Cartography of War

by Daetrin

Plot Your Course

Rose was expecting Scarlet’s voice to tear her away from her maps, as it had so many times before, so Gérard’s gravelly rumble jolted her badly. “We should try and find a good way across this river. Upstream or downstream?”

She blinked at him. “Why, we can cross here. Oh, except for your bandages.” She frowned at the watercourse, which was too deep for wading and not narrow enough to jump across, and then gestured northward. “There should be a fall before it joins with the Baltimare. I expect we’ll find a good crossing somewhere around there.”

“I am fortunate to have you,” Gérard told her. “This journey would be so much more difficult without an adept navigator.”

Rose snorted angrily. “It would be easier if my friends were still alive! And if I weren’t held captive by some deranged predator.”

“Or if I could still fly,” he sighed, not disagreeing. “If I had been more alert, none of this would have happened.”

“You need to leave other people out of your mistakes,” Rose muttered, marching off across the muddy grass.

“Tch,” he said, a disapproving click of his beak, but didn’t elaborate on it one way or the other. Instead he simply padded after her, staying further from the water than her. She glanced back at him, and slowed enough that he came nearly alongside her.

As soon as he was within range she pivoted on her front legs, lashing out as hard as she could with her hind legs and catching him squarely on the bandaged part of his side. The impact was unpleasantly yielding under her hooves, and he made a soft, strangled groan as he crumpled onto the grass. She made a mad dash for the river and threw herself in, the muddy water closing over her head for a moment before she surfaced, kicking frantically with her hooves. It might just be that he couldn’t swim, and if so, she was probably free the moment she reached the other side.

“Compass Rose!” She heard him bellow when she was halfway across the river, but she didn’t dare look back, just focusing on swimming as fast as she could. There was a moment of worrisome silence and then something slammed into her hindquarters, dragging her under the water. She spluttered and clawed her way to the surface despite the weight, craning her neck to see Gérard hanging grimly onto her, his talons digging painfully into her flanks. “Swim,” he instructed her.

She struggled toward the shore with a panicked flailing of her hooves, the larger gryphon a dead weight dragging her down. If the river had been anything but gentle she never would have made it, and even as it was by the time her hooves found muddy bottom she was shaking and trembling, throat raw from choking on water. When she finally made the riverbank she collapsed onto the grass as Gérard dragged himself out beside her, the bloody tracks where he’d held onto her stinging and aching at the same time and her heart pounding madly as she dreaded his reaction.

He laughed.

It was a real laugh, not like the pained hysteria of before, a throaty chuckle that wobbled between comforting and disturbing “That was very good. I have learned to respect a pony’s kick, but I did not expect to be on the receiving end of yours.” He touched his side and winced. “Carelessness seems to be a theme of mine lately.”

“You’re...you’re not mad?” She stared at him, flabbergasted. Mad was an understatement. She’d expected him to be murderous, but he seemed almost happy about what she’d done, which was in its own way more disturbing.

“It is the first duty of a prisoner to escape, and that was a marvelous try.” He clicked his beak at her. “I was not sure whether you had given up, so I suppose I have my answer.”

“But I -” She coughed and scrubbed at her muzzle with a hoof. “You’re playing with me, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no, Rose, this is deadly serious.” He sobered. “We are enemies, you and I, and both our lives are chained to what we do here. But I do not care to remove anyone’s dignity, or heart. It gladdens me to see I have not done that to you.”

“Ah,” she said, a bit dazed. “So you’re not going to...do anything?”

“I will take care that this does not happen again, but I will not punish you for doing what you must.” He sighed. “Unfortunately I think you have undone all your stitching. We will have to stop here and properly treat our wounds. I had hoped to get further before that became necessary. Perhaps you will help me with that again?”

“After all that,” Rose dragged herself to her hooves. “You’re still asking for my help?”

“Just because we may have to kill each other someday does not mean we can’t be decent to each other,” Gérard appealed to her.

“Fine,” she said, lacking the energy to argue. Rose tottered up the slope of the riverbank to lean against the nearest tree, upending her saddlebags and distributing the contents over her still-crumpled tent in hopes that they’d dry off. She ran her hoof sadly over the waterlogged cover of the journal, though Sky’s sketchbook seemed to have escaped with only minor spattering.

“Are the maps ruined, then?” Gérard approached her cautiously, limping even more noticeably than before. Distantly, she wondered how he even managed to stay upright, with the shape he was in.

“No, they’re waterproof. I do all the changes with spells.” Her mouth answered automatically, her brain too scattered to think. She reached back to touch the bloody rivulets oozing from her flanks, but stopped short partway.

“Then all we have lost is time.” Gérard joined her under the trees, dripping wet and looking even less harmless than before, his fur plastered against corded muscle. “Do you think you could find an appropriate place to set up camp?”

“No!” She exploded at him. He blinked. “I can’t - I can’t do this. I thought you were going to kill me there in the river! Or worse! And you don’t even notice!”

He sighed and sat, running his talons through dark blue mane and shaking aside the water. “Compass Rose,” he said gravely. “I would not hurt you.” He glanced at the bloody streak along her flank. “On purpose,” he amended. “And I would not take any life in frustration or anger. There may be a day when I must kill you, and I hope it never does, but if I must it will be because I have no other choice. Until then, you are perfectly safe.”

“Safe until you kill me,” she said in as bitter a tone as she could muster.

“Is that so strange? Yes, I suppose it must be for you.” He answered himself. “Ponies do not act that way. How odd it must be to never have that edge to your life.”

“I would rather do without it!”

“I suppose so.” He leaned forward toward her. “Rose, we are stuck here together, you and I. We will be for weeks at least. Please do me the favor of believing my honorable word. I know you could never regard me as a friend, but could you extend your trust to me as an honorable enemy?”

Rose slumped against her tree. “Do I have a choice?”

“It is entirely your choice.”

She frowned at him, and for an instant she felt she understood what he meant, though it was only fleeting and only a feeling. It might have been just her exhaustion, or his continued insistence on the absurd was too much, but it was enough to keep her from snapping a reply. Rose shivered, suddenly realizing how cold she was. “I’ll...I’ll find us a campsite.”

Gérard looked disappointed, though she might have only been imagining it. “Very well,” he said, shedding his saddlebags with a wet thump. Some of the medical supplies he’d pilfered from Mercy were still intact in their sealed jars or cases, but the linen wraps were ruined and something he’d taken from one of his fellow gryphons had been reduced to a muddy, ill-smelling mush. She didn’t care to look too closely at most of the food supplies he set out to dry, but her attention was caught by an oilcloth-wrapped package that he handled carefully, almost with reverence. He checked it carefully, then placed it delicately on the ground as he shook out the saddlebags.

Rose almost asked, but his expression when he stowed it away again was so pained that she didn’t dare. Instead she closed her eyes, focusing on one of the more complex spells she knew. Some unicorns had flashy magic, especially when it came to their signature spells, but hers was more of a whisper, filtering out around them and returning with little specks of information. Where the ground was wet, and where it was dry. Where it was high, and where it was low. Where there were grass and trees, and where there was dirt.

It wasn’t all that extensive, really, and a pegasus could cover a thousand times the ground in an afternoon, but a pegasus wouldn’t have the same feel for the land. She opened her eyes to see Gérard watching her intently and waved southeast. “There’s a good place over there.”

“Thank you.” He replaced the contents of his saddlebags, despite them being still wet, and nodded to her. “Let us go. I would rather be under the canopy.”

She took a deep breath and obeyed, turning her tent into a temporary bindle rather than repacking it all, and led him a few hundred feet to the spot she’d found. It wasn’t so much a clearing as a flat patch, hidden from sight by spreading branches but with light enough to feed ground-covering ivy.

“Very good,” he said approvingly, and yet again started laying things out to dry. She followed suit, then collapsed into one of the patches of sun to warm up. Everything either ached or stung, but she was tired enough that she dozed for a time, at least until Gérard’s voice woke her. “Do you know any herb lore?”

She squinted over at where he was looking mournfully at the anemic remains of Mercy’s medical supplies and shook her head. “No, Golden knew all of that. I can identify fruits and a few trees, but beyond that…”

“Oh, well.” He sighed. “We would have run out eventually.” He began removing his wrappings, and she winced as his injuries were revealed, looking as bad as ever, if not worse, with blood oozing over scabbed and broken skin. And it was at least partly her fault, which made it even more disturbing.

“I’ll let these breathe for a bit,” he said, discarding the soiled bandages. “Can you start a fire with that horn of yours?”

“Of course,” she said, still staring. “I’ll...I’ll find some wood.”

He raised his eyebrows at her and clambered to his feet. “We will,” he corrected her, and it took her a moment to realize that he couldn’t trust her to leave. She hadn’t even been thinking of escape, but there was no point in protesting. Fortunately for both of them, it didn’t take long to collect what they needed; she already knew where caches of deadwood were from her spell, so it was merely a matter of picking it up rather than searching. Even so, by the time the fire was started Rose was ready to stop for the day, and even Gérard was a little wilted.

But there was more work to do. “I hate to do it,” Gérard said, eyeing her tent. “But we need bandages, and really only need one tent. Oilcloth will at least be reusable.”

“I suppose,” she said with little enthusiasm. The idea of having to share with a gryphon for weeks on end held little appeal for her, but walking around with open cuts along her flanks held even less. She scooted out of the way as Gérard padded over to begin operations on the tent fabric, his talons more than sharp enough for the job, and started boiling water in some improvised containers. Sky had at least hammered enough survivalism into her head for her to remember that.

After they’d sterilized several strips of cloth, Gérard retrieved one, along with one of the containers of boiled water, and approached her. She drew back for a moment before she stopped herself, eyeing him warily. “Do you...know what you’re doing?” She couldn’t deny that it needed to be done, and that it’d be hard for her to do a proper job given how much it already hurt. But she wasn’t eager.

“Tch. I have been doing field medicine since I was a fledgeling. Now hold still.”

It wasn’t the first time Rose had been injured. Roaming the untamed wilderness of Equestria for three years was guaranteed to cause at least a few scrapes, but Mercy had always been at hoof to attend to them, and she was far gentler than Gérard. Of course, Mercy also had the proper medical spells to numb wounds, help them knit, and keep them clean, so she’d never given much thought to what it would be like without them. And it was unpleasant.

She gritted her teeth as he wielded the cloth and water to wash and wipe out the deep scores along the flanks, which only served to make them feel worse no matter how necessary it was. Then he opened Mercy’s jars and she found she truly missed the unicorn’s spells. The salve was fine, but the resin didn’t just sting, it itched, which was even more maddening. Despite her squirming, Gérard kept pressure on the cuts, holding them closed until the resin set. “I wish I had seen this earlier,” he remarked. “Ah well. That was not so bad, was it?”

Rose swallowed a yes. It was certainly something she could have done without, but compared to the wounds he bore it was nothing. Between the kick, the swim, and his removal of the bandages, the gouges and gashes crisscrossing his wing and side were only marginally less raw than they had been the first time she saw them. Worse, even, because now most of his plumage and a goodly amount of his fur had been rubbed off or stripped away, leaving bare and patchy skin. The largest, deepest cuts, along the base of his wing, where it joined his body, oozed rather than bled freely, but it was the sight of so much exposed muscle that truly disturbed her.

But she took a breath, picking up another scrap of oilcloth and applied herself to the task, mentally thanking Celestia that she didn’t have to actually touch anything. His beak snapped shut as she poured water over a patch of puffy and broken skin, and she was torn between sympathy at his pain and relief that he wasn’t completely unfeeling. It took far, far longer for him than it had for her, and used up the rest of the water, but after some time and several dirtied oilcloth rags she was satisfied his wounds were free of mud, fur, feathers, and any other debris.

“Only use the thread for what is absolutely necessary,” he told her, his voice even more gravelly than usual. “We will have to conserve it.”

“Yes, of course.” Privately she suspected they didn’t have enough regardless. He’d worried about the stitches back at her camp before he’d learned how far they had to go, and he had probably imagined it was a temporary measure. Used as he was to flying, he couldn’t have known it would be a trek of at least a month.

She used up the rest of the salve on him, which only drove home how extensive the damage was. It was bad enough to take in at a glance, but actually working on the swath of wounds made her intensely conscious he was lucky to be alive. And despite everything, she didn’t have it in herself to wish him dead, no matter how much simpler that would have made her life.

The tiny spool was over halfway emptied by the time she finished, and it took an alarming amount of her tent, properly cut and boiled, to cover everything and bind it in place. It was only the middle of the second day, and already they were down to the dregs of their supplies. She thought longingly of the cart Golden Glimmer had hauled, the weight of the baggage no impediment to an earth pony, but there was no possible way for the two of them to even carry a fraction.

“Thank you,” he said gravely, and she gave him a weary nod before crawling up next to the fire and closing her eyes, trying not to think of blood and cuts and open wounds. She tried not think about the furious itching of her flanks, or of how few supplies there were. But most of all she tried not to think about how much further they had to go.

Comments

[Kapuchu]

Compass Rose

Exactly the same name as one of the main characters in "What Bound Them," though a gryphon and not a pony. Strange.

[Daetrin]

4056920
There are only so many names.
Also, gryphons don't use descriptive names o.0

[Kapuchu]

4056989
Ah! I misread, I thought you wrote "Compass Rose was affected more than most gryphons" No, Compass rose in What Bound Them is a unicorn

[Cerulean Voice]

Am I detecting the beginnings of Stockholm Syndrome from Compass?
That could be interesting.
Keep this up, I do thoroughly love Gerard's mannerisms.

[Daetrin]

4067074
Trying to avoid it the best I can, really. Shouldn't be too difficult unless people misunderstand Stockholm Syndrome itself.

[Rovoska]

Man, I wish I had read this sooner. Love it!

[Fox]

I know there's no romance tag, but is it bad that I find all of this romantic?