Keen Trader woke up.
He was lying on the foredeck of the Mare Mustang, he realized as he opened his eyes. The deck was canted, and from the lack of any motion, he knew they were aground. There were no equine sounds around him, only the raucous cries of crows, no doubt quarrelling over some scraps -- and faintly, the soft sussuration of water.
Then he sw the corpse of Time Maker, lying beside him, and he remembered that he had been -- knocked out, it must have been -- in the middle of a battle aboard the Mare Mustang's decks, and was now lying amidst the shambles. He should have had a pounding headache, but he didn't feel the slightest bitg of pain.
Guess I really do have a hard head, just as Mare always says, he thought, in a desperate attempt at merriment. It fell flat, even in his own mind, as he regarded the corpse of the lead oarspony -- a steady, sober stallion he had well known and liked. There were even worse implications of Time Maker's presence here.
The pirates must have won, or at best Mare Mustang must have taken such heavy losses in winning free that the survivors were too few and exhausted to take care of tending to a wounded Keen, or decently covering Time Maker's corpse. The fact that Mare Mustang was grounded implied that whoever had her had not controlled her course very well.
Surely somepony must have won the battle? But actually, that was far from certain; in the confusion and literal fog, everypony on Mare Mustang might have been killed or knocked out, and the boat still managed to slip free, only to drift down the Avalon until it fetched up on a sandbank or riverbank somewhere. The lack of any equine sounds certainly smacked of some such fate.
Slowly and carefully, Keen rolled up nto his hooves. As he did, he realized that he had been lying very close to -- indeed, almost on top of -- a second corpse, whose identity he did not recognize. The dead stallion had been tall; almost as tall as Keen himself; and his coat was a shade of orangish-brown quite similar to Keen's own. Likewise his mane was a shade of golden-brown not very different from Keen's, though with a bit more gray hair, indicating that the other stallion had probably been somewhat older. This mane, and the stallion's head, was drenched in blood from what must have been a bad wound; the stallion's head was turned away from Keen, mercifully hiding whatever damage had been done. He even wore a bloodstained silk shirt, sodden from what looked like a nasty chest wound, which had originally been white, of the same style Keen favored; indeed, of the same style that Keen was right now wearing.
Keen shivered as he considered those similarities. The dead stallion had obviously been a pirate, and Keen should have hated him, but it was hard for Keen to hate a dead Pony who looked in so many ways like Keen himself. Instead, the similarities in their appearance filled Keen with a superstitious dread; reminding him of tales he'd head of buzzies and doppelgangers, mythical monsters which could assume one's own form. He felt very glad that he could not see the dead stallion's face. He supposed that the strength of his emotional reaction derived from his awareness that, had he not been remarkably lucky, that might have been him lying there. At that thought, his head and chest both ached in sympathy, so badly that for a moment he gasped and doubled up with the pain.
Now standing fully on all four hooves, Keen could survey the state of his command. That state was sorry. Mare Mustang was littered with still forms; apparently there had either been no other survivors, or so few and so badly wounded that they could not even clear the decks of the dead and more severely wounded. All sails were down, not furled but simply draped on the deck or half over the sides; some were missing. The cargo hatches had been torn open. Some of the cargo was strewn about the strand; Keen expected that the most valuable cargo had been plundered by the pirates.
The meaning was plain. While Keen had lain unconscious, the priates msut have overrun Mare Mustang, and slain, stunned or taken captive the crew. They probably did not have enough crew, especially after the fight, to make the merchant boat their permanent prize, but instead beached her and looted her hold at their pleasure. Then they left her here derelict, not wanting to hang around after the fog burned off and they were exposed to the view of the Guards atop Mount Avalon.
That fog still lingered around the boat, though it was gradually dispersing; he could now see a hundred lengths and more in all directions. The day seemed well-advanced; the Sun, invisible above him through the fog, was almost burningly-hot on Keen's skin, even though he could not yet see her orb. He could not actually see where it was in the sky, but he thought it was already far to the west. Hours must have passed while he lay stunned.
Everything around him, save Mare Mustang herself, seemed rather vague and colorless and gray, as if the world had gone spectral, but it was bright enough that he could clearly see the outlines. He was not entirely certain where he was, though he had an idea. The fog had robbed him of his normal landmarks, most obviously Mount Avalon. He could see enough to tell that the river was wide here; so wide that he could not see the far bank; from the direction of the current he must be on the eastern or southern shore. The wild shore.
The stretch of riverbank on which the Mare Mustang had come to her rest was a gentle slope, beyond which rose thickly-wooded hills. The pirates, had driven her far enough ashore that it would not be easy for Keen to get her afloat again, if he had to do this alone; and would be challenging even if he could locate one or two other survivors of the crew. Keen was in good condition; other survivors might well be severely wounded.
This shore did not look like the swamp he had been in when the pirates felled ... knocked him out. It looked more like the south shore opposite, or a bit east of, the former location of Lake Landing. That would match the wide river and gentle current, and the hills behind the strand.
That thought alarmed him. This bank, as he had reflected on the voyage upstream, was extremely dangerous, haunted by terrible beasts. The corpses on board would soon draw carrion-eaters much more fearsome than the cawing crows. Keen needed to find a weapon with which to fend off such horrors. Unfortunately, weapons were valuable: the pirates surely would have snatched up all such that they could discover when they plundered his boat.
His fine longsword had of course been stolen, as he had expected but which still caused him emotional pain -- and a moment later, physical pain as well. His right foreleg cramped in anguish, and he pulled it up for inspection to see a dreadful thing -- a bloody wound, as if a dagger had been thrust through the flesh around the cannon!
He seemed to have a confused memory of a dagger to the cannon, a mocking lecture by a pirate who imagined himself his better because of an aristocratic birth, then a rapier thrust right through his heart. But such was of course impossible -- had he suffered the latter wound he would not have gotten up now, in fact he never would have gotten up again in this world. He blinked, looked at his cannon again, and both the wound and the pain were gone. And, glancing his chest, he saw that shirt and chest were alike unmarred by any such terrible wound as he had imagined.
Indeed, his shirt was even free of blood. But how could that be, if he had been lying on the blood-drenched decking? He looked around at his back and side, and saw that there actually was a tremendous amount of blood staining the shirt, and his mane, where he had lain upon the foredeck. I'll have to get that laundered later, he thought. Good thing that it's white; repeated washing and boiling and bleaching can probably get it out. And those silk shirts aren't cheap!
It was of course a trivial loss, compared to the loss of crew and venture. The crew were his friends -- he felt a sick horror at the thought of having to tell their families how they died. He hoped that some had been as fortunate as himself, and survived the attack. And he now probably had only the ordinary furs; the pirates would have stolen the finest ones and carried them away in their galleys, leaving only those not worth stowing in their limited cargo space. Between paying off the estates of the dead crew, the time it would take to refloat Mare Mustang and the time it would take to get her to Colton now, he doubted that this venture would see any profit.
By his own impatience and folly and greed, he had lost what he had hoped to gain -- and also lost what could never be replaced by any future ventures, the lives of good Ponies. The guilt was a leaden weight on him. He had been in command; he had made the fatal decisions. It was all his fault.
For a moment he was overcome with shame at his failure.
Then, he recovered.
Enough maundering! Keen Trader sternly told himself. Attend to the task at hoof! I must find a weapon, and then consider how to refloat Mare Mustang and steer her to a safe port. If I act fast and well, I may still keep my boat -- with her owner-captain aboard her;; she is still mine, and no derelict for others to salvage!
Another good reason to find a weapon. Unarmed, he was far too vulnerable to anypony of ill intentions and low character who might hapen along and wish to salvage a wreck. Just because he had survived the pirates did not mean that his life was charmed. Alone and weaponless, he was terribly vulnerable.
Keen had gotten this far in his reasoning, when he saw the girl.
He was not sure just when she had arrived. He had been looking at his boat, and then considering the potential dangers posed by scavenging beasts and Ponies alike, and after that thought, it only seemed natural to look up and at the environment surrounding the Mare Mustang before commencing his search for arms. Adn there she was, standing next to one of the boses of furs, holding a fur in one hoof and looking directly at Keen.
She was an older filly, or young mare, appearing about fourteen or fifteen. She was gray-coated, with two-toned yellow and orange-yellow hair; worn long with red ribbon bows tied into bth mane and tail. Her eyes were a lovely light yellow-golden, and their expression was solemn as they met his gaze.
Given the nature of his previous thoughts -- and the fact that she had obviously been examining his furs -- he might have been justified in suspicion of her motives. Yet he was not. Why not?
Keen was too wise in the ways of the world to imagine that, just because she was young and pretty, she was harmless. Indeed, there was one sort of harm that young and pretty mares are all the more able to inflict upon stallions, though the fact that Keen was happily married and no other conscious crew aboard limited that avenue of danger.
Besides, she scarcely seemed a bad Pony. Her eyes contained too much sorrow for him to imagine her wholly innocent, but her exression spoke of suffering and sympathy rather than sin and malice. She bore no weapons, and while she was of muscular build, she did not look able to pose much of a physical threat to a full-grown stallion.
As to her peering at his cargo, that could be put down to natural curiosity. He did not think there had been time for her to abscond with anything.
But she might be aid. And she might know where he could recruit aid. She must have come from somewhere; she probably had kin near these parts. And her interest in the furs suggested an obvious means of hiring them.
All these thoughts flashed rapidly through his mind, because this was a very familiar situation for Keen Trader: having to decide whether or not to trust a stranger, and whether he migtt do a profitable trade with them. He decided, provisionally, in the affirmative for both.
Rearing up and leaning on the rail, he called out to the young gray mare.
"Ho, lass!" he said in a friendly tone, and waved his hoof over his head at her. "I am Captain Keen Trader, of the merchant boat Mare Mustang of Colton! We are a respectable boat, though we have encountered some difficulties. Might I be so bold as to inquire your name and origin?"
The girl cocked her head at him, and looked at Mare Mustang with an odd expression. Then she took a few steps closer to the boat, and said:
"Well met, Captain Trader. I am Ruby Gift, of Sunney Towne. And I would urge you to quit the deck of your boat and get under cover. The fog is burning off, and we shall soon be in full sunlight for some hours."
"That sounds like welcome news," said Keen. "This abominable fog aided pirates in attacking my boat, and impedes my ability to fix my position. Would you, perchance, know where I have fetched up?"
"Almost exactly where Riverbridge once was," Ruby replied, stepping a bit closer, "across the Avalon from where until the late Leveller fighting stood Lake Landing."
"Thank you, lass," said Keen. "You have confirmed my own dead reckoning." There was one thing she had said that confused him. "You speak of the fog lifting as if this would pose some threat? Why do you believe so?"
Ruby looked at him sadly and rather strangely, then asked "May I come aboard your boat, Captain Trader?"
"Certainly, my dear," he replied.
Ruby executed a prodigious leap from the strand onto the bow deck by Keen's side. Keen was impressed; he would have had difficulty making that jump up onto an unknown deck. At one point, Ruby almost seemed to be floating in midair, as if she had been some sort of wingless but still flighted Pegasus rather than an Earth Pony.
She stood now at his side, and looking at Ruby close up, Keen noticed the extraodrinary reality and solidity of Ruby, esecially compared to the eerily tenuous environment of the strand and the hills, which seemed to waver and fluctuate before his vision, as if their existence was somehow optional. Keen, and Ruby were fully real; the Mare Mustang was mostly real; all else seemed debatable.
"Captain Trader," she said, and her tone was gentle. "You are new come to this state. There are many things that you need to learn --"
"State?" he asked, mystified. "If you mean grounding, I have run aground before -- every riverpony has, from time to time. It's a routine risk of the river trade. I shall simply float my Mare Mustang off, a tedious but routine task --"
"Nay" said Ruby, and though her tone was quiet and calm, it got his attention. "I do refer to thine own state of mortality."
"What?" asked Keen, even more puzzled. "All Ponies be mortal, save perhaps the Ruling Princess."
"To be truer, I refer to your state beyond mortality."
"Beyond?" asked Keen, now thoroughly perplexed. "Lass, I cannot grasp your sense."
"Captain Trader," said Ruby. "I know from mine own memories that this can be hard to take. But thou must ken this, lest thee be harmed."
"Ken -- know what?"
"Good captain," Ruby said, gazing intently into his eyes. "Hearken well unto me. Thou art dead."
"No!" gasped Keen, struck by a punch of fear that seemed to hurt his heart like a length of cold steel. He staggered back from the pretty young mare who had just told him something terrible. "No! That cannot be!" His eyes rolled about wildly as he struggled to find the words to express himself. "I'm alive!" he cried, rearing and shaking both fore-hooves at the murky but now brighter-glowing sky. He clutched his own barrel. "I'm real ..." he groaned. "Real ..." He touched a hoof to his own face, then reached out and put that hoof gently on the side of her muzzle.
She netiher flinched from his touch nor complained, though his behavior was rather improper from a stallion toward a mare who was not at least his good friend. Instead, she smiled gently at him, put her own hoof lightly on his cannon to show that she both accepted and controlled this intimacy, and said "Of course thou'rt real, dear Captain Trader. I ne'er did make any claim in other wise. Thou'rt real. But thou'rt also dead."
"Then how can I touch you?" Keen demanded. "Why do you not shrink from my uncanny hooves? Are you some necromancer, to so calmly bear the fell presence of a thing from beyond the grave?"
He meant to challenge her with logic, but for some reason he had lost his wonted calm. His voice, normally so well-controlled after the habit of a stallion who made it one of his principle sources of income in trade negotiations, shrilled most shamefully. He felt a nameless horrid suspicion -- though he knew not the reason, he feared that Ruby Gift was right, and that his life had indeed already ended, though all common sense argued that if he were able to debate the point, he was indeed most definitely alive, since the dead are not exactly known for their great volubility.
Then, Ruby said something else at least as horrible as her earlier utterances.
"Why, good captain," Ruby replied, "for the very good cause that I too am dead."
She smiled at him, a smile that was clearly meant to be warm and gentle and friendly, but which in light of her statements, the shaken Keen could only regard as the ghastly grin of some ghoul about to devour his soul. He withdrew his hoof and shrank back in loathing from what seemed to be a sweet young mare.
Ruby's ears drooped, slightly, and she sighed. "Very well, so be it," she said. She shut her eyes and concentrated.
Keen beheld a golden glow from beneath her eyelids, and also from her Mark, which he perceived to be a magnifying glass. Was she using her Talent? Keen had never seen anypony's parts glow when they did such, save for a Unicorn's horn when he was telekinesing, or the flight of an especially fast-moving Pegasus. Certainly, he had never seen any Earth Pony do such, though he had heard rumors of the rare Earth Pony mages and such luminence proceding from their hooves and manes when they performed their laborious and subtle workings.
Ruby opened her eyes, the glow swiftly dispelling. She looked at Keen.
"Captain Trader," Ruby said calmly, "the proof of my claim lies right beside us. Behold!"
She pointed directly at the unidentified corpse which Keen had noticed before on the foredeck.
Dread chilled Keen's heart. His head and his right cannon hurt him. "That -- that is just some unfortunate pirate," he averred. But his own words sounded strangely hollow as he uttered them.
She shook her head sadly, and stepped over to the bloody corpse. She crouched down beside it.
"That were no pirate," she said sadly, "not unless my Talent has very much played me false." She lifted the head, looked at the face, the view of which was blocked by her own head and mane from Keen. "I ween he was an honorable merchant, and a brave Pony who died in defense of his boat and cargo, of which the thieves sought to rape from him." She turned her own face toward Keen, though her long orangish-yellow streaked mane was still obscuring the corpse's face. "He was a good Pony who had a very bad day -- but at least he died well, fighting for his own."
She moved aside, and now Keen could clearly see the face.
"I sorrow, good Captain Trader, for these ill tidings I bring unto thee. I am so very sorry."
All Keen could see was that bloody mask, so very like his own, beacause it was his own.
It was his own face. His own corpse.
And Keen Trader knew he was dead.