Chapter 13
Of all of the very stupid things that I have done in my life, rushing out into the no mare’s land between the Equestrian front line and the walls of Virion Hive is not at the top of that extensive list (that would be the time when I was thirteen years old and burnt my name in Auntie ‘Tia’s lawn with a magnifying glass, and then told her she shouldn’t have made the sun so bright), but it’s certainly in the top ten at least.
The first order of business for our so-called expert was to take a look at the walls she was expected to help smash a hole in with her expertise. Being Princess Luna’s very special commissar to General Market Garden, I had appointed myself to look after Maud Pie; being a civilian in a military camp must be a very intimidating experience, and it was up to one’s friendly neighbourhood political officer to keep the vulgarity of the common soldier in check so as not to offend her delicate sensibilities. That it got me out of some of the more tedious and dangerous duties I had to perform was merely an added bonus, or so I had thought at the time.
Maud Pie sat on her haunches and peered through a pair of binoculars at the walls, while Cannon Fodder and I sat nearby and enjoyed a rather lovely picnic away from the office. A short distance away, the artillery crews conducted their grim, arduous work of pounding away at the fortification walls, but from where I was sitting it looked like they had still done very little except knock a few shallow dents in the heavy stonework. Still, in the fine tradition of the Equestrian military they carried on regardless, wasting ammunition and energy out of a curious sense of obligation to be doing something productive for the war effort.
Captain Bramley Apple had reversed his opinion on the new ‘expert’ the moment he discovered that she was a very distant cousin of his, and so rapidly that I feared he might be hospitalised for whiplash of the mind. However, as I had recently found out to my great embarrassment and irritation, it appeared that most ponies in Equestria have at least some tenuous connection to that intrepid clan of earth pony apple farmers, Yours Truly included. If Nightmare Moon herself had somehow returned from the depths of wherever the Elements of Harmony had banished her, with all of her daemonic legions of brainwashed cultists ready to drag Equestria back into a new dark age of night-based tyranny, and announced to him that she was his great-great-great-aunt’s cousin thrice removed, not only would she have a chance at being right but he would also renounce his vows to Princesses and Country on the spot and start waving the flag for eternal night. Blood is thicker than water, and all that.
After about half an hour of peering at a stone wall through a pair of binoculars, Maud Pie had apparently got what she needed and trotted on over to where Cannon Fodder and I were sitting and eating cress sandwiches.
“I need to take a few samples of the wall,” she droned.
“Whatever for?” I asked. “It’s a stone wall, isn’t it?”
“From here it looks like limestone blocks and cement, but your cannons shouldn’t be having this much trouble breaching it.” She raised a hoof and pointed it at the city off in the distance. “The Changelings must have done something to the rock to make it more resistant to artillery. It could be a coating on the outer wall or something in the mortar, but there’s no way I can tell from up here.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll organise a pegasus section to get you your samples.”
“I’d rather do it myself,” she said.
“What?” I blurted out, a little too loudly too. However, she didn’t react in the slightest at that outburst, and instead merely tilted her head a fraction of an inch to the left. “Why, in Celestia’s name?”
“Your pegasi won’t know what to look for, but I do. Besides, I can’t in all good conscience ask ponies to risk their lives on my behalf while I stay safe here. I don’t think I could live with that kind of guilt.”
“A commendable sentiment,” I said, “but completely out of the question.”
She blinked, slowly, and not once did her expression change. It was frightening, in a way; I suppose it makes little sense to imagine Yours Truly being intimidated by this mere slip of a filly, but spend more than five minutes alone with her and that cold, analytical, emotionless stare and even Iron Will’s famous iron will must slowly buckle under the strain.
“I have to get that sample,” she said. “General Market Garden wants me to help the artillery knock that wall down. Getting that sample will allow me to work out the quickest way to do that. If you want to win this battle before the Changelings can reinforce, you’ll let me do my job.”
Of course, I could have, and probably should have, let her do it alone; my experience in this dreadful conflict might have challenged some of my preconceived notions about the expendability of the lives of the lower orders in relation to my own, but such a thing was based on an understanding of shared peril in the sight of the enemy. I was hardly keen, however, to put my own life at risk for the sake of another apparently heedless of the value of their own. Indeed, I’d have been quite happy to let her go, and even give her a few of my uneaten sandwiches for a snack along the way, assuming that the soldiers on picquet duty didn’t stop her from this mad venture. I might have been responsible for her safety, at least, on an unofficial basis as her self-appointed chaperone, but I would have merely said ‘I did my best to stop her, honest’ and write it off as yet another tragedy in a war already replete with them.
That is, until I happened to recall who her sister was. I had met Pinkie Pie precisely once at that party, and that was quite enough for one lifetime. If she was capable of even a tenth of the unnatural feats attributed to her, that not even an egghead like Twilight Sparkle can adequately explain, then I feared what horrors she might inflict upon me if I simply stood back at a good safe distance, puffed away at one of the fine cigars that were nestled against Slab in my breast pocket, and watched as her beloved sister was torn to shreds by an entire war swarm of Changelings.
“What about Pinkie Pie?” I said.
“What about her?”
“She would be upset if anything would happen to you.”
Maud Pie paused, looked away and pawed at the ground with her hoof, then fixed me again with one of her chilling, emotionless stares. “Pinkie herself has risked her life for Equestria before, against Nightmare Moon, Discord, Tirek, and the Changelings too. She understands what we must do to protect Equestria.”
“I can’t allow it.”
“Blueblood,” she said, and I felt a chill creep along the length of my spine. “I will get that sample. Victory depends on it.”
She wasn’t going to change her mind, that much was apparent, and I could hardly risk her running off alone when my flanks were turned. Again, if I wanted to make sure Maud got out of this alive, there was nothing for it but to go along with this crazy scheme.
“Fine,” I said, with the usual sense of finality that comes when I’ve mentally worked myself into a problem that I can’t escape from. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Right now?” said Maud Pie.
I shrugged. “No time like the present, unless there’s something else you’d rather do.”
My schedule for the rest of that day was clear of anything that I couldn’t afford to miss on account of being captured or dead. The prospect of another strategy conference followed by an inspection of the penal unit clearing out the latrines was almost sufficient to make this utterly insane venture seem appealing; at least I wouldn’t be bored out there.
“You’re coming with me?” she asked.
Naturally, I had thought about roping in a section or two of unlucky soldiers to escort her, but as the old saying goes, if you want something done right then do it yourself. I had no desire to incur the wrath of Pinkie Pie, who I imagined would use my entrails for bunting at her next party. If, Faust forbid, something did go horrendously wrong and Maud was lost out there, then I was not entirely sure I would want to survive to live with the disgrace of losing a mare entrusted to my protection. Once again the old adage of dictum meum pactum [my word is my bond] that constrained all nobles of our realm had pointed me in the direction of mortal peril, slapped me on the flanks, and told me to get on with it.
“I can hardly allow a lady to walk across no mare’s land unaccompanied,” I said. Faust help me, what was I doing? With a bit of luck, some sense would seep into that rock hard skull of hers before we reached the point of no return.
So that was that, apparently; this time I wasn’t to be dragged along into yet another foolhardy venture, I was volunteering. I know this sounds like the last thing the cowardly wretch you know and love would do, but I had a reputation to maintain, and one that had at least eased a few things in my life too. The thing about reputations, however, is that one is built up by words as much as deeds; all I needed to do was to be seen to be eager to go and have another stab at the Changelings in the name of Princesses and Country and all that, even if not practically possible. All I needed, therefore, was to say ‘tally ho!’ and let saner officers talk me down, then I can trundle off back to my picnic without a slight upon my honour.
My mistake was assuming that there are sane officers out there.
First, however, we sought out Captain Bramley Apple to ask him if he could cease firing while we were out by the wall; it would not do well for me to have survived three encounters with the enemy and one rather nasty fracas with some natives only to be smeared across those very fortifications by an Equestrian cannonball. We found him doing that most un-officer-like activity of actually working by helping out with the loading and firing of one of the cannons in his battery. Clearly, I thought as I approached him, as he grabbed another gunpowder charge and shoved it into the still-steaming muzzle, he was in desperate need of my guidance if he was to be accepted by his fellow brother officers.
We told him of our plan, and rather than saying something along the lines of, “Heavens! That’s the daftest idea I have ever heard, sir, if you don’t mind me saying!”, or something to that effect particular to the colloquial dialect of the southern portion of Equestria his family hailed from, he instead scoffed as though insulted.
“Sir, I can hit a fly off a mule’s behind with one of these cannons and leave the mule unhurt,” he said, patting the side of his cannon as though it was a very large and friendly dog. “You’ll be safe, sir.”
“Be that as it may,” I said, “I’d rather you hold fire for the duration, just for my peace of mind.”
Bramley Apple tapped his stubbled chin and gazed down at the walls his cannons had been ineffectually hammering away at for the better part of a week. In the subtle movements of his lips and the steady gaze of his eyes I could almost see the calculations running inside his head; his mind only held two things, I found, being apples and artillery, and he accomplished both to the frightening level of the savant. Just about everything else he was more or less deficient, and, much to his credit I must admit, he at least acknowledged it.
“We’ve been firing all day now,” he said, still with that faraway look in his eyes. “If we stop now they’ll know we’re up to something. Now, take a look here.” He pointed at the walls below. “We’re focusing our fire on three points, here, here, and here. If you avoid those three and head to that bit in the middle next to that tower there you should be safe.”
I didn’t like that word, ‘should’; a lot of things ‘should’ be but simply aren’t, for example, I should be spending this war nice and safe in my cavernous palace with my loyal servants instead of running straight into enemy territory to grab a chunk of rock. Nevertheless, despite my misgivings Maud Pie seemed to be happy with that arrangement, I think. It was rather difficult to tell what she was feeling at any given point. I hoped, therefore, that the officer on duty at the picquet lines would be concerned about my safety enough to stop us going through with this.
No such luck. We trotted on down the slope to where lines of trenches and earthworks were in the process of being dug into the hard, dusty ground. It was not good ground for digging trenches, though, and I know this because Maud Pie had explained this to me at length in an hour-long lecture in such detail that even Twilight Sparkle would have found it excessive. The parched, dry earth proved to be difficult work for even the earth ponies with their shovels, resulting in rather shallow holes that tended to collapse at the first sign of moisture. Bolstered by sandbags, these formed a loose, almost continuous line along the length of the slope in front of the artillery batteries.
“Do you see how unsuitable the terrain here is for building?” said Maud Pie. She pointed to where a group of earth ponies struggled to repair a trench line where the wall had collapsed and buried part of it. “The city walls should have collapsed by now. Modern artillery has made medieval defensive walls like that obsolete.”
“Maybe they brought in stone from elsewhere,” I said. I had no idea, but it sounded plausible.
“It’s possible,” she said. “Or it could be magically enhanced somehow. The Changelings left some strange materials behind in Canterlot, and we still don’t know what they’re capable of. I must get that sample to find out.”
Here and there, however, the engineers had been set to building blockhouses along the picquet lines. These were small, squat, and rather ugly buildings that were, as befitting their name, shaped like crude little blocks. They were all in varying stages of construction, ranging from a square patch of land cleared and levelled in preparation to an almost-fully built structure, and every stage in between. Around each, scores of engineers, some of whom I recognised as being the Horsetralians I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years, busied themselves in the varying tasks of construction that I, as a prince, had no knowledge or interest in.
[Very few of these blockhouses survived the war, as they were taken down for building materials during the post-war reconstruction. One, however, has been preserved in what is now the Virion Military Cemetery and is open to the public.]
We asked a sentry for the officer on duty here, and were pointed in the direction of one of the blockhouses in the more advanced stages of construction. It was more or less complete, or at least it looked to be to my inexperienced eyes, having the necessary four walls and a roof that form the basis for any permanent structure. There still remained scaffolding around the walls through, and a number of ponies in the dark uniforms of the Royal Engineers did something, Faust-knows-what, with the walls. Painting it, for all I knew.
The door had yet to be installed, which seemed like something of an oversight for any defensive fortification no matter how small. The interior consisted of a single, dark, and rather gloomy room, lacking windows except for small loopholes for muskets and horns. A few candles had been lit to provide some light, at least, whose soft orange glow, flickering in the draft from the open door, only added to the oppressive atmosphere in this cramped area. The ceiling was low, too, and I’m rather a tall fellow, you see, so I made the mistake of trying to stand upright only to hit my horn and almost knock off my cap. How Auntie Celestia put up with this sort of thing, I’ll never know. [One gets used to having to hunch and seeing where my little ponies neglect to dust the tops of bookcases and cabinets.]
There were a few soldiers arranging stout wooden boxes, but at the back next to a flight of wooden stairs leading up to the top floor two were busy trying to position a rather primitive desk at the direction of a young officer. As we approached, he looked up, made an excited little noise, and pushed past the two to rush towards me.
“Lord Commissar!” he said, snapping to attention and saluting. The rest of the soldiers ceased whatever it was they were doing and followed suit, with one dropping a small box on the floor with a loud clatter in the process.
“As you were, chaps,” I said. “Don’t mind me.” They didn’t, and happily got back to whatever it was that they were doing; the meaningless busywork the army likes to inflict on soldiers to make sure they don’t get too bored and find creative ways to alleviate it, it appeared.
“If I had known you were coming I’d have organised a better welcome for you,” said the officer, beaming happily that a ‘living legend’, as those blasted tabloids referred to me when it wasn’t ‘cad’, ‘bounder’, or ‘noted letch’, had seen fit to grace his tiny blockhouse.
I said he was young, but up close I could see that we were approximately of the same age, but he had not gone through the same deteriorating effect that combat inflicts upon young, bright, and eager officers. Either that, or he was simply more resilient than I. He grinned, and it was that same cocky, charming, and entirely sincere smile that Shining Armour had perfected. His was the sort of face that fillies squealed over and reassured their mothers that they were in good, safe, inoffensive hooves, before they would grow up and seek out an utter bastard like me instead.
“The name’s Flash Sentry,” he said. “Lieutenant Flash Sentry of Cadance’s Own Crystal Guards. What can I do for you?”
So that explained why everypony was so shiny, thought I as I looked around and realised that beneath all of the armour, webbing, pouches, pockets, haversacks, muskets, bayonets, and so on that the average soldier is laden with and under the ever-present dust that coats everything within minutes, there was a certain glittering luminescence to their coats that marked them as the recently-returned natives of our northern vassal. Except for Flash Sentry here, however; I suppose they still needed Equestrian officers to show them which end of the bayonet goes into the enemy.
[By the second year of the war a combination of losses and unequal recruitment of volunteers had put the regimental system under strain, which led to regiments with ponies from different recruitment areas of Equestria mixed together. The Crystal Guards is one such example, as the Crystal Empire was unable to muster sufficient volunteers for a full regiment (the lower population and the crystal ponies’ reluctance to engage in an Equestrian conflict is cited as a reason for this).]
I explained Maud’s plan to Flash Sentry, and as he nodded along eagerly I realised that I had made a rather fatal error there. There was no way in Hades that this stallion would dare to be seen contradicting Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood, Order of the Crescent Moon, Hero of Black Venom Pass, bronze swimming certificate, and so on and so forth; I could have informed him that my plan was to go to his next family dinner and roger his mother over the dining table and he would have wholeheartedly agreed. My mistake was thinking that ponies would be both sensible enough to realise I was doing something very stupid and brave enough to tell me to stop.
At any rate, those were the events that led to me crawling through the dirt to collect some lumps of rocks. Looking back, I realise that I have only myself to blame for this and what was to follow. After I finished explaining the plan, Lieutenant Flash Sentry wished us luck and pointed us in the direction of his platoon sergeant, who gave us a few tips on how to avoid being seen out there and a dusty light brown cloak each for camouflage.
“I’ll be wanting those back,” said the sergeant as I put on the first piece of genuinely practical clothing I had been issued with since joining the Commissariat.
“Of course,” I said, lying through my teeth; I had every intention of keeping it on the off-chance we would have to do something this daft again.
Following that, the sergeant showed us how to rub dust into our coats, manes, and uniforms, especially on the shiny bits. Cannon Fodder might have blended in with our surroundings thanks to all of the accumulated filth in his fur, but I with my white fur, blond hair, and black uniform stood out like a sore hoof. Maud Pie too, being made up of varying shades of grey and washed-out purple, would have blended in perfectly in some sort of granite quarry, but out here where the overriding colour scheme was a sort of beige-yellow, like the contents of an elderly pony’s wardrobe, she would be just as visible, perhaps even more so, than I. When we were through, however, wearing the latest fashion of linen cloaks and with our coats and clothes positively smothered with choking dust and clods of dry earth, we didn’t quite blend in with our surroundings completely, but from a distance one would have been forgiven for not noticing three lumps of earth shaped suspiciously like ponies the first time around.
“The three of you should be able to get through without being seen,” he said. “Don’t you worry, sir. We sent out a few small patrols on hoof and they all came back safely; the Changelings don’t seem to be bothered by ponies nosing around. But we’ll keep an eye out for you just in case.”
That still did not put me in the best confidence. And though I asked nicely, this Flash Sentry chap couldn’t just spare anypony at all with all of the very important building work going on, and a larger group risked being spotted and hunted down anyway. So this was it, again, and the day had been going so well for me, too.
Just before we left, however, Maud reached into her pocket and took out a small, ordinary stone. She placed it carefully on the ground, and beseeched the stone, Boulder she called it, to wait here until she returned. I was starting to detect a theme with her.
With that extra bit of madness done, we were sent on our merry way in the direction of the fort. It was early afternoon, just after lunchtime, and the sun was at its most fierce. This heat was the sort that one believes one might get used to it in perhaps a week or two, but one never really does; here it was forever stifling, stultifying, and utterly abominable. The air itself was hot and choking. The glare of the sunlight stung my eyes. Stand in front of an open oven for any length of time until the fur on your nose singes, then imagine that for about eighteen hours a day and you might have some inkling of the conditions we had to live and fight in. I mention this again because no sooner had we walked, or crawled, really, about twenty paces or so, much of the dust we had covered our coats with was washed off with the sheer amount of sweat that poured off us. Before long I resembled a zebra with streaks of sweat carving lines in this dust-camouflage.
We crept on, and I reluctantly led the way. I had no idea what I was doing, which I understand is now rather redundant to point out as I rarely had any inkling of what I was supposed to do, but here, alone except for my loyal aide and one mad mare, doubly so. Slow and steady seemed to be the right way to go about this business, despite my natural inclination to want to get this thing over and done with as quickly as possible.
Crawling down the slope felt like descending into the depths of Tartarus itself. I became acutely aware of how my sweat-soaked and dust-stained uniform rubbed against my fur, how much noise my hooves made against the dry earth, and how much dust was kicked up with each cautious step. Though they were below us, those imposing walls seemed to loom menacingly, dwarfing us like ants beneath its magnitude and threatening to topple over and grind us all into dust. The fortress keep towered over the occupied pony city, casting its oppressive shadow over the enslaved masses below and raising a defiant hoof to the oncoming force of liberation and retribution that would very soon batter itself to pieces against its walls. I wondered how many Changelings lay within. How many stood at the ramparts and gazed across the gulf between us?
It was just a matter of placing one hoof in front of the other, over and over, until it was all over. The going was desperately slow, and my paranoid instinct had directed me to the gullies, ditches, and trenches for cover, and when the terrain necessitated crossing open ground we crawled on our bellies. Whatever Maud Pie was going to do when we got to the wall it had better be worth it, thought I, when I’d scratched my leg on some brambles while trying to squeeze through them.
My head was swimming, the inside of my mouth felt like sandpaper, and there was an odd, metallic taste that lingered on my tongue. From behind I heard the cannons still firing, faintly like distant fireworks, and each muffled ‘crack’ was followed seconds later by a louder, more immediate thud as the lead shot struck the wall ahead. When I glanced back I saw small puffs of white-grey smoke blossom at the very crest of the hill, and then drift away lazily in the muggy breeze.
The wall towered over us. We were close, but there was one last obstacle for us to cross; the ground, which had been sloping downwards unevenly for the entirety of our journey, rose sharply to form a glacis. Behind this was the ditch that I’d seen at the top of the heights, and while I was under no illusion that they would prove difficult to cross, it was still something of a shock when I crawled to the lip of the glacis and looked down at the drop below. It was about twenty feet across and about half as deep, making a formidable obstacle for an army let alone three ponies alone. With nothing else for it, except for giving up and going home as I really wanted to from the outset, we carefully climbed down backwards into the ditch.
Just ahead of us, this huge grey edifice constructed of stones each the size of a medium carriage and cemented with what looked like tar rose up ahead of us. Either side of us was a tower projected out of the wall, and I realised that if the Changelings had access to artillery, muskets, and magic they would turn this ditch into a veritable killing field; there was nowhere to hide down there, and any attacking force would find itself trapped and ripped to shreds. It was a good thing they didn’t, thought I, but that reassuring notion didn’t make the itching in my hooves go away.
I don’t know how long this whole ordeal had taken, but the sun was not in the same position in the sky when we finally reached the wall as when we started. After crawling out of the other side of the ditch, we darted to the base of the wall. It made my head spin to look straight up at it from the base. Nevertheless, we were halfway done with this silly venture, so I sat down in the marginally cooler shade of the wall and watched Maud do whatever it was that she wanted to do here.
Maud Pie stood and stared at the wall, while Cannon Fodder and I lingered around her. I was supposed to be looking out for Changelings, but curiosity got the better of me and I kept glancing over my shoulder to see what it was she was doing. It was, however, apparently still nothing. If it was not for the occasional blink I’d have thought she had turned back to stone; her ability to stand stock still would have done her well in the Royal Guard back when a soldier’s main purpose was to stand to attention next to Princess Celestia.
“What’s taking so long?” I hissed at her. “Hurry up, will you?”
She either didn’t hear or was deliberately ignoring me, because she didn’t take her eyes off the wall. After about a minute of this, where I paced around muttering to myself with great irritation, she reached into the voluminous pocket of her frock and produced a tiny pick, which she then used to chip away at the stone. A small chunk was dislodged, and as Maud slipped it into her pocket something rather curious happened. This peculiar tar-like substance that covered the entire wall reacted to this miniscule violation of the wall’s structural integrity by pulling itself to fill the small hole she had made.
“That’s interesting,” said Maud, sounding anything but interested.
“Have you finished?” I snapped.
“Not quite.” Maud then turned her pick around to use the flat end to scrape off some of that tar. It clung to the pick’s head, and writhed like a live thing. The sight of this lump of translucent black ooze resisting the lure of gravity, somehow trying to pull itself back to the wall, was rather unsettling; it was as though there was some base, animal intelligence to this hideous thing, bent to the malign will of the enemy. Before it could do that, however, Maud scraped it off into a waiting vial, which was stopped with a cork and then slipped inside her pocket.
While she was doing this, I had wandered off a little, more out of frustration at the time this was taking. I had realised that I had left the cress sandwiches and the picnic hamper back with the artillery, and was annoyed at that too. By chance, however, I happened to look up.
“Maud!” I screamed, pointing up.
She turned and followed my hoof up to see the huge lump of masonry plummeting towards her. Rather than do the obvious thing and dive out of the way, Maud Pie stood rooted to the spot, apparently transfixed by the source of her impending demise. I moved to drag her out of the way myself, but Cannon Fodder, in a rare instance of showing individual initiative, wrapped a filthy hoof around my upper foreleg and held me back. It was too late anyway; if I had charged in then the both of us would have been crushed like two impertinent lumps of ginger in a mortar and pestle.
Maud turned on her forelegs, pirouetting like a dancer, and bucked her hindlegs skywards. Her rear hooves connected with the falling chunk of wall with a sharp crack that I first assumed were her bones snapping like twigs. This lump of masonry shattered into a thousand tiny lumps that fell harmlessly around her in a wide circle, and a cloud of choking grey dust spread to get clogged in my throat and eyes. When it cleared, there stood Maud Pie with that same blank expression on her face, surrounded by a pile of debris, which she regarded with only a trifling amount of concern.
“Those innocent rocks,” she said, stroking one rather large shard of broken masonry with her hoof. “War is hell.”
I looked up at the battlements above to see a number of Changeling drones peering over the edge at us. Their round, chitinous heads were silhouetted against the bright afternoon sky. We stared at each other for a tense moment, their cold gazes locking with mine, before two disappeared behind the crenellated battlement. I had every intention of being as far away from here as possible when they came back with another big chunk of old masonry to drop on us, so I darted over to Maud Pie, who still stood there looking forlornly at the smashed debris around her hooves, seized her by the upper foreleg, and pulled her away.
“Run!” I shouted, tugging at her. Maud was surprisingly strong, though it shouldn’t have been much of a shock after I had seen her smash part of a wall to dust with her bare hooves, and she remained rooted to the spot despite my panicked attempts to get her to move.
“But…”
“Shut up and run, damn you!” I let go of her and just galloped away with Cannon Fodder right behind me as usual; if she wanted to avenge her damned rocks, break down the wall with her bare hooves, and take on the entire Changeling war swarm all by herself then fine, good luck to her. After that display she probably had a decent chance of winning, but I certainly wasn’t going to stick around and watch that no matter how entertaining it might be.
I skidded down into the ditch, my hooves losing traction in the dry, dusty earth but I managed to remain upright. Cannon Fodder had tripped and tumbled down after me, but he soon righted himself and seemed no worse for wear.
Not for the first time and certainly not the last I cursed my inability to teleport. I scrambled up the other side of this ditch, dislodging small pebbles and dust to cascade down behind me. Just as I reached the top of the glacis I heard what sounded like a brace of firecrackers. Pockets of earth around my hooves erupted like tiny fountains of dust. Something shoved me violently in the flanks and I fell over on my face. My backside felt strangely numb. I lifted my head off the ground, my muzzle smarting where it hit the dirt, and looked over my shoulder up at the wall to see the Changelings on the battlements with smoking muskets, then when I dared to look down I saw a small, neat hole in my left flank cheek, which leaked a steady flow of crimson over my white coat. The vague sensation of numbness I had felt there gave way to a horrible, searing kind of pain. It burned, like I’d been stabbed with a hot poker.
“They’re shooting at us, sir!” shouted Cannon Fodder. He had somehow escaped the volley unharmed, and stood there over me with that expression of dull surprise he gets when something unexpected happens to him.
I thanked him for that observation with a barrage of swearing that I shan’t repeat here. The pain intensified as Cannon Fodder helped me to my hooves, but somehow, pure adrenaline most likely, I managed to stand unaided again. I was about to bolt, or as near to as I could in this condition, when my aide tugged at my shoulder. He pointed down into the ditch behind us, and there lay Maud Pie on the ground, dragging herself closer by her hooves and leaving a trail of blood in the dust behind her.
The Changelings were still reloading their muskets - prime, load, ramrod, and so on. That the enemy had our allegedly war-winning weapons was a shock, especially being at the receiving end of them. I could have ducked behind the glacis, which would have afforded me some measure of cover, but Maud was still there offering a big and obvious target for them. Now that Cannon Fodder had pointed her out to me I could hardly leave her for the Changelings and claim ignorance, and, again, there was the shame of having to return to camp without the defenceless civilian I was supposed to have been protecting with my life.
There was nothing else for it, despite the sharp, hot agony lancing through my flank I slipped down the slope with Cannon Fodder to Maud, riding down a cascade of loose, dry earth. There I saw that she had been hit once in the right foreleg, and though the musket ball appeared to have missed the bone and only struck flesh, it was doubtful even one as tough as she would be walking any time soon, if ever again. She was bleeding heavily, as I was, with a flow like a trickling faucet from that hideous wound; the both of us would be in deep trouble soon if we weren’t patched up soon. Her face was screwed up in pain, and though she did not cry out, her hissing, laboured breath and pale, flushed, sweaty pallor made her agony abundantly clear.
We would have to carry Maud Pie back, either that or risk whatever it was that the Changelings did to prisoners. It was something unpleasant, no doubt. I, for one, was not all that eager to find out, shot in the flank or not. Cannon Fodder took her one good foreleg and draped it over his filthy neck and shoulders, while I grabbed her by the scruff of her frock with my magic. She was heavy, and my horn ached a little as my magic supported more of her mass, though that dull ache was nothing compared to the hot agony in my flank. Together we dragged her, her hindlegs trailing two shallow trenches in the dust, up and over the edge of the glacis onto the other side. Just as we tumbled over it, there was another rippling crackle of distant musket fire and something like the buzzing of bees past my ears. A quick check revealed that none of us were hit this time, and we pushed on.
With each step a stab of pain savaged my left flank cheek and hindleg, so I was forced into an awkward, three-legged gait. The heights rose up in the distance before us, with the artillery as tiny dots at the very crest, and a thin, spotted line of the picquets punctuated by grey lumps of half-built blockhouses about halfway down. The safety they represented was so desperately far away, the great uphill expanse, filled as it was with crags and trenches in our way, seemed to stretch on into infinity.
I dared to look over my shoulder again, twisting my neck and trying to avoid looking at the deep crimson patch spreading across my flank and the dripping trail I left behind, and saw that the drones had taken flight. The sound of their wings buzzing filled the silence otherwise occupied by my frantic, panicked breathing. They had discarded the weapons that by all accounts they should not have possessed, reverting back to base savagery of swarm tactics. There were perhaps five of them, maybe as many as ten; I’m not sure as I was hardly in the best condition for counting. They would be upon us in minutes, with fangs bared and hooves pounding.
Maud Pie’s head rolled listlessly on her neck as she faded in and out of consciousness. I’d let go of her with my magic, and instead let her wounded foreleg fall across my shoulders. A thin, weak groan slipped past her dry lips, and her hefty, dense earth pony frame settled across Cannon Fodder and me. Her hindlegs dragged in the ground behind us, occasionally kicking to try and help us along. I buckled somewhat under the weight, but panic and terror does wonders for one’s strength and endurance, and we ploughed onwards, step by harrowing step up that slope.
The drones were almost upon us, and I could see their glistening fangs and those cold, hideous eyes. I drew as much raw magic as I dared into my horn, until it began to throb, then discharged it all in a mad, frantic, ill-aimed salvo of shots. None of them hit their marks, but it didn’t matter. In the hail of scintillating shots the Changelings weaved and turned, like, well, flies dodging the sweep of a tail around one’s rear. It would keep them off us for a bit, but not for very long, but if somepony out there in the forward picquet lines was doing their jobs properly, then they should have seen the spectacular fireworks display I had just set off and realised that something had gone awry out here.
My head swam drunkenly, my vision blurred around the edges, and the pain was such that I felt I might faint at any time, but we carried on. Only being flogged could compare, but this was a sharper, more intense kind of pain. I felt sick, and the bile rose up my throat. My mouth was terribly dry, and my tongue was a lump of steel wool. I could taste copper too, sharp and tangy.
Maud lifted her head up, and her face was contorted into a grimace of pain. I could see that she was trying to maintain her infamous stoicism, but fear and I were old friends by now - he had already taken up residence in my home and placed his monogrammed towels in my bathrooms - and it was clear to me that she was terrified and merely putting on a brave face despite it. With every agonising step that we carried her, her mask slipped just a little further. Tears rimmed her sharp, ice-blue eyes, and I could feel her shallow, panicked breath on my cheek; it stank of terror. The acrid stench of blood, sweat, and urine assaulted my nostrils, and whether the latter was mine, hers, or ours I couldn’t tell, but it probably all came from me. It hardly mattered anyway.
“There.” She looked over at a pile of large boulders, each roughly a third of the size of a pegasus filly, and pointed her muzzle over to them. “The rocks, take me to them.”
“We don’t have time,” I snapped. She must have been delirious with the pain, I know I was.
“Take me to them,” she said.
We were about halfway to the Equestrian lines, and still nopony was rushing to our aid. I feared nopony would. A sentry out there had one job to do and that was to stand there and pay attention to what the enemy was doing, and there were hundreds of them on the picquet lines and so surely one of them must have spotted us running for our lives with half a dozen drones on our backs. Acting on a hunch, or perhaps the panic had made me more amenable to suggestion, Cannon Fodder and I did as we were told and stumbled on to the small collection of rocks.
At her direction, we positioned Maud behind the rocks, her hindlegs just touching them, and I finally divined what she intended. The drones twisted and turned, apparently toying with us. One dived down towards us. I fired a salvo of shots from my horn, but the creature dodged and weaved in sharp, angular dashes as insects do. The others held back, apparently thinking us defenceless, and watched, flitting around like dragonflies above a stagnant pond on a hot summer’s day.
“Hold me steady,” said Maud. I did as I was told, wrapping my hooves around her upper foreleg and shoulder and bracing her against my chest. Cannon Fodder did the same with her other side. Under her loose frock, I could feel heavy, corded musculature, tight and toned like a coil under tension. As she steadied herself, I could feel her muscles shift and ripple against my seemingly weaker grip.
She looked over her shoulder. Whatever she was doing she had to do it pretty damned quick, as the drone was almost upon us. Her right hindleg lashed out like a piston, striking one of the boulders with her hoof and sending it tearing through the sky. I felt her whole body lurch forwards, like a recoiling cannon, and I steadied her as best I could. The flying rock struck the Changeling square in the chest, I heard a ‘crunch’ of shattered chitin and a sharp squeal of pain. Both carried on, arcing gracefully through the sky, and then disappeared somewhere off in the distance.
The other drones dived down upon us, having realised their error. Maud, however, was faster; her hindlegs lashed out again in rapid succession, with each kick pushing her body against Cannon Fodder and me. She hissed in pain, her body was slick with foamy sweat, but she still persevered. A storm of flying rocks ripped through the Changeling formation with the same lethal effect. At least three were struck dead-on, and another I saw tried to dart out of the way but was too slow, and suffered in a glancing blow that was nevertheless enough to send it crashing to the ground.
The three drones that were left arrested their attack and stopped. They held back in mid-air, hovering in place and occasionally flitting from side to side. Maud, however, had given the last of her strength and had slipped into a deep unconsciousness. She slumped against Cannon Fodder and me, her breathing shallow and rapid but her body still and heavy. I struggled to support her, but a pony who has truly fainted is much heavier than one who is fighting to stay awake and alert, and her hefty earth pony frame slipped somewhat in my weakening grip. It would not be long until I joined her, I thought, as stars sparkled in front of my eyes and my head felt as though it was swimming through a pool of jelly, and I was certainly in no position to fight should the Changelings gather what was left of their courage and finish us off.
“Sir!” Cannon Fodder’s voice cut through the haze in my mind. He jostled my shoulder and pointed behind us, and when I turned to look I saw what, right there in that moment, the most beautiful sight imaginable.
A platoon of crystal unicorns at full gallop rushed down the slope towards us, a cloud of dust kicked up by more than two dozen hooves in their wake. The ground shook as they charged in, the harsh light of the afternoon glinting off gold and crystal armour. Flashes of light in a dizzying array of colours erupted from their horns, and a volley of magic shots ripped through the air over our heads with the distinctive crackle of ionised air. The Changelings, having apparently realised that they were outnumbered and we three ponies were no longer worth the trouble, turned tail and fled back to their fortress as fast as their wings would allow them. I lifted my cap off my head and waved it at the approaching soldiers and cheered myself hoarse - somehow, against all reason and sense, we had made it through.
The soldiers slowed as their charge petered out now that there was nothing for them to charge against. I gave Maud Pie to one of the troops who immediately called for a medic to tend to her injured hoof, while the others swarmed around us to form a defensive square. While they did that, I staggered off in an odd daze that was a mix of immense relief, exhaustion, and possible blood loss. Lieutenant Flash Sentry swam into view, and steadied me with a hoof to the shoulder.
“What happened?” he said, sounding a bit distant to my ears. It was a struggle to focus on his words or his face. He offered his canteen to me, which I drank from greedily. The water splashed over my face, but what I could gulp down brought me some measure of relief from the lightheadedness and nausea.
“They have muskets now,” I said, handing his canteen back.
Flash Sentry frowned and then shook his head. “What? Changelings don’t have guns.”
“Then what in blazes do you think this is?” I pushed his hoof off my shoulder and turned around, presenting my flank to him.
Far be it from me to do that to another stallion, but I wanted him to see the very obvious wound in it. The pain had not died down in the slightest, and remained as hot and intense as ever; I would have given my royal title for morphine right there, if offered. Flash Sentry stared dumbly at it, with that dull, open-mouthed incomprehension of a pony whose previously-held convictions about the world had just been rendered completely and utterly wrong by overwhelming evidence.
“Oh,” was all he could manage to say. He turned slightly pale.
“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘medic!’.”
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And that puts paid to Market Garden's plans to storm a breach.
Which she's going to go through with anyway, because it's that kind of story.
Ponies plan. Faust laughs
WIKIPEDIA
Oh my there is a lot of details and I love it.
They started to make proto-bunkers? Or are they pill box? Neat, you can see the face of warfare changing as the story progress. Command center, depot, bunker, cover from the elements, many uses and we can see the ponies digging in for a plausible longer siege or maybe a better counter if the changeling make a sortie. They need to defend the artillery after all. Question is, will the trenches advance forward eventually? Perhaps. There are two videos on YouTube that I would recommend for this situation.
The first is: 'Trenches Systems (Cross Section)' by Simple History.
The second: 'How to lay siege to a Star Forteresse in the 16th and early 17th century' by SandRhoman History.
Flash Sentry make and appearance! That's very nice and I hope he will be a recurring character. I am usually a pony Twilight /Flash shiper and have a little conflict of interest with how marvelously you tangled Blueblood and Twilight into a great mess before.
Maud was a real trooper here and we can see the influence of Pinkie past actions in her decisions of wanting a sample. Getting wounded and terrified might change her opinion though. Her prowess with rock smashing and putting is a great nod to the War Against Sombra universe. Man those Pie sisters are strong... But Blueblood getting her out of there might have earned him the Pie sisters eternal gratitude, however terrifying such thing might be
I thought she would have also taken a sample of the broken masonry they dropped on them rather than just the mortar and living wall to analyze. Maybe she grabbed one before running.
The comment on the ground being poor and hard to dig or work with kind of put off some more elaborate plans to take down the walls, like digging a tunnel or deviating the river through a pony made trench. At least not possible with the time constraints and enough explosives.
The walls being alive but using the existing wall to brace itself on it totally something I could see the changeling engineer. It cling to it, regenerate and probably disperse the energy of the cannonballs over the whole surface. Clever. Now... how do you kill it? There is multiple things they could try. Magic shots, incendiary rounds first then pounding it with normal cannonballs, directly applied explosive charges, chemical or magic potion, gas... there might be some trial and errors involved.
Annnnd the bugs got their hands on modern weapons. Very good thing they discovered that fact before launching an attack... or maybe Genenal Market Garden will attack anyway despite the advantages the defense provides for decent firepower. I believe those drones only used them as a mistake and will pay the price for it because their leaders probably intended to keep the surprise for a big attack. But they shouldn't have the infrastructure to produce the weapons or the back powder or Chrysalis really stepped up with the reform. So now there is secondary objective of finding where the weapons cane from. Buyed from foreign power? Stolen from pony reserves? Slaves building them in secret? I guess this will be a mystery Blueblood will get involved in later on.
Blueblood HAS done well from all this
1) He gets a month or more convalescent leave (in Canterlot?) playing the hero.
2) As officer in charge, he will get the credit for uncovering two potentially important bits of Intelligence
3) He'll likely get a medal for saving Maude
4) Maude (& potentially Pinkie) will likely be VERY grateful for saving Maude. Possibly some of the other Mane 6 as well.
(Nudge nudge, wink wink)
Have to know, though. Did Maude get Boulder back?
10528977 Oh, it's GUARANTEED the charge will go in. The thing about stories like this is that it relies on the kind of idiot general who, when presented with evidence of a development that makes their plans totally obsolete, will decide that the evidence merely proves the plan cannot possibly fail. In short, every general is a Joffre.
Which makes it very hard on the unnamed soldiers, but gives the main character plenty of opportunity to show character (by getting wounded, experiencing horrible things, and losing 2/3 of the friends they've made during the current story).
10529245
I really hope that the story doesn't go there but rather keeps people reasonably competent. Which seems rather easy here considering.
1) The ponies need to attack relatively fast.
2) They haven't fought enemies with muskets and artillery yet.
So all the plans they come up with will be a) untested and b) created in a hurry.
10529579 Yeah, that's not happening. The competence of the general has kind of been telegraphed to us with the name "Market Garden."
10529862
Market Garden was done by and approved by reasonably competent commanders. Those can make mistakes too.
10529901 To put it politely, the competence of Bernard Law Montgomery is... debatable. Especially among American history students.
Solid chapter as always.
Y'know, I totally expected the bugs to have guns.
The changeling masonry was interesting.
Seeing Flash Sentry was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. He could be an interesting contrast to Blueblood.
A shame about Maud getting a hole blown through her, but at least she seems to have made it (and took down a few bugs herself). I'm sure a cake or similar will mysteriously find its way to Blueblood's desk, once Pinkie hears about what happened.
10530070
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't old mate Monty give Rommel a spot of trouble in Africa? Market Garden failed, but Monty wasn't a hopeless general
10530997
10530070
It's pretty interesting, as American historians tend to be much harsher on Monty, and in my opinion a little unfairly so. Granted, Operation Market Garden was a bridge too far and Monty had the unfortunate habit of annoying nearly every American he had to work with, but his mastery of logistics and methodical approach worked out in North Africa.
10531215
American historians are perhaps harsh on Monty because Monty screwed America. Monty's job was to make sure the British looked like they pulled their weight on D-Day, but without racking up huge amounts of casualties. So Monty's solution was to be in charge of the effort firstly, so it's the British name on it, and also to borrow American troops for the Brits to command wherever he could. I read this on wikipedia an hour ago, so it must be true
10531215 Montgomery was good at organizing and supplying forces, but to call his movements "slow" would be a criminal waste of the opportunity to use the words "ponderous", "dilatory," "lugubrious," and "elephantine." He was pretty much useless in any situation in which he didn't have enormous manpower and material advantage on the tactical level. Add to that his incurable habit for publicly carping on his equals and superiors in rank and openly seeking their jobs- and, worse, spreading both his lack of urgency and his contempt for other commanders throughout his subordinates- and it's pretty understandable why he's not well regarded by a lot of people.
10531425
The difference in perspective is quite interesting - the version I was taught at university was that his slow approach, particularly in Normandy, was down to a policy of casualty conservation imposed from above by British High Command, who wanted to ensure that there was enough of the British Army left after the war to continue to have a presence on the world stage. By 1944 Britain was going through a shortage of manpower, and Caen had turned into a meatgrinder where Commonwealth forces encountered the bulk of German panzer divisions in France, so I think in the context he often had to work in his slowness made sense. (It also allowed the Americans to break out at St Lo, which he obviously took undue credit for - like everything you mentioned about his personality). Anyway, this makes me nostalgic for my uni days.
He's certainly an interesting figure to look at, and while I might have borrowed a few of his traits for General Market Garden, I'm trying not to equate the two directly. Of course, readers will have to wait and see if she turns out any better...
10531494 Put it to you this way: a not uncommon joke over here among military historians is that Montgomery was the reincarnation of George B. McClellan. The two men had nearly identical personalities, strengths, and weaknesses.
I can't see any kind of general wanting to order a frontal assault through minimal breech lines. The general at least has /stated/ a willingness to restrain operations to avoid casualties.
So, I remain hopeful (as does Blueblood no doubt) that this leaves open the chance for alternative plans since a frontal assault through breaches made by artillery seems out of the question. I presume the presence of Griffon auxiliaries offers the opportunity for some sort of mare-drop to disrupt Changeline fortifications..
There's other alternatives if they can't engage in a seige or mount a frontal assault. Infiltration, tunneling (if not to demolish the walls then to allow underground assault teams).. Presuming they know the walls are steady but can be undermined with magic they could go for something along the lines of the Battle of the Crater during the Seige of Petersburg.. Dig underneath wall. Put lots and lots and lots of explosives underneath wall.
Use detonator.
That just mean you need to fortified more.
Blueblood's mistake was assuming Flash Sentry is reasonable. I wonder if they both know Twilight Sparkle (biblically).
At least they didn't tell him that his mother was a hamster and his father smelled of elderberries.