Equestrian Nights

by Adela

Night Raid on the Neighagra

Carrara put her left forehoof up and backed up a step. Trying to douse the hostility of their unintended guests with a passive posture that signalled her restraint. Unarmoured, outnumbered, outmaneuvered and unprepared for a fight, this is the sort of potential engagement that got ponies killed. If the bandits had the decency to merely take prisoners rather than leave the corpses of Fulcrum and his subordinates, perhaps there was a more peaceful solution than a fight that would see them injured -- or worse.

Carrara had travelled this river before, with Fulcrum no less. That was many years ago, but this stretch of the river was foreign to her which could only mean they missed the channel they were meant to take. From memory it was still a rough stretch of water, but it at least didn't mean one of many a potential waterfall that would spell their doom. And the river was picking up speed which could only mean dire things if they did not halt the boat now...

Iris was decidedly less diplomatic, her chair and the table scattering behind and beside her respectively, nosily clattering to the ground as she rallied to her hooves. Her horn had already begun to flare in that electric blue sheath of magical energy...

"Wait!" Carrara cried out. Halting the griffin in front of her advancing, or the aerial sniper firing a shot, and the inexperienced and uninformed unicorn mare from firing a horn blast.

Iris could see no other hostiles than the one that had levelled a blade to Carrara's features given she was further within the cabin, and could not possibly interpret the extent of the threat they posed correctly. If she assailed the rugged griffin that towered over Carrara, that would inevitably cascade into the Earth pony being shot at and likely struck. It was a bad place to be, and the Earth pony tried to still that encroaching sense of panic within her that she was about to bite the dust.

Sunny woke with a start with the cry and fell out of the hammock as Carrara barked her order, and he gazed in shock at their unexpected arrivals. Slinking back as he looked to where he stashed his gear under the cabin floor in storage and burned the location of his cudgel into his memory. As he then fixed his eyes upon the griffin that was immediately infront of Carrara. Things turned to an uneasy silence save for the chortling sloshes and scraps of the river and tortured hull.

"Workponies' wages for the fleet, accommodation money, port fees and reserves... Now!" The griffin infront of the Earth pony growled. Coldly practiced by experience.

"Look, I don't know if you already calculated this into your plan or not, but we probably don't have a lot of river left. Just let me weigh anchor--" Carrara tried to get in edgeways.

"You have about 4 miles of river, to be precise. Hand over the bits now, and you might be able to stop your boat in time... Don't, and you'll all go under and I'll see to it none of you make it to a shoreline alive." She barked and clenched that blade even tighter.

Jabbing the air with it in their general direction, to make it obvious that none of them would be leaving the cabin that would quickly become their tomb.

"How do you even know all those bits are onboard this ship to begin with!?" Sunny protested the idea that this vessel must contain what they looked for, as he slowly flittered down to his hooves.

His tone achieving varying degrees of success to placate any desires for bloodshed, as well as attempting to pry intelligence from his captors. As he would have likely been trained to do in this situation, with the added selling point of his often innocent-looking demeanour. And on some degree it seemed to work as the tension lifted slightly in the bandit leader in front of them, her sword claw loosening and the sabre's point dipping slightly lower.

"We have scouts in the Crystal Empire. We know full well that a fleet master by the name of 'Fulcrum' was entrusted with such things and you ponies are the last of the line, as well as this ship playing host to him. The money's onboard... you just need to hoof it over and you can keep breathing." The griffin chuckled after the quite concise, and likely accurate, examination of the situation.

"Look, we're new workers. Taken on only 4 days prior. We don't know where Fulcrum keeps the safebox for the fleet's finances." Carrara said, voice edged in desperation. "You seem to have knocked unconscious the only pony who can assist you! Just let us stop the ship, check his injuries, and then we can accommodate your demands."

"Hey, Marcus! ... What's the condition of the decrepit Earth pony?" With a slackening posture the griffin turned her head to look at the prisoners they captured.

"No good, boss. Not dead, but I think he might be in shock after the skull-denting I gave 'im. The 'corn and other 'Earther' are in a better state, but they'll be witless a spell." The griffin behind her replied as he leaned low to check on the stunned captives whose heads hanged limply.

Carrara's eyes left the pirate to focus on Fulcrum, trying to get a read on his condition as she leaned slightly to get a better look past the feathered brigand. Her old friend's breathing definitely seeming shallower and staggered than what was healthy. Upon hearing their state Sunny immediately got up and Iris gritted her teeth and scowled, bringing her horn low as her posture squared in anger. Carrara for her part got front row tickets to the scene and was lost for words or thoughts.

"Great. Just going to be one of those nights, isn't it?" The griffin's words callous to the feelings of the ponies afore her, and reflected the meagre depths of her compassion all too well to her hostages.

"Please, you must let me see to them!" Sunny beseeched. "You'll get your bits after I secure their safety!"

"First off!" The raid leader bellowed, then allowed a second's pause, lifting her blade up again to point at the pleading Sunny to remind him of his place in these utter lack of real negotiations. "We'll check the cabin. Then you can secure the boat and rouse your friends." She relented by the offer of her bargain.

The demands were almost reasonable, but Carrara tried to stall. Stepping forward and parting her lips to speak. Before she could get a word in edgeways, the pirate's right foreclaw shot forward and slammed into Carrara's shoulder and left side of the neck. Brushing her aside so as to be able to peek into the cabin.

The griffin's eyes trailed the room before settling on something that took her surprise. Sunny's armour of the 1st Aerial Cavalry Battalion in a gear net tucked away beneath the rows of hammocks, and suddenly the pirate captain knew full well why the brazen Earth pony dared to get in her way after her 'gracious' offer.

That precipice of violence that speeds towards you as if a ravine, before you all too suddenly plummet into its abyss. Carrara realized the threat before any of her companions. There were benefits to being older and this was one of them—knowing full well the bandits would leave none of them alive.

"By Guto's tailfeathers ... Air Cav!? Here!?" She screeched in shock and anger, and immediately took two paces back.

Griffin bandits may have gotten away with robbing a few caravans as long as not too many ponies were injured. Attacking lawponies on the Frontier was a different ballgame, however. Particularly those personnel under the incredibly proud Brigadier Hurricane. That was a step too far for even the boldest of them, and the only recourse was to make sure it looked like an accident.

The ship going over a waterfall, for instance, would be perfect. The illusion might hold until they recovered the bodies at a much later date, giving them time to hide themselves away or put their affairs in order. The whole reason why a military escort was a mixed blessing on the Equestrian Frontier—at least when it came to banditry.

"4 total! Markspony bow-high!" Carrara screamed as she darted towards the portal, coming up from underneath the stocky griffin figure.

Taking the initiative in the face of the reeling griffin leader and using her larger mass as cover from potential fire as her melee breached the cabin unto the open hull quickly begun with a twisting buck with her hind legs. Pivoting on her left forehoof athletically to deliver the blows with adroit precision. Her right hoof connecting with her sword arm and striking her claw and the blade's crossguard—Dashing the long sabre from her grip to skid across the deck. Her left hoof planting square against her gut, driving the griffin back and stealing her breath.

Sunny, driven by anger of their piracy and concern for his advancing friend, sped forward to engage the opposition. Iris in unison teleported in a blink ontop the nearby collection of stacked granite slabs just as Sunny's fore hooves collided with the neck of the bandit previously leaning against the unicorn's impromptu stone stage. He himself caught unprepared for the assault while aiming to skewer the Earth pony as she attacked his leader, all before the Pegasus put him down. A flurry of forehoof stomps from the Pegasus against his beak, neck and head. Sending the bandit ever closer to oblivious with each strike as he pinned him to the ground by standing ontop of his ribcage.

Iris locked eyes with the sniper wafting on the winds in front of them. That hexagonal ruby necklace flanked by two stout, golden unicorn horns glowed in unison with her own. Her straightened mustard locks lifting up as if what she were summoning had its own gravity, stronger than the pull of the earth.

The griffin clenched the lever plate trigger, and with a wicked *twang* the deadly missile surged toward her. The ruby amulet relic allowing her to focus, and almost as if catch the projectile midflight for a millisecond, and warp the bolt upon a sanguine-hued magic field. Shattering it to pieces upon its own captured energy, and the magical strength of the mare. The splinters of wood and hardened steel spraying across the lens-like flare of her shielding arcanum. The griffin cursed as his bolt failed to find purchase, winching back the string while flitting further over the bow.

Carrara snapped her head side to side, her eyes quickly locating what she was searching for. The attached anchors Fulcrum had already prepared in advance just in case they should miss the river fork. Temporarily returning her focus to the winded bandit leader she reared up, and brought her right hoof down and planted it square against the left eye socket, once more driving the bandit leader back and leaving her momentarily dazed. Her skull felt as solid as mortar, and she could feel her joints crush together with the powerful blow... darkly contemplating the enemy's fortitude in that moment.

Using the time and space she bought for herself, she galloped towards the mooring and coiled Baldt-type stockless anchors. Four attached in succession of decreasing weight, as if a drag line with a heavy gauge hemp rope attached to the hull, designed to gouge into the river bed.

Her keen mind tried to calculate the length of the rope and the most optimistic projections of one or all of them catching and not tearing free. Her world and thoughts were shaken as she was catapulted forward, and she was tackled to the ground. The air driven from her lungs and the din of battle turned to a humming haze as a claw gripped into her right shoulder blade painfully, spinning her about and slamming the back of her head into the deck.

A mean looking pair of griffins transformed into one as her eyes finally focussed through the concussive impact. The griffin apparently named 'Marcus' viciously striking his right hind claw into the mare's stomach and pinned her to the deck beneath him.

He was saying something likely of unadulterated malevolence to her as if parting words before her mortality, but it was no longer audible.

Carrara struggled under the weight of the griffin and attempting in vain to wriggle from his grasp, all before noticing the series of cast iron weights just near her right hind hoof. She reached out and pinched the heavy rope coiled near her about the back of her left foreleg pastern bone and the digital cushion of the hoof. Tossing a length into the air and wrapping about griffin across its neck, left shoulder and right brachium. Providing tension upon the woven hemp line as she gripped it securely.

Before the griffin could realize just how dangerous the situation had transformed for him, she lashed out with her right hind hoof, painfully striking the second smallest of the iron instruments to slide into the water. Cracking and splitting her hoof in the process as she would brook no failure, and thus sparred no energies, in making sure they should land in the water. Force and weight combined compelling its slightly larger family to dip into the pulsing stream, and then its biggest and smallest siblings in tow.

"For Fully, arsehole." She said hoarsely, removing herself from guilt as she remembered just what designs they had enacted on her first, true friend.

Carrara winced as the nature of friction and gravity extracted the griffon from her. His claws being torn free from gripping her hide. The heavy rope tearing and crushing into his feathers and hide as he was yanked across the hull, his head slamming into the ship's starboard railings next to the gangway access—Body disappearing into the churning, night-blackened water's surface as it was pulled overboard.

The rope badly scoured her as it thread itself painfully through her pinching grip between her 2nd phalanx joint and the frog of her left forehoof. Leaving the skin, fur and muscle gouged away and bleeding profusely. It was a price she was willing the pay to make sure his attempted escape from its binds would be futile.

She painfully lifted herself up to lean against the cabin wall but could do little else. Rope burned, bleeding, winded, hoof-cracked, concussed and feeling far too old for any one of those already. She took comfort that the battle was panning out in their favour, as punctuated by Iris' cackle as apparently her magic struck true.

The griffin marksman had put up a valiant and adept display of agility in dodging her prior blasts of magic, but the end result was clear. Iris strafing the aerial assailant down her head and torso, that sustained lance of light that cut viciously down her body. Feathers smouldering as she fell into the occulting tree cover of the portside forests and out of the fight.

"Who's next!?" Iris shouted, chortling in victory atop her granite stage, relinquishing her baleful blue horn ray that cut through the air with dire portents for her target.

Sunny had finished his designs on the bandit before, a final aggressive stamp bludgeoning his foe, and with lightning speed was already tangling with their leader as she rallied from prior injuries. Iris lined up her horn and prepared for Sunny to provide her an opening as he landed a punishing right hoofmaker slap-kick down the beleagured bandit leader's beak and jaw. Fighting like a stallion possessed.

Carrara could only watch, but she didn't like what she were seeing. Despite knowing full well his abilities, for some reason she didn't want to see Sunny like that. A sense of welling remorse that the evils of the world should reduce them to such a state. Her eyes turned instead to the rapidly shortening rope and her body tensed in anticipation.

"Brace!" She warned her companions as the uncoiling length of hemp spun off the hull.

Iris teleported moments before into the ship's cabin and locked her left hoof against the door frame. Sunny took to the air, safely free of the centripetal force as the ship moved mere feet beneath him. Carrara's head initially dashes against the edge of the structure, compounding her prior injury to her senses. As the ship suddenly pivoted aftwards out towards the port side and the vessel swung in a long arc with the twisting river.

With the sudden starboard dip threatening to capsize their vessel, as well as her already trauma-addled senses, her grip falters and she slides. Tumbling down back first as she fervently fought to hold on but finding nothing upon the water slick decking, before slamming into the freezing waters. She plunged deep into that blackness, and was immediately dragged by the undertow produced by the flowing current beneath the hull, short keel and rudder of the barge.

Her hooves battering against the underside hull before she was tumbling aimlessly once again. Her world was black, and screaming, as the water itself made as if deafening sounds with the torrent of its flow. Fighting to find a surface that didn't seem to break or yield as she was twisted and turned in the grip of the river.

"Cara!" Sunny screamed, losing sight of the bandit leader as he fixed his gaze upon the Earth pony and watched her disappear into the river.

"You ponies will not survive the night." The bandit leader spat angrily, using the distraction and the sudden destabilization of their arena to pullback. "There's more of us at camp. Be seeing you real soon." She screeched hatefully.

Sparing no time the bandit began her solitary retreat, especially when she espied Iris slowly appearing from the ship's cabin with surer hooves. Sunny turned to stare daggers at her as if he threatened to give chase and channel some of his righteous anger with his hooves into her hide. He wanted to, but he held firm understanding that he could not simply take the night to chase her down. There were others that needed his attentions more.

Allowing himself a deep breath, Sunny flittered upwards to stare over the stretch of the river. Gazing in what would be vain hope of seeing Carrara upon the banks ahead... the ominous cacophony of the waterfalls in the distance making the threat and fate of not finding her all too easy to contemplate.

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading Ch. 4 of Equestrian Nights, and I hope you enjoyed the storyline thus far and my attempt to blend High Fantasy with Old West vibes.

I'm planning a smaller companion series later on that deals with an earlier time frame (roughly a decade and a half) of the setting that won't have any bearing on this story, but might illustrate more of Equestria's early tribal relationships when Equestria was very young and show more of the background characters in these installments.

So if you like what you're reading, and have any ideas, thoughts or questions, let me know underneath.

Next Month...

The Skinny of It Is...