“Vengeance is a blind purge”
Based on a true story
The cold thronged the air, picking my flanks like sharp needles thrust into my flesh. It hurt, a lot. I hissed in the shaking pain coming from the large slash across my stiff, bleeding abundantly. The drops of blood seeping out of it had frozen into dark red diamonds on the tips of my brown fur.
It wasn’t the pain from a vulgar paper cut, oh no... It sparked spikes of dolor, lashing my skin and mind, impeding me from thinking too much. I wanted to cry, shoveling my screams down my throat. I couldn’t leave a peep out of my mouth. I couldn’t let them spot my trail and my hideout. I was doomed if they found me.
Barks echoed in the background, not so far away behind me. Dogs! And they weren’t generic dogs, no, no, no… they were trained hounds.
Oh, goddesses! I galloped away. Slipping on the snowdrift, my wounds forced jerks down my left hind leg. I flail on the ground, stopping me straight in my evasion. I had been clumsy, unaware, and stupid. I had been near my goal, and yet had been so far from completing it. I could have ended that mission swiftly. But I had completely messed up.
The yaps sounded closer now, I had to find a hideout, quick!
In that cold night of December, the winter had covered the ground and its humus with a white and thick layer of snow. It was hard to move through, my hooves sinking into it, forcing my pace to slow down. My fur was wet and freezing, running with solidifying sweat. My eyes blurred with the hot mist I breathed out, I could feel the change of temperature on my front teeth, like biting in an ice-cream a hot day of summer.
Since I had ran away, I had been digging my way through a somber and twisted forest. One I knew well of course, even if I had always took great care in not venturing it by night. Nopony knew what could lay between the snow and the dirt. And in this time of war, it was often death. Last year, when the snow cover had melted, during the last days of May, the invaders had found several of their comrades, ossified by the cold, their throats sliced open. The ponies from the Bushes had done a great job that year. Too bad a bastard had denounced them. Their photographed faces had been stamped on a red plaque, listing their crimes and announcing their horrid execution earlier in the day by a firing squad. I had two brothers exposed like slaughtered swine on that poster. My sister? They took her in the east, beyond the river. I would never see her again.
Some courageous ponies tore those monstrous pictures down. All but one, which was left disfigured with black painted words, ‘Dead for Equestria!’.
I shot my eyes open. Unconsciousness had broken into my shivering body, making me faint in the whiteness. Now, half buried in the snow, the cold’s deadly embrace clenched on my limbs; it was a feeling that would only thaw in months. My blurry eyes focused on hundreds of trees thrusting themselves out of the snow like the ragged and mummified fingers of a claw. The forest was made of high, thin and crackled spruces, the bottom of their trunks barren of any branches. Mortvan Forest was eerie at night to say the least. It was a landscape of wooden pylons vanishing in the dark of the night as my sight was shut by the blackness.
A deep pant, repeated over time, sunk me deeper into the snow. I tried not to move, forcing back my craving to breathe in. They were a few hoofsteps from me, aiming their dull electric torches around. The hope to find me was kept ablaze in their hearts, as much as their desire to make me pay my impudence. Somehow, I was glad it had started snowing. This would cover my odor and trail.
The cold was so body-shattering I shouldn’t fall asleep, for it meant to die. A close bark nearly startled me. They were two dogs, sniffing the air with their quivering muzzles, the frothing on the side of their mouths freezing into small picks of ice on their chops. With them, four soldiers was exploring the area, seeking prints in the snow. There were still some of them, but the wind and snowfall was at my advantage.
The soldiers wore dark and shady uniforms, and carried small guns, hung tightly in a holster on their left side. The weapons shined under the shafts of moonlight descending from the slits left between the canopy of tree leaves meters above our heads.
“This cocksucker was nearly on us,” a voice roared in a foreign accent, spitting a phlegm next to me. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know lieutenant. The dogs are freezing out there. It’s twenty below zero right now. If the resistant’s got through here. He’s going to die. Mortvan is a hellhole.”
The lieutenant growled, trotting past me. My bloodshot eyes widened, and I didn’t dare making a move. One of the hounds hopped next to me, whining in the cold, sticking to his master’s leg to snatch as much warmth as possible. They were going away, and soon I’d be safe.
“What do you think he was after?” a deep voice asked dully. “Coming alone in a military camp? I call that crazy. A saboteur?”
“No, I don’t think so. The cottage is just the place we requisitioned from the peasants, there is nothing valuable there but us.”
“Just shut up,” the fourth soldier finally broke his silence. “He was just spying on us. You know the resistance… sneaky junk living like rats in that forest.”
An owl hooted half a dozen of meters above us. I couldn’t care less as all my might was focused on that pony. I didn’t know his voice, but I did know who had been talking. I could see him from my hideout. A skinny, grinning and brown-colored unicorn whose traits had degraded to a greenish shade thanks to a long-lasting sickness. He was wearing a black attire over his shoulder, far too big for his thin stature. The hide had fallen into clumps on his sides. I could see his rifle stored in a frozen leather sheath.
I smiled broadly. My quest was not vain after all. He was my target.
Have you ever been in a weather so cold that sap is left to freeze in the trees’ trunks? I have, and this was one of those nights. The wood cracked under the cold’s assaults, the solidifying viscous liquid shattering it from inside out, forcing roars out of the barks. Each tree was moaning in the darkness, scaring the dogs away, making the soldiers grunt, and giving me time to plot my next move. I looked up, spotting the branches that soon would fall down under the weight of the snow. With the slivers of moonlight from above, I saw one ready to hurtle down. There was my shot of luck.
It cracked, bent and finally fell.
The whizz filling the air pushed aside the hounds, yapping in the snow. It sparked spikes of fear in the soldiers’ hearts. Drawing their weapons in a jiffy, stressed and unnerved, they nearly unloaded their deadly tools on the inanimate piece of wood lying before them. One gave a sheepish laugh, cursing his overreaction.
During the short mess, I had leapt out of my hideout, crawling like a cockroach toward the unwell pony. Weaving between the sprouts and roots, muffling the sound of my steps, I had taken position behind a tree. I had two wet pebbles in my hooves.
One throw over the soldiers’ heads ricocheted far beyond them, at the opposite position of my target. The dogs raised straight on their paws and rushed toward the echo. A second throw brought a thump even further away. It was enough to launch the hounds and their masters on a deceiving track. Behind them was left the sick soldier, whose gingery fur gleamed with ice. His movements were slow and dampened. Few coughs rammed his throat. He grumbled at his acolytes leaving him behind.
I leaped forward in silence and stood behind him. My hooves broke apart a root hidden deep in the snow. The soldier instantly swiveled and his eyes met mine.
Blackness welcomed him as my hind legs struck his left side.
“Good night Sir, because it is your last.”