The battle for the town of Einkorn quickly bogged down, the militia finally able to take shelter in permanent buildings and reform from their crushing losses in the open fields of Unicornia. As the men of Hatharô brought up heavy cannons and began to bombard the town, the fighting quickly centered around the administrative district. Once home to the ruling unicorns of the entire district, the sturdy buildings made good cover when blasted to rubble by human cannon fire.
Reinforced by several large groups of earth pony levies and their unicorn leaders, the Equestrians made their stand in the ruins of the town. The fighting was a brutal contest between unicorn magic and human gunpowder, rapidly degenerating into a swirling hell that roared and flashed day and night.
Both sides began digging trenches to avoid the escalating levels of firepower. The front lines themselves were a scene of unparalleled destruction and barbarity. Witnesses describe banners and flags more resembling rags, the severed heads of ponies and men stuck on pikes. Death came in a hundred ways, unceasing. Ponies were shot, and blown up; men were burned, frozen and incinerated by magic. Both sides used daggers and other short range weapons to deadly effect in the rubble. Bloated bodies lay scattered in the wake of each attack; earth pony morale went down a few more pegs when they finally had to give up trying to retrieve their dead for traditional burial rights, only to be shot down by human snipers.
Both human and unicorn commanders noticed, and feared, the sense of common suffering between the earth ponies and men living and dying in misery. Despite the visible differences in species, there often appeared to be more in common with each other than their leaders. The earth ponies were dying in droves for a cause that they had no say in, and only because they were being invaded. The men were dying horribly an ocean away from home.
Often, only a wall or barricade separated the miserable creatures.
Then, on the fifth day of the battle, the pegasi began a massive rainstorm.
- The Great Sarathûl-Equestria War
A battered, tan earth pony staggered up, her ears still ringing from the onslaught of human "grenades". The hurled weapons had been used down when the rain had paused for only a few minutes. The explosions had broken down the rubble even further, and a lucky toss had even scored a direct hit on one their barricades, tossing ponies and wood into the air like twigs.
She scrambled for her weapon, a short sword she'd scavenged off a dead man. Better than the makeshift pike she'd been issued at the start of this madness. She wasn't skilled with it by any means; not that needed to be, just leap over the rubble, hope for surprise, and stab blindly. To aim only gave the human a chance to level an arbeques or raise a sword.
After snatching up her weapon in her teeth, she dove for the nearest bit of miserable cover, blinking as the rain started again with undiminished force. Her soaked olive-green mane pressed back down her neck and back, and she sighed in despair. Now she would grapple with the humans in the driving rain again, as surely an attack would be mounted after such a destructive barrage. She was no soldier, but the young mare had learned a few things over the course of her terrifying time levied into the local militia. Wretched pegasi; they'd been told the rain was to stop the human guns, somehow, but at this point, she would take the gunfire to the rain. Sometimes she thought she hated the pegasi more than the humans . . .
To her surprise, there were no shouts and battle cries, no onrush of dirty armor and drawn weapons. Other than the distant boom of cannons cutting through the roar of the rain, this area of the front was silent.
And then she saw why. Somehow, impossibly, the grenades had blown an earth pony into the upright ruins of the barricade. He just lay there, suspended in air by coincidentally vertical wooden beams and furniture. Deliberate building could not have created such a flimsy structure yet tall, the poor pony pinned at the very top.
She stopped and gasped when she recognized the still-alive pony - Autumn Harvest, his dull brown coat and stocky build recognizable to her. With a strangled cry, she waited for the humans to shoot him down. A son of family friends - her friend, and in the tiny world of the earth pony serfs, real friends were valuable beyond measure.
She was surprised when he was still alive a minute later, wheezing and gasping for breath, clearly wounded. It seemed the humans had been shocked into silence like the earth pony line. Or, perhaps the rain really did spoil their guns like the unicorns claimed, and they didn't want to risk being killed as they ran out to finish him.
He'll die, if nopony does anything. His suffering was obvious, ugly wounds gouged out of his body by shards of the grenade. And the fear on his face nearly stopped her heart. Despite all the horrors she'd seen in the past days, it only took one extended look at a pony in agony to snap her out of the death-like trance she was in.
Almost without thinking, she shakily rose to her feet, spurred on by an urge that clearly didn't care for own safety. She stumbled out from behind her cover, her gaze fixed on the now screaming Autumn Harvest.
"What are you doing?" a voice from the earth pony line hissed. She didn't look back, distantly wondering if she'd finally snapped from the horror.
"Get back here!" another voice ordered, a unicorn in all likelihood. She ignored that too.
No gunfire came. The only sounds were the rain and her own hoofs, muffled by the mud she was wading through. Almost as an afterthought, she threw her short sword behind her, hoping perhaps the humans would understand that gesture. Their banners were mere paces away, and through the sheets of rain she thought she could see helmeted heads gazing at her.
She stopped in front of Autumn Harvest, craning her neck upwards to her friend. Blinking at the rain, she realized she hadn't brought any way of getting him down from the crude structure. The water streamed down her face - or was it tears?
She stood there, unsure of what to do, when she heard rubble shifting nearby. She whipped her head, to find a man standing there.
She froze. The man was in dirty leather armor, the dark red and brown colors of Hatharô worn down by the weather. He made no move towards her, and was alone, in front of her barricades. No weapons were evident in hands. It was the first time she'd seen one of the bipeds this close without trying to kill them.
He opened his mouth. "I thought, perrhaps, you might need these." He held up a small saw.
She blinked. "Yeah, uh. Thanks." He held out the saw handle-first, and she hesitantly took it in her mouth. "Thank you."
Rather unsure of what else to say to the human, she turned back to Autumn Harvest and awkwardly began sawing through the biggest upright plank.
The human spoke again. "That- That vood îs crritical to the whole strructure.. It vill collapse ven that îs cut through, and I'm afrraid only hurrt the poor fellô furrther."
She blinked again, and if it was from the rain of the human, she didn't know. "You speak good Equestrian." she observed.
"I speak Ekvestrrian vell, yes." he agreed.
An awkward silence fell upon them, trading tired stares. "What do you suggest?" she asked finally, resolving to treat this helpful human like any other pony. It would make conversation much easier, for one.
"Vell, may I?" he held out his hand. She gave the saw to him, and after they exchanged a glance, the man walked up beside her to look at the structure.
it was almost a good thing that Autumn Harvest was near-delirious from pain, lest he look down and see the tall man standing in front of him. "Hm, if ve cut this vun and this vun," he gestured with his hand, "then ve can loverr the mass of beams down on this pivot and brring this pony dovn.."
In spite of everything, she raised an eyebrow. "Lover?"
The human huffed. "You knov vat I mean."
"You should've brought another saw, we could cut them both at the same time." she observed.
"That ve could." he agreed, and turned back to is lines, yelling something in Tarsen. Almost instantly, a saw was hurled over one of the walls and landed with a wet plop in the mud.
She grabbed it in her mouth, and moved to the other side of the man. They started to saw through the beams.
As her grandmother always said, if you wanted to strike up a conversation, ask about their home. Curiosity got the better of her.
"So, how goes it in your trench?" she asked, pausing from her exertions.
The human glanced up. "Vonderrfully! Ve vrrite final letterrs to loved vuns, hide, and prractice thrroving rocks in the absence of grrenades. God abovve, we've prrobably lost morre men to our grrenades than killed ponies vith them."
"Well, if you ever give up on them, we'd love to have a couple." she observed.
He gave her a quizzical look. "I thought you had magic. You have magic, rright?"
She laughed bitterly. "No, I'm just an earth pony. Been a farmer my whole life."
It was the human's turn to laugh. "Trruly? As vas I, beforre all this madness began."
"Yeah, it's even in my name." She paused in sawing again, to hold out a hoof. "I'm Chaff."
He took her hoof with a hand. "Fâô. Named after a grreat herro, like the King of Lûndôvîn."
"Thanks." she said, getting back to her work, which was quickly finished. They jumped up to catch the mass of timbers that pinned Autumn Harvest, slowly and awkwardly letting it down.
"So," the human gasped out between breaths, "does it alvays rrain so miserrably in yourr lands?"
She shook her head angrily. "No, goodness no. The blasted pegasi think it ruins your gunpowder, or something, so their making it even more miserable for us."
"They rreally contrrol the veatherr?" Fâô asked, visibly surprised.
"Well, yes." Chaff admitted. "Never this bad, though."
"The madness sprreads." the man sighed, as they finally set Autumn Harvest down on the ground. "Vell, it is done."
"It is." With Fâô's help, Chaff slung Autumn over her back and turned towards the Equestrian line. "Well, uh, thank you. Again."
The man nodded. "It gladdens me to see ve arre not all savage beasts. Good luck to you, Ekvestrrian."
"Stay safe." she replied, watching as the man slowly made his way back behind cover. With a final wave, he ducked behind a ruined wall.
Chaff shook her head and chuckled grimly. "It'll be a miracle if one of us makes it." she muttered sadly, starting back for the banners of Equestria.
Author's Note
Inspired by that one scene in War Horse, and another in Passchendaele. Like what you read? Start here for an amazing journey. Seriously, do it, I can't recommend the series enough.
Written rather hastily for a comment on Across the Sea, and touched up slightly before being made into a legitimate story. My focus is elsewhere for the time being, so this was just a project I finished in a slow hour.
Anyway, do check out Across the Sea, it's a criminally unknown story. It's a lot better than this sorry fanfiction of a fanfiction I scrounged up here. If you want 16th century warfare, political intrigue, excellent and lengthy character-building and incredibly deep and extensive world-building, look no further.
