Armor's Game

by OTCPony

The Battle of the Kelpie Creek

Sword at her side and her bicorne cocked at a jaunty angle, Rainbow Dash marched on, grinning as fifty thousand ponies around her roared out The Fire of Friendship.

It was amazing that they still had the energy to sing. The army had marched hard and fast since Silvestris, but that hadn’t been because they had been ordered to. The army had never before marched so well and confidently, not even after Maneden. The smell of victory was in the air. The rumour was that somewhere ahead of them was Chrysalis’ last army. The Changeling Queen had massed everything she had left in a last, desperate attempt to stop them.

Rainbow, just one pony in a whole army surging forwards, marched on almost at a trot. Was she tired? Yes. Was she annoyed at being woken up when the moon was still high for a march? Yes. But it didn’t matter. Her ponies were behind her, they were winning, and soon they would fight the last battle. And then they could go home.

But from somewhere up the column, the singing suddenly faltered. Rainbow frowned and tried to see around the Pegasi in front of them. Racing up the column, all heads turning as it passed, was a troop of Imperial Crystal Hussars.

“I don’t like the look of this.” said Cloud Kicker behind her.

Worry replaced elation on thousands of faces as the Hussars passed. They were blown, and many of them had lost busbies. Their swords were sticky with ichor and some had had their pelisses slashed to ribbons. The supported three wounded between them.

“MAKE WAY!” shouted their leader, a blue-maned gold Pegasi wearing Captain’s stars. The Hussars flew past the Dragoons and continued their unsteady way up the column.

“Does this mean...?” asked Blossomforth quietly, without needing to finish.

“Yep,” said Rainbow grimly. “Looks like the Bugs know we’re coming, everypony. Guess we’re all just going to have to fight twenty percent harder now.”

***

“Captain Sentry,” said Shining Armor impassively.

“Sir,” panted Flash Sentry, dropping his salute. “Well, we found the Changelings, sir. Uh, maybe I should say they found us, but anyway, both of us found each other, so...”

“Get to the point, Captain.”

To let his personal dislike of Flash Sentry creep into military operations was deeply unprofessional, he knew. It wasn’t as if he’d had any choice that today would be the day the Imperial Crystal Hussars would be out on reconnaissance; they had just been next in the rota. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it would have been this lecher Flash Sentry, of all ponies, who gave away his position...

“Well, they know we’re coming, sir,” said Sentry. “We got hit by a cavalry picket just outside Underpaw, but from our recce it doesn’t look like they hold the town. As we fell back they were pulling pickets back to their main position behind the Tabby Burn.”

“Do you have maps?”

Sentry opened his sabretache with a wing and pulled out a heavily annotated map which he opened up on the grass. The entire headquarters huddled around it on their knees. The entire army, moving in seven great columns, had halted while a hooful of ponies made plans that would determine the fates of thousands.

“Their entire line is fronted by the Tabby Burn,” said Flash Sentry, pointing at a thin line of blue on the map that trickled into the Kelpie Creek from the east. “Their left is anchored on this town here, Softpaw, on the Creek. Their centre is fixed at Overpaw, and their right on Fluffingen. The ground between Softpaw and Overpaw is mostly clear, sir, but the Burn’s banks are marshy on both sides. It’s a very strong position.”

“What about their numbers?”

“Every soldier they have left, sir,” said Flash Sentry seriously. “I’m not kidding: even the field at Maneden wasn’t this packed. There’s at least a legion in Softpaw with another behind in support. Probably just over a legion in Overpaw too. Fluffingen looks lightly-held in comparison, but given the hill and woods to the east, we’d have to take it in a frontal assault and I wouldn’t fancy our chances. They’ve got at least a legion in between each village, and more cavalry squadrons than I could begin to count.”

Shining Armor leaned closer to the map, taking in the shape of the ground, gun positions and buildings. “We can’t flank. If we try to take the villages head-on it will be another Silvestris. And if we try to break through the centre we’ll be fixed by the forces there and cut to pieces by the batteries in each village.”

“That’s a long front the Changelings have,” said Colonel Warning Order. “At least four miles. Their forces are dispersed. If we mass everything at a single point we could smash through between the villages.”

“They also have a direct road route from Softpaw straight to Fluffingen,” countered General Blackfire, pointing at the map. “We’d founder as we crossed the Tabby Burn and they’d have plenty of time to mass their forces to oppose us.”

“Split the army,” advocated Brigadier General Sword Knot. “Send one half over the river then race our boats down the Creek past Softpaw. The manoeuvre force can meet them below the town, cross back over and take the Changelings in the rear while the other half fixes them here.”

Major General Dame Air Freight of the Supply Corps looked positively ill at the prospect. “They’re barges, not battleships! Those boats won’t last five minutes under Changeling artillery fire!”

We broke their centre at Maneden, thought Shining Armor. And we forced them to uncover their flank at Silvestris. Maybe we can do both here...

“There is no way of escaping the fact that this will be bloody,” he said decisively. “Our best bet lies in breaking through between the villages and isolating their strongest forces there.”

“But sir,” protested Sword Knot. “You said so yourself. If we go for the centre we’ll be pinned by the forces there and the crossfire from each village will tear us apart.”

“Not,” said Shining Armor grimly. “If we can draw off those forces.”

***

As the eastern sky turned pink, Queen Chrysalis stood atop the tower of what had once been Softpaw’s council chambers. The Queen of the Hives grinned as she stared down at the length of her army.

It was a formidable position: the Twenty-First Legion swarmed in Softpaw below her, while two batteries sat on the town’s eastern flank and ten cohorts waited behind in support. Between Softpaw and Overpaw, the Twenty-Second Legion and sixty-four squadrons of some of the only Changelings left who could still fly guarded the gap with a battery of guns. Overpaw thronged with fourteen cohorts and had three batteries on each side, while another forty cavalry squadrons, the Twenty-Third Legion and a battery of guns covered the gap between it and Fluffingen. Sixteen guns sat to Fluffingen’s west, guarding the flank of the five cohorts within. In the wooded hills towering above Fluffingen, the beginnings of the foothills of the distant Bone Mountains, seven cohorts sat ready to slam into the flank of any force that tried to storm the village. Twenty-five cavalry squadrons sat behind the lines in reserve.

Ten thousand cavalry and forty-six thousand infantry stood ready to smash whatever force Shining Armor hurled against it.

“A marvellous position, My Lords,” she whispered. “Shining Armor will have no choice but to come between the villages.”

“Will... will you not allow us to demolish the hoofbridge, My Queen?” asked Lord Thorax quietly. It was a surprise that he had spoken. He was a meek, quiet Lord whom it was rumoured Chrysalis had lain with only once.

“Let it stand,” said the Queen dismissively. “Shining Armor’s troops will have a chokepoint to cross; our gunners will have an aiming marker.” She turned and bared her teeth at the old stone bridge crossing the Tabby Burn. A path stretched from Underpaw south to the road linking Softpaw and Overpaw. The ponies will march into a killing ground. My gunners will turn that white stone red.

Lord Chitin knew that any word he spoke was dangerous. “My Queen,” he said hesitantly. “I really do think we should reconsider the positioning of our forces in the gaps.”

“You know the plan,” said Chrysalis tersely. “Shining Armor will have to cross the Tabby Burn. While his forces founder in the marshes we will catch them in the crossfire of our batteries in each village. We will trap whatever’s left against the Burn and sweep them away with our cavalry. If he sends his Pegasi across independently, our legions will form square and defeat them in detail.”

“These are the same ponies who marched into a crossfire at Maneden and defeated us,” said Chitin. “The same ponies who marched into the defences of Silvestris time and again even though they knew it meant death. We cannot underestimate them, nor allow them any advantage, My Queen!”

“I know you would put our infantry right at the Burn’s bank,” said Chrysalis coldly. “I will not put my forces in any position where Shining Armor can blast them in the open with his guns, nor will I risk any chance of them being caught in the fire of our own artillery!”

Chitin knew that he had only got this far because he had a victory under his belt. Thorax would not speak in support, and Lords Carapace and Larva had long since been cowed. To criticise further would be death. “I can only urge you to reconsider, My Queen.”

Chrysalis’ eyes flicked from Lord to Lord. Her voice was bitterly condescending. “One of my Lords will not support me. Another cannot even make an argument for his suggestions.” She waved a dismissive hoof at Carapace and Larva. “You two may as well be drones for the quality of your counsel. Know this; I let you live because I require commanders on this battlefield. Win and you will remain Lords, but count yourselves fortunate, for I see that today victory will be my own.”

***

The army was silent and stationary now. No shouts or song rose from the ranks as the morning mists swirled around them. A sibilant hiss rose from every company as sharpening stones were run along spearpoints and then passed to the next pony. Everypony prayed they would not have to use them.

Beyond the low rise ahead of them, the officers knew from looking at their maps and the soldiers knew because their officers had told them, was the battlefield, a wide plain dotted with villages with the Creek on the right and a forested hill on the left, leading down to the marshy banks of a stream. Beyond that stream was the enemy.

Shining Armor had dismissed his Generals an hour ago to finalise his plan, and now at seven in the morning, huddled in their greatcoats at the head of their division, General Sir Warding Ember stood with his two brigade commanders, Major Generals Dame Golden Shield and Dame Bright Bastion.

Mist blowing from his muzzle and his headquarters trotting behind him, Field Marshal Prince Shining Armor cantered up past the Guards Divisions’ rearguard. Heads turned as he trotted past the massed battalions, and suddenly a thunderous cheer filled the air, thousands of ponies roaring as one. Shakos, swords and spears were waved in a display of indiscipline that Shining Armor should have hated. Instead, a smile plucked at his muzzle and, not once breaking his step, he swept his cocked hat from his head and raised it up in salute.

Warding Ember watched and his heart swelled with pride. After all his years in the Royal Guard, he must have trained half the officers in the current army, but a hooful stood out for him. Major General Neigh had fire: at Valneigh and Silvestris, and even in the first meetings to decide on the Army’s doctrine, he had shown nothing less than an utter determination to crush the enemy. Colonel Morning Star had thought: he was so, so careful to avoid casualties, but as he had shown at both the strategy meetings and in his non-standard tactics at the Recinante Cliffs, he was a brilliant analyst of what won an engagement quickly. Lieutenant General Dagger von Steel had skill: he had led his division into the mouth of Tartarus at Maneden and had devised a formation that took it victorious through a cavalry charge and a fire-swept field. Colonel Silver Star had drive: she had dragged her Crystal Pony recruits up and drilled them relentlessly to turn the Crystal Guard into one of the finest regiments in the army. He had seen her lead a spearpoint charge into the flank of Cocoon’s legions at Maneden without pausing to fire even a single shot.

But there was something inexpressible about Shining Armor. He seemed to have all those virtues united in one pony. To be sure, he had made mistakes. His strategy of annihilation may have cost the Army’s reputation at home dearly. At Valneigh and even at Maneden, he had been too cautious, both nearly leading to disaster and the latter only being a great victory by mistake. But after that education on the field of fire, he had learned. They had all learned. In his pursuit of his objective, to bring the Changeling army to battle and to smash it, he was relentless. On the march he had humped it along with his ponies, never once using his magic to help him along, and at nights he had eaten the same food and slept rough like them. That mattered more to any soldier than his General’s ability to win them honour and wealth. The Army went into battle never fearing that they might lose on Shining Armor’s account. Finally, his grasp of the offensive was second to none. He had constantly kept the Changelings wrong-footed and retreating until now, in desperation, they had made their stand here, where the Royal Equestrian Army might end the war once and for all.

As he passed the vanguard battalion of the cheering division, Shining Armor returned his hat to his head. Warding Ember stood to attention and led his officers in the salute.

“Mares, gentlestallion,” Shining Armor said, returning the salute. “Golden, I hear you’re writing a book?”

Golden Shield smiled. “Just a small thing, sir: a brigade commander’s view of the campaign.”

“Well I’d like to read that when this is all over.”

“You’ll have a copy with my compliments, sir.”

“Well let’s hope the chapter for today ends well.”

Laughing, the four of them climbed the rise. Shining Armor pointed down across the plain. The Guards Division was on the right flank, up against the Kelpie Creek. Directly in front of them just over a mile away was a village.

“Softpaw,” declared Shining Armor. “Small village, roughly three hundred houses. The Changelings have at least one legion in the village, and another behind in support. They also have three cohorts off to the left with sixteen guns, and at least sixty cavalry squadrons between here and Overpaw. I need you to assault that village.”

Warding Ember nodded grimly.

“You will be supported all the way in by two batteries,” Shining Armor continued. “You’ll also have the 10th Heavy Brigade operating under your command to act as cavalry or infantry as you see necessary. While you’re moving in, the 6th Brigade and the 9th Light Brigade will move against Overpaw while the 5th, 7th and 12th move against Fluffingen. The 2nd Division, the Life Guards and the 11th Brigade will remain in reserve until you have pinned their flanks and centre. You must not let up in your attack: we must get the Changelings to commit their reserves to these villages. If we don’t...” He did not need to complete that.

The Field Marshal checked his watch. “Time now is ten past seven. At ten o’clock, everypony will crest this rise, and you’ll all go in.

Shining Armor took a deep breath. “Okay, everypony, we all know that this battle will determine the fate of the war. All the ponies who have died in the past are with you here today.”

Golden Shield stepped forward. “I want to thank you, sir. Thank you for getting us here. It’s an honour to serve under your command.”

Bright Bastion was next. “Sir, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve here.”

They saluted, turned smartly and marched off to their brigades. Warding Ember smiled at Shining Armor. “To think that that dishevelled RPG player I welcomed into the recruiting office all those years ago could lead an army here today.”

Shining’s cheeks turned slightly pink. “Don’t remind me. I tripped on the doormat, remember?”

“And now you’re here. You have risen higher than any officer I have ever trained.” Warding Ember took Shining Armor’s hoof and shook it. Then he stood to attention and brought his hoof up in salute. “Today it is for me to live up to that.”

***

“SPIRITS DAMN IT! WHY THE BUCK ISN’T THIS ON THE MAP?!” Major General Neigh raged as he slashed at the hedgerow with his sword. Next to him, pioneers from the 7th Brigade hacked gaps through for the rest of the brigades.

Neigh had been given three brigades, two of infantry, one of Hussars, to take Fluffingen on the left flank. To get to his jumping-off point he needed to make a wide march behind the rise. The route he had selected had been shown on his map as clear. What he found instead was row upon row of fields enclosed by dense hedges, thickets, and irrigation ditches. Even if the Changelings had long since sucked the life from them, cutting through the hedgerows was an exhausting task that was costing him valuable time.

It was not helping Neigh’s already-foul mood. Shining Armor had broken up nearly his entire division and kludged together his brigades and battalions to make up for the casualties he had caused. Consequently, today Neigh was left with a heterogeneous unit that was theoretically the 5th Brigade, but was really more a collection of companies that had never worked together before and were still understrength. His other infantry brigade, the 7th, hadn’t even been part of the 3rd Division!

The crowning humiliation had been him being saddled with the 12th Light Brigade, the most incompetent cavalry brigade in the Army. It was led by Brigadier General Firebolt, who had been so terrified of attacking at Maneden that half of Cocoon’s army had been able to escape when a cavalry charge could have routed them. The brigade’s regiments had yet to win a single battle honour between them, and the joke was that its motto was “Thou shalt not kill”.

Perhaps Shining Armor wishes me to die, thought Neigh, grinding his teeth. Maybe I should. But a look down at his uniform drove that thought from his head. Since Silvestris he had worn the pink-faced red jacket with gold shoulder wings of the Trottingham Grenadiers. No, I must live. For them, for their families.

He checked his watch. Spirits damn it; he was already half an hour behind schedule! His brigades had set off at eight thinking that the march would take two hours. Now he might delay H-hour for the entire army!

Cursing Shining Armor, cursing maps and cursing Chrysalis, Neigh roared and slashed his sword at the next hedge.

***

Crouching atop the rise, a pocket watch held in his magic, Warding Ember kept his eyes firmly fixed on the dial. The minute hand clicked to 9:59.

“Ladies,” he declared to Golden Shield and Bright Bastion. “We shall dine tonight at the usual time. Good luck.”

He swept his hat from his head and waved it in the air. At the flanks of the Guards Division, gunners put their portfires to their guns.

The booms were almost swallowed by the immense battlefield, but every soldier there, pony or Changeling, ranker or officer, knew what it meant. It was the beginning of the end; now was the moment to which the entire war had been moving.

The Battle of the Kelpie Creek had begun.

***

“My Queen!”

“My Queen!”

“I see them!” Queen Chrysalis leapt atop the abatis surrounding Softpaw. Over the rise marched thousands of ponies, gorgeous in their red uniforms, their colours fluttering. Puffs of smoke flashed from either side of them as their guns fired, covering them on their march to Softpaw. Off to her right, Chrysalis saw thousands more ponies marching straight towards Overpaw.

They marched like parade soldiers. They marched towards their deaths.

“We have them!” she cackled. “By the Hive, we have them!”

So Shining Armor was not being clever. He was coming straight for her fortified villages, and he wasn’t even bothering to attack Fluffingen! In truth, Chrysalis felt a little bit disappointed. Everything her Lords had told her had made her expect some kind of bold manoeuvre by Shining Armor, perhaps some kind of massed dash through the centre like she’d planned for. This was just... inelegant.

No matter. They were marching straight on to her fortifications and straight on to death.

“Gunners, wait!” she cried. Their portfires were lit, ready to fire the great guns bought in secret from the Dragon Kingdoms. Dozens of them waited, but she wanted that plain full of ponies before they fired.

“You see, My Lord,” said Chrysalis, teeth bared in exultation. “We have our victory.”

Lord Chitin did not answer. Tension and uncertainty shrouded him.

Chrysalis laughed. “FIRE!”

The guns began.

***

Shining Armor gritted his teeth as he watched his army march into death. The hamlet of Underpaw, packed with troops being held back for the decisive moment, sat on his left. He could see their flank units from here: their colours, untouched by the wind in the village, hung heavy on their masts. Soldiers pawed nervously at the ground, just wanting to get it all over with. Some took swigs from water bottles. A few of those, Shining Armor had no doubt, contained the cider ration saved from yesterday. One officer whispered a prayer from the Book of Harmony.

Beyond Underpaw was the Guards Division marching on Softpaw. To Shining Armor’s right, the 6th Brigade and the 9th Light Brigade advanced on Overpaw. And beyond that...

A cold shock of utter horror filled Shining Armor as he stared at the empty eastern half of the plain. He drew his binoculars in a desperate attempt to disprove what he was seeing. Where in Tartarus is Neigh?!

A Hussar, panting and lathered and his busby and pelisse askew, thumped down next to him. “Field Marshal, Major General Neigh is delayed!”

“How long?!”

“At least another hour to get into position, sir!”

“Hurry them!”

The Hussar saluted and flew off. Behind Shining Armor, a desperate whispering broke out amongst the staff. If Neigh’s brigades were not in action, then the left flank of the 6th and 9th Brigades was hanging in the air. Then every Changeling legionary and gun between Overpaw and Fluffingen was free to be swung round to slam into their flank as they advanced.

If his brigades kept advancing, then they, a battle, an army and a war were lost.

Shining Armor swept around to face his aides. “Halt the advance! All units to halt in place!”

The staff stared at him in disbelief for a few moments, but then the Hussars took off to deliver the new order. Shining Armor watched them race across the plain to the slowly-marching battalions at the right and centre, praying they would reach them in time.

***

What few windows remained in Softpaw and Overpaw were rattled by the blasts of the guns. The Changelings fired constantly. The ancient iron guns, with their immensely-heavy breeches that required a team of dozens to shift, could never fire as fast as the Equestrian cannon, but the Changelings had got close. They had trained incessantly in all conditions, and today, when they had the luxury of numbers and a fortified position, they could get very close to their maximum rate of fire.

The fire was like a thunder never ending. And the thunder came from a cloud: great billows of grey powder smoke wreathed Softpaw and Overpaw. The gunners operated in a sulphurous fog, and even the Changelings packed in the streets and away from the guns still buzzed and choked as the smoke irritated their spiracles.

As their guns roared and bucked, Changeling officers would occasionally step forward and peer through the cloud. The Equestrians had been stopped.

Sitting on the field just in front of the forward slope of the rise, cavalry regiments were jammed behind infantry battalions, representing a deep, packed target for the Changeling guns. Gunners chittered excitedly at the effects of their fire. Every round told. Hundreds of ponies were bowled over as shot smacked into their ranks. Equipment, spears, swords, limbs and heads tumbled through the air as shot after shot landed among them.

The Equestrian advance may have stalled, but the ponies’ guns were firing back. They had less of a target and their enemy was fortified, but the Royal Artillery had months of experience behind it. Roundshot smashed houses in Softpaw and Overpaw flat and carved bloody paths through rooms packed with Changeling defenders. Shells burst over the abatis and set it and its defenders on fire.

Lord Thorax cowered as a dozen screeching Changelings, their wings burned away and flames licking up their carapaces, galloped away from a shattered section of the Overpaw abatis. Six more raced up it and began hastily rebuilding the defences.

The pony fire was telling. He had heard of the power of their guns at Maneden, but he hadn’t imagined anything like this. The village was being reduced to a ruin, and the ponies hadn’t even started advancing yet!

Thorax spotted an officer in a purple helmet amid the chaos and hurried over, keeping low. “Where’s the Queen?!”

“Not sure, My Lord. I think she’s over on the right. She might be leading a flanking movement.”

The right, thought Thorax. Carapace and Larva. Chrysalis had dismissed those two to the point where she’d thought a blow would be least likely to fall, so she could have command of the victory in the centre. Now she had to abandon that position and take command of the right, or Carapace and Larva would just sit there and let a victory fly away, paralysed by the terror of making a wrong decision.

“Here and Softpaw are clearly the ponies’ main effort,” he said, trying not to sound too shrill. “I want our cavalry moved in to the village.”

“All of it, My Lord?”

“The infantry will need all the help they can get at this rate.”

Thus, the order was given for twenty squadrons of cavalry to move into Overpaw.

***

“Tirek in Tartarus!”

Warding Ember was not the only pony in his division cursing. Red lines of troops cowered in the grass, hunkering down in old irrigation ditches or curling up behind scrubby bushes, for all the good it would do them. Some even tried to hack holes in the ground with their spears or knives.

Ember was making the best of it: he had sent his pioneers and sappers forward, and he could see them labouring furiously to throw corduroy roads over the swampy banks and dumping fascines into the Tabby Burn to create corridors for the assault. But if they didn’t move soon the Changelings would have them pre-sighted for fire and blast them to pieces when they finally attacked.

It was a nightmare of sound. Roundshot rumbled overhead, canister whistled, and the shrieks of the wounded rose terribly over it all. The stink of sweat, hot metal, burning grass, blood and ruptured bowels filled the air.

Ponies died in ones and twos, a slow trickle that would add up to the day’s ghastly total. They could not go forward, and they could not go back or they would rout in seconds. So they lay there, cursing the Changelings, cursing the shot, cursing their officers as their colours were shredded by fire and more and more of them died.

They were not even in spear range of the Changelings yet.

***

Lord Chitin crouched on the edge of Softpaw, watching fire pour into the prostrate pony division. It was an amazing sight, but he knew deep within him that something wasn’t right.

Why are they just attacking here? Do they mean for us to reinforce here and uncover our right? But if they do, why aren’t they advancing?! It makes no sense!

“Lord Thorax has moved his cavalry into Overpaw, My Lord,” said an officer next to him.

Chitin stared at him in disbelief. “All of it? How does he mean to counterattack once they advance again?!”

A flash of heat suddenly swept over them. Chitin threw up his leg to shield his face from the cloud of shrapnel as a pillar of fire erupted into the air from one of his batteries: the pony artillery fire had found one of his guns.

Chitin scrubbed soot from his face. A massed assault on this flank and we’d be helpless. What is his plan?!

***

“Major General Neigh is in position at Burnside, sir! He’s making his advance on Fluffingen!”

Shining Armor flipped open his watch case. Ten minutes past eleven, over an hour behind schedule! “Give the Major General my regards,” he said tersely. He spun to face the rest of his aides. “General advance, now! Move, move!”

The Hussars took off into a field of smoke and fire. Every instinct screamed at Shining Armor to follow them, to join his ponies fighting and dying, but he knew he could not. His position as the General was here, observing the entire battlefield. If he could not see when and where to make the decisive action, then all was lost.

But the idea that it might be lost already gnawed at him. His army had been under artillery fire for over an hour, and if he looked over to Underpaw he could see surgeons and medics, their scrubs and aprons already gleaming red, setting to work on the tide of wounded and dying.

He had already taken two thousand casualties, and the assault hadn’t even begun.

***

“Armor thought to catch us!” cackled Chrysalis, waving a claw at the battalions slowly marching on Fluffingen. “He thought to make us attack his left flank and then catch us as we marched with an attack from Burnside! Well no matter! His plan as failed. We will let him break his attack on our defences!”

She spun towards Lord Larva. “My Lord, move your cohorts into the village. I want total numerical superiority here when they attack.”

Lord Larva, who had been ordered by his Queen to begin massing those five cohorts for a flank attack just before the pony battalions appeared out of Burnside, said; “Yes, My Queen.”

Chrysalis waved a drone over. “Tell our cohorts in the woods to stand by. When those ponies assault Fluffingen’s defences, I want them to march down and hit them in their flank. We’ll clear this brigade away then roll up Armor’s line from the right.”

“Yes, My Queen.”

Larva knew there was nothing he could do to stop his Queen from presenting her bizarre fantasies as battle plans. Roll up the line?! Did she really believe that Shining Armor didn’t have a reserve ready to smash any movement like that?!

But he knew that if he said anything, he would die, and a drone less willing to ask questions would take his place. So he stayed silent, hoping, praying that Shining Armor was just trying to bludgeon his way through the defences in the villages, and didn’t have some grand scheme ready that no one had spotted.

***

“Not a shot fired until I hit the palisades!” bellowed Golden Shield, waving her sword above her head. “No stopping! Do not stop!”

Bloodied but determined, the Guards Division’s battalions trotted in half-distance columns towards Softpaw. It seemed mad, advancing into clouds of fire without even shooting back, but the Guards knew that if they were to break into Softpaw, the momentum of their mass must not be lost.

Warding Ember had nearly had a fit when Shield had advocated going in in battalion columns, but it was the only way to build up the mass required to break the defences. So they trotted on in dense masses, Colonel Noteworthy and Lieutenant Colonel Caramel’s light infantry battalions advancing ahead of them, firing and moving and flowing like quicksilver towards Softpaw. Though they were in column they had no fear of the Changeling guns, for the gunners had ranked self-preservation over tactics and had committed the cardinal sin of getting into a duel of counter-battery fire with the pony guns.

So they trotted on, hooves drumming on the boards of the engineers’ bridges as they crossed the Tabby Burn, the 1st Guards Brigade in the lead, the 2nd further back watching their left flank, and the 10th Heavy Brigade in the third line ready to sweep away any counterattacks. At a hundred and fifty yards from the town, just over the Burn, the Guards could see individual houses burning and hundreds of black figures swarming behind the defences.

At a hundred yards, they could make out the twisted ruin of the abatis, smashed to splinters by the artillery barrage.

At fifty yards, they could see the icy eyes, as cold and soulless as the winter sea, of each Changeling.

At thirty yards, those eyes vanished as thousands of black, gnarled horns glowed, then a storm of glowing green shots crashed into the approaching columns.

Golden Shield, conspicuous by her hat and sword, was felled by five shots. The colours fell as the Ensign dropped dead clutching at his heart, but they were seized by the Sergeant behind him. Ponies jerked and twisted as shots struck, but the lines closed up and they kept marching.

The Changelings had trained well, and they were firing close to three shots a minute. Any Equestrian drill instructor would have been proud. They fired, waited, charged their horns and fired again. Rank after rank of ponies fell as tidal waves of fire crashed into them, but they kept marching, snare drums hammering, huge Grenadiers leading the way.

Then the cry went out from the surviving officers: “BATTALION, DOUBLE!”

And with a roar, the Guards charged forwards, smashing into the Softpaw defences like a hammer into glass. Some vaulted the shattered abatis. Other crowded behind parties of pioneers that hacked at it with axes. Hissing, screeching Changelings charged in response, goring the attackers with their horns or slashing with claws and fangs.

Furious combat erupted along the entire northern edge of Softpaw.

***

The 7th Brigade sloshed, cursing their wet boots, over the southern ford of the Tabby Burn. Ahead of it was Fluffingen. At its head was Colonel Crimson von Dagger.

The young officer’s Adam’s apple was bobbing in his throat as he swallowed in fear. His was the last, least brigade in the army, and he the youngest brigade commander. For that reason, before they’d always been kept on the far flanks or in reserve, until today, when everypony was being thrown in.

Behind him, as his three battalions marched in two lines, he could hear the thunder of guns, the two batteries on either side of Burnside seeking to reduce Fluffingen and the two Changeling batteries to the village’s west. He’d be in range of those guns soon, but they scared him far less than that barricaded, loopholed village. Ponies could march through a hail of fire and come out the other side, but they could not withstand for long a hail of shots from behind barricades, nor batter their way through solid walls.

Then the guns disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

The roars came moments later as Dagger spotted the pencil-thin grey lines arcing through the air towards his brigade. He held his breath as roundshot fell into the ground before his lines, bounced, and shot overheard behind his battalions, or struck his ponies at head level.

Ponies were blown sideways and back in clouds of crimson smoke, splattering their comrades with blood. The lines stubbornly closed up and kept marching as drummers grimly hammered their drums and the Ensigns gripped the colours tighter, but the shots told.

Dagger knew exactly what was happening: Oblique shots. The artillerist’s dream, his battalions were at just the right angle to allow the Changeling guns to fire almost at right angles down the length of his lines. Nearly every shot that hit took down three ponies in each rank.

Ahead him, his Light Companies fired and advanced, their spears crackling as they fired at the town, but they could no more clear the way that a single stallion with a chisel could quarry away a cliff.

Dagger’s heart was thundering. The next few moments could destroy his brigade. The Changelings were holding until they were as close as possible, so that every one of their shots would count. He prayed them to make a mistake; to give in to panic and fire early and give his ponies a chance. But they didn’t. Their hive nature kept them in position, and when the fire order was given, Dagger flinched from the roar of destruction.

Streams of green magical energy tore at the Equestrian brigade, ponies jerking and bucking as they were struck. Then new Changelings took over at the loopholes and fired again, and a second storm of shots tore into the red-jacketed attack. The air seemed full of blood and fire.

“FORWARD!” roared Dagger. “FORWARD!”

But the 7th could not go forward. The tide of fire had hurled it back and halted it there. Ponies milled in the grass, making a desultory fire with their spears that was even less effective than the Light Companies. The colours fell as the Ensigns were hit, rose as Sergeants grabbed them from the ground then fell again.

The attack was stalled.

***

Major General Neigh watched in stunned disbelief at the sight. From his position atop the low rise, the 6th Brigade looked like a red thread draped loosely around Fluffingen, wreathed in smoke. They just stood there, the Vanhoover Fusiliers and Bucklyns being chipped away by fire while the 2nd Battalion (Royal Fillydelphias) waited uselessly behind him.

He felt vomit rising in his throat. It was Silvestris all over again. The ponies in that brigade couldn’t move, and without support they would die where they stood. Crimson von Dagger had been so determined to lead that attack, and he’d obliged him. By the time Dagger had marched it had been too late: he had gone in in line. Who’d ever heard of lines assaulting villages?! They had no mass and no ability to absorb losses to keep going! He had not been able to call him back, and to order Dagger to change formation in the middle of the battlefield would have been to invite a devastating counterattack. He’d had no choice but to let Dagger keep going while hoping for the best but preparing Sword Knot’s brigade for the worst. The worst had come.

“Brigadier Knot!” he barked. “Mixed order! Take your brigade in on the right and clear away those guns with your Grenadiers and Light Companies! I’ll follow up with the 12th to cover Dagger’s retreat. Once he’s out the way, push your central and left battalions into the village. Remember, pin them! Don’t drive them out! Got it?”

Sword Knot wasn’t listening. “Sir!”

Neigh swept back around to face the battlefield. The sight before him chilled his blood. His jaw worked soundlessly as he tried to comprehend it. Spilling down the hills above Fluffingen, out of the woods that Neigh had thought impenetrable, were seven cohorts – close to 3,500 Changelings – in column, trotting at the double towards the left flank of the 6th Brigade while the Changeling artillery demolished its right.

The 6th’s flank broke before the Changelings collided. Hundreds of terrified ponies streamed back across the meadow towards the rise, a tide of tiny red drops that were horrifically vulnerable to a cavalry charge.

Neigh needed cavalry, but all he had was the most useless light brigade in the Army led by an utter coward. But those troops needed protection.

“Brigadier General Firebolt!” he roared, rounding on his cavalry commander, desperately hoping that a bit of shouting would inspire her courage. “Charge in support of those ponies! Get them back here alive!”

***

Crimson von Dagger ran with his brigade, out of the smoke, across the grass back to the rise. He knew this was wrong and he knew that he should reform his ponies into a skirmish line, but Spirits he had to get out of there! His flanks were gone; he couldn’t break into the village; and thousands of Changelings were slashing hundreds of Vanhoover Fusiliers on the left to ribbons.

Then he heard the sonorous trumpet of a bugle, and two thousand Pegasi in two lines, standards fluttering and sabres gleaming, roared over the ridge and crashed, a tidal wave of blue streaked with gold, into the cohorts charging down the hill.

Brigadier General Firebolt had not forgotten the shame of Maneden. Everypony from Shining Armor down had sneered at her for daring to want to preserve her force against a stronger opponent. Well not today. She would not let that happen again. Her entire brigade charged, glorious in their dolmans, braid and busbies, pelisses fluttering in the wind, whooping and screaming as they smashed into the flank of the seven cohorts in a whirl of flashing sabres and gouts of Changeling ichor.

***

Well I can cross off cowardly from Firebolt’s list of traits! thought Neigh furiously. But what about stupid?!

Firebolt had gone in with her entire brigade, nearly two thousand Pegasi in two lines, the Applewood Light Dragoons in front to crack the formations and the Whinnyapolis Hussars behind to deal with the dispersed Changelings. They smashed one cohort, then another, and sent another two scurrying to the rear before they even reached them as the remaining three struggled to form square, but she could have done all that with just one regiment. Instead she had taken them all in, and now the Pegasi were blown, exhausted, their lines ragged and overextended, and Firebolt had no cavalry reserve to catch a counterattack.

Neigh swept the field with his binoculars, looking for something that he prayed that he would not find. Then he saw it. Twenty squadrons of cavalry were forming up to the west of Fluffingen, ready to sweep round behind the village and smash Firebolt’s brigade as it flowed uselessly around the Changeling squares.

“Sound the recall!” he barked desperately. A staff officer put a bugle to his lips and blasted the urgent twelve-note fall-back signal. He sent it four times as Neigh stared through his binoculars, willing Firebolt to do something. She did nothing. Her brigade battered uselessly at the squares.

The Changeling cavalry moved at the trot. Neigh watched, sickened, as they disappeared behind the column of smoke rising from Fluffingen and emerged on the other side in flight. Wedge formations arced towards the 12th Light Brigade like black darts. They only needed to cross blades with two squadrons before the rest of the brigade broke in panic and streamed back towards the rise.

Neigh forced himself to look through his binoculars. The Changeling cavalry carried no swords: the razor-sharp hooks and claws on their legs and their gnarled, cruel horns were more than adequate. They slashed and gored at the faces of the 12th’s Pegasi. He knew exactly what was happening: those two regiments were smart units recruited in wealthy areas, to which young, bored rich kids were attracted to more by the promise of a fancy uniform and mess dinners than they were the idea of battle and service. The pampered young things were jealous of their looks and could not bear the thrusts at their faces, turning their heads away or throwing their legs up in a crude attempt to block, exposing them to a slash across the chest or a hack at the wing...

After fifteen minutes of fighting, the 12th Light Brigade was back behind the rise, having left three squadrons’-worth of mutilated Pegasi corpses behind outside Fluffingen. The Changeling cavalry fell back into the village. The grass around was strewn with red- and blue-coated dead.

Neigh stormed towards Firebolt and Dagger. They stood there, heads drooping, forlorn expressions on their faces as ragged ranks slowly formed up behind them. “Casualties?” he spat through gritted teeth.

“Eight hundred and fifty five,” whispered Crimson von Dagger. “And... and three regimental colours.”

Neigh sucked in air through his teeth in disgust. “And you?”

“I... I’m not sure,” stammered Firebolt. “We’re all dispersed and both regiments have lost their standards so we can’t...”

“SPIRITS DAMN IT!” exploded Neigh, such that everypony around him took a step backwards. “You lose the field, lose your colours, and you can’t even give me a casualty count?! Do you want us to lose the battle as well?!”

Dagger and Firebolt said nothing. They dared not meet his eyes.

“Brigadier General Knot,” hissed Neigh. “We shall resume the attack with your brigade. Mixed order, we will take the village in column.”

“We can’t go back out there!” gasped Dagger. “It’s suicide!”

“I see,” growled Neigh. “You two will stay here, then. I wish to fight with brave ponies, not cowards, and if you so much as bloody sneeze without me giving you a bucking order I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

Tears were forming in Dagger’s eyes. “Should... should we reform our brigades, sir?”

Neigh wanted to punch Dagger in the face to spare himself any more idiocy. “OF COURSE YOU SHOULD REFORM YOUR BRIGADES YOU IMBECILE!” shrieked the Major General. “MUST I DO ALL THE THINKING AROUND HERE?!”

It was the wrong thing to do, Neigh knew, as he turned his back on the sobbing officer and stormed off, but he needed a release, and he could think of no better target than the two who might have lost him the battle, which Shining Armor would blame him for.

***

Lord Chitin watched ragged lines reform under shredded banners a few hundred yards from Softpaw. It was unbelievable. He had driven off two pony attacks but still they were preparing for a third! Officers were gallantly waving their hats as they addressed their men and he could no sign of panic forming in their ranks.

The situation in his village was desperate. His legionaries were almost totally drained of magic and they slumped exhausted against ruined houses. Choking smoke from burning buildings blew everywhere and he could barely see. His barricades had been reduced to piles of shattered woods, blasted to sawdust by pony artillery or hacked to pieces by pioneers. And of the eight guns he had begun the battle with, he had two left.

I have to hold this village, he thought desperately. If this flank falls, our entire line breaks. We’ll lose the battle, and I’ll... That did not bear thinking about.

He waved an officer over. “Bring up our reserve. I want the whole legion in here. And have our cavalry charge their left while we manoeuvre.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

***

Shining Armor’s teeth were gritted so tightly that his jaw was beginning to ache. When he’d spotted the ten cohorts behind Softpaw moving into the village, he’d thought it had been the moment he’d been waiting for. But then sixty-four squadrons of Changeling cavalry had swept around the village towards the 1st Guards Brigade’s left flank. After nearly two hours under enemy fire, the brigade had at last broken, and was sent streaming back to the three battalions of the Crystal Guard, which opened their squares to accept the fleeing Guards before the cavalry struck.

The 10th Heavy Brigade was moving up, and Warding Ember would probably recover his position, but the situation in his centre was critical: White Cuirass had taken his two brigades into Overpaw in two lines of infantry with a line of cavalry in between and had been hurled off with heavy casualties. Now four squares sat on the plain to the north of the Tabby Burn, the Changeling reserve of twenty-five squadrons charging around them, their ponies wavering and becoming ever more likely to break by the second. The 9th Light Brigade had countercharged the Changeling cavalry and had been driven off, and now a mass of Pegasi, more a band than two proud regiments, swirled on the forward slope of the rise as it tried to reform.

An aide-de-camp landed next to him and hastily saluted. “Major General Neigh reports that Fluffingen is masked, sir. The Changelings are pulling their reserves into the town.”

“Good. I need his cavalry for the centre. The entire 12th Light Brigade.”

The aide grimaced. “I imagine he’ll be glad of that, sir.” He took off again.

Shining Armor turned his binoculars back to Softpaw. The Crystal Guard’s squares had held, a perfect point-to-point diamond formation so each square’s fire would not risk the others, and now the 10th Heavy Brigade was launching a charge of its own against the shot-up rags of a once-fine group of cavalry squadrons. The Guards Division would soon be advancing again.

In a perfect world, that would be his signal to launch the attack of the 2nd Division. In a perfect world I wouldn’t even be fighting a war, he thought absurdly. Either way, he could do nothing until the situation at Overpaw was stabilised.

***

It took all his strength not to bury his head in his claws in despair. His cavalry charge had bled to death amid the squares of those green-uniformed Guards, and those Pegasi had just finished it off. Soon that division would be advancing again.

Lord Chitin’s offensive capability had been shot to a bloody ruin. His cavalry squadrons had staggered back to Softpaw exhausted. All they had left was the hope that the ponies would smash themselves against the defences, but their abatis was so wrecked that they were shoring up the defences with bodies and nothing more. What remained of the barricades was so packed with Changelings that each of them could barely move or lift their hooves.

“Pull in another three cohorts,”

Chitin looked up to see the madly-grinning face of Queen Chrysalis. “The town is already packed, My Queen. One shell on our defences will...”

“This is clearly the decisive point!” shrieked Chrysalis. “We need every drone we can spare here! If he was going to try to break our centre, Shining Armor would have acted by now. He means to turn our flanks at here and Fluffingen!”

Thus, the three cohorts were pulled out of the centre into a village already crammed with troops. Thirteen thousand Changelings were pinned in Softpaw. Barely five thousand Changelings and sixty-four bloodied cavalry squadrons stood ready to defend the gap between Softpaw and Overpaw.

***

Brigadier General White Cuirass gripped his sword so tight in his hoof that the blood was draining from the joint. His four battalions were formed into squares in front of Overpaw, with thousands of buzzing, snarling Changelings spilling around them. The centre of his square was coated with dead and groaning wounded. It was almost impossible to take a step without standing on one of them.

As the drums of the battalion band thundered, he waved his sword in the air and yelled; “Stand firm, my little ponies! Keep your position and old Tirek himself can’t touch you! But if one of you gives way, he’ll have every last one of us, sure as day!”

He didn’t think he sounded very convincing. Over the din and smoke and through swarms of Changelings, he saw a down-cheeked Pegasus Lieutenant in one of the other squares take to the air, waving his sword and shouting something to his ponies before a blast of Changeling magic took him through the head.

Then the black fog of Changelings flowing around their squares cleared, as thousands of Saddle von Hoofsburg's and Beryl de Topaz’s blue-coated Hussars thundered past them, followed by the ragged, tired lines of the 12th Light Brigade, and chased the Changelings back to Overpaw.

***

“Brigadier General Cuirass’ front has been stabilised, sir,” said Colonel Warning Order. “The Changelings have pulled back into Overpaw.”

“Good,” said Shining Armor. “And the right?”

“More drones moving into Softpaw, sir,” said Crystal Thought, staring through a pair of binoculars. “Looks like fifteen hundred of them. General Ember is preparing for another attack.”

“Tell him to hold,” said Shining Armor quickly. “Mask that town and prevent anyone from leaving. Same with Overpaw and Fluffingen.” He thrust a folded sheaf of orders to an aide-de-camp. “Deliver these to Lieutenant General Steel! Now, quickly! Move!”

The Hussar took off. Shining Armor licked his lips and turned back to the battle. His heart was thundering. The banks of the Tabby Burn were wreathed with smoke and the plain was littered with corpses. He had lost thousands of ponies already, and the worst part of the battle was only just beginning.

***

“Spikes!” barked Inkie Pie.

With the Softpaw, Overpaw and Fluffingen fronts stabilised, Shining Armor had begun pulling batteries out of the line. Towed by huffing, lathered, cursing ponies, every battery the army had left was being massed behind the rise by General Sir Time Target.

Every battery except one. No. 1 Battery sat on the outskirts of Underpaw, and the battery that had earned the reputation as the most accurate in the Royal Army had a special mission that came directly from Shining Armor himself.

Muscles sticking out like cords in their legs, sweat streaming down their muzzles and collecting under the bands of their shakos, cursing gunners battled with hoofspikes to slew their guns round to face the two guns remaining on the eastern side of Softpaw. The guns in Overpaw were pinned down facing the 6th Brigade, and Shining Armor wanted rid of anything in the centre that might impede his grand scheme.

“FIRE!” bellowed Inkie.

The guns bucked and roared, shooting a great cloud of smoke out in front of them. Gunners raced forward to place a leather-covered hoof over the touchhole and spongeponies thrust rammers down the barrels to quash any remaining embers of gunpowder. Then a new charge and roundshot was rammed home and the gunners made their cannon ready with a quill of fine powder through the touchhole.

“FIRE!”

The guns fired again. And again, and again, and again. Inkie’s gunners could not see their targets, but they heard her corrections, heard her tell them their effects, and they grinned, knowing that they were doing a job well done.

“READY!”

“HOLD!” cried Inkie. She marched through the cloud of smoke and raised her binoculars. The edge of Softpaw was a sea of smoke and fire and shattered bodies, and in the centre of it were the broken limbers and blackened barrels of two destroyed cannons.

Inkie leapt back through the smoke, swept her hat off her head, and waved it wildly at Time Target, standing atop the rise. The Artillery commander waved his hat in response and disappeared behind the hill.

***

Where are the guns?

The tower of Softpaw’s council chambers had been the first casualty of the ponies’ artillery, collapsing in a rain of burning wood, slate and stone after a shell hit. Fighting through a cloud of thick black smoke that choked her spiracles and made her eyes stream, Queen Chrysalis raced along the council chambers’ roof and desperately tried to see what was happening.

She didn’t like what she could hear: the staccato rumble of cannon fire had faded several minutes ago, and apart from a sudden, quick storm of fire just now, it had not returned. All she could hear was the dull crackle of spear fire as the ponies’ lines fired into her towns, and the screams of the injured.

She scuttled to the eastern end of the council chambers, waving her leg in front of her to clear the smoke. From here she could see across the Burn and the plain to Underpaw, expecting to see, unique on this battlefield, a stretch of meadow and a sliver of ground innocent amid this hell of guns and smoke.

And instead she saw troops. Red-clad troops spilling out of Underpaw. Troops trampling the grass flat. Seven battalion columns raced across the plain towards the Burn, leaving brown, snail-like trails of churned-up mud behind them. Blue, orange, red and pink banners fluttered over them. Four lines of Pegasi fluttered with the columns. Ahead of them all was a thick line of green-clad ponies trotting in open order. The noise of their drums was lost in the din of battle, but even from here she could hear the skirl of bagpipes.

Chrysalis bared her teeth in triumph. So she was right! She had checked every one of Shining Armor’s movements! She had spotted his attempt to goad her into a flanking movement, stopped his brigades cold at the defences of her villages, and now he was making one last desperate gamble to attack through her centre, and she was ready to blast the attack’s flanks away with oblique shots from her guns.

Grinning, she looked down, and her elation was replaced with horror. Her great guns, the guns that had taken so much effort to acquire and move, had been blasted to pieces. She had no artillery in Softpaw, and her batteries over in Overpaw were pinned down dealing with another brigade. And between Softpaw and Overpaw, she had only a single battery, one legion, and only sixty-four shot-up cavalry squadrons to oppose them.

Then the guns began: sixty-six guns, massed wheel-to-wheel by General Sir Time Target atop the rise, opened fire in a flash of flame and smoke that even at this distance hurt Chrysalis’ eyes, and dozens upon dozens of shells and shot tore great rents into her lines beyond the Tabby Burn.

***

The Royal Cloudsdale Greys were over the Burn first. Spear in hoof, Rainbow Dash thumped down on the opposite bank. Her first shot was off before all her hooves touched the ground, a bright streak of magic arcing off into a cloud of smoke. Then she dropped her short spear to her side, crouching on the ground as the second line of dragoons echeloned through to fire.

Rainbow muttered curse after curse as behind her hundreds of engineers and pioneers laboured furiously to throw fascines into the Tabby Burn. Standing knee-deep in muddy water, they built three bridges for the advancing columns, while another detachment checked the stone hoofbridge on the old path from Underpaw for signs of powder. She hated this! She, her wonderful troop, her entire beautiful Cloudsdale regiment, was just sitting here being shot at! Applejack might be able to handle that, but not a Pegasus! She belonged in the air, at the charge, with her sword in hand, not standing to die like the infantry!

Then behind her she heard the thunder of bugles. She looked behind to see hundreds of green-clad infantryponies streaming across the fascines, reforming in open order on the southern bank of the Burn. One of them wore Sergeant’s stripes and, incongruously, a distinctly non-regulation light brown Stetson that had replaced her busby.

“Mornin’ Dashie!” laughed Applejack. She cocked her head at the red-clad columns advancing behind her. “Form up behin’ the 4th. We’ll take it from here!”

As the smoke cleared and the Cloudsdale Greys streamed back to the rear, the Changelings’ sole remaining battery in the centre slowly became visible. Magical blasts from the Light Infantry’s spears left smoking burns on the massive barrel, and as the gunners buzzed and hissed and struggled to turn the immense gun, their chief gunner screamed at them.

“CANISTER! LOAD IT! LOAD IT!” shrieked the Changeling officer, his helmet more black than purple from soot and smoke. But even if they’d had time to load, they could no more sweep away Applejack’s regiment with a single shot than a swarm of flies could be killed with a single hit with a swatter. The Light Infantry stormed the battery, their spearpoints stabbing the few Changelings that tried to swing ramrods at them. Most fled.

Battalion columns streamed over the Tabby Burn, flowing together like trickles of blood as they concentrated to cross the bridges. Shining Armor had his lodgement beyond the Burn.

***

The Field Marshal galloped forward, sweat lathering his coat and mist blowing from his muzzle. Behind him, struggling to keep saddlebags closed and carrying maps and binoculars in their mouths or magic, ran his staff, hastily removed from their position on the rise. The decisive moment had arrived and Shining Armor wanted to take personal command of the battle beyond the Burn.

Behind him the artillery had ceased firing: the 2nd Division had closed to danger-close range with the Twenty-Second Legion and the guns were being limbered up and raced forward to support the attack. But for now it was an infantry battle.

Shining Armor slid to a halt as his hooves began to clop on the corduroy road thrown across the banks of the Burn. The engineers had done a spectacular job: rather than lose their boots and composure as they crossed the swampy banks, the columns had crossed the roads in perfect order. Now the Changeling infantry were advancing on his division in lines four deep, and at this moment his ponies didn’t need the distraction of a Field Marshal making himself a nuisance among them.

Huge rents had been torn in the Changeling lines by his artillery, but the drones had stubbornly closed up and kept marching. A thick cloud of skirmishers stood in front of his lines, chipping away at the advancing legion and doggedly pulling back to the red-clad ranks of the 3rd and 4th Brigades, thrown out in a single line with the 1st Battalion, Trottingham Grenadiers and the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Shetlanders held back in column as reserves.

With the roar of a bugle, the Light Infantry broke and streamed back through the gaps in the lines. Then with a rattle of drums the division advanced and commands snapped out from the officers. “MAKE READY... PRESENT... FIRE!”

On the left, the Vanhoover Fusiliers firing was parade perfect, great flashes of light bursts from platoon after platoon and crashing into the Changeling ranks, racing down the battalion and starting again at the flank once the first platoon had recharged their spears. The Changelings endured that fire, halting at a hundred yards from the battalion and beginning a furious volley of their own.

On the right, the firing was different. Colonel Morning Star, Lieutenant Colonel Brigandine and Colonel Claymore had arrayed their battalions in only two ranks and marched them to within fifty yards of the Changelings. A massive explosion of fire, so bright it forced Shining Armor to look away, erupted from the battalions as the entire first rank opened fire. As Shining Armor’s vision cleared, he saw thousands of ponies charging as one into the Changeling ranks in a whirl of ripping spearpoints, flashing swords and flying tartan, with bagpipes thundering as they fought.

That flank broke first. As the Twenty-Second Legion’s left disintegrated, two flank companies of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Appleloosans spotted the gap and raced in. The Twenty-Second's centre cohorts broke moments later.

The last to collapse were the three cohorts facing the Vanhoover Fusiliers. They remained there, attacked on three sides, in the best order Shining Armor had ever seen. Order or none, they were cut to pieces almost in rank and file. Fifteen hundred drones died to the last where they stood, stationed right out on the open plain and supported by nobody.

The rest of their legion, a shining tide of black, streamed to the rear, where there were only green fields and clear retreats.

The cavalry would not allow them to get that far.

***

Chrysalis stared down from the council chambers’ roof as the shattered remains of her last legion were overcome by a tide of red. Two lines of cavalry smashed into the crowd of her fleeing drones, scything at them with long, cruel swords. A few cohorts managed to flee to the rear, but four were utterly overcome. From her position atop the roof, they were buried by what appeared to be nothing less than a boiling sea of blood from which shining, gore-streaked blades rose and fell.

The Hive Queen clawed at her face in disbelieving horror. This could not be happening to her, to her Hive! She had had the perfect position! How could Shining Armor have overcome her?!

She had only one hope left: her cavalry, her sixty-four tired, battered squadrons forming up ready to charge the disorganised, thronging mass of two thousand Pegasi that was struggling to reform on the plain below. Bugles were trumpeting and Ensigns were waving standards, desperately trying to redress their ranks to face the charge.

They didn’t manage it: Chrysalis bared her teeth as her cavalry charged the disorganised mass. She could salvage this. She would destroy the pony cavalry, and then pull cohorts from Softpaw to drive the infantry back over the Burn.

***

Breathing heavily, her wings aching, Rainbow Dash looked around the disordered mass of her regiment. Her sword was nicked and streaked with gore, and the sleeve of her cavalry jacket was yellow to the elbow with Changeling ichor.

She tore off her bicorne and swiped sweat from her forehead. Every instinct screamed at her to order her troop to reform in lines, but that wasn’t the plan. The brigade had to look disordered for the Changelings to counter-charge.

She spotted Lieutenant Colonel Spitfire, her uniform as tattered, muddy and gore-spattered as anypony’s, sweat beading her golden coat, pointing to the south with her sword. “Look!”

Rainbow swept her head around. A thin black line was racing towards them up the plain, just hovering off the ground. Changeling cavalry! We’ve got them!

“Back! Back!” she cried at her troop. As they took off she heard the blast from Spitfire’s bugler giving the order to pull back. An apparently-disorganised mass of red fled back to the Tabby Burn.

There was method in the apparent madness: the disorganisation had been deliberately created to conceal what was forming up behind the cavalry. As they retreated with a vengeful swarm of Changelings behind them, the Life Guards Brigade split to reveal the battalions of the 2nd Division formed into seven squares in two lines, the Light Infantry protected inside them and arrayed point-to-point to prevent friendly fire. In front of them was a line of sixty-six guns, raced across the Tabby Burn on pontoons to provide close support.

The Changelings saw the squares disappear in a titanic cloud of smoke as the Royal Artillery’s cannon fired double loads of roundshot atop canisters. Entire squadrons were knocked back as roundshot scythed through them like demonic polo balls, while clouds of walnut-sized lead spheres snatched dozens of Changelings from the air. Through the smoke, none of them saw the gunners galloping back to the safety of the squares.

The shattered lines emerged into the teeth of the fire from the squares.

The 2nd Division fired, recharged, fired again, recharged again, fired... They fired until their spear points were red hot, disciplined volley after disciplined volley into the ranks of the Changeling cavalry. As had already been proven far too often on that battlefield that day, to both sides, nine times out of ten cavalry could never break infantry squares. So the Changelings just flew around them, lashing out furiously, spitting, hissing, buzzing, dying, until the reformed Life Guards Brigade charged again in two lines and swept from the field the last Changelings in the world that were still strong enough to fly.

***

Chrysalis never saw her army break. She never saw the 2nd Division’s squares reform into columns to chase the tattered remnants of her legions from the field. She never saw the division split in two to invest Softpaw and Overpaw and trap nearly twenty thousand Changelings in those towns.

If someone told her that Lord Larva had been able to drag two legions out of Fluffingen because the ponies had lacked cavalry on that flank to pursue them, she had never heard it. All she remembered later were a few dim snatches of being dragged through Softpaw by Lord Chitin and another officer, smoke billowing in front of her, the council chambers collapsing in a burning ruin behind her, Chitin blasting other Changelings out of the way with his magic, and in the streets, drones packed so tightly that they could barely move. The doors of what had once been houses and shops burst open and screaming Changelings fled their fiery interiors with flames licking up their carapaces. Then she had been submerged in cold darkness.

When she came to she was sitting on the far bank of the Kelpie Creek beneath a darkening sky with barely two dozen other Changelings. Lord Chitin, water dripping off his carapace, did not look at her, but instead stared open-mouthed, his body cloaked in a cloud of shock, incomprehension, grief, and sorrow beyond words, at the burning town on the other side of the river.

Thick lines of ponies surrounded Softpaw on three sides, the Creek blocking the fourth. They only needed to stand there, firing constantly into the town, the Changelings packed so tightly on the defences that every shot was sure to find its mark. Behind the drones still fighting even now was a town built not of stone or wood but of towers of flames.

The only escape was across the single stone bridge arching across the Creek. It was packed with thousands of drones trying to flee, but they died there as surely as had they stayed at the defences. Shell after shell fired from howitzers beyond the town crashed on to the bridge, blasting apart dozens of her drones with each explosion. After half an hour of Chrysalis watching, the damage and the weight of the press on it was so great that the bridge collapsed, sending hundreds of screaming, terrified Changelings into the river below in a shower of shattered, blackened stone.

They watched for hour after hour as Softpaw and beyond it Overpaw burned. Chrysalis could feel the heat on her face. Flames leapt hundreds of feet into the air, the great pillars of smoke thousands of feet beyond that. The ponies never stopped firing with spear, shot or shell.

A few more Changelings managed to swim the Creek. Chrysalis said nothing to them as they dragged themselves up the bank, helped by others. She was numbed, beyond all grief, anger or mourning. After an hour or so no more came.

When the sky began lighten in the east above the Bone Mountains, the thunder of guns at last began to fade. Silently, Queen Chrysalis stood. Her drones, all she had left of her Hive, followed as she turned away from the holocaust and walked slowly down the bank. To follow her was all they had ever known.

The morning was cold. The sunrise was almost lost behind the rain-drenched clouds that had swept in from the north. Chrysalis dragged her claws in the dew-tipped grass as she walked, still feeling the heat from Softpaw on her back.

“My Queen?”

Lord Chitin stared as, with what looked like an enormous effort, his Queen looked down at him. “Yes?”

“My Queen... what... what do you command?”

Chrysalis stared at him in silence, then looked behind them at the clutch of shivering, terrified desperate drones. They are all that’s left. Our eggs are gone, our larvae. Can I rebuild a Hive with this?

Then she knew what she needed to do, and Lord Chitin gasped and stepped backwards as a boiling, seething cloud of grief, hate and rage surrounded his Queen. Not after any setback, any defeat, had he known his Queen so angry.

“What I command, My Lord,” she whispered, her eyes afire. “Is vengeance.”

Comments

[OTCPony]

Happy Christmas everyone. Have an update.

This Battle of the Kelpie Creek is the battle I've been building to since I started this fic: the single largest, riskiest, and most costly battle of the entire war. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

It's historical basis is the Battle of Blenheim during the War of the Spanish Succession. Other influences, including the attack of the 2nd Division, were the manoeuvres of Charles Antoine Morand's division at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt during the Napoleonic Wars. Bernard Cornwell's depiction of the Battle of Vitoria in Sharpe's Honour was another inspiration for the "face of battle" elements of the chapter.

This is a hugely complex engagement, so I've provided a map of the battlefield to assist in comprehension:

http://otcpony.deviantart.com/art/Battle-of-the-Kelpie-Creek-502166876

[The Good Boy]

Chrysalis is so fucked

[paladinwolf]

The battle was epic. It got a little confusing at times, but that was likely to me reading too fast. My only suggestion, move the link with the map to the beginning of the chapter, or perhaps right at the part where Shining is explaining the battle plan. I found it difficult to place the huge # of units without a map. Took one look at said map and had most of the plan at a glance. In any event, keep up the fine work :)
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