The stranger stayed firm, giving none of his limited ground and saying nothing through voice or body.
Behind the alpha heckhound the two others growled, but their leader had only to turn a sharp eye to them and they were choked into silence. Ears folded and short tails turned down, they backed off. But from beyond the shed door they kept a dark watch on the trapped stallion.
The alpha donated all of his undesirable and curious attention back to the stranger. It was the lack of any response from the pony that intrigued him; whether from stoicism or fright, he didn't yet care. He turned his head half-aside and leered at his prey with one suspicious eye, and then his neck rolled across so that his other eye could have its turn. At last he took one, and only one, wholly confident step forward.
Still the pony offered no answer of any form.
Through the quiet moments which ticked on by the alpha continued to visually search the stallion statue, from the tips of his peeking hooves to the hood of his ragged-refurbished cloak.
"Well then...," the big beast seemed to shrug with heartless indifference at the refusal to respond. His voice was a deep hiss of warm steam, pleasant on the ears at first but disguising something charred and crackling.
He straightened out, crowning himself with the stance of a regal lord. Forelegs stiff to buttress his brawny chest, hind legs bent like almost a sit, together they gave a smooth curve to his back. The sizzling red mane sprouting from his scruff curled like greedy hands of flame reaching out from under a furnace. Though he appeared so immensely formal he didn't make any polite effort to holster his razor claws or to keep the piercing pinpoints of his horns aimed away.
"I'm Kerby," he greeted.
The fiery flicker in his eyes brightened as they narrowed on the pony.
"And you?"
Still the stranger surrendered not a word. Not any readable clue came from him, not even a twitch or turn, his face hidden as it was in the double-shadow of his hood and the shed's underlit darkness.
It wasn't foolishness or indecision that had him so serenely tense; he understood well the threat hovering over him and what hopelessly few choices he had. Nor was he possessed by a confident calm, snuggled in the hidden motions of a master plan. Rather the great stillness which seized him was molded out of fear. Not the obvious fear; not for himself. These heckhounds could chew him up and spit him out as slobbered shreds if they wished; his individual fate meant little.
The fright which sutured his mouth was very different.
For after his meaningless demise would these monsters not be wary enough to scour a wide perimeter for other intruders?
This encounter had to take as long as possible.
The cloaked pony finally gave a belated response to the huge heckhound. Nothing much: only a slight movement of his body, measurable in tiny inches. He made himself an odd mirror to his adversary's tall showing. He likewise took on a refined character, not lordly but something almost heroic, all without masking any of his defensive readiness.
"Hmph," Kerby shot a humored snort. "No name, hm? That's fine. I don't mark my buried bones with gravestones anyway." His muzzle twisted into a smile deliberately broad enough to reveal his every last fang.
He began to pace, moving with graceful menace while still observing the stallion keenly. His steps had the rhythm of torture: gradual, precise, purposeful to a sensitively exact degree. Near the open door he stopped for a moment to eye the wooden bolt that had been kicked out of the way, it worthlessly sitting on the ground against the rotted and weak boards of the shed wall. Then back to wandering he went, never approaching the stallion closer but nonetheless infinitely stalking his victim.
"So," he intoned in sinister bass, "if not your name... will you tell me this:... what are you doing here, my– little– pony?"
From the stranger, still no answer.
"You're the one from the village, no doubt," the monstrous hound continued, huffing once in detectable displeasure. "The pony in the dirtied cloak who helped wash away my poor, bungling scout." Slower he paced as he narrowed his eyes another time, flaring their wicked intelligence. "Followed him here, did you?"
Silence. Motionless silence.
The now predictable quiet began to bore Kerby, and his charming disguise proved paper-thin as his burning impatience peeled it back. He ebbed to a hard stop, stomping closer one threatening step.
"If you have nothing to tell me then I have no more time to waste with you. But at least you can whet my horns."
And the monster brought his neck down, leveling his weapons and glaring at the holes he intended to pierce into the stranger.
Underneath the shadow of the pony's hood his nostrils flared.
Purchase more time, old fool!
He broadened the spacing between his hoofs and aligned his body to the hound, presenting a more defiant target. Ready bends entered his legs, for parrying or kicking, and the back folds of his cloak were lifted by his fighting tail.
A growling deepness came out with his voice as he commanded, "Stand down, pup."
Run, Bookworm. Run!
The appearance of such new resistance instantly reignited Kerby's interest. His simmering irritation received a fresh smothering of civility as he lifted his head nobly again, a fascinated and ferocious grin taking hold. Still cautious, he took yet another step towards the pony.
"Or what?" he delighted in hissing.
Behind the veil of his terrible teeth the light buried within his throat flickered and changed color. The low growl which roamed out of him clicked with unseen sparks.
A flare lit in the stranger's mind, flashing great twinkles of memory: the heckhound pinned against the building face this morning; the crackling growl in his throat; the burst of fire that had popped from the tricky monster's mouth...
The pony's hooves shuffled. Not for a blink did he take his eye off the heckhound, and he prepared himself for defensive action. All he waited for was the right moment to spring.
Kerby's lungs expanded like a filling bellow, broadening his chest, and his lips pulled back. But suddenly at the final instant he underwent a strikingly cold change. His tongue rolled up in his mouth and pressed against his teeth while a spasm erupted in his neck. Tightly controlled, the rocky muscles there pulsed in an irregular rhythm, accompanied by a sloppy gagging sound.
His lips snapped shut tight except for a small hole in front aimed for the cloaked pony. Out of the way his tongue slid at last, but it wasn't flame that came spewing out. A steaming smog, ashy in color, blasted from him. The billowing gust shot from his muzzle with some force, not unlike the explosive trail belched from a fired cannon.
Again entangled by surprise the stranger's protective readiness failed. Instead of flighting from the line of fire he only flinched ineffectively. The soaring cloud of hot smoke flew into his face, streaming across and into his nose. Its smell was rancid with whiffs of burnt coal, and it spilled through him into his throat where its hideously black taste made nest, gagging him. The rest of the awful smoke ran past his face and pushed against the back of his hood, lifting it. Hacking heavy coughs he spewed the foul cloud from mouth, and shaking his head hard he tossed off his cloth prison to release the noxious gas trapped about him. His hood itself grabbed one of his ears in a final effort to hold on, but the tickle of it made that ear flick and throw down the concealing cover at last.
Prideheart was freed.
A pony undaunted he immediately corrected his posture to stand soldierly again, ready for war if it came to it, and his nose spat out the last bits of disgusting smog with a defiant snort.
Yet the mighty heckhound hardly seemed threatened at all by the stallion's relatively fast bounce back from the 'attack.' His reaction to the revelation of the pony's damaged face was one of amusement, with humming laughter buried not so far back in him.
"Ahmhmhmhmm. My goodness, is that contagious?" he chortled and took a much-less cautious step forward. "Is that why I should be keeping my distance?" And another confident step he took, absent any careful fear of the stallion.
"Old wounds from an enemy more calamitous than you, pup," Prideheart said in a sober, muted growl.
The warning had no effect on Kerby, predictably deflecting off of his entertained grin. He continued approaching without a sliver of hesitation, stalking along with such ordinary evil. Immediately before the unshaken pony he stopped, his powerful body a high tower looming in the sky and raining down his awful sneer. The two stood close enough to each other that at any time he could have simply dropped his neck forward and sunk his fangs into the pony's face.
"You followed my hound here," the smug beast conjectured with undoubting certainty and in a voice so maliciously soft, "so that you could be the big hero, because you thought he was all alone. But... now you've really fallen into the fire, haven't you?"
In his sweltering mouth his hungry tongue sloshed about once, and his teeth made a sharp click when snapped them together to refresh his vicious smile. In he leaned, just one dangerous inch.
"And now you burn..."
Behind him his two heckhound flunkies laughed eagerly. They both set paws through the open shed door, anxious for a piece of the action.
But their master launched a glaring eye back towards them, hot with violent displeasure. Instantly they were punished by his stern stare, shrinking from fierce monsters into frightened puppies. They withdrew from the shed one hundred times quicker than they had slunk in, and outside they returned to waiting, now with heads lowered in fearful shame.
Swiftly wiping every trace of brutish hostility from his face Kerby turned again towards Prideheart, waving a self-satisfied smile. He indulged in gloating, "There's quite a lot more of us here than you reckoned, right? Hmhm. I don't know what was going through your mind descending into this quarry. Whatever it was that you had hoped to do by tucking yourself away in this shed... well, it certainly didn't work out for you. But it makes me wonder... oh do tell me: caught between the tinder and the flames, what terrified thoughts are you left with, hm?"
The pony seized his chance to draw out the confrontation.
"How did you evade Cerberus?" he demanded, using anger to deftly conceal the truth which he already knew. "He would not have let you out of the underworld willingly."
In a small way the large heckhound was impressed with the stallion's apparent knowledge, though it little showed since in fast time every muscle in his face came to be dominated by a glower of annoyance. Not for Prideheart; no, the monster's eyes shot far off elsewhere. Out he looked, yet his sore sight somehow tunneled down through rock and fire, perceiving the twisted black iron and the deadly jagged crown of spikes which composed the Wretchful Gates of Tartarus. And before those blasted gates his mind's gaze, roiling with hot frustration, saw the guardian parent ever watchful there.
"Oh, Daddy never lets us do anything," the beast groused, his foul mood almost again spoiling the refined demeanor he had been cultivating. "He makes us stay down there separated from others, with only ourselves for company. All we have to entertain us is fighting each other or roaming the mazes of Tartarus alone." The inklings of dour attitude drained away as his cleverness came back in full force, and he smirked at the pony, "But sometimes... when you least expect it... a little surprise can 'crack' the doldrums of imprisonment."
"He knows not that you've escaped," Prideheart surmised.
"Not yet," muttered Kerby, naughty and pleased. Still he simpered, saying, "Guarding the gates of Tartarus is a busy duty. He can't always keep one of his six eyes on us."
Again anger fanned his fire, a seemingly inescapable mood for the infernal hound. It seared a boorish scowl onto his face and prodded him to resume his pacing, only now he wandered with scornful urgency through a much more constricted loop. The five steps of dirt he roamed back and forth over started to bake from the heat he left on them.
"But honestly," he ranted at Prideheart, "why shouldn't we be let out for some fresh air now and again? Hm? Our less-fiery siblings he lets come and go often enough, but us? The unwanted hounds of Cerberus? Pffh. Just because we're born with this fire inside he treats us differently. He seals us away from others. He rejects us."
Abruptly the monster halted and jumped back into the pony's face. Mercilessly incredulous he asked the stallion a fiery question, but so strangely it came out with an undercurrent of honesty:
"Can you imagine: a father condemning his puppies... just because of the way they're born?"
Like before Prideheart returned no answer, yet this time it was because he hadn't one. His silence sat cold without its former determined comfort. The defensive strength he presented took a blow despite there having been no attack.
"Oh, I'm venting," Kerby complained to himself, in the same breath restoring his dark civility and raising himself up fully over his prey again. "What would you even know? There's nothing a pony rejects. The only things inside of them are rainbows, and sugar plums, and gumdrops, and golden sunshine. Just magical things. Isn't that right?"
Despite his impatience over it earlier, now the stallion's muteness amused the monster more than anything. The beast lifted a paw and gave a light, playful slap to Prideheart's cheek. It rendered no damage whatsoever, but it did quite surprise the pony who had been ill with icy thoughts.
"You wouldn't know," the hound assured him, weighing his remark down with a chuckle. "You wouldn't know the unloving cruelty of fathers."
Never in all his remarks had it truly sounded like Kirby had been fishing for sympathy, and if the stallion had perceived any illusion in that regard it fizzled away quickly when the monster spontaneously filled his air with a diabolical change. A trained illusionist throughout his trick plays the story's mystery upon his face, but always at the height of his act does his true feelings surface, whether they be that of a magnanimous showpony or a clever huckster.
This demon's character wasn't one of a charitable entertainer.
"... But... of course... Daddy's right. He's quite right to keep us separate. He doesn't approve of the kind of trouble he knows we'll get up to."
Everything the beast said now slithered out with a delicious hiss.
"Sooner or later he'll discover we're missing, of course. He always checks on us during his infrequent breaks. And once he finds out that we're gone, oooh, are we going to be dead dogs. So, really, we need to have as much fun as we possibly can before he shows up and drags us back to Tartarus by our scruffs three at a time.
"And what fortune! We've found a lovely little town of ponies to play with!" he exclaimed, lit up with wry sarcasm. He flashed his big, toothy smile at the stallion. "You caught us just as we were in the middle of planning them a party."
Prideheart squinted, suspicious, until the terrible realization swiftly struck him with all the blunt sensation of a shovel's broad side being plowed into the back of his head.
He had seen it. Their planning; he had seen it in the quarry basin! The two lines of stones laid parallel... like rows of buildings divided by a street. The arc of rocks curving around the setup... like a hugging river.
Stony Nook.
And the heckhounds! He remembered the dreadful sight of their army gathered around the crude model. Fresh in his mind was the leaderly movements of their atrocious commander, stalking about while pointing here or there and barking his orders; a general laying down his callous conceit of conquest, his devilish design for domination, his sickening scheme for slaughter! It had been not a speech of inspiration for the troops; no, nothing of the sort had lived within those heinous howls. Only a blasted battle plan: scorch the earth.
Quite obviously Kerby could perceive the horrible understanding which wormed its way into the pony, and he scarcely made a secret of reveling in it.
"I really think it's going to be an exciting affair. Hounds and ponies mingling freely, without some wretched gate to divide us. There'll be plenty of shouting, I'm sure... and screams. We'll light up the town."
"Too lightly you regard them," Prideheart immediately warned the hound.
Yet it was a bluff for show. Secretly inside, his doubts had already festered and bloomed as a putrid ulcer, feed by the long trail of disappointment he had walked for decades. So lucky were the townsponies to have had even a favorable few among them; ponies with the heart to have stood up and driven the one heckhound back. An army of these beasts was a whirlwind inferno to the ponies' dry grain silo.
Kerby puffed a wad of dismal smoke out of his nose, wobbled his head, and moaned in blunt disappointment, "Yes, clearly I underestimated their ability to send old, magicless, diseased unicorns after us."
They were more words that were hardly intended as a penetrating attack, tossed away with such flippant disregard, yet the pony reacted as if they were a knife forged for the very purpose of penetrating between his ribs. Silence strangled him again. The only air which left him was a blistering sigh which bled from his nostrils, and he fought to counter the shameful drooping of his head.
The mighty heckhound, meanwhile, hardly noticed. His look darkened and a grim growl started to accompany his voice.
"Maybe they did wash out one scout, but all of us? No. They're just little ponies, after all."
His malignant attention became cutting pincers on Prideheart's throat.
"And they especially won't be prepared since word won't get back to them of how many we are. It's as you've feared, hero. Dash your hopes; you're not going back. You're going to join us here for the night. Or," his sinister fangs took the shape of another treacherous smile, "what's left of you will, anyway. I'm afraid you won't be attending the party tomorrow."
The threat buzzed right past the stallion without answer or wince. The only things he felt were the cursed fire bubbling under his dead eye quietly and in his heart the deathly chill of his long failure.
But Kerby's eyes saw nothing but the stone silence again, and once more he began to grow so unsatisfied with how little the pony buckled under the taunts and stings. Quickly his grin dropped into a sneering frown.
Uncooperative morsel.
"Alright," he growled.
But then very unexpectedly he turned his back to the pony. Lazy he approached the two heckhounds waiting outside the shed door, and he spoke to them in a voice which didn't echo with stern command. Instead his words had a very bored quality, save for certain punctuated stabs which seemed to shoot from him backwards.
"This one won't make a good snack; not with the rotten meat on him. One of you go look around the top rim. Catch the other one. The little foal."
A sharp gale of sheer terror rushed into the stallion's lungs for a split moment.
The gasp was just audible enough for Kerby to hear. Sweet cruelty started to spread over him, spilling out with malevolent glee from the heckhound's every fiber.
Prideheart, from his place behind the unforgivable beast, only heard the savagery through the sadistic timbre of the monster's torturous instructions.
"Actually," Kerby suddenly and viciously purred, "go after her, but don't hurt her. After all, once Daddy hauls us back to Tartarus he's going to keep us on a shorter leash than usual for a few hundred years. To survive the boredom we'll definitely need a chew toy."
"Also, some ice, I'd suggest," the stallion abruptly said. His voice moved. "For your eye."
"My eye? What?"
Kerby pivoted back, so surprised by the bizarre comment that he needed the sight of the pony's face to understand what had been meant. Yet all his eye caught was the jagged points of Prideheart's broken horn, driven hard like a spear into where socket-flesh overlapped with bone.
"Aghrgh!"
Briefly blinded, the hound threw his paw about in defense but cleaved empty air. Again he was struck, this time by the full weight of the pony crashing into him with a shoulder tackle that turned into a continuous push. Backwards through the door he was carried until he was thrown into his two startled cohorts, knocking over all three heckhounds.
The furious snarl which came from Kerby shredded any words he might have been trying to say. His gentlehound manners were thoroughly disposed of. Fast he clawed back to standing, shoving the other tumbled heckhounds out of his way heartlessly, and the fires flaring in his eyes (including his squinting, injured one) came straight from the red depths of the underworld. Immediately he saw the pony's half-cloaked tail disappear behind the shed door before it swung shut in scrambling haste.
The big beast rushed forward and flung himself into the freshly-closed door, intent on knocking it back open and indulging his hungry anger. But a second time he was caught off guard for, though the whole shed loudly buckled with his blow, the door didn't blast open. It jostled and jumped, rattling with a wooden groan and chittering at its metal hinges, but it stayed fastened shut. Grinding his teeth the monstrous heckhound smashed his paw into the door for another strike which sent a shock wave through the flimsy building, and this time he heard distinctly the clunky bouncing of the heavy wood bolt trembling in its inside hooks, barely holding the door locked.
First spitting a few ugly barks at his still-recovering subordinates, Kerby realigned himself with the unhinged edge of the door and targeted the vulnerable bolt on the other side. Once more he blitzed against the shed, and once more its walls screamed with cries of flexing wood and frightened metal. But the door, its whimper lingering a bit longer than the rest, didn't give. Blowing steams of smoky fire from his nose the heckhound lowered his horns for his next charge, and with ease he pierced the wood entirely, cutting straight through door and bolt.
Accompanied by a brutal cry he tore himself free, his horns ripping apart whole chunks of the door boards as they came out. He punched the door with his paw whereupon it at last started to race open. Yet not fast enough for the bloodthirsty hound. As soon as he saw that the lock had been successfully broken he pushed himself into the still-turning door, whipping it the rest of the way as he entered the shed with his two growling heckhounds behind him.
The swinging door slapped the side wall of the shed in a heavy strike, wiggling the building with a single loud bang; a tickle compared to the previously rending blows. The hounds blinked at the darkness while fresh daylight re-flooded in around them. Yet, quite unusually, they felt brightness also coming from in front of them.
There was no pony inside the shed. There was only a hole in the weakest section of wall, scantly stallion-sized and profusely pushing through sunshine. The rotting wood had been bucked through.
Kerby turned around, incensed far beyond the typical limits of his ire, and he slashed back through his heckhounds while snapping at them with his words and jaws. All three hounds emerged from the shed, and the alpha fast spotted the fleeing pony. Again the large beast hissed and bit at his lessers, directing them towards their prey while swearing them to misery worse than their imaginations could ever conjure if they were to fail. It was all the encouragement they needed to bolt after the pony in raging, vicious cowardice.
Prideheart ran. Every ounce of strength his body had he put to that effort. His short mane waved as the speeding wind brushed it, the tail of his cloak battered about in a frenzy, but yet his galloping gait was weakened and off. Each fourth beat he dipped, fighting against a tumble as his bruised knee buckled under the force of his flight. It pushed a current of hot pain out with every fast clop it endured, begging the pony to relieve some the agony with a cry, but he kept his lungs busy with only the many desperate breaths he needed to power his distraction.
This encounter had to take as long as possible.
Far and fast, flee! Flee, Bookworm!
The stallion raced clockwise around the quarry terrace, rushing back towards the descending trolley tracks which he had first climbed down from. He needed no glances back to feel the pressure of his pursuers, their perfect strides pulling them closer to him one paw at a time. As their heat came increasingly upon him he made a sudden veer inwards, moving not towards the landing to ascend but instead straight at the wooden net of trestles.
Behind him the two heckhounds followed, snapping their jaws and nipping at his tail, but ultimately falling short of grasping him before he dove into the jungle of wooden beams. Sliding between and slipping under the crisscrossing mess Prideheart squeezed through quickly. However, the fatter bodies of the brutish heckhounds slammed up against the thin holes in the framework.
Out the other side the pony popped, staggering as he tried to build up speed again. But the disappearance of the fire on his tail, the shortness of his breath, and the blaring pain of his damaged knee all caused his effort to wane. He slowed and heaved an aching gasp before he looked back.
Inside the trestles he could see the twisting bodies of the heckhounds. One of them still tried fruitlessly to claw his way through, perhaps more frightened of the master behind him than of any splinters from tearing free. The other whined as he failed to extract himself from the knot in which he had gotten tied up.
But above them, upon the sloped track, Kerby appeared. The alpha heckhound had a hateful stare for the pony, matching good eye to good eye and dead eye to swollen eye.
Prideheart creaked a step back, about to turn and run. However the large monster didn't spring down to chase. Instead he threw his head up, and out of his maw came a howl which demolished the pony's ears; a baying deep as the ash left after a bonfire and sharply piercing as a glowing-hot blade.
Down in the quarry basin the pony saw the terrible sound jerk the ears of every last heckhound there, from underworld crack to Stony Nook model to northern dock and boat. All turned towards the awful noise, and thus shortly every light in the field of fiery eyes fell upon him, the intruder. Their alpha split the quarry air with one additional commanding, vengeful bark, and his nose marked the target.
Again the wind roared through the stallion's mane and his cloak flailed like a storm-caught flag. Still his knee impeded him and still he ignored its stinging warnings all he could. As he scurried he tried to work his mind for the longest-lasting solution; he tried to add up every spare second of theoretical resistance he could make. Place to place his good eye jumped, hunting almost helplessly.
Save for the three behind him all of the heckhounds seemed to be in the basin below. However, they were breaking for different paths of ascent in an attempt to surround him. Most dashed for the nearest ramp, one the pony was presently passing by. Eventually they would join Kerby in pursuit from behind, though the alpha himself now seemed in no great hurry. He had jumped down from the tracks and, menacing as ever, merely ambled after the stallion. Easy he let himself lag behind the pony, angrily content to watch Prideheart be ripped to pieces once caught.
Any heckhound not going for the close ramp was instead making for another ramp up, one on the farther side of the great rock pile which loomed over the crack to Tartarus. Between those rocks ahead and the trolley track behind there were no ramps ascending away from danger. Unless the stallion intended to take a careless leap down into the basin – likely to a landing which would have shattered his already fragile knee – he was going to be caught in their pincer.
Nowhere to run, Prideheart ran regardless. He darted towards the craggy mound of stones, the only feature on the barren stretch of terrace that wasn't heckhound-infested. Maybe something of it offered him hope to draw out the inevitable; how thickly it occupied the thin pass, perhaps. The outmost pebbles teetered on the very edge of the drop into the basin, just above the red crack to the underworld, and the largest and heaviest of its boulders meanwhile were stacked haphazardly against the quarry wall. All and all it was a lazy half-hill slumped to one side, difficult to squeeze by on the short end and treacherous to climb at its steep heights.
... Treacherous... to climb...
... A hill of rocks. A pile of fragmented, broken steps leading up...
A stairway! One just barely high enough to reach the next terrace!
He went with all his wounded speed, but his eye he kept mostly to his rear. The raucous crowd of heckhounds had grown dense all racing for the same ramp up. At that bottleneck they had morphed from a pack of hunters to a slovenly brigade of selfish ants all trying to swarm the same anthill. Their careless pushing and shoving of each other had plugged the ramp, and a only stream of one or two heckhounds at a time trickled from the clog.
Facing forward again, moving full tilt towards the stone pile, the pony closed in on it. But he was too heedlessly focused on his small luck to have kept up with the lighter group of heckhounds ahead of him. One stray beast had pulled far ahead of the others, ascending the front ramp much earlier and having reached the rocks just before the stallion did.
The swift monster scratched his way over the low end of the pile, appearing very suddenly before Prideheart, and he lunged off the stones at the pony. Yet he sailed a sliver too high, allowing Prideheart just enough room to weave under.
But the sudden dip and redirection of his body staggered the stallion's legs, and his suffering knee failed to lock when he attacked the ground with a braking strike. Through an awkward turn and near tumble he pivoted about, barely keeping upright.
The hound landed and scrambled back around for another go, his powerful forelegs seizing earth as his weight swung around and then shot forward. His slobbering jaws opened, and his running body tucked lower for another lunge.
Prideheart, unready for any new dodge, saw split-second familiarity in his circumstance. The sight of the forward-rushing beast about to spring was memory to him. He recalled his hard awakening in Stony Nook that very morning.
Like a tilted rocket the heckhound launched himself in an arc through the air, his claws forward to pin the pony. And repeating his morning performance the pony responded, rearing himself up with his forelegs tucked in. When the monster crashed into the stallion they both fell backwards, and Prideheart followed through with a smooth roll and a strong kick, punching the beast into the air. The flung hound, after flipping head over paws, crashed upon the low end of the stone pile where the loose rocks beneath him immediately fled downhill. They rolled, he was carried, and his yelping wheeled in pitch as he spun round and round down the pile until he turned right off the terrace, falling into the crack of Tartarus below.
Such was the still-fresh fruit of Prideheart's religiously-practiced self-defense training. It was another exemplary show of dexterity for the elder pony... except, of course, his old body again failed the landing. Like before his buck carried him through his roll until he was standing tall on his forehooves, and like before his balance didn't steady him enough to prevent a twist from sneaking into his form. He curved as he fell, his flank slapping the hard ground.
In haste he pushed himself up, fighting through the prickly tightness that quickly coated his slammed side. The gruesome whispers which dribbled from him merged moans of pain with dark curses, and somewhere there too he released a sore gasp of panic. Fast approaching was the long train of heckhounds who had been following behind him, whistling ferociously while about to tear into the station.
No time to rest nor time to breath Prideheart stumbled his hoofs on top of the piled stones and started to climb. Each pull hurt worse than his steps while racing had, and the situation was not at all helped by how the new ground sometimes shifted under him suddenly. More than once he clamped his hoof down only for stone to roll or turn in his grip, the stutter in his climb throwing his belly into the pointed edges of the rocks below him. But he let each slip steal no time from him, keeping on relentlessly in no small part thanks to the bounding heckhounds who were lightning devils in his peripheral.
The first beast caught up quickly and vaulted straight from his sprint onto the rocks, thereafter tearing his way up the stones in pursuit of Prideheart. His more reckless climb tore rocks free worse than the pony but his tenacity paved over any faltering, and in moments he brought himself into biting distance.
The stallion threw out a buck to defend himself, missing as the heckhound slunk his head aside. But the pony followed with an immediate second effort that did land, though it only butt against the beast's nose with weary force. The monster hardly flinched and, unfazed, he countered with a bite that snared the pony's cloak. Cutting his front fangs into it he growled as fiercely he pulled, jerking wildly.
Around Prideheart's neck the leaf brooch which linked the cloak together stabbed his throat and shoved his apple high, gagging him. He clung to the rocks, trying simultaneously to twist his way out of being choked while also not allowing himself to be yanked backwards. If he could have he would have fired another buck to dislodge the fiend remotely strangling him, but every inch he loosened his hold by felt like the last one he had to give before he would fall.
In short time the more intense pulls of the heckhound dug the brooch in until it began to pierce him so deeply that he sensed the warmth of broken skin. The last of his air popped out as his throat sealed completely shut, and the slipping of his conscious resistance felt like fat stones forcing themselves through every artery in his body. The drowning world started to smear its colors and slur its songs, a fog closing in and eating up his senses.
But the hard clack of rock skipping off rock stood out sharply to his dulled ears. He shot his eye uphill to see a melon-sized stone whirling towards him.
Down and aside he dove, as far as he could manage. The rolling rock bounced a hair over him and nailed his captor heckhound square on the forehead. There was a barking whine from the beast as Prideheart's cloak slipped free of his jaws, and the monster lost his footing as a murky tarp fell over his burning eyes. His inert form flopped down the rock pile, colliding with the heckhounds who had started to climb after him, and those who weren't thrown off to feed the underworld pit became a nicely mangled train wreck at the base of the stones.
"Come on, mister!"
"Bookworm!"
At the top of the climb, standing at the edge of the next terrace up, was the sacred filly. She waved her hoof energetically in encouragement, summoning the stallion.
Despite the bloodthirsty heckhounds swarming below there wasn't a shine of fear in her eyes. No cringe stood ready to pounce on her. But such strength – strength which held nearly a smile on her – wasn't the glue of bravery. Her shout to Prideheart had resounded with thrill. She was the foal in the front row of the theater, so excitedly close to the stage action that she could reach up and tug at the hems of the actors' costumes.
"Come on!" she repeated brightly while bounding in place.
The stallion, however, was frozen. He still clung stiff to the rocks halfway up the pile, hopeless hooves being slowly eaten by the cracks they were slipping into, and through the silent death of his heart his gaze laid upon the most precious filly. The pupil of his good eye faded into the tiny depths of fear. Under the crusty film which choked his dead one the withering color of poison swirled about in distraught anger.
"Quit standing, mister! Come on!"
Blackened barks roared up the rocks behind the stallion. Thumps pounded, scratches shrieked, and many heckhounds were advancing over their spilled brethren to begin climbs of their own.
But the stallion held motionless.
His despondent will had been to have spared the filly, purchased through his own hide. He was to have waded into the inferno as lengthily as possible; to have taken their flame all for himself... But despite his actions the fire was now going to claim her as well...
...
Despite...?
...
Because of his actions.
Another filly! Another filly... a filly just like her... Another one – more than unsaved – betrayed by a feckless fool.
A happier tale of yesteryear would have seen stronger venom in dragon fire; would have told of a pony who had shielded a city at the joyful cost of his own body and soul rotted into dead waste by unendurable corruption.
"Mister, come on!"
He pulled his hooves from the stones' crannies and pushed them forward. Eye ahead, teeth grit, every bodily pain compressed into his gut; he carried himself up rock by rock.
He was the final barrier between hounds and filly.
"Alright!" the triumphant little filly cried. She had one jubilant bounce of victory in her before she was peering around the climbing stallion at the snarling faces of the monsters scaling after him. And then she grinned her clever grin.
"Hold on, I'll get another rock!"
Bookworm disappeared from the edge while Prideheart climbed. Somehow he was faster than before, with all his inconsequential aches now maintaining an obedient temper. His more rapid ascent threw stones recklessly about underhoof yet he clawed his way up evenly, slithering along and cutting his belly when he had to. As he grew close to the peak of the pile he heard ahead of himself the distinctive thump-thump-thump of a fat stone wheeling over its flat faces.
The rock appeared in front of him, pushed along by the filly, and when she sent it over the edge he readily slid himself aside. Down it hopped, and it cracked loud when it skipped off the face of an unprepared heckhound. The struck beast tumbled over backwards, catching a few of his fiendish fellows with him as they were cast down the stones. Some hounds were spared from the tidal wave, and more ever continued to jump onto the pile.
The stallion reached the top, hauling himself to a stand before the beaming filly. Without a word in greeting to her he leered his good eye back at the approaching hounds and then bent his forelegs, packing them with energy. Moments later the first heckhound to make it up caught lightning with his face; a swift kick delivered with far more grounded power than the cloaked pony's earlier efforts. None of the beasts below quite expected the leading hound to be blasted down so violently, and they were all caught in the cascade of dominoes.
"Yeah!" cheered Bookworm. "Alright, mist-"
"Why have you remained?!" Prideheart, despite threat looming so dire in every wisp of air about him, couldn't prevent his dread-filled fury from spilling out. "Your promise you had sworn to me! To obey!"
"I couldn't leave you alone!" the filly actually chuckled, explaining herself as one explains the simple sunrise to a foal. "You said it yourself: 'remember responsibility to others; it overrides all things. Even the self.'" As she puppeteered his own words about in front of him she was shining with an adventurous grin. "I'll protect you, and you can protect me!"
"I cannot protect you if you do not heed me!!" he screamed, lashing out with wild indignation at the affront to his anxious authority and crashing his hoof into the earth. Though for all his fire there quite visibly was a pall over him; a fear-filled cloud masking the royal rays of the sun.
In turn, a sourness started to play with Bookworm's smile. Nothing of his huffing and puffing sounded to her any different from the paternal bellowing she felt she knew well. It was the same stern rubbish, unfair and hypocritical.
Still she tried to be reasonable, for a filly at least, in whining, "Mister! I'm doing the right thing and being the ordinary pony hero everypony should be! A hero just like you! These heckhounds won't get us! At the end of the story the heroes always come out on top!"
Upon the stallion's dragon-wound every patch of sickly skin seared in flame. Every nerve was set ablaze, every twitch was a lash from a whip of fire, and the boiling behind his dead eye flooded backwards to every bone and muscle in his body, subsumed by white hot agony. Desperate, dark, despairing, and full of pain he cried out, roaring into the filly's face.
"SUCH IS NOT THE NATURE OF HEROISM!"
The sudden attack was so unsparing in its brutality that Bookworm tripped a step back, rendered mute and with the buds of wounded tears instantly coming to her eyes.
Were he not burning so badly and all the world around him swirling in a vortex of fathomless danger Prideheart might have rushed to make amends. Such vehement and destructive command was not his preferred method with which to instruct foals. In fact the hurt she openly displayed stung him quite deeply, building high a tower of regret against the backdrop of prouder memories; all his years of rearing such foals earnestly with slow and guiding love.
But time lent no allowances. The rocky hill behind him called out warning with every scratch of climbing paws against it. The chorus of baleful barks which rose from the pit was only growing stronger. And, by far what snapped the stallion back to attention and flared his immediate alarm, another insidious heckhound had strayed from the crowded pack and found a different way to the third level. The monster, a distance away around the terrace but hardly distant enough, was already surging towards the ponies at breakneck speed.
"Go!"
The stallion pushed the little pony, turning her about in the same motion. His weight pointed to a nearby ramp up.
"Go!"
Obedient, she ran, first in a fast trot but then a full gallop after spotting the heckhound and receiving another push from behind.
Prideheart followed close, constraining his own speed slightly so that he remained in back of the filly. For every guarding step he followed with, for every breath he sweated, he calculated and recalculated his options a thousand times. Any means – no matter how desperate – he searched for; a way to shepherd his little pony away from this nightmare.
But his mind was menaced by the fiery darkness fast encroaching from every direction. All his thought felt shackled, helpless to do any more than focus on one set of fangs at a time. He held his watch on the nearing heckhound who had changed paths to try and intercept them.
Fortunately all the beast's savage velocity wasn't enough, and the ponies reached the ramp with a few second to spare. The stallion started to usher the filly up, but once she was scrambling along on her own he turned away from her. He still followed, walking backwards, but was slowed greatly by erratic hobbling. Out of his cloak materialized his canteen still fairly heavy with water, and he wriggled frantically while backpedaling, trying to slip the strap fully over his head.
The heckhound skid into the base of the ramp, drawing down into a more scrupulous approach. Up the ramp he stalked, paw before deliberate paw, his eyes and ears deadly attentive to the stallion. Back and forth he slithered as he came, seeking a vulnerable opening.
Setting fire to the back of his neck Prideheart at last ripped the strap over his head and freed his canteen. In his mouth he gripped the looped end of the band and then rocked it steadily. The canteen swung below his chin loose, gradual, lazy, but ready.
The contenders climbed up the rest of the ramp, pony still pedaling back gently while the hound followed almost mesmerized by the canteen pendulum. At the peak the land flattened, losing Prideheart his height advantage, and the beast suddenly tensed in ambition to strike.
So the pony moved first, whipping his impromptu flail at the heckhound. Easily the monster evaded the reach of the weapon; a precise duck of his head. A second swipe followed immediately, but again the beast needed no serious effort dodge it.
At the third stroke the maddened heckhound pushed his ferocity and fetched the flying canteen nimbly out of the air with his teeth, snatched as perfectly as a well-trained mutt catches a ball. His squeezing fangs slightly deformed the item's shell, and his ruthless growl spilled bubbling drool over it. Triumphant, he brought his invincible sneer into the face of the now disarmed pony.
But Prideheart answered by simply dropping the strap and charging the monster. One solid blow under the chin and the beast's own jaws shredded the canteen.
The explosion of water splashed down the heckhound's throat, each drop sizzling loudly. Wads of wet, black smoke fled in clumps as a fit of hoarse gagging attacked him, and he collapsed onto his side. With paws clasped to his neck he coughed and hacked and spat, always finding more smog to spew while he struggled to breath. Tiny little tears of fire crawled out of the corners of his eyes.
Stepping back, Prideheart saw the horde of hounds down below emerging onto the third terrace. They never tired, they never slowed, and they seemed always only moments from his tail.
He wasted no time and went to rejoin Bookworm, disheartened to find that she hadn't gone far. Paused just a few paces from the ramp she had rather enjoyed watching the brief brawl between pony and hound, and such a proud smile pranced across her face for the hero's shrewd solution.
"Onwards!" he again tugged and turned her, pushing her ahead of himself.
There were no more tricky climbs left to exploit now that they were on the top level. The terrain instead spread freely away from them, transforming into the bumpy hills that mile after mile eventually grew into the Pearl Peaks. That open land was hardly a path of escape, especially with all the tiring ups and downs that would eat the strength of legs so old and so young.
However, immediately about the top of the ramp the ground had been flattened smooth; in fact, leveled perfectly so. Long ago quarry ponies had cleared it for their own needs. Another trolley track sat off to the side, complete with cobweb-coated wooden stop and parched ore cart. Identical to all the quarry's trains it shot straight to the terrace edge and vanished back down into the quarry. More prominent about the area was the four long buildings constructed in traditional Stony Nook style; muscled stone dressed with skimpy wooden frames and hay hats. They still stood in sturdy condition for all of their abandoned years. In their more glorious past they were once the lodgings of the quarry workers; where ponies had slept, eaten, bathed, and rested during their days-long excursions at the site.
Waddling along with unsatisfactory speed Bookworm regarded the structures as a ghostly mockery of her home. The windows were lightless, whistling a haunted tune wherever they were cracked enough to let wind through. The untended hay on top had for years been thinning, shriveling bald like an elderly mane or that of a decomposing corpse. Here and there lined against the buildings' sides were unloved batches of wood, once leftover beams or boxes or tools but now only unburied bones. Even the stone faces of the structures had a deathly cold to them, with slimy trails of green sneaking out from every nook and crack like on forgotten tombstones.
Not that the spooky scene wasn't interesting to her. It started her imaginative mind rolling.
"Maybe we could hide in one of them," she suggested pleasantly to Prideheart.
The stallion was too swarmed by chaos to waste time reprimanding her inexperienced imagination. Aimlessly he continued to push her forwards, his eye running wild over the area and begging each detail it came across to show him her salvation. But everything he searched contorted into nothingness in the panic of his mind, like screaming out into a vast canyon and hearing no echo. Every spouting thought was shouted down by a merciless howl, or bark, or snarl; awful noises plucked from the many examples closing in on the ponies.
It came to him late; an answer which glittered with the only hope this situation had; a realization of the only wall he could build between filly and fell-fire.
"Here! Here, come! Now, climb within!" Prideheart prodded and shoved the filly all the way to the quiet cart waiting for them on the trolley tracks.
Bookworm, though unable to read his intentions, gave no resistance. Rearing on her hind hoofs she stretched tall, but not nearly able to reach the top of the cart's high walls she bounced to try and catch their edge. As she hopped she remarked questionably, "I don't think hiding here will fool them, mister."
"Nevermind! In!"
He threw his neck under her and flipped her into the cart. She, of course, tumbled inside with a giggle.
Immediately he wedged his front into the tight space between track stop and ore cart, putting all his weight onto the cart to try and grow some room. Fairly easily the wheels creaked, grinding rust only in small amounts. As soon as the gap was large enough he stepped fully inside and rammed his leveled head against the metal cart. The ear-breaking gong it rang in his brain he ignored, the stiff surface sharply scraping against the sensitive tip of his broken horn he endured, and all his remaining menagerie of pains crying for equal attention he shut out. Pulling against the wooden cross-ties for better traction he pushed the cart forward, with each step imparting more speed into it as he rolled it towards the terrace edge.
From within the cart Bookworm was now tall enough to latch her hooves over its walls and peek out, first beaming at her laboring companion. She then shifted to face the oncoming avalanche of heckhounds which poured from the ramp top.
"Here they come!" she warned Prideheart, none of her immersed joy missing.
The stallion seized any last shred of strength he could find, taken from every corner of himself forgotten or not, and he launched his desperation into the cart hard. He was galloping when he finally felt gravity start to snag his invaluable load. Below him the ground disappeared, replaced with trestles as the tracks went into their downward curve, and the cart's blazing wheels brought it slowly away from the speeding stallion. Before it could escape he clasped his forehooves on its back and vaulted up, but his busy and tired legs produced an insufficient leap. Left hanging he fumbled against the metal frame and instead simply clutched tight for the ride ahead.
Heckhounds swarmed behind the fleeing ponies, and the closest of them went for a flying bite at Prideheart just as the cart swooped over the edge. The loud clap of his jaws was empty, but the chomp had been close enough to have nabbed any flea unfortunate enough to have been resting on the tail of the pony's cloak.
The cart rocketed down the slope so quickly it moved faster than its wheels could spin. They screeched as they slid hot until the whole vehicle, not obese with heavy stones like it normally would have been, lifted an inch into the air.
Crash!
The world shook when it smashed back onto the tracks, hitting the third level landing and losing none of its blinding speed. Prideheart was jerked but held as the bucket's steel shell rattled with thunder, and Bookworm laughed as she was tossed about inside. There was no moment to catch a breath; the cart blasted over the next drop almost immediately.
Crash!
The second level landing walloped the chart, freshly testing the stallion's tenuous grip and flinging the filly for another fun flip. Then the air floated them up one last time.
Crash!
They hit the basin still at full speed, nearly knocking Prideheart loose. He redoubled his grip and pulled himself up, peering into the wind blasting over the cart as it screamed across the quarry floor. The wooden stop just ahead seemed an oncoming train.
He braced, shouting for Bookworm to do the same, and only a moment later the cart plowed into the end of its track. Its burning wheels froze and its body rolled instead, the back-half turning end over front while taking the stallion with it. But as the flung cart went vertical its top rim slapped against the large stop, producing a explosion of long-settled dust from the lonely wooden structure. Yet the stop actually succeeded in its eponymous job; it repelled the cart, bouncing it back where it slammed its wheels onto the track again. Nearly all of its momentum had been robbed and it gently rolled backwards only a short distance.
At the peak of the crash Prideheart's forehooves had been pinched between wood and metal, and he was torn free by the hit. The old wooden beams of the stop cracked when he was thrown into them, but the pony too was ultimately deflected by the structure. He flopped down onto the end of the track with a thud, landing in the small space between stop and cart.
"Bookworm! Bookworm!"
Off the tracks he peeled himself quickly, a painful dizziness disorienting him and coughing from the dust invading his throat. But all his concern was for inside the cart, and he reared up to look in.
The filly lay on her back against the cold cart floor and, though her eyes had a little spin and some dust had spritzed her mane, she was quite alright. Still she giggled.
"Exit! Swiftly now!" commanded the stallion frantically. He lowered a hoof in to help her out.
While he hoisted the filly he left his eye on the enemy. The angry, flummoxed heckhounds were high in the quarry, but they were already breaking to pursue. Some tried to run their way down the tracks' thin slope, interfering with each other in their usual selfish fashion, and many others were doubling back to race down the ramps. A few very bold ones leapt straight over the edge down to the third terrace, seemingly to no lasting damage greater than momentary discomfort.
They were fast. Hungry. Relentless.
"Hurry!" Prideheart ordered.
Bookworm landed out of the cart and buzzed her head to free some of the trapped dust.
"Where?" she asked.
The ponies had crashed where all of the quarry's tracks led. No matter what level a track started on they all flowed down to this specific place at the north end of the quarry. It was the destination of all the quarry's bounty:
The dock. For shipment by river to Stony Nook.
Once more getting behind the filly Prideheart shoved her, urging her towards the dock and the lone flatboat waiting there. The river water was the only other shield for her besides the stallion's own body.
Spying the dock ahead Bookworm realized the stallion's plan. She grew quickly out of needing the older pony's exhortations and skipped ahead of him, remarking again about his heroic cleverness. Her clops changed from rugged claps to soft clunks as she went from rocky floor to wooden boards. Underneath, the water which swirled in the small pony-made bay forever mumbled in discontent, very eager to rejoin the rush of the river proper. For too many years it had been trying to pull the flatboat away with it but the barge had only ever waved and teetered in place. Two stumpy wooden bollards moored the boat, rope wrapped just under their bulbous heads.
"Enter!" Prideheart implored her, limping as he caught up.
The filly faced away from him to inspect the nearest bollard. She prodded the old, heavy rope tied about its scrawny neck like a fancy bow, still tight.
"Mister," she said plain and unworried, "we have to untie it first."
Again she looked over the knot, thinking of perhaps nabbing the loosest part with her teeth and tugging. Just as she was preparing herself for what was surely going to be a disgusting moldy taste she heard a frightening crack from behind, and she whirled about to see.
The other bollard's head had been torn clean from the rest of it by one fast buck. It flew away until the rope still tied to it snapped taut, and then it miserably plopped into the water.
"Enter!" begged Prideheart again. He hobbled around her and readied to destroy the other bollard.
The flatboat, now unmoored on one side, was tempted by the lure of the river. Its tickled front end tested the happier water, and with that small taste it only yearned stronger to sail as it once had years ago.
Bookworm for the first time actually felt a spur of haste inside herself and she skittered up to the dock edge near the intact bollard where the boat was still close. She bounced over its low siding, only briefly getting her hind legs caught.
No sooner had he seen her hooves leave the dock did the stallion fire his next buck. However by thoughtless mistake he leaned too much of his weight onto his terribly impaired knee, spiking his ache, and it spoiled his shot. His kicking leg balked from lost strength, his hoof only glanced the post, and though splinters were chipped it was left intact. The pony slipped into a fall from both the loss of stability and the awkward redirection of his deflected strike.
The self-damnation he but mumbled nearly overpowered the nasty noises from the horde of heckhounds rumbling across the quarry. Already the monsters were in the basin blitzing over it, and of the closest hounds the stallion could see the strings of spittle hanging between the fangs of their open mouths.
To his hooves Prideheart rose with a quaking shudder, and immediately he went into another buck. This time he was better balanced, fueled by enraged desperation, and the head of the bollard ripped straight off.
The river didn't delay in stealing the flatboat, and nor did the stallion with his jump. His effort was unfortunately weak, coming too fast after his buck, but as the barge was only just beginning to build speed he cleared the short gap regardless. Barely. Only his front half managed to make it over the boat's siding. Scrambling and kicking he eventually tugged himself over.
The flatboat was an ore barge of the most straightforwardly simple design: a level floor where stones could be laid or stacked in whatever piles made the most sense, sidings that were only leg high, and at the stern was a platform raised but one step up. Back there sat the boat's single steering oar mounted dead center; a sizable sculling oar. The whole oar had long been dry, the bladed end lifted out of the water and the greater share of the shaft cutting downwards through the plain Y-shaped rowlock which held it in place, the handle tip poking into the floor of the boat. Only one pony was needed to steer the barge down the river, but none too many would have fit on board anyway if it had been carrying the small cottage's worth of stone it could fit.
Prideheart grasped the oar in his mouth, leveled it horizontal, shoved it out, and then stabbed the water with the blade. Riding in a boat was something he had never done in his life, let alone steer one with a scull. But the water only protected Bookworm if the gap between bank and barge was big enough to be a barrier to the agile heckhounds, and the river alone simply wasn't pulling the boat away fast enough.
He angled the oar how he best hoped was correct and then the stallion pushed a stroke. The water's tough resistance he felt channeled through shaft, pushing back on him, but as he carried through he sensed the forward thrust his stroke had imparted.
However he also felt the bow turn slightly shoreward.
Fidgeting wildly he sliced the oar up out of the water, twisting it this way and that way in panic as he tried to work out the physics in his scattered head. It should have only been a matter of reversing his stroke, and he knew that, but the oppressive danger of the moment and the enormous stupidity of his blunder had stalled him into second-guessing each of his second guesses.
And then time ran out.
The first two heckhounds charged onto the dock, the flatboat not yet past the end of it, and without pause they reached the edge and leapt through the air. Arcing over water and siding they both crashed aboard the barge, their reckless dives eliciting a surprised shriek from Bookworm. One of them skid into the port siding after landing while the other had a much more nimble touchdown in the center of the boat.
Prideheart yanked forward the oar already in his grasp with one powerful pull, and it slid inwards until the bladed end smacked against the rowlock. Holding tight the base he snapped it in one direction with all his might, and the handle end concordantly whipped across the boat where it thwacked the portside heckhound square in the face. The blow carried through, shoving the beast over the side and into the water where he yipped and sizzled as his fire was quenched.
Swiftly the stallion swung his makeshift weapon back the other way, aiming for the remaining heckhound. But the further monster was more prepared; to stay safe he didn't have to do anything more than take a step out of range. The two combatants traded threats a few times, empty swats of the oar versus the snips of a fiery muzzle, but eventually the heckhound decided that there was an easier target: Bookworm behind him.
In the small boat he really only had to turn around to corner her, and his dreadful bulk looming over the tiny pony coated her whole in a red shadow.
But the filly didn't shrink back. Rather, in clear mimicry of what she had seen before, she unslung her knapsack and took its strap into her mouth. She put an easy swing into it, drifting it back and forth.
The monster wasn't perturbed in the least by her defensive showing and he stomped his paw forward, thrusting his glowing snarl into her face. She responded by slapping him on the cheek with her bag.
The weight of her school supplies gave the attack all the hardness of homework, but unfortunately it was fueled only by the fledgling strength of a filly; a pat of a pillow, and nothing more. The absurd softness of the hit did surprise the heckhound though, who stood his head up and merely blinked several times over while he pondered about whether that really just happened.
Prideheart rammed the hound from behind, driving the beast past the filly. His charge didn't end with his strike and he pushed the monster along, aiming to throw him over the bow of the boat, but the heckhound was able to right himself enough to resist. Failing to get the necessary lift the stallion instead held his foe in a fragile pin against the bow's siding, hooves locking down throat and paw as best he could while the violent beast thrashed about in struggle.
"Bookworm!" Prideheart called. "The oar! Steer us away from the bank!"
She dropped her bag and raced over to the stern where she pushed the oar back into the water, yet she didn't quite own the necessary size to take the reins like a real driver would. She mostly moved the oar about by wrapping her hooves around it from below and hanging her weight where she wanted it to go. But it was enough. And, unlike Prideheart's inexperience, the knowledgeable filly had read books before about the famous river traders of the Damazon rainforest and thus had the wits to improvise some impressively decent control over the boat. With a slow slush of the blade underwater the barge began to creak away from the shore.
On the dock heckhound after heckhound had piled up. The river had hauled the boat far enough from the small bay that the hounds in front had gotten too nervous to take jumps, much to the anger of their more eager (or less wise) brothers behind them. Harassing howls were traded around, but meanwhile other heckhounds had doubled back and lined up on the river bank slightly downstream, readying leaps for when the boat passed near.
And when it came, the first of the beasts crouched in preparation. He was about to launch when Bookworm's turn took effect. The zealous hound misfired, hesitating not enough to fully stop his spring, and he popped a small hop in the air before plopping into the shallows of the river.
On board, Prideheart's weary strength couldn't compare to that of the hulking hound's. Every time the monster unleashed a fierce quake it threw off the stallion, and he only managed to reassert him by recklessly disregarding the scratches his body and cloak were taking.
For the furious beast's part, even if victory was inevitable he lost the patience to wait for it. He changed tactics, making use of his blazing anger to ball up some fire in his throat.
The pony recognized the signs and knew enough to back off immediately. His early defense kept him relatively safe: the spat fireball burst against his covered shoulder without doing any real damage.
But the heckhound exploited the opening aggressively. He returned the stallion's earlier charge, knocking the pony off his hooves with ease. Teeth bared, eyes alight, the hound licked his lips and opened his maw for a huge, juicy bite.
From the riverbank came impatient baying together in a whole restless chorus. One particular howl rose above them all with unforgiving command, and like that it brought the attacking hound to a sudden stop.
Displeased, but frightfully obedient, the beast snorted some cinders onto the stunned stallion and then stepped over him. He approached Bookworm but made no attack or even threat towards the harmless filly. Merely he laid a bored paw on the end of the oar handle. Bookworm gave a tremendous effort to resist his pull, bringing every last ounce of her young weight counter to his direction, but of course it did nothing; the hound could have lifted a pony ten times her weight. The oar swiveled back and the flatboat started to turn towards the bank.
Paws scraped dirt and eager laughs boiled as the heckhounds lining the shore prepared to divebomb the barge.
Hanging under the oar Bookworm tugged and jerked and yanked to no avail. Now that the boat was on its dangerous course again the humongous heckhound felt free to get angry at her annoying wobbling. His paw locked the oar down and he once again brought his face to hers to press an evil growl into her.
A soft tapping on his side unexpectedly called his attention, and when he turned to look his cheek was greeted by the uninhibited force of Bookworm's knapsack, this time lashed with the strength of an adult stallion. The heavy hit lost the monster a few teeth, and though he again reacted with a high head and blinking eyes it was this time to vainly try and clear the stars from his vision before he stumbled over.
Paw no longer chaining it down, Bookworm drove the oar for another sweep and corrected the direction of the barge at the same time as three heckhounds on the bank launched themselves. The first cleared his jump, if barely making it aboard the boat. The second took a hard hit from the boat's lip right into his stomach as he landed only halfway on. A crazed panic took him immediately as the water tortured his hind paws and tail. Between painful cold, shortened breath, and frantic yelping he couldn't find the coordination to pull himself fully aboard. The third, unlucky heckhound said a prayer and held his breath as he plunged straight into the river.
Prideheart went for the fully-boarded heckhound, again and again swiping the knapsack at the monster and driving the beast towards the bow. When the stallion passed near the hound who was still struggling to climb aboard he detoured to not-so-gently persuade the monster to surrender, his convincing hind hooves adequately doing the job. The buck cost him the knapsack however, as the other heckhound took advantage of the distraction to rip it from the pony's mouth.
Then the hound went on the attack, turning the tables and pushing Prideheart towards the stern. Each time his fangs chomped through air flecks of hot slobber spilled onto the pony, and each time his razors sliced the wind they snipped a few hairs from the pony's mane. At last one of his paws landed; not on Prideheart himself but instead catching cloak near the neck. The heckhound tore the pony to the floor, ripping the clothe a little as he did so.
The snarling mad beast was about to dig into the fallen pony to pull out his bones when the handle end of the sculling oar bopped his ear. Again Bookworm had mimicked her hero, this time by having scooted the oar forward to wield it as a weapon. Yet, akin the knapsack, it in her hooves functioned much less effectively, being more like a scrawny stick used in foalhood games. The twitchy thing hopped around the heckhound's face like an irksome gnat, never doing anything more bothersome than pokes to his nose or wily bats to his chin.
At first the monster loosely swatted at it, pushing the pestering device away so that he could focus on the disabled stallion. But always the jiggling handle fast returned with an irritating vengeance, nudging his head painlessly again and again and again and again. Each little tap was another angry coin on the pile, building and building until the heckhound was absolutely wealthy with fury. He snapped.
Being a dog after all he trapped the oar in a style much as flailing dogs do. Paws lunged and crashed upon it from above, and he closed his muzzle over the handle in the course of a blink. Growling and gnawing with all the noisy ruckus of a buzzsaw, writhing his neck like a sprinting snake, he reduced the oar's tip to a pulp with hateful speed.
His blistering rage was so focused on the stupid, stupid stick that he didn't even acknowledge the filly controlling it. Nor did he catch Prideheart returning to his hooves.
The stallion tucked low and charged, ramming the heckhound's exposed underside, and he didn't stop. He galloped, monster torn from the oar and hoisted over him, carrying the beast all the way to the bow and launching the heckhound overboard when he slammed into the front siding. The water popped and sizzled as the heckhound sunk under, the flatboat burped as it rode over him, and Prideheart managed to stay aboard only because the sturdy siding bent and cracked without breaking.
The cloaked pony went to step back from the now-shaky siding but found he couldn't stand on his own. The blood sloshing back and forth in his brain played tricks with his balance, adding to the troublesome weakness of his legs. Fumbling he clasped a more solid stretch of siding and leaned on it while trying to stabilize himself.
"Mister!"
Crawling back to his paws was the dazed heckhound, much uglier now on one side of his face because of the flattened fur and gummy gaps between some fangs. His flaring temper provided enough clarity to overcome the ringing which still echoed in his ears, and however much he wanted to take out his frustration on either pony he again couldn't ignore the barking of his comrades on the riverbank. All down the river's edge they were dancing around each other, following the floating boat downstream while they waited for it to come close enough to leap aboard. Altogether their drooling anticipation was a waterfall of hot slobber into the river.
The heckhound snatched the oar in his maw, twisting it despite Bookworm's resistance so that he could scull the barge back towards the bank.
But as he went to pull Prideheart seized the oar too, standing on the opposite side right next to the filly. Together the ponies countered every one of the monster's rabid jolts (though admittedly it was the stallion who provided most of their strength). The tug-of-war stayed a stalemate, with the heckhound's grip on the handle only digging in as he pulled and pulled. Each effort found him growing more lucid and more fierce, gaining power if anything, while the stallion felt his own body loosening from exhaustion. Soon the heckhound would give a pull too large for him prevent.
Which is something the pony suddenly realized he wanted.
When the monster hissed his worst growl and snapped his jaws forward on the handle to take his biggest tug, Prideheart shoved the filly back while releasing the oar himself.
The heckhound pulled so hard that, with the resistance suddenly absent, he tripped over himself and stumbled backwards. The oar popped out of his mouth and he collided with the edge of the boat. Up he went, paddling paws in the air like he was doggedly trying to surface from underwater, and perhaps all of his efforts actually did buy him a single extra moment of enjoying the fresh air. Over the side he rolled and down into the drink, snuffing out his fire.
Prideheart grabbed the oar before it bounced out of its rowlock, and he scrambled to orient it correctly so as to reverse the heckhound's final parting momentum towards the bank. Though he still struggled with his confusion over steering the boat, Bookworm came next to him and reached up, taking a calm and wise hold of the handle. Wordlessly she guided the older pony through the stroke. It arrested their wrong motion and turned them towards the center of the river, away from harm.
The stallion stayed in position, holding oar and ready to nudge the barge steady as proved necessary, but Bookworm felt confident enough to let go. She wandered up to the stern and stood her forehooves on the siding, looking back.
The defeated dogs swam their soggy selves back to shore. Of the dry heckhounds a few were still trailing the boat on the bank, but their zeal was decreasing by the second. Most of the remaining hounds had come to a stop. It wasn't that they couldn't have followed; the barge was adopting the speed of the river but for a good while longer the hounds could have raced hard enough to have kept up. It was solely that there was no point; nowhere was the river going to be narrow enough to allow them the chance to vault aboard. And if there were any heckhounds dumb enough to have tried anyway they dared not. The clear, harsh signal not to continue the chase had been thrust into them with a sharp howl.
Standing out amongst the pack of hounds was Kerby, tall above the others and silent as death. He was frozen still on the bank. The lights of his eyes, one still swollen and dimmed, never left the cloaked stallion. They lingered like a long day's sun never setting, only instead of giving cool shine they smoked with the depths of smoldering charcoal.
It was a stare Prideheart returned with both his eyes – life and death – until the barge wound far enough down the river that the horrible hound's hostile gaze was hidden behind clouding scenery.
Bookworm waited in her spot too, watching for any heckhounds to reappear. But they never did.
"Yahoo!" she reared off the siding and kicked her legs in celebration. "We did it, mister! Just like Star Swirl the Bearded!"
She turned around and looked at him with eyes so full of fabled poetry but not the age to turn it into beautiful verse, except to tell him, "You really are the hero you said you were!"
Prideheart, still latched to the oar and determined to keep them in the river's center despite the passing of the danger, slouched down. Each gasp wanted to slow into a regular breath, but he labored as the feelings in his wounds slipped back into his senses bit by bit.
"Woah," Bookworm remarked, worried at the sight. "Are you alright, mister?"
The heart in his chest throbbed against his ribcage like its walls were going to burst. His long-suffering knee wept and wept and wept, even as all sensation faded away except for the sting which penetrated from skin to bone marrow. Every sound that entered his ear was distorted by the iron bubbles bouncing about inside his skull, tilting his dizzy head in either direction with their randomly shifting weight. A thousand ants with bladed feet prickled across his chest and belly. Bruises he didn't remember receiving clamored for his attention, he discovered a kink in his neck as deep as a canyon, and his famished muscles choked in anguish over their deficit of strength. His body would rather that he had crossed the Pearl Peaks again.
"Come on," Bookworm delivered with oddly uplifting cheer, "there's no way that was nearly as bad as fighting off a few bull weevils, right?"
The battered pony weakly lifted his good eye up at the filly. He took her in: her bright orange fur not stained with a single drop of red or discolored with any splotch of blue or yellow, her little tail sprouting full without a droop, her happy eyes pure crystals without flaw or scratch, the lovely braid of her mane twisted like rope completely unfrayed and having not a single thread poking out.
She was perfect and pristine, save for a smattering of stone dust over her which proved that she had approached the quarry fire and escaped unburned.
The spent, beaten, sagging, damaged pony grinned large.
"Verily!"