Several hours had passed by the the time the two stallions had the stagecoach in an operable condition. It was far from being repaired, but they were certain they could pull it again without losing a wheel or breaking the reins off. The rear axle took the most amount of work, as the wheel that came off had actually sheared the hub off with it. Their temporary solution was to take some of the iron bars down and hammer them into the axle to keep the wheel in place.
All of the windows were ruined one way or another, so they just chucked the shards of glass off into the field. They did the same with anything else deemed unsalvageable, like the door and a few broken containers that had once sat on top of the stagecoach. Everything else, if it couldn’t be pieced back together, had been stuffed inside. When all was said and done, the carriage looked like it had taken a tumble down a hill. Noon had arrived, and with it came the desire to just lay down and not do anything.
Their stomachs did keep them awake, however. Soon the campfire was rekindled and the two stallions sat around it, tired and aching. Whiskey rubbed at the bruise on his side, using a simple spell to help ease the pain and keep his weight off his bad leg. Sharp Tack stirred a pot over the fire, a hard and frustrated look on his face. Off to the side, they had put the mare resting in the grass.
“I still don’t know what we’re going to do with her,” he said, glancing away from the stew and down at her. He took the wooden spoon out of the pot and tasted it. “Got anything?”
Whiskey held the mare’s notebook in his hooves, flipping through the pages. “She’s been places,” he said. “The Riverwood Forest, some place called Hoofprint, the... June-amp Ocean? Ever heard of that?”
“Geography was never my strongest suit,” Sharp Tack said. “What, has she just been listing the places she’s been? Like some kind of travel route?”
“Drawings, actually,” Whiskey said, presenting one of the open pages. It was of a surprisingly well-drawn forest interior, where beyond a row of tall pine trees, the forest dropped away to reveal an incredible and expansive landscape with mountains in the far distance.
Sharp Tack whistled. “Artsy filly, huh? Any maps?”
“Some,” Whiskey said, flipping to another page. “But they’re incomplete and not anything I recognize. I mean, what in the North is ‘Harmphstead?’” He showed his friend a detailed map of the presumptive kingdom, whose borders looked like a misshapen potato. “I swear half this stuff is made up.”
Sharp Tack just shrugged. “Beats me. There’s nothing in there about who she is or what she does?”
“Nope, just these kind of drawings.” Whiskey set the book down and reached for an apple. “How’s the stew going?”
“It should be ready soon,” he replied, stirring the pot again. He took another quick taste. “Can you go see if we have any salt? If we did it’d be in the crate with all our medical stuff.”
“Good thing that crate was a broken one,” Whiskey said with a sigh, standing up with a limp. “And why is the salt in the same box as our bandages?”
“I used it for dealing with those bee stings a while back,” he chirped. “It’s pretty effective stuff.”
“Whatever,” Whiskey muttered, walking towards the stagecoach. “I like my stew unsalted, thank you very much!” he hollered as reached the carriage.
He knocked his hoof on the side as he poked his head in the doorway, looking over the loose contents and the dilapidated state of it all. There wasn’t much in the way of sentiment held over it, but it was still the first thing he was ever in charge of. When the boss paired him and Sharp Tack together and set them off, sending them off across the country, the process was like discovering an entirely new piece of himself. And this was the catalyst.
He sighed. The floorboards creaked uneasily back at him as he shuffled his way inside. He overturned salvaged materials and shifted through broken bits of wood until he finally found the medicine box. He popped the steel lid and quickly found a salt shaker beneath a roll of gauze.
“And he mocks me for being disorganized,” he grumbled, taking the salt and scooting back over to the doorway. He popped out and took a few steps back towards the campfire, and as soon as it caught his eye, he froze in place.
The unicorn was sitting up right beside Sharp Tack. The world held a collective breath, not even the quiet winds stirring to bother the sudden silence.
It was the mare who broke it, not that she seemed to notice it in the first place. “Thirsty,” she said, her voice dry and cracking.
There was another bewildered pause, before Sharp Tack absentmindedly reached into his vest and produced his banged-up flask. The mare eagerly snatched it from him, her hooves shaking as she unscrewed the cap, brought it to her lips, and threw her head back.
“Whoa there!” Sharp Tack yelled, stealing it back before she guzzled the whole thing. She immediately choked on the bitter taste and started coughing and retching.
Whiskey hastily hobbled over. “Hey!” he shouted, throwing the salt shaker at the mare. It missed and landed at Sharp Tack’s hooves. “What do you think—!”
“Whiskey!” Sharp Tack barked, and the lazy stallion fumbled over the rest of his words. The two glared intensely at each other as the mare continued to try and control her lungs. Sharp Tack leaned over into a nearby box of ingredients he’d been using for the stew, and offered the mare a canteen. That he didn’t bother stopping her from drinking.
“Sorry about that,” he said to the mare with a nervous laugh. “Are you alright?”
She finished the canteen off and gasped for breath, only to suddenly start hiccuping. “I’ll live,” she said, a wariness to her tone.
“Help yourself to some stew,” he said, handing her a metal bowl. She took it in her hooves and nodded a thank-you. He hastily added, “I’ll be right back,” and then cantered off to intercept Whiskey before the stallion started speaking again.
Sharp Tack said in a hushed tone, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Me?!” Whiskey said, aghast. He threw a hoof out at the mare. “What do you think you’re doing?!”
“Be quiet!” Sharp Tack hissed back. He shot a glance at the mare who had already dipped the bowl in the stew and was taking generous gulps, holding the bowl up with her hooves. He turned and grabbed Whiskey by the foreleg, leading around and behind the stagecoach.
“I’ll reiterate,” Whiskey started, reluctantly holding back his voice. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t give one of our lockups our stock like that! That’s not how this works! That’s not how we work!”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we can’t exactly work the way we used to!” Sharp Tack rebuttled, knocking a hoof on the stagecoach beside them. “What do you want to do, tie her to the roof? She’s a unicorn, for crying out loud. And I checked those last two horn caps we have—even if we swap them out, there’s no way they’ll last until we get to Portsmouth. Would you rather have an angry captive or a blissfully ignorant and complicit one?”
Whiskey groaned and dragged his hooves across his face. “Alright, fine, I get the point. But what’re we going to do with her when we do get to Portsmouth?”
“Hell, I’m winging it here!” Sharp Tack said, trying to keep his voice down. “I didn’t expect our stagecoach to explode and complicate things!”
“Speaking of which,” Whiskey started, a bit of breath catching in his throat, “regardless of why that happened,”—he motioned at the tip of his own horn—“we both know the cause of it, and frankly, that scares me a little. I know this mare is going to net us a profit, but something tells me she isn’t going to be so complicit when we get to Portsmouth.”
“All the more reason to get her on our good side,” Sharp Tack finished. He poked his head around the carriage and spotted the mare dipping her bowl back into the stew for a second helping. He turned back to his friend and said, “Just follow my lead, alright? We can do this.”