Redheart's War

by SockPuppet

Chapter 10

It wasn't solid shot or grapeshot, but a load of metal debris. Of garbage, really. But of that anti-spell metal they used a decade later.

The shield spell flickered as the load sliced through it. It killed two of the unicorns outright, left Shining Armor and the other one unharmed, and cut Celestia down in a spray of bright-red alicorn blood.

When Celestia hit the ground, she released some sort of magical... I don't even know what the word is. Like a snap, or a splash. Yeah... a splash.... imagine dropping a huge rock into a lake, and the splash of the water. She released this magical splash that knocked us all down, knocked me over, onto my flank, made me lose my borrowed helmet, and drove the remaining mist and fog away.

That's the part that really caused the problems—without the fog, the archers and the unicorns and kirin and the few remaining gunners in the castle could see to aim. The fortress was half-torn down by Celestia and Cadance's spell, but the remaining half was the problem!

As Celestia went down, at least three dozen of us stood up and ran to her.

Spells, arrows, cannonfire.

My spot in the trench was maybe thirty yards from her. There was a Fourth Battalion captain to my left, Major Blueblood to my right. We surged out of the trench and sprinted toward Celestia. The griffon I had patched up was just behind me.

Shining Armor went down to his knees and cast a small, dense shield spell over just himself and Celestia. The last of his shield-casting unicorns, the fourth unicorn, took an arrow into his eye.

I ran. The jungle mud, lumpy with rocks and roots, squashed under my hooves. Every fourth hoofbeat the pain I remembered from my old caltrop wound surged up my foreleg. Major Blueblood went down, a spell hitting his armor and staggering him. The colonel went down, he died a few hours later. The Fourth Battalion captain went down on my other side, a puff of blood, brains, and feathers. I never found out what happened to the griffon.

I kept running.

Grapeshot hit my armor, denting my chestplate. I stumbled but kept running. I jumped over the donkey sapper's body.

My vision blackened, down to a narrow tunnel. All I could see was Celestia. The cannonfire was as quiet as popcorn popping. The screams of the wounded, well, I couldn't even hear them.

Celestia, bleeding on that muddy jungle loam, was my entire world.

I tripped, stumbled, went down face-first, crunched down into a rock and broke my nose. To this day I still can't smell very well. That's one reason I like salmon jerky, the black pepper is so strong I can actually taste it, and this is why AP ends up changing the twins' diapers most of the time—he smells the messes before I do.

I shook my head. A spell struck into our group, ponies flew, blood and feathers everywhere. I half-stood back up, looked around, dropped down again.

Shining stood over Celestia with his shield, and nopony—nopony—running to them! The others who had stood when Celestia went down were all either wounded, dead, or covering behind rocks, roots, trees, or bodies.

And I say covering, not cowering, very carefully. There were no cowards in that jungle clearing that day. Everypony was looking around, weighing their chances and measuring their distances. They knew there was no chance to get to Celestia across that open field, under that withering fire, across that spell- and arrow-beaten zone.

My vision was fuzzy but I thought I saw blood, lots of blood, around Celestia.

"Who's senior?" I shouted, looking at the others.

After a moment of silence, somepony shouted, "You, Corporal."

My eyes went wide and my ears wilted. I was flat on my belly in a dip in the ground, so I raised my head and looked around. There were maybe two dozen of us, pinned down, and the officers and sergeants looked to all be dead or unconscious.

Those. Stupid. Stripes. Why had they made me a corporal?

Ponies were going to die, and it was going to be at my order.

"I gotta get to Celestia, stop her bleeding!" I shouted. There was a rumble of voices that I assumed was agreement. "On three—everypony throw spells, fly toward the gunners, or, I don't know, buck rocks at them. Anything to cover me!"

I felt my whole body going cold. My heart pounded even harder. Troopers were going to die. I very probably was going to die. Ordering Jade to kill that deer, that had been terrible enough. Ordering troopers to die? Could I actually bring myself to—

Celestia's head twitched, and I saw the blood pooling around her.

"One! Two! Three!" I shouted.

Perhaps twenty ponies stood. Spells flashed, half a dozen pegasi surged airborne, and the earth ponies really did toss rocks up and then buck them toward the distant fortress.

It was a massacre. Arrows and spells arced back, and a charge of grapeshot blew several of our pegasi apart.

Those brave ponies all died because of me. At my orders.

Running again, as fast as I've ever run in my life, my hooves back under me, the arrows seemed to miss me, the spells sizzled past. A single grapeshot ball nicked my right ear. My heart pounded in my ears and my vision dimmed with every heartbeat.

I ran toward Shining Armor, his shield spell, and Celestia, as the others died to distract the gunners and the archers and the spell casters.

Just as I got close, maybe five or ten steps away, a cannonball hit Lieutenant Armor's shield spell. A bright flash, like a lightning bolt in the face, dazzled me.

Stunned, momentarily unconscious, what was going on, my whole body just buzzing from the magical backlash, wet, mired in the muddy jungle loam, deafened and my ears ringing, I stood up—

— and I screamed. I crumpled back down. I looked down my right flank, and the armor on my right hip was dented, smashed, my rear leg hanging at some crazy angle.

The cannonball had spent most of its energy against the shield—otherwise I would have been dead—but then its ricochet smashed my hip, smashed my armor, and broken all the bones in my thigh. My leg was just limp, crumpled under me. What was surprising was how little it hurt. I mean, don't misunderstand me. My eyes were crossed with pain and hot urine pooled underneath me.

But it should have hurt worse, really. The pain should have knocked me unconscious. Adrenaline, I suppose. On my belly, I crawled, I was so close to the shield. I crawled, an arrow glanced off my withers armor, and then I was there, under the protection of Shining Armor's spell, its auroral light shimmering above me.

"Corporal!" he shouted. "Sun and moon, look at yourself!"

I wasn't looking at myself, I was looking at Celestia. Her helmet was dented, blood ran out from under it, and her left foreleg spurted arterial blood.

Another cannonball hit the shield, and Shining Armor staggered as the force echoed across his spell, down into his horn and his skull. He dropped to his knees, looked up, looked at the castle, grinding his teeth, blood pouring from his nose, his ears cockeyed at different angles.

If Celestia had a head injury, I dare not remove her helmet. What if it was keeping her brains in? But she was exsanguinating through the leg wound. I didn't know how much blood an alicorn body held, how much an alicorn could spare, but the puddle around her looked like enough to have already bled a teenaged filly dry.

(Dammit, if alicorns were going to fight alongside the Guard, we medics should get training in alicorn anatomy and emergency care! What if Twilight had been wounded in the dogs' caves last summer, hmm?)

Dragging, I crawled to her, and tried to turn around to reach into my saddlebag. My bag was gone. The cannonball, or else the magical backlash, must have torn it away.

But I still wore my smock over my armor. I nosed a tourniquet out of one of the pockets. I squirmed a few more inches and felt something in my hip snap. My broken nose dripped blood on Celestia's white coat as I inched toward her damaged leg. The salt of my blood ran down my throat, so I breathed through my mouth.

She opened her eyes. Her left pupil was blown, but her right eye looked calmly at me.

"Ah, Corporal Redheart. You look how I feel."

Looping the tourniquet around her foreleg, I shimmied it up, past her elbow, and then to the upper leg, above the arterial spurt. My nose dribbled blood onto her open wound.

"Sorry," I said. "Unhygenic." I bit down and pulled, and the tourniquet zipped tight. Celestia's bleeding went from an arterial spray to a soft trickle, then stopped.

"Thank you, Corporal. Most efficient."

I put my head against her chest, just underneath the armor. Her heart raced, her breathing fast and shallow.

"Low blood volume," I said. I turned to my bag—and it was still gone.

I closed my eyes in frustration. She needed plasma! Whole blood would be even better, but any sort of blood extender would do.

What—what was I going to do? The Princess needed some blood extender, and I had nothing! No other ponies could make it to us! The other medics were behind the line, out of grapeshot range.

I glanced up, at the noontime sun. My sweat mixed with my blood and urine, soaking my coat. Of all the stupid things to notice, the jungle fungus really itched on my ears, right then.

What would happen without Celestia? Even if other unicorns could raise and lower the sun, what would happen to Equestria without her?

I thought of my little brothers, back in Whinnyapolis.

Pushing myself up with my forelegs, I looked at the back of Celestia's helmet. Just like any Guard's kit: the owner's blood type was etched in small letters.

Unicorn A-neg.

Huh. Unicorn. I'd always wondered what she had been, before...

My blood type was earth pony O-negative. It wasn't a perfect match, but it was acceptable for an emergency.

I glanced across the field, and saw at least a dozen dead troopers. Troopers who had died when I ordered them to cover my rush to Celestia. The only way to make their deaths mean something was to save Celestia. Otherwise, it would all have been a waste.

"Princess!" I shouted.

Her eyes re-opened. She looked at me.

"Give me your good foreleg," I said.

Arrows bounced, cannonballs ricocheted. Shining Armor stared up at the castle, horn lit bright, the shield dome darker and smaller, but holding strong. Blood trickled from his ears, now, too, not just his nose. His eyes were bloodshot.

Celestia gave me her foreleg and I found a vein, pulled a sealed infusion line from my pockets, and stuck it into her. More of my blood smeared her leg, dirtying her bright white coat. Her blood smeared my smock as I worked. So, yeah, the framed scrap of fabric in my office at work... the bloodstains are mostly hers.

I stuck the other end of the line into my own foreleg, hit my vein on the second try, and pumped the bulb that primed the transfer.

My blood filled the line, moving into her.

Her eyes widened. She pushed herself up to her good foreleg, half-standing. "Corporal, no..."

I lowered my head to the mud. "Hold still," I said. "Doctor's orders. Don't jostle the line."

She glared at the stone curtain walls of the fortress and her horn flashed, and the walls, already weakened, finally began to collapse.

It took a good thirty seconds for the walls to tumble. It started on the far left, and the stonework near the bottom collapsed, bringing down the firing slits and parapets above in a deep thundering rumble. The collapse moved left-to-right as the weakened walls fell apart. The vibrations shook the whole island, rattling my ruined hip and I moaned as the vibrations shook the broken bones. The humid air filled with thick gray dust, and then, after perhaps a minute... silence. No spells snapped back and forth, no arrows flew, no cannons fired.

Celestia’s forequarters dropped into the mud, mud wet by her blood and mine, her urine and mine, all mixed together into a foul slop I remember so vividly when my nightmares are at their worst, two days before Hearth's Warming every year.

Shining Armor stood and levitated his sword over his head. A spell amplified his voice: "Take the castle! Kill their gunners! Free the prisoners! Celestia's Own, and no quarter!"

Major Blueblood, covered in his own blood, red against his white coat, stood shakily, then sprinted forward. He led the charge into the castle's ripped-open interior, the first pony into the breach in the walls, shouting, "No quarter!"

As my blood flowed down the infusion line into Celestia, she looked into my eyes and stroked my mane with her wing. "Celestia's Own truly don't quit, do they?"

My last thoughts were of my little brothers, and that they would grow up in a world protected by Celestia, and not in a world devoid of her grace.

I passed out.

Author's Note:

Comments are welcome!

Comments

[Hopeful_Ink_Hoof]

Since it's brought up here: in this particular universe, does pony tribe matter when it comes to blood type?

[Yutah123]

What if Twilight had been wounded in the dogs' caves last summer, hmm?

I would wish a thousand curses upon the accursed dogs responsible for such an atrocity.

My blood filled the line, moving into her.

Cadance was right.

What greater love than laying down your life for your loved ones, than sacrificing one's literal life and blood for the Princess herself...

On another note, this feels like a blood ritual, only with a few steps removed.

"What?" AP said. "Buried at sea? What did they die of?"

"Drowning."

Ah.

Ok. While it seems uncharacteristic of Equestria, like Sledge said, well, they had just been through a horrendous battle, and they were fighting slavers under no quarter. I guess it's one of those rare cases...

[Bronycommander]

Adrenaline can be a blessing and a curse, Redheart. But thanks to you, a importnant pony lives on

[Sledge115]

Having now watched the film 1917, I can't help but listen to this when I reread the entire sequence from Celestia and Cadance tearing the fortress down, to Celestia's fall, and finally the charge of Celestia's Own to rescue their leader.

I personally think it's a perfect fit

[Jinzou]

I don't know why, but right at the end there I had to fight to keep from tearing up.

Fucking masterful.

[Beware The Carpenter]

Would have appreciated a bit more description of the fortress? I'm gathered part way through that this was a curtain wall going around a bunch of smaller buildings and collapsing it inwards for instance wouldn't risk making it fall on prisoners but at first I was imagining a giant tower and worried that Celestia and Cadance's spells would do just that.

[Blik]

10503343
I was tearing up too. This is why I keep coming back to this story - I've read it 3 or 4 times now. The emotions are so raw and believable, even in a saccharine world of technicolor ponies. Many thanks, SockPuppet, for writing this.

10301781
In the companion story about Vinyl Scratch the author implies that sometimes the subspecies of pony is important when it comes to blood type matching.

[SockPuppet]

10937000
Thanks for the comment! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[redmar]

I would have expected that Alicorns are there own subtype and when it comes to tribe are like bloodtype AB they can receive any type as donor. Since Aliconrs are all three types it only makes sense when tribe matters when it comes blood donors.

[Rubberduck]

Damnd... i sit on the edge of my chair while reading.

[Heavyhauler75622]

On the re-read...

The name for the cannonload that took Celestia down is called langrage (sounds like 'language'). It was used in warfare when either you wanted to severely damage sails, or when you no longer had round/ball, chain, grape, or cannister shot to load against the enemy.

In "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl", Master Gibbs is actually heard using the term during a loading sequence...