The Dust Bowl Prince

Two years before the Fall of the Old Kingdom…

His hooves sunk deep into the mud and not for the first time that day Argentum was glad for his thick boots. He trudged along, the mud sucking as he pulled each hoof out in his gait, and headed to where most of his band was gathered. They loitered about, dicing and gaming and chatting whilst their fellows were out in the village, picking through the corpses and ruins like crows.

“Any luck, brothers?” Argentum asked, removing his helmet and tossing it to a pile of packs and sacks. His hair – though matted with sweat and grease – flowed like beaten strands of gold and silver in the stiff cold breeze. Argentum was especially proud of his mane: long locks that caught the light in a dozen different ways and set many a maiden’s heart aflutter. Even after the grime of the battle had sodden them, the silver-gold strands he was famed for were gleaming.

His ‘brothers’ chorused a mix of growls, grunts and monosyllables that made it obvious the takings were slim. A hulking brute of an earth pony spat a mess of phlegm ruefully.

“Ain’t nothing in this gozzam chicken-shit village,” he said, staring at the mangled corpse of an earth pony peasant with one hateful eye, the other being nothing but a long scar running through an empty socket. “Most I got was off the blacksmith. Some real good steel there.”

Argentum leaned against the well they were gathered around. None drank from it and he could see, or rather smell, why. Water and rot and death made a damp sickening aroma from deep within the well and a trail of blood led from the edge all the way into the darkness below.

“At least you got something from the pub before it burned down.” The young unicorn pointed to the haul of beer they had loaded onto the wagon, and the flagons in their hooves. “Isn’t that good enough, Lost – especially considering we suffered no casualties? Save for poor Potluck’s arse?” The group grinned and glanced at the sour-faced Potluck, whose rear had been bandaged and who was hiding his shame deep in a mug of beer.

“I was hopin’ for something shiny, personally,” Lost-An-Eye replied. “Where’s the fucking lord, Arg? This place shoulda had a lord or a wealthy mayor or something, right?”

Lost-An-Eye was one of the founders of their little company. He was a massive earth pony of swamp-green fur and slabs of muscles, hooves the size of dinner-plates that could (and Argentum had seen it happen) repurpose metal mugs into metal plates just by stepping on them. His orange mane was patchy. Balding hit some stallions hard. Lost-An-Eye would shave his head whenever he found the time to hide just that flaw, though lately he had been distracted from the habit long enough for his mane to grow to the length where it became noticeable. The last stallion to point it out got a broken nose and thanked Lost for his kindness.

Argentum didn’t know what Lost’s real name was. He had deserted Jarl Hoarfrost’s army along with the two ponies who had introduced him as “Lost-An-Eye”, told everyone the story then promptly died before divulging his true identity. One went from a badly-infected wound and the other got his throat cut for beating on a whore a little too much. Lost-An-Eye burned down the whore’s brothel with her in it for the trouble.

The story went that Lost’s regiment had been ambushed and, after a brave fight (apparently taking ten of the enemy for every one they lost), they were forced to beat a hasty retreat, leaving Lost behind. He came back to them a week later, just wandering into their camp drenched head-to-toe in blood, his eye replaced with a fearsome scar and him looking mildly put-off at worst. When asked what happened, he just stared at them like they were stupid and said, “Lost an eye”. Words of infamy forever after.

“He’s gone where everypony else with money have gone, Lost.” Argentum flicked his eyes to the west. “To Equestria.” The lord’s place had been filled by a simple seneschal reporting directly to the King. He had struck Argentum as a feckless sort, sputtering and grunting his pleas, promising the heavens if they would just let him live. He would have most certainly lined his pockets had the village anything to line them with.

“Not everyone with money, Brother Argentum,” Cenric countered.

Cenric spoke in his harsh, gravelly accent, earned by growing up speaking a harsh, gravelly language. Argentum had asked the griffon to teach him the tongue and, always having had a gift for languages, he learned it fast. I have a gift for many things, he thought, an old anger bubbling up within him as he recalled all the ways in which he excelled and all the ways he could put his talents to use. Accident of birth conspired to rob the colt of all opportunities to prove himself, but he conspired back. He was good at conspiring.

Cenric was a strange creature, with a lion’s hindquarters and an eagle’s front. He stood taller than any of them; even Lost-An-Eye had to bend his neck backwards to meet his eyes. His kind was new to equines, coming out of the mountains over two decades ago, at first in the form of wandering explorers and roving bands and then by droves of tribes. The eastern kingdoms had fallen to the invasion and the alien tribes had divided and settled those lands. It was a migration much like the ongoing exodus of ponies to Equestria, though the griffons ran not from the weather but from another reaving race.

Like his people, Cenric was a barbarian and a heathen and though Argentum never put much stock in either civilisation or religion, it was plain just how different the creature was. He equipped himself with a bandolier of macabre trophies: skulls, bones and broken pieces of armour. He claimed it honoured particularly worthy warriors, though Argentum thought it would honour them more if they had been buried. A dark, coarse brown all over save for a black head accentuated the dark, barbarous air Cenric gave, though bright blue eyes were enough to mollify some of the sense of foreboding ponies had when they looked at him. His eyes were surprisingly kind, that earthly wisdom only a noble savage could have. Nonetheless, they could turn as cold as northern ice and show nothing but brutality and cunning.

“Of course, there are some stubborn petty kings and warlords who are clinging to this land like an infant on its mother’s tit,” the colt grinned. “Then there are ponies like us, who are staying on this sinking ship just long enough to loot the cargo hold.”

“And your mother, Prince,” Sharp said, frowning. His spectacles slipped as his cerulean brow creased. “Your mother is why we are here, after all.” The tall, slender unicorn’s face screwed up as he cast his eyes about, drinking in the death and mud and misery of the burning little village.  He had hitched his robes up like a lady hitches up her skirts, taking care to tread on the drier parts of the ground.

Sharp was such a neat-freak. The only pony who Argentum knew was more obsessed with neatness and propriety was his sister, but she was in a palace in Equestria and Sharp was in a muddy ruin with him. Despite being on the road, he had managed to keep his black mane combed and tightly bound in a queue, and his little beard was trimmed meticulously. He was as his name suggested, very sharp. Even his eyes, pools of amber, were sharper than any blade Argentum knew of.

Argentum would never admit it to the stallion, but he was a little proud having a tutor like Sharp. What the pony lacked in worldliness and physical strength he more than made up for with mental acumen and a creative flair for magic. The magician had even been an apprentice of the famed Starswirl the Bearded! He had always wondered why a sorcerer as gifted and capable as Sharp would be content with being the tutor of the Queen’s bastard. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was merely biding his time before he took on a greater task. He was certainly being paid a fortune to mentor Argentum, so it was possible Sharp was just collecting coin to fund some grand quest. The prince certainly hoped the mage had ambition beyond teaching.

“No,” the prince said, his face twisting into a humourless smile. “My mother is not why we are here.”

Queen Antimony was one of the dozens of copper-crown lords and ladies who clung to their old lands and old animosities. Despite the freeze, the famine and the invaders the wars of the Long Winter refused to end. Even with the new Commonwealth of Equestria proclaimed by his sister and her precarious allies, his mother had not wavered in her desire to crown herself Empress of all Powniland. Being the suzerain of a few nominally independent lords of a dying land was apparently achievement enough to warrant dominion of the entire continent. She was like the first mate of a sinking ship, recently named captain after her predecessor’s sudden death, and all she wanted to do was manoeuvre it to board other sinking ships. She was a fool.

I guess that makes me the biggest fool of all. Argentum was well aware of Powniland’s situation and his mother’s single-mindedness in her lost cause, yet he stuck by her side still. Only because I want to, he reminded himself. Only because there’s still a bit more juice I can squeeze from this rotten fruit before it shrivels up completely.

He looked his tutor dead in the eye and was rewarded a flinch. Argentum had been birched only a few times by Sharp, when he was younger (bastards deserve no whipping boys, even royal bastards). Now he was older, his wizard tutor dared not to scold his charge physically.  Not since the boy learned to delight in pyromancy.

“We are here because Realgar has my father’s seat. It just so happens my mother has decided to make war on him at the same time we do.”

Sharp gave a derisive snort. “Pillaging villages and raping peasants is hardly making war, Prince Argentum.”

Argentum scowled. “It would be if I had more soldiers, or if I raised a banner over my head while I did it. Most of warfare seems to be just banditry mandated by the nobles.”

“It would be a more honourable form of warfare if you abstained from such activities.”

“Oh? And what would you call more honourable forms of warfare, Sharp? Lining up against another army and charging? Smashing into gates with oil poured onto our heads? An ambush or hit-and-run skirmish if we’re being generous with the term ‘honourable’?”

“I meant merely focussing on attacking Realgar’s soldiers rather than his peasants,” Sharp said, in a manner Argentum found irritatingly reminiscent of the tutor’s lectures during his foalhood.

The prince swept a hoof across the gathered bandits and filibusters. “And what should I pay my stallions, hmm? How should I keep them entertained and fed if all we did was attack soldiers. We have no baggage trains to feed us. What we have in coin and food is what we have taken from Realgar’s smallfolk.”

“It was merely a suggestion, my prince.”

“Of course, we haven’t been killing as many of his soldiers as I’d have liked,” he said as he turned to his band. “Which is why I would like us to step up our war against Realgar. Ambush his soliders, intercept his supplies and rob his paymasters. There’ll still be plenty of booty between now and when I have Realgar’s head on a spike, but I won’t have you all growing fat and lazy. Practice makes perfect, after all, and butchering defenceless villagers is foal’s play. I believe you’ll be up to this task, my brothers.”

There was a chorus of agreement from the ranks and the brigands toasted to their young leader, to victory and to riches. Lost-An-Eye poured a pint of ale into a tankard and passed it to Argentum.

“Hey, Arg,” he said. “Where’ve you been for the past hour anyway? We’ve all been drinking the loot without you.”

“Oh, I stumbled upon a pretty young farmer’s daughter while running down some survivors a short distance from the village. She was very insistent that I show her and her family mercy.” He grinned lasciviously. “I agreed in exchange for her maidenhood. So that is where I have been for the past hour, and I’ll say it is was a damn sight better than swilling piss-beer with you lot.” He took a lengthy swig of his ale and the warriors all laughed and congratulated him.

“My prince,” Sharp spoke up, frowning. He had been the only one to not join in the bawdy round of laughter of the other stallions. “You did not… kill her, did you? You honoured your deal with the filly?”

Argentum scoffed. “Of course, Sharp. I am not a monster after all.”