//------------------------------// // Riposte I // Story: Wind and Stone // by Ruirik //------------------------------// Slumped against the side of the bed, Summer stared into the small fire burning in the hearth. Behind her Pathfinder had finally settled, his ragged breaths drawing in and out like waves breaking against rocky shoals. The peaceful sleep was a victory, more for the wine she had forced down his throat than her own skill with medicine. But some wounds were beyond her abilities. Grasping the sword she’d pulled from the burning camp, Summer inspected the blade. What had been a standard gladius had been broken near the tip, with the blade melted from the heat of the flames and the weight of the structure collapsing on top of it. The result was a sword curved down like a broad tipped fishhook at the point, with a central ridge that wavered in a chaotic pattern from point to guard. Even the blade itself was chipped and cracked, looking more like a poorly maintained sawblade than a soldier’s respectable weapon. Even the metal of the blade had been turned, stained black at the tip from Pathfinder’s seared blood. Looking at that blade filled her with an unparalleled fury. ...Kill... A scowl pulled the corners of her mouth into a steep frown, and she tucked the sword under her wing. Summer rose to her hooves, marched to the fireplace, and threw a small log into the flames. Orange embers burst from the coals and danced in the air before they were snuffed out, their beautiful ballets cut short by the cruelty of existence. The heavy door to the bedroom creaked as it opened, and Summer craned her neck around to see Rain limping in. Their eyes met; Rain nodded, Summer did not. “You can get a new sword at the armory,” Rain said after several moments. Summer’s ear twitched with her eyes glancing towards the blade, then scoffed. “I have a sword.” “That’s not a sword, that’s scrap metal.” “Whatever.” Rain made a grunt and shuffled towards the bed. Summer studied the sound, her ears picking up multiple diagnoses without so much as a follow-up glance. Leg swollen, to the point of being difficult to bend when walking, hence the scraping of her hoof against the floor. Words growled out indicative of extreme mental exhaustion, paired with heavy steps that suggested a mirroring physical symptom. “How’s the kid?” Summer shot Iron Rain a glare. “How the Hell do you think he is?” “Watch it, Celsus,” Rain warned her in a growling voice while her wings opened a bit. Summer returned her attention to the fire for a moment before she rose to her hooves. “Sleeping.” “No shit.” Rain moved towards the bed and looked him over. “Tell me something I don’t know.” “Keep him warm, if he starts making too much noise give him more of the wine on the nightstand,” Summer answered, gathering the broken, hook-like sword, her helmet, and her medical bag. Rain’s brows knitted together and she scowled. “What’s got you so pissy?” Summer said nothing, and made her way to the door with a purposeful march. Carver and Windshear, both standing dutifully outside the door, tried to get her attention when she passed them by, only to be ignored just as handily as Legate Rain had been. She moved through the halls of the governor’s mansion until she passed through the foyer, converted like so many other places into a makeshift hospital. The pained moans of the countless wounded fell on deaf ears, and Summer made her way outside. It was unseasonably cold. Fog had settled over Nyx, sheathing the full olive trees, hiding the densely packed streets from the squat buildings all around. Moans from the countless thousands of wounded and dying drifted through the fog from all around, creating an ethereal, haunting tone in the city. A breath of cool air washed over her as wind whistled through the trees that dotted the city streets. Overhead, the clouds formed an impenetrable wall of darkness across the night sky. Summer unfurled her right wing and bit down on the crest, squeezing flesh and feather between her blunt teeth, and pulling on the alula a little. The metallic tang of copper painted her tongue, reminding her she hadn’t preened in days. Too many patients, too much blood. Not enough time. Summer shook her head to dispel the thoughts, and once she had her bearings she moved quickly through the gloomy streets. It took her only a short amount of time to get to the area that had been set up for survivors of the prison camp. Rain had ordered them separated from the rest of the wounded so Summer and her medical team could divert more resources to them. The least they could do, Rain had said, was to get the prisoners some extra food. Summer maneuvered her way through the throng of suffering, her eyes skimming over the hardly covered ponies for the one she had seen at the camp. She found him towards the far left corner of the triage area, his teal coat and greasy brown mohawk making him easier to spot among the more drably colored mares and stallions rescued that morning. He raised his head to look at her when Summer walked up to him. Bags under his eyes and the haunted look he carried told Summer he hadn’t gotten much rest since the rescue. “You’re that medic,” he observed out loud. Summer nodded. “The kid,” he grunted as he tried to stand up, accepting the help of Summer’s hoof once she offered it. “He’s alive,” Summer answered, instinctively checking the stallion’s pupillary response and the swollen eye that another medic had cut to release to blood. “What’s your name?” “Cloudburst.” Summer’s eyes grew wide and her heart clenched in her breast. “Cloudburst?” A look of confusion crossed his face as he slowly nodded his head up and down. “Yeah.” Summer took a step back from him, the voice of a dying filly echoing in her mind. “If you see Cloudburst... tell him I’m sorry... and that I love him.” “I met a mare in Nimbus who mentioned you.” Cloudburst seemed to lighten up immediately, and a look of hope grew on his face. “Snow? Sh... She’s my fiancee!” he said, struggling to stand. “Where is she? I-Is she alright?” Summer’s heart palpitated with her breath catching in her throat. She couldn’t tell him that it was by her hoof that Cloudburst’s lover was dead. How could she look a pony in the eye and tell him that she had done that? Swallowing back her hesitation, Summer forced the distant, unattached look on to her face. No matter how heavy her heart felt, nor how deep the pain, it was never to be shown to the patient. “I treated her on the first day of the battle,” Summer began, keeping her tone factual. The frown that she allowed to pull at the corners of her mouth was a practiced one, used specifically to indicate a sense of sympathy for the bereaved. “I’m sorry. She just… lost too much blood.” Cloudburst stared at Summer with the same heartbroken expression she had seen on countless other mares and stallions over the years. He didn’t break down, at least not immediately. Summer got the sense he would hold himself together, at least until she had left him alone again. It was fine with her, she didn’t care what he did when she left, but she did need him to answer a few questions while she could. “Cloudburst,” she began, putting her hoof on his shoulder and waiting for him to look her in the eye. “You tried to get my attention this morning at the camp. What was it you wanted to tell me? What…” Summer paused, her mouth feeling dry. When she spoke again her voice had dropped to a whisper and she had closed the distance between them so no other pony would be able to hear. “What did they do to him?” Iron Rain sat back on her haunches and yawned, her hooves rubbing at her tired, burning eyes. She didn’t know the last time she had slept, or for that matter how long she’d been awake. All she knew was a sense of exhaustion that had settled down into the marrow of her bones. A lean was stopped by the sharp protest in her thigh, earning a hissed curse from Rain. Correcting her posture, she glared at her swollen leg, as though she could will the muscle and bone to shake off the damage of the griffon war hammer. It was in vain though, and soon she resigned herself to dealing with it once more. From the bed, she heard Pathfinder moan in his sleep. Craning her neck around to look at him, Rain couldn’t help but have at least some concern for the colt. He was facing her, pain wracking his expression, though his eyes remained tightly shut. His breaths grew quicker and a pitiable mewl that seemed to project from the tips of his teeth escaped him. Rain climbed into the bed and laid on her side with her wounded leg opposite of the mattress. She could no better lay on that than Finder could lay on his wrapped chest. Which was fine, though it was a touch awkward to sleep face to face with a gasping, writhing colt. Pathfinder recoiled immediately to the touch of the rough fabric over top of him. His hooves thrashed out, his tail flailed, and a pained, strangled sounding cry escaped his stubby muzzle. It made Rain recoil with the gray fabric still clenched between her teeth, then pause for a moment to consider her position before renewing her plan. “Look, kid,” Rain grumbled to Finder, pointing a hoof at his snout as though he were looking at her in rapt attention and not in an alcohol induced coma. “I’m letting you stay here cause I owe you one, got it? That doesn’t mean you get to be a Feathertop sized pain in my flank.” In predictable fashion, Pathfinder didn’t respond to her decree. At least she didn’t think he did. Then again Rain didn’t speak moans. Battlefield screams, growls, and utterances, absolutely. Rain was a master of that crude and improvised vernacular. But the breathless moans from the wounded and maimed? That was Summer’s territory. And Rain would have been all too happy to leave it to the irascible mare. Channeling her brother, Rain grasped a pillow in her fetlock and held it over Finder’s head. Where Steel used to wait for her to be fast asleep, then throw the pillow over her face until he had nearly smothered her. “You snore,” he’d say when she woke up, and usually proceed to hit her with the pillow once or twice more. Unlike him, though, Iron found herself stopping. The better angels of her nature made the legate pull the pillow back and plop it down over her own face. It muted the noise, but only just. After about a minute, Rain grew bored, and with sleep predictably refusing her, she brushed the pillow off her head and sighed. With nothing else to look at, and unable to roll onto her wounded side, Rain was forced to stare at Pathfinder. His moans had subsided, replaced with shuddering gasps for air. She wondered if he was dreaming. While not a doctor, she knew what a stabbed lung looked like. The only blood on the colt’s tongue and lips were from oral injuries, and Rain knew Summer well enough to know the medic wouldn’t have left her and Finder alone if the kid was that badly injured. Summer was a bleeding heart, and Rain only knew how to kill an enemy, not treat a comrade. She watched him with a thoughtful frown, and soon found her gaze drifting down to his side. His wing was raised off of his side from the thickly packed bandages covering his wound. His other wing lay hidden under him, though Summer had seen to it that several pillows propped him up enough that Pathfinder wasn’t laying on the broken bones directly. Rain slowly extended her hoof, and with the softest touch she could manage, she lifted Finder’s wing. There was a tacky sound as dried blood and sweat separated from his fur and feathers, and Rain cringed, her stomach turning a bit with the noise. Finder shuddered, and Rain expected that if he hadn’t have already been asleep or drunk, he might have passed out. With the same deliberate manner, she lowered his wing back down and sighed. Scooting a little closer, Rain got a better look at some of the smaller wounds that decorated Finder’s body. Along his cheeks, near the back of his jawline, Rain noticed cuts. She recognized claw marks when she saw them, and Finder had more than a few to choose from now that Rain got a good look at him. For the ones on his jaw, they started in a triangular shape pointed back towards his mane and dragged forward in lines near an inch in length. His fur would regrow in time to cover them, but why would they claw him there? Rain scratched her chin on her fetlock and pursed her lips. Her hooves gingerly took hold of Pathfinder’s, which she gently petted. His breath quickened again and his face tightened in a look of panic. Again Rain frowned, and when she moved his hoof back down she gently cupped his hoof between her own. Pathfinder made a pained yelp, making Rain recoil. “The Hell, kid?” she asked out loud, letting his hoof drop back to the bed. The moment replayed in her head over and over. She struggled to think what she might have twisted or pinched, but nothing came to mind. Then she realized what she had touched, and with more care than before she lifted Finder’s hoof off the bed and examined the bottom. From that angle the problem was easily identified. The sole of Finder’s hoof was badly burned in what she imagined to have been an act of torture. She’d heard about griffons doing it before. It was another taunt to captured pegasi. First they broke their wings, then they burned their hooves so walking itself was too painful to bear. She sighed heavily and shook her head, setting the tender hoof down as though it were made of delicate porcelain. Propping herself up a bit on her foreleg, Rain looked over Pathfinder again. If... no, when he recovered he’d be a handsome stallion someday, at least by Nimban standards. She smiled a bit. Longbow had been easy on the eyes, and a great shot. Rain had quite liked the colt’s brother in the limited amount of time she had known him, and if Finder grew to be half the colt Longbow thought he could, then he might make something of himself. Her eyes trailed down his sides to his flank where still more claw marks carved jagged canyons in his flesh. Somepony, likely Summer, had done her best to clean and stitch up the wounds, but there was no hiding them. Not with so few bandages to go around. His cutie mark, at least the one Rain could see, would always be divided by those claw marks into four sections. Rain wondered if they had tried clawing it out of his flanks. Without thinking she moved to touch his mark, and Finder instantly cried out and tried to flee from the touch. “Shit! Easy, easy!” Rain said, using her foreleg to keep him as still as she could. He didn’t calm down, and his eyes snapped open, but didn’t see the mare in front of his own face. They darted around the room, pupils shrunk to tiny pinpricks of black in seas of gold. Rain knew the look on his face. She’d seen it before in battle when a soldier’s mind broke and primal terror had claimed dominion over them. “Kid, you’re safe,” Rain said, taking his unburned hoof between her own and carefully guiding it up to her cheek. “Listen to my voice. You’re safe here. You’re with friends. Nothing can hurt you here.” Her tone, like her touch, was both firm yet delicate. She guided his hoof over her cheek and cheekbones. His breaths, at first quick and raspy gasps, began to slow, and the panicked flick of his eyes drew towards her. Rain swallowed once and then let go of his hoof once Finder was able to keep it there with his own strength. The small hoof began to move, upwards at first, over her eye and along her brow, stopping when it got to her mane. He then moved down to her muzzle, over her nose and down her lips. The soft feel seemed to settle him more, and Rain took a chance. She reached up with her own hoof and as gently as she could, pressed it to his cheek. She gently stroked his cheek for a moment, then slid her hoof up to his white-streaked mane. Rain felt his hoof slide off her lips and down her chin, where it soon fell to the mattress once again. She didn’t dare move until she saw his eyes drift shut, and he seemed to fall back to a dreamless sleep. Allowing herself a relieved sigh, Iron Rain settled onto her pillow and watched him for a while longer. She continued to pet his mane with the same slow rhythm until her eyes grew too heavy. Her hoof came to rest around his shoulder, and Iron Rain let her exhaustion claim her.