To Lift Up the Humble
The blizzard enveloped them tighter than any mother's blanket round her child. For all they knew, for all they could see, they were the only minotaurs left in all the world.
For all they knew they were the only creatures of any kind left. The winds blocked out all sound. The snow blocked out all sights. Beyond the confines of their stuttering fire was naught but a howling vortex.
Tracker Sense, bearer of the meaningless title of Long Horn of the Knosso Mina, rubbed his arms for what little warmth he could get against the bitter wind that sliced through him. On the second day of the blizzard they had skinned two more goats from their dwindling herd, but all the blankets they possessed had gone to those more in need of shelter than a strong bull in his prime years: they swathed his father Whisper, who sat closest to the fire with his head bowed, and his daughter-mate Hawkeye and the unnamed babe she suckled at her teat. His grandson, hornless and nearly hairless, barely a month old and greedy as a hundred goats. Tracker could barely see him beneath all the blankets the female's covered him with. His own mate, Oakheart, sat close beside Hawkeye fussing over the boy and his mother, but she refused to have him or their son interfering in a mystery of the cows.
"You should not feed him so much at once," Young Bull's voice was rough, belying the state of his temper. Tracker's son did not much care for their situation, however little he could change it. "What will you do when you run dry?"
Tracker smiled, his son had more youthful vigour than he had sense, to choose this as his battleground.
"And what babe have you nursed, to speak with such wisdom?" Oakheart demanded. "Minos did not mean for these matters to become province of bulls. Tend to the fire or the herd, those are your tasks, leave us ours."
Hawkeye chuckled, "Never mind him, little one, you take as much as you like. Drink, and grow up big and strong now."
Yes. Tracker thought. Great Minos grant that he may live out his first year, that I may see my son bestow upon his son a name as I named him, that he may grow tall as his father and sharp-eyed as his mother and lead the Knosso Mina when my son and I are gone.
Minos grant there will be a Knosso Mina for him to lead when I am gone.
There were only the five of them. Five minotaurs and an unnamed child, tending to a herd of ten goats who were almost as desperate to get around the fire as the minotaurs. Their waterskins were nearly empty, their food was almost gone. Their wood was burning away fast. If the blizzard did not ease up soon the nothing short of Minos himself would save them.
Even if the blizzard did cease it would still take a miracle to save their people.
Young Bull scowled as the fire's warmth began to wane, his black fur knotting above his nose. Tossing another stick upon the flames he said, "The herd from the Ariad that we came across near Troezen, they said that their Long Horn was gathering the whole Mina too him, all the people who could be gathered. They said he intends to lead them north across the dragonwall."
"Nothing but death awaits them by that road," Whisper raised his grey head - white in some places - to speak in a hushed voice. "The north road is full of peril, they cannot pass that way."
"It is perilous, but is it any better to sit here and wait for death to find us?" Young Bull demanded. "At least the Ariad have a Long Horn who searches for answers!"
"You go too far, even if you are my son," Tracker snarled. "I am still Long Horn and you are still half a child!"
"The Knosso die," Young Bull said. "The minotaurs die. There are less than thirty head in all the Aego Mina. The Ido are destroyed. Our people are scattered to the four winds, at the mercy of any griffon bandit or pony warlord. The day after my son was born word came to us that Flatfoot's herd had fallen. The day before this accursed snow began to fall we were robbed. Father of my father, have you not said that we were once accounted amongst the highest of the peoples?"
Whisper nodded slightly, blinking his blind blue eyes, "It was so once. When I was younger than you are now I would stand beneath the Crystal Gate and watch the light refracted through it like...rainbows. I recall when all the Mina dwelt together in a single city." He sounded weary, as if he would soon fall asleep or worse, "I remember courting my mate with a golden torque, with a ruby set in its centre. That torque, shaped like, like serpents. My son, what happened to that? Do, do you still have it?"
"It was taken from us, before Young Bull was born," Tracker reminded him gently. "At the town where we-" He could not say it, for his father's sake and for his own; at the town where we lost mother. There had been sixty of them then, when the herds had been larger, and they had traded with the ponies who had dwelt in the town for food for themselves and their goats. When night came the ponies had attacked them, taking back everything they had traded and more and never giving back what the minotaurs had given them.
Young Bull is right in this. We are a much fallen people.
Young Bull shook his head, "A crystal gate and ruby torques. I courted Hawkeye with a fat goat underneath a dying willow tree."
"A willow tree beside a pure spring, and you know how important water is I hope," Hawkeye said. "Besides, it was a very nice goat; and I would rather have a bull who knows how to tend a herd."
"How are we gone from dwelling in a shining city to squatting in the snow hoping for the weather to take pity on us before we freeze to death?" Young Bull demanded. "Did we so offend Minos that he set out to inflict such punishment on us."
"This is none of Minos doing, but that of Tirek," Oakheart said. "Be careful what you say, Minos is neither mocked nor offended."
"What can he do that has not already been done to us?" Young Bull countered.
"It does no good to dream of what once way in the lifetime of your father's father," Oakheart said. "Labyrinth was broken long ago, the Mina scattered. The old days will never come again."
"There you are wrong," Whisper said, his voice hoarse. "Did we not see the sun rise for the first time in long years five days past? Is that not a sign from Minos, heralding a turn for the better in our fortunes?"
"That sign burned the last sight out of your eyes from gazing on it too long old greyhair, now you can see nothing at all," Oakheart replied dourly. "If there is a message in it, as likely it is that we may now die of too much heat instead of too much cold. Fire burns."
Whisper shook his head, "It is a sign. A sign that evil cannot endure forever."
Tracker shook his head before Oakheart could speak again. He loved his father, and he would not have him shamed overmuch. If he wished to cling to hope then let him. For himself, Tracker had no such hope. He had never seen the glories of Labyrinth, known a world where all minotaurs had been united under a single king; he had never seen the sun before it rose a few days ago, nor known a world which flourished under the peace of Queen Laurenia. All he knew was the world as it was: their city fallen, their king slain, minotaurs forced to roam a world in darkness as homeless vagabonds, prey to the dread minions of Lord Tirek and the selfishness of all forced to live in his vile shadow.
"Perhaps Queen Laurenia has returned to us, to set all arights," Whisper continued. "Tirek could not stand before her power."
"Tirek is the only lord that I have ever known," Tracker said. "Mock him not, lest his wrath descend upon you."
"Queen Laurenia will not help us no more than Minos has," Young Bull declared. "But we may help ourselves before it is too late."
"And how will we do that?" Hawkeye asked.
Young Bull took a deep breath, looking like he was girding himself for a battle, "We must abandon the Way of the Lamb."
"What?" Whisper's voice broke with shock. "Abandon the - the way of the lamb was bestowed upon us by our ancestors! Since Labyrinth fell, with my father's last breath he urged me to remember the way; child, what you suggest, we cannot. The Way of the Lamb is the only thing that has kept our people alive."
"Alive? Is that what we are? Call you this living, this running and hiding, this enduring? We sit still while raiders pillage our belongings, offering no resistance. If someone threatens to strike at us we flee from them. If they catch us, we let them have their will in hope that they will not hurt us overmuch."
"And often they do not," Tracker said. "We are too few to fight. As it is, we may lose belongings but we save lives."
"As your mother's life was saved?" Young Bull shouted. "You know as well as I that for every minotaur spared by the Way of the Lamb, two more are slain. I will not stand by and watch my son die while I have the power to protect him!"
"And what will I tell your son when he asks me where his father is?" Hawkeye shouted. "Shall I tell him that you died for trinkets or for turnips?"
"Tell him I died to make a better world for him to live in."
"How is a world where a son does not know his father better than a world where he does?" Hawkeye said. "Or are you so strong that you will fight the whole world by yourself and win?"
Young Bull shook his head, "If we were to unite the whole Mina, join together-"
"We are too few now, even if all the Knosso could be gathered," Tracker said. "The Ariad speak of coming together to cross the Dragonwall, but they can barely muster two hundred head if they are fortunate. Two many to pass unnoticed, far too few to be safe from danger, Way of the Lamb or not. We are no better placed."
"Perhaps if you had done something when we were better placed then we would not be staring into the abyss as we speak!" Young Bull snarled.
With a strangled yell Whisper rose to his feet and tried to spring at his grandson with arms outstretched. But his old bones gave way beneath him, and he fell into the snow with a cry of pain.
"Foolish, insolent boy," he moaned, tears filling his rheumy eyes as they stared sightlessly upon Young Bull. "You think it was easy for me to stand aside, to do nothing as my mate died, to watch as our wagons were looted until they stole the wagons themselves, to watch as our tents were ransacked until we had no more tents, to do nothing while the blankets were stolen off our backs. I longed to raise my fist to against them, to take up a staff and fight, to make them hurt as I was hurting. But I did not, none of us did, because we knew that it would only end with more blood, more children wailing, and we knew that it was more important that our people live. We must live! No matter how degraded we are, no matter how far down we sink, at least we are alive."
Tracker closed his eyes, unwilling to look upon his father's misery. He felt the pull of his son's words, but he knew it was his father who spoke true: pride was not worth dying for.
The snow began to clear, the wind dying down a little, some visibility returning, enough to hear voices in the distance.
"Do you know where we are?"
"No ma'am, and I fear we have lost the column until the weather clears enough for flight."
"Ponies," Young Bull spat upon the ground. "Come to rob us again no doubt."
"Be quiet," Oakheart snapped. "There is a chance they will pass us by."
"Is that a fire there?" a female voice said. "Let us make towards it, any beacon in this savagery is surely welcome."
Sighing, already resigned to being possessed of less than he had been yesterday, Tracker motioned for Young Bull to sit. When he did not do so, Tracker glared at him. His son obeyed, his expression mutinous.
They could see the pony-shapes drawing closer to them now, approaching down from the top of the hill, towards the lee in which the minotaurs had taken shelter.
An alicorn led them, emerging first from out of the blizzard to gaze upon the minotaurs with an imperious look. Her eyes, mane and tale were all purple, though her mane was mostly hidden beneath a helm with a shining silver gem set in its crown, and she wore purple armour over her white frame. Tracker sensed a power in her, a majesty that no Long Horn of the Minas had possessed in his lifetime. She was a commander and a ruler or he was a suckling babe.
Twenty ponies in similar purple armour followed in her train, earth ponies mostly, with a few unicorns and pegasi. They eyed the minotaurs contemptuously, some of them even laughing. Minotaurs had never given other races any reason not to laugh.
"Greetings," the alicorn said. "I apologise for the intrusion, I seem to have found myself lost in this storm. My companions and I have become separated from our friends and looked to you fire as the only marker we could make out."
"No apologies are necessary, it was an honest mistake," Tracker replied. He wondered how long the politeness would rumble on for, before these ponies showed their steel and violent intent.
"We should be glad of a fire ourselves, however little warmth it brings," the alicorn said. She paused for a moment. "Have you food?"
"Little enough to keep our bellies held together," Young Bull said. "Not enough to feed your crew I fear."
"Bull, don't," Hawkeye hissed.
The alicorn blinked, "I fear I have offended you in some way I know not."
"Stop pretending!" Young Bull yelled. "You want our fire, you want our food, you want to send us running in fear of you, well why don't you just say so, and then you may see that all minotaurs aren't so scared as you expect."
A green eyed unicorn stepped forward, half between the alicorn and Young Bull, "If you want to flex your muscles boy you might want to start with an easier target."
"Like a squirrel!" somepony jeered to the laughter of his comrades.
"Peace, Viper, peace all of you," the alicorn said calmly, her soft, majestic voicing silencing all pony throats. "I am sorry sirs, if I have misled you as to our intentions. We merely-"
"You merely did what all ponies and all creatures do," Whisper said. "Take from those weaker than you, give to those stronger than you. We are the weakest of all, and so all take from us, but there is a justice in this world stronger than the law of strength, and when that justice is upheld then beware the reckoning of your wickedness! Until then, take what you wish but please, please leave us be. Leave us our lives if you take all else. Please, mercy, let us live."
The alicorn was silent for a good few moments, her purple eyes impenetrable. At last she said, "A true justice, aye, you have spoke truer than you know, old bull. You have a fire, and we have not, but we have food in plenty in our saddle bags which you have not. Will you break bread with us, as we share in the warmth of your red flames? We have wood also to fuel its warmer furies?"
Tracker had never heard such an offer made to minotaurs before, "Who are you?"
"I am Sola, the Empress of the Risen Sun, who has cast down Tirek, shattered his iron crown and restored the light to the world. And I am she who will set all things to rights and restore that justice of which you spoke," the Empress declared. "And I will be your guest if you will have me."
Tracker frowned, "No pony has asked such a thing of minotaurs since the darkness fell."
"And now the sun has risen again, did you not see it?" Sola asked. "The world changes, and we change with it. Or so I hope."
Tracker considered. Then he nodded, "Be our guest."
Sola sat, and her ponies with her, and shared out food with the hungry minotaurs: bread and cheese and succulent fruit of many kinds. They ate together, and as they ate the minotaurs told a little of how they had been cut off from the rest of their herd by the snows, and of their wanderings recent and far off.
"You poor, poor people," Sola said. "I have slept in dragons nests and bats caves, I have huddled up with mules for warmth, but I have never known hardship such as you have suffered. That you did not flee my coming is, in itself, remarkable."
"It is hard to run with a little one hanging off you," Hawkeye said with a nervous smile.
Sola laughed, "When my son was born I was forced to retire from the battlefields to tend to him. It was the most frustrating period of my life. But I would not give him up for anything."
"Nor I."
Sola frowned, then rose to her feet, "Master Tracker Sense, would you see your people safe from harm, protected from the persecution they have suffered?"
"Is this a joke, of course I would," Tracker said.
"Then kneel before me, and kiss my hoof," Sola extended one armoured leg towards him.
There was something about her, some magic that had nothing to do with unicorn's art and everything to do with the majesty that radiated from her brighter than any sun, that compelled Tracker first to his feet and then to his knees. He felt as if he was in a haze or dream, watching his body move as a puppet rather than an actor in the drama.
"Do you swear fealty and obedience to me, Sola the Risen Empress, and all my heirs until the Empire falls? To obey the Empire's laws, protect its throne, and champion it against any insult or dishonour, from this day until the end of days?"
"I do so swear, with all my heart."
"Then I, Sola, Empress of all things touched by light, do on this day decree that I take the minotaurs under my protection: any minotaur who will enter my domain and swear his loyalty to me shall be protected from any hurt or harm, and allowed to live as they will within our dominions.
"For we are on a quest for justice, my children and myself, justice not just for ponies but for all creatures. We shall cast down the wicked, spare the defeated, lift up the humble and the helpless and wear down the proud in arms. What say you then, of the Knosso Mina, will you come with me and seek justice at my side."
"Yes," Young Bull cried, taking up his shepherd's staff. "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes." Even the goats began to bray in excitement.
I will see my grandson grow tall, Tracker thought, wiping away a tear. And perhaps even my great-grandchildren if Minos wills it. Truly we were sent a miracle this day.
As he helped his father up, to follow Sola and her column in search of their friends, Tracker felt something stirring in his breast he had not felt since he was barely a babe himself.
He felt hope.
Author's Note
Written for the May Worldbuilding prompt, this is also a kinda-sorta prequel to my own In the Shadow and the Light, set in the same AU.