon equivalent of the product of hard work.
The road out of town was, against expectations, cobbled to a good standard as it wound its way east, following a path of least resistance between the seemingly endless expanses of bullreed-choked marshes. Their high and noble crowned stems swayed in the early morning breeze, and the temperature began to climb. After a few minutes trotting on the harder ground, the hooved members of the group called a brief halt to put on shoes. Truth slipped into the set he had given her for her last birthday; fuchsia enamel and brass with a steel substrate. She looked gorgeous, he thought, even in a bedraggled, fear-worn state, not yet recovered fully from the exertions of the trip. Emboss stood into his own birthday set, bought around the same time; burnished steel, unvarnished or enameled.
Astrapios, as per his style, produced the smallest shoes Emboss had ever seen. They would not have sufficed even for the most diminutive of foal’s first shoes. They were gold, of course, with a steel substrate so clean and free of scuffs that Emboss could not imagine them to have seen much use. At first it had seemed that the zebra wasn’t going to put something on his feet to protect them from the road but, at the last, he extricated a quad of simple, iron shoes from his hemp panniers, which attached via snappy metal prongs.
By lunchtime or, at least, when the sun had reached its approximate zenith in the sky overhead, the swamp teemed with diaphanously winged insects, and the little brown birds that feasted on them. The two ancient and timeless enemies wheeled and circled each other, chirping and buzzing with merry abandon. Emboss wondered how different the species of his home and native land, and those of this place, really were. Most, he did not recognize, but he doubted that he would have been able to tell the difference.
They had been walking along at a steady pace for perhaps six hours when the mountain began coming into view. They could just about make out, on the distant horizon beyond the flat marshes, strange, rippling purple-tinged shelves, smooth and sometimes pocked with snow.
“That’s the Supplicant Altress range,” Astrapios said. “It’s all funny like that because it’s being reflected through the atmosphere. They’re just really tall, and they’re supplicant to an even taller mountain. The mountain. That’s why you can see them, though. They’re still hundreds of miles away in reality.”
“That’s where we’re headed?” Emboss said.
“In that direction, yes,” Truth said, throwing her head a little.
“More than that,” iYut said. “The Night Gate is directly below the peak of that mountain. Good place. Strong magic. Ginnungagap is on the other side of the world, on the same line. You can really feel the billowing of reality’s skirts. I’m sure you unicorns will appreciate it.”
“Reality wears a skirt?” Emboss wondered, aloud.
“It is a metaphor, because it seems as though reality is about to show you what you really want to see,” iYut said, smiling and shooting a mysterious glance at Emboss. “You understand? Her skirts are billowing!”
“Ah, I see,” Emboss said, though really he had no idea what the zebra was talking about.
As the sun climbed away from noon and into the long hours toward dusk, the marshes receded, gradually transitioning to a neatly coppiced forest of spindly trees, sticking up out of the bronze floor of the leaf litter like brooms. There was no single point where Emboss remembered leaving the marshes. He just looked up one moment and found himself in the midst of the forest, trotting down the road. There was only the gentle background rustle of insects, the stabs and whoops of birds in the far distance, and the sound of horseshoes on cobble, keeping a gentle, insistent pace.
Ahead, the Supplicant Altress range was growing more visible by the hour.
*
“--and then, your Princess Luna, though she was in her most fearsome metamorphosis and unrecognizable as a result, descended on the Great Slithering Ones from out of the sudden cover of the eclipse, and smote them righteously all over the Line Tuple, at last destroying the remnant of their number. The first Intercession was ended, and much rejoicing broke out through the ranks, despite their wounds and having fought four days without a break.”
iYut was telling stories, which seemed to be a major pastime of his peoples, or perhaps just of the zebra in question, going by the skill and acumen with which he spun a yarn. He even did voices for some of the more detailed parts and, for a moment, Emboss was able to forget the concerns of the greater world. Of course, as far as iYut was concerned, he was merely relating the past, and not recalling a story.
“I don't remember this from history at school,” Truth said, busying herself with a water gourd. “I definitely would have noticed if my teacher had told us about any plagues of eternally multiplying, all-devouring worms invading from other realities.”
“It is all true, I swear it,” iYut said, looking slightly hurt. “These records were sung down from dam to foal for nearly three thousand years.”
“Celestia lies, darling, we must be careful not to forget that now,” Emboss said, the aforementioned realities crashing down. “If you can simply outlive anyone who might say otherwise, history is yours to write and rewrite. Oh, I imagine there are large tracts of non-fiction; the best lies are mostly true. But the important stuff? All lies.”
“These things are just part of our shared history where I come from, I heard the song and knew its rhythm before I was off my dam's teat,” iYut said, rolling his shoulders in a shrug. “By the time I left on trotabut, I could speak and sing it well, as well as any zebra.”
“We need to get our act together on that kind of thing,” Emboss said, frowning. “Equestrians, I mean. We relied too much on books and authoritative records, guaranteed by the benevolence of the crown. We have to keep our own histories.”
“There it is!” Astrapios called, from his position a little ahead of the group.
They had just reached a nearly-hidden turn in the road, where it crested a small hill on the edge of the forest. The overlook commanded a fair view of the more steeply sloping countryside beyond. As Emboss quickened his pace and caught up with Astrapios, he saw that the slope rolled down to the centre of a low valley, with its opposite side visible, crowned in the purple fuzz of heather and pocked here and there with stands and spinnies of tall, black-boughed trees hemmed in by the far smaller rings of fences.
In the lee of the valley, long, brick buildings, of every shape and size, marked out a town. It was nothing like the Equestrian standard -- neatly planned baroque fantasies and follies, or thatch and wood. Instead, the place seemed like it had grown organically, with people allowed to build wherever they wanted, over a period of many years. There was no swirling decorative marble fascias or glissandos of extensive ornamentation in view. Emboss could see that, even from here. Not a single folly-turret, so common back home, jutted out of any of the low roofs.
In what he took to be the very middle, a two-horned shape marked the only signs of anything but spartan ornamentation. Here, it was far more bladed than the few examples he'd seen on ambassadorial residences or official outposts of this stateless state that refused easy classification within the Equestrian schema. The prongs of it were all that was visible, and they glinted occasionally with the lustre of some metal as they caught the coppery wane of evening sunlight.
“Unless, mares, hens and gentlecolts, I very much miss my mark, that...” He indicated with his head, in the obvious direction of the middle of the valley. “Is the two-town of Lo Squitz.”
*
They were just about to leave the cover of the woods, where the treeline broke abruptly on the edges of the valley, when it happened. With his eyes busy trying to catch glimpses of the two-town ahead, Emboss hadn't been paying attention to his immediate surroundings. There was a sudden rustle and crackling of foliage moving and, all of a sudden, half a dozen feathery shapes dashed from behind blackish boughs, bounded over the narrow drainage dykes on either side of the road, and landed with a clack and clatter of metal, paws and claws. All the commotion and movement sent Emboss' heart hammering into a frenzy, and he had to resist bolting.
“Oh, bugger!” Astrapios exclaimed, as the foremost shape levelled a boxy, brass-finished crossbow at him, the Equestrian-made weapon seeming almost like a foal’s toy, brandished in one foreclaw.
“'Bugger', indeed,” the shape said, in surprisingly sure-accented Equuish. “Right, you know how this works; stand and bleedin' deliver!”
The gryphon, of an uncertain clade, wore a black felt cloak pulled up tightly around his neck, complete with a three-cornered hat, equally black, and what appeared to be a polka-dot 'kerchief draped over his beak and tied at the back. His friends were equally attired, right down to the 'kerchief. Glancing back the way they had come, Emboss saw that another half dozen had appeared, blocking their escape. Emboss felt Truth instinctively draw up to his side.
“Bandits,” iYut muttered, then winced as he realised what he’d done.
“Who said that?” the lead gryphon said, glancing around.
“Look boss, they've got a zebra with 'em!” said the gryphon standing behind his left shoulder, the tone of barely-contained eagerness apparent in his voice.
“Ooh! Ooh! Dibs! Dibs on the zebra!” said another.
“Nobody is eating my crew!” Astrapios said, drawing himself up to his full height, which wasn't very much at all. “Now, look, I don't know what kind of game you're playing here--”
“We are not bandits,” the lead gryphon said, flatly ignoring the hippogryph, now staring furiously at iYut. “How bloody dare you, a stripy fellow like you, calling us bandits!”
“The cheek of it, the bare faced cheek...” the one standing at his shoulder added.
“Have you ever even met a bandit?” the lead gryphon said, gesticulating with his crossbow at iYut. “Why, a bandit'll rape you soon as look at you! Doesn't matter what species you are, doesn't matter to a bandit!” He clicked his beak and shook his head. “Then he'll eat you, and your whole family too!”
“Please don't eat us!” Truth whinnied, suddenly.
“That's what I'm saying!” the lead gryphon shouted. “We're not going to eat you, because we're not bandits!”
“You just called dibs on my zebra,” Astrapios said.
“Yeah, for the reward,” the lead gryphon said, finally focusing on Astrapios. “We're highwaycocks, not bandits. We're just after a financial reward, gained through the threat or application of certain kinds of violence, see?”
“Also, kidnapping and rendering to the authorities,” the one behind him said. “But again, for financial gain.”
“I am nobody's zebra,” iYut said, firmly.
“If you try anything funny with me or my wife,” Emboss said, voice sounding far more threatening than he really felt. “I'll--”
The crossbow bolt struck the cobbles inches to the left of his hooves, sending up a spray of sparks and stinging his barrel with splinters of wood as the projectile destroyed itself. Emboss immediately forgot any thoughts of resistance as the threat he had been making died in his throat. Truth made a sound like a mouse being strangled and pressed herself against him even harder. There was a clunk and a rustle of clockwork ratcheting as the crossbow reloaded.
“Right, I'm going to be charitable and kind, considering you're visitors to these lands, and forget about all the unpleasantness vis a vie the bandit comments,” the lead gryphon said, pointing the crossbow squarely at Emboss and Truth. “All your valuables, in a pile, on the ground, or the pretty mare gets it, understood?”
Emboss was half-way through formulating some response from the depths of his fear-hobbled mind, when the world around him exploded into strobes of fierce, lightning-bright illumination. The sound was of a God beating on Tipanic war drums that heralded the end of the world; six sharp thuds in quick succession, each assaulting his ears more terribly than the last. The stink of saltpeter and something sulphurous stung his nose. Someone screamed, some pony. It took him a moment to realise it was his own voice, heard from a distance.
Sight left him, robbed as he screwed his eyes closed to protect them from the flashing. Old instincts kicked in and he made to bolt, feeling Truth’s muscles tense up against him in preparation to do the same. It didn’t matter the direction, or any consideration of the greater tactical situation. Time for such cogent, sapient thoughts had departed. He heard shrieking; gryphic cawing that sounded more strangled and distressed than any sort he’d encountered before.
He slammed into something, hard. It was feathered but unyielding, and he bounced away at a tangent, still carrying forward a lot of momentum from that panicked burst of speed. An orchestra of squealing came next, of tension being released. Something passed by his right ear very close. Emboss had broken into a full gallop now. He couldn’t remember running this fast at any point since his foalhood. A presence tugged at his right flank for a moment, stinging and digging quite deep, but it hurt not a bit and then was gone.
Weird, kaleidoscopic patterns lurked under his eyelids. He found himself returning toward a calmer state some unknown period of time later, and this was the first thing he was really aware of. The quality of the ground beneath his hooves had gone from the unforgiving stone of the cobble to something far more comfortable and familiar; springy grass. As though he had been staring at the sun for too long, his vision began to return in odd purple blotches, revealing more and more of the actual world. He saw a rolling moor, replete with grasses and heathers and, in the floor of the valley beyond, a town crouched.
Sweat, foamed up into a lather where his clip was stricter, felt like it covered every inch of him. All he could hear was his heart, hammering in his chest as though it was about to explode. Breath came strangled and strained. Still cantering, he pulled left, trying to turn. Then, something gave on his back right side. He crumpled like a felled tree and landed on his chest in the heather. Smells of exertion and rooted-up earth, the blood of grass and deciduous plants, filled his nose. For a long moment, he merely lay there, pain now a constant. It was clustered around his right flank, near his mark, but extended to every muscle. Hot fire trickled out. Something warm dampened the grass, as though he had lain in a mire.
There were more explosions in the distance. They had a different quality to them, sharper and snappier, each accompanied afterwards by a ripping noise. There was more shouting and screaming, swearing in both Equuish and Gryphic. He struggled to lift his head to look, to try and find his wife, but the tree line somewhere far behind him was just a black and green blur, hazed with smoke or vapour. Emboss had lost his glasses at some point. He lit up his magic, subconsciously rooting through his thankfully undamaged panniers for the little ponyoak box that held the spare set, whilst trying to make sense of the distant scene. That was when he noticed the ugly, three-furrowed rent along his right hand flank. It was bleeding freely. Emboss whinnied and almost crushed the ponyoak box with his telekinesis, such was his alarm. Truth? Where are you, Truth? Oh, skies above, please be alive…
Glasses perched on his muzzle and vision corrected, he surveyed the scene. What he saw made him struggle to his hooves, despite the agony this caused. He hissed through clenched teeth and swore himself. Gryphic figures were fleeing through the trees in disarray, far fewer than the dozen or so total than had waylaid them in the first place. Smoke lay over the gap in the forest where the road exited, and he saw little sparks where damp fires had started in the leaf litter, their smouldering kicking up further billowing clouds. The stink of burning gunpowder hadn’t left him, and it was only getting stronger. He could see no sign of his wife, or any of his travel companions. Despite the fear and terror that now crawled up his spine, somehow worse than the physical pain, he forced himself forward.
The scents on the breeze were more complex now, as he approached back toward the obscuring smoke. There were feather- and blood-marred shoe prints in the ground around the edge of the road, with downy fluff gathered in the adjacent drainage dyke. Even moving at a trot was blindingly painful; regardless,he managed a short hop, landing on the cobble and almost collapsing again. He must have taken it at a bound without noticing during the bolt.
Something growled at him from the smoke, and he froze. Black stripes emerged, like some optical illusion. The zebra, iYut, stood there, rigid and sweat-drenched, half of his short-cropped mane missing, neck and withers decorated with ruddy pink patches of burns. Soot had nearly turned his flanks black and, where it hadn’t, marred his white fur to a dirty grey. His muzzle had obviously suffered the worst of whatever had happened; burns, cuts and abrasions rendered it into a broken mask. One eye was screwed shut with swelling, and the imprint of a hoof was rendered in the orbit. In his mouth, he was holding a strap of woven hemp cords, onto which was attached a series of iron spheres, each painted a different primary colour.
His expression turned from one of utter hatred and the intent to do great violence, to a warm smile. He dropped the hemp cord and licked his lips, ears folding forward from their prior back position.
“Like I said,” he grunted, as he spat out a boxy, fractured tooth, covered in spit. “Canny folk!”
“That was you?” Emboss said, inanely, his voice sounding pained. “What did you do?”
“Flashbangs and frangible bursters, a fundament of my people. Works better underground,” he said, between heavy breaths, sitting down on his haunches. “Light adapted eyes, walls all around to focus the sounds, sometimes even kills through shock.” He laughed and grinned wider. “Or because of hot, flying metal.”
“Smells like fireworks…” Emboss mumbled, glancing around. “Where is everyone?”
“Hiding, hopefully,” the zebra said, slipping off his panniers and rummaging through them. “I only put down one fat bird, maybe two. The rest will be back, and they will be angry. Very, very angry.”
“Truth!” Emboss shouted, trying to peer through the remarkably persistent smoke. “Where are you, Truth?”
He trotted past the zebra, and almost had a heart attack upon seeing a lumpy shape lying some distance further back up the road. It was soon obvious that it wasn’t a pony, however. Emboss’ breath caught in his mouth; the gryphon was very clearly dead. Parts of him were missing that a living being couldn’t do without. Blackish blood was pooled all around him, highlighting paw and hoofprints, and feathers were strewn through it, being carried away by the gentle camber of the road toward the drainage dyke. The crossbow sat beside him, scuffed and soot-black but apparently still functional. Emboss wrapped magic around it and hefted it up, surprised at the feedback he received through the thaumokinetic link; it was far heavier than it looked. He called for Truth again, feeling bolder with the weapon in tow, but got no reply.
“Don’t worry, I think she was the one who kicked me,” iYut said, laughing. “I do not hold it against her; she is in heat, after all, and was under a lot of stress at the time anyway.”
“Hey!” Emboss turned around and tried to feel some chagrin at this very impolite statement, but couldn’t; all he felt was pain and a growing weakness, an inertia that came from the core of him. “You can tell that?”
“Anyone with a nose and even a little bit of pony in them can tell; it is a primal thing,” iYut said. “Being as it is, you should follow yours. Who else will smell like that around here?”
“That…” Emboss said, frowning. “Isn’t a bad idea, actually…”
iYut focused his one good eye on him, studying for a moment at the sway and confusion in Emboss’ voice. He bit his lip, shook his head.“Did one of those bastards get you?” he said, peering. “I am not surprised. Even in small fights, these gryphons can cut you to ribbons. They walk around with knives on the ends of their limbs at all times; it is to be expected.”
“Yes, but I’m fine. I need to find my wife,” Emboss said, inhaling deeply through his nose and trying to ignore the overwhelming stink of smoke, blood, a slew of odd chemical smells undoubtedly from the devices iYut had used, and the lingering tartness of broken grass rubbed into his muzzle.
“You are not fine, I can see from here,” iYut said, then drifted around to his right hand side. “Oh, yes, one of them cut you, I can fix this.”
Emboss tried to object, but he could only agree with the zebra, so kept still. iYut began to remove things from his hemp panniers, muttering to himself. Emboss’ entire back right leg was covered in blood, as though it had been varnished with the stuff, and it was still bleeding. Working with a surprising degree of finesse, iYut removed string-wrapped paper packages from their hiding places and bit off their tapered ends then, in a single motion, dumped the powdered contents of a package into four, evenly spaced gashes on Emboss’ flank. It was so sudden; all he could do was yelp. The powder clung, stinging and settling, and he whimpered, but it began to subside, along with the worst of the pain.
“We have been fighting these stupid fat birds for centuries. We have become good at treating equinoids for claw and beak injuries,” iYut said, spitting out the tapered end retained in his mouth. “This mix will clean the wound and stop the bleeding, and also deaden nerves.”
The zebra finished by applying a patch the size of a kerchief over the centre of the injuries. It began to react in some way with the powder, fizzing and sizzling until the material, which had the appearance of stretched out seaweed or some sort of damp rubber, bonded firmly to his skin. Though it hurt a little when he moved, where the patch had caught hairs, all the pain of the injury had stopped. He probed around the edges of it with a gentle lick of telekinesis, and found that much of his back end had become numb to the touch.
“Good?” iYut asked, putting his panniers back on.
“Good,” Emboss nodded, taking a shaky breath.
There was rustling then, of paws or hooves moving through the undergrowth and trees somewhere off the path. Emboss aimed the business end of the crossbow at the source, fumbling magically for wherever the trigger might be. From the smoke, which had begun to clear, a tiny hippogryph appeared, shortly followed by two identical gryphons. Besides mud and ruffled feathers, which they were already busy preening back into place, they didn’t seem to have been injured at all.
“Woah there, killer,” Astrapios said, holding short when he noticed the crossbow. “Just us. Everyone okay here?”
“Yes, boss,” iYut said, rolling his shoulders and wincing. “Still trying to find the wifey.”
“Oh, the one in heat?” Astrapios said, casually.
“Luna’s tits, does everyone know?” Emboss groaned.
“I am part pony,” Astrapios said, snickering. “It’ll only make her easier to track down; I’m sure she’s around here somewhere.”
“That’s what I was just saying,” iYut said, nodding.
“Right, well, we need to get off the road,” Astrapios said, making to head back into the woods. “We’ll head north across country and arc around to Lo Squitz, maybe meet up with the Charnel road.”
All of the equines present, even those with bird and cat in their heritage, became aware of the smell at pretty much the same time. With the smoke clearing out, and Emboss becoming better at mentally parsing the stench of the fight, it had only been a matter of time. He bit his lip and just about managed to stop it from curling up in a most uncouth fashion, but iYut had no qualms in pulling the full flemens gesture, which he seemed to enjoy, like a respectable pony who had happened upon a particularly nice flower. Emboss decided to be embarrassed on the zebra’s behalf and frowned.
“This way,” he said, for the benefit of the gryphons and, crossbow hovering beside him, the group headed into the woods.
The forest immediately around the road was obviously disturbed, and run through with tracks from various species, mostly gryphon. When the flashing devices had gone off, the twelve bandits, or highwaycocks, had fled in disarray, smashing smaller branches and generally making a mess of the flora. Emboss spotted several sites where some struggle had taken place, and surmised that they had tried to take flight in panic, only to collide with trees and come tumbling back down again. Singed feathers and a few, longer, pinions, whose loss must have been rather painful, added weight to this idea. He even found a gauntlet, evidently for gryphons to wear on over talons or paws, which ended in razor sharp tines. He wondered if this was intended as a terror weapon, as he nudged at it with his nose to get a better look at it. That certainly seemed to be the purpose. Gryphon claws were sharp and fierce enough, as well he knew.
Further away, however, the forest was pristine and uninjured, and became progressively thicker. The light making it down to the forest floor dimmed, due to an increasing prevalence of green and ochre vines, which wrapped the boughs of the jet species of tree in parasitosis, or symbiosis; Emboss couldn’t tell which it was. The large, diamond-shaped leaves that the vines sprouted at their tops were to blame for the shade.
The specimens of tree here were older and, as a result, much bigger. Where trailing vines did not obscure them, moss and fungus, mostly in shades of dun and copper, spread across them. There were even squirrels, which seemed far too Equestrian to be present in gryphic lands. They were slender and wore coats of black, but were identifiably squirrels. Bushy tails disappeared up trunks or scurried across the leaf litter as they came near. Little birdsong reached his ears, and he saw no flying forms. All the time, he followed his nose, maintaining decorum by not giving in to the urge to roll his top lip.
Just before the sun vanished for the night, they found her. For half an hour, the scent had been very strong, and mixed in with her usual, personal smell. Despite his tiredness from the day’s walking and the fight on the road, he managed to gallop up the low incline in the forest and bounded over a fallen tree, which had been cored and was now rife with various mycelial infestations. He halted as he landed, sniffing deeply, then glanced around, trying to get a track on her.
The leaf litter was disturbed and mud rooted up, and some very identifiable shoe prints were impressed in the dirt. He followed them around to the end of the fallen bough, where they terminated, and there she was, hidden within the hollow, eyes wide, posture rigid and terrified. A pure and unashamed happiness filled him as she sprung out. They necked, tightly embracing one another. There was no need for words, and Emboss had none anyway. He couldn’t stop himself from crying as they kissed. Even though she tasted like a fungal nursery, and her mane looked like she had been dragged through a hedge backwards, he still thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Eventually, he managed: “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“I just kept running,” Truth said, even the crushed timbre of her voice, so terrified, making him hurt inside. “Then I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t smell you--”
“It’s alright, it’s okay,” he cooed, kissing her neck again. “We found you.”
“How did you find me?”
Emboss didn’t want to voice the words, and chose the lesser of two evils, pulling the gesture he had so long been suppressing.
“Oh!” She whinnied, understanding dawning. “I’d forgotten…”
“Ah, wonderful!” interrupted Astrapios, who’d come sauntering up the slope. “No harm?”
“Are you okay, love?” Emboss said, stepping back and looking her over.
“Cuts and bruises,” she said, sighing. “I’ll be fine.” Then she noticed the blood on Emboss, all down his back right leg, which had mostly air dried and was now swampy in his fur. “Oh, sweet foals, what happened to you?”
“Gryphon got him,” Astrapios said. “Just a scratch; probably instinctive.” He glanced back toward iYut, whose own injuries, whilst salved in various ways, mostly through self-administered first aid during the search in the forest, were still evident, including the hoof-print in the orbit of his left eye.
“Friend zebra patched me up,” Emboss said, rolling his shoulders in a shrug. “I think you got him in the face during all the commotion back there.”
“Oh, sorry,” Truth said, glancing between her back hooves and the bashed up zebra. “I was just so afraid. I didn’t really know what I was doing.”
“Think nothing of it, no problem at all; a mare in your condition is prone to such things,” he said, sagely.
“Right!” Astrapios said, before Truth could reply or express displeasure at iYut’s comment. “I don’t think we’ll make it to Lo Squitz before nightfall, which is any minute now, given this diversion.”
“We can’t travel at night?” Emboss said, glancing upward at the sky’s nearly vanished light.
“Far too easy to get lost or injured, and there are blaggards abroad,” Astrapios opined, and that seemed to be the end of the discussion, because next he said: “Who knows how to start a fire?”
“If we start a fire, said blaggards will see us, won’t they?” Emboss said, idly grooming the mess and leaves from his wife’s fur with the tip of his nose. “There has to be someone among us who can see in the dark, too. Our nightvision isn’t that bad, and we’re only ponies.” He shot a look at the silent sisters. “Aren’t you mainline gryphons nocturnal hunters anyway?”
“What we are and what we aren’t,” said one of them.
“Cannot be so easily categorized,” finished the other.
“I don’t think that really answers my question,” Emboss said, in their vague direction, unsure of to whom he should direct his replies, and whether it really mattered. “I think I speak for both of us when I say that we're done sitting around on our haunches waiting for things to happen.”
He glanced at his wife for confirmation, finding it in spades, then she said: “I don't want to spend another minute in this forest longer than we have to.”
“Well, alright,” conceded Astrapios, whose expressions were becoming harder to read by the minute in the fading light. “But if you fall in a hole and break your legs, I'll just have to put you out of your misery.” He laughed and scratched at the ground. “I think that's vaguely south-south east, over there,” he said, indicating a gap between boughs that were now discernible only from other aspects of the forest by shadowy smudges.
*
They left sylvan clutches in a quiet troupe about an hour later, Truth and Emboss leading a neat line of softly moving figures. The rolling moor that lead down to Lo Squitz was thicker and wilder here, the bristly heads of unfamiliar, yet delicious looking, grasses, brushing against Emboss' barrel as they moved and, here and there, the swaying washed out shapes of flowers, frilly hexagons of too-flimsy membrane, danced to the tune of the insistent and nagging wind.
The Equestrian moon, ever a comfort to lost and lonely travelers, cast its luster over even gryphon lands, sparing and forgetting none in its nightly peregrinations. Emboss wondered, as he shivered and began to regret the civil attire of close-clipped fur, if the Princess of the Night had, in some Divine fashion, arranged a light to guide their way. Lo Squitz was a whorled knot of gleaming silver, islands of mercury dribbled into an ice cold stream, under a sky unmarred by clouds. The moon was not full, appearing in phase to be the waxing gibbous, but that was enough to drown out whatever petty fires and sources of illumination the gryphons in the town had placed.
He had worried at first, when they had set off from the little spot in the woods where Truth had hidden herself, because Astrapios seemed to navigate on intuition, and with a laissez-faire fit to put a nottlygna into an existential crisis, but it was for naught. The diminutive hippogryph had brought them out perfectly, precisely where they needed to be: on the edge of the forest adjoining the conspecific Lo Squitz moorland. He had never indicated an uncanny sense of direction before and, when navigating the sea off the coast, had needed many maps just to avoid being dashed on submarine boulders. That was something Emboss was keen to forget the image of; tanned hides as writing materials.
After two hours crossing the moor, during which their pace had to slow right down to avoid potential detection following Emboss' detection, admittedly at long aural range, of gryphish muttering and snk-snk-snk's of claws on stone, they joined up with the road again, though only followed its course from a distance, on safety grounds. The steady breeze now brought with it the proper smells of the city, an osmic fantasia on the themes of gryphon. Sulphur, burned and burning wood, and a dozen different types of pine-like smells, all volatiles and thick oils, as well as a certain skein of coal smoke, mixed with the bodily scents of gryphons and their feeding, ablutions and leavings.
Smells were controlled far less here, it seemed. Whereas Bad Gutz had the rape of ocean's bounty to cover and control it, and the constant blast of cold sea air to clear it, further inland, they had no such luck. Even the breeze was not enough to clear it from settling in the low point of the valley, just over the town. Emboss wondered if gryphons even had a particularly refined sense of smell. Judging by the stink of their diets, and the lack of much olfactory signaling, at least of which he knew, suggested that they didn't.
Gradually, the main road broadened and the materials used in its construction took on a more solid tone. Huge blocks of granite, faced with fine cubic patterns like crenelations or squares of chocolate, had been set ten abreast with brick separations that also held fine iron-worked drainage gutters. Either side of the road, the grassy dykes and ditches with stagnant, oil-filmed water, had been replaced by steeply angled v-shapes, in which the drained water flowed fast and along courses bedded with a coarser granite. Occasionally, his shod hooves would throw up a flickering spark, which fled across the night and died out as soon as it appeared.
Emboss was busy admiring the engineering work, which was almost on a par with Equestrian standard models, when his wife let out a gasped “Finally!” and he looked up from the road, and beheld Lo Squitz's Western Gate. Compared to Port Dauphine, these looked far older and more decrepit, and not at all what he had been expecting, given the fine condition of the road leading up to it. The walls it lead through were moss-drowned and made of mortared flint blocks, roughly quarried in some distant age, and the gate itself was a squashed ovoid, fashioned in newer-looking oak, barred with iron and locked tight. There was a smaller wicket gate inset, open, and with an oil or gas light ensconced in glass that cast a pool over its entrance from above.
What Emboss had, at first, mistaken for a pile of rags and rubbish, shook and juddered violently as they approached, then unfolded to reveal the shape of a gryphon wearing heavy oilskins and an assortment of different pieces of armor. He, and Emboss was only half sure of the gender, was parked on his haunches, and hissed softly in challenge as he hefted a crossbow, of primitive single-shot make, in their general direction. The weapon seemed to double as a general purpose devise, for its long body was gnarled and knotted up at the mouth, as in a good cudgel, and had a sliver of stout iron, sharpened and with a little hooked curve in the tip, emerging from its stock.
Fierce eyes flicked between Emboss and Truth, then took in the gryphons and Astrapios, obviously missing iYut. The thaumic mechanism by which his rocks effected their disguise of him had evidently reestablished themselves. There was an awkward moment of uncomprehending silence as two cultures sized each other up. Emboss saw a talon curl around from its place on the trigger guard to the tong of metal that was the trigger itself. He wondered how much tension it would stand before loosing the evil shaft that lurked inside its wooden embrace. Backward-facing barbs lined the tip. If the gryphon decided to stick it in him, he knew the round would not be coming out.
Astrapios ambled out between them and the nightwatchcock, and clicked his beak for attention. To Emboss he said: “Let me handle this, friend gryphon here doesn't want a fight.” Then he turned to the nightwatchcock, and said something in gryphic that sounded quite convivial, as much as a language composed of harsh guttural noises and staccato squeaks, chirps and clicks could to equine ears.
The conversation turned into a negotiation quite rapidly. Emboss recognized the gesticulating, and even some of the words or phrases. Astrapios had said the gryphon didn't want a fight, and this was largely true, at least a fight involving lots of unpleasant stabbing and impolite gouging. He was, however, more than willing to set about a mercantile conflict. Eventually, after the moon had slipped a little further through the tapestry of night, detente was reached, and peace treaties signed by way of some grubby coinage pressed into the talons of the nightwatchcock, who subsequently shambled off, suddenly discovering that he had an incredibly fascinating thing to inspect a short distance away.
Astrapios beckoned them through the wicket gate and, one by one, for the portal was only meant to admit a singleton, they entered Lo Squitz a little before midnight.
Any self-respecting Equestrian town or village would long ago have put itself firmly to bed. The pubs and licensed venues bucked out at eight in the evening, and even wild parties, thrown once a year by the most daring Libertines, would only tread the dancefloor until eleven. Canterlot was different, a real twenty-five hour, ten days a week type of city, but comparatively few actually lived there. Lo Squitz was just an ordinary town, typical of many such places, as far as Emboss knew, and it was as bustling and busy as if they had trotted in at noon.
Gryphons and alce muscled past one another as throngs of feathery beings strutted and slithered across a wide plaza, which Emboss found himself glancing around, looking for something, until he realized that he had never seen such a space without at least one large fountain or outrageous statue. At the centre was nothing, merely a point at which all the edges were equally distant. It made him feel immediately ill at ease.
Much of the traffic seemed to be heading away from, or toward, large structures that erupted out of the ground at irregular intervals, shaped faintly like a gryphon's head and beak. Only as they wandered further in, trying to gain a sense of the place, did they notice that these were underground entrances and exits, each decked in chickenscratch signage. Gas lights lit the tops of the 'beaks', dangling from them on deliberately crooked stanchions like the angling lures of certain deep sea fish.
Along five lines of sight, equally spaced around the other side of the plaza, streets raced off on odd vectors. The business premises here, shops and restaurants, all appeared to be rather at the top end of the market, and were dressed in lots of marble and rich oak. Through beveled windows, hints of soft, plush things and sheer quality came, right at the edges of perception.
“When you're done sightseeing, we'll need to go downstairs to pick up a boat,” said Astrapios, adopting a hushed Equuish tone.
“Boat?” Emboss said, dimly.
“Well, we're going into the east, aren't we?” Astrapios said. “There are canals all over the place, linking industrial and production centres with markets and so on. Really big barges and other watercraft, mostly run on steam or pulled by alce. There are systems of locks and lifts that will take you all the way from where we are now, at more or less sea level, right up to the pawhills of the Mountain. Rather swank technology, even if I do say so myself. We've been building them for centuries, one of our few indigenous ideas.”
“Not much call for it in Equestria,” Emboss said, sighing, suddenly realizing just how tired he was and how far he had traveled, as his body issued a litany of aches and pains, including a creeping fire on his flank, beneath the zebric patch.
“I know, you just use airships, good roads and sheer brute force,” Astrapios said, shaking his head. “Combine that with a generally lower level of what is usually termed heavy industry, lighter bulk fuel and food needs, and a smaller national range, and it all becomes economically unfeasible. And, how could I forget, your steam train is making a big splash--”
“Are you sure a town somewhere isn't missing its tour guide?” Truth mumbled, nudging Emboss.
“Er, is there a ticket office somewhere?” Emboss said, rolling his shoulders and trying to loosen the kinks and knots that had built up from carrying the panniers so far.
“Ticket office?” Astrapios said, as if the words were unfamiliar.
“For the... barge, or whatever it is...” Emboss said.
“Skies above, old horse, absolutely not,” Astrapios said, feigning shock. “The locks and canals, and most of the barges that run regularly on them, are owned and operated by the Crown, for the free use of all citizens and modes of business. Of course, you can hire a private vehicle, some opulent yacht or something, there's usually space for everyone to use the waterway, but they are few and far between. Not much is done in a hurry in this country, you'll soon learn that.”
“So you just get on?” Emboss said, quizzical. “Without paying?”
“Without paying,” Astrapios said, nodding.
*
The equinoids among them whinnied or nickered with relief as they entered the underground warmth of Lo Squitz, following Astrapios through the warren of granite-walled tunnels and hollows. If the city above had been busy, then the domain below was positively fit to bursting. Emboss found it strange that a species with large wings and generally bulky bodyplans would choose a life in such close quarters, especially when something as apparently trifling as tithes of persons and gold was in question, but nobody around seemed oppressed or otherwise unhappy.
Building materials varied widely, though the most common type Emboss saw was unfinished granite, cut into a number of different, largely square, shapes. It lined the walls, made up the buildings and ran underhoof. In some instances, entire brick houses had been moved brick by brick and rebuilt in situ, slotted in as though they were only bricks themselves.
Young gryphons, cubs, of different ages and types, slipped gaily chirping and hooting to each other along the thoroughfares and, where their passage allowed, Emboss saw brief glimpses into private warrens that looked a little like Equestrian neighborhoods, townships in miniature, were houses of different sizes were crammed into and around the ceilings of hollows as though they were the nests of weaver-birds. This was where the normal folks lived, the lower and middle classes, by rough approximation. As they passed further down, they ran into bulging expansions in the general threading of tunnels and passageways, that held freestanding shops and small warehouses, where traders blatantly hawked their wares. Some even broke into tortured Equuish the moment they saw ponies, though the party did not stop for very long.
Though Emboss had given up trying to keep an idea of where they were in relation to their entry point after the first layer of the town, he had been subconsciously counting his steps, and knew that they had gone at least three miles of distance before they finally entered the Bargeway. Astrapios had launched into full expository mien, so Emboss knew the name of their location long before they actually reached it. The roughly oblong hall, which was natural in its origins and so roughly faced all round, was loud with the clanging and cawing of gryphon industry in full flight.
Cutting through the centre of the hall, and forming its 'floor', was a smooth gray waterway, in which sat many long, narrow barges of similar design. Docks and wharves spread outwards in fractal patterns to reach them, but there were also catwalks and bridges that spanned the two sides of the Bargeway, from which ladders and ropes allowed access to top decks. There were at least a hundred of the large craft, decked in Royal purple and black, scattered at various points across water.
At each end of the Bargeway, lifts of evidently gargantuan strength and proportion were hauling up their loads of either barge, dry and settled on its hull, or water, which Astrapios explained was for flow balancing purposes. Much of the lifting work was done by displacing water or using it as a counterweight, with steam engines to compensate for mistakes or unexpected loads. Once they reached the surface, they could be fed back into the canal system.
There didn't actually seem to be very much stuff being delivered to Lo Squitz. Emboss saw far more in the way of things merely being shuttled, by of teams of alce stevedores and the occasional crane, from one barge to another. Exactly what, he couldn't really determine. Only when something obvious came into view, like gigantic bundles of lumber, or the evident tubular shapes of steam boilers, was the identity clear. The rest of the time, everything was crated up in wood, and so hidden from view.
It was far too loud and bustling to allow normal discussion at this point, so they continued to follow Astrapios as they navigated through the crowds. The side of the Bargeway they were on was, rather unimaginatively, just called Leftside, though it was a massive flat bank, and formed a little town all by itself. The inevitable dockside pubs and bawdy houses, replete in brick armor and with lewd, visual signs that needed no interpreter to understand, even across a biological and cognitive horizon, crouched below inversely stacked shelves of small apartments and flats, for gryphons only, perhaps, as they had no visible means of entrance from below.
How Astrapios selected the barge they eventually boarded Emboss didn't know. None of them were marked in any meaningful way, even in gryphic. All of them, perhaps, carried passengers, and it was only necessary to pick one that was headed in the right direction. Emboss kept expecting someone to turn up and demand to see their tickets, or at least count them in as they entered a foyer on the barge, but there seemed to be little in the way of crew.
The place was tatty and clearly well used, with a panoply of scuffs and talon marks on the floors, but far from decrepit. The gryphon sisters, Erisne and Ensire, boarded last and, seconds later, someone slammed closed the pentagonal hatch from the outside, which muted the industrial roar. The deck beneath Emboss' hooves clanged and rumbled, various subsonic noises rising and falling in quickening crescendo, like the heaving of a giant sprinting uphill. There was a surprisingly delicate quiver which, for a thing of this size, was no small feat at all, then the barge began to move.
“Oh, good,” said Astrapios, glancing around. “Just in time. Clever, aren't I?”
“Where does the barge go from here?” Truth said, peering around the foyer suspiciously, as if still searching for someone to buy tickets from.
“Everywhere, eventually,” Astrapios said, looking down the corridors that led in three cardinal compass directions away from the foyer. “It's a sort of big loop at both ends, with a long straight bit in the middle.”
“No, I mean, what's the next stop on the line?” Truth said.
“Bregth, if memory serves,” Astrapios said, trotting off in a direction he had apparently selected at random. “Lovely little town, had some wonderful tush there, if you know what I mean, looks a lot like Lo Squitz actually...”
With the hippogryph narrating the entire way, they eventually found themselves somewhere to rest their hooves and other ambulatory appendages, in the shape of a long, spacious lounge located toward the rear of the barge, inside which were crammed hundreds of mismatched chairs, a herd of benches of remarkable vintage, and surprisingly few gryphons. Emboss had been anticipating a positive riot of beaks, wings and claws, but only about a dozen or so inhabited the big public space, snoozing in the higher spots or staring out of the lozenge-shaped windows at the slithering-past of docks, quays and other assorted industrial paraphernalia.
With a lot of muffled shouting from outside, and the by-now expected clanging and banging, the barge was loaded onto its lift and begun on the climb to the surface, taking with it a draught of water. Astrapios remained the only one among them talking now, as they all settled onto benches designed for gryphons, too tired and aching to offer much in the way of conversation. Emboss was a city pony, and simply not designed for cross country trotting. There had even been some galloping back there, somewhere at any rate, and Emboss was quite sure that speeding about in such a fashion was not something anypony should be getting up to, much less him.
Emboss was fast asleep in a disgraceful little pile before the barge even reached the summit of its mechanistic climb, and only woke again when the earthquakes began.
*
King Hywell crouched on his belly in the gaily-pendented aftcastle of the Didn't Want To Stop For Tea Anyway, the steam yacht which he had stolen, and peered over the imported ponyoak rail out across the expanding V of froth-frilled grey water, looking for signs that the military were still pursuing them.
In the distance was Bregth, still very visible despite the span of miles now separating them, due to the flat nature of the surrounding countryside. The two-town lay beneath a pillar of black smoke like the body of a sooty jellyfish embedded in the loamy chalk of the central lowlands. With the steam motor chugging away below deck, it was retreating at a fair pace. Soon, even the low and desolated landscape around the canal, long since cleared of trees and pocked here and there with the moundings-up of iron works and mines, as well as the countless other medium-heavy specialist industries that provided the umpteen million chemicals and processes all the other work required, would not prevent the two-town from falling out of sight.
His adventure had become quite dramatic in the last day. It must have had something to do with the tremendous light that had appeared in the sky before dawn, whose tendrils of aurora had not dissipated until the sun had gone as far as the zenith. First, on arriving in Bregth, he had been dismayed to learn that, despite his sudden and entirely unannounced departure for parts unknown, word of his movements had reached the nominal civilian authorities. They, in their disgustingly servile manner, had put on the most ridiculous welcoming ceremony for him, which had all begun with a full surprise rendition of Stoop Not Thou Weary Souls, complete with cannon, trapeze and performing snakes.
To make matters worse, Hywell had been so stunned at this turn of events that he had only been able to muster blithe compliance with their intended, and hastily put together, schedule. His addled brain had rolled out all the platitudes and regalness his cubhood instructors and life of public service had drilled into him. There had been a crash tour of a smeltery, which made iron nails and smelled of cleaning fluid and fresh paint, followed by a tasting session and another tour of a distillery, the primary product of which was a deeply objectionable, if extremely intoxicating, liquor, made from turnips.
Then, someone had tried to assassinate him. It had taken the civilian authorities almost no time to organise this visit and, equally, it had taken them very little time to scare up an assassin or two. Foel had been distracted by the turnip stuff, tasting it repeatedly and very carefully in order to ascertain its various characteristics, and was just in the middle of a speech about the stuff's cinnamon notes and heady bouquet, when a pair of masked alce, each armed with crossbows, emerged from the crowd of dignitaries, officiants, aide-de-camps and other hangers on, and opened fire.
Hywell's only cogent thought had been a prideful one, because the crossbows were gryphic ones and clearly sourced from an armourer in the that very town, not Equestrian ones, which were obvious because they always had far too much complex clockwork and extra fiddly bits. He was about to grab someone and congratulate them on their patriotism, when one of the alce got around to pulling his trigger, sending a bolt spiralling across the alarmingly narrow space that now separated them.
There had been a warm sensation in his head, and a strange feeling of tenseness, and that was all Hywell really remembered. He'd guessed what had happened, though. The Crown, sensing danger, had reacted on his behalf. The only pity was that they had been standing next to several hundred copper-lined barrels of high-proof alcohol. The next thing he'd known was Foel bellowing instructions at people and dragging him from a pile of splintered timbers and crushed rock.
Stealing the yacht had simply seemed like the next logical step. They'd had just enough time to do it, as the remaining elements of the military, their leadership now scattered finely and at high altitudes above the town, or carefully mixed with and beneath the remains of much of the Artisian's District, decided how best to exact revenge. That was the problem with last-minute assassinations; far too easy to end up standing beside tons of flammable material and an enraged, Divine source of ignition, when it all actually went down.
“Looks like they were planning on a buffet lunch!” Foel called, from somewhere on amidecks.
“The bastards,” Hywell said, tearing his gaze away from the water now he was sure of their clean escape. “I bet they even had those little hats for the snackrabbits.”
Foel nodded grimly as Hywell climbed down from the aftcastle and joined him on deck, sidling up to the folded-down mainsail and mast and using it as protection from the onrush of wind. The gryphon was engaging in some post-prandial preening, but stopped and produced the damning evidence; three paper hats, crushed in his talons, flecked with blood.
“Damn decent of them to bring it all to a close, really,” Foel said, clicking his beak. “We'd have been there days otherwise.”
“Do you think they're all dead?” Hywell said. “The... duke, I think it was?”
“Not much left of the district, sire, let alone the occupants, present company excepted.”
“Shame.”
“Take heart, sire, there are always new rats to replace the old. I suspect they are already popping up out of whatever gutter they call home. In any case, the punishment for attempted regicide is summary execution. Nice and clean, was that back there.”
“Right as usual, Foel,” Hywell said, sighing.
“Remarkable technology, this,” Foel said, indicating the boat in general.
“Seems fairly unremarkable to me.”
“Well, what about that automatic tiller?”
“Automatic tiller, Foel?”
“The one doing the steering, sire.”
“I saw no such thing.”
“It's not up on the aftcastle?”
“There's nothing up there at all.”
“Oh, balls.”
*
The Didn't Want To Stop For Tea Anyway possessed a steel-plated prow. When the yacht had first been built, some decades past, the alloy had been in considerable vogue, representing as it did the modernity, toughness and general spirit of the nation. For a boat intended as a floating tribute to aforementioned virtues held in trust by the state, the fact that some of its construction was not made of steel, perhaps demonstrated considerable restraint on the part of whatever committee was responsible.
However, in order to showcase the swiftness and surety of the state, an equally vital pursuit, the yacht also needed to cut quickly through the water, producing in the final design a dart-shaped nose, and an overall thinness. Power was provided by no fewer than six high pressure boilers, driving a pair of tremendously expensive and effective triple expansion engines and two, inevitably steel-plated, screws. No cost had been too great in this department. Unfortunately, the one thing that had been neglected was an automated tilling system, that role intended to be filled by sinecured former naval officers, grown fat on state pensions and wearing finely-tailored dress uniforms.
For some minutes following their discovery of this fact, Hywell and Foel struggled to make sense of the overly-ornate control scheme. It had made so much sense in the panic of the boat's initial theft and, had they possessed a few more minutes, they might have discovered the decidedly non-automated tiller. The Didn't Want To Stop For Tea Anyway struck the West-East 22, a prosaic barge of vast tonnage and inevitable momentum, at the apex of a very broad curve in the expansive canal, more or less head on.
The spear-like metal nose of the yacht sliced into the far softer wood of the barge with a clipped thwack, belying the hundred or so knots of combined impact velocity in its innocuousness. At the same moment, the substructure beneath the steel-plate began to buckle, transferring energy in rippling waves through the comparatively fragile decking and general timbers. In the rear of the decomposing folly-craft, the boilers ripped themselves free of their mountings and kept on going, being as they were, humble servants of the one true cosmic Lord and Master, physics.
Crushed between the immovable bulk of several thousand tons of barge and the onrushing of loosed steam boilers, complete with attached steel screws, gearboxes and other large, metal objects, the rest of the yacht immediately performed its best impression of a pancake.
*
“Ow,” said Foel, somewhere out of sight.
Hywell opened his eyes, talons already reaching for the Crown. It was its usual body-temperature warm, slightly slippery, and firmly on his head. He looked up, and saw he was within a shimmering, oily bubble, with Foel beneath the centre, standing on his back legs over him. His wings were unmantled, spread, arms wide. Tell-tale vibrations in the air and a haze of stinging black smoke around Foel’s thaumically-manicured claws told him all he needed to know.
“Still breathing, sire?” Foel said, words strangled. “It's just that this trick is a bit... draining...”
Beyond the skein of the Sharpe bubble, all Hywell could see was a tangle of metal, cogs and bits of unidentifiable machines. Yellow flashes of freshly smashed timber gave some hint as to what had happened.
“I'm okay,” Hywell breathed, slithering up onto his haunches. “Take it down.”
“I'm holding up fifteen tons of boiler and screw, sire,” Foel half-grunted. “Be ready to move, on my mark.”
Hywell scouted an exit; a gap in the general destruction that hinted at the remains of an open hold or cabin space. He tapped Foel on the hindquarters.
“Right, mark.”
There was a hideous, groaning heave of metal, drowning out the crackling snap of the Sharpe bubble vanishing into whatever hidden dimension it usually resided in. Hywell tensed and darted for safety. Immediately, something struck him a body blow that almost had him off his paws, but the surge of adrenaline fear and panic drove him forward. Dust, and the instinctive screwing shut of his eyelids, blinded him for a moment. Someone grabbed him, dragged him.
The avalanche of sound that came next continued for almost a minute, ending in distant and muted splashing noises. They were in a storage bay of some description, though so much damage had been done to it that what, if anything, had been stored here was no longer obvious. The wooden floors and ceilings were a crushed mess of crazed and fractured varnish, with a clear half of the space missing, smashed away by the impact.
Peering into the void beyond, Hywell could see beams and spars, and other rooms and spaces just like this one, cleaved in twain or with chunks missing from them. Not much was left of the yacht, except crumpled metal, and the boilers themselves, which all seemed to have survived intact. They were spilling steam and smoke now, and the scent of mild acridity had developed into a pungent aroma of a thousand wood burning fires. The boiler that Foel had been preventing from killing them both now balanced precariously above silky gray water, which was flooding into the lower spaces.
“That bastard Crown,” Foel remarked, holding up his talons, which were smoking and burned where the quick met the nail, the arcane runes carved there barely visible. “Picks its bloody moments...”
“You know it watches,” Hywell said, edging away from the cavity. “I'd take its inaction this time as sound approval of your bodyguarding skills, Foel.”
Foel growled noncommittally, then noticed the boiler and its current position. His eyes went wide, and he tried to move to place himself between Hywell and the teetering mechanism.
“Foel! Whatever is the matter?” Hywell said.
“Steam explosion, sire. Surprised it hasn't happened already. Those boilers have been running all day, and they've just been at full tilt for a good half an hour. Get it? They're bloody hot, and the moment they hit the water...”
“They'll cool down?”
“In a manner of speaking, sire, that's exactly what they'll do.” Foel rolled his wrists around several times, performing little gestures Hywell knew meant he was trying to activate his Sharpe abilities. “Buggerit...”
“Foel?”
“Too much power through the casting substrate causes pronounced ablation relative to excess,” he said, as if recalling a line from a textbook. “Never thought I’d actually do it.”
Hywell’s uncomprehending stare was answered when Foel raised his talons. They were still glowing cherry red at the tips and, where the precisely cut magical symbols had once been, were now melted ruins. The half-cooled dribbles of keratin ran to the quick like the frozen tears of a marble statue.
“Gadarn’s beak!” Hywell squeaked. “No magic?”
“No magic,” Foel nodded, slinking away and toward the other side of the half-room, where the soot-stained remnants of a door leaned against its frame. “We need to clear out of here. ”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Hywell said, following him.
Foel had just shouldered the door out of the way when the barge shook bodily. Hywell felt as though the whole thing had dipped below the water and then popped back up. The explosive sound that came next seemed to hammer his ears from every angle, shaking things about in his guts. Foel fell with the force of it, vanishing into the corridor beyond. At the same moment as the explosion tiny objects slashed through the cabin, narrowly missing Hywell. He felt one pass across the back of his neck, zinging through the air.
Foel screamed. Hywell had never heard the old cock make a noise like that, and suddenly felt as if he’d had his rear end dipped in ice water. He rushed through and found him, back legs collapsed, clinging to the corridor’s seaward railing. Along his left flank were a pair of ugly tears, like furrows in soil, bleeding sluggishly. The nails of his paws skittered as he tried to stand up, but it didn’t seem as though his legs were working properly. Though light was coming in from the many random punctures in the superstructure of the barge, it was hard to see where else he might have been injured.
“Bloody shrapnel!” Foel gasped, releasing his grip on the railing and falling to the varnished wooden deck, which was rucked up in places and smashed in others, from where it had buckled with the impacts and subsequent detonations. “One of the boilers must’ve gone up.”
Hywell ran his talons up the plates and folds of Foel’s armour, searching for the pont grabbage. This inset claw-hold sat underneath an overhang of metal, just above where the wingroots met. He had been shown how and when to use it, but that had been a long time ago. Foel was much lighter than he seemed. All the flyers of the world were. So much feather and taut muscle, but little of the heavier stuff of which alces were made. Even he, who had spent much time of late luxuriating in the ease of his office, lifted him up with ease.
“Where do we go?” Hywell said, once he’d stabilised himself on three legs.
“Up, up on the top,” Foel grunted.
Moving him seemed to have exacerbated something, because the blood flowed far more freely now. They left a trail of it behind them as they struggled along the buckled corridor, away from the ruined prow of the barge, like the slime of some macabre fleshy slug. Eventually, as Hywell dragged Foel up a wide companionway onto the top deck, he realised that the gryphon had passed out. Things were more obvious in the blinding light of day, even as smoke curled and flurried away on the gentle breeze. He saw half a dozen inward punctures on Foel’s armour, all having come from the same direction. There were none on the other side.
The situation was becoming more desperate. The top deck was crowded with wreckage and stored material, the two intermixing so thoroughly that it was hard to tell what had been originally part of the barge, and what had been kinetically introduced. When the smoke briefly cleared, he could see all the way from the prow to the stern, and it was all like that, except for a smoking, bubbling crater amidships. That was where one of the boilers must have ended up. From every open porthole came smoke, and it was evident that much of the barge was in the process of burning.
Someone shouted. It was the soft, melodic tone of somepony. Hywell recognized the speaker’s race straight away. Equestria made a point of sending lots of diplomats, officials and other meaningless functionaries to all of the public official events. Celestia herself had even come to his coronation. Now there was a creature he hoped never to meet again. The undisputed and total ruler of all ponies had an overwhelming friendly politeness to her, but there was no soul behind those magenta eyes, no spark of personhood. He’d often wondered if anyone else had noticed this, or if it was he alone who had seen through her finely-crafted pony suit.
The pony shouted again, and there was a flash of light. Immediately, the wind picked up and blew away smoke. From the direction of the stern, about a hundred yards away, a little procession of ponies came. There was not only the one, but two, and it seemed as though they had their foal with them. Then he realised that the foal had a beak and a set of wings, and saw that it was the tiniest hippogryph he had ever seen. He had not known they came so small. Following behind them was a pair of black-feathered hens, pure gryphons. There was also the suggestion of something stripey and barely there at all, but Hywell dismissed it as the effects of smoke stinging his eyes.
Hywell clicked his beak and looked down at Foel. His breathing had become shallow and barely there at all. Where Hywell had lain him was now a pool of blood so black it seemed like tar.
“I’m so sorry, Foel,” Hywell mumbled, feeling like someone had slipped a needle of cocaine in behind his ears. “This is all my fault.”
His friend did not answer.
Hywell simply sat there on his haunches, staring at the life leave Foel’s body. The next thing he was aware of was a soft sensation at his side, where the transition from feathered front to furred behind was. It was tickly and full of whiskers, but it drew his focus away from Foel. There was a dun little pony nuzzling him. It had an auburn mane, the cut of which suggested it was a female. Behind her sat a male, who was wearing a pair of spectacles and looked confused and terrified.
“Help me,” Hywell gasped, speaking gryphic.
The two ponies just glanced at each other, then simultaneously looked beyond him. Following their gaze he saw the little hippogryph, who was dressed in absurd equestrian finery like some kind of ceremonial soldier missing his plate. It had little tassels on the shortened epaulettes, which fluttered gaily in the strong breeze.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” the hippogryph said, matching his gryphic. “King Hywell Edda.” He looked up at a spot just above Hywell’s head, which he had long grown used to people doing. “And that is the Autumn Crown.”
“If you’re here to try and take it,” said Hywell, voice strangled by a strange tensing up of his throat. “Please, just wait. If you go for me now, the Crown will kill my bodyguard, and everyone else on this barge, defending itself.”
“We’re not here to do you any harm, sir,” the hippogryph said, curtly using the wrong title. “But we have to get off this boat. My gryphon friends here have been moving survivors who can’t leave by their own steam to the banks.” He gestured to the pair of identical black-feathered pure gryphons, whose plumages were ruffled and fluffed up beyond repair.
“Take my bodyguard first,” Hywell said, laying a talon on Foel’s armoured chest. “He is in need of--”
“Survivors, sir,” the hippogryph said, not meeting his gaze. “We’ve only time for survivors.”
Eventually, when Hywell said and did nothing in response but allow his talons to slide off the battered armour, the two gryphons took to the wing and carefully scooped him up, one to each of his forearms.