The Mountainside
The scout burst into the royal tent amidst a gust of snowflakes, just as I’d set Princess Platinum’s brose before her. “Your Highness,” he panted, dipping a hasty bow, snow falling from his cloak. “We’ve found them. We’ve found Lord Sunstone’s marching column.”
“Sunstone’s column?” Princess Platinum rose from her breakfast abruptly and somewhat stiffly, wobbling slightly as her eyes bored into the scout. I stepped up by her side, ready to steady her if need be. This recent march through the mountains had weakened her, for all she wouldn’t admit it. “You’ve found them? Where are they? Are they well? Tell us their condition. Speak.”
“Northaways of here, Your Highness, on the other side of the ridge.” The scout’s horn blazed orange and he lifted his hood and pulled off his slitted snow-goggles, revealing the tired eyes and hard, frost-blistered features that had become the norm among unicornkind in the course of this hellish journey. Tools of his trade jangled about his person: a tinderbox, emergency pouches of oatmeal, an enchanted looking-lens, and a set of snow-shoes strapped at his side. “Glimpsed a moving mass amongst the troughs and valleys at the mountain’s base, struggling to make headway through the snow drifts. Winds are driving right at them something fierce. But they look largely intact, and I recognised Sunstone’s banners.”
I breathed out, briefly giddy. The several marching columns that composed the entirety of the unicorn kingdom had done their best to stay within sight and galloping distance of one another. But since entering the mountains and snaking our way through the passes, driving winds and unexpected ferocity from the snowstorms had seen us lose contact with the column led by Lord Sunstone. Their absence had been a dark weight on the mind for the last week.
“Did you make contact? Do they know we’re here?” I said. The scout turned to me.
“No, Clo— my lady. Observed from a distance for a few minutes, but thought it best to come here at once.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’m not sure they know where they are. Their direction of travel was slow, unsure. And they seemed to be angled a shade too north-west. Those winding passes and the snow-shroud’ll be playing havoc with them.”
“We must correct them,” said Platinum firmly. She frowned, as if thinking. “Clover, remind us of our intended destination. The name and exact locale temporarily eludes us.”
“Evergreen Mont, Your Highness,” I said for what wasn’t the first time, as the scout’s expression carefully remained impassive. I turned back to the table, to where several griffon-scrawled maps lay spread out, and swiped up the top one for inspection. “Another two day’s journey at our current pace, but the griffon tribes told us there’d be firs and pines there fit for grazing and lumber. We could rest there while hunting out the best route south-west out of the Greycairns and into the uninhabited lowlands. But if Sunstone’s column keeps on its current course … they’ll just head deeper north-west into the Greycairns. Where the griffons have put down labels like ‘The Wailing Wastes’ and ‘Herein Ice-Wyrms’.”
Platinum stood straighter, with some effort. “We assuredly must correct them. And if they have been lost for over a week, amidst what sounds like harsher conditions than what even we have faced, we must grant them courage also.”
“I can head back out there, Your Highness,” said the scout. “Descend down the mountainside, advise them to change course, and pass on any message you may see fit —”
“No,” replied Platinum. “You have exerted yourself enough, good ...” She broke off suddenly into a coughing fit, and when she next spoke, her voice was that little bit more strained. “... Good pony. We require our scouts to remain able.”
“I can go, Your Highness,” I said, a vague premonition of doom flickering in my mind as Platinum’s possible intent suggested itself. “If I can borrow a sledge, I can alternate between it and teleporting and reach Sunstone’s column soon without overly tiring myself, and keep myself fresh for clearing any obstacles in their path. I can stay with them and guide them. As well as pass on any encouragement you wish, word for word.”
“Our words are fine and encouraging things,” said Platinum after a moment’s consideration. She looked directly at the scout. “And yet … What is your name, good pony?”
“Surehoof, Your Highness.”
“We would have you do two things, Surehoof. You have a scout’s sledge? Lend Clover your sledge. And bear a message to the tent of Lady Nightshade. Inform her that I give her authority over and responsibility for this column and its progress until we reconverge.”
“Give Lady Nightshade authority over the column?” I said with weary dismay, as the premonition was vindicated. “Your Highness —”
“This column is in good order and the morale of our subjects here holds,” Platinum said, with the determined finality that invited no discussion. “But Sunstone’s falters, and has wandered lost for far too long. Our words are fine things. We ourself are finer yet. Retrieve our russet — no, our burgundy cloak and our snow-goggles, Clover. And accompany us to Sunstone’s column, lest we need any heavy thinking done while we are there.”
My princess is a pony some charitably describe as ‘dauntless’, and who less charitable others deem ‘bloody-minded’. Danger doesn’t dissuade her. Centuries of an ancestry that spent their time hitting others over the head with swords whenever they weren’t being hit over the head with swords themselves has wrought a certain base stubbornness and inability to acknowledge the existence of personal risk in her and her line. Once she has committed herself to something, nopony could alter her mind with anything short of unorthodox trepanning techniques.
But as we advanced up the slope of the mountainside and to the high ridge, past all the guttering fires and flapping tents of our camp, and through a wild wind that screamed snow into our faces, I felt I had to make the effort.
“I could handle the matter by myself, Your Highness,” I insisted. I squinted out at a narrow window of the world through my own slitted snow-goggles. My saddlebags were stuffed with supplies and rolled-up maps, and I pulled up the harnessed sledge at my back. Atop that sledge perched Platinum.
“We will hear no more on the subject, Clover. We will not be gainsaid,” she muttered. She’d donned her cosy burgundy cloak, though it couldn’t be cosy enough, and her crown had been jammed down atop a fur-lined hood. Her jewelled, hiltless sword rested in a sheath at her side. I’d watched her pick it up with some trepidation. I knew the quality of her bladework. I’d tended to her cuts after umpteen sessions in which she’d grumpily insisted the training dummies had been cheating. Still, if we were ambushed by anything unfriendly, I could make use of it myself.
“The unicorns in our column would benefit most from you at their helm, Your Highness,” I pressed. “They have to be led on to —”
“Lady Nightshade shall do so admirably. She is steadfast and knows our course and destination,” Platinum said obstinately. “Our unicorns in Sunstone’s column struggle on through darkness and distress. Are we to not go to them?”
She is demanding, she is obdurate, she has a host of qualities which fail to ingratiate, but there are reasons she has my loyalty. I could only sigh and reply, “The descent could be perilous, Your Highness. I advise against undergoing the peril. For your sake.”
“Our sake is unicornkind’s. No more, Clover. Must we say it thrice?”
She didn’t. I held my tongue for the rest of the journey up towards the ridge, passing by the last of the pitched tents and fires. Winds and snow flurried and whipped all about us, the unending chill biting past whatever warmth our cloaks gave, biting through to the bone. Overhead, pale grey clouds roiled in the sky from horizon to horizon, shrouded by the snow that ceaselessly pelted down. The clouds seethed and pressed up against one another, their motions striking up distant and constant thunder.
And I knew that past these clouds, when the snowfall lightened and sunlight made meagre silhouettes against the thick grey barrier, that things lurked behind. Long, twisted, pony-like forms, always galloping, always flying, mixing their cruel laughter with the wind and sending the snow scything down, again and again and again …
I forced them from mind. We had a task before us. The skyborne horrors would have to wait.
Along the stony crest of the ridge, there was a short cleft, and we struggled up towards it. Upon reaching it, craggy rock rising on either side of us, I undid the sledge’s harness, took a trepid step towards the ridge’s edge, and pulled out an enchanted looking-lens. I rose the wooden tube of it towards my eye, willed magic through the gems set within, and squinted through.
There — far off and far, far below, all but invisible past the blizzard, I sighted a shifting dark mass of what had to be Sunstone’s column. What seemed like tiny, colourful banners flapped wildly at their head, lashed by gusts of wind-driven snow.
I turned the looking-lens down, adjusted the magic in the gems, and focused on the slope down. Broad, sharply-sloping slabs of glacial ice ran down much of the mountainside, pockmarked with jags of black rock and the odd treacherous crevasse. Descendible by sledge, with a little care.
Well, let’s not understate. A lot of care.
“Right,” I muttered. I put away the looking-lens and regarded the long slope down, down all its pale, snow-shrouded, rock-studded vastness. Vertigo swooned in around the edge of my mind, and I tried to will it away as I checked the sledge. It looked solid enough, at least, with the runners and crosspieces fashioned from tough walnut wood and lashed together, and engraved with little magical runes to impart additional lightness and sturdiness. I rested one hoof on the front and tried to steady my breathing as I pondered the route ahead.
“Clover?” came Platinum’s voice, and I turned on her, abruptly and wearily reminded of the other pony’s wellbeing I had to safeguard as well, as if the next while wasn’t going to be fraught enough. A stubborn, ailing pony who hadn’t even finished her brose before plunging headfirst into this. But whatever bitterness flared up in me was dampened as I met her gaze. Under her crown and the rim of her hood, her tired eyes radiated genuine concern. “Are you well?”
I sat down in the front of the sledge as Platinum shuffled back to make room, and I pulled on as reassuring a smile as I could muster, as a unusually chill wind cut through the cleft. “Quite well, Your Highness. Just steeling my nerves for the descent.”
“Take heart from us, Clover,” Platinum replied, her voice thin and with a hint of rasp to it. “We don’t see any reason for fear in a mere mountainside.”
I glanced pack to where the cleft plunged down into the glacial slope, blistered with rocks and crevasses all the way down its impossible length, and I glanced back to Platinum. Wryness came naturally then. “No reason at all, Your Highness?”
“What reason do we have to be afraid, Clover?” said Platinum. “We are with you.”
The chill wind slowed. My answer, when it finally emerged, came with a hitch in my voice. “Well. Hold on tight to me, Your Highness. I’ll try not to disappoint.”
“You never do, Clover,” she said, and as I shifted to secure my seating and rested my forehooves on the top of the front-runners, she wrapped her own forelegs around me from behind, pressing her thin frame close. I heard her sniff once, twice. “That said, Clover, we really must urge you to find the time to give yourself and your cloak a good wa—”
She has a rare knack for ruining moments, but I found myself able to forgive her. “Hold tight, Your Highness!” I said, interrupting her, and kicked forward the sledge with my magic. It lurched across the ground, clearing the lip of the cleft and slipping down onto the slope. For one breathless moment, it skittered over the layers of ice and packed snow, gathering direction and speed.
And then, direction and speed thus gathered, it tore down the slope, and we were borne with it.
The world blurred by, turning to so much pale indistinctness. Biting wind pelted my face, and even past my snow-goggles, I felt compelled to screw up my eyes against the volleying snowflakes. Platinum’s grip about me tightened, even as she whooped in my ear. “Hah! Most exhilarating!” she laughed, with more energy than I’d heard from her in a while.
A fierce grin broke across my features, and I forced my eyes to resist squinting. There — up ahead, a jag of black rock hurtled towards us. I brought my magic to bear on the sledge and smoothly pulled us to the right, curving clear of it. The world kept whipping by, and I was aware of the mountains on either side of our own, great looming shapes past the veil of snow. If I’d craned my head to see where we’d come from, how remote and small would the cleft be? Would it still have been in sight at all?
A sudden bump in the slope arrested that line of thought as the sledge skipped over it, left us briefly airborne, and smacked down in the snow a few metres hence. The impact jolted us, leaving me wobbling in my seat and eliciting a slightly more breathless whoop from Platinum.
In the corner of my vision, there was the faint suggestion of darkness creeping into the pale, wild sky. I barrelled on regardless, heedless. Forwards was that mattered, all there was.
Ahead, we were coming up on a small crevasse, all but hidden in the snow. Small enough, I reckoned as we neared it. A metre wide, maybe less, enough for the sledge to clear at this speed. But no sense in leaving things to chance. Magic gathered about my horn, and as we came upon the lip of the crevasse, I wrenched the front of the sledge up a fraction. My world tilted up, and I glanced down as we skipped right over the crevasse. For a brief second, I glimpsed a gap descending deep down into the glacier ice, glimpsed ice walls falling down into blackness, turquoise light swimming in their heart.
And then the glimpse passed, and we slammed down onto the snow, hurtling on our way and leaving the crevasse far behind almost as quickly as we’d seen it.
“Why do we not do this more often?” Platinum enthused in my ear, as I kept my attention firmly on whatever might come rushing at us next. “Make a note, Clover! When we settle, we settle where we may regularly — ah.” When she next spoke after a moment, her voice was perturbed and soft enough to all but go unheard over the rushing wind. “Clover?”
“Hmm?” I replied absently. The wind and snowfall was growing fierce as we descended, and I was sure I could spy a greater crevasse in the distance.
“Clover, there’s something —”
And before she could finish, that something struck. A great force suddenly buffeted the sledge side-on, wind and snow crashing into us like a hammer-blow, and the sledge was thrown into a mad spin over the slope. The world whirled, wind screamed in my ears, and as I tried to desperately reassert control over the sledge, the something flew overhead. A long, house-sized, ice-coloured mass that left a trail of bone-cracking frost. Cold, cruel, alien laughter pealed.
The wind screamed and I swept my head about. My magic crackled out and caught the sledge, and I poured force into arresting its spin, force enough to make my horn itch. As the sledge slowed, I saw the long form of the thing, galloping through the sky over us and laughing in a mad whinny like a gale at a windowpane. It was one of the windigoes that lurked behind the clouds, demons of ice and wind and darkness, descended from its high lair.
My head turned, and a new reason for my blood to run cold presented itself. There wasn’t just one. The clouds had descended, wreathing the slope at our backs, and in their depths, I saw more monsters capering. Dozens, at least, their crackling laughter breaking like thunder.
“Back, beasts!” came Platinum’s snarl, and a burst of magic erupted from her horn, flying out and blazing harmlessly through the skies. She tottered upright in the swaying sledge, one hoof resting on me for support as she gestured with the other. “Back! Lest we —!”
“Down, Your Highness!” I screamed, my magic forcibly planting her back down into the sledge and wrenching her forelegs around me again. As she squawked with outrage, I wrenched the sledge round to speed straight down, missing another crag of rock by inches. Wind and monsters howled, chasing us down, and I thought desperately through the fog of terror.
To Sunstone’s column. There’d be ponies. There’d be fire. There’d be safety. The monsters didn’t strike directly where ponies were gathered, as far as we’d seen. They just sent down snow and wind to make us struggle.
The sledge hurtled down, buffeted by the wind at its back, and I felt Platinum writhing behind me. “Clover!” she snapped. “Clover, do not mishandle us! These coward beasts think to hunt us when we’re isolated! We must show them their mista—!”
“Be quiet, Your Highness!” I snapped back, my gaze frantically combing the way ahead. The large crevasse I’d sighted earlier loomed ahead, still distant but rapidly drawing closer, and past it, rolling hills ran down towards the ever-closer lights and mass of Sunstone’s column.
Platinum’s reply was drowned out by the scream of wind at our back, and motion in the corner of my eyes made me glance from side to side. Two of the great monsters had galloped down through the sky and were loping on either side of the sledge, casually keeping pace like hunting wolves. Their white eyes burned down with a terrible, hungry glee, and as I watched, they edged in closer, and closer, and closer.
Time stood still. I closed my eyes. I breathed in.
And the magic for teleportation gathered about my horn and wreathed about the whole sledge and in one impossibly brief instant, whirled us far ahead of the surprised monsters, keeping all of our sledge’s speed and momentum. I released my breath with a yelp of pain as my horn protested the magical exertion, and opened my eyes to see the crevasse coming up before us, many metres wide. A faint rising lip made a ramp up into the air over it. It might be enough. It might not.
“HOLD TIGHT!” I yelled one last time before the ascent. Platinum reflexively tightened her grip on me, whatever her current state of pique might have been, and before time allowed for any more thought, we crested the lip.
And for a long moment, we became pegasi, flying through the air over the great crevasse. All the shades of blue and green twinkled in the vastness under us, some detached part of me noted, so many imprisoned colours under a wintery prison. For a moment I felt weightless and breathless, and the sky extended endlessly all around.
And at our peak, another of the monsters came slashing in. Its winter-grey form blurred past, trailing an ice-flecked gale, and the sledge helplessly like a toy in the air as orientation entirely deserted me. Pale skies and the shades of ice and howling greyness whipped around me as I felt my hoofhold on the sledge vanish, and my flight became freefall.
Burgundy flashed past my vision, and something below my conscious thought made me clutch out at it, at Platinum, seizing her mid-air and holding her close to me. The pain in my horn stopped mattering, stopped existing, as with one great magical wrench I teleported us over to what I hoped was the air over the slope past the far side of the crevasse. A much healthier place to fall. I twisted us in the air, holding Platinum in my forelegs and turning my back to the ground.
I crashed into hard layers of snow and ice, all my breath and all my remaining sense departing me. Helpless, I tumbled down the shallower slope, Platinum falling from my hooves and getting lost somewhere. Sky and snow and sky and snow blurred together.
Then I hit a rock, and the cold blur of motion yielded to a hot blur of pain. For a long moment — I couldn’t tell you how long — I lay slumped against the stone’s side, wheezing wretchedly and struggling to move. The world lay side-on in my vision, grey skies and oncoming dark clouds on my left, and endless white snow and ice on my right. Before me, there was a sledge as well, embedded front-down in the snow.
I lay still. I might have lain there for a while. But before I could drift entirely off into blackness, burgundy and the gleam of jewels entered the mix, and a figure lurched through the snow towards me, the snow coming up past her fetlocks.
“Clover?” came the voice of Platinum, as if from a great distance. And now there was desperation and fear in her voice. “Clover? Clover, are you hurt? Clover, tell us you are not hurt! Clover, answer us, please!”
“Y’Highness,” I murmured, lifting my head a fraction. The sensation of cold crept in around the edges of my world, as well as memories of where I was and what I was doing and what terrible life choices had led me here. I blinked blearily up at Platinum. Her crown was askew on her head, and her eyes were wide and frantic. “Keep moving. Keep moving. Sunstone’s not far ...”
“We shall move on in company! With you! On your hooves, we command it!” When I didn’t dutifully spring to my hooves, she forced her muzzle under me and tried to push me upright. “Clover, we order you to rise,” she said pleadingly, and it was now her voice’s turn to develop a hitch, “Clover, this is rank disobedience —”
The dark clouds drew in. Shapes emerged from them. Tall, twisted, monstrous shapes. Moving slowly, without a care and all the time in the world. A pack of cats with two trapped mice. And if those mice never made it to Sunstone’s column...
“Behind … behind you,” I wheezed. I tried to push myself to my hooves and failed. Platinum turned, and saw the monsters incoming. The foremost of them towered above, its eyes like stars in the night sky. Its fangs gleamed like the first icicles. Its long form, too twisted and stretched to anything equine, was shadows and snowstorms and pitiless chill.
Platinum stared up at the face of winter. And she drew her sword. It twirled up in her magic, up into the high, impractical stance her fencing tutor had always patiently told her to stop doing.
“Approach Clover, monster, and die,” she rasped.
The monster laughed, and desperation all but lifted me off the ground. I tried to rise again, past the foggy pain in every part of me and the blinding ache in my side, and very nearly succeeded.
“En-garde, then!” Platinum drew the sword back for one of the wild, telegraphed swings she regards as the last word in swordsmareship, but as she lashed out, another coughing fit overcame her. She all but doubled over, her trachea seemingly trying to escape out through her mouth, and the sword fell from her grip. She stumbled on regardless, and promptly became one of history’s few swordsmares with the distinction of tripping over her own blade. “Gah!”
Every sinew of mine bent to getting me up, every ounce of will fighting its way through my battered body, and slowly, achingly, I got up. I lurched through the snow towards Platinum, who coughed indignantly as she tried to rise, and tried to get between her and the monster, the whole pack drawing in towards us.
As I tried to stand between them and Platinum, Platinum tried to return the favour, even if coherent words had fleetingly deserted her, and we struggled to safeguard the other, there on that bleak mountainside. The monster’s eyes shone the cold, hungry white of winter vastness, and it lunged down.
And I acted first. I wrenched away from Platinum, my horn blazing and spluttering with whatever magic I could to bear, and, driven by nothing more than the drive to stand with Platinum, to protect her, to keep the darkness at bay from a fellow pony, let fire with a gout of spellfire. It roared up in my usual lilac tint, save for scattered flames around its edges.
And though it could have been my imagination, they seemed to flare a brilliant pink.
And past the rush of fire, the low, icy laughter of the monster suddenly became an ice-cracking scream. Magic torrented from my horn, and I was only dimly aware of Platinum shifting at my hooves, of the strange and untapped magic that seemed to come rushing up from my heart and through my horn, of the darkness on either side of the fire receding.
I let fly with my magic, and when there little left to let fly, only then did I stop. I stood, and tottered, and gasped at how sore my horn was, and blinked and peered through watering eyes for any sign of the monsters. All I saw was white vastness, rising to a distant and dark mountain-ridge, a vanishingly tiny cleft therein, and pale grey skies high above. The snow still fell, but seemed to have thinned, and the vague suggestions of shapes past the pale clouds seemed to be slinking, to be keeping a wary distance.
Not gone. But at bay, for now. And by what means, I was in no frame of mind to even guess.
“H-how?” I babbled to myself, wobbling where I stood. “Magic. Didn’t work before. Magic? Pinky fire. Went whoosh. Fire of … of … horn hurts. Pink.”
Something to consider later.
“Clover.” Platinum murmured in my ear, and I felt her hooves on me, gently pulling me down to sit on my hindquarters. I slumped, and felt her against me. “Clover, Clover, Clover. Steady, now. Stout heart. Commendable work. Rest.”
And rest I did, all but collapsing into Platinum’s hooves as we sat there in the snow. Silence descended upon the mountainside, a welcome moment of peace after our sledge-ride.
“Never, never, never do that again, Clover,” wheezed Platinum softly, after a long and unbroken hush. “We are your princess. We face the foe.”
“Yes, Your Highness” I murmured to my ailing princess. “But you’ll face them in company.”
“Rank insolence,” she muttered without rancour.
The hush descended once more, and just at the point where I glanced at our upright, half-buried sledge and felt it was past time to make a move on, there were flames, and voices, and the sound of sets of snow-shoes scuffing up towards us. “Princess Platinum?” somepony said.
We turned, and saw cloaked unicorns coming towards us, from the direction of Sunstone’s column. They neared us, a half-dozen or so, and at the front I recognised the grim, gaunt features of Lord Sunstone himself. He stared at us, clearly surprised. “Your Highness?” he said. “Was that your magic we saw?”
“Ah, Lord Sunstone,” Platinum said. She drew away from me and staggered upright, aiming for properly royal poise and getting some of the way there, and smiled benevolently. “We come to deliver you from distress and to correct your course. Clover brings maps. We bring ourself.”
Knowing my cue, I worked one last flourish of magic. I unclasped my saddlebags, presented the maps to Sunstone and his ponies, and duly delivered them from distress.
And as exhaustion closed in, and hooves and sledges caught me and bore me to where there were ponies and warmth, they returned the favour.
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I really like how you do Platinum and the other founders, where it's so easy to see why they have their people's loyalty despite everything.
I've always thought Windigos were about more than simple conflict. They're about betrayal because of deprivation. Spirits of treachery can't stand in the face of loyalty and friendship.
9212578
They're pillocks in their own way, and it's fun to play with their faults, but it's worth bearing in mind that they're the leaders who successfully led their people through a migration. It's only fair to depict the qualities that could result in that.
Glad you think I do squarely by Platinum and the others.
Platinum is one of those people you spend most of the time wondering why you're friends with them... and then the push comes to shove, and they're there for you, reminding you of exactly why, again.
Also, that sledding scene was exhilarating! Nice writing once again.
9212686
She's a faceted pony, that one. Eminently regicidable in times of peace, but when darker times roll in, she knows what her station obliges of her.
Glad you approve!
I need another bout of trepanning like I need another hole in my head!
This was nice and Platinum seems to rank her duty above personal wellfare which is not always wise. I would not trust a pony with the name Nightshade except if I wanted to procure a deadly poison.
9224441
Thank you! One core aspect of Platinum (as I've written her, at least) is her sense of noblesse oblige, to fulfil the responsibilities to her subjects she feels her station obliges of her. Take to self-destructive lengths, definitely, but it gets her loyalty even when her more entitled tendencies might erode it.
One can only imagine what Princess Platinum would have been like as an earth pony.
...
Princess Adamant? Princess Adamantine?
9333425
Adamantine sounds excellent. Let's go for that in the tribe-swapped AU.
Mess with the princess, get hit
Platinum trusts Clover implicitly. Clover will protect Platinum with all her heart.
9733051
There's a good summary of their relationship.
The more I read of her, the more I come to consider your Princess Platinum as my favourite character.
11442742
I've a soft spot for her too. Protagonists who are proud enough to set out on heroics, daft enough to run head-first into every avoidable complication along the way, and decent enough to stick with it regardless are my favourite sort to write for.