A young Daring Do embarks on her second adventure.
In the wild land of Corva, an ancient cairn lies open, with great and unknown treasures undoubtedly lying within. It will take Equestria's most intrepid adventurer-archaeologists to venture forth and join the corvids on the delve within.
'Intrepid' ought to be Daring Do's middle name.
So what if she's eleven, and Corva's on the other side of the world? Any would-be author needs to go on great journeys and explore perilous places. Besides, there's no way this could be as dangerous as her last adventure.
“It was a beautiful day in Canterlot.” Daring Do, a great believer in setting the scene, narrated to herself. “Through the hustle and bustle, our valiant heroine and her trusty sidekick made their way to the Royal Archaeological Society’s headquarters, to which they had been mysteriously invited…”
“I work there. That’s not too mysterious,” Dad protested, by Daring’s side. He looked briefly thoughtful. “Mind you, I like being trusty. Can I be dashing as well?”
“You can choose one,” Daring said with all due severity. “And it’s kinda mysterious. You said Lady Charroan hadn’t told you exactly why she was calling you there.”
“Lady Charroan, long may she reign over our mad society with the iron hoof we all deserve, loves tantalising ponies with an air of mystery.” Dad grinned wryly.
“What do you think she wants?”
“If I had to guess, she’ll want me to help organise a new conference or draft me into helping edit the next Archaeological Enquiries journal.” Dad shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll be something more exciting than that. But most importantly, if forced to choose between adjectives, I opt for ‘dashing’.”
Daring absently nodded, mentally updating her narration. She wasn’t entirely satisfied with it, truth be told. It was a nice day, sure, with a clear sky and a bright midday sun that made the marble sparkle. But there was a briskness to Canterlot’s air today that had made Daring put on the khaki bush jacket Dad had gotten her for her eleventh birthday a few months back and had made Dad button up the front of his own indigo justacorps.
‘Beautiful’ could stand, though. Embellishment made for the best stories. And Canterlot was in full hustle, with even a bit of bustle going on as well. Well-dressed earth ponies and unicorns thronged the wide streets and pegasi cut through the skies. Full carts and wagons found exciting new ways to end up at cross-purposes to one another. Overhead, past the teams of pegasi, Daring squinted at the towers of the palace on Canterlot’s topmost tier, as she usually did, for the sight of a white figure at a high balcony.
Having a fan-in-waiting had induced the habit. Especially when they happened to be the Princess.
“Nearly there,” Dad said and Daring turned her attention back to the street. Excited, she flapped up off the ground, alighted on Dad as the nearest perch, and used his back as a platform from which to propel herself up into the air, eliciting an ‘Urk!’ from him as she did so. With a few clumsy wing-flaps she flew ahead, skiffing the edge of a lamp-post in the process and whirling round mid-air to see the society headquarters.
Before her, taking up the end of the short side street, sprawled the Royal Archaeological Society’s headquarters. Temperamental artifacts and treasures with unsuspected destructive potential meant that the Society had often had to rebuild from the smouldering craters where bygone headquarters had sat. This latest was a large, white-washed, and timber-framed building with wings and pennants and superfluous little towers sprouting from it at their own private whims.
Daring eyed it approvingly. Her attention was caught by something black-and-white perched on the roof. It was about pony-sized, though not pony-shaped. A griffon, maybe? But it looked like it had two legs, rather than four...
“Daring?”
Daring turned away from the black-and-white thing and, with some effort, hovered round to face Dad frowning up at her. “Try not to break yourself on civic infrastructure. And especially try not to break poor, decrepit fathers while doing so.”
“Sorry,” Daring replied, abashed as she flapped back down to the pavement. “I did almost miss the lamp-post, though.”
“‘Almost’ is the key phrase there.” Dad sighed and tousled her mane, which she allowed with only a few token protests. “Summer Flight Camp’ll be good for you, poppet. Looking forward to it?”
Daring nodded. She absolutely was… well, saving for the presence of a couple of foals from her school who she knew would also be showing up. Before Dad’s mysterious invitation, it had been the most exciting thing on the horizon.
She’d practised flying as hard as she could on her own and could move through the air in a sort-of-flying-ish way, but she was tired of doing so with all the grace of a thrown hardback. Dad had tried to help, but there was only so much he could do as an earth pony. She’d seen Wonderbolts shows and sought out new stories with heroes that could break the sound barrier and fly in death-defying races. Those were nearer the ideal.
“One more week, and then you’re there for a month,” Dad said as they trotted towards the headquarters. “Worse ways to spend your summer holiday. Remember, when you emerge as the best flier in Equestria and begin winning all the races, share the prize money with your nearest and dearest. I have bad habits that need maintaining.”
Daring grinned. “Nope. You’re only getting it for good habits.”
Dad sighed. “How could I have raised such a cruel daughter?” They neared the oversized front door of the building and Dad leaned forward to push it open. “Well, never mind. Let’s pretend to be respectable members of society.”
Daring duly pretended as the doors swung open and they ambled in. The vast main room of the building greeted them, centred around a great wooden pillar permanently coated with pinned notices and printed papers. Around it spun rows of wooden walkways and staircases and doorways on each floor led into mysterious recesses of the building; to studies and vaults and offices and armouries and libraries and more.
At the moment, it was disappointingly quiet. The last few times Daring had been here, there’d been at least a couple of rival adventurer-archaeologists brawling around the scenery each time, complete with cheering spectators.
This time only a tall, lean, yellow-hided unicorn mare stood at the column’s base, hammering in a notice with her forehoof as they entered. She turned and a rune-engraved prosthetic foreleg nudged up the wide brim of her hat. Daring met the diamond-blue gaze of Lady Charroan, Peer of Equestria, Head of the Royal Archaeological Society, Dame of the Order of the Spur, recipient of the Celestial Cross, and almost certainly all sorts of other things.
Charroan was an easy mare to be awed by, even if a pony didn’t know her reputation. And if they did, they’d know she’d led the first delve into the Thorn Tower, set a new record for the furthest attempt yet made to reach Utmost North, helped rescue Zebrica’s Pharaoh from the accursed Wandering Pyramid, and loads else. She’d received a knighthood for saving Equestria once and had been granted a full-blown peerage for doing it a second time.
She was also a soft touch for peppermints and had slipped Daring one each time she’d come to the society headquarters before. Dad nodded politely and doffed his tricorn and received a nod, doff, and grin in return. “Gallivant,” Charroan said, her voice marked by a soft growl. Daring bobbed her head at Charroan, and she in turn smiled down at Daring. The multitude of interesting scars that notched her face creased with the motion. “And Trouble. Glad you got my message.”
“Glad to have received it.” Dad smiled wryly at Charroan. “Share the exciting details, your ladyship. How many journal submissions do I do battle with this eve?”
“You cynic. I’ve something a little more exciting than that in mind.”
“More exciting?”
“More exciting.” Lady Charroan stepped closer to Dad, her grey braids swinging, and tapped the front of her embroidered jacket. “We have a foreign visitor in need of our bespoke services.”
That got Daring’s attention. Someone sought the services of Equestria’s adventurer-archaeologists? Who, and why?
Dad blinked. “Did they ask for me in particular?”
“Not you by name, but any competent member of our society.” Lady Charroan smirked. “You are something resembling that. And —” She leaned closer. “You may not have been able to publicise it, but Princess Celestia has divulged enough to me regarding the Antlertean outpost and your work there. Frankly, even if most of the others weren’t off competing with one another to get at those new-found ruins in the Dactylian Interior, I’d call on you in particular.”
“Gracious,” said Dad after a moment. “You’ll make a stallion blush.”
“I’d sooner make a stallion hear the visitor out, at least. No more than that, if you’d sooner not take his offer up, but ...”
“His offer,” Dad said, prodding at those details which seemed to need filling out. “He’s a he, then. This all sounds great fun, Charroan, but I’m still almost totally in the dark.”
“I’ll be happy tae enlighten ye, cuddy.”
The words came from an upper story, from a low, soft, burr of a voice, and Daring and Dad glanced up at the same time. Daring’s eyes widened.
High up, one foot resting on the wooden railing, there perched a corvid. Its frame was the size of any pony, bent wings at their side promising a wingspan to rival griffons. Black feathers covered them, save for flashes of white on their withers, belly, and flanks. Dark eyes glittered over a long, sharp beak, set in a thin face. A patched tweed waistcoat was buttoned tight about his torso, set all over with little hooks and pockets. A hemp strap was wound over the waistcoat, and Daring glimpsed the edge of a satchel peeking up over his shoulder.
Daring didn’t think she’d ever seen a corvid before, except maybe apart from a few far-off specks in the skies over Manehattan. They were a strange, far-off species that lived in the easternmost wild expanse of the continent of Ungula, as far away from Equestria and the west as you could get. She rummaged through everything she knew about them.
Fliers, check. Lived in clans, check. Tartan and black powder and weird, wailing bagpipes, check. They’d been at war with Equestria ages back, a war which Equestria and Princess Celestia had thoroughly won, check. They did other things, maybe?
This one spread his wings and flew down to land before them, his taloned feet scrabbling briefly on the richly-carpeted floor before finding an awkward purchase. Daring took a half-step towards him. Dad stood still, though little muscles moved in his face and his stance shifted ever-so-slightly.
“Gallivant, I present to you our unexpected and honoured guest.” Lady Charroan gestured from pony to corvid with her steel foreleg. “Unexpected and honoured guest, I present to you Field Researcher Gallivant, one of our more accomplished and, most saliently, present members. And his daughter, Daring Do.”
“Pleased tae meet ye,” rasped the corvid. Now that Daring got a closer look at him, he seemed fairly old. Weathered, at the very least; his plumage was shabby and scruffy and tufted in places, especially on his head, and his eyes were wrinkled around the edges.
Then she was aware of the corvid turning those eyes to briefly inspect her, saw vague — curiosity? Amusement? Something in the cast of those eyes, though his strange, gaunt, beaked face made it hard to tell. Then he turned back to Dad, and as Daring wondered what he’d made of her, he raised one foot and extended it towards Dad, balancing smoothly on the other.
“Likewise,” said Dad, his tone mild and measured as he extended his own forehoof and shook the corvid’s foot. “You have the advantage of me, Mr …?”
“Gamfer. Bard of Clan Glimrovoe, if we’re tae ken each other by our occupations.” His r’s all trilled out, the corvid released the grip of his foot’s long, clever digits on Dad’s hoof, and leaned back, scrutinising the stallion. “Charroan here, who I’ll take tae be an authority on these things, assures me ye’re a competent adventurer-archeologist. Is that a fair assessment?”
“I defer to her opinion,” Dad said neutrally.
“Guid. I — and my clan for that matter — require someone wi’ that exact description.”
If she was intrigued, Daring knew, Dad must be as well. But he had a lot of experience in looking sober and composed, and so while she unabashedly goggled at the magpie, Dad instead said, “It’s nice to be in demand, but what exactly do you require an adventurer-archeologist for?”
One of Gamfer’s nimble feet rose and tapped at his waistcoat’s breast pocket. “Lead me somewhere comfy and I’ll show ye, Mr Gallivant.”
Dad glanced round at one of the doors leading to the side. “Is anypony using that meeting-room, Charroan?”
“Sweep the dust off the table when you enter.” Lady Charroan replied. “I don’t think that one’s been used since Dust Devil kicked Wavebreaker out through the window after he tried to steal her trophy-piece at the end of a delve. Again.”
“One wonders when they’ll just admit their true feelings and get engaged. After you, Mr Gamfer.” Dad gestured to the room and then glanced round at Daring. “Wait outside while I discuss things, poppet. There’s books over by the —”
“The wall over there, got it,” said Daring, making for the cubby-hole in one wall, which came stocked with its own little library of diverting literature. “Tell me what it’s all about once you’re out!”
“Tell me your plans as well, for that matter,” said Lady Charroan, turning and ambling in another direction. “I do like knowing what bits of geography my archaeologists are bound to inflict themselves upon and who to send the inevitable apology letters to.”
As Dad and Gamfer vanished into the room, affording a brief glimpse of the shadowy meeting-room within before Gamfer nudged the door shut, Lady Charroan swept around a corner out of sight, and Daring flapped up into the little cubby-hole in the wall.
It was a familiar cubby-hole to Daring. Its base and back were lined with cushions, and its sides were bookshelves lined with a mix of dry-looking journals and biographies and considerably more fun-looking adventure novels. A good place to sit in peace to do some research or to leave a bookish foal while you chatted about exciting things on the other side of a closed door.
Daring nestled herself into the cushions. She pulled an Equid Brayton book at random from one of the shelves — it seemed like ages since she’d last read one. She opened it up and glanced inside while, from the other side of the meeting-room door, she heard the faint sound of chairs shifting, followed by murmured conversation.
Then, once they’d had a moment to get engrossed in whatever they were talking about, she shoved the book back where she’d found it, flapped out the cubby-hole and landed as quietly as she could on the floor, and then scooted over to the meeting-room door.
Hushed conversations were made for listening in on. It’d be so discouraging for a hushed conversation if it wasn’t listened in on. And she obliged it as she pressed her ear against the wood.
She picked up Dad’s muffled voice, as well as the flap of papers. “—imposing from the outside, certainly. You said it was called …?”
“The Auld Howe.” That was Gamfer, and more papers shifted and a chair creaked. “A chambered cairn. A resting place for heroes, built in bygone times.”
A hoof rapped against the paper and the table underneath. “These inscriptions. Writing, or magical runes?”
“Runes. Wards on ‘em kept the whole cairn sealed tight. Nae getting in, not for love or money or even barrels of black powder ignited against the wall. No corbie’d even tried in living memory. It was just part of oor island’s landscape, ye ken. There’s the sea, there’s the cliffs, there’s the ridge, there’s the mysterious cairn we cannae breach, and there’s yer tour.”
“Until now?” Dad replied.
“Until now. The enchantments must have just been quietly fading. And well, there were the earth-tremors, and shortly after, that wyld storm blew over, and something finally gave. Namely, that wall.” Now a talon tapped the paper. “See the rent?”
“I see it.” Dad’s voice was quiet, which meant he was intrigued as all heck, Daring knew. After a pause, “Any estimate on the age?”
“Nothing firm. I’d peg it around two thousand years. North of the Capric Empire’s invasion. North of all our named Cormaers.”
Dad softly said a word Daring knew would get her a telling-off if it was repeated. “Some time between the Fall of Antlertis and the rise of Capra. If so, that’s … that’s a marvellous find. We’ve precious little from what went on then.”
“Even mair precious and littler for us. We’ve legends. We’ve stories of the First and Second Cormaers. We’ve got the odd other cairn like this. Otherwise, nae much.”
Silence. And then Dad. “And you’re looking for assistance in delving into it.”
“Aye. A bard has clout and in matters of oor tales and histories, we’ve mair clout than usual. I urged our chief tae leave it be till I’d had the chance to go recruiting. She indulged me, though that raised a few hackles, I dinnae mind saying.”
“Why did you raise those hackles, then? Why come to us?”
“Because ye’re the experts at this.” Gamfer replied. “I’ve flown far and wide in my days. Seen mair than most, rubbed wingtips with many, and I ken of yer Society. And I respect oor history enough that I won’t have it tarnished or lost by accident or have it blow up in oor faces. I’ll have whatever’s doon below uncovered properly.”
“Has your dad agreed yet?” somepony said at Daring’s back. “It’s not often we get mysterious old magpie bards turning up with offers of adventure. I’ll be put out if he hasn’t.”
“Gah!” Daring spun around and looked up. Lady Charroan had snuck up at her back, stirring a cup of tea with her magic.
“Eavesdropping?” Lady Charroan asked.
“I, ah, they, er, I, erm.” Daring floundered, and then conceded the point. “Yes.”
“Well, budge over and make room, Trouble. I want to eavesdrop too.” Before Daring could react, Lady Charroan plonked herself down by her side and leaned to place an ear against the door. “Voices low, now. No sense in the eavesdroppers being eavesdroppable themselves.”
“I … I guess,” replied Daring. “You’re not ... er …?”
“Your dad’s mentioned you’ve got an eye on the adventuring lifestyle yourself, correct?” Charroan said, still absently stirring.
“Correct,” Daring carefully replied.
“Vital adventuring quality, nosiness. And as the nosiest of all our number, far be it from me to discourage promising qualities when I see them.” She sipped from the cup at last and savoured the brew for a moment before remarking, “That, and when one’s long past the glory days of field work, one learns to make their own entertainment. What have they said so far?”
“Ah. Um.” Daring recollected what she’d overheard. “On the island where he’s from, there’s an old cairn … that’s like an old stone tomb —”
“I know what a cairn is, Trouble.” Charroan’s face twisted in a wry smile and she tapped one of the scars on her face with a forehoof. “Got this courtesy of a guardian zombie who objected to me borrowing a burial mask from one. But sorry, I’m interrupting. Go on.”
“Right. Well, it’s been untouched for as long as they’ve known it’s there. It was warded too strongly. But it’s been broken open by a storm and they want Dad’s help to properly excavate it. Or Gamfer does, at least.”
“Good and concise,” replied Charroan. “I approve of a pony who can summarise. The corvid passed a lot of the details onto me when he showed up yesterday. Seemed to have had a rather fraught journey here and he was rather in a hurry to get his talons on somepony. Luckily for your dad, I happened to remember he was somepony.”
Charroan leaned to press one ear against the door and Daring did the same.
“—plenty of corbies on-site who’ll be gagging to join in the delve,” Daring caught Gamfer saying. “Chief Tirla and myself’ll be making sure the mair sensible of their number’ll actually get the chance to. And when it comes to planning and directing things, oor lugs’ll bend tae ye. If ye accept.”
“I see.” Dad was silent for a moment. “If I should accept, what will I be able to write about after the fact? Will I be able to take a trophy-piece?”
“Write as ye please,” replied Gamfer. “Stories ought tae spread. But it’ll almost certainly be a hard ‘naw’ to trophy-pieces. What comes from clan land is the clan’s.”
There came the rap of claws on wood, as if Gamfer had paused to think. “Tirla may gift ye something if she takes an especial shine tae ye, but dinnae count on it. And dinnae take a daft risk to try and get around that.”
“Duly noted.”
“No trying tae deter ye, and if I could promise ye something, I would, but ye deserve tae have that sort of thing made plain.”
By Daring, Lady Charroan groaned. “Bah,” she said. “We’ve few enough corvid artifacts as is.”
“I need to think about this,” said Dad quietly. “And if I were to accept, I’d need to set some personal affairs in order. When would you need an answer by?”
“Soon, bordering on immediately. My journey here was a peedie bit fraught. Dirigible whales are utter nuisances tae airships, I’ve learned. And my schedule for homecoming’s tragically unsympathetic.”
“What’s your schedule?”
“At ten o’clock tomorrow morning, an airship from the docks here’ll take me back to Rhovies in Ovarn via Asincittà and my clan’s sailors’ll be expecting me there the day after. That’ll have tae happen, whether I’ve a cuddy in tow or not. The clan’s eager to explore the cairn.”
“...You appreciate that that’s about as short a notice as you could have thrown at me?”
“And I’m sorry for that. If ye’re able to wrangle yourself into helping, dinnae doubt I’ll appreciate it.” Gamfer sighed. “Lady Charroan’s been guid enough to offer me lodgings in exchange for company. I’ll be here till the last second the morn and then at the aeroport till the last second there as well. If ye decide tae come, ye’ll ken where tae find me.”
“That I will,” Dad replied. Chairs shifted past the door. “Well, I’ll try to let you know my answer in person either way. You’ve granted me an excellent opportunity. It’d be only decent of me to give you my answer myself.”
“Much obliged.” Hooves trod and talons scuffed, and Daring remembered to hurry back away from the door just before it opened, Lady Charroan doing likewise in a much more sedate way. The door swung open and Dad and Gamfer ambled out. They stopped when they caught sight of Daring, who froze mid-hurry and tried to look as non-eavesdroppy as possible.
Charroan, at that moment, pointedly stirred her tea and glanced skywards. She whistled in a manner even the most bribed jury in the land couldn’t have found innocent.
Dad sighed and rubbed his brow under the brim of his tricorn. “If I was to ask exactly how much of that you overheard, Lady Charroan and Daring—”
“Are you going to Corva?” Daring delightedly exclaimed, having concluded that, as Lady Charroan’s whistling made maintaining a fib more than impossible, she may as well let her simmering excitement take charge. “Are you?”
Gamfer snickered. Lady Charroan noisily sipped her tea and Dad gave her an exasperated look. “Charroan, have you been teaching and/or enabling bad habits?”
“I would never.”
“Peedie cuddy.” Daring glanced up at Gamfer, confused briefly by the words, until she concluded that based on the way he (A) had used ‘cuddy’ in reference to ponies, and (B) was looking at her at her with a glint of mischief in his eyes, notwithstanding that (C) she didn’t have the least idea what ‘peedie’ meant, he was probably talking to her. “Persuade yer daddy, aye? Insist he’s tae have a grand adventure to tell ye all about.”
Gamfer could have benefitted from being followed around by a translator, but Daring immediately approved of him regardless. “Shall do!”
Dad closed his eyes and breathed the weary sigh of the only sane pony in a room being chivied by lunatics. “Ah, goody. They’ve all joined forces.”
“I’ll be kind and spare ye, Mr Gallivant,” said Gamfer. “There’s a book back up there I was enjoying, and which I might try tae filch from Lady Charroan before I go. Take care, and keep me in the loop.” He turned to Lady Charroan and bobbed his head. “Obliged tae ye for setting that up, Lady Charroan. I’ll see ye shortly.” He turned to Daring and winked. “Mind now, nag him untae death.”
“Thank you, Gamfer,” Dad replied past teeth that were very nearly gritted. “Do please go enjoy that book now.” Gamfer smirked, spread his wings, and took off back to the level he’d come from, the air from his wings buffeting Daring and obliging Dad and Charroan to hold onto their hats.
Once the magpie had vanished back upstairs, Dad stood for a moment, looking thoughtful. Not a happy sort of thoughtful either, Daring noted.
“Take him up on it, Gallivant,” Lady Charroan said softly. “You’re a capable old hoof and I shan’t have you coop yourself away for another long while. Do it for your own sake.”
“Just for my sa—?”
“Shush. Do it for the Society’s sake. And because I never got the chance to visit anything in Corva and must live vicariously through others nowadays, do it for my sake.” Charron paused. “Do it to spite Old Chestnut as well, maybe?” She frowned, as if consulting some internal notebook. “Are you two still rivals or have you changed about? It’s hard to keep track of who’s rivals with who these days.”
“I’d love to, for all these reasons.” Dad continued to look dour. “And yes, we still are. She’s still sore about the Everfree outpost, even after she made me exceedingly and literally sore near the end of events there. But there’s … look, it’s the timing. There’s personal things I’d have to take care of. I … I’m leaning towards not doing this. I’m not sure I can.”
“When you say ‘personal consider—’”
Something must have flickered on an unseen part of Dad’s face or some signal passed between him and Charroan, because the unicorn hushed. After a moment, Charroan sighed and patted him on the wither. “Well, think on it. And come to whatever decision you see fit.”
“I will.”
“So long as it’s the right one.”
“But I’m so good at wrong decisions.”
“See what I must work with?” Charroan tossed her head in a theatrical way and glanced dolefully at Daring. “At times, I suspect the princess grants our Society royal support merely so she can have all the most deliberately awkward ponies in Equestria under one roof where she can see them.”
“And she considered you best-qualified to lead us.”
“The greatest cat-herder in the realm. What a boast that is.” Charroan drew her hoof away and gave Dad a last, imploring look. “But do think about it. Consider taking him up on it.”
“I will.”
“And if you don’t decide to do so, I will personally kick you into the sea. No pressure.”
Dad smiled and turned to leave, and as Daring made to follow him, she felt Charroan’s magic discreetly press something into the front pocket of her bush jacket. On inspection, it was two somethings. Peppermints, snug in their wrapping.
One was usual. Two had something of an unspoken bribe to it.
Daring felt it’d be rude to turn a bribe down.
They made a detour to pick up that night’s dinner, the trimmings for a bean casserole. Dad liked cooking, but he especially liked the sort of cooking you could leave in the pot and reheat day after day until Daring lodged protests. As he got the ingredients from a farmer’s market and stowed them in his saddlebags, and as they wound their way down through the tiers of Canterlot, Daring mulled things over. She mulled Corva over.
What did she know? Well, there was what had been mentioned in the conversation between Dad and Gamfer, in which cairns and islands and curious clans had featured. There was Gamfer himself, who seemed nice enough, though Daring felt she might have to make notes on what exactly he was saying and what it all meant when they went with him to Corva.
Because they were going with him to Corva. Dad was. And Daring. That was inevitable. It was just a matter of threading the needle of evitability, if that was a word.
What else did she know? There was the whisky Dad sometimes had a glass of in the evening, the bottles of which had labels with things like misty valleys and grim, towering mountains and lakes and corvids playing the bagpipes mid-flight. It looked exciting.
And then there was A Foal’s History of Equestria, as well as the other Equestrian history books Daring had read. Most of them had touched on a war about eighty years back, how a cruel and terrible corvid king — a Cormaer — had united Corva then and led it to war across the whole continent, and how he met his end at the Battle of Dream Valley.
A Foal’s History knew its audience and depicted exactly that, with a picture of an apparently-famous painting of the battle spread out over two of its pages. Across the length of a valley, according to the artist, countless ranks of earth ponies and unicorns in gleaming barding had held firm against even countlesser corvid warflocks tearing down from the eastern skies with their strange black powder weapons.
Daring’s gaze had risen skywards, as a pegasus’s did. Arcs of spellfire and bursting rockets and erupting shot made the middle a hellish riot of colour, and above them in the high skies, jostling banks of skyforts and pegasi squadrons stormed into corvid warclouds and their flaming gonne-batteries.
Princess Celestia herself flew at the bit where the painting vanished into the central crease, coming with the dawn to end the battle at the decisive moment.
She’d ended it thoroughly. The eastern half of Dream Valley was still glass and ashes to this day.
Daring thought about these things and tried to get as solid an idea of Corva in her head as she could, and she was so lost in thought that she didn’t realise they were nearly home until Dad’s voice snapped her out of it. “Daring?”
“Hmm?” She glanced around, back in reality. “Yeah?”
“You’ve been quiet. And you’ve not tried to concuss yourself off the scenery once. You’re not deep in thought, are you?”
“Maybe,” she allowed.
“Oh no,” said Dad. “It’s amazing how I can feel a mane-hair turn white. If you’d asked me, say, twelve years back, when all this was a nice and even grey spectrum, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. How I’ve learned.”
“Dad.”
“Woe, how I’ve learned.”
“Dad.”
“I’m teasing. What are you thinking about?”
“Corva. ‘Cuddy’ means pony, right?”
“I believe so.”
“What does ‘ken’ mean? And ‘peedie’?”
“First one means ‘know’, I think. Not sure about the second.” Dad looked briefly thoughtful. “Always been interested in Corva. Source of one of my bad habits. If you’re interested in a more personal connection, then — on my side, at least — you’ve two great-uncles who fought at Dream Valley.”
“Really?” Daring hadn’t heard this one before.
“Really. Fine Grain and Gothic Art. Both signed up on the same day, both joined the same battalion, and both unfortunately got hit by the same satchel of black powder. After the smoke cleared, nopony could tell which bit had belonged to who. So they just pieced together whatever they could find and called it Fine Art.”
Daring boggled at him for a moment. Then, trying and failing to not fall apart with scandalised giggles, she flapped up to deliver the savage beating Dad amply deserved. “Gross! You just made that up!”
“From whole cloth.” Dad laughed and fended her off. “Stop murdering me! Look, Mrs Mortar’s watching from the other side of the street. What’ll she think?”
“She’ll think justice is being done!”
On the other side of the street, Mrs Mortar just rolled her eyes and declined to pass comment. Daring and Dad made their way past her, and turned down the final stretch into their cul-de-sac at the base of Canterlot.
It was never hard to spot their home, detached and in the middle on the cul-de-sac’s left-hoof side. According to Dad, back in the days when thoughts like ‘settling down’ had first begun to cross their minds, he and Mom had looked at their combined revenue, compared it to existing house prices in the capital, and decided they’d be better off just buying an empty plot, getting the raw materials, and building it themselves.
A third of the way in, Dad had thought something had gone terribly wrong in their interpretation of the plans and had advised stopping. Mom, however, had been committed, and had persevered.
Their house was two stories high with every wall at a slightly jaunty angle from the outside, and it produced a whole orchestra of creaks when the wind blew. On the inside, as they stepped in, the hallway’s own angles defied mathematical law, and in other rooms, superfluous windows afforded views of dazzling expanses of wall.
Most surfaces looked as if they had just been attacked by a book monster and the scullery was on its side for reasons Dad (and one day, a team of increasing-fraught architects chasing dreadful rumours) had never been able to pin down. Daring had her own room upstairs, all shelves and cushions and old toys and a bed that had rendered sterling and versatile service as a palace or galleon or sky-fort in its time. Dad had a bedroom that was a little too large for him.
It was home, and Daring loved it. Especially when the creaks started harmonising whenever there was a strong wind outside.
“I’ll get these bags put away,” said Dad. He took a moment to hang up his tricorn and justacorps, and shook out his unruly grey-banded mane before making for the kitchen. The kite-shaped doorway to it always obliged him to step carefully. “The afternoon’s still young. You want to go down to the park in a little—?”
“Are you going to Corva?” said Daring. Time to broach the topic while Dad was still vulnerable and overseeing groceries and whatnot. “You want to go, right?”
Dad sighed. His withers seemed to slump. “I do. But I don’t think I will,” he said.
“Why not?” Daring pressed. Gamfer had urged her on and Lady Charroan had bribed her in good faith, and besides, Daring really, really wanted to go as well. It was time to make the inevitable happen. “You want to go. I know you do.”
“I do,” he said, and moved towards a cupboard. “But there’s not enough time if Gamfer needs to fly back tomorrow.”
Daring frowned. “Time for what?”
“I heard what he said about his clan wanting a first crack at the cairn. If he shows up without the promised pony, they won’t waste any more time before levering stones aside and investigating everything themselves while he sighs and shrugs. And I’d need time to sort things out here. Time to pack, and research, and to see you’re not left by yourself.”
“Left by myself?”
“A week till flight camp, remember? I don’t want you left alone here, and I don’t want you left hanging and with no way to contact me if something goes wrong at either end. There’s not really anypony I can ask to look after you, either.” Dad clicked his tongue. “Ivory Scroll’s picked the worst time to go visit family in Seaddle, how dare she. And I’m out of touch with most everypony else. There’s nopony convenient.”
Daring had learned to think with something like forethought, else she might have reflexively argued back on the grounds that she could be left by herself and that the incident with the living room and the whirlwind had been a complete one-off. But she had goals in mind. Dad had to go to Corva, that was obvious. But so did she.
She already had an adventure to her name and a story to go with it. But the thing was, she couldn’t share that story. It was all hush-hush for reasons of state, and Daring had promised both Princess Celestia and Dad that she’d keep quiet about it all, even if it sometimes felt like she’d burst for not getting to tell everypony about it. She wanted another adventure, especially in a land few ponies ever went to, which she could finally talk about once she was home again.
She could tell ponies all about it and hold them spellbound, and write about it and amaze all Equestria. All she had to do was get there.
“You don’t have to find somepony to foalsit me. You could take me to Corva with you,” she said, as Dad dipped his head into one of the bags
Dad slowly raised his head, a tin of beans held in his mouth, and regarded Daring levelly. She barrelled on. “If I go with you, you don’t have to worry about finding me another pony to stay with or that I’ll be out of touch at Flight Camp, because I’ll be there with you! See? It all ties up.”
“One problem there is,” said Dad, setting the tin of beans on the table and turning back to Daring, his voice gentle, “that’d get in the way of you going to Flight Camp. And you do need to go to Flight Camp.”
Daring didn’t immediately reply and Dad sighed. “I know you’re trying your best and that most of Canterlot’s still intact for all I joke, but you ought to be properly taught flight by another pegasus. It’s not fair for you and your talent that I can’t really help you with it. The camp instructors’ll be able to help you better than I can.”
And the part that went unspoken, Daring knew, was, Mom could’ve taught you.
Daring bit the inside of her cheek, and tried to not think about how heavy and awkward her wings felt and how her cheeks burned, and tried not to think about a couple of other foals jeering, fresh in memory, before a sudden insight jolted her brain back onto the proper topic. “Corvids can fly!”
Dad blinked. Daring pressed on. “They’re all fliers. They’ll know how. If I go with you, I can make some friends, like I was going to do at Flight Camp anyway, and get some tips, can’t I? If Gamfer was happy to have you, and you can’t fly, he wouldn’t mind having me!”
Dad’s brief smile was wry before he quickly put his solemn face back on. “That assumes Gamfer’ll take you as well.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask him,” Daring urged.
His expression grew solemner yet. “Even if he was willing … Corva is … well, it’s not the same as Equestria. Things aren’t as managed there. They do things differently. It’s more dangerous. All the clans are practically countries unto themselves, and they bicker a lot. And there’s the whole matter of how we were at war once. It wouldn’t be safe there.”
“Ask Gamfer,” Daring said. “Maybe his clan’s safe to be in, if their bard was allowed to go ask ponies for help. If they’re all different, they can’t all be unsafe, right?”
Dad suppressed a smile, she could tell, and he turned to finish unpacking. Daring waited for him to finish and tried not to fidget.
“I’ll head back up soon,” Dad said after a while. “I’ll ask Gamfer. If he says it’s safe to be there, and if I think he’s not fibbing just to get his archaeologist, and if he’s willing to bring you along as well … then maybe—”
He got no further before Daring whooped and all but tackled him with a flying hug. He seemed to have braced for impact and released nothing more than a comically exaggerated wheeze.
“So bearing all these conditions in mind,” he said, after gently nudging Daring to shift her grip from his throat, “I’ll have to add another. If I took you, would you promise to stay safe and do what I tell you? Even more than usual?”
“I will!” He could have asked her to promise the moon and Daring would have agreed. Adventure beckoned, and when it did, you didn’t quibble.
“Do you really? Not to be too blunt, but I do have vivid memories of certain exploits three years ago.”
“Don’t worry,” said Daring, flying high and pleased with everything. Not least herself. “I don’t do the silly stuff I used to. You know. When I was little.”
About a half-hour or so after Dad had left to make his way back to the Society headquarters that afternoon, and a few minutes after Daring had finished packing what she imagined a trip to Corva would entail, she started to think she shouldn’t get her hopes up too much.
Maybe Gamfer would say no. Or he’d casually mention how his clan’s island was attacked by krakens every other day, and Dad would unjustly reconsider taking her there. Or maybe Old Chestnut would have swooped in back from Gazellen, taken the assignment, and was at this very moment flying to Corva and laughing at Dad out of an airship porthole.
More time passed, and just as she was starting to work herself up with worry, Daring heard the front door trill its usual symphony of creaks. She poked her head around the corner to see Dad. A cheerful light filled his eyes, what looked like aerotickets jutted up from his front pocket, his saddlebags were heavy with books and protruding scrolls, and from a greasy paper bag held in his teeth, there came the mouth-watering smell of hayburgers.
Dad’s voice was both muffled and undeniably gleeful. “Nether min’ the cathe—the caththe—” He gave up trying to enunciate past the bag and briefly set it down. “Never mind the casserole. Today’s a good day.”
“He said yes?” Daring all but hovered off the floor with sheer excitement. Dad grinned and nodded, and afterwards, she’d swear she hadn’t squeaked with pure delight that loudly. “I knew it! Didn’t doubt for a second! I’ve packed and everything!”
“And I thought I was being efficient.” Dad ambled through to the kitchen table, on which he tossed the bag of hayburgers and the saddlebags full of books and scrolls. “Some light reading from the Society’s archives, anything we’ve got relating to corvids, cairns, and, where we’re very lucky, the intersection of the two. That should keep me out of mischief for the flights ahead.” He grimaced. “Hope they keep me distracted as well. Air travel doesn’t like me and the feeling’s mutual.”
Daring flapped up onto a chair and leaned her forehooves on the table, ogling the books and scrolls. One of the latter had fallen and unrolled across the table to display a large map of Corva. Its vastness took up the easternmost side of the continent, spanning from the ocean to the spine of the Greycairn Mountains, a great patchwork of mountains and forests and rivers and valleys and lakes — or should that be glens and lochs? Maybe one of the books would be a Corvic phrasebook.
“Gamfer’s clan and island, Glimrovoe, is here.” Dad tapped somewhere off the south-west mainland, where an expanse of islands ran from the ragged coastline out into the sea, whether singly or in companionable archipelagos. Daring leaned closer and saw him tapping one of the most westerly islands, hardly more than a pinprick on the paper.
“How are we getting there?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, we’ll get an airship from the aeroport here in Canterlot — which, since this map inconsiderately ends at the Bovish frontier, is somewhere around that mug on the counter there. Then we’ll change airships in Asincittà — just over the gap and right on that knothole at the edge. Then it’s all the way over to the far east of Ovarn, right over that expanse of table, and then we’ll apparently hop aboard a clan ship there and take off for Glimrovoe. Not a long ship journey either, mercifully. How’s that for an itinerary?”
“Wow.” Daring grinned wildly. “We’re going far.”
“Aren’t we just? All the way from the counter to the table here. I’m tired at the mere thought.” Dad looked innocent as Daring groaned. “Gamfer’s fine with you coming if you behave yourself. He’ll host us both in his own home. And he’s mentioned there’s chicks and fledglings aplenty, so you needn’t be lonely while I’m delving. You can make some friends.”
“Friends, yeah,” said Daring, half-listening as she gave more thought to the journey ahead and the island to explore and the delve she’d be around for.
The exciting things.
After the hayburgers were devoured, packing happened, in which Dad made a few tactful changes to Daring’s efforts. When luggage space was limited, most of a bookshelf could be set aside in favour of warm clothes, she probably wouldn’t need six compasses, and a toothbrush might be useful, just throwing it out there.
After a moment’s thought, he smiled faintly and sadly, and said it’d be only appropriate to bring the helmet, though. So long as she was careful with it.
Daring agonised over which of her compasses she should bring and eventually opted for the little brass battered one that had once been Dad’s, and which he’d given her for her tenth birthday. It was a lucky compass. No matter how much Dad might have gotten mauled or set on fire or immersed in quicksand or whatnot in the course of his earlier adventures, so he’d told her, the compass had always emerged fine and in working condition.
She slipped it into the helmet — the helmet, her mother’s, still a little too big to fit Daring but only a little, she was sure — to keep it safe, filled it up with a set of cosy socks, and nestled the whole thing into one corner of her case.
From Dad’s room, there came a muffled and heartfelt litany as he wrestled with his own case and his barding and spurs. Her own work finished, Daring cheerfully wandered through to get in his way.
After the packing eventually came to an end, a largely-sleepless night passed by.
Daring tossed and turned, riveted by thoughts of Corva and what she’d find there and all the ancient corvid treasures that lay under the earth in the age-old cairn. She was dimly aware of Dad still up and about in his own room, reading by firefly-light. There came the sound of pages turning and a pencil occasionally scratching at notepaper. He took this sort of thing seriously. He liked to prepare.
Morning took Daring by surprise. She belatedly realised she must have drifted off to sleep when she found herself in bed instead of sailing a ship across a lunar sea in search of the fabled Moonstone Crown, outracing the furious Mare in the Moon herself. When she groggily recalled what the day held, she lost no time in springing out and nudging Dad conscious. He’d fallen asleep on an open book and spent some time blinking blearily at the world before the nature of the day stole on him as well.
Once they’d washed, they had honey and oats for breakfast before throwing together a travelling picnic in the form of a bag of apples, a stack of cheese sandwiches, and candied carrots. That done, and all else packed, it was time for the most important part of all.
Dad donned his hat and coat with slow deliberation, as if it was an old ritual. Daring herself mulled over what she should put on for the journey. Clothes were important. Besides keeping you warm and all that, the aesthetic made the adventurer. She instinctively went to dig out Mom’s helmet, but reluctantly decided it might still slip off her head. If high winds snuck up on her while she was on an airship deck ... it hardly bore thinking about. In the end, she opted for her bush jacket and topped it off with her favourite red scarf.
“Very dashing. I approve.” Dad smiled down at her resting one hoof atop his own case. “Ready?”
Daring smirked and flipped her scarf dramatically with a forehoof. “Born ready!”
“Really? Are you sure? I remember you being born squalling and — ow! Assault! Savage assault! Constables, help!”
“You’re not meant to undermine dashingness!” Daring waggled her forehoof, threatening another faux-kick.
“You’re not wrong. Cardinal rule of adventuring.” Dad hitched himself into his case, opened the front door and gestured. “Shall we?”
Daring took a moment to savour the moment when the adventure began, when she took the first step out her door. She glanced around at their street, which seemed so still and quiet, and glanced up towards the lofty and distant hubbub of the higher city. Past it, small tufts of cloud marbed the brilliant blue expanse of the sky and fussing weather teams shoved them hither and thither.
They wove their way back up into Canterlot at as brisk a pace as their cases allowed, up through the curving, bustling streets. Daring itched to be able to fly ahead, to get there faster, but she tried to put the thought aside. Before long, the headquarters of the RAS rose before them.
Daring sighted a familiar black-and-white form perched on its roof, still and settled as a statue, with what looked like a pipe in his beak. As they approached, he glanced down, and casually took flight and flapped down to join them. Gamfer’s talons clacked on the cobblestones as he landed.
“Thank ye both for coming. Dinnae doubt we’ll be grateful, Gallivant.” He spun and waggled the little metal pipe in his beak, emptying it out, and slipped it down into a waistcoat pocket. He inclined his head down to Daring. “And thank ye, Daring, for whatever ye did tae convince him. Ye’re owed as well.”
“I nagged him like you asked!”
“I kent ye were reliable.” Gamfer grinned conspiratorially at her.
“Thank you for agreeing to take both of us,” said Dad. “I’m sorry for the imposition it must —”
“Imposition? Havers.” Gamfer shook his head. “I’ve mair living space than I ken what tae do with, and it’s nae burden tae host a pair besides myself. Being a clan’s bard has its benefits. Corbies tend tae prefer bards happy and cosy and well-provided-for, rather than lean and angry and inclined tae satirise them. Shall we get oor ship?”
“Let’s.”
They got a ship.
Daring followed Dad and Gamfer as they alternately wove and shoved their way through the clamour of Canterlot’s aeroport. Over the ponies on all sides and past an array of barriers and checkpoints, she could see dozens of wooden gantries and towers, flocks of tethered airships bobbing around them, pouring out and hoovering in passengers and cargo.
Gamfer’s presence helped clear the way. Plenty of ponies seemed to instinctively draw back when he stepped on by them or flapped up to see ahead and Daring was aware of guards keeping a level and distant eye on their group. But nopony gave them any trouble, not outright, and soon enough…
“Aye, there we are. That peedie passenger-ship, thereabouts!”
Daring looked up and there it was. The Peregrine was tethered to the top of one of the wooden towers, a sleek and comparatively small passenger-airship. The lacquered fabric covering its envelope had been painted white and trimmed in gold and the underslung gondola was the red-brown of mahogany.
She’d never flown in one before. Daring studied it and an anticipatory grin lit up her face.
“Got your ticket, Daring?” Dad butted into her trance-like gawking. To their side, the ship’s crew bludgeoned their cases into a dumbwaiter that ran up the tower and to the ship’s hold. Gamfer had already moved on ahead, strutting awkwardly up stairs made for hooves.
“Yep,” she said, shaking herself back to reality. Dad seemed to be regarding the airship as well, though without nearly as much cheer. He nodded at Daring and nudged her towards the rising stairs. As she trotted ahead, she heard him sigh and mutter, “At least this leg of the journey’ll be short. And it won’t go too high.”
“It might be fine!” she called back. “You might not be airsick!”
“I might also be a long-lost princess,” Dad said sadly. “But I shan’t lie, poppet, it’s as equally likely.”
They trotted upstairs, where they were greeted by a walkway leading to the Peregrine’s entrance. It was wide enough and the breeze was gentle, but Daring felt obliged to spread her wings for balance as she trotted up it. For the look of the thing, at least. She could imagine it was swaying, amidst gale-force winds and incoming sky-pirates and such.
A uniformed mare by the door ushered her in and Daring entered the gondola’s passenger deck. Rows of cushioned benches criss-crossed its long, open expanse, and brass portholes ran along its walls. A bar took up one end and a dining area the other, each flanked by doors marked for crew use only. Dozens of their fellow passengers, mostly ponies with a few donkeys and what looked like a family of griffons, had already commandeered bench space and were reading or chatting or staring out the portholes.
From below, there came the sound of luggage being heaved and stacked, and from above, she heard the hoofsteps of the crew doing mysterious airship-related things on the upper deck.
“Here,” Gamfer called and Daring turned to find him nestled near the bar, where benches along the wall met at a corner. He patted the space next to him, and Daring cantered over, Dad ambling at her back. “Shame this one’s no got an open deck, but there’ll be time enough tae stretch oor wings on the next one.” The magpie squinted up at Dad and frowned. “I’ve seen mair joyous faces. Ye alright?”
“For certain lax definitions.” Dad shook his head. “I’ll probably survive this stage at least. It’s only a few hours. Distract me with conversation. Don’t let me look out the windows. That helps.”
“Aye? Any topic in particular?”
“Professional assessment.” Dad reached into his jacket pocket and drew out one of the books he’d borrowed from the Society, bookmarked at several intervals with scribbled-on notepaper. “Found this in the Society archives. Thorn Thicket’s own journal while she was charting out the eastern Greycairns two hundred years back, along with details on some of the cairns she saw amongst the clans there. You reckon they’ll be of any use to us?”
“Eastern Greycairns?” Gamfer shook his head. “Poor mare. Imagine having to negotiate wi’ Cairnlanders. Nearly worse than spyugs from Clan Scarrach. Still, let’s have a peek.”
They bent over the book, and as they started talking in low tones, Daring sneaked an apple from the bag in Dad’s jacket and flapped over to the window. She peered out over the teeming, open space of the aeroport, excited by every detail. Past it, the white towers of Canterlot jabbed up at the sky and she scrutinised them for any sign of a princess on a balcony. Seeing none, she glanced round at the other ships in the aeroport.
Where were they going? Where were they coming from? What were the beings on them doing? That pretty one to her left, with a turquoise envelope and a gilded gondola — she tried to make out the name and failed when she realised it was in some flowing, curly foreign script. From its walkway, a party of antelopes in their finery descended, deep in conversation amongst themselves, two of them propping up an elder in their midst.
Ahead of her, the Aquilo bobbed by itself, a crimson airship with a stylised black-and-gold crown emblazoned on the envelope, with no-one currently leaving or embarking. A single goat stood by it at its tower-top, twiddling through papers and impatiently tapping his hoof, as if he was waiting for someone.
To the right, another airship, the Fancy-Free, was taking off at that moment in what seemed like a Manehattanly direction. Its jaunty yellow envelope was festooned with streamers, and ponies crowding its portholes waved and hollered farewells at a similarly-behaving group of ponies on the ground.
How many other adventures were beginning or happening or being planned? Right this second? In just this aeroport?
Were any of them as cool as the one she was about to have?
Obviously not.
Calls from the crew came and Daring turned to see them slamming the entryway closed and moving off around the airship. The distant throb of the engines shifted a pitch, and she was thrilled to realise the airship was beginning to shudder underhoof, that it was beginning to move.
“We’re flying!” she exclaimed, as the Peregrine climbed its first inch, interrupting Dad and Gamfer’s conversation as she wheeled on them. Dad offered up a smile that was trying not to be wan, but wasn’t quite making it.
“Nothing like a first flight,” Gamfer said. He slumped in his makeshift nest and sighed a sigh of happy remembrance. “Nothing except for all those after. Savour the moment.”
Daring’s hooves drummed on the bench seat as she jigged with sheer delight and whirled back on the porthole to watch their ascent. The aeroport below them grew smaller and smaller, as did the ponies crowding it, some of whom were waving their airship off. More of Canterlot slipped into view under them as they rose to the heights of the high towers.
And though it could have been her imagination, before the airship began pottering forwards with more determination, Daring could have sworn she did see a flash of white at a high balcony before another tower occluded it from view.
They rose above the clouds, leaving Canterlot behind, and the sun saw them on their way.
It was hard to tear herself away from the porthole. Equestria kept on rolling on; far, far below. Fields and hills and towns and forests rambled by underneath, all toy-sized from Daring’s lofty position.
She glimpsed a thin line of railway weaving through the hills and vanishing into a forest and steam came puffing up through the canopy. Then, whenever the current view threatened to grow boring, a new sight slid into view — a ridge of mountains, a pegasus cloud-village, a flock of peeved geese.
Several hours slipped by and she only moved away to go to the bathroom, grab a sandwich from Dad and once, when a solid carpet of cloud-cover obscured Equestria from view, to get a book from a nearby stack. But the clouds had dispersed by the time she returned and she found the ship had moved out over the ocean, a bay in the distance and kelp-boats plying the waters below. She ate her sandwich as she watched them.
Dad and Gamfer had talked all the while. Dad’s voice was strained and his face was pale, but Gamfer was determinedly chatting to keep his spirits up, and so far, he was still standing. Or sitting, whatever. As the ship passed over another thick bank of cloud, hiding the sea from view, Daring listened in.
“...Problem is, ye see, it’s a rare thing tae raise a cairn. Not every part of Corva keeps the custom. Some of those clans that do keep it have let it lapse. And nae wonder. Whole ages can come and go wi’oot corvids proving themselves worthy of the honour.”
“You only wheel it out for your greatest, then? Your chiefs? Your … Cormaers?”
“For Cormaers, aye, as and when one’s inflicted on us, and when they leave enough of themselves to bury. Not all chiefs.”
“Not all?”
“Not all leave enough tae be buried. Besides that, not all earn a cairn. And if ye’ve earned one, we ken about ye. We bards’ll sing it and teach yer story, and yer name’ll be on corbie tongues wherever corbies fly. So the theory goes.” Gamfer clicked his tongue irritably.
“Hmm. And the actual practise?”
“Falls short here. I’ve nary a scooby who the joker in this cairn might be. The script in the entryway’s in some variant of Auld Corvic. Few enough corbies in the west as can read that these days. And it’s faded tae the point of nigh-illegibility. The only word I’m sure I can make out is ‘Gruamach’. That ring any bells for you?”
Dad shook his head.
“Thought so. It’s tae be expected. Two thousand years is lang enough tae make mince o’ myths. They can warp wi’ every teller. I dinnae know who or whit a Gruamach is. Some great chief or hero? The lost name o’ the First or Second Cormaer? A weapon? A place? Just some unknown word in Auld Corvic?” Gamfer shook his head. “I hope there’s inscriptions further in that’ll clarify things. Finding a Gruamach itself, whatever it is, would clarify things even mair.” He paused and glanced in Daring’s direction, apparently realising her interest. “Any guesses yersel, Daring?”
“Oh. Um.” Daring thought. Gruamach had to be important if they’d bothered carving it. It had to be something to do with the cairn. But who or what would someone want to keep safe in a sealed old cairn? “Maybe an old chief’s treasure? Or maybe something they wanted to keep really safe. Like ...”
She sought about for something suitably cool and precious, some treasure an ancient corvid warlord might have cherished, and her train of thought stole back three years. To an Antlertean ruin in the Everfree and what its old mage-lord occupant had cherished above all.
Daring’s train of thought got mired when she guiltily realised that she hadn’t been back to see Cervile since, for all Princess Celestia and her royal agents must have met them and provided company.
But she was spared further thought when the whole airship juddered around her. She looked back to the window, where the clouds seemed to have tilted ever-so-slightly. Dad groaned, while Gamfer said, “Och, we must be descending. Peek oot the window, chookie. See where we are.”
Daring pressed her muzzle up against the window and peered down. The airship seemed to be on a gentle incline and the cloud-cover below them was peeling away as they descended. And below the cloud-cover…
Daring stared, transfixed. “There’s a city!” she exclaimed. “Is that Asincittà?”
Dad seemed reluctant to so much as acknowledge the existence of the window, but he made the effort and shifted over, casting a brief glance outside before looking away. “That’s the culprit. Capital of Equestria’s best and maddest ally, the Asinial Republic.” He forced a grin. “Busy, isn’t it?”
Busy didn’t do it justice.
Big, broad Equestria spread its cities and ponies out, but little Asinia seemed to have put them all into one basket and then grafted superfluous clockwork bits onto said basket. The great donkey capital sprawled across an expanse of coast, framed within the great, wide mouth of a river valley and running for what seemed like miles inland. Its buildings rose high, like those in Manehattan, but were webbed with gantrys, walkways, and superfluous-looking cranes.
Between them, the winding streets were alive with countless beings. Dense forests of chimneys and smokestacks filled whole districts, pouring white clouds up into the sky, and through them, smaller airships and ornithopters and teams of fliers flitted. The waterfront was the busiest of all, with countless wharves and jetties and arsenals servicing an ocean’s worth of ships. Daring saw donkey steamboats and ironclads rubbing shoulders with towering Equestrian clippers and windjammers, driven on by teams of weather-pegasi. Amidst the mix, a few exotic craft stood out, pictures from all her books come to life at last.
There, she saw what looked like a convoy of sleek zebra-crewed dhows, their alchemically-petrified timbers dark and their sails aglow with a strange lustre. There, a chunky, outsized galleon from Pachydermia, built on the same scale as its elephant crew. Over there, she saw a paddle-junk from distant Ceratos, its rhino crew furling its batten-sails as golems trudged in its paddle-wheels to bring it smoothly into port.
It was like Canterlot’s aeroport, times a million. And though it wasn’t possible to take it all in, Daring gave it a good try.
She turned to the fore of the craft. They were aimed at an aeroport, around which excited flocks of airships fluttered and bustled. Their design seemed different from the sort that ruled the roost back in Equestria — their envelopes were longer, metal-clad, and sported fins at the back, and their gondolas were attached directly underneath rather than being secured with a structure or a lattice of ropes. Daring squinted to make out their names.
She frowned and then squinted harder in the hope she’d just misread.
“One of them,” Gamfer said, hopping off the bench and looking the same way as Daring, “will bear us on tae Ovarn. And from there, Corva. Glimrovoe. Hame at last. All we need is to find the right one.”
“Hmm. I’m sure airships shouldnae be this hard to find.”
“Check the notice-board again.” From where Daring perched on his back, she could hear a strain of tetchiness finally leaking into Dad’s tone. “Maybe they’ll have fixed their glass by now. And — ow! Watch where you’re going!”
“Watch where you’re standing,” replied the obscured quadruped, hurrying on under a voluminous cloak and cowl and trailing a clattering cart in their wake. Dad looked for a moment as if he was about to keep the conversation going, but turned away with gritted teeth.
Around them, Stackwynd Aeroport roiled. The same semi-controlled chaos that seemed to revel throughout the city did so here, except it now fizzed off enclosing walls. A dizzying number and variety of beings bustled about — mostly donkeys, but with a substantial minority of ponies, as well as griffons, zebras, goats, bovines, sheep, gazelles, and nigh-on every other sort of sapient species the known world had to offer. Daring saw a couple of elephants over by the stalls, casually dipping their trunks into barrel-sized glasses of beer and reading table-sized newspapers from home.
That same bustle had obliged her to hop up onto Dad’s back to not get lost underhoof, and he’d hunted about the aeroport in search of their transfer.
Thank heavens they’d not had to lug their cases around as well. They’d been spirited away by strange mechanisms and whirring belts into the spaces between the aeroport’s walls, and would, they’d been assured, be loaded onto their airship and sent to the right cabin therein. Probably. The odds weren’t terrible, at least.
Daring looked up at the aeroport’s notice-board. It hung from the high ceiling, a long rectangle of brass-framed glass glowing a steady white by some alchemy, and with the names and times and destinations of airships written all over its surface.
A thin walkway ran around it, upon which a donkey jenny slouched and read a book, a speaking-tube by her right ear. Every so often, the tube would burble, and she’d rise, scoop up a marker pen and cloth, and make a circuit of the board to rub out and amend whatever needed amending with remarkable speed.
For the last few minutes, she’d been kept idle while a griffon and a pegasus carefully wiggled out the old pane of alchemical glass, which had picked up a mysterious pink tint, and replaced it with another. Below, the crowd of aspiring passengers grew restless. But now the repairbeings seemed to have finished, and as they flew off, the speaking tube squealed.
The jenny got up with a groan, stretched, and then took off at a canter around the board, blurring pen in mouth. Airship names curled into existence in her wake.
“The What’s A Piloting License?, calling at … Cromlech Taur.” Dad clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Not ours.”
“Top Of The World, Ma, bound for Marephis via Tabuck.” Gamfer stood with a generous amount of space on all sides, and the old magpie watched the jenny work. “Even less oors.”
“Why do donkeys name their ships like that?” Daring asked.
“Some things in the world, poppet, are beyond mortal wit. That’s the Flies Like An Eagle, Falls Like A Brick bound for Eweboea. Ovarn, but not the city in Ovarn we need.”
“Seriously, why?” As the crowd around them shifted and sections of it began trickling towards their departure towers, Daring shifted atop Dad and grumbled to herself. The donkeys didn’t seem to take this sort of thing as seriously as they ought to. If she’d had an airship of her own, she’d have called it something cool and adventure-y. Like Sparrowhawk, or Lightning Strike.
Granted, there was already a Wonderbolt called Lightning Strike, but Daring doubted he’d mind. But the point stood. She wouldn’t call it something like —
“Beep Beep, I’m A Cloud, headed for … och, Canterlot. Nae use, unless you’re bored of my company already and wanting tae head hame.”
Like that. Daring squinted up the board, willing the jenny to write something proper. And which would take them a step closer to Corva, at least.
The jenny defiantly wrote No, Your Name Lacks Gravitas : Al-Antelus : Tower 4 at 15:00.
Daring grumbled into Dad’s tricorn, convinced the donkeys were doing this on purpose.
As she grumbled and icily regarded the noticeboard, the jenny wrote Please Stay Airborne : Rhovies : Tower 2 at 14:45. Though she still wasn’t getting into the spirit of the naming scheme, Daring could forgive them in that moment. “Look!” she said, pointing up, drawing the attention of Dad and Gamfer. “There’s our ship!”
“Ah-ha! There’s the culprit!” Dad looked up at Daring’s delighted exclamation, and his posture straightened and rose. “The Please Stay Airborne, quarter to three. That’ll give us time to get there and get settled in.”
“Tower Two. At least that’s nearby. No a complete guddle to get to like finding here was.” Gamfer shook his head. “I’m sure it wasnae laid out like this last time I passed through”
“I blame the donkeys’ innate magic. Prods them to tinker and optimise.” Dad contemplated the all-encompassing kerfuffle. “Bit of a blessing that Asinia and Equestria are as friendly as we are. Without us, I suspect they’d go a bit mad and try to optimise the world.”
With minimal faffing, they found Tower 2, and alternately wove and shoved their way towards it, joining part of a stream of beings that had begun moving as soon as the sign had gone up. Mostly donkeys and sheep travellers, with a few ponies as well as a bovine family, a cow with two young calves at her hooves.
They made their way up a broad and winding flight of stairs, and Daring saw them rise up past a tower floor that seemed to be entirely filled with crates which teams of portworkers were heaving into the gondola’s cargo bay. Finally, they alighted on the tower’s topmost platform, and Daring took the chance to flap off Dad’s back.
The tower was open to the skies and wide on all sides, enough to allow four of the great airships to dock at once, and two were at that moment, taking on fuel and supplies and cargo and passengers. One of these was their own, the Please Stay Airborne. Its long, metal-clad envelope had been tinted silver, a contrast with the dark red of the gondola underneath. A jack and jenny in smart scarlet uniforms stood at its gangway, and checked and waved through ticket-holders.
“I booked a cabin for this leg. Had some spending metal sloshing about, and thought I’d as well put it to fun use. Once we’re inside, ye’re welcome tae bunk down in it,” Gamfer said, perhaps noticing Dad’s wince at the way the airship bobbed in its berth. “It’ll be a peaceful berth. There’s blinds for the windaes. Buckets tae boak in, besides.”
“...You might have to translate that last one.”
“If ye’re unlucky, it’ll become all-tae clear.”
They were waved through by the crew, assured that their luggage had made it to the right vessel (“Trust us, sirs and ma’am, we’re as surprised as you are.”) and made their way up the gangplank, Daring cantering ahead to see the inside first.
Instead of the one open space that had filled up nearly all the Peregrine, the huge Please Stay Airborne boasted a large reception area with doorways and corridors running off to different areas of the ship. Gleaming bronze and dark, polished wood predominated for the walls and furnishings, a match for the plush red of the carpets underhoof.
“Your starboard cabin’s this way, sirs and ma’am,” a uniformed jack said, as Gamfer presented his ticket. “Your luggage is waiting for you there. Should be making landfall in Rhovies tomorrow midday, wind-currents and the absence of calamity allowing.”
“Since there’s two fliers in your company,” said the jenny by his side, “we’re obliged to remind you that taking off from the airship from an exterior deck isn’t recommended in the slightest, as being left behind to the mercy of the high winds and storm-ghasts often offends. Meals’ll be available in the dining area half an hour after takeoff. We trust your journey’ll be pleasant.”
They were roughly two hours into the journey, and Dad looked like a pony praying for death.
“Rocks,” he groaned to himself as he curled up in the cabin’s bed. “Large, immovable rocks. Hills. Civic infrastructure. Big grassy fields. Milestones.”
“Do you want me to get you some more water?” Daring looked at Dad with concern. The grey hide of his face had turned green and stayed that way, and his head drooped over the side of the bed and rested over a bucket. It was hard to make out in the dimness with the cabin’s window’s curtains pulled shut as tightly as any curtains had ever been pulled. “A sandwich?”
“Oh, stars, no. No, poppet. Nothing solid. It wouldn’t stick around.” He blinked groggily in her direction. “Could you get me one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“Could you get me something very solid and very earthy and very much connected to the rest of the earth — an oak tree, say — which I can hug a lot and promise to never part myself from as long as I draw breath.”
“There’s candied carrots. Maybe they’ll help a little?”
“Then, after that, I’d like you to get me whoever invented the first device that could carry non-fliers through the air as well, so that I can kick them at length. Or at least gurgle plaintively at them. Oh, urk, stars above. There’s nothing all around.”
“Seen this before,” Gamfer said sympathetically. Some cured leaves from his satchel lay on a sidetable before him, which he delicately shredded with the talons of one foot.
“Seen what?” Dad groaned.
“Earth cuddy rapport with the earth. Once we’re up at this sort of altitude, there’s nae earth to latch onto for love nor money. Ye’ve got it worse than most I’ve seen. And I suspect ye compound that by naturally being no great with motion at heights. Hence, yer puir body doesnae ken whit else tae do but … well, boak.”
Gamfer had been right, they didn’t need a translation for that last one.
“Every time I’ve been in an aeroport,” Dad croaked, “I see them selling pot plants for uneasy travellers to carry to take the edge off. Every time I think to myself, ‘This time’ll be different, it’ll be fine, I’m toughening up.’ And every time, I’m an idiot.”
“Maybe fresh air would help?” Daring suggested. She wasn’t altogether sure what to do with Dad. She felt as fine as ever. Finer, if possible. Being a pegasus must have its advantages in times like this. Dad just groaned.
“Some foul air? Pipefuls help brace me.” Gamfer nodded at the pile of shredded leaves and his pipe lying alongside it, the former of which he was carefully scooping into the bowl of the latter. Dad groaned harder.
“Just … let me endure it. I’ll try and read something. Or get some rest. Or just hone my self-pity to a fine edge. Something.”
“If ye’re sure. I’ll gie ye peace. I’m off to have a bracer.” Gamfer stooped to peck up the pipe and secured its stem in the side of his beak. “I’ll be on an outside deck. If ye need me, come running. Or send Daring running. Either-or.”
He turned and left the room, the door sliding shut behind him. Dad groaned faintly and Daring flapped up onto the bed and pulled the cover over him. He murmured thanks, and she thought for a moment she should go ask for another bucket from one of the crew. Or see if any of the other passengers had a miraculous cure with them, or a pot plant she could borrow.
She dwelled on that line of thought, but just as she’d gotten to the part which required staging an elaborate distraction so she could swoop in past some hypothetical evil Duke’s guards and make a daring escape with his prized flytraps, Dad said in a voice on the edge of hearing, “Your mom … always teased me mercilessly about this. In between saying the names of solid, earthy things to try and help me. Gallant adventurer-archaeologist, undone by air-sickness. Very teasable.”
Daring listened and Dad continued. “Still not altogether sure why she put up with me. But she loved me enough to memorise the names of every mountain in the Greycairns and murmur them in my ear. So I must have had something going for me.” He was quiet for a long moment. “Maybe my dashing good looks. It’s usually those.”
“Did you and her ever go to Corva?” Daring asked. Dad didn’t talk about Mom much. He’d been trying to do so more often since the delve into Fallow’s Freehold and he’d answer any questions Daring had about her, but she could tell the subject could never be fun for him.
Times when he came out with it like this were rare. And she wouldn’t want to disturb a chance to hear more about the mare whose hat she would one day fill.
“Never got round to Corva. Few ponies that do, nowadays.” Dad sighed. “Not that she didn’t sometimes raise the notion. If she hadn’t seen what was past a horizon, she wanted to. World spoiled her and me with horizons to chase. She’d be proud you’re here.”
Pride warmed Daring. “You really think so?”
“Trust me, if she could see you and where you’re going, she’d be hugely proud, and then insufferably smug about it for weeks on end. Every other soul in the Hereafter right now has probably had it up to here with her bragging.”
The thought of a bragging Mom-ghost tickled Daring, and as she suppressed a laugh, Dad chuckled his own pained chuckle. “Try not to follow too much in her hoofsteps now, though. You don’t want to end up with your own airsick colt who’s only redeemed by his dashing good looks. Aim higher, poppet.”
“Oh, colts.” Daring snorted with supreme disdain. “I won’t bother. Colts are dumb.”
“I feel I ought to try and refute that,” groaned Dad. “But look at me, I can’t.”
“Ha. Are you sure you don’t want some water?”
“Pour me a glassful and leave it there.” Dad wiggled a hoof vaguely in the direction of the cabin’s one and only table. “Maybe I’ll be brave enough for liquids later.”
Daring scooped up a nearby glass — the bottom thick and the sides leaning inwards, so it wouldn’t go flying or slosh everywhere in turbulent weather — topped it up from a tap in the closet-like bathroom attached to their cabin, and slid it onto the table. Dad murmured thanks, spent a moment studying nothing, and then sighed and said, “You don’t have to hang out with the invalid if you want to go check out the rest of the ship. I’ll be fine here.”
Daring couldn’t deny she’d been itching to go exploring for over two hours. But the sight of a stricken Dad had kept her here. “Are you sure?”
“For loose definitions of ‘fine’, yes. I’ll just lie here and make plaintive noises for the next while and not get up to mischief. Go find where the party is. Don’t go anywhere you’re not meant to or bother anyone you shouldn’t, alright?”
Daring needed no more prompting and turned away to roam. “Don’t die!” she chirruped over her wither as she passed through the cabin door.
From Dad, there came a gurgle of acknowledgement, and then he started muttering to himself, “Starling Peak, Mount Certain Horrible Doom, Mount Restless —”
And then she nudged the door shut, and Daring turned on the narrow corridor, a fierce grin lighting up her features. So far, everything had been in the hooves/talons of Dad and Gamfer. Now she had a little freedom to nose around fun new things and she didn’t intend to waste it.
Left or right? Left led the way they’d come in, to the ship’s stern, and right led to the bow and parts unglimpsed. She turned right, and at the end of a corridor lined with closed cabin doors, she saw a door sporting a sign.
Bow Exterior Deck
To Be Locked in Adverse Weather
Kindly refrain from:
Flying off the side, if capable of flight;
Falling off the side, if not;
Dropping anything or anyone overboard;
Taunting passing geese;
Imitating dirigible whale mating calls;
And any unspecified idiocy.
We thank you for not giving us cause to specify new things.
Daring pushed it open with some effort, and stumbled out into shockingly fresh, brisk wind.
And she saw such a sky.
The blue vastness filled the world above her, glimmering from horizon to horizon, darkening and deepening to velvety richness the higher up she looked. Daring huddled into her jacket and scarf against the cold and buffeting wind as she trotted forwards onto the ledge of the deck, and gawked out past the railing.
On all sides and below the airship, great cloudscapes drifted like mountains on the move, their forms capable of swallowing up whole fleets of airships, their golden folds hiding crevices of grey and black, murmuring to themselves with a low, thunderous thrum. In the distance, she glimpsed a pod of dirigible whales slowly gliding between two towering clouds, their low song carrying on the wind.
She hunted about for the proper words. “On the bow of the airship, our heroine beheld a wonderful sight,” she muttered aloud. “Clouds lay all around her, bright and ...”
Daring paused. ‘Bright’ didn’t seem to have the right oomph to it, and if she was to practise her narration, she’d need to use the right words. ‘Scintillating’, maybe? She liked scintillating. The word itself seemed bright and sparkly and it seemed to fit the way the tops of the clouds shimmered in the sunlight.
“Clouds lay all around her, scintillating and stuff.” She wondered if she ought to elaborate on that a bit more and leaned closer to the railing to try and glean something more out of the sky.
The wind whipped about her as the airship bore on over it all, tousling her mane and brushing through her wing-feathers, inviting them to spread forth. Daring rested a forehoof on the railing, spellbound. Never mind the sign on the door, the expanse just begged to be flown in...
“I ken bad ideas when they’re being thought. Bardic knack.”
Daring spun at the voice of Gamfer. The magpie sat nestled down against the wall further along from the door, like someone had set down a round-ish cushion made of black-and-white feathers with a head poking out.
He continued past the pipe in his beak. “I mean, I was once daft enough to take off intae open and unkent sky when I was a fledgling. But then, I didnae have sensible and sage-like authority figures nearby tae set a guid example. Ye’re luckier. Dinnae mind me, by the way. Just polluting the fresh air a bit.”
Daring forgot about the sky and asked the important question. “Did you hear me narrating?”
“Aye. Didnae want tae interrupt ye. Every life’s a song. Why no sing it?” Gamfer groaned and stretched his wings briefly before folding them back in. His pipe bowl gleamed red, and as it tilted, Daring saw little runes etched into the inside that blazed whenever he drew on it. “Might persuade Skyare to make a habit of that as well, once we’re back,” he said contemplatively. “He willnae, but hope springs eternal.”
“Who’s Skyare?” Daring had recovered from her surprise. If the only witness didn’t seem to find it something worth teasing her about, then it was fine. And she’d also realised that now that Dad was resting, it was her chance to bombard the magpie with all her burning questions.
“Chief Tirla’s son. One of the fledglings I teach. Your age, or thereabouts. Might introduce the pair of ye, if ye’re in need of a playmate when ye’re there. Bit of a dour peedie thing, truth be told, but boot him in the tailfeathers often enough and he’ll warm up.” Gamfer turned his head aside to slowly blow out a long stream of smoke, and when he turned back to Daring, his gaze was sharp and curious. “Mind if I ask ye something?”
“Can you ask … oh, sure.” A flash of boldness made her grin and ask, “Can I ask you things in return?”
“Fair trade, eh?” Gamfer smirked past the pipe. “Alright. I’ll go first. How did ye convince yer daddy to go? He seemed unsure yesterday. I’m indebted tae ye for swaying him, and I’d like tae ken yer trade secret.”
“Well.” Daring breathed out, marshaling the narrative in her head. If her audience was a professional story-teller among his clan, or whatever it was exactly a bard did, she should tell it well.
“Okay, so. He wanted to take you up on it. It’s his job to explore cool old places and write journal papers about them, and nopony else has been to Corva in ages. He could have been the first.” She paused for a suitably dramatic moment before introducing the twist. “But he felt he couldn’t. I was going to flight camp for the summer, and he didn’t want to be unreachable in case anything went wrong.”
“Flight camp?”
“Yeah, flight camp.” Gamfer continued to look mystified. “You know, where pegasi and griffons can go to learn good flying technique.” A thought stole on her once the words left her mouth. “Do you have those in Corva?”
“Och, no. Nae need. Nae shortage of adults oor fledglings can learn flight from. First thing any corvid learns, soon as they’re chatting instead of cheeping and they’re shedding their down.”
Daring suppressed sudden envy for corvids and tried to find the thread of her story again. “Well. Well, anyway, I had an idea. What if he took me with him? He wanted to go to Corva and I wanted to go too. We could both get what we wanted and we wouldn’t be out of reach from each other. And he was still a bit unsure, but once I promised I’d be sensible and stay safe, that made his mind up.”
Gamfer’s features past his beak tightened in a smile. “Hah. Had my suspicions when he came back to me. We had a guid chat then, and he got a few promises from me. Why did ye want tae come tae Corva as well, out of interest?”
“Well … because I’ve not been before and I want to see it.” Daring grinned up at Gamfer. “It looks cool. You’ve got mountains, right? And valleys. And cool old tombs.”
“Glimrovoe’s guilty on the last charge, no so much for the two prior. We’re too peedie.” Gamfer eyes shone. “But we do have sea-cliffs. Great and red and rugged, hunnerts of feet high, and when the roch winds blow and the sea hurls itself aff them, ye hear the thunder of it for miles.”
His gaze rose, as if staring up at something only he could see. “Seastacks standing tall above the water, lit wi arcane light at night to guide oor ships tae harbour, and crackling wi’ skyfire when the thunderstorms blow through. Inland, circles of standing stones. Great dark ridges jutting up along the head and spine o’ the isle, and in the head’s shadow … there, ye’ll find oor cool auld tomb.”
Daring felt she could see it already. “It sounds amazing.”
“It’s no wi’oot its charms.” Gamfer sighed happily. “Auroras as well. When the night stands still and the black begins tae blaze. Shimmering spectres in their finery o’ red and green and blue, dancing across the sky. Ye’ve never really telt a story till ye’ve told it under the light o’ skyfire. Keeps the whole clan hooked.”
Daring could picture that too, but she hoped she could see that for real, the sky alive with the northern lights. “Is that what a bard does most of the time, then?” she asked. “Tell stories?”
“Sort of, aye.” Gamfer looked thoughtful. “A bard has tae ken all sorts of stories. We have tae ken oor clan’s legends, and oor history, and oor law. And those three can blur thegither. Ye tally the tales and legacies of every corvid that’s come before, see what they teach us, and bend the ear of any corvid that’ll hear ye. That’s a bard’s duty. It’s a puir clan that lacks a bard. Puir, and daft. Though I may be biased.”
“So you’re like ...” Daring scrunched her face in the effort to parse the role into something Equestrian. “...teachers and historians and lawyers all at once?”
Gamfer shrugged. “Aye, ye can make sense of it that way, I suppose. Most of us learn the trade from an older clan bard while we’re still chicks and fledglings, and get apprenticed if we’ve the aptitude. Some others roam away and make pests o’ themselves, and it happens other bards vouch for them. Took the low road there, myself.”
“What did you do?”
Gamfer puffed out smoke with every sign of satisfaction. “Misspent youths are great things. Dossed about the whole continent, sailed wi’ Clan Brineborne doon in the Asinial Main for a time, saw three continents before I wis twenty, and picked up all the bad habits. And soaked up enough stories and hard knocks to be taken in by the clan’s bard when I washed up back hame, and to be named her successor once I’d had that bit more sense pecked into me.”
Daring was envious. She only had nine years left to match some of that, she’d have to hurry up. “You should write a book!”
“Och, maybe. Tried once. But writing’s an exercise in misery and lunacy, so I felt. I pass those stories on the auld-fashioned way. I speak them. Or sing them, depending on how much whisky I’ve had. But I only tell my ain stories when I’ve especially vain or someone asks. The better stories came from history or legend. A Cormaer story, usually. Or any chief or hero whose story merited remembering and who merits telling. There’s some legacies ye have tae keep alive.”
He was silent for a time, and before Daring could ask the next obvious question (“Writing’s not that much of an exercise in misery and lunacy, is it?”) Gamfer spoke again, his tone low and gentle.
“See, that’s why I’ve recruited yer daddy. It’s all aboot legacy. About having a story that lasts, which corbies now and corbies yet tae come need tae hear, about living and teaching long past yer death. But we’ve nary a scooby who or whit’s in the Auld Howe, or whit they did. We’ve lost that lore. There’s a story untold in that cairn, a song unsung. Whoever’s in that cairn deserves better. We today deserve better. Ye see why I’m so interested?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Chance came to uncover it at last, and I jumped. Most of the rest of the clan wanted to get right in there and explore, find auld treasure, poke around wi’ an ancestor’s bones, that sort of thing.” Gamfer shrugged. “And that’s fine. Beings ought tae get tae explore and find treasure and meddle wi’ ancestral bones.”
This sounded eminently reasonable to Daring.
“But I’d have been damned if I didnae get a full story out the place before anything might get mucked up,” Gamfer continued. “And when I bumbled through Equestria in my youth, I’d learned of a society of ponies who specialised in kicking the past till stories fell oot. Why no poach one tae assist?”
It was as fair a description of the Royal Archaeological Society as any, Daring decided. “So your chief let you go recruit us?”
“With persuasion. Chief Tirla wasnae keen on dragging in cuddies — Dream Valley casts a muckle shadow — but she’s got a guid heid on her shoulders. She respects bards in general, and tolerates me in particular. She’s oor chief, and her word is law, but she’s a guid chief, and she’ll hear a corby oot. And in this case in particular, she afforded me some clout. Besides, I assured her all I’d really be doing is involving a fellow professional.”
Daring frowned. “Fellow professional?”
“Aye. He delves intae auld places and uncovers their story, aye? And then tells other cuddies about them?”
“Sure.” Daring was privately unsure if you could describe Dad’s most recent paper, Threefold Inspiration: The Merging of Tribal Architectural Styles in the Immediate Post-Founding, with Reference to the Canter Vale, Duncirrus, and Roanoak Sites as a story. She’d skimmed it and there’d been a dismaying lack of snappy dialogue or swordfights or dramatic and mushy confessions of love.
Old Chestnut hadn’t even tried to ambush Dad during any of his visits to the sites last summer, that was how boring they were. But Gamfer didn’t need to know that.
“Way I see it, he’s just a different sort of bard. And the way ye are, ye’ll likely become one as well.”
“You think so?”
“Beings in the habit of practising their dramatic narration tend tae fall intae barding in later life,” Gamfer remarked. He rose with a groan and plucked his pipe from his beak with his talons, hopped forward, and tapped it out against the railing. “Hard for them no to. And with three bards on the scene, I dinnae see how we cannae get a tale from the Auld Howe.”
The thought of being a bard as well thrilled Daring. The distant pod of dirigible whales vanished behind a meandering cumulus cloud and shortly emerged on the other side, their song thrumming through the air. Daring itched to join them, but did her best to suppress the urge. There’d be time to fly later. And she’d fly her heart out then.
“I’m heading back in,” said Gamfer at last, emptying his pipe and slipping it back into his pocket. “Want tae chum me? Check yer daddy’s still in the land o’ the living. Then I’m of a mind to inspect the stock for this thing’s dining room and bar.”
When enquiries were made, Dad concluded that oh no, he seemed to still be alive. But he’d managed to keep down a glass of water and half a sandwich, so the future had some hope in it. Feel free to keep marauding around the ship. Just keep the cabin curtains closed, poppet. Mount Cloudpoke, Hurricane’s Seat, the Sleeping Giant, Frosty Peak, et cetera.
The dining room proved fun to investigate with wooden tables ringing a clattering conveyer belt driven by donkey clockwork, around which dishes migrated. Daring snagged a bowl of vegetable stew — the time-honoured dish of any pony adventurer setting out on their journey — while Gamfer opted for a bowl of oatmeal, which he salted thoroughly before eating.
Seeing him peck into the shallow bowl and tip his head back to swallow distracted Daring from her own stew. The other diners seemed to be distracted as well, even more than they’d already been distracted by the magpie. “Tsk,” Gamfer remarked to Daring as he adjusted his pecking angle. “Ye’d think they’d never seen someone eat porridge before.”
After that, as the sky out past the airship’s porthole purpled to evening, Daring left Gamfer to his own devices. There was still a whole ship she hadn’t checked out yet.
She found the door that led to the ship’s helm, and though she kept her distance, she sneaked a peek inside every time a donkey crewmember entered or left, wondering at the array of wheels and brass dials and levers she glimpsed within. The crewmembers themselves worked as if in a trance, their hooves moving without the slightest hesitation.
A deck below, on the same deck as the cabins, she found the airship’s parlour, where many of the donkey and sheep passengers sat, sprawled, chatted in low tones, and in one group’s case, were halfway through a game of billiards. A gaggle of lambs gave her curious looks as she flapped in, but shyly averted their gazes when she grinned at them.
Down yet more decks, she pursued the source of the engine room’s steady roar and found it past a heavy door, red lights flickered and things crashed and steam hissed and the odd word that she theoretically wasn’t meant to know yet was uttered. It half-sounded like the engine room was fighting back and the battle wasn’t always going the engineers’ way.
In the bottom-most deck, past doors she couldn’t look through, the airship’s hold had all the cargo and luggage slung within. She fancied she could hear the items of luggage grumbling amongst themselves, and the odd pair of cases vying for dominance. This was a donkey vessel, after all.
And at long last, as the evening drew in and the crew began sealing the doors to the exterior decks and stacking chairs in the bar, Daring found herself yawning, and ambled in the direction of the cabin.
She slipped into the dark room, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw Dad sleeping where they’d left him. Gamfer had made himself a makeshift nest by piling spare blankets on the floor and dozed where he sat. Making as little noise as possible, Daring flapped up onto the bed by Dad, pulled a corner of the blanket over herself, and lay and wondered what she’d see tomorrow that’d beat today.
At some point in her wondering, she must have fallen asleep. The hazy image of a cake-eating contest with Princess Celestia which had probably been set up for entirely sensible reasons at the time vanished, and she blearily blinked awake.
The cabin was dark and the shapes of Dad under blankets and Gamfer in his makeshift nest and the wardrobe were all silhouettes. But a sharp grey light poked in past the edges of the curtains and, as quietly as she could, she flapped off the bed, slipped under the curtain, and stood precariously on her hind legs to peer out the window.
A high, grey bank of cloud hung low overhead. But the skies beyond were clear and the sea underneath still had a defiant twinkle to it. And past the sea, past a peppering of small islands, she saw land. Bands of white beaches huddled under soaring cliffs, and past them, patchwork hills rolled past the horizon.
Villages slept here and there, clusters of little buildings sporting tiled roofs and connected by winding white roads. Out on these roads, and in the fields surrounding the villages, a few distant specks that might be sheep were already up and working.
Ovarn. The last stop before Corva.
As the long morning dragged on, Daring remained glued to any passing porthole or exterior deck. The grey clouds overhead peeled away, and under a midday sun, Rhovies took shape. It loomed from the sea off the Ovish coast; a huge and roughly diamond-shaped island straddling the horizon, one point tapering upwards into a craggy mountain.
Fields and hamlets sprawled around the island’s lowlands and open fields, coalescing into a dense city hugging the mountain’s lower slopes. Street upon whorling street of low-lying houses and forums and theatres and halls rested under the sun, their tiled roofs gleaming in all the colours of the rainbow, reds and greens and oranges and dark blues. As the mountain climbed, the buildings fell away in favour of great terraces hewn into its side, host to brimming orchards of cypresses and olive trees with grape vines spilling down over the edges.
At the mountain’s top perched the real spectacle. A huge statue of a sitting ram had been carved out of the peak, an expression of serene benevolence on his features and a scroll resting in his forehooves, the pale stone of the mountain painted to make the statue surprisingly garish. Pale green fire crackled in the glass globes of his eyes like captured skyfire, lights to see by for sailors at night.
“That’ll be the Giant,” groaned Dad when Daring excitedly described it to him. Gamfer, sifting through his own satchel in the cabin, nodded. “Carved in his own image by an archon of the city centuries ago. Keen on civic infrastructure, that archon, but not the most modest sheep there ever was. Urgh. Are we getting closer to the ground? I’m feeling less awful now. I think that means there’s imminent ground.”
“Yep! We’re descending!” Daring all but spun in a little circle as Dad contrived to slump upwards in the bed and reach for his water. She slipped under the curtain again and peered out the porthole.
As they drew closer, she saw them turning to angle towards the city’s port-building, one great complex ringing an artificial, protected inner harbour with neat lines of wharfs and warehouses. Sleek xebecs and little steamboats flocked in its waters. Two aeroport towers poked up from the port’s top, a couple of other Asinial airships tethered there already.
It was a lot smaller than Asincittà’s own waterfront, Daring thought. Maybe that helped it be a lot less chaotic. Where buildings and streets in the donkey capital had seemed to sprout and rise wherever at their own private whims, this city seemed a lot more organised, as if architects and city planners on high had laid down the law from the outset, and had patiently kept on laying it.
This close, she could make out other things as well. Out past the harbour’s fortifications, the walls ran around the city, short and thick and divided by towers at evenly-spaced intervals. Armoured sheep toting large, serious-looking crossbows patrolled its length, and cast level looks up at the Please Stay Airborne as it bore upon the city. Back within the orderly sprawl of the city and dotted around the island’s long coastline, more towers rose here and there topped with manned ballistas, and a few seemed to casually swivel around to track the airship.
Daring frowned. “It looks like they’re on guard for something.”
“Aye. They’ve lang memories o’ Dunderheid.” Gamfer sighed. “The Seventh’s war left an impression. Best if ye stay on the ground and keep yer wings tucked in while we’re passing through. They get a peedie bit antsy around fliers. It’s a wonder they’re open tae trading wi’ Glimrovoe at all.”
“Dunderheid? The Seventh...” Daring furrowed her brow. “You mean the Seventh Cormaer? And the whole war?”
“Aye. The same yin yer queen threw doon in flames at Dream Valley.”
“Princess. She’s our princess.” Daring thought of Celestia then and of the time she’d met her, which was still a top contender for one of the coolest things that had happened to Daring.
She knew some of the more martial legends around the princess — those were her favourite, even — and she’d seen the painting showing Celestia flying forth to kick haunch at the valley, but it was hard to imagine the tall, gentle, twinkly-eyed alicorn she’d met getting a warlike face on.
It was hard to imagine her throwing down someone in flames.
“Princess, beg pardon,” Gamfer said. “Point is, Ovarn and ither parts were first in the Seventh’s path. They bore the brunt before he tore on westwards.”
“Oh.” Daring eyed the towers and bow-toting guards, a little discomfited. This place seemed intact enough, it didn’t look like it had the scars of an invasion … but then, it had been decades and decades ago, and the sort of city that would build something like the Giant probably wouldn’t think much of fixing up whatever else might get destroyed. Walls, say. Towers. Harbours. Homes.
“Well, nae matter,” said Gamfer softly. “Some certain clans still try it on, but Glimrovoe trades wi’ them in peace. Some of my clan should be here tapping their claws for us to show up.”
Daring kept quiet and watched as the Please Stay Airborne bobbed on towards the aeroport. At one of the towers, teams of sheep were already patiently waiting at machines that would launch grappling irons to tow the airship in. As they drew closer, the teams acted on some unspoken signal from the leading ewe amongst them and sent the irons flying, where they snagged loops on the airship’s sides with a series of thrumps that trembled through the gondola.
“That’s our cue.” Dad pushed himself up, already looking quite a bit happier now that solid things were just a not-necessarily-lethal fall away. “Come on. Let’s lug our luggage down and find Gamfer’s friends.”
With some amount of faffing and heartfelt grumbling, they were able to negotiate their luggage through the narrow ship corridors and towards the main entryway, just at the tail-end of a large and extended sheep family leaving at a leisurely pace. The lambs seemed to have a game going which involved weaving between the adults and headbutting each other. The adults held their own conversations in quiet tones and occasionally leaned out in a patient, practised sort of way to clip the ear of any lamb who shot off-target with a headbutt.
Eventually, the flock moved out onto the sunlit stone of the tower and Daring relished the freshness of the air even as she shivered in it — the wild sea air blew in and made the city brisk even in the sunshine. Ahead of them, the crews and launchers had been replaced with a cordon of checkpoints and guards. At one open spot, a guard ewe waved them over, and the three headed to her. As they moved closer, Daring noticed her strange armour — layers and layers of folded linen, reinforced with metal sheets and flaps.
At her back, waiting behind, she could make out two other sheep keeping an eye on proceedings. Their wool was black, they wore steel barding instead of linen, and their heads were covered by grim-looking steel masks. Almost imperceptibly, those masks turned in Gamfer’s direction.
The guard before them held out a hoof for their tickets, and as Dad passed them over, Daring saw she kept a level eye on Gamfer too. After checking the tickets, she looked up and nodded. “Welcome to Rhovies, newcomers,” she said. “Respect the laws of the Tyranny and the Archonate, and conduct your business here in the peace we keep. What is that business?”
“Passing through here en-route tae home,” Gamfer replied. “Meeting corvids fae Clan Glimrovoe. Are any of oor ships in port, dae ye ken?”
The guard’s expression grew a shade less friendly as Gamfer spoke. She didn’t immediately answer, but instead stood still for a moment and closed her eyes, as if listening for something. Daring tried to listen as well, and looked from side to side, but nothing odd struck her before the guard opened her eyes. “Down and out the tower, left along the waterfront. A few minute’s walk.” She hoofed the tickets back to Dad. “Best you met them and leave as quickly as you came, newcomer. Leave our city in the peace you found it.”
“Glad tae.” Gamfer ushered them on as the guard stood aside and Dad and Daring rattled through with their cases. Daring cast a glance back at the guard and saw her give Gamfer a cold look before composing herself and turning to the next passenger.
Once the cases were heaved down the tower, Daring asked, “What was she doing there? When it looked like she was listening, sort of ...”
“Empathy, I think. The sort that’s a special sheep talent, like an earth pony’s rapport with the earth, or donkey cunning for mechanisms, or pegasi and corvids flying. Sheep can pick up on what beings feel, know when and where emotions are running high, even at a distance.” Dad glanced back up the stairs. “Not sure what she was listening out for, though.”
“Unease, I’ll bet.” Gamfer adjusted the strap of his satchel. “Come on. Let’s find my clan. Imagine the dismayed looks on their faces when they see I’m no deid.”
They set off the direction the guard had pointed, peeling away from the aeroport tower and out along the long, curving waterfront of the city’s inner harbour, their hooves and case wheels clicking over the white cobblestones. Dad brought his own hooves down on the stone with no small relish, looking entirely his old self again. To their right, the harbour’s turquoise waters shimmered with activity as sheep labourers loaded and unloaded crates, farmers heaved dripping bundles of kelp ashore, and gaggles of lambs played on empty slipways. From the latter, there came the odd splash and chorus of whoops as one fell in by accident or design.
“Would have asked one o’ the others to come with me,” Gamfer remarked, as they side-stepped a drenched lamb who clambered out the water onto the stone beside them, intent on avenging herself. “Gies me company and broadens their horizons, ye ken. Decided otherwise. Others can be wary enough of one corbie, ye saw. Two would have them reaching for their crossbows first and asking questions after.”
Daring wondered if she ought to argue that point — beings were surely nicer than that — but she remembered the guard, and wondered whether she hadn’t been holding back because Daring and Dad had been there. Plenty of the sheep on the street seemed to be giving them a wide berth as well, just like beings had in Asincittà’s aeroport as well.
“They like oor clan’s stone just fine, but I imagine they’d sooner do without the corbies that escort it here.” Gamfer craned his head and his eyes lit up. “And speaking o’ the deils, that’s a clan ship. This way!”
He quickened his pace, and Daring took off after him, enthusiasm filling her. She was dimly aware of Dad at her heels, but had eyes only for the parting shapes of docked ships lined along the curving wharf, craning her head to make out the clan’s ship, wherever it may be.
And then, past the shape of a weatherbeaten xebec, she saw the corvid ship. It wasn’t hard to pick it out from the line-up; the corvids flapping around it were something of a clue.
The long, low shape of it stood out as well, amidst the comparatively stouter and higher xebecs and steamboats. Its overlapping planks were black with some alchemical paint which glimmered gently under the sunshine, as if stars had been caught within. The prow and stern curved up high and proudly, perfect matches, with knots and curling patterns carved into the wood. At its centre, a tall mast rose to a furled expanse of dark blue sail.
A pair of dock cranes tottered over it like anxious storks, one slowly descending with its long, wrapped load of timber. Said descent was overseen by a pair of flapping magpies, with a third overhead providing cheerful moral support. On the deck below, four more corvids flapped and hopped hither and thither, seeing that the crane’s load descended smoothly, or belaying and rigging whatever on the ship needed belayed and rigged. They sported either tough tweed waistcoats like Gamfer’s, set over with useful hooks and pockets, or short oilcloth jackets that left their wings free.
Three of the four on the deck were magpies too, sporting Gamfer’s plumage pattern, but one stood out, a jay. Their own plumage was rust-red, and chased with blue and black streaks along his face and wings. As the three of them neared the ship, the jay turned, frowned at them for a second, and then flapped off the ship’s side towards them. “Gamfer. Ye’re back.” There wasn’t joy in his voice, or unfriendliness, or much of any inflection for that matter. His eyes were dark and impassive.
“Tsk, Airt. Tirla’s not let ye wander off unsupervised again, has she?” Gamfer nodded at Airt, and the other magpies in the sky or on the boat turned to caw their own greetings. “Still not deid, nae matter how ye might have prayed otherwise. And look, I even brought the cuddy.”
“So ye have.” Airt alighted on the ground before Dad and looked him over, still betraying nothing. Daring noticed that under his oilcoth jacket, he wore a coat of thin steel plates, like barding.
“Pleased to meet you,” Dad said, extending a forehoof. “Field Researcher Gallivant, of the Royal Archaeological Society in Canterlot.”
“Airt, lieutenant tae Chief Tirla. She wanted me tae get a look at ye when I met ye here.” As Airt shook Dad’s hoof, his gaze briefly flicked downwards, and he blinked as he properly noticed Daring for the first time. “... Ye’re a second cuddy.”
“Yep!” It was a fair observation; Daring didn’t contest it. “I’m Daring Do.”
“My daughter,” Dad said. Daring was aware of him drawing that little bit nearer her, though his tone remained mild and friendly.
Airt turned on Gamfer, his look cold. “Gie a bard an inch, he’ll take a mile. I understood ye were just getting one.”
“Did ye get a back-up cuddy, then, Gamfer?” one of the magpies on the deck called cheerfully. “Just in case the first breaks?”
“Wheesht, Glett, ye daft spyug,” replied Gamfer casually, not bothering to turn to face Glett. He kept his gaze on Airt. “Negotiations arose. I can house them both, nae trouble.”
Airt was quiet for a moment then, not saying a word, and Daring was aware of Gamfer tensing ever-so-slightly. Was Airt wondering whether to allow this or not? Would the chief’s lieutenant have that much clout, even over a bard? She looked past him to the ship and the other magpies there. Their attention lingered on her and Dad, and their looks were cool and level.
How welcome were they?
Daring felt she ought to speak up, to make a good impression of herself. “I like your ship! Does she have a name?”
Airt glanced down at Daring, his expression stonily neutral again. “The birlinn? Storm-Birlt’s her name.”
“A guid ship. A tough auld stone-hauler. And she can glide us back to Glimrovoe as well,” Gamfer said, interrupting. “Ye look aboot done here, Airt.”
“We’re aboot done. Just this last load left tae load.”
As he spoke, the last load of long, wrapped timbers finished their careful descent, and were plonked down to lie along the deck alongside a dozen or so other similar loads. The ship bobbed at the extra weight, but soon settled, and the magpies promptly set about securing them with ropes and belaying pins.
“Hop in, ye pair,” Gamfer said quickly. “Help weich their cases intae the ship, Airt. Cadge a gangplank for them.” Gamfer flapped up and over the birlinn’s side. “I’ll help get the canvas up. How’s that for reciprocity? Ye two can lend a hoof there as well.”
It didn’t take long before the Storm-Birlt was ready to cast off. All the timber was secured across the deck, hemmed in by other crates. At the stern, an expanse of sailcloth awning had been stretched over the bulwarks and an upraised pole set in the deck, forming a makeshift tent for whatever and whoever needed shelter. The sky had had enough time to grow overcast. An expanse of white, marbled with grey, had blown in from the west.
Airt circled round the birlinn, checking and double-checking everything, a ledger in one claw, and had a brief muttered conversation with a ram who seemed like the harbourmaster before flying back aboard. He settled himself by a tiller just behind the tent awning. “Bulder, cast us aff!” he called. “Glett, Skreevar, unfurl the sail and take us oot. We’ve a good wind. Take all advantage.”
One of the magpie crew cast off the ropes securing the birlinn to the wharf. Another pair took off into the air on either side just aft of the ship’s furled sail and quickly unfurled it to send the whole dark blue expanse of it rippling down. Daring stood on the open deck, watching them with naked curiosity.
Storm-Birlt groaned as the last of the ropes was cast off. As Airt pulled on the tiller, the two hovering magpies tilted in the air and flapped into the sail with easy, controlled motions. Daring felt the unmistakable thrum of weathercrafting in the air and her wings tingled. A wind picked up, sending her scarf flapping and making the sail bulge out. She felt the birlinn begin to move, curving round to the right as wind filled the sails and Airt plied the tiller, aiming for the mouth of the harbour. Aiming for the open sea.
“Two magpies at a time, driving her on,” Gamfer remarked, hopping up to her on the deck. “They’ll tak it in shifts. Airt will keep us on the right course. And as we’re travelling relatively light, we should all get tae Glimrovoe tomorrow eve. Ye alright back there, Gallivant?”
“More or less,” came the voice of Dad. Daring turned to see him leaning out of the awning, one of his hooves resting on the end of a piece of timber. “Travelling on water’s not quite as bad as through air. And if things go wrong, I’ve got this nice, solid piece of timber to be best friends with.”
“Should’ve kept one of the stones for ye.” As they spoke, they cleared the towers that framed the harbour mouth, sweeping past into a wild expanse of choppy grey. Daring shivered. Partly from the seachill and wind, and partly from anticipation. They were aimed right at an unseen horizon, lost amidst a veil of sea-mist. Civilisation was rapidly diminishing behind them.
Grey seas roiled under a grey sky. Frigid winds scythed down from pale grey clouds that straddled all horizons, and Storm-Birlt skimmed over the dark grey ocean.
Daring thrilled to the motion, to the kick of the birlinn falling and rising. She was tremendously pleased to find out she had natural sea-legs, and by the time the ship was out of sight of Rhovies and pitching and rocking on the open sea, she could stagger like a drunkard across its deck with absolute ease. The ship kicked up a cold salt mist that rolled in over the sides, and every time she got caught in it, she felt properly rugged and adventure-y. Never mind windswept, she felt outright seaswept.
She would have stood up on her hindlegs to try and lean out over the ship’s side, to really complete the impression. But Dad, despite being hunkered down under the awning and looking deeply distracted by his papers, could magically make censorious noises whenever she so much as thought about it. He and Gamfer must have been comparing notes.
Gamfer and the other corvids, whenever Daring checked on them, were either flying overhead to keep the ship moving at top speed or flapping around the deck, tending to the ropes. Airt stayed at the tiller, pulling at it with his claw every once in a while, his expression impassive and his gaze firmly on the horizon. Glett and Skreevar glided overhead on the same wind they coaxed forth to keep the birlinn skimming onwards.
Two other magpies — Bulder and As-yet-to-be-named — had settled in conversation with Gamfer at the prow of the ship, not giving the slightest damn about the spray that constantly pattered off their feathers. Next to them, just behind the prow on the port side, Daring noticed a curious wooden frame, almost like a stepladder with a wide groove running up it. A wooden chest sat underneath it, shut tight.
Eventually, after what didn’t feel like but must have been hours, there came a call from Airt. “Glett, doon. Raffle, ye’re up.”
Glett dipped his wings and flew down towards the deck, looking weary and cheerful, and despite his weariness, Daring envied the sheer ease and confident motions of his flight. Raffle broke from her chatter with Bulder to take Glett’s place in the sky.
Glett himself alighted on the deck between Daring and the awning, gave her an unabashedly curious look as he stepped past, and then transferred the look to Dad as he made his way to a tall jar near the back. Dad rose his head and returned the stare as Glett dipped his beak into the jar and took several nips of whatever was inside. They maintained eye-contact for several moments, Glett wide-eyed, Dad impassive.
Finally, Dad spoke first. “Yes?”
Glett swallowed whatever he’d just taken a beakful of. “Beg pardon,” he said, with no apparent shame at all. “I’ve never seen a cuddy before. Ye’re like a sheep, really, but less wooly.”
Dad slowly nodded, with the dubious air of a pony who wasn’t sure whether he was being pranked. “You could say so. My name’s Gallivant, by the—”
Glett glanced towards Daring, as if double-checking something, and then turned back to Dad. “How come she’s got wings and you dinnae? Are they under yer coat?”
“Born without them.” Dad was getting dubiouser by the microsecond.
“Ooch.” Glett winced, and gave Dad a sympathetic look. “Sorry tae hear that. That can’t be a fun affliction. Er. I’m sure ye’re very brave about it.”
“Glett,” Gamfer called from the prow, “this is why I cursed yer name under my breath whenever ye came for yer lessons as a fledgling, and why I’ll curse yer name for decades yet. Three types o’ cuddies. Doughty earth ponies, which he is; magic-wielding unicorns, which neither of them are; and weather-crafting pegasi, which she is. Like oor ain crows and ravens and us magpies, except only the pegasi are winged, and they dinnae have oor other tribes. Ye’ve been telt this. Often.”
“I have?” Glett considered this. “Aye, probably.” He looked back to Dad and squinted. “How come they beat us at the Valley, though, if maist of them didnae have wings?”
“Because the Seventh underestimated them, and overstretched whit he had,” Gamfer replied, “and Corva lost a generation that day by his wretched hubris and by the wrath of the cuddy queen.” He sighed. “Next time I tell the story tae the fledglings, listen in and refresh yerself. But gie the cuddies peace. Have a couple mair nips and then get some rest.”
“...Did they hae, like, a trillion archers on the ground, or …?”
“Aye. And magical shields and skyforts and allies and their queen. Nips. Rest.”
“How dae ye use a bow wi’ hooves?”
“Glett.”
“Whit tribe’s their queen? Her that melted the Seventh.”
“She’s all three rolled into one and made terrifying. Now would ye gies peace.”
Glett got the hint then. He turned back to the jar, took a couple more beakfuls, and then hopped over to winkle out several wooly blankets from under a sheet of oilcloth.
Gamfer hopped closer to Daring and Dad as Glett bedded down. “Beg pardon for that,” he said quietly. “There’s nary an ounce of harm in him. Just natural nosiness. Common trait in Glimrovoe, though I swear maist of them heeded their lessons when they were peedie.”
“It’s no problem,” Dad replied. “Should we expect a lot of that once we reach the clan?”
“Some. Though ye yerself’ll probably end up spending maist of yer time with Chief Tirla’s picked corbies. The hard heart o’ Glimrovoe. Mair the ‘speak softly and keep their feelings quiet’ types than the sort tae pester ye about where yer wings are.”
“Duly noted.” Dad nodded. “I’ve been meaning to ask, what does ‘peedie’ mean?”
“Wee.”
“Which itself means…?”
Gamfer clicked his tongue. “Small.” And that resolved all mysteries. “Mind ye, ye’ve been doing well. Ye’ve no had to ask me for too many translations. Just thank yer stars it wisnae some corbie from the Cairnlands or Brackensea who needed yer help. Or somecraw from one of the clans that stick by Auld Corvic. Even I couldnae help ye there. Had tae get young Skyare’s help tae even translate the runes on the Howe before I dared dig oot my ain phrasebooks.”
Daring remembered that name. “You mentioned him,” she interjected. “He’s one of the fledglings you teach, right?”
“Aye. I’ve been giving him special attention for a while noo, at Tirla’s request. Hoping he might take tae barding. Had him swotting up on stuff even I’m hopeless at, like Auld Corvic.” Gamfer paused then, and his voice emerged a little quieter. “Needs all the skills he can get his talons on, truth be told.”
“Huh?”
Gamfer shook his head. “Never ye mind. I’m sure ye’ll be pals.”
Daring nodded, since it wouldn’t have been polite to shrug, and turned her attention back to the sea.
As the day drew on, the sky got darker and more drizzly, and a sea-mist swallowed them up that shrank the horizon. Airt’s expression grew a little grimmer at that, but he stayed at the tiller. At one point, he called for Bulder to fly up and replace Skreevar, keeping the magpie rota going.
Skreevar alighted in the same spot as Glett, but she wasn’t much like him. Where Glett had been all amiable curiosity, Skreevar stopped only long to shake some rain off her rumpled coat and wings and stalked past Daring and Dad with only a cursory glance. One sip from the jar satisfied her, before she huddled in under the awning, drew out a little pack of playing cards from a waistcoat pocket and started playing some one-magpie game with them.
Daring watched her for a moment, and then started towards her — if Skreevar was shyer than Glett, then she could put the first hoof forward. Dad’s interposed hoof stopped her, though, and when she looked up at him, he shook his head.
“She’ll be tired,” he said softly. “And if she’d sooner not talk, that’s up to her. Don’t annoy her, Daring.”
Daring reluctantly heeded him. Skreevar glanced their way only briefly during the conversation. Dad returned to his own reading and Daring turned back towards the open deck.
“Gamfer,” Airt called. “Mind the tiller for a shift while I get some rest. Keep us pointed east-sou’-east, and lined up wi’ the—”
“I ken where hame is,” Gamfer replied, flapping over to the tiller. “Dinnae fret, and get some rest. I’ll keep us right. Nor’-nor’-west, aye?”
Airt didn’t dignify that with an answer as he hopped over to the blankets. Skreevar kept at her card game and Glett snored like a storm, undisturbed.
“Turn in as well whenever ye like, ye pair,” Gamfer called to Dad and Daring. “There’s blankets tae spare, and food tae keep ye going. Ye probably willnae want the haddies, but there’s oatcakes and kelp. I’ll no have ye starve before ye arrive.”
“Thank you, Gamfer,” Dad replied. Daring distractedly echoed him. She was already en-route to investigate what a haddie was.
She found her answer in the food crate, beside mounds of crumbly oatcakes and dried slices of kelp. Daring wrinkled her nose at a mound of dried fish, smelling strongly of both fish and smoke, tinted a dark shade of orange by whatever smoking process they’d underwent.
She knew some beings ate fish, of course—you got it in lots of pet food, since dogs and cats and alligators and suchlike had to have meat. Griffons ate it too, and Diamond Dogs as well, she’d read, though they ate underground creatures more often, and so too did corvids, apparently. But anything that had once been alive and with enough of a mind to want to hold onto said life wasn’t, by and large, considered proper food for ponies.
But it couldn’t hurt to try some, at least. Just to see what griffons and Dogs and corvids saw in it. Daring regarded a haddie and tried to be brave, even as her squeamishness kicked up a fuss. She gingerly opened her mouth, tried and failed to ignore the smell, and leaned in…
...and leaned back, and closed it again. Her squeamishness relaxed, victorious.
One adventure at a time.
“If ye’re no indulging, peedie cuddy,” came the surprisingly soft voice of Skreevar, startling Daring, “then pass a haddie over.”
Daring glanced Skreevar’s way, to where the magpie loomed patiently over her cards, and then turned back to the haddies. She leaned down to pick one up by the tail between her teeth, trying not to taste it or breath in, and presented it to Skreevar. A great beak dipped forward to take it almost delicately away from Daring and set it down by the magpie.
“Thank ye,” Skreevar said, and pecked out a chunk and swallowed it back. Compared to Gamfer, her motions seemed dainty. Daring watched her for a moment, relaxed, and turned to retrieve some of the oatcakes for herself and Dad.
“Thank you, poppet,” Dad said, when she plonked the oatcakes down by him, and then flopped herself down by his side. One of his hooves absently stole round to tousle her mane, and she made a token protest. “Tired?”
“Not tired,” she lied, suppressing a yawn. The deck did feel good to lie down on, all of a sudden. Outside, the clouds were getting darker, and the ship was rocking more and more. Behind her, she was aware of Skreevar fiddling around with something metallic. A gas lantern hissed to life and the space beneath the awning was filled with a yellow glow.
“It’s been a big day,” Dad said. “Big last couple of days. One more and then we’ll be in Glimrovoe. We’ve not seen any of Corva or their cairn and it’s already been an adventure, hasn’t it?”
The hiss of the gas-lantern mixed with the ceaseless roar of the sea and the sound produced was strangely lulling. Daring nodded, vaguely, and nestled in closer to Dad. “Mm-hm.”
“I could just ask Gamfer to turn the ship around. We’ll have enough fun by now, I bet.”
Daring still had just enough wakefulness to bap Dad’s side with a forehoof. “I’ll kick you again.”
Dad laughed and kissed the top of her head. “Consider me warned. Get some sleep, Daring.”
“D’n need sl’p,” she mumbled, her head slowly falling down to rest on her forelegs, her wings tucking in close. Who needed sleep? There was adventure ahead. She could all but taste it, like the salt on the breeze. Enough to fill her dreams with … with …
She wasn’t entirely sure. Tiredness caught up to her then, taking interest for all the excitement.
Daring slept like a log and her sleep was deep and dreamless.
“Phthhcpt,” she managed upon waking, stretching her forelegs out as she yawned herself conscious, her senses flickering to life and drawing in details, bit by bit.
There was a woolen blanket around her — Dad must have put it there. There was no more hissing gas-lantern, but the sea was pounding and the rain hammered off the awning like it had a grudge. She cracked an eye open, and past the lip of the awning, dark grey roiled in the skies.
Properly wild weather. It was a novel experience for any Equestrian and an exhilarating one for Daring. She kicked herself free of the blanket and staggered out onto the deck, obliged to spread her wings to try and steady even her good sea-legs. She saw Dad chatting with Gamfer and a couple of the magpies — Glett and Bulder.
“Good morning, Daring.” Dad turned to her with a smile as she trotted towards him, though he was distracted when the ship lurched over a particularly fighty patch of ocean. He staggered, eyes briefly wide, and took a moment to right himself.
Bulder, who was almost identical to Glett save for having a smirk as his resting expression rather than a cheerful grin, snickered. “Enjoy yer trip, cuddy?”
“Dinnae do comedy, Bulder,” Gamfer said. “Ye’ve neither the material nor the charisma.”
“Stuff yersel, bard,” Bulder replied without rancour. “Whit ye gaunny do? Satirise me?”
“Ye’re enough of a satire as-is.” Gamfer turned his attention to Daring. “Morning, Daring. I was just telling yer daddy that we’d made good progress overnight, better than we’d been expecting. That’ll be Airt’s jay’s luck making itself known. We’re drawing closer tae the clan, though this last leg’ll be a bumpy one.”
“We’re deep in corvid waters now, south of Corva proper,” Bulder said. “And whit that means, practically speaking, is that every bloody mainland clan wi’ nae mair use for a stormcloud punts it south, where it dosses around here.” He leaned closer to Dad with a wicked grin. “Brace yersel, cuddy. This is the roughest stretch.”
“At least it’s no kraken mating season,” Glett remarked cheerfully. “Seas arenae safe for any ships then.”
“Aye, well...”
“Tentacles everywhere.”
“Glett, I’m trying tae strike an ominous note, and ye’re scuppering it.”
“Sorry, Bulder,” Glett replied, not sounding remotely sorry.
“Bulder!” Airt barked from the tiller. “This is three-magpie weather. Head up!”
Bulder promptly did as he was told, but not before casting one last smirk in Dad’s direction. As Daring lifted her head to watch him join Skreevar and Raffle in the skies, her scarf was whipped up into her face by the soaking wind. Rain pattered on the decks and Dad huddled into his coat. Gamfer soaked it up as if it was sunshine, his feathers dripping and his expression carefree.
“Bracing stuff,” he remarked.
“That’s a word for it,” Dad muttered, staggering back towards the awning. Gamfer chuckled and made to follow him. Daring didn’t, not immediately. She wanted to stand on the deck for a moment and taste the sea-mist again. She must have had a good, long sleep there, and the birlinn’s deck was doing an excellent job of refreshing her yet further.
Her gaze turned towards the port side — north-ish, if her sense of their direction was right. Past the side of the ship, dark grey seas roiled, and vanished amidst mist and drizzle.
It stayed like that for a while, and even after she stole back to the awning to grab an oatcake for her breakfast and brush her teeth and suchlike, it remained obstinately grey and misty, with stormy clouds blustering overhead. At one point, Airt called for Glett to replace Skreevar, and that was all that changed.
And given enough time, even storms could lose their novelty. Daring headed back under the awning, her coat and mane and tail soaking, and slumped down next to Dad. He shuffled some of his papers away from her to avoid them sharing in the deluge.
“When I write all about this,” Daring muttered, “I’m going to make this bit more exciting. I’ll have us get attacked by pirates or something.”
“That would definitely get readers’ attention.” Dad nodded solemnly. “Will I dashingly fight them off?”
“Nope. I’ll fight them off. You’ll get kidnapped.”
“Perils of being a sidekick. I understand.” Dad looked doleful. “Will I at least get a snappy one-liner or two?”
“Nope. But the pirate-queen will get one, when she carries you off, and I’ll be too distracted fighting heroically to think of a comeback. But once I’ve tracked her down to her shipwreck lair to rescue you, then I’ll have thought of one. I’ve got this planned.”
“Quite right. No sense in rushing these things.” Dad looked around the ship. “What’ll the rest of our crew be doing, out of interest?”
“Cheering my name.”
“Excellent.” Dad closed his eyes and stretched his neck with a groan, and then smiled down at Daring. “Bored?”
“Kinda.” She drummed her forehooves on the timbers. “I just want to be there.”
Dad was sympathetic, but had his papers and notes to distract him, at least. Daring eventually decided to follow his example, and picked out one of her own books from her case. A Foal’s History soon found itself spread across the deck before her. She had the idea of looking up the chapter about the migration of the Founders — her own journey probably wasn’t quite so rough as what Hurricane and Pansy had gone through.
Daring got quite lost and swept through their chapters. She knew it all, of course, but re-reading it was still fun, like meeting a friend. She only got up once or twice to stretch her legs and look at what the magpies were doing, and found the weather still relentlessly dreich and blustery. The sky continued to darken as the day slipped by, and A Foal’s History slipped by with it.
She was just relishing the events that led to the brave and silly Monsoon deciding to settle the nightmare island of Saddle Arabia in the name of Equestria, when she heard a call from Airt. “Look for the light!”
She frowned and looked up, and saw that the sky before the ship had darkened further. Stormclouds shrouded the evening and gathered thickest about a bank they seemed to be sailing directly at. There came the distant groan of thunder, and the magpies overhead were staying close to the ship. But they didn’t seem wary. They seemed more … eager. Expectant.
Daring rose from the floor and headed onto the open deck, squinting as she tried to make out what they were looking for. Was it something in the bank of dark clouds ahead of them? What sort of light?
She peered into the darkness and thought she saw it an instant after there came a happy cry from Raffle. “Aye, there it is! Deid ahead.”
Daring could just about make out a distant yellow glimmer, a smudge of light making itself known past the clouds.
“Send up one of the greens, Gamfer,” Airt called. “We’re coming in past the clouds and all’s well.”
Something alighted on the deck just behind Daring and she was gently nudged aside by Gamfer as he hopped towards the prow. “Observe at a distance, Daring,” he said. “Only irresponsible adults get tae play wi’ rockets.”
That got her attention. Daring watched avidly as Gamfer made his way to the curious wooden frame and the sealed crate that sat near it. He leaned over the crate and heaved its heavy lid open and she peered to see what lay within. It looked like an array of cones, each about a foot long, made of what looked like thin wood twined together, with thin rope coming out the wide bottom of each. Some had a variety of colours painted on their tip — blue, green, red, white, all sorts. Others were tipped with steel.
Gamfer picked up one of the green ones and slotted it into the groove running up the length of the frame. He drew out his pipe, puffed once to get the little runes in the bowl flaming, and then touched the inside to the rope coming out from the cone. It caught fire immediately and burned upwards swiftly. Gamfer took a step back, just as the fire touched the cone’s base.
The green cone screamed up then, so fast that Daring could have blinked and missed it save for its plume of fire, and was lost the instant after among the dark clouds. Lost, that is, until the second it erupted. With a thrwump that Daring felt buffet her, even from that far up, a ball of green fire exploded to life in mid-air and briefly dazzled her. She blinked away white-green stars from her vision. It was like some magical firework, but with more punch.
She wanted to set off all the colours.
Gamfer didn’t obligingly set more off, though, nor did he step away from the prow. He leaned forwards, his eyes narrowed, as if waiting for something.
A moment or two later, that something came. From far off, there came the muffled scream of another rocket. And then, the instant after, an echoing thrwump and a little flash of green past the clouds.
Gamfer grinned. “And there’s oor escort arranged. Come forward, cuddies! Come see Glimrovoe from the sea.”
Daring hurried forward and she was aware of Dad rising and treading forwards as well. Past the prow, she couldn’t see anything, not yet. But her wings tingled and on them she could feel the thick bank of cloud before her thinning, thinning til they suddenly swept out the other side
And there was Glimrovoe.
The long silhouette of the island was dark against another storm-blue bank of clouds on its far side and which seemed to ring the whole of the island, mantled by a high expanse of golden evening sky. Daring thought it looked like a resting crocodile, several miles in length. To her left, its long snout rested above the water, with a high ridge shaping its brow and head, dipping back down, and then slowly rising and falling in a shallower, longer ridge across the island’s spine and tail.
She squinted to make out details as her eyes adjusted to the evening light. Its base was trimmed with red, as if the whole of it was propped up on sandstone cliffs. Atop one of these cliffs, just under the crocodile’s head, she could see the same yellow light flaming brightly for the ship to steer by. Patches of dark green and gold filled the land above the cliffs till it rose to the heights of the brow and spine, which flamed orange and purple in the evening light.
And through that evening light, she could make out dark specks flying in their direction. Corvids on the wing.
“Home’s always the best sight,” Gamfer said. “Brace yerselves. I suspect a traditional Glimrovoe welcome’s inbound.”
“Is that Gamfer? Has he got the cuddy?”
“He’s got two cuddies!”
“Haha, he’s got the cuddy, the auld loony only went and did it.”
“‘Auld loony?” Gamfer shot back, straining to be heard above the hubbub from all sides, port and starboard and fore and aft as well as up above. “Hellyiefer, I’ve pecked ye for cheek in the past, and I’ll cheerfully do it again!”
“Why’s one of them peedie?”
“Because they’re a chick or a fledgling or whatever peedie cuddies are called, ye complete gowk.”
“Any souvenirs? Tell us whit ye saw!”
“Never mind the cuddies. Ye still alive, Raffle? Ach, that’s a shame.”
Daring stared avidly in all directions, turning and twisting her head to try and keep track of things and failing. Dad stood by her, his gaze level, though he stood that little bit closer to Daring.
The birlinn was surrounded by a whirling flock of corvids, maybe a dozen or so, all chirping queries and exclamations at once, most gawking openly at the ponies on deck, some others cheerfully interfering with the business of the ship as they flew in to torment Glett and Bulder and the others. They alighted on top of the mast, some hopped onto the deck, some skimmed over the waves at the ship’s side.
They were a medley of different types as well, Daring saw. A couple were black-and-white magpies, and there was another brightly-coloured jay like Airt, but most of them were solidly black or just had the odd grey patch. Among them, though, there were different bills, different eyes, different body frames and wingspans. A few, heavy-billed and long-tailed ravens, seemed to have magic coursing around their outspread wings.
A couple were flying at a distance, though, keeping a quiet eye on the ship and its passengers and not saying a word. One of them, a raven, had notches on his beak, and when he turned to face the ship briefly mid-flight, Daring saw scars criss-crossing his face and torso.
“If any corbie’s not involved in bringing this ship intae port,” Airt snapped, from where he remained attached to the ship’s tiller, “they’re tae keep clear! Leave the crew be till we’ve docked and unloaded. Leave the cuddies be till the chief’s seen them. Bruck!”
The scarred raven turned to Airt, as the others reluctantly peeled away.
“Let Tirla ken we’re here, if she doesnae already, and what we’ve got.”
Bruck nodded once, flapped his wings, and with a flash of violet magic, teleported some distance away towards the island. He flew onwards, teleporting as he went, and was soon lost from sight, aiming for the crocodile’s increasingly-close head. Daring could make out thin plumes of smoke there, creeping up past the cliffs
“One o’ the hard heart, same as Airt,” Gamfer murmured to Daring and Dad. “Corbies that went gallowglassing under Tirla, back in the day. Won’t be too long till another generation does the same.”
“Gallowglassing?” Daring was still distracted by their honour-guard of corvids. The enthusiastic and noisy set still flew as close as they dared and openly scrutinised the ship. The quieter ones kept their distance and their thoughts to themselves.
“Mainland clans — and sometimes us islanders, being fair — cannae go a minute wi’oot finding something to fight their neighbours over. Every generation, a flock o’ the keenest young Glimrovoans’ll grab their gonnes, fly north across the sea, and offer their gonnery tae the highest bidders for a few seasons. And they’ll come hame with stories and treasure for the clan, scars aplenty, and a likely chief or two amongst them.”
A brief shadow fell over Gamfer’s face then. “Those that come hame, at least.”
He was quiet and lost in memory for a moment, but before Daring decided whether she ought to ask if he was alright, he bounced back. “Tirla proved herself out there. Came back tried and tested and hardened and a chief-in-waiting when her and her hard heart returned, twelve years back or so. Didnae have tae wait long, either, before auld Brandit retired.”
Daring considered this. Going travelling with your friends sounded fun, that couldn’t be denied. Roaming across the breadth and length of a land and meeting new folk and surviving all sorts of death-defying peril was practically archaeology, when you thought about it.
But they lost people too. Like in archaeology.
Bruck’s scars had been extensive, and if he’d lived through all that, he must have had to give out worse than scars. Be polite to the hard heart of Glimrovoe, whoever they were, was probably the lesson to be learned here. Be very polite to Tirla, chief amongst them.
“Is Tirla a magpie too?” Daring asked. Just so she’d be prepared for whoever they were about to meet. Her current picture of the chief was a bit like Gamfer, only bigger, femaler, more grizzled. Lady Charroan with a beak, essentially. Maybe with some spiky armour as well.
“A crow. Her and her son both.” Gamfer twirled his pipe stem in his beak. “A lot like yer ain earth cuddies. Nae weathercrafting or magic-wielding, like magpies or ravens, but they’re strong and hardy, and they ken a sky and its currents and eddies like the backs of their claws. Natural knack, ye ken. Ye’d have a rotten time trying to outfly one.”
Magpies were practically pegasi, ravens did magic, jays were lucky if what she’d heard about Airt was right, and crows were sort of like earth ponies, if you removed all the earth pony stuff and gave them wings and feathers and claws and plonked them in the sky. Emphasis on ‘sort of’. So far, so sensible.
Daring was about to look round to see if she could pick any of them out among the flock surrounding them when Gamfer spoke again. “Look up,” he said. “We’re passing by Guster’s Torch.”
Daring looked up. They were passing by a great sea-stack that towered out of the waters, layer upon layer of red sandstone rising hundreds of feet up. Atop it, there flamed the golden light she’d seen past the stormclouds, wreathing the stack’s entire peak.
“Any Glimrovoan sees Guster’s Torch from afar, they ken hame’s near,” Gamfer remarked. “Any corbie from any other clan kens they’re in oor waters and they’d best behave.”
“Speaking of other clans,” Airt said. He pulled on the tiller and the birlinn tacked starboard, coming round the sea-cliff. “Some lieutenant from Scarrach came round the day we left. They must have heard about the Howe opening.”
“From Scar—?” Gamfer shook his head, and spat over the ship’s side. “Scarrach and Chief Drumloch taking an interest. There’s a headache we dinnae need.”
“Tirla’ll be keeping the lieutenant at claw’s length, I’ve nae doubt,” Airt replied.
“What’s their name?”
“Called herself Cranreuch.”
“Havenae heard of her, but that’s no surprise.” Gamfer looked grim then. “Drumloch goes through his lieutenants fast. If she’s sensible, she’ll stay on Glimrovoe and not bother going back to Scarrach.”
“Beg pardon,” Dad interjected, his tone mild. Deliberately mild tones from Dad were a clear sign he was thinking hard about something, Daring knew. “Is this another clan that’s taken an interest in the Howe?”
“Aye. Scarrach, from the isle of the same name. Fellow islanders, technically, but practically mainlanders. Flock of gannets, wi’ a chief who fancies himself a peedie Cormaer.” Gamfer sighed. “Nothing for ye tae worry about, cuddy. Glimrovoe’s beyond his grasp, and we’re no easily bullied.”
Dad didn’t reply, but instead turned his gaze towards the prow, towards the island they were fast approaching. Daring did likewise, and saw that they’d left Guster’s Torch far behind, and they were sweeping round the lip of the red sea-cliffs that sheltered the island’s harbour.
This close to the island, she realised she couldn’t make out any trees, as if its landscape was just too wind-blown for them. In place of them, she could make out plenty of tall standing stones against the skyline, sprouting up singly or in companionable rings, as well as the shapes of windmills. What were the stones in aid of?
But before she could study the standing stones much more, she was distracted by the sight of Glimrovoe’s town, spread out atop the sea-cliffs.
The sea-cliffs here, in the little sheltered harbour nestled next to the crocodile’s head, were lower than those that ran around the rest of the isle, only twenty feet high or so. But that still wasn’t low enough, and great sections had been cut out from the front of them to make a lower tier for the harbour, to receive and hold and load the clan’s ships. A couple of other birlinns were already bobbing at rest in the harbour, moored against long piers of dark grey flagstone strewn with carts and little stone warehouses.
Past the harbour’s edge, the buildings rose, row upon row. They were set and snug within the hillside facing the sea, and all seemed to be made of the same dark flagstone as the piers, cut into neat rectangles secured together with some glittering cement and mottled with veins that ranged from pearly white to purplish black. Most of them were little homes with doors of painted wood and little porthole-like windows and chimneys that trickled grey smoke up into the sky.
Flagstone streets meandered between them, with long, wide slopes climbing up across the rows and thin gutters and channels running down towards the sea. Corvids didn’t do stairs, it seemed, not when they only needed their wings and to pull the occasional cart or wagon. A few greater buildings stood out here and there, running back and set into the slope to take up the space of several homes. Daring could hear clanking and grinding and machines working in some of them.
In pride of place, in the middle of the topmost row, stood a broad and tall stone building with a slate roof that curved gently to a high point. A pair of corvids were perched on its roof, and even from this distance, Daring could see the gleam of barding on their forms.
“The chief’s hall,” Gamfer said, seeing where Dad and Daring were looking. “Ye’ll need tae be presented tae her. Then, I swear, ye can sit doon and rest.”
There was a lot of clattering, a lot of sharp commands from Airt, an indecent amount of faffing, and a lot of time taken before the Storm-Birlt was finally brought in and secured to a pier.
Many corvids who hadn’t wanted to fly too far from their hearths to greet the returning birlinn found the harbour an acceptable distance to travel, and they were eager to helpfully get in the way and, incidentally, get a look at what the bard had dragged home. They crowded the pier alongside stacks of empty creels and coiled netting, the other birlinns bobbing at their back
“Kuil!” Gamfer called to one of the peanut gallery. “My favourite corbie! Be the very soul of helpfulness ye always are and lug the cuddies’ luggage to my home. Get the heating block working while ye’re at it.”
As they were led off the ship, Dad drew Daring close in to his side, one protective forehoof shielding her as they trotted. Daring would have protested, but Dad’s face was set, and … well, the sheer number of eyes glinting amidst the evening murk was a little overwhelming. The sky was filled with flapping wings, and the chatter that came from umpteen throats was all but indiscernible. It might have just been a couple of dozen who’d flown over to greet them, but it felt like hundreds.
“There’s Gamfer and his cuddies!”
“Why are there cuddies?”
“I thought the auld coot was joking, but naw, he went and did it!”
“Ugsome, neither ye nor Hellyiefer are too big for me tae peck respect intae!”
“Whit does the Howe need a cuddy for?”
“Here, there’s two. Och, she’s only peedie.”
“Clear a path, ye gawkers!” Airt snapped, muttering some postscript about bards and their bloody bright ideas under his breath. “The chief’s expecting them!”
They were led along the pier, up the slope towards the first row of homes, and further up into the town, with their peanut gallery of curious corvids throughout. Dad already seemed happier to have his hooves back on stone, though his gaze was set and quietly wary in the face of the crowd. Daring didn’t know what was happening to their cases, though Gamfer had flown off briefly to have a quiet word with a couple of corvids, and then flown back to accompany them.
Most around them flew, or alighted briefly on the rooftops or streets, but there were a few who stuck to the streets when pursuing the ponies. Daring saw a couple of grizzled-looking elders, whose wings dragged along the ground or were kept firmly tucked in — they kept their distance and scrutinised Dad and Daring in silence.
She saw a few chicks as well, ranging from little balls of grey fluff that toddled along at their parent’s claws and flapped as-yet-useless wings, to those nearer Daring’s size whose black feathers had mostly grown in but were still grey and fluffy around the edges. She made eye-contact with one of them briefly, and ventured a friendly smile. She got a wary look in return and then lost sight of them.
It was the same as before. For every corvid who flapped to the front to witness the novelty, there were plenty more who seemed to be keeping their distance and just observing, or who were keeping quiet well in the background.
Before long, though, it all passed. And Daring found herself before the chief’s hall, blinking and breathing deeply in the surprisingly fresh air. The wind blew all the smoke of the town out high over the sea, and the sheer press of corvids around had alleviated. Not by that much, but they had gotten a bit quieter too, which helped.
The two guards she’d seen earlier had flown down to either side of the front door. They wore oilcloth jackets, left undone at the front to reveal steel breastplates engraved all over with whorls of little magical runes, like important guardsponies might wear. Chainmail aventails covered their necks and were connected to helmets which covered their heads and ran over the top of their beaks. An extra inch of sharpened metal probably came in handy when pecking things their chief wanted pecked.
But that wasn’t their only weapon. Sharp steel sheaths covered their claws. And across their backs, there were slung things like big, long crossbows with the arms sheared away. Daring squinted at them for a long moment before realising what she was looking at. Gonnes. The strange black powder weapons that had hammered the Equestrian ranks at Dream Valley.
One of the guards, a magpie, scanned the crowd. The other, whose blue feathers suggested a jay, nodded at Gamfer. “Bard,” she said.
“Aitran,” he replied, nodding back. “Skuther,” as he nodded in turn at the magpie guard. “I’ve visitors for the chief.”
“They’re expected. Lead them in.” Aitran fixed the crowd with a look, which was somewhat obscured behind the eyeslits of her helm. “Closed hall tonight. If ye flock o’ spyugs could all gie the chief a peedie bit of peace to render the proper courtesies, that’d be decent of ye. I’m no optimistic, but that’d be decent.”
A cacophony of replies rang out — “We’ll be guid!” “Aye, but we’ll be heard! We’ve that right!” “But why cuddies?” “Dinnae take that high-and-mighty tone wi’ us, Aitran, I mind when ye were peedie and fluffy and cacking in yer nest...” — and as it did so, the door to the hall was opened, and Daring and Dad and Gamfer were all let inside.
“Airt’s sister,” Gamfer whispered as they entered the hall. “And Skreevar’s dad. Hard-hearters. But like wi’ me and my bardhood, a title gets ye so much respect and nae mair. We were all peedie bairns once.” As they ventured, the hubbub from outside diminished, corvids peering in past the open door and Aitran's interposing form, and Gamfer fell silent.
The chief’s hall sprawled before them. Before them, in the biggest section, there sat in the middle a circular stone block set all over with red-hot runes, over which a pot steamed. A ring of seats and widely-spaced tables radiated out from it, all the way to the hall’s stone walls, enough to sit dozens if not hundreds, and the rising rafters themselves looked sturdy enough to seat many more perching corvids.
Old tapestries lined the wall, along with paintings on canvas, battered-looking crossed gonnes and claw-sheaths, interspersed with glowing gems and alchemical globes which shone orange. One particular item stood out, enjoying metres of space to itself on all sides. An old steel breastplate, fitted for a corvid torso, with the stylised design of a black cockade embossed over its heart. A hole had been punched right through the middle of that cockade, as if from a lance.
Daring’s gaze travelled back to the ground and she realised there were corvids amidst some of the low tables. A couple more armoured guards. One lurking against a wall. They all turned to face the incomers, eyes glinting.
At the back, a platform rose a foot above the floor. A crow perched there and she glanced towards Dad and Daring.
“Come closer,” she said, her tone soft and even. As if she was used to not having to raise her voice to be heard. This had to be Chief Tirla.
They drew closer, and as they did, Daring took Tirla in.
She was quite different from what Daring had imagined. She was much younger than Gamfer, closer to Airt and the guards outside — maybe even a little younger than Dad. There wasn’t even a hint of spiky barding. She was unadorned, all her plain black feathers visible, save for a wooden ring around one claw. She wasn’t even that big, though she carried herself as if she was tall, with a cool and detached poise.
It was her eyes that betrayed who and what she was. Her right was dark brown. The left had deep scars on either side of the socket, and had been replaced with a faceted green stone. Some orange light danced and flickered within it.
Tirla’s dark eye studied them for a second before she spoke, her tone still even. “I understood ye were bringing back only one, Gamfer.”
“That’s whit I thought!” came an unheeded caw from outside. “Wheesht!” came Aitran’s equally unheeded response.
“The archaeologist agreed tae come only if his daughter could come as well, chief,” Gamfer replied. “I take responsibility for housing and feeding them both, as I agreed tae for the archaeologist alone.”
Tirla studied Gamfer for a moment, before turning back to Dad and Daring. “Tell me yer names, cuddies.”
“I’m Gallivant, Field Researcher for the Royal Archaeological Society in Canterlot. This is —”
“I’m Daring Do!” She’d spoken the instant between Dad introducing himself and beginning to introduce her, and the words seemed a little not-courteous out loud like that. Daring paused, and thought. “Er, Chief Tirla. Or just chief? Or Tirla?”
Daring belatedly stopped, and Tirla’s brown and green fixed her for a long moment — she seemed to be one of those beings who’d discovered the fun of keeping your conversational partner confused a half-second longer than necessary. But when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly gentle. “Ye’re not one of my clan, Daring Do, so you neednae call me chief. But if ye want tae be proper, call me Glimrovoe. I speak tae ye as that.”
Daring wrapped her head around that, and nodded. “Alright … Glimrovoe. Er, thanks.”
Tirla turned away from Daring and regarded Dad. “Gamfer’s explained why he brought ye here, I trust?”
“He’s told me about the Auld Howe. That you intend to delve into it. And that he advised bringing over somepony from the Royal Archeological Society to consult.”
“He telt ye right.” Tirla leaned forward, just an inch or so. “I wasnae keen to bring ye over, cuddy. Ye, or anyone else for that matter.” She glanced at Daring again and Daring tried not to fidget. “But my bard pleaded his case well, and now that I’ve got ye, I intend tae take full advantage. We’ve delayed the delve lang enough. We begin tomorrow.”
Dad nodded, his eyes lighting up at the prospect. “That’s no problem, Glimrovoe.”
“Guid. Rise early,” Tirla said. “We’ll have a lot to blether about come the morn. Till then, ye’ll bide wi’ Gamfer. I dinnae doubt ye’ll all want some rest after that journey.”
And that could have been that, had a new voice not snarled out at their backs, like a blade sweeping from a scabbard.
“Glimrovoe, on behalf of Scarrach, I object.”
Daring wheeled to see the form lurking by the wall unlurk. A heavy-billed and black-feathered raven rose to her full height and stepped forwards.
“Cranreuch of Scarrach,” said Tirla, calm and apparently unruffled, though her soft voice had acquired an edge, like a razor slipping out through a wad of cotton. “Ye’ve opinions on this endeavour, then.”
The raven’s powerful form loomed high, upright and proud, her dark eyes almost level with Tirla’s, even with Tirla on the raised floor. She was young, Daring guessed — there was a smooth sheen about her feathers and no wrinkles around her eyes, which was how corvid age seemed to show up. Maybe only a little older than the sprightly magpies of the ship crew.
Daring also eyed a plaid sash wound about Cranreuch’s torso, its tartan a dark purple shot through with black and white, secured at her shoulder with a heavy copper brooch. It was the first and only tartan Daring had actually seen on Glimrovoe, for all it was a corvid thing. Shouldn’t most of them wear it? Or did Glimrovoe do things differently?
“Scarrach has opinions, aye,” Cranreuch said. “Yer clan sits upon the heritage of all the isles. How can we no be interested?” She didn’t have the same accent as the Glimrovoans either. Where their words were soft and unhurried, hers were harder and quicker; though they both had a faint musical lilt, hers was fainter.
“Heritage of all the isles,” Tirla repeated flatly. “There’s a phrase ye’ve used at me before and I’ve yet tae grasp it. The Auld Howe was nothing tae Clan Scarrach, or tae Clan Starksay or Clan Farflung or Clan Wail or a’body else. No a single word raised regarding it in all my time as chief or during my predecessor’s, tae my knowledge. Yet it’s become a lynchpin of their heritage now. How odd.”
“It can’t not have, Glimrovoe. Now that it’s open.” Cranreuch’s tone lowered to become something almost soothing. “Nae clan that dwells in the isles now dwelt here in the times the Auld Howe was built, not after the Capric Empire scoured them. Glimrovoe may be older than most, but even it cannae claim to have been living here since the days the Howe was erected. Ye cannae claim continuity. Dae we not all have equal claim? Are we not all to see what the auld islanders laid doon for their descendants tae find?”
“No,” Tirla replied. “Not when we’re plainly keen on snooping oot another tool for Drumloch’s ambitions. Scarrach’s Chief can fancy himself the inevitable Eighth Cormaer all he pleases. Glimrovoe has nae interest in helping him live up tae these ambitions, nor in relinquishing that which we’ll sweat and work for falling intae his claws.”
Cranreuch clicked her tongue against the roof of her beak before replying. “Ye name Scarrach. Glimrovoe, ye appreciate that Scarrach alone isnae curious about the Howe? Every clan ye mentioned and ithers besides — Starksay, Farflung, Wail, Haggersound, Starnlicht — they all share the same keenness.”
“I’m sure every one of the peedie clans Drumloch has bullied intae vassalage find themselves wi’ nae alternative tae sharing his keenness,” Tirla said flatly. “We shan’t play along—”
“Whatever feud ye imagine ye have with Scarrach isnae shared, Glimrovoe,” Cranreuch interrupted, and there came hisses and indrawn breaths from the peanut gallery of Glimrovoans. “Chief Drumloch bears ye nae ill-will—”
“Ye will not interrupt me.”
Tirla’s snarl lashed out like a gonne-shot. She stood taller then, and Cranreuch reflexively hopped back.
Cranreuch opened her beak and then closed it, skewered under Tirla’s brown and green. “I beg pardon, Glimrovoe,” the raven said slowly, eventually. “My eagerness got the better of me. I merely report the opinion of my chief. He simply doesnae wish for the Howe’s treasures and secrets to fall outwith islander claws.” She cast a cold glance over to Dad and Daring. “And the involvement of cuddies before yer fellow islanders, before fellow corvids… it galls.”
“Then advise Scarrach tae reflect on why I might have come to prefer their presence tae his,” Tirla curtly replied. “Share yer last opinions and then haste ye oot this hall. Ye only get so much latitude in a day, Scarrach’s lieutenant.”
“Aye!” came the shout from some unseen Glimrovoan outside. “Shuffle off back tae Scarrach, ye gannet! Tell yer would-be-Cormaer that Glimrovoe invites him tae get right in the bloody sea.”
Though a few raucous shouts of approval echoed this advice, Tirla sent a cold look in the direction of the generous advice-bestower and he and all of his compatriots hushed.
“I’ve said my last this eve, Glimrovoe,” Cranreuch replied. “But dinnae doubt I’ll have words on behalf of my clan later.”
“That’s yer right as a clan envoy,” Tirla replied. “But for now, wheesht. Awa and seek yer bed. I’d see tae my ither guests.”
Cranreuch edged away back to the wall, and Daring found herself and Dad the focus of Tirla’s attention once again. From outside, the corvids of Glimrovoe were winding down their jeering.
Daring realised with surprise that another, smaller corvid had slunk out from a side-door at Tirla’s back. They were standing well back in the shadows, as if trying to see but not be seen. They were about Daring’s size and their wings were tucked in against their sides.
They looked like a fledgling. Was this Tirla’s chick, Skyare, like Gamfer had mentioned? She peered round Tirla to try and make him out and she caught glimpses of a crow’s solid black feathers, with a fledgling’s fluffiness around their edges.
When she peered at him, she got a return glance from sky-blue eyes. His gaze narrowed when they met Daring’s own and his expression was sullen and guarded.
Skyare — if it was him — shuffled back. When Daring looked closer, his right wing was held in tight against his body.
He caught her looking. His sullen look turned to an outright glare, and he turned pointedly, presenting only his left side. Daring blinked, bewildered and affronted, but before she could dwell on Skyare, the chief spoke again.
“Beg yer pardon for that, cuddies,” Tirla said suddenly, and Daring turned her attention back to the chief. The sharpness in her tone had vanished. “As we were discussing, ye’ll bide with Gamfer. Leave now and rest. The hospitality of Glimrovoe’s yours, and nae harm or offence’ll be offered ye while we remain yer host.”
Dad dropped a brief bow. “Thank you for your hospitality, Glimrovoe.”
There came a few snickers from outside, and Daring glanced suspiciously in their direction. When she couldn’t find the culprits, she turned back to Tirla, who looked faintly bemused. “Nae need tae bow. I’m no yer cuddy queen. And the hospitality’s nae great imposition. Two cuddies atop several hundred corbies is manageable. And I’ve delegated tae Gamfer in any case.”
Dad grinned, abashed. “Understood, Glimrovoe.”
“Ach, dinnae knuckle under that easily, cuddy!” some corvid crowed from outside to a backing chorus of chuckles. “Acclaim her as the Eighth! Whip oot yer spare crown and gie her a loan.”
“Less taking the pish oot the guest, Gablo,” Tirla said, raising her voice to be heard by the crowd outside. “No unless ye want him tae turn and take yer ain pish. Be warned. Gamfer advises he’s as near as the cuddies get tae bards.”
That was enough to make Gablo shut up and Tirla turned back to Dad. “Ye’ll have opportunity aplenty tae silence any mockers. We’ll keep ye busy tomorrow, cuddy.”
Dad’s abashed expression diminished in favour of an expectant smile. “I look forward to it, Glimrovoe.”
Tirla nodded and immediately turned from Dad to Daring. “Same rule of hospitality tae yerself, Daring. Unless yer daddy bids ye otherwise, roam the island as ye see fit and within reason. Keep in sight o’ the main settlement and any croft wi’ shelter tae offer. Nae interfering in anyone’s work. Dae ye understand?”
“Yes,” Daring ventured. She tried to sound understanding and cheerful, with some difficulty. Skyare’s hostility had left her piqued.
“Guid.” Tirla leaned back. “Gamfer, if ye’d see them sheltered and rested?”
“Aye. chief.” Gamfer nodded and stepped forward. “With yer leave?”
Tirla nodded, and with that, Gamfer turned and ushered them out again. “Come on, ye pair,” he said gently. “The heating block should be on if Kuil remembered, and it shallnae take a moment tae make up yer beds if ye’ve the need.”
They turned to leave, but there were a couple of corvids Daring tried to glance at before she trotted out for good. First among these was Skyare, but when she turned back in his direction, he’d already shuffled well back into the shadows. Unfriendly blue watched her go.
The second was Cranreuch. Daring expected she’d be watching them leave with even more unfriendliness than Skyare. Instead, she seemed to be deep in thought, her gaze somewhere far away. If she’d even known anypony was staring at her, she didn’t take it in, or at least betray it.
They left the hall behind and emerged back into the evening, where the diminished crowds of Glimrovoans still pressed thick. “Hah!” said one as the door shut behind them. “The look on that smirking spyug’s face when Tirla had at her. That’s her telt.”
“She shallnae take a telling,” another grumbled. “She’ll be bleating the same chorus at the chief tomorrow.”
“Gies a look at the cuddies,” insisted another, flapping over the heads of the others. “Och, they’re sheep practically, but less fluffy.”
“Why’s the big yin no got wings?” A corvid face loomed suddenly down at Daring, poking close and making her reflexively step back. “The peedie yin does.”
Daring liked meeting new and exciting folk, but there was such a thing as meeting them too close, and she wanted to shove them away. Dad whirled on them and seemed about ready to shove them back as well, but Gamfer got in there first before either of them. “Oot the road, Dagg!” Gamfer barked, and punctuated the command with a quick peck right to the side of the too-close corvid’s head. Dagg squawked and hopped back. “Where’s yer manners? Gie them peace and let them rest. Ye can gawk at them from a safe distance when there’s daylight. Off with ye!”
And though he had to repeat himself a few more times, they were all able to make their way to Gamfer’s eventually, give or take a little shoving. The flock gave them a little more room, and most of them began to peel away, their evening diversion over. Wings flapped as they took off back homewards.
Gamfer’s home was at the far left of the same tier as Tirla’s hall, and from a distance, it looked a lot like a big one-room schoolhouse, built from dark flagstone. When Daring pointed that out, Gamfer replied, “That’s whit it is. Whenever a chick or fledgling’s no helping their parents, suffering through their drills, or skiving, they’re kicked in my direction for a bit o’ education in the morning.” His eyes shone with undisguised pride. “And for my pains, there’s nae corbie fae Glimrovoe that’s passed under my door that doesnae ken their letters.”
He stooped to push on the door handle. No lock on it, Daring noticed, nor on any of the buildings she’d seen, for that matter. “Nae imparting my wisdom tae them for the next few days, though, the lucky things,” Gamfer continued, his voice muffled.
“Why? Is it a holiday?”
“Naw. Because I’ll be busy joining the delve.”
He struggled with the door for a moment, which seemed to have become stuck. Dad leaned in to help him and Daring turned for a moment to look at her back.
She could just about see over the roofs of the houses on the tier below, to where the pitch-black sea glimmered and churned under a sky that had properly darkened towards night. The Storm-Birlt and her sisters bobbed in the harbour. Constellations peeked out past patches of high-drifting clouds, briefly obscured by whatever corvids flew across the starscape. Guster’s Torch flamed yellow, casting a soft glow to just about see by.
The homes themselves had come alive with light too, as the sky had darkened. Little veins of quartz and crystal that ran through the flagstone had started to glow a soft and steady white, and when Daring leaned forward to inspect one, she saw little runes chiselled into the surface of one of the veins, their magic fuelling the light. Enough to make out the houses and pick your way through the streets.
With a sharp shove, Gamfer levered open the driftwood door to let them in. He hopped into the dark interior and pecked at a crystal set into the inside wall. Light spilled across the interior.
The great front room of it was the schoolroom with rows of long tables facing a wooden bar connecting two stone blocks — for Gamfer, she guessed, to perch atop and be heard and seen by all. The tables themselves were covered with scratches and nicks, as if from generations of little corvids hopping up onto them and scrabbling around. The end of each row sported a stack of slates and pencils and sponges.
In one corner, there sat a dark heating-block like the one in the hall, a cuboid of carved stone about Daring’s size. In another corner, a trapdoor sat slightly ajar. The porthole-like windows, set with thick glass, were all but submerged under bookshelves and stacks of scrolls and framed maps and pictures.
Daring frankly wouldn’t have minded being taught here — it seemed way cooler than her own school back in Canterlot, with its humdrum jotters and desks and blackboards. But maybe that was novelty talking. The corvid fledglings themselves possibly had their own opinions on the matter of how exciting their schoolhouse was.
A door behind the perch led through to the teacherage and Gamfer flapped over the desks to lever that open in turn. “Mind yer steps,” he said as Daring and Dad wound their way around the benches. “Ye wouldnae believe the sorts of things some of the fledglings leave lying around.”
“I’ve sometimes been drafted to help hector archaeology undergraduates,” Dad remarked. “I’ve been an archaeology undergraduate. I’d believe it.”
The teacherage itself only consisted of two rooms connected by a short corridor. One of them, the larger of the two, sported a low table and a glowing heating-block at its centre, as well as their luggage. A large nest lined with fleece blankets and well-padded with cushions sat in one corner, and stone shelves and cabinets ringed the walls. Various objects sat on these shelves or were mounted upon the walls — a stone basin, a bowl of rusty coins and miscellaneous gemstones, a faded swatch of sea-green tartan, and even, high on one wall, a battered-looking gonne.
Daring had only got a brief glimpse of the other room when they passed by it in the corridor, but it looked like a study, and its collection of books and papers rivalled the schoolroom’s. It was probably even more booky than their house, albeit more concentrated in a single space. A smaller nest and a low desk were half-hidden among its stacks.
“Kuil gets tae live,” Gamfer said approvingly, inspecting the main room. “Luggage delivered, block warming things up. I credit my good moral tutelage when he was young and impressionable. Hold on a moment and I’ll set up a second nest for yourself, Daring. Beg pardon if the beds arnae the shape ye’re used to.”
“Thanks!” she replied, mind elsewhere, distracted by the furnishings in the main room. The tartan looked like an old keepsake, the gems and coins like a personal stash — the stash he’d drawn upon to get passage to Canterlot? — and the gonne looked as though it’d been well-used once upon a time.
“Isn’t this your bed?” Dad said. “I wouldn’t want to dislodge you.”
“Ye’re dislodging nothing,” Gamfer replied, as he trundled out a rolling wooden platform from underneath the main nest. Its side rose high, making for a natural nest-shape. He made for a chest of drawers, and began pulling out an implausible number of spare blankets. “I fall asleep in my study maist nights anyway. Setting a second nest there’s the best and also most dangerous decision I ever made.”
“If you’re sure,” Dad replied. He was quiet for a moment before speaking further. “I’d like a chat tomorrow. About this Clan Scarrach.”
Gamfer nodded, even as he arranged blankets and pillows within the wooden nest. “As ye like,” he replied. “But for what it’s worth, what I said earlier I meant. They’re not worth restlessness.”
“All the same,” Dad replied, his tone flat.
Gamfer nodded and kept sorting out Daring’s nest. Daring’s nest. Now there was a fun notion. And soon enough, the fun reality of it took shape. Within the broad, shallow cup of the nest, blankets and pillows had been built up in a way that all but sang comfy. She trotted forwards to inspect it, and leaned over the side and pressed a hoof down into the layered wool. “Oh, this is cool.”
“High praise, I think.” Gamfer smiled and then yawned. “I shan’t keep ye both up, not unless there’s anything else ye need.”
“I don’t believe so,” said Dad. His cool flatness had been set aside for a moment. “Thank you for hosting us.”
“The pleasure’s mine, Gallivant. Glad tae have ye here as well, Daring.” Gamfer turned to her, a mischievous light returned to his eyes. “Mind, nae sneaking a light intae bed and reading a book under the covers well intae the morn. Ye seem like the type.”
“...I would never,” Daring said with a carefully-straight face, exactly the type.
“Dinnae fib tae yer host’s face.” Gamfer turned to head out. “Porridge in the morning, and also Howe-delving. Chamberpot’s over there should ye need it. Sleep tight, ye pair. The day ahead’s a busy yin.”
And with that, he left, leaving Daring and Dad alone. Dad groaned and shrugged off his coat as he trotted forward to kick open his case.
Daring looked around, at the floor under her hooves, at the stone walls on all sides and the strange ornaments they sported, and listened to the distant lapping of the sea. “We’re here,” she said, with some disbelief, and then repeated it with even more delight. “We’re here.”
“That we are.” Dad sounded mixed parts pleased and thoughtful, even as he lugged his barding out of his case, section by section. “Heck of a journey, wasn’t it?”
“The heckiest,” Daring concurred, though she studied Dad for a moment. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, poppet,” he replied, wrestling out his criniere. “Still recovering a little from all the air-travel and trying not to dwell on the fact I’ll have to do it all again when going back. And, well ...” He sighed. “I suppose Gamfer did mention other clans were interested in the Howe’s contents, but I’d never pressed him as to what sort of interest. I’ll ask him all about Scarrach tomorrow. If you want to go exploring tomorrow, Daring, I’d stay clear of that Cranreuch if you see her.”
“Already planning on it,” Daring replied. The big, unfriendly warrior-raven had made her opinion of the visiting ponies really clear. Daring could endure without Cranreuch’s company. She had other things to do.
She wanted to meet some of the other corvids, other than Gamfer and the working sailors. She wanted to find out what they had in some of the big buildings along the waterfront. She wanted to climb to the highest hill on that ridge that made up the crocodile’s brow and see the whole island and the sea around for miles. She wanted to trot along the sea-cliffs with a salt-edged gale blowing and get a properly windswept look as befitting the great adventurers. She wanted to see a gonne being fired, if that could be arranged. And she wouldn’t say no to a peek inside the Auld Howe either, if the chance arose.
As for making friends, as she’s been advised … she might make the effort. But not Skyare, though, even if Gamfer had pressed for it. She didn’t know why he’d glared at her, and that had stung, just a little. Well, he could glower all by himself if he wanted. She had better things to do than be an accessory to it.
She mulled over all these plans as she brushed her teeth and got ready for bed — or nest, rather. Dad did likewise, though he was already reading and re-reading his notes even as he prepared for bed, and took them with him into the nest. Daring was just about ready to copy his example and sneak a book from amongst those she’d brought, till Gamfer’s request pricked at her conscience.
She could try the bookless approach for one night, she supposed. And as she clambered over the nest’s high walls with no small amount of effort, she did feel her eyelids getting heavier.
“Good night, poppet,” Dad said, from somewhere past his nest’s high walls. “Don’t suffer any nonsense from bedbugs. Bite back.”
“G’night,” Daring murmured back. One of her hooves, without much volition, stole over to tuck a wool blanket over herself. On the other side of thick stone walls, past the murmur of the strange town, the sea lapped against harbour walls.
She’d explore places tomorrow, Daring thought to herself as the sound lulled her closer and closer to unconsciousness. She rolled onto her side in the nest. She’d climb to the top of that high ridge, and see a gonne fired, and make friends, and …
After the last couple of days, Daring expected to find the world rocking under her whenever she slept, whether that world was an airship or a birlinn deck. Things were strangely steady.
She struggled into something approaching consciousness, and found herself blinking up at a stone ceiling, past jutting wooden walls lined with cushions and blankets. She remembered where she was.
Past the sides of her nest, she could hear voices. Dad and Gamfer. Something else made thick, bubbling noises.
“—their Scar spits up fire fae the earth’s heart. If ye believe the tall tales, ye can fly in and, if ye somehow dinnae melt, find Diamond Dugs wi’ pelts of pure charcoal and eyes o’ rubies. Their clan’s never lacked for black powder and never lacked for rich farmland. Means they’ve always been trading with a’body, what with being tucked in closer tae the mainland. Means they’ve always been plentiful and prosperous. Means they’ve always swaggered, and often pecked aff mair than they can swallow.”
Daring blearily did battle with an entangling blanket as Dad replied, “And this Drumloch’s doing the same, you say?”
“Aye. The latest in a line of Scarrach chiefs who fancy themselves a kingdom o’ the isles. Greedier and luckier than maist, and many o’ the peedie clans have already knuckled under tae him. Anything for an easy life. But not Glimrovoe.” Gamfer’s voice rose with pride. “Never Glimrovoe.”
“Never Glimrovoe?”
“We’ve never knuckled under tae any other clan. Even when corbies o’ Glimrovoe flew as part of the Cormaers’ warflocks, they were slow tae join, and did so only on their own terms rather than letting themselves be meekly summoned. We’re too remote tae be bullied easily and thrawn enough tae make any attacker’s life a misery if they tried. And gey few have ever tried. Even Scarrach.”
Dad didn’t reply and an awkward pause followed. Daring continued fighting the blanket, which had just about given up. Gamfer spoke next, his voice soft. “If ye’d prefer that I’d dwelled mair on Clan Scarrach as a risk, then I’m truly sorry I didnae. But I swear that I dinnae rate them as a real threat tae the delve.”
“And you’re sure Scarrach won’t try anything stupid? You don’t think Cranreuch will try anything if we find something in the Howe?”
“They won’t, unless they want tae break themselves aff the hard heart and any storms and rockets we flung their way. I doubt Cranreuch will either. Even if she stole whitever we found and flew like her tailfeathers were on fire, it’s too far tae fly unassisted from here back tae Scarrach. We’d pursue her and take her on the wing.”
And on that note, Daring finally kicked the vanquished blanket free and tottered up to look out over her nest’s sides.
Sunlight spilled in through the porthole-windows, lighting up the room. Gamfer hovered over the heating-block, its top sporting both a large pot steaming away as well as a thin slab of sandstone, atop which two bannocks were toasting. Dad stood to one side in the act of pulling on his barding.
Daring’s yawn made her jaw creak, but she was able to get a word out eventually. “Morning!”
“Morning poppet.” Dad looked up from an uncooperative flanchard. “Sleep well?”
“Yep.” Daring blinked round at the room, at the furnishings, at the sunlight spilling in from outside, and at the old bard giving her a cheerful nod. “We’re actually in Corva.”
“Struggling tae believe it myself,” Gamfer replied. “Come on. Get a bannock. Porridge as well if ye want it.”
Daring half-flapped, half-shambled her way clear of the nest, still groggy, and accepted a bannock on a platter and a little pot of blackberry jam that was pushed in her direction. She ate, as did Dad, who alternated bites with strapping on the last sections of his barding.
“Sure ye’ll need all that?” Gamfer asked over a bowl of salted porridge. “It must be deid heavy.”
“Not especially. It’s fitted stuff, so it’s nicely distributed.” Dad, with practised dexterity, managed to finish strapping on his croupiere. “Besides, better to work up a needless sweat than get needlessly punctured by anything.”
“Words of adventurer-archaeological wisdom, I take it?”
“The wisest.”
Sensible enough, but Daring felt she‘d never need barding. She could just fly out the way of any danger rather than be weighed down. So long as she kept an eye out to know the danger was coming, of course. And once she learned to fly with any degree of grace. She flexed one wing. That’d be something else she would try while she was here. She’d watch the corvids and pick up tips. Maybe practise flying with some of the fledglings she’d inevitably ingratiate herself with.
She ate, and plotted, and continued plotting even as she finished eating and brushed her teeth. Gamfer fiddled with the heating-block and set aside the pot of porridge, while Dad finished pulling on his justaucorps till it was snug over the barding.
And shortly after that, someone rapped on a window. “Delve team’s assembling,” some corvid called from the other side. “Dinnae be fashionably late.”
“Never any fun allowed in this clan.” Gamfer theatrically sighed and moved to his door. “I’ll fly on ahead and sort a thing or two with Tirla. Ye mind where tae find the chief’s hall, Gallivant?”
“Walk outside, turn right. I can find my way down a street, sometimes. On occasion.”
“I’ve faith in ye.” Gamfer departed and from the other side of the door they heard him briefly blethering with the messenger before receding.
Dad donned his tricorn and looked down at Daring. “Will you be alright by yourself for the day?”
Daring grinned fiercely and flapped her wings. “More than alright.”
“You’ll stay safe and not annoy anyone who’s working?”
“I will. And won’t. In that order.”
“And you’ll make friends?”
“Millions.”
“And you won’t slip ahead of me into the site and provoke any age-old guardians therein?”
“I—that happened once.”
“And what a stick-in-the-memory sort of once it was.” Dad tousled her mane, and Daring feigned the usual protest. “If we can get anywhere in the Howe cleared and secured by day’s end, I’ll see if I can take you along to have a look inside.”
And Daring wouldn’t turn her nose up at any old ruin, even if she didn’t get to risk her life in it quite yet. She had learned. “Sounds great!”
And with that, Dad departed as well with a backwards smile. “Spread your wings, poppet.”
Daring trailed behind him by a couple of feet, just to see him off, and stopped at the front door of the schoolhouse as he emerged outside. It was a crisp, cold morning crowned with a clear blue sky, and when Daring looked out over the roofs of Glimrovoe’s homes, running down towards the harbour and the sea, she saw the blue arrested only by the distant grey of the clouds that encircled Glimrovoe — the clan’s weather, banked up in a great ring around the isle.
Corvids flew hither and thither. Down by the docked birlinns, she saw several fussing over the Storm-Birlt, flapping around and inspecting it from all angles, while others heaved along carved blocks of stone on rollers and ropes towards the warehouses by the piers. Distant caws and calls filled the air and from the great buildings that hugged the shorelines, she heard the clanks and grinding of machines at work. Corvids flitted in and out of their high windows.
Daring looked right, in the direction Dad was heading, where she saw Gamfer and a dozen or so corvids outside Tirla’s hall. They waited on the ground and perched on its roof, resting on any surface available as they quietly blethered amongst themselves. They all seemed to have the cool bearing and marked features of the clan’s hard heart, and most bore gonnes across their backs.
Bundles lay on the ground around them; ropes, steel tools, glowing crystals set in lantern frames, paper and ink pots, wooden poles and struts.
They turned to Dad as he approached, and Daring struggled to make out the low thrum of conversation that sparked up then. “...waiting for the chief...” she caught, and little else. She sidled closer.
As she did, Tirla emerged from the front door of her hall, Airt by her side. Tirla briefly scrutinised the delving party before turning to the aloof jay.
“We’ll waste nae time,” Daring heard her say. “While I’m below, I want ye keeping an eye on things topside. Call us out if Cirein-cròin rises from the sea or Scarrach invades or anything of that magnitude, I’ll want tae be informed. Otherwise, I trust ye tae handle it.”
Airt nodded. “Aye, chief. I’ll make sure things dinnae go entirely tae pot while you’re below.”
“Mind and actually keep an eye on the clan some of the time, Airt,” said one of the team, a lean rook. “Dinnae spend all that time sneaking off tae preen Kuil.” This got a few snickers and caws of helpful advice from the others.
Airt rolled his eyes in answer. “Jealousy disnae become ye, Uncan.”
Dad forebore passing comment, though his gaze travelled in the direction of Daring, and caught sight of her at the same moment she realised she’d been seen. He mouthed something that might have been, ‘Lady Charroan’s a dreadful example to follow’. Fairly caught, Daring turned aside.
What else was there to see? Daring turned and looked up past the gap between the schoolhouse and the neighbouring home. Beyond, a patchwork of yellow fields ran up into heather-covered slopes, rising and growing craggier all the way up to the sheer ridge that made Glimrovoe’s spine. Several standing stones rose from the heather, and as Daring watched, a pair of corvids flew by, alighted on one, seemed to check it and its neighbours for a moment, and then flew on. What were they doing?
“Heroines,” Daring murmured to herself, a suitably heroic smirk coming to her features, “find out.”
And while she was at it, she’d fly right to the highest point of the island, high enough to see it all and the sea around for miles, right to the edge of the ring of clouds and maybe beyond. Then she’d properly have her bearings, and be able to plan everything she’d visit in the days to come.
She’d make a map, Daring decided. Maps were vital.
Daring rushed back inside Gamfer’s quarters, and rooted around in her and Dad’s luggage till she found the lucky compasses, a spare pad of paper, a pencil, and a saddlebag to throw everything into.
And last and most importantly, the hat. The hat. It was still a little too big for her, but forcibly pushing it down around her mane and ears did the trick most of the time. It’d finally get a chance to experience Corva.
Would she need anything else? Her jacket? Her scarf? No. It was a hardy sort of land. It may be brisk outside, but so what? She’d be hardy too.
Daring pulled on her saddlebags and donned the hat, and crammed it on till she was sure it’d stay donned. And then, satisfied, she headed back outside, her peripheral vision only slightly obscured.
As she emerged, Dad and the corvids of the delving party were heading off. Dad trotted on the ground with Tirla herself by his side, the pair slightly ahead of most of the party, who flew around and over him and chattered amongst themselves. They were far too distant now for Daring to make out what they were saying.
They made for the Howe, awaiting at the isle’s head, and so Daring turned in the other direction where the spine of the isle clipped low-lying clouds. She took a deep breath and then took flight.
Daring flapped vaguely skywards with great effort, wobbling as she vied with the wild air currents that seemed to think they had a right to the sky as well. The town’s roofs gradually fell below her. She gritted her teeth as she tried to force both her wings and the air to behave themselves, and re-steadied her hat as she flew on, past the edge of the town and out over the isle proper.
Below her, a patchwork of gold blanketed the rolling lowland between the town and the high ridges, barley and oat stalks shivering in the gust. Distant corvids flew over the fields with some ushering little rainclouds. Here and there, dark stone structures rose above the surface of the stalks, crofts and barns where they presumably kept their tools and stored the harvest till it could be hauled over to one of the windmills.
They didn’t have earth ponies, she remembered, who could practically coax a harvest from stones if they bent their magic to it. The corvids of Glimrovoe had to make their land work, every inch of it that could be spared and the seas around as well. Suppose the land let them down one time, or there was a blight, or …
...well, they’d struggle. They’d have to be vigilant, all the time.
Past the fields, running on for a few hundred metres yet, the land began to climb into a snarl of heather and craggy rock. Daring examined it as she flew onwards, at the dark, towering shapes that soared up from the rolling land.
They were the standing stones she’d glimpsed the day before. Some sprouted up in wide circles, like fairy-rings of mushrooms, while others rose by themselves, aloof from the rings. Some were so low they barely rose above the heather, while others soared over six metres high. They were all the same flagstone that Glimrovoe’s buildings were built from, dark and lustrous and sparkling in the sunlight.
And as Daring flew closer, skimming over the fields and passing over the heather, she saw a couple of crows hovering over one of the stand-alones, one bearing a tape measure and the other a bundle of red ribbons.
“Aye, ready as it’ll ever be. Cannae imagine it’ll grow much mair,” the crow with the tape measure called to the other with the ribbon. “Mark it.” His partner tied the ribbon around the top of the stone. Daring flapped closer, curious, and they glanced her way.
“What are you doing with the stone?” she asked.
“Just marking it for collection and processing,” the ribbon-bearer replied. “Ye must be one of Gamfer’ cuddies, aye? We’ll chat anon, peedie wan. These stones arnae gonnae mark themselves.”
They both took off before she could get a word in, making for a ring sprouting from the next ridge over. Daring stared after them for a second (“I’ve heard they’ve got stones in foreign parts which really are smart enough tae mark themselves,” said the measurer, distantly. “Ye’re thinking of golems, ye daft spyug,” replied the ribbon-bearer.) before she turned back to the standing stones and mulled over what they’d mentioned.
“Oh,” she said, realising. “Rock farms. Right. That makes sense.”
Ponies back home grew gemstones on their own rock farms, where they carefully nurtured and enchanted the ground and grew bumper crops of everything shiny the arcane industries and jewellers could ever need. If Glimrovoe had figured out how to do the same but for big chunks of building stone, that all seemed fair and sensible.
She flapped in an ungainly way over the marked stone, tried to land neatly on top of it, failed, and scrabbled at it with her legs until the general effect had been achieved. She spread her wings to keep her balance, her pinions fluttering in the gust, and looked up.
The land rose for a little while yet, pock-marked with more stones and circles, growing steeper and steeper till sheer grey cliff-faces broke up from it and soared to a towering ridge, the highest on Glimrovoe. Daring looked up, peering up from under the brim of her hat, till she risked falling over backwards. If she listened closely, she could hear the skirl of the winds around the peak, flying in from the open sea.
The same heroic smirk returned to Daring’s features.
“Our heroine,” she said to herself and for the hypothetical audience of agog page-turners, “resolved to conquer the perilous peak or perish piteously in the attempt.” She was proud of getting ‘piteously’ in there, it was a good word, it ought to be used more often. She spread her wings and caught a little updraft from a breeze to carry her, which helpfully carried her off the wrong way.
“Aargh, no, peeving, tabula rasaargh.” Daring heaped these and other blandishments on the breeze before she was able to settle into a steady rhythm with her wingbeats. “At its top, there was a lair of … of ice-wyrms? An evil sorceress and her trained mantaghasts?”
She soared onwards, up past one of the little cliff-faces that climbed up towards the sheer ridge. At the top of that face, a few feet in from the edge, a smaller stone rose, as if standing vigil over the landscape below. Daring swept up past the lip of the cliff and alighted on the standing stone’s top. She took stock, came to a decision as she did so, and shook her head. “No,” she muttered. “No, stranded sun-bears who’d forgotten to leave with the dusk, and who needed to be led—”
But before she could elaborate on her theme much more, a call rang out from the ground.
“Here! Here, cuddy!”
Daring glanced down and saw three corvids near the base of the stone, peering up at her, seemingly surprised by her appearance with their intent looks. They were fledglings, around her age and size, their feathers still touched with downy grey fluff. One of them had the white markings of a magpie. The other two might be … were they crows? Maybe rooks, or jackdaws? Those tribes had been mentioned in passing in one of her books, though she couldn’t remember precisely what they looked like or what they did, nor had Gamfer mentioned it.
She flew down to greet them and alighted on the ground in only a slightly meteoric way. As she recovered, the fledgling at the front regarded her with bright eyes. Their expression was hard to read.
“Hello!” Daring panted, her bearing regathered, and she extended a forehoof. “I’m Daring Do.”
Their leader, the magpie, didn’t take her hoof with their own claw, but studied Daring for a moment longer before speaking. “Flannan,” she said, a faint smirk appearing on her features, and gestured with one wing to the crow on Daring’s right, who began shuffling clockwise. “Rashan. And Roostan.” This to the one on Daring’s left, who began their own slow counter-clockwise shuffle. “We heard the bard was planning on bringing cuddies here.”
The hairs on Daring’s back prickled slightly, and her eyes flitted between Rashan and Roostan and to the distant peak, which was where she’d only wanted to go when setting out. She was suddenly wary … but maybe the three corvids were wary too. “That’s me. Or, well, I’m one of them.”
Flannan kept up the same smirk. “Aye, we’d gathered.”
“Whit does the clan need cuddies for?” Roostan said suddenly. “It’s oor Howe.”
“Wheesht,” hissed Flannan. “I’m eldest. Ye dinnae speak till I say.”
“Ha, aye, first tae hatch in the clutch,” said Rashan, who kept shuffling clockwise round Daring, and she had to crane her head to see him when he was just about at her wing. “A whole half-minute. Like that means anything.”
“Wheesht, I said!”
Daring hesitated for a moment. Just a moment. “I like your island!” she ventured. “I’ve never been anywhere like it back home, in Equestria—”
Flannan’s eyes narrowed. “Equestria,” she repeated.
“...Yeah,” Daring said, after a pause. “Equestria. Have you ever—?”
“Our dad said Equestria’s an evil place,” Roostan cheerfully blurted out, and Daring had to spin on the spot to keep track of the speakers. “Yer queen turned the Seventh tae ash, he says, and a hunnert-thousand other corbies wi’ him.” His eyes lit up. “And that armour in the chief's hall’s auld Chief Bride’s from when he took the black cockade and fought at the Valley. Got cut tae collops by the cuddies, alang wi’ nearly every Glimrovoan that followed him.”
“Collops?” Flustered, Daring kept turning on the spot to face Roostan. “What’s a collop? What do you mean ‘evil’? We’re not — ow!”
Something had jabbed into the base of her right wing then with a sudden sting of pain, and she whirled back the other way, to where she saw Rashan with one of her down-feathers in his beak. “Hey! Did you —”
Rashan spat the feather out. “They are real.” His smirk was nastiest of all. “Could have fooled us, the way ye were flying.”
And that clicked things into place for Daring.
She’d had this at school, a little bit and a little while ago, before Dad and her teachers had gotten involved. Red-hot anger and humiliation simmered up in her, and her hide and feathers fluffed with fury. “Leave me alone!”
“‘Leave me alane’,” Flannan sang. “Thought ye cuddies were meant tae be terrible and ferocious.”
“Dad’s told us stories the bard hasnae,” Roostan said. “About the sorts of things yer queen did tae oor Cormaer and the corbies that followed him. Got burned tae ash in Equestria, didn’t they? Well, now ye’re in Corva.”
“The cheek of it,” Rashan said mockingly. “A cuddy thinking they’ve any right tae the skies here.”
“But dinnae fret. We’ll leave ye alane. Soon as we’re bored.” Flannan jabbed her beak out at Daring’s face, and Daring flinched back reflexively, only for something else to jab into the base of her left wing. She spun two-thirds of a circle again, goaded from all sides, and Roostan met her gaze, another feather in his beak.
A red-black haze pounded in her head and a painful lump had suddenly taken up residence in her throat, and she found herself torn. Fillies faced with bullies ought to fly away or gallop off (and she’d have to gallop, these three could probably fly better than her). They ought to find a teacher who’d supposedly solve it, eventually. But heroines stood their ground.
“Leave the cuddy be!”
The scratchy caw came from a short distance away, and Daring glanced its way. She saw another fledgling hopping in an ungainly way through the heather as fast as he could, his left wing flapping free to keep him steady and a hemp satchel wobbling on his back. Livid blue eyes flared at Flannan, Roostan, and Rashan.
Skyare. Daring was surprised as she recognised him. Why was he here? Had he been keeping an eye on her all this time? Why was he getting involved if he’d seemed so unfriendly? But whatever the reasons, she was briefly delighted that he was doing it. She bet Chief Tirla’s son would be able to send these bullies packing—
“Aw,” crowed Roostan, “Skyare fancies the cuddy.”
“She’s a guest o’ the bard!” Skyare sprackled free of the thickest heather and into the clearer patch around the stone, panting and glaring at the three. “Call this Glimrovoe hospitality? Ye’re shaming the clan!”
Rashan laughed then, harsh and derisive. “We’re shaming the clan? Look in a mirror, ye clip. Ye wouldnae ken Glimrovoe if ye plummeted ontae it.”
Skyare hissed, the feathers around his hackles fluffing. “Ye come closer and say that, ye —”
But before he could finish the sentence, Rashan flew at him, springing into the air in one smooth motion and flapping down at Skyare in a flurry of claws and flapping wings and jabbing beaks. Skyare tumbled back with a squawk, Rashan atop him, and Daring didn’t need any more urge to act than that. She lunged at them, hell-bent on pulling Rashan off.
But she was stopped in her tracks by something seizing on her tail with a painful jerk, and she twisted to face Roostan with her tail in his beak, with Flannan by his side. “Where ye going, cuddy?” Flannan sneered. “We’re no done wi’ our sensitive diplomatic exchan—”
Daring didn’t think. She just kicked back with her rear legs. Her hooves slammed into Roostan and kicked him tumbling backwards, poleaxed and briefly senseless on the ground.
For a moment, Daring was shocked. Her thoughts caught up, and she was, at first, simply surprised by how hard she’d just kicked Roostan. She wasn’t frail or weak or anything, but … were corvids lighter than ponies? Were ponies stronger? Maybe both? Was that how she’d just kicked him flying like that?
And all these questions were followed by the realisation that she probably ought to feel worried for Roostan and check whether he was alright, which was in turn drowned out by the indignant flare of no, to Tartarus with him, he’d ganged up on her, and before her breathless train of thought could chase this too much further, Flannan came at her.
The magpie sprang at Daring, her beak open and claws spread, and Daring barely had time to react before she was bowled into and sent rolling backwards. She yelped and flailed wildly with her hooves, trying to throw any kick she could into Flannan, who was pecking and flapping equally wildly atop her.
Daring felt Flannan’s claws jab painfully into her side, and she was dimly aware that her hat had fallen off. The spurt of red indignation this realisation provoked was enough to make her lunge out, champ into the scruff of feathers at the front of Flannan’s torso, and wrench to one side.
Flannan went tumbling over with a pained squawk, and Daring paused just long to cough, spit out a piece of down that had got caught in her teeth, and scrabbled forwards at Flannan. But the little magpie had recovered before Daring could properly bring herself up off the ground, and Flannan’s beak jabbed at Daring’s face, and Daring scrambled back reflexively. She felt some sensation flicker across her right cheek, numbed by sheer adrenaline.
For a moment, she paused to just catch her breath, and Flannan did the same. The pair glared daggers at one another, and though it could have been the adrenaline talking, Daring could have sworn Flannan looked hesitant…
Then there came a sharp keen of pain to one side, and Daring turned instantly to that.
Skyare was pinned beneath Rashan, his hemp satchel fallen free as he struggled under and pecked up at Rashan. One wing, his left, flapped at Rashan, while his right lay spread and helpless on the ground. He threw his head up to try and peck Rashan, legs thrashing up at the magpie’s belly. Rashan avoided either attack with ease as he flapped up effortlessly and lashed down just as quickly, his bunched claws dashing down into Skyare’s midriff to knock his breath out.
Skyare rasped out a cough and flapped his left wing to vainly try to roll round onto his belly and thrashed with his feet anew, claws clutching just short of Rashan. Rashan flapped up, alighted heavily on Skyare’s left wing, took aim at the joint of Skyare’s right wing with his beak, and pecked down savagely. Skyare keened again.
“Whit’s the matter, clip?” Rashan snarled, and once again drove his beak down into where Skyare’s inert wing met his body, drawing out another keen. “It’s no as if ye’re using it! Stay doon while we see tae the cuddy, and then ye’ll get yer—”
Daring didn’t let him finish. Without thinking, she tore at Rashan and blindsided him, barging him off Skyare and sending him sprawling back towards the cliff edge. He tottered and then corrected himself, his wings spreading and flapping to help correct his footing.
Daring found herself standing over Skyare, her vision blurry and her mind still caught up in a mad red fog. Below her, the crow hissed with pain.
She looked from Rashan to Flannan, who’d started forward when she’d seen Rashan attacked but had held back, and round to Roostan, who was groggily picking himself up as well. She glared round at each of them, drums pounding in her head, willing one of them to be dumb enough to come at her first. She’d have a forehoof waiting for them.
But not three or even two of them at once, some little part of her whispered, under the red. She’d be pecked and scratched apart then.
Daring held her ground regardless, and pawed the ground with her forehoof. Her wings unconsciously spread, and her feathers fluffed.
“D-dinnae,” hissed a voice underneath her. Skyare, sounding so very far away. “Just fly off, cuddy. Go away.”
And Daring hesitated, but she held her ground. She didn’t even look round at Skyare, but stayed fixated on the three before her.
None of them, it turned out, wanted to be first to get a hoof to the face.
Flannan glanced briefly round at her brothers, donned a smirk, and then turned that smirk back round at Daring and Skyare. “Come on,” she declared. “The lovebirds want peace? We’ll gie them it. Here, Skyare, ye’ve finally found something that’ll suffer ye.”
She flapped up and into the air with effortless grace, Rashan and Roostan following after a moment’s hesitation. Daring’s wings itched as she watched them take off and fly overhead, back in the direction of the town. Part of her wanted to pursue them — especially when Rashan dipped down for a moment, snagged Skyare’s fallen satchel with a claw, and dropped it over the cliff edge. Daring turned to watch it tumble down amidst the heathery crags and onto the grass below and then scowled up in the direction of the retreating fledglings. What had been the point of that?
Her anger began to ebb and the roar of adrenalin dimmed. She panted, suddenly breathless, and was aware of a stinging sensation across her cheek. She gingerly reached up towards it with her forehoof and yelped as patting it produced a sharp twinge of pain. Her forehoof, when she inspected it through suddenly-watering eyes, came away red. Flannan must have pecked harder than she’d realised.
Skyare keened on the ground, the sound lurching her even more into reality, and she looked down to see him trying to rise to his feet, his right wing still limp on the ground. “I - I’ll help!” she stammered as she stooped to him. “Let me —”
“Leave aff!” he spat at her, his head jerking up and making her start back, his angry blue eyes filled with water. “I ken how to do it myself! Just gies a minute!”
Daring stared for a second, bewildered and then livid, anger and frustration and simple hurt making a froth of her mind. Possible retorts snarled up in her throat, got nowhere, and she stooped to pick up her hat before turning sharply away with a flick of her tail. She glared out at the landscape of Glimrovoe, which was now blurry for some reason, and scuffed at her eyes with her non-stained forehoof.
For a moment, she hated it here. She hated it here on this faraway island, where they flew better than she could and she didn’t understand things and they ganged up on her when she’d done nothing wrong and where she couldn’t do anything right.
She’d survived undead Antlerteans. Some dumb corvid bullies shouldn’t have had any right to make her feel like this. Neither them nor Skyare.
Daring scuffed at her eyes again and then turned when there came a cough and rustling noise at her back. Composing herself, she turned to give Skyare as cold a look as she could manage. He’d risen to his feet, his wing still limp and trailing. His usual sulky look had turned a little apprehensive, and he seemed to be pointedly not meeting her gaze.
“I’m sorry,” he bit out, eventually, after only a short eternity. “Shouldnae have snapped. That wisnae worthy o’ the clan. I can manage things, but ye were doing yer best. And ye helped.” And, a few achingly long seconds after Daring had gotten over her surprise, “Thank ye.”
As she put her hat back on, Daring opened and shut her mouth a couple of times. She turned her own gaze away for a moment, before deciding at last on, “It’s okay. Um. Thank you too. For getting involved. Sorry if I made you feel bad.” Eloquence seemed to have momentarily deserted her, and she channelled a little of the frustration there into a backwards glance over her withers. “Who are they?”
“Cloacs,” Skyare said disdainfully. “Like tae swagger and hurt. Least, as much as I’ve seen of them. Maybe they’re different wi’ others and I just bring oot their best side.” He gave her a wry look. “Ye as well, seems like.”
“What’s a cloac?”
“It’s rude,” he said ominously. “Say it before ye’re tall enough in front o’ anycraw who is tall enough and ye get a bit o’ down plucked.”
Good enough for Daring, who gave the landscape at her back a grim smirk. “Total cloacs,” she dubbed the long-departed three. It clicked off her tongue nicely. Corvids seemed to have good curses; she ought to learn more.
“If ye’re hanging aroond,” Skyare said, his gaze roaming the heather around the stone, “help me find my wing-strap. It must have come off.”
Daring helpfully looked downwards, though she couldn’t help but steal a look at his trailing wing. Eventually, curiosity could contain itself no longer. “Is it hurt?”
Skyare looked up at her, briefly puzzled before annoyance flushed across his features. “Nae mair than usual. It’s just like that all the time. Can we no talk about it?”
Daring didn’t answer for a moment.
She imagined if one of her own wings didn’t work, even living with Dad who was an earth pony, living on the ground in Canterlot, knowing plenty of pegasi who worked on the ground, knowing she’d probably be able to live a normal life even if she never took to the sky again.
She didn’t want to imagine it.
“And can we no stare at it for ages either—”
“Is that why they picked on you?” she said softly, cutting off Skyare. She looked up, saw him looking tetchy all over again, the found strap dangling from his beak, and she quickly clarified. “The cloacs, that is.”
After a moment, he dropped the strap over his wing and snorted. “It’s whit they bring up. I think they just like picking. They’d find any reason. They tried it on ye, didn’t they? They’ve tried it on peedie Grimleen as well, just ‘cause she’s smallest o’ her clutch.” He hunkered down, carefully balanced on one crouched leg, and used his other foot and his beak to begin tying his wing back in against his side. “But I’m their favourite. Managed tae get them aff Grimleen a few times by stumbling intae the way o’ their beaks instead.”
Beings were the same everywhere, it turned out. Even if you wished they weren’t.
“Why?” Daring asked at last as Skyare continued fussing with his wing.
He was quiet then. “Because even if I’ll never be a complete Glimrovoan, I’ll try tae act like a Glimrovoan,” he said suddenly and heatedly. “They dinnae get tae take that from me.”
“No, I meant —” Daring circled her hoof. “Why do they pick on you, though? You’re the chief’s son, right?”
Skyare adopted an expression similar to Dad’s upon being compared to a sheep. “...Aye? So I’m reliably telt.”
“So you’ll be chief one day,” Daring patiently said. “Why get you annoyed at them before then? Even if your wing doesn’t work, shouldn’t they be sucking up to you?”
Now Skyare looked like Dad upon being asked where his wings were. “Why would I be chief one day?”
Daring didn’t even know what her own expression was like at that moment. “...Because that’s how it works?”
“That’s how it ...” Skyare trailed off, and then gave Daring a peeved look, inasmuch as he could with a length of strap in his beak. “Ye ken we tell Cormaer stories oot here as well, aye? We’re corvids like anycraw else, we’ve bards and everything. Do ye think the Second’s legend’s totally passed us by?”
“I don’t know what that is!”
There followed a mutual pause. “Ah, alright,” Skyare said. “Aye, alright. Maybe ye wouldnae. Well, naw. It doesnae work that way. A chief’s child doesnae just get tae become the next chief. The next chief’s whoever the clan trusts tae lead them. Whoever’s tried and tested and respected, and never mind who hatched them of a’ things.”
Daring considered this. It seemed stranger than rulership by an immortal alicorn Princess, but she was here to learn about strange things, wasn’t she? “And that’s what the Second started? Whoever the Second was?”
“The Second Cormaer, and naw, he didnae. He’s why chiefs dinnae just birth the chiefs after. It’s a whole...” Skyare finished with his wing, stood up with it firmly secured and gave Daring a lofty look. “It’s a Cormaer story. They’re the stories. A’body ought tae ken them.”
Daring didn’t ken them and added kenning them to the to-do list. But she also couldn’t help but feel she was getting side-tracked. “Well, even if that’s not how chiefs work,” she said, “they still shouldn’t get away with bullying you. Does your mom know they do? Have you told her?”
Skyare gave her a flat look. “Ye’re really making friends today, cuddy.”
“What?” Stung again, Daring saw his flat look and raised him an annoyed one. “I get that I don’t know how everything works here, but I’m not doing it on purpose! You don’t have to keep being rude to me about it, you can just say. What’s wrong with what I said?”
“I’m no a clype.” Skyare sullenly avoided her gaze once again. “I dinnae tell tales. I dinnae need tae tell tales. If I’ve a problem with Flannan or anycraw, I’ll deal wi’ it by myself, and I’m not gonnae share my problems around.”
Daring knew when someone was acting stubborn in the face of help and recognised she’d make no headway. Not head-on, at least, so she’d have to come up with another way to convince Skyare to do it. It was frustrating. Thank goodness she’d never be so dumb.
“Never mind me,” Skyare said, shaking his head, his gaze picking over the ground again. “Do ye ken where my satchel fell? There’s stuff in there Gamfer asked me tae work on.”
Daring nodded towards the cliff edge. “Rashan grabbed it. Tossed it down there.”
“Whit?” Skyare stepped over, peered down, and gave the satchel a frustrated look. “Ach, utter cloac,” he muttered. “That’s a hard climb doon and back.”
“What’s in it?”
“A few passages in Auld Corvic. Gamfer wanted me tae brush up on translating it before he came oot o’ the delve wi’ whitever auld writing or texts they might find inside the Howe, so he could get my second opinion. This side of the isle’s fairly quiet, when the harvest’s still growing and the stones roundabout are being left tae grow. Best place I can hear myself think.” Skyare frowned down at the satchel, and turned to one side, aiming for a circuitous path winding down the cliff face.
“Wait, it’s alright.” Daring had paused then and thought quickly. She whirred her wings. “I can go get it for you.”
“I can climb doon just fine, cuddy, I’ve done it before,” Skyare replied coldly, impatiently.
“I’m not saying you can’t do it. I’m suggesting ...” Daring assembled and deployed her quick line of thought. “...more an exchange. You said it’s a hard climb, right? So let me go get it to save you the bother, and in return, you tell me a Cormaer story. Or a few of them, if you’ve got the time. That way, I’ll know a bit more, and I won’t keep insisting you become the next chief or whatever. That sound fair?”
After a moment, Skyare turned, met her gaze, and gave her a look that was briefly wry. “Bit transparent, don’t ye thi—?” He paused. His eyes suddenly filled with concern as he looked directly at her cheek. “Ye’re hurt.”
“I’m hur—? Oh.” The cut on her cheek stung again, now it’d been brought back to her attention. Daring reached up to pat it again, forgetting, and yelped when the predictable happened. “It … it’s just a scratch.”
“It’s bleeding. Ye’ll need it cleaned.” Skyare seemed to make a decision then and made for the same path down the cliffside. “Come on. I’ll show ye tae the sea, ye can wash it there. We’ll grab my satchel on the way. Maybe I’ll tell a Cormaer story or two as we go.”
If it wasn’t quite the victory Daring had hoped for, it was darn-near the same thing. “Let’s!” she said brightly and made to follow Skyare down towards the distant sea.
One thing prodded at the back of her mind, though, something she felt she’d forgotten. She mulled it over as Skyare approached the cliff path, his good wing slightly spread to help his balance. Then it dawned on her.
Introductions. Right.
“I’m Daring Do, by the way,” she said suddenly, drawing Skyare’s attention back to her. She offered him a forehoof. “You maybe didn’t know that.”
Skyare blinked, and though he didn’t seem to know what to do with a proffered hoof the way Gamfer had, he seemed to realise what this was about. “I’m Skyare,” he replied. “If ye want Cormaer stories, the First’s a guid yin to start at, I suppose.”
