"There. That will take some pressure off and relieve quite a bit of the pain," Dr. Remedy finished snuggly fitting the knee brace over Prideheart's worst leg.
The device was hardly of the modern fancy design available in a proper hospital like those in Canterlot would have offered, but the doctor had plenty of experience wringing the most value out of meager or less up-to-date supplies. Old medicine wasn't always bad medicine.
"Likewise the medication should bring down the swelling."
Prideheart only gave a soft harrumph and pulled his leg away, but immediately he felt a difference upon bending it. All the taut fabric, and in particular the tight squeeze of the firm bands above and below his devastated knee, was a new and odd sensation. But dangling and flexing his leg in the air suddenly no longer awakened the same growls of pain it had used to. Prior, even the wind brushing against his knee was enough to have sharply tingled him with jaw-clenching soreness.
Doubtful of the miraculous relief, but more than that almost too eager to test it, he put his hoof down and took a solid step forward. He even leaned heavily into his braced knee. The wound was there; that he felt without trouble, and working on it as he was sent a warm wave of irritating crinkles running up his leg. However the bothersome squeaking of a irritated mouse was not any comparison to the former roaring caterwauls of a vicious lion. The injury was still wild, but had been comfortably caged.
Home Remedy, foul-mooded by nature but now even more so in light of the cloaked stallion's poor patient manners, warned him, "Just remember: that brace eases the symptoms but it's not a cure. You should be off that leg and letting it rest; for a long time, really."
A stiff kink had developed in her neck from having bent so low to slide the brace onto him, and she stretched herself while standing high to loosen the tightness, but all the while her doctor's gaze never veered from the stallion's exposed legs. His mangled knee may have been the worst damage down there but goodness! All those bruises, cuts, and scratches which coated his legs almost made them more red, black, and blue than his natural white!
It was hard for her to resist the impulse to throw water at a forest fire.
"I have some ointments that will help with the-"
"It is well enough," Prideheart beat back her offer swiftly, though he had little attention for her as he was still slightly enamored by his newly empowered knee.
"Fine," the doctor hissed.
That grotesque wound on his face required attention also, or at least it probably had needed it some decades ago, but why should she have bothered demanding an examination? Fussy, irresponsible, know-nothing ponies! All of them! She tugged at the lapels of her physician's coat to straighten it out; a little act of disdainful decorum to counter his rudeness with.
"Another pony who won't do what's needed to take care of themselves. Fits right in here."
She turned away and started stomping off towards her office. There would have been nothing gained by seething over the issue, anyway. Time was short and there were so many more preparations which had to be made for the terrible things that were coming to Stony Nook.
The heavy sound of her hooves woke Prideheart from his bout of momentary wonder, and a strange murmur wiggled up into his throat. He tightened his lips over his teeth while he considered second thoughts, but then he released himself, opened his mouth, and called after her.
"... Thank you, Doctor."
The unexpected gratitude stalled Home Remedy long enough for her to return him one of her nicest scowls before she moved on.
On both ends of town Stony Nook was in chaos, though of a surprisingly orderly fashion all things considered.
Resolved to their awful course, the townsponies had quickly broken apart into teams under the direction of Crumble Pie, and by her instructions they had started to piece together a defense. Already most of them were scrambling about along their new wall, from riverside to riverside, trying to make the best use of their limited time before they had to face the unfaceable. Prideheart had only just begun to help them when Home Remedy had pulled him aside for her ferocious round of medical practice.
Meanwhile, east across the long stone bridge which spanned the river, the lucky evacuees gathered. In number they were fewer than the defenders; just a scant few dozen ponies with an even smaller few number of wagons they had nearly finished loading. Their haste was even more urgent than anything going on across town, yet their results were slower for reasons of old, young, brokenhearted natures.
Only a rare few of those ponies were of the strong and stout type who would have otherwise been standing with the unfortunate but noble defenders if they had not be selected to have served as draftsponies for the wagons; like it or not, young and solid backs were needed to haul the heavy loads down to Mule's Head. Some of them wished to stay but otherwise obliged to the duty requested of them, and the rest were ponies who had asked specifically to be allowed to abandon Stony Nook. Those ponies surely had not wanted to be thought of as cowards, and they had been quite relieved when Crumble Pie had without question accepted just about any excuse from them, true of otherwise: family, infirmity, or simple fear.
So, working fast, the rare ponies had piled much into their wagon beds: some food, blankets, other simple supplies, as well as all of the town's most essential documents and records (all neatly sorted and packaged as a matter of everyday affairs thanks to Mayor Desk Job). What took the longest to load – what they were still trying to get aboard one at a time – was all those other ponies who were themselves departing also. Nearly half of those leaving were older ponies, from those with their first deep wrinkles crawling up their faces to those who were living prunes crowned with wiry manes white down to the roots. They left not only because they weren't fit enough in any way to fight but also because the wise years of experience they had accumulated made them fit enough to watch over the other half of the departing ponies: all of Stony Nook's fillies and colts.
Every foal in town was brought out and loaded into a wagon. The task of it was not so laborious in body as it was in mind, and certainly that was what delayed the departure the most. It was a deep well of heartbreak on that end of the bridge. Parents, some succeeding but many failing at containing their grief, said their final goodbyes to their own beloved foals before hoisting their little ponies up into the wagons and returning to town to join the defenders. A long string of ponies walked backwards over the bridge, heading west while facing east, unable to say an easy or fast goodbye to their love.
But despite the difficulty – despite shattered hearts in the parents; despite the loudest tearful cries of protest from the foals – all accepted it. All agreed: not one foal should be left behind where the fire could reach them.
Certainly not even Bookworm.
Prideheart, weary leg freshly reinvigorated, wasted no time returning to the wall, and upon arriving he found the cherished filly being dragged down off of it by her father.
Crumble Pie, atop the wall and rushing out orders upon pony after pony, was bidding Bookworm a lamentably fast farewell in between all the pandemonium. The filly was going to be the last pony to join with those who were to escape, and she had in fact only been spared immediate placement in a wagon because the gray mare had recognized the fountain of knowledge she was. Crumble Pie had asked that the filly be briefly held aside, and for the last few hurried minutes she had been extracting everything she could have about heckhounds from the well-read foal. Already anything of use that had come out of the filly was being incorporated into the defensive planning.
But now with the reprieve over Bookworm was being hauled away, and she was loathe to go. Scrolldozer's magic could direct a hundred stones simultaneously in an orchestrated performance of immaculate grace, but pulling his one little pony along to somewhere she didn't want to go almost resembled an ant struggling to push around a misshapen pebble. The tender touch of his magic tugged and tugged at her while he pleaded for her cooperation, but she only ever wriggled and kicked while barking in despair at Crumble Pie who had no more time to listen.
'Old quarry' this, and 'heckhounds' that, she shouted. Whatever it was precisely that the filly wanted to share with the gray mare, she was quite desperate to do so. Her screaming had her nearly at the point of frustrated tears.
When finally Bookworm accepted that Crumble Pie's overworked attention was beyond reach she was left with no choice but to take the battle directly to her father.
"Dad, stop!" she commanded. And when he didn't she twitched harder against his magic, flinging about indignant grunts with each kick.
"Honey, please! You have to join the others now."
"No! Dad! The heckhounds-! Dad! If we don't-!"
"Baby, I'm so sorry but it's time for you to go. Please, just-"
"Dad, they have a fire that-! Their inner fire-! Dad, stop it! We can't save Stony Nook if we don't-!"
"You don't worry about Stony Nook, baby. W-We're-... we're going to do just fine here, alright? You know Crumble Pie will m-make sure that-... that w-we're all going to be o-okay. But to be sure, you have to get away from here a-and... be safe."
"But we gotta-! Dad! Daaad!"
Each denial added only more pressure until, tremendous and volcanic, she erupted in an enormously hateful cry:
"Dad, you're not listening!"
Scrolldozer stopped as if he had swiftly smashed into a brick wall, and his magic flickered with weakness as it gently let his daughter go. But it wasn't his intention to free her, and with a shaky hoof he reached out and guided her face to his. Down he lowered himself, bending his legs so steep the he was nearly brought to the ground, and he met her eye-to-eye. Though she was the callow and upset filly it was he who seemed far more anxious and disheartened, in his own adult way. His fatherly veneer was intact but underneath it everything crumbled quickly in the worst sort of way.
"Bookworm," he teetered on the edge of control, "I'm so, so sorry, honey. I am listening. Really I am. But there's no time. Mrs. Totaler and the others really have to leave right now, and you've got to go with them."
But his speech was all too familiar to the filly; the words may have been new but the hypocritical parental authority was still the same. And her method of fighting back against it was unchanged: outright denial. Her dead silence screamed. Her passive stillness wrestled against it. She refused in every way to cooperate. She didn't even allow herself the respect to look at him, violently squirming her chin away from his hoof.
And her little weapons eviscerated Scrolldozer. Down to the core it cut him; that this was the way his last goodbye to his daughter was going to turn out.
"Y-You're going to go with all your school friends on a little adventure away from Stony Nook, okay?" he brought up a broken smile, trying so very hard to find the words and strength which might nudge her forward. "And once you're in Mule's Head you'll get to take a train, all by yourself! W-Without-... without me... And listen: y-you take it straight to Canterlot, alright? You're going to see Mom! Won't that be nice to see her, and s-stay with her for a l-long while?"
A freezing shiver climbed into his voice, and slowly it slipped a stuffiness up his nose. He scarcely had the coherence to try and hide the slurp of snot being pulled back up, but the way he scrunched his muzzle did help to hold the tears in.
"... A-And when you see her you give her a big hug for me, and-... a-and you t-tell her how m-much I love her, okay? W-Will you super promise me that you'll do that? Tell her t-that I love her so very, v-very much?"
The disagreeable filly said nothing, declining to betray her policy of disobedience. She didn't even offer up a defiant grunt.
"And I love you too, B-Bookworm. I'll a-always love y-you, baby. Please know that."
Scrolldozer tried to get a hoof around to embrace her, bringing himself up so that he could endow his last kiss upon the top of her head.
But again she wriggled in resistance, this time whining harshly. And in her struggle she at last spied her cloaked hero standing a short distance away observing the whole ordeal.
"Mister!"
The little filly tore away from her father, escaping his final show of affection, and she raced to the safety of Prideheart.
Scrolldozer, panicked by his daughter flying out of his very grasp, started to follow her, but he went only a few failing steps before he noticed whom she was escaping to and with how much eager desperation she fled. His numb flanks couldn't lift his legs through another further step and he was only able to stand back and wait, watching her interact with her mysterious friend through the corners of his lowered, misty eyes.
Bookworm reared up as she crashed into Prideheart, and she pawed at his chest with her forehooves. She was somewhere between the frenzied excitement of yapping puppy and the dismayed devastation of a heartbroken foal needing comfort. Certainly those two extremes tugging on her was what caused her blathering of fast and broken pleas to emerge without any clarity.
"For what is all this trouble, young Bookworm?" Prideheart nudged a calm into her with the gentleness of both his hoof and his question. On his face was a smile so simple that it revealed in every open way the love and delight he felt for her pure acceptance of him.
She bit down on her lips to hold back her rambling until she had the right words, but meanwhile she pushed herself closer into him. Her knees folded and her chin rested up against him, and she gazed up at him like he was a tower of hope; a foal's embrace of a figure beloved; clinging to him, her salvation from the tyranny of her father.
"Nopony is trying to stop the heckhounds!" she finally complained, certain that her hero would understand.
Prideheart tweaked his good eye at her, saying, "Here before you many are preparing to make their stand against the wicked brutes."
"No, mister! Not that! The quarry! There's still a crack in the quarry! If we don't do anything to seal it then the heckhounds will just come back after they're beaten!"
Ah. So that was what drove her agitation.
The cloaked stallion let no jolly amusement show on his face, but his heart chuckled. Stony Nook's circumstances were dire – an unfair evil visited unjustly upon them by cruel fate – but the filly's imagination was directing her to the wrong sources of worry. Yet again her young inexperience was butting heads with her mature knowledge and causing her trouble. At least this time her mistake had no chance to pull her into any real danger.
Again her priorities matched those of a fictional hero. She saw only the broad and triumphant strokes of the tale: heckhounds being vanquished completely by ponies empowered with unstoppably good hearts; evil being put back in its place by the forces of justice. There was much Prideheart admired in that, but there was an obvious truth the filly missed. Had her mind been older and sounder, and her priorities more mature, then swiftly she would have realized what all the adults of Stony Nook, and particularly all the parents, had already come to accept: there was a greater, more immediate victory that had to be won, above all else.
Or rather, a greater, longer defeat that had to be prepared for.
The crack to Tartarus was of no concern to anypony since the defenders' foremost goal was to hold the line for as long as their lives lasted. That duty superseded all others. They were to spend their lives purchasing their most precious loved ones the best possible chance of escape to Mule's Head. Only if—whether through a lucky miracle or some unanticipated eruption of heroic willpower—only if they were able to succeed in driving the heckhounds out of Stony Nook then the need to seal the quarry crack would become a legitimate concern.
If.
Otherwise...
... a last stand needed no follow-up plan.
But all that besides, the filly was still full of a charming foolishness which wasted her worries on things so inconsequential. For even supposing that the battle did find unexpected success, well then there would have hardly been trouble in sealing the crack regardless. Quenched heckhounds were harmless, and naught but a single fast pony would have been needed to chase after them to the quarry. One agent with a blasting charge could bury the red fissure without trouble or interference after the cowardly monsters had descended to the fiery bowels under Equestria to recharge.
Yet Prideheart hardly expected Bookworm to have grasped all those considerations; not her, so prone as she was to fables and fantasies. One day her sound mind would be capable of incredible tactical thinking. One day she would be a pony of astounding heart and soul. He believed those things in full faith. She was already well on her way, after all. But such growth would only come after she had matured enough to soften her overly devoted love of heroes, their fictional conflicts, and their imagined ability to defy impossible odds solely through narrative power.
Unfortunately there was no time left in Stony Nook for her to grow. No time even for the cloaked stallion to give one last lesson to show her the errors she had made.
With her father he was in agreement: she had to depart.
Prideheart draped an affectionate leg over her. The fabric of his new knee brace rested with confidence upon her shoulder.
"Wise filly, worry not," he instructed her. "These matters will be handled as best they can. Your role is not to be here to see them through."
Bookworm took a blow from his failure to immediately validate her fears. It was like a small white spark suddenly popping into a thick pane of glass.
"Mister, the heckhounds; that crack is their weakness, remember?"
"Yes. That lesson you taught me well. And your teachings on these monsters will be of immeasurable help when the battle comes."
From above his face hovered over her, caring and kindly despite the wretched repugnance of his dragon-wound. But as he nearly touched his nose to hers he leveled the tender guidance of a parent upon her.
"However, it is not the time for cracks and quarries, but the time for some to stay and some to go. And you, dear young Bookworm, must go. Away, with the others. This time you will not come back for me."
Very gently he brought his hugging leg off of her and used it to touch one of her hooves, still on his chest.
"Fear not for me, for I am not so foolish now as to enter this fight alone. All here will stand together. But... do I have your true promise that you will go? A promise sought now not for control over you, like before... but to give my trust belief in you. Hm?"
The filly looked at his big hoof over hers, and all the scuffs and scratches upon it. The terrible weathering was the legacy of his many recent days of hardship, up and down over mountains and far over dusty and rocky ranges, but in her young mind they were only the scars from the battle he had fought yesterday to protect her. And now today he would fight again in a battle, this time to protect all of Stony Nook. Fight, as heroes ever did.
Her head stayed down and her only answer was a worried whine.
The stallion took her hesitance in warm stride, saying, "Are you unable to grant that promise after all our agony on the river? Ah, no trouble there is in it; I have an alternate promise which might suit your good character better. Many heroes are needed here for the great defense..."
With an affectionate touch he lured her face eastwards towards the bridge.
"... but those defenseless who must flee will need a hero with them as well, for their own safekeeping."
Again Prideheart touched her with his hoof, this time lightly upon her heart. His touch was soft as a feather cushion even for how rugged his hard, old hoof was.
"A hero such as you, young Bookworm. On my deepest sincere request, can you promise to me that you will ensure they arrive at their destination in safety? To you I entrust them."
It was a request expertly built to appeal precisely to the little filly, and quite so it draped a smile over her still-present fears.
Yet she was hollow of any agreement. She gave no word and sealed no promise. An unseen wall still sat in the way, keeping her from crossing the threshold.
Grinning, Prideheart gave her one final, goodhearted nudge, "Nothing there is to worry over for us who hold here. Surely you know this. More fell challenges have I faced in wrestling bull weevils than from any tender pups of Tartarus; this day is no more than a holiday."
Her smile expanded, in size and sadness.
"... I promise, mister."
For a fraction of a moment Prideheart's gaze lifted up towards Scrolldozer, leering darkly.
"A super promise, then?" he returned to very specifically ask Bookworm.
"... I super promise that they'll be safe."
"Good. It is committed to you in confidence."
He lowered himself around her, hugging firm, and she only had slight reserve before she gave back in kind.
"Go. Wait not to depart," the stallion then instructed. An older eye of his looked at her. "You I will not allow to be lost."
"... See you later, mister," the filly hoped. She reluctantly began to return to her father.
Prideheart delayed in thought before he answered.
"... Verily."
Unsatisfied but nevertheless resolved, the filly went back towards her father who threw open his legs, ready to accept her with a vast and anxious hug of his own. Only she declined to take it, paying his offer a mean frown as she turned past him to shuffle down the road.
It was another stab into the father's heart, and it took him a great effort to stop his bleeding, pick himself up, and follow her. There was still enough intact loving parent in him to see his daughter's departure through.
To watch the wagons pull away with her in tow; to look out through his tears as she shrunk into a safe speck rolling down the eastbound road... That should have at least made it just a little bit easier to die.
Now that Bookworm's future was secure, Prideheart turned his focus fully upon the town's defense.
Swiftly he made his way to where the wall intersected the road and he climbed the crude stairway there. Up top frantic ponies dashed and flew about every which way, making their preparations. But more importantly, there was Crumble Pie. The gray mare was lecturing to a collection of attentive ponies which included Hailstone and Desk Job, and though the cloaked stallion's arrival interrupted their session it wasn't in any unwanted way.
"Oh, good, you're here," Crumble Pie greeted, and she grinned slyly at him, "and no worse for the wear after going a bout with our good doctor, I see! Please forgive her if she was a little, uh, zealous. I hope Doc Remedy didn't hurt you too badly?"
Being amongst so unfamiliar a crowd still kept Prideheart silent, but he did raise and wobble his leg to show off his new brace; the 'wound' from his latest heroic battle against an implacable enemy.
"So," Crumble Pie quickly swallowed her amusement and moved to bring the stallion up to speed, "keeping in mind what the wiggler told us, here's what we got (and I sure hope it'll do something to keep those things back): we're lining the wall with buckets full of river water. Someponies will be on top to throw them, other ponies'll have the job of racing back to the river to refill them. Water is our only real way to hurt'em; those dogs are worse than cats when it comes to the stuff. More importantly, every hound we tag that way is out of the fight for good. If we can just hold up on the wall and rain down water on them then maybe we can last for a good long while."
She heard her own words and a cloud of dismal uncertainty came over her. Over to her other ponies she looked.
"Hailstone... there's absolutely no way that the pegasi can get a rainstorm together? Even a small one would make this so much easier."
"Stony Nook doesn't have a proper weather crew, and we don't have the materials."
It felt like it wasn't the first time that Hailstone had explained it, though in actual fact all the rushing about had prevented any full account from earlier being given.
"We can't make any fresh clouds, and way out here there's only so few up there to begin with. Not enough for a storm of any sort, that's for sure. And anyway it wouldn't matter. Even if we took one of'em and dunked it in the river it wouldn't hold much water, and what it did hold it wouldn't rain out very evenly. You need some actual rainwater in the mix to bind a cloud together so that it'll stay saturated and pour properly. That's what makes it into a raincloud, instead of just some ordinary, everyday cloud. You know, that's why Cloudsdale has a whole factory just for pumping out rainwater and rainclouds. We can't do it, Crumble Pie. Nice idea, but it's no good."
"I understand. Just fishing for advantages wherever we can find them."
Hailstone's excuses left Prideheart unimpressed, and vainly so. Pleased with it, he grunted too loudly, "It is right that no magical weather would give saving cover."
As expected the comment was not popular with anypony, and Crumble Pie in particular showed his irrelevant remark a disappointed frown.
"I'm not throwing out anything that can help save these ponies' lives," she said.
It was her direct words more than any unfriendly stare from the others that brought a downcast glance of shame to the cloaked stallion.
"Anyway," Crumble Pie didn't wait to carry on, "that's the core of the plan: wall and water. You got any immediate suggestions to harden things up a bit, sir?"
Prideheart shook off his ignominy and searched the area, spying every pony hurrying about and every sloshing bucket they were depositing. The long wall spanned across the entire west and south sides of Stony Nook, a mirror to the great riverbend itself. Quickly a numbers game kicked off in the stallion's head.
"We must be careful to have the wall entire stationed with ponies," he warned the gray mare. "The hounds' thirty gives them numbers enough to stretch their attack wide across much of the face of it, which they will try." He remembered the heckhounds bottlenecking on the quarry ramps, snapping and snarling at each other with a distaste for togetherness or teamwork.
"There's only twenty-four of'em or so, not thirty," Hailstone chastised the stallion, more to be combative than to be helpful.
Came Prideheart's cold reply, "Trust better eyes, feathered poltroon."
"Oh yeah, I bet you see pretty well with that slimeball you got there."
"Scoundrel, there are ants I've witnessed hold their hill with more valor than you."
"Enough!" Crumble Pie shouted, aghast, frustrated, and disdainful that she had to come between them yet again. "We've got to cobble together a defense here and we don't have time for bickering from a pony I know is more professional than that and from a pony old enough that he should have left his colthood behind years ago! Now take those chips off your shoulders and shake those rocks out of your brains!"
And though she was exasperated, the gray mare refused to let the pointless aside of foalhood-level nonsense draw momentum away from their planning. Leaving no space for the scolded ponies to even respond she pressed forward immediately, acknowledging Prideheart's suggestion of coverage, "Right, so we'll space out the ponies we got as best we can to get the whole wall. But we can't spare everypony for that. We'll need our fastest few ponies on bucket refilling duty."
The cloaked pony quietly secured him shame and became professional once more.
"That is sound."
"Good. Okay then. Now, anything else you recommend?"
"... The center of the wall is the furthest run from the river. Of water, the largest stockpiles should be there-"
"Because it takes the longest to get fresh buckets to. Check," the gray mare acknowledged instantly. She launched a confirming stare at the others to make sure that they understood too.
Impressed, Prideheart continued with his next observation, "In a defense such as this our whole line must hold. Not but one breach would be needed for the hounds to take victory. Any of their rotten kind who stole inside could disrupt other defenders from behind, snapping our ranks and scattering us quickly."
"I get where you're going," Crumble Pie nodded, then grinned, "and we're already ahead of you. Mayor?"
Desk Job's brightened horn raised up a simple bell with a wooden handle. It was an unremarkable one much like a parent might use: stretching it out the window in evening and shaking it to ring a trail their playing foals could follow all the way home to supper. Stony Nook had always had a few lying around for similar purposes; signaling other workers at the quarry, calling town meetings, and so on. The Mayor twiddled her magic to sound the bell, and its sprightly tingle was unusually jolly for such a grim morning.
"We distributed all the bells we have," Desk Job explained. "Not everypony has one of course, but enough do that if any heckhounds make it over the wall then somepony should see it and give the warning signal."
Crumble Pie frowned, "So everypony will know if our line is cracked. Trouble is, though, there isn't any plan yet for what exactly we do when that happens. I just don't know the best way to deal with it."
"Any penetrating invaders must be repealed without delay, and holes in our line restored with all speed," Prideheart determinately advised. "A tear grows longer in time, and hounds will spill through if we are not fast to re-sew it."
"Right; throw'em out right away if we can," the gray mare winced, "but... suppose we can't?"
"To the end of our lives, we must hold," he granted no quarter.
Crumble Pie gave her head an incredulous shake, but lest she show enough silence to permit Hailstone a chance to spit more anger she quickly insisted, "No, no, no. We're fighting to the end if we have to, yes, but we're also trying to save lives here. That means we need to have an actual plan of what we're going to do if the wall doesn't hold. And 'die' isn't good enough!"
But she still had no alternative herself. For the life of her she couldn't figure out a sensible failsafe strategy. But like in her many days quarrying good rock from the earth, she knew how to work with others to achieve results which she couldn't alone. It had in fact been her very purpose in inviting Prideheart into their fold.
She looked hard at the cloaked pony, and she questioned him again, making sure to press her strong honesty.
"So, the heckhounds get over and we can't push'em back... What do we do then that saves everypony we can?"
The quiet stallion spoke nothing as his eye rested on Crumble Pie, then moved steadily over some of the others. Even in their dislike of the outsider, they all looked to him for an answer. And as his gaze moved on down the wall to the many further ponies who were carrying buckets or discussing with their neighbors nervously about their own short futures, he slowly silenced his own breathing until, in the quiet halls of old Canterlot military classes, he found the answer they sought.
He turned east.
"A retreat to the bridge," he said. "Our narrowest chokepoint."
"Without the wall for an advantage we wouldn't last long tussling hoof-to-paw with these monsters, even on a narrow bridge like that," Crumble Pie mused with a grim edge. But immediately she started to awaken to the stallion's intended strategy, and she brightened, "... But we wouldn't have to hold them all that long; only long enough to get everypony over the bridge. Then... we break it!"
Prideheart nodded at her perfect pick up of his thoughts.
But Desk Job turned up a confused eyebrow at the plan.
"I thought you said that destroying the bridge was too big a risk?"
"No, no," the gray mare energetically latched onto the emergency strategy, and she explained, "It would have been too much of a risk if it was the only thing that we did. We don't know how quick the heckhounds will be to figure out a way to cross the river. But as a final measure when we back out? What is there to lose after our lines are already broken? We'll save all the lives we can while delaying the hounds as much as possible, however much or little that is." However she eased into an unpleasant seriousness and reluctantly cautioned her friends, "And... if it does turn out that they're fast in getting across, well then we're down nothing anyway. We'll still be between them and our ponyfolk on the road so that we can fight to the last to stall them anyhow."
She mulled silently on the dreadful potential for a moment, but then she nodded in appreciation at Prideheart for his solid strategy. The stallion in turn accepted her showing with a humble and loyal bow.
"Mayor," Crumble Pie then asked, "how many blasting charges do we have here in town?"
"Only eight. You keep most of them up at the new quarry," she answered with flawless memory.
"Eight'll be enough to demolish the bridge pretty good. We can bust them out and set them up later. We need to make sure the wall is absolutely ready first."
The gray mare let out a weary but ready sigh.
"Right then. Can I trust you all to spread the word about our strategy and make sure everypony is in on it? They'll need to know preicsely when to ring the bells, and what to do if they hear those bells start rocking. Mayor, you know our numbers; you're in charge of spacing out ponies and buckets. Remember: ponies spread even, but more buckets go near the center."
And while the others acknowledged and began to break apart, she turned to Prideheart and invited, "The wiggler had a bit to say about how the hounds fight; biting and slashing and spitting fire, and the like. And I guess we can expect them to be able to leap right up the wall, too. You've seen some of that up close, right?"
"Verily."
"Well... think you can tour around with me and give some very quick lectures to everypony about how to best deal with it? Sort of fast budget-budget self-defense classes. We don't have time for more."
His deferential bow asked her to lead the way.