Malign Spirits

Chapters

Chapter 1: Up the Avalon
Chapter 3: A Strange Mare by the River
Chapter 2: The Fight in the Fog

Chapter 1: Up the Avalon

Keen Trader and his crew were doomed.

They had boated down the Muddy from Stalliongrad, their riverboat Mare Mustang full of furs from the Northwest, furs that should fetch a fine price among the furriers of Colton, at the foot of Mount Avalon. It was a good plan for a venture, and it would have worked, had not Keen Trader gotten too greedy at the last.

He had, of course, traveled in company with one of the regular trading-fleets down from Stalliongrad. Keen Trader was bold, not stupid, and well he knew that the Northwest was infested wth bandits, especially along the river. Keen grasped that a target as tempting as a fur-laden flatboat could safely travel those streams only if she either traveled in convoy, or carried at least a squad of well-armed and armored guards.

The latter solution was so expensive as to be impractical. Royal Guards were unavailable for deployment in such penny packets, mercenaries might be hired, but they were costly; competent armsponies would cut so deeply into the profit margin as to render the whole voyage pointless. A big merchant house could hire a section or company of mercenaries and deploy them strategically through a large fleet; such tactics were unavailable to small fry such as Keen Trader.

Traveling in company was by far the most prudent choice. The disadvantage, of course, was that a convoy goes at the speed of the slowest boat -- generally a big wallowing barge carrying bulk cargo. Mare Mustang was a fast boat, equipped with both oarlocks and the ability to step a mast and raise a yawl rig, with both a flat bottom and a retractible keel board, for the best performance in both the shallows and deeps of the river. Half her capabilities were wasted in a slow convoy, and Keen Trader knew it.

And the first boats to reach Colton could catch the furriers when their demand was the most keen, allowing the furs to be sold for the highest possible prices. Hence, an ambitious trader such as Keen could not be satisfied to amble along, slowly grazing with the herd. No, he would want to gallop ahead of the others, racing to his destination! At some point, all the brave merchants broke away from the herd to make their final, frenzied dashes up the River Avalon toward the great mountain atop which gleamed the capital of Canterlot, and Keen Trader was no exception.

The Muddy River was dangerous, poorly-patrolled. But the Avalon was watched over directly by the Royal Guard, including by platoons of sharp-eyed Pegasi stationed on the Palace towers, and higher still on outposts closer to the summit of Mount Avalon. Equipped with strong telescopes, they could see everything that passed in the Vale of Avalon, and be there within minutes of swift-winged flight. Any bandits who dared to operate in the Vale would have to do so in small groups and from concealment. Surely, the Avalon would be safe!

Keen Trader was mostly correct. There had been only two flaws in his reasoning.

The first was that, while most of the Avalon between the ruins of Junction, where the boats turned off the Muddy, and Colt Creek, where the boats turned off the Avalon, was safe enough, that was not entirely true of the stretch between where Junction had been and the town of Saddle Lake. There, the north bank is mostly desolate, its villages sacked in the late wars, and the south bank is even worse, holding as it does the northern fringes of the dark and dismal Everfree Forest.

Indeed, some of those villages on the northern shore had been wasted neither by contending armies nor even bandits, but rather by that which had come out of the Everfree to raid across the river, when the Royal Guards were busy in the Northwest fighting against the hordes of the vicious Griffon Chief, Guntram the Black, three decades and more past. There were things in the Everfree that did not like Ponies, not at all, and they did not always remain within the forest's borders.

In consequence, both shores were there almost entirely lacking in any Ponies on lawful errands, and prime lurking-grounds for bandits. Such bandits would of course have to brave the terrors of the Everfree, or of the lands right across the river from the Everfree, but they would of course be armed, and inured to danger.

The second flaw in his reasoning is that he did not consider that Pegasi, no matter how sharp-eyed, cannot see through fog.

The fog had swirled thick over the water as Keen Trader captained the Mare Mustang around the dangerous confluence of the waters, and Brown Roarer, the big young dun stallion who had replaced Ken's usual pilot, had gone pale as he conned the boat past jagged rocks and into the fog spilling out from the Avalon. He had previously been only a cub pilot -- this was his first experience of piloting alone, and he clearly did not appreciate such a challenging baptism in chief-pilotry.

Crusty, old experienced White Foam, Keen's regular pilot, had broken two legs by managing to walk off a pier at Pietown. White Foam was a really good pilot, but he did tend to drink too much in port, which had been his bane. It might be months before White Foam would be healed enough to rejoin the boat, if he ever was -- it would certainly not be until the next voyage, or the one after. For now, they would have to make do with Brown Roarer -- he had been the only decent pilot available.

They were heading into the wind as well as the current as they took the first leg of the Avalon. The channel was narrow and the stream strong. Both tacking and rowing were impossible, and towing difficult here where there was no maintained towpath. That left poling, and that is how they went up this part of the river: a slow and weary process of walking down the deck holding long poles, the motion of their hooves actually pushing the boat upstream while the poles coupled them to the river bottom. They felt every ton of the boat and her cargo, every pound per square inch of the current against the hull, and every yard of their progress upstream. It was a tough job, but the only way to bring the boat past this part.

Keen Trader and Brown Roarer stood astern, crewing the tiller and as necessary augmenting the steering capabilities of their rudder with the long stern sweep. It was vital to keep the Mare Mustang's bow into the current; they could not afford to let her swing broadside on; possibly capsized and certainly swept far downstream in such a situation. To complicate matters, the fact that they were poling meant that a sudden shift in attitude could eassily result in crew overboard, and it forced them to keep to shallow water. What was more, sometimes the broad shallows were on one side of the river, sometimes on the other; so every now and then they had to maneuver under oar across the main channel, trying to lose as little headway as possible.

The fog made it worse. When poling, of course, their progress was sufficiently slow that visibility was not much of an issue, though in the densest patches, Keen sent a crewpony forward to watch for shoals and at certain points cast the lead, calling the mark back through the streamers of mist. Mare Mustang, even laden, drew less than a fathom, but it was important to know the general trend of the bottom to avoid grounding. This was not a stretch of water upon which one wished to find oneself helpless.

But when they rowed across the channel, it was nerve-wracking. If they rowed too slowly, they would lose too much headway before they reached water shallow enough to continue poling. If they rowed too fast, they risked grounding or worse, fetching up on a rock or snag. Mare Mustang was a sturdy boat, but Keen did not care to try her hull against solid stone, or the tough, twisted wood of a great fallen tree. They laid their bets, and they took their chances. And, fortunately, they won.

It was a long and weary morning. But toward noon the fog burned off, the river stood plainly revealed, and far to the north-northeast the peak of Mount Avalon rose above the low and rolling hills. The river widened and the current slowed. They raised the mast, lowered their side sweeps and set sail, into a north wind.

At first, the river's course went directly into the wind, and they had to tack, working their sweeps furiously to aid each turn to avoid falling off too far to leeward. Then the river bent eastward, and soon they were broad-reaching down a long lake, bounded by hills to north and south. As the wind shifted, they sailed sometimes closer to one side and sometimes the other, getting a good look at both.

The north shore was a green and pleasant forest, limned by marshes and broken by clearings, the wooded hills rising behind. Between and upon the trees squirrels frisked, and in the meadows rabbits browsed. Ducks and geese swam in the swamps, sometimes whirring into the air in great noisy flocks when the Mare Mustang passed too close. It was idyllic and lovely: reminiscent of the White Tails or the Foals.

Here and there, though, were reminders that these woods had a darker past. There were the ruins of towns, the remains of many villages that had been on the North Shore. Fire-blackened chimneys stood stark besides the hummocks that had been houses; looking lonely down upon the lake. In many places stockades still stood, but with broken gates and no Ponies manning the watch-towers. The land was fertile, but desolate.

Many of the ruins were scorched, sacked in the Leveller Risings of many decades past, or overwhelmed by bandits who bred and swarmed while Celestia's armies were engaged in the Northwest against Guntram the Black two decades ago. The wood was rotting away, leaving only skeletons of brick and stone to stand after less sturdy structural components fell back into the soil. In some cases, though, stone itself had melted and run, or been half-dissolved by acid or warped in stranger manners.

These were the marks of foes far feller than mere Leveller fanatics, of that which had come out of the Everfree while the Guards were away in far-off wars. Hydras, Star-Beasts, and more nameless creatures had been emboldened to cross the Avalon and fall upon the homes of Ponykind. The Militias, Equestria's last reserves in emergencies, had mustered and beaten the monsters back from most of the Vale of Avalon, but these lands had been hard by the hell-forest, and the Militias could not arrive in time to save these settlements.

Keen Trader was thirty-six years old; he had been born in YOH 1233, when the Leveller Risings had been recent memory. He had been a colt and young stallion during Guntram's attacks, when it had seemed for a time as if all the Northwest would fall and be lost to Equestria for ever; the tale of the Realm's rise now ending and that of its decline beginning. The sight of these ruins moved him; they were scars remaining from those wars, a reminder that Equestria had not yet come all the way back from the harm done it by her own unruly demagogues and the demoniacally-vicious Griffon tribal warlord.

As a young stallion he had wished to run off and join the armies fighting Guntram. His own master, Gray Bale, had convinced him that his brains and talent made him far more valuable -- both to Equestria and to all who cared for him -- as a merchant than he ever would have been as a soldier. Keen knew that what he and his fellows were doing, by bringing the riches of the Northwest back to Equestria and hence encouraging further settlement and exploitation, was serving the Realm in a fashion far more effective than he might have ever done with his sword -- though he'd had to use his sword more than once anyway, defending his ventures from river-pirates.

Still, he knew little of the northern shore. The biggest town had been Lake Landing; he'd heard that it had been a fairly nice place before the Levellers had burned it down. The destruction of Lake Landing had undermined the defenses of the whole Lower Avalon, and one village after another had fallen to one or another foe. He knew the other villages only to the extent that their larger ruins were useful navigational marks; had he been a pilot, of course, he would have memorized them all.

He knew even less of the southern shore here. He had heard legends -- essentially wonder-tales -- that there had once been a great castle and city deep within what was now the Everfree, and had then been a veritable Garden of Paradise, and that castle and city had been the capital of a great Realm. That Realm had been ruled by two Alicorn Sisters who had quarreled, the younger rising against the elder to become a monster, the very same Nightmare Moon who figured so prominently in the harvest-festival of Nightmare Night. In their battle, the castle and city and Realm had all been cast down, and the forest cursed forever to be the abode of monsters.

He did not know, of course, that the Realm in question had been Old Equestria, and the elder Sister the very same mare who now sat on the throne at the Palace of Canterlot. Keen Trader was an intelligent Pony, but he was no scholar, and even scholars had long since forgotten these things, gently nudged to do so by the social manipulations of a super-equinely charismatic Ruling Princess who really did not like to hear this tragedy spoken of in her presence. Once labeled myth, the label had stuck.

Likewise, he had heard stories about ghosts haunting the very section of the southern shore he was passing: deadly ghosts, set there by Nightmare Moon to consume and slay the living. He had even once heard a song about a bard who had been kissed, and horribly-scarred, by a ghost mare with glowing golden eyes.

He had never actually seen any ghosts along this shore, though of course he'd never made the passage by night. He had no desire to see any, either. Least of all super-powerful ones, able to harm the living.

All he could see from the stern of the Mare Mustang was that the southern forest was deeper, darker and thicker that that to the north of the lake. The air was noticeably warmer there, as if there were some strange source of energy within: Keen Trader was minded not so much of a roaring bonfire as of some vast steaming compost-heap rotting away somewhere beneath the soil; a fancy rendered more plausible by the stench of decaying vegetation -- and other organic materials -- wafting across the water to his nostrils.

He did not, in truth, know why the Everfree was so much warmer than the forest on the north shore, less than a mile away. He only knew that it was unnatural, and he did not like it, any more than he liked the ancient twisted trees; the way their gnarled branches moved -- sometimes to no visible wind -- or the vines which draped those branches, and sometimes seemed to squirm, especially when he saw them from the corners of his eyes. Nor did he like the sounds he heard when he passed the hell-woods: the strange hoots, howls, shrieks, snarls, growls and other calls emitted by creatures little-known in the rest of Equestria.

Least of all did he like what he sometimes saw when he passed too close to that horror-haunted shore. The glimpses -- and sometimes more than glimpses -- which he had been vouchsafed of forms both shocking and manifestly predatory convinced him to never make this run by night, and to always keep crossbows and half-pikes ready on deck when passing this place.

It was thus each time with a sense of relief that Keen Trader put the Mare Mustang turning to port, and away from that dreadful riverbank. Brown Roarer knew these waters, and the leadspony Mark Gainer was alert, but Keen could not rid himself of a certain nagging fear that his boat might come to some grief on the Everfree shores; wrecked on some hidden rock, and they all leave their bones mouldering in the hell-forest.

The notion took root in the back of his head, in the same place from which he got his best trading hunches, and try as he might Keen could not dislodge it. He felt it as a coldness on his croup, an irritation as if some predator were about to leap on him from behind, a wrenching in his stomach, a constant unease. Sweat broke out upon his brow, and his mouth went dry.

He could not afford to show fear before his crew. Nothing would demoralize his boys faster then the awareness that their captain was afraid, and that would put them all in very real danger should they balk at some maneuver. So he kept up a brave front; remained alert for any obstacles ahead; snapped out his orders in the normal fashion; and hoped that they would soon be clear of this terror-shadowed stretch of river. He was glad that the direction of the wind kept the crew from literally smelling his fear.

At one point the wind shifted full abeam, and they ran broad-reaching right down the center of the channel. Keen Trader relaxed, allowing himself a soft sigh of relief. They were now about as safe as they could be in these waters.

Soon they would reach the end of the lake. The river there turned north-eastward again -- but here it would be broad, shallow and slow-flowing. The main channel would be deep enough for their keel-board at full draft, which would let them continue to sail even close to the wind; while they could augment the sails with the sweeps, and with their combined power, make good headway against the current.

Five miles of that, and they would make Saddle Lake. where they would be in full view of Mount Avalon and have plenty of room for maneuver. An easy row across the lake, and they could dock for the night at Saddle Lake Towne, get some well-earned rest. From there on, they would be in well-patrolled and routinely-cleared waters, all the way to Colt Creek -- no more than two or three days from Colton and the end of their voyage. They would be home.

Home.

Home meant his wife, Mare Counting Scroll, after whom he'd named his riverboat. Small, smart, pretty and businesslike -- and with a hidden passion she'd shown only to him. She was his lover and helpmate, who ran the Colton end of his ventures, contributing as fully to their success as did his foreign labors. Home meant their three children -- studious, ten-year-old Wellborn Scroll, a colt so intelligent that Keen felt awe at having sired him; six-year-old Sugar Scroll, who always begged him so sweetly for candy, or whatever else her heart currently desired, and to whom he found it very difficult to refuse; and little No-No -- he should arrive just in time to celebrate her first birthday.

Home meant warmth and love. Home meant happiness.

Home was why he made these long, wearying and dangerous trading ventures in the first place. He could have made an adequate living working in a counting house or as a shore factor. He could have even saved enough to gradually build his investments in trading ventures to the point that he would have enjoyed a comfortable living for himself and his family, with an adequate fortune on which to retire. But for his family, he wanted something more than merely adequate. He wanted to make them rich, so that his wife could show herself to the world in style, and his children enjoy top educations.

He was almost at that point already. Indeed, if he could bring in and sell this cargo -- especially if he could beat the other boats into port -- he really would be rich.

Rich enough that he could afford to quit leading the ventures himself. He could hire captains on a share basis, remain in Colton to manage the firm, taking a smaller cut of more ventures and growing even richer. He could hang around the coffee-houses, conferring with his fellow-merchants, keeping an ear up to the buzz of commerce and an eye out for profitable investment opportunities.

Would he become bored? Certainly there would be fewer physical challenges. He wouldn't have to remain alert on dark nights, his whole body crying out for sleep, steering past sandbars and snags. Or stay on top of some complex deal in an unfriendly town while shivering with some foreign fever. Or lead his crew in fending off a pirate attack. All of which, at one time or another, there had been no choice but for him to do over the last decade of his life.

Such adventures made exciting tales, but they were hell to live through. He would miss the wonder of seeing new places, but he would not miss the pain and fear of dangerous voyaging. Besides, as a rich merchant he might still travel, both for business and pleasure. His travels would simply be far easier and safer, that was all.

And he would get to see his family every evening. He could sleep next to Mare every night. He would be able to watch their children grow to adulthod, marry and have children of their own, as it happened rather than as a series of vacations home followed by the next long voyage. He would grow old, happy and rich and respected, warmed by his hearthfire and the love of his family.

He looked up at Canterlot, shining on the slopes of Mount Avalon, and his gaze shifted down and to the left, his mind filling in the homely walls and towers and rooftops of Colton to the west of that great eminence, nestled in the foothills by Colt Creek. Colton, his home town. Colton, where was his family. He looked -- and suddenly made up his mind.

This would be his last personal venture. From now on, he would be the investor who equipped and organized the voyages. He chose home and family over excitement and adventure. When he came home this time, it would be for good.

He smiled, contemplating his happy future.

But first, of course, he had to get past this next bit.

Ruby drifted over the treetops, a thicker patch of the mists that hung over the Everfree. She didn't bother to manifest mortal eyes, and hence was blind in the light octaves, but such scarcely mattered to the Wraith. Her spectral senses informed her of the patterns of magical energy flowing beneath and through the haunted forest, while her Talent for Finding rendered her almost incapable of becoming lost in any case.

She had slipped into a deeper dream after dawn, as was her wont; mortals imagined Wraiths were driven back by cockcrow, but in truth they recked little of the behavior of male jungle-fowl, of which Sunney Towne had been in any case bereft for over seven hundred fifty years. Nightmare Moon had accidentally slain Three Leaf's original flock and the Wraiths had been utterly-uninterested in acquiring a new one.

What actually drove Wraiths back was sunlight: something about the solar radiance disturbed and disrupted their spectral forms in a way no mere firelight nor even most magelights could. This was why Wraiths shunned daylight, and were normally most active by night.

As a mortal filly over three-quarters of a millennium ago, one way in which Ruby had often been bad was that she had refused to go to sleep at bedtime. The realities of farming meant that at some seasons she was so tired that she dropped off immediately to bed when night fell, but when she wasn't too tired, she often sneaked out of the bed and crept out to think her private thoughts under the beauty of the night sky. Indeed, it had been while engaged in this solitary pursuit that she had first met Princess Luna, with momentous consequences for both of them.

Now, as a Wraith, Ruby no longer actually needed sleep. Instead, she spent her existence in a constant waking dream, in which she blindly repeated the same actions -- especially those of the last few hours of her life -- again and again each day, unless she made a special mental effort to avoid doing so. And every evening, she was once again murdered -- the few times she had skipped that she had become deeply and horribly exhausted. She knew that her ritual murder sustained her through its link to the Curse; if she avoided that too often, she would risk the True Death; and she did not want to pass for real until she could redeem all her kin. Most especially the one who had specifically killed her.

But she had discovered that, if she let herself relax and sink into a deeper trance for a few hours every day, she could make herself focus better on doing new things when she wasn't actually re-enacting her murder. This was the equivalent of sleeping, for a Wraith, and most of them did this at the height of the day, when the harsh sunlight kept them in the halfworld, or under cover, and during which their ghostly powers were restricted in any case.

The Wraiths spent this time in their own individual ways. Her mother Mitta Gift semi-slept, either in their cottage in the village, or her bed in their secret inner sanctum in the cave on Falls Hill. Her father Gray Hoof rested in their old family house with his mistress Three Leaf, when she wasn't staying in her own hut working on experiments.

Her eldest half-sister Starlet usually slept with her beloved Roneo -- any issues of pre-marital respectability having been washed away by that last devastating blast from Nightmare Moon -- the one that had slain her and Roneo both, as they embraced in mingled love and terror, so many centuries ago. They would never wed, nor would Starlet bear Roneo any foals, in or out of wedlock.

Gladstone -- her eldest half-sibling, and the least favorite to her of her kin -- he was often doing something nasty with one of the mares of his squad of Skeletal Guards, who were bound to obey his every command, and were in any case usually pathetically-grateful for his attentions. He always acted as if this were some great achievement on his part.

Ruby had been rather personally innocent when she had died. After over 750 years of unlife, she was no longer quite so innocent, at least in terms of observational knowledge. And the notion of carnal union, in general, had never actually bothered her. She grew up in an age where there was much less privacy, helping her family to farm. She had known where foals came from.

But something about what Gladstone did bothered her. She was not bothered by the fact that her father loved Three Leaf (though she wished that Grey Hoof, Mitta and Three Leaf had all made the Morgan-Marriage they had obviously wanted after her grandmother Dainty Hoof's death, two years before the Curse, a plan spoiled for ever by Grey Hoof's murder of Ruby herself, which would have led to Mitta leaving Grey Hoof, had not Nightmare Moon rendered the issue of divorce entirely irrelevant with the blasts of focused gravitation which cut down husband, wife and old mistress down alike in death). Nor was she at all bothered by the love of Starlet and Roneo.

What she supposed bothered her was that this was not love. She knew this, because Gladstone did not restrict himself to just one mare at at time, nor did those mares show much inclination to avoid Passing On any longer than those he did not choose. It was rape, or very close to it, and it reminded Ruby too much of a certain terrifying moment when she and her mother had been attacked by bandits, over eight years before they had both died. Grey Hoof had saved them then, but there was no one to save Gladstone's victims, for they were directly bound to Gladstone: the most Ruby herself could do was tell them that it was possible to Pass On, and how.

It was just another way in which the Ponies of Sunney Towne had, themselves, essentially become bandits. She knew this always in the back of her mind, but when she saw the misery in the fiery sparks that glowed in the sockets of Gladstone's victims, she was forcibly confronted with its truth.

She hated bandits. And when she saw his victims, she hated Gladstone. Which she should not, as he was her brother. Or half-brother, in any case.

Sometimes, she even hated herself.

But not right now. For she was doing something she loved.

She was searching.

Ruby had been a non-conformist in matters of sleep when in her breathing days, and death had not changed her in this. While most of the Wraiths slept all afternoon, and awoke only for Ruby's combined fifteenth birthday and murder-party, Ruby preferred to nap in the early morning, and then rise in the late morning or early afternoon. She had fallen into this habit in her subterranean sanctum, and then discovered that as long as she stuck to the shadows -- easy in the Everfree Forest -- she could flit from shade to shade, sometimes sinking into the ground to cross sunlit patches, even on a sunny day without much difficulty.

And on foggy or even overcast days, she could roam about outside in almost complete freedom. She still had to worry about breaks in the clouds, but even direct sunlight only caused her pain and exhaustion and drove her back into the shade or the ground for a time. That was a risk worth taking, for the fun of exploration. The sting of sunbeams was simply part of the game she played; and unlike tangible undead creatures, Wraiths could only be disrupted and repelled, rather than truly harmed, by the power of the Sun. The others feared the Sun; Ruby did not. That was the difference.

Sometimes she drifted about the forest, searching for hidden treasures in loot abandoned by thieves, or the many ruins that littered the forest. At times she went as far as the Castle and City Foreverfree -- there were endless fallen houses there, which she had seen slowly return to the soil, and many spaces hidden beneath the former city, which were hidden from the Sun and in which she could wander as she pleased. There were other ghosts there too, and some were willing to converse with her. Her life was over, but that did not mean that she had to be alone, or shut herself up in one small village forever, not when she had the wit and heart to adventure.

Upon occasion -- and she had to plan this carefully, usually on a very cloudy day -- Ruby could wake early in the day, and make it across the river, during the decades and centuries when it was bridged. She had to travel invisbly and intangibly to do this, for there was no way she could cross those waters in any showy or solid Aspect, but then she could rest and re-form on the other side. Usually she became but a patch of mist, within which a sharp-eyed Pony might have seen a pair of wan golden eyes, peering out at them.

Then she could go into the towns of living Ponies, and watch them go about their business in the markets and streets and houses, and hear their speech, and learn something of how the world that she had left for ever wended its way without her. If she planned it right, and it was a very foggy day, she could even get little things from the towns, but only things that they were throwing away, for she hated thieves and did not want to become one. These things she brought back to her Sanctum, and collected for her later enjoyment.

Tapestries, and books, and clothes, and sheets of music, mostly.

Sometimes -- oh, those times were wonderful! -- she found things on her side of the River. That meant that she could use her full power and bring back sizable things -- heavy clothes, or boxes and crates and trunks, or even large items of furniture such as beds and bookcases and tables.

Her Sanctum was a lovely place, filled with more wealth than she had dreamed she might ever enjoy in her breathing days. She had tapestries to decorate her walls, and books to read, and bookcases to keep them in, and pretty clothes to try on and pose in, and she even rested on her own bed now. She was rich, though she had none save her mother with whom she might enjoy her treasures. She did not trust the others enough; she had never, in many centuries, shown them where it was, though she suspected they knew she had her own place. This was her place, where she could be safe from all the world, and dream of her life as it might have been.

The world seemed to be getting richer. She was no expert on economics, but when she saw the riverboats and visited the towns, it seemed as if the boats and houses kept getting bigger and sturdier and nicer century by century. Almost all the houses now had those chimneys they had invented a few hundred years ago, and glass gleamed in the windows, and the Ponies seemed bigger and better-fed and healthier. And there were more and more boats on the river -- sometimes whole trading fleets sailed past her -- though the last half-century had seen some setbacks in that regard.

She remembered that Luna had once told her that She and her Sister had a plan to accomplish this, that they wanted to make Equestria better and better until one day it would reach the heights of the fabled Age of Wonders, millennia ago, and then Ponies might even go beyond the Earth, though that part seemed strange to Ruby. And she supposed that the plan was coming true, even without her friend, who had been banished to the Moon -- Ruby had seen that part of it, as a new Wraith -- and she wondered if Luna could see any of this from the Moon, and if it consoled or enraged her.

She sometimes wished that she might partake in the new world whose birth she was witnessing, but she knew her limitations. She was dead, after all. The world was for the living. She knew that she was lucky to see it at all -- had she lived the life she had meant to live, she would have died some six or more centuries ago anyway of old age if nothing slew her first, and missed all these beautiful things. She had her cave and her treasures, and she mostly enjoyed her unlife.

Today she was excited, for her Talent had told her that there was, or would be, something really special to find on the shores of the Avalon. Perhaps a riverboat had gone aground and jettisoned some of its cargo? That was salvage, she told herself, and no thievery at all, so she could take some of it!

So she drifted through the forest, a mist-cloud, and her golden eyes glowed in happy anticipation of what might at her destination be revealed.

Author's Note

This is essentially how riverboating worked in the days before steamboats. The cheaper riverboats only sailed downstream and then were broken up for timber. A quality boat, such as the Mare Mustang, had numerous ways of making progress against the current: sails, oars, towing and poling. All these methods save for sails put great demands on the strength and endurance of the crews (good thing for Earth Pony hardiness!) and sails required some management in the narrow confines and rapidly shifting depths of the rivers. In particular, there wasn't always room to tack upwind, and when proceeding upstream it might be impossible to make headway against a strong current.

The Equestrians know that paddle-boats are possible, and some larger riverboats have treadmill-powered paddles. This is not really practical for a medium-sized boat like the Mare Mustang. The principle of the screw propellor is known but not yet much employed, as it requires machining to tolerances impractical before the Industrial Revolution is well underway to avoid shipping too much water at the joints, and the gains are minor without engines to drive them. This advanced knowledge comes from the copies of Age of Wonders books that escaped the fall of the Crystal Empire. Thank you, Lady Tourmaline.

Over short distances -- which is what one had to deal with on any but the broadest rivers -- a small fast canoe or racing shell can actually sprint and catch even a fast merchant boat such as the Mare Mustang, though the Mare Mustang can beat any of those boats in a long haul. The implications of interception geometry make up a good part of river piracy and anti-piracy strategy and tactics.

Such attacks are generally suicidal against large trade fleets with archers stationed in the bigger boats and an escort galley or two available to lend a hoof in the thick of the fighting, as the pirates would have little cover against their arrows while the archers could shelter behind their bulwarks; and a canoe whose rowing was disrupted could be run down by the galley. They are all-too-effective against lone boats.

River piloting is a complex business, as channels shift and shallows may suddenly rise or fall or currents significantly change after a major storm. Many details must be committed to memory, as the changes come too fast for any system of written guides to completely cover. (Today in America, I would assume they use databases and sonars).

The system of master and apprentice ("cub") pilots described is based on what was actually used on early to mid 19th century American steamboats, as described in Mark Twain's famous Life on the Mississippi (1883). Mark Twain actually was a steamboat pilot, so I take his opinions very seriously on such matters.

Equestria at this time didn't have steamboats, but she had large rivers that conveyed a lot of her internal commerce, and large riverboats to ply these internal waters. Now (YOH 1506) of course, Equestria has both steamboats and steam railroads, though the great age of steamboating passed in the early 15th century YOH. As in America, the railroads outcompeted the steamboats, and for the same general reasons.

The Mare Mustang could really use an auxiliary engine, couldn't she?

That "long lake" includes much of what is today Ponyville, later built upon what were then shallows. Before Dawnflower Apple re-colonized the region, much of it were wetlands. In the steamboat era, Celestia had the main channel dredged and deepened, and various farmers -- mostly Apples, Carrots and Berrys -- built dikes and claimed some of the shallows as rich bottomland. Thanks to generations of efforts by the Apples in particular, the beasts of the Everfree have been pushed back, and Ponyville now straddles the river where Keen Trader saw but ruins on the northern shore and the dark forest on the southern shore.

Guntram the Black may or may not have been literally-demoniacal. He was apparently able to somehow subdue Celestia in a one-on-one confrontation and kidnap her, if we are to believethe account of Aquilinus. Certainly, he had incredible charisma, to have united the fractious savage Griffons of the Northwest beneath his standard, and was a brilliant war-leader, to have then defeated the Equestrian Royal Guards in numerous battles. It is quite possible that he had merged with a Night Shadow or some other evil entity: this would go a long way toward explaining his fabled powers, which included the ability to overcome the most powerful known Incarnate Alicorn in face-to-face combat.

Or Celestia may just have not cared about being abducted. The 13th century was a time of extreme emotional despair for her, and she in many ways was just letting go and letting herself -- and Equestria -- drift. She might have just found being abducted by a barbarian Griffin interesting. Celestia could get very strange when she was seriously sad.

Ruby Gift, like pretty much everypony not actually rich in the Equestria of over a thousand years ago, slept in one bed with her parents most of the time. That's how a pre-industrial economy works. (Gray Hoof was rich by the standards of Sunney Towne, not by the standards of the wider Equestrian world).

If you need any more to disgust you, the Skeletal Guard don't have a Life Aspect. They self-assemble into those flesh-dripping skeletons, and that's about as lively-looking as they ever get. They're not Wraiths, they're a spectral sort of Revenants.

On the one hoof, Gladstone doesn't exactly have a lot of romantic prospects. On the other hoof, he only has as much of a sex drive as he chooses to imagine for himself -- none of them have any emotional need for sex; only for love and affection.

Think on that.

Chapter 3: A Strange Mare by the River

Keen Trader woke up.

He was lying on the foredeck of the Mare Mustang, he realized as he opened his eyes. The deck was canted, and from the lack of any motion, he knew they were aground. There were no equine sounds around him, only the raucous cries of crows, no doubt quarrelling over some scraps -- and faintly, the soft sussuration of water.

Then he sw the corpse of Time Maker, lying beside him, and he remembered that he had been -- knocked out, it must have been -- in the middle of a battle aboard the Mare Mustang's decks, and was now lying amidst the shambles. He should have had a pounding headache, but he didn't feel the slightest bitg of pain.

Guess I really do have a hard head, just as Mare always says, he thought, in a desperate attempt at merriment. It fell flat, even in his own mind, as he regarded the corpse of the lead oarspony -- a steady, sober stallion he had well known and liked. There were even worse implications of Time Maker's presence here.

The pirates must have won, or at best Mare Mustang must have taken such heavy losses in winning free that the survivors were too few and exhausted to take care of tending to a wounded Keen, or decently covering Time Maker's corpse. The fact that Mare Mustang was grounded implied that whoever had her had not controlled her course very well.

Surely somepony must have won the battle? But actually, that was far from certain; in the confusion and literal fog, everypony on Mare Mustang might have been killed or knocked out, and the boat still managed to slip free, only to drift down the Avalon until it fetched up on a sandbank or riverbank somewhere. The lack of any equine sounds certainly smacked of some such fate.

Slowly and carefully, Keen rolled up nto his hooves. As he did, he realized that he had been lying very close to -- indeed, almost on top of -- a second corpse, whose identity he did not recognize. The dead stallion had been tall; almost as tall as Keen himself; and his coat was a shade of orangish-brown quite similar to Keen's own. Likewise his mane was a shade of golden-brown not very different from Keen's, though with a bit more gray hair, indicating that the other stallion had probably been somewhat older. This mane, and the stallion's head, was drenched in blood from what must have been a bad wound; the stallion's head was turned away from Keen, mercifully hiding whatever damage had been done. He even wore a bloodstained silk shirt, sodden from what looked like a nasty chest wound, which had originally been white, of the same style Keen favored; indeed, of the same style that Keen was right now wearing.

Keen shivered as he considered those similarities. The dead stallion had obviously been a pirate, and Keen should have hated him, but it was hard for Keen to hate a dead Pony who looked in so many ways like Keen himself. Instead, the similarities in their appearance filled Keen with a superstitious dread; reminding him of tales he'd head of buzzies and doppelgangers, mythical monsters which could assume one's own form. He felt very glad that he could not see the dead stallion's face. He supposed that the strength of his emotional reaction derived from his awareness that, had he not been remarkably lucky, that might have been him lying there. At that thought, his head and chest both ached in sympathy, so badly that for a moment he gasped and doubled up with the pain.

Now standing fully on all four hooves, Keen could survey the state of his command. That state was sorry. Mare Mustang was littered with still forms; apparently there had either been no other survivors, or so few and so badly wounded that they could not even clear the decks of the dead and more severely wounded. All sails were down, not furled but simply draped on the deck or half over the sides; some were missing. The cargo hatches had been torn open. Some of the cargo was strewn about the strand; Keen expected that the most valuable cargo had been plundered by the pirates.

The meaning was plain. While Keen had lain unconscious, the priates msut have overrun Mare Mustang, and slain, stunned or taken captive the crew. They probably did not have enough crew, especially after the fight, to make the merchant boat their permanent prize, but instead beached her and looted her hold at their pleasure. Then they left her here derelict, not wanting to hang around after the fog burned off and they were exposed to the view of the Guards atop Mount Avalon.

That fog still lingered around the boat, though it was gradually dispersing; he could now see a hundred lengths and more in all directions. The day seemed well-advanced; the Sun, invisible above him through the fog, was almost burningly-hot on Keen's skin, even though he could not yet see her orb. He could not actually see where it was in the sky, but he thought it was already far to the west. Hours must have passed while he lay stunned.

Everything around him, save Mare Mustang herself, seemed rather vague and colorless and gray, as if the world had gone spectral, but it was bright enough that he could clearly see the outlines. He was not entirely certain where he was, though he had an idea. The fog had robbed him of his normal landmarks, most obviously Mount Avalon. He could see enough to tell that the river was wide here; so wide that he could not see the far bank; from the direction of the current he must be on the eastern or southern shore. The wild shore.

The stretch of riverbank on which the Mare Mustang had come to her rest was a gentle slope, beyond which rose thickly-wooded hills. The pirates, had driven her far enough ashore that it would not be easy for Keen to get her afloat again, if he had to do this alone; and would be challenging even if he could locate one or two other survivors of the crew. Keen was in good condition; other survivors might well be severely wounded.

This shore did not look like the swamp he had been in when the pirates felled ... knocked him out. It looked more like the south shore opposite, or a bit east of, the former location of Lake Landing. That would match the wide river and gentle current, and the hills behind the strand.

That thought alarmed him. This bank, as he had reflected on the voyage upstream, was extremely dangerous, haunted by terrible beasts. The corpses on board would soon draw carrion-eaters much more fearsome than the cawing crows. Keen needed to find a weapon with which to fend off such horrors. Unfortunately, weapons were valuable: the pirates surely would have snatched up all such that they could discover when they plundered his boat.

His fine longsword had of course been stolen, as he had expected but which still caused him emotional pain -- and a moment later, physical pain as well. His right foreleg cramped in anguish, and he pulled it up for inspection to see a dreadful thing -- a bloody wound, as if a dagger had been thrust through the flesh around the cannon!

He seemed to have a confused memory of a dagger to the cannon, a mocking lecture by a pirate who imagined himself his better because of an aristocratic birth, then a rapier thrust right through his heart. But such was of course impossible -- had he suffered the latter wound he would not have gotten up now, in fact he never would have gotten up again in this world. He blinked, looked at his cannon again, and both the wound and the pain were gone. And, glancing his chest, he saw that shirt and chest were alike unmarred by any such terrible wound as he had imagined.

Indeed, his shirt was even free of blood. But how could that be, if he had been lying on the blood-drenched decking? He looked around at his back and side, and saw that there actually was a tremendous amount of blood staining the shirt, and his mane, where he had lain upon the foredeck. I'll have to get that laundered later, he thought. Good thing that it's white; repeated washing and boiling and bleaching can probably get it out. And those silk shirts aren't cheap!

It was of course a trivial loss, compared to the loss of crew and venture. The crew were his friends -- he felt a sick horror at the thought of having to tell their families how they died. He hoped that some had been as fortunate as himself, and survived the attack. And he now probably had only the ordinary furs; the pirates would have stolen the finest ones and carried them away in their galleys, leaving only those not worth stowing in their limited cargo space. Between paying off the estates of the dead crew, the time it would take to refloat Mare Mustang and the time it would take to get her to Colton now, he doubted that this venture would see any profit.

By his own impatience and folly and greed, he had lost what he had hoped to gain -- and also lost what could never be replaced by any future ventures, the lives of good Ponies. The guilt was a leaden weight on him. He had been in command; he had made the fatal decisions. It was all his fault.

For a moment he was overcome with shame at his failure.

Then, he recovered.

Enough maundering! Keen Trader sternly told himself. Attend to the task at hoof! I must find a weapon, and then consider how to refloat Mare Mustang and steer her to a safe port. If I act fast and well, I may still keep my boat -- with her owner-captain aboard her;; she is still mine, and no derelict for others to salvage!

Another good reason to find a weapon. Unarmed, he was far too vulnerable to anypony of ill intentions and low character who might hapen along and wish to salvage a wreck. Just because he had survived the pirates did not mean that his life was charmed. Alone and weaponless, he was terribly vulnerable.

Keen had gotten this far in his reasoning, when he saw the girl.

He was not sure just when she had arrived. He had been looking at his boat, and then considering the potential dangers posed by scavenging beasts and Ponies alike, and after that thought, it only seemed natural to look up and at the environment surrounding the Mare Mustang before commencing his search for arms. Adn there she was, standing next to one of the boses of furs, holding a fur in one hoof and looking directly at Keen.

She was an older filly, or young mare, appearing about fourteen or fifteen. She was gray-coated, with two-toned yellow and orange-yellow hair; worn long with red ribbon bows tied into bth mane and tail. Her eyes were a lovely light yellow-golden, and their expression was solemn as they met his gaze.

Given the nature of his previous thoughts -- and the fact that she had obviously been examining his furs -- he might have been justified in suspicion of her motives. Yet he was not. Why not?

Keen was too wise in the ways of the world to imagine that, just because she was young and pretty, she was harmless. Indeed, there was one sort of harm that young and pretty mares are all the more able to inflict upon stallions, though the fact that Keen was happily married and no other conscious crew aboard limited that avenue of danger.

Besides, she scarcely seemed a bad Pony. Her eyes contained too much sorrow for him to imagine her wholly innocent, but her exression spoke of suffering and sympathy rather than sin and malice. She bore no weapons, and while she was of muscular build, she did not look able to pose much of a physical threat to a full-grown stallion.

As to her peering at his cargo, that could be put down to natural curiosity. He did not think there had been time for her to abscond with anything.

But she might be aid. And she might know where he could recruit aid. She must have come from somewhere; she probably had kin near these parts. And her interest in the furs suggested an obvious means of hiring them.

All these thoughts flashed rapidly through his mind, because this was a very familiar situation for Keen Trader: having to decide whether or not to trust a stranger, and whether he migtt do a profitable trade with them. He decided, provisionally, in the affirmative for both.

Rearing up and leaning on the rail, he called out to the young gray mare.

"Ho, lass!" he said in a friendly tone, and waved his hoof over his head at her. "I am Captain Keen Trader, of the merchant boat Mare Mustang of Colton! We are a respectable boat, though we have encountered some difficulties. Might I be so bold as to inquire your name and origin?"

The girl cocked her head at him, and looked at Mare Mustang with an odd expression. Then she took a few steps closer to the boat, and said:

"Well met, Captain Trader. I am Ruby Gift, of Sunney Towne. And I would urge you to quit the deck of your boat and get under cover. The fog is burning off, and we shall soon be in full sunlight for some hours."

"That sounds like welcome news," said Keen. "This abominable fog aided pirates in attacking my boat, and impedes my ability to fix my position. Would you, perchance, know where I have fetched up?"

"Almost exactly where Riverbridge once was," Ruby replied, stepping a bit closer, "across the Avalon from where until the late Leveller fighting stood Lake Landing."

"Thank you, lass," said Keen. "You have confirmed my own dead reckoning." There was one thing she had said that confused him. "You speak of the fog lifting as if this would pose some threat? Why do you believe so?"

Ruby looked at him sadly and rather strangely, then asked "May I come aboard your boat, Captain Trader?"

"Certainly, my dear," he replied.

Ruby executed a prodigious leap from the strand onto the bow deck by Keen's side. Keen was impressed; he would have had difficulty making that jump up onto an unknown deck. At one point, Ruby almost seemed to be floating in midair, as if she had been some sort of wingless but still flighted Pegasus rather than an Earth Pony.

She stood now at his side, and looking at Ruby close up, Keen noticed the extraodrinary reality and solidity of Ruby, esecially compared to the eerily tenuous environment of the strand and the hills, which seemed to waver and fluctuate before his vision, as if their existence was somehow optional. Keen, and Ruby were fully real; the Mare Mustang was mostly real; all else seemed debatable.

"Captain Trader," she said, and her tone was gentle. "You are new come to this state. There are many things that you need to learn --"

"State?" he asked, mystified. "If you mean grounding, I have run aground before -- every riverpony has, from time to time. It's a routine risk of the river trade. I shall simply float my Mare Mustang off, a tedious but routine task --"

"Nay" said Ruby, and though her tone was quiet and calm, it got his attention. "I do refer to thine own state of mortality."

"What?" asked Keen, even more puzzled. "All Ponies be mortal, save perhaps the Ruling Princess."

"To be truer, I refer to your state beyond mortality."

"Beyond?" asked Keen, now thoroughly perplexed. "Lass, I cannot grasp your sense."

"Captain Trader," said Ruby. "I know from mine own memories that this can be hard to take. But thou must ken this, lest thee be harmed."

"Ken -- know what?"

"Good captain," Ruby said, gazing intently into his eyes. "Hearken well unto me. Thou art dead."

"No!" gasped Keen, struck by a punch of fear that seemed to hurt his heart like a length of cold steel. He staggered back from the pretty young mare who had just told him something terrible. "No! That cannot be!" His eyes rolled about wildly as he struggled to find the words to express himself. "I'm alive!" he cried, rearing and shaking both fore-hooves at the murky but now brighter-glowing sky. He clutched his own barrel. "I'm real ..." he groaned. "Real ..." He touched a hoof to his own face, then reached out and put that hoof gently on the side of her muzzle.

She netiher flinched from his touch nor complained, though his behavior was rather improper from a stallion toward a mare who was not at least his good friend. Instead, she smiled gently at him, put her own hoof lightly on his cannon to show that she both accepted and controlled this intimacy, and said "Of course thou'rt real, dear Captain Trader. I ne'er did make any claim in other wise. Thou'rt real. But thou'rt also dead."

"Then how can I touch you?" Keen demanded. "Why do you not shrink from my uncanny hooves? Are you some necromancer, to so calmly bear the fell presence of a thing from beyond the grave?"

He meant to challenge her with logic, but for some reason he had lost his wonted calm. His voice, normally so well-controlled after the habit of a stallion who made it one of his principle sources of income in trade negotiations, shrilled most shamefully. He felt a nameless horrid suspicion -- though he knew not the reason, he feared that Ruby Gift was right, and that his life had indeed already ended, though all common sense argued that if he were able to debate the point, he was indeed most definitely alive, since the dead are not exactly known for their great volubility.

Then, Ruby said something else at least as horrible as her earlier utterances.

"Why, good captain," Ruby replied, "for the very good cause that I too am dead."

She smiled at him, a smile that was clearly meant to be warm and gentle and friendly, but which in light of her statements, the shaken Keen could only regard as the ghastly grin of some ghoul about to devour his soul. He withdrew his hoof and shrank back in loathing from what seemed to be a sweet young mare.

Ruby's ears drooped, slightly, and she sighed. "Very well, so be it," she said. She shut her eyes and concentrated.

Keen beheld a golden glow from beneath her eyelids, and also from her Mark, which he perceived to be a magnifying glass. Was she using her Talent? Keen had never seen anypony's parts glow when they did such, save for a Unicorn's horn when he was telekinesing, or the flight of an especially fast-moving Pegasus. Certainly, he had never seen any Earth Pony do such, though he had heard rumors of the rare Earth Pony mages and such luminence proceding from their hooves and manes when they performed their laborious and subtle workings.

Ruby opened her eyes, the glow swiftly dispelling. She looked at Keen.

"Captain Trader," Ruby said calmly, "the proof of my claim lies right beside us. Behold!"

She pointed directly at the unidentified corpse which Keen had noticed before on the foredeck.

Dread chilled Keen's heart. His head and his right cannon hurt him. "That -- that is just some unfortunate pirate," he averred. But his own words sounded strangely hollow as he uttered them.

She shook her head sadly, and stepped over to the bloody corpse. She crouched down beside it.

"That were no pirate," she said sadly, "not unless my Talent has very much played me false." She lifted the head, looked at the face, the view of which was blocked by her own head and mane from Keen. "I ween he was an honorable merchant, and a brave Pony who died in defense of his boat and cargo, of which the thieves sought to rape from him." She turned her own face toward Keen, though her long orangish-yellow streaked mane was still obscuring the corpse's face. "He was a good Pony who had a very bad day -- but at least he died well, fighting for his own."

She moved aside, and now Keen could clearly see the face.

"I sorrow, good Captain Trader, for these ill tidings I bring unto thee. I am so very sorry."

All Keen could see was that bloody mask, so very like his own, beacause it was his own.

It was his own face. His own corpse.

And Keen Trader knew he was dead.

Chapter 2: The Fight in the Fog

It was when the Mare Mustang made for the mouth of the Avalon into the lake that things started to go wrong. First, the wind, which had been blowing from the north-north-west, shifted to the north-north-east. The riverboat could still sail, but much more slowly, as she glided northwards. Keen knew that as the river ahead curved northeastwards, and that soon further progress under sail alone would be impossible.

"Crew sweeps," Keen commanded. Scudding like some great water-bug, the Mare Mustang rowed northward, against a current that was here still thankfully slow. It took effort, and Keen knew that it wuld be a weary passage up to Saddle Lake. At least we're making headway, he thought, We don't need to pole -- yet.

The next thing that happened -- and it did not happen until they were a thousand or so lengths into the channel, was that the wind suddenly shifted to the east, and a thick, opaque fog began to drift with it from the wooded swamps on the eastern banks of the river. The fog seemed unnaturally-coherent. Keen felt a crawling along his back, and he felt sure that this was hostile weather-working.

Given just where they were -- just what forest they were passing -- Keen was especially unnerved. It might be brigands, aided by a fogworker; or some sort of monster from out of the Everfree. He briefly considered ordering Brown Roarer to turn the boat back downstream -- but his hackles rose at the thought of backing down -- of giving up, tamely accepting defeat.

If it were brigands, boldly pressing forward might throw off their plans; dishearten and demoralize them. If it was a monster, then sailing back toward the Everfree might simply expose the Mare Mustang to greater danger. And if it were but a natural fog, then he would truly be a coward to flee from it.

Keen made up his mind.

"Heavy, break out the arms. Brownie, make all possible speed upstream until we lose visibility, then as fast as we can do without running aground. We'll run right out of this fogbank!"

Heavy Hoof -- the big, brown-coated, orange-maned bosun, opened the arms locker and distributed axes and half-pikes to the crew. The boat's two crossbows were readied and loaded. Keen took one at the stern, and Heavy went forward with the other.

Keen briefly wished he'd shipped a swivel-gun: essentially a big blunderbuss mounted on a pivot, so that it could be quickly turned and pointed at any clear target. Smaller firearms were not very effective against Ponies, because they were slow-loading single-shot weapons, inaccurate against anything as agile as a Pony and against which each of the Kinds had its own defense -- Earth Pony toughness, Unicorn telekinesis and Pegasus flight-fields -- but a swivel gun sprayed its grapeshot into a wide area and with enough of a punch to penetrate this protection. In the packed, close-quarters environment of a boarding action, such a gun could be fearsomely effective.

Keen had been offered a surplus swivel-gun at Snake City, but he had chosen not to make the purchase. To use the weapon he would have needed to buy and store black powder, which was both an expense and a fire hazard; and to use it effectively to hire a gunner, as neither he nor anypony else aboard the Mare Mustang had any experience with black powder artillery. That would have been an even greater cost, cutting deeply into his profits. The logic behind declining to buy the swivel gun had made sense at the time. Now, he was not so certain that he had made the correct decision.

The Mare Mustang drove forward under full oar-power; aided intermittently by her sail as she tacked every other leg up the Avalon. The oarsponies were pulling with desperate strength, and the riverboat shot forward with enough speed, relative to the water, that Keen knew her prow was raising a bow wave, putting a bone between her teeth, as the galley-ponies termed it, though he hoped there was nopony to see their progress.

Keen's craft was not a galley, she was a yawl-rigged riverboat, and close to fully-laden at that; so this was almost her utmost speed. At that moment, pride swelled in Keen's heart as he saw his ship and crew both laboring to run rapidly through the fog. Counting himself, that crew was but a dozen in number, yet they included some Taented oarsponies, such as Time Maker and Thirsty Blade, and the others well-matched their pace. He also had in Sheet Trimmer a skilled rigger, for all that he had been apprenticed to a linenmaker when Keen had first met him.

Then the fog was upon them.

It wrapped Mare Maverick like a stifling shroud, instantly reducing visibility so severely that he could scarce see the bow of his own boat. The location of the rierbanks, let alone shallows, became increasingly a mystery.

"Back oars!" Keen commanded. No point in running aground at full speed, wedging ourselves well and proper on a sandbar. Laden as we are, we might not be able to get off again without losing much of the cargo.

Keen went forward to the waist, treading sure-hoovedly on the central cat-walk. "Softly, lads," he warned his crew. "See the stillness of the air. This is no normal fog. Pirates, I reckon, and they have a weather-worker."

This was, of course, but an educated guess, but Keen misliked the suddenness and thickness of that fog; especially the way in which the wind had wafted that fog across the water, only to die down when the Mare Maverick was fully shrouded in its mists. That smacked less of natural weather than of hostile warlockry.

A good weather-working Sea Pegasus, skilled at both sailing and weather-working, could command high pay from any captains fortunate enough to secure their services. The pay was high enough that Keen couldn't afford one -- it would have cut too deeply into his profits. This was a decision he now regretted even more than his lack of a swivel gun. For that reason, few joined pirate bands -- why risk the short and bloody life of outlaws, when they could enjoy the long and wealthy lives of respected maritime professionals?

But some Ponies will make foolish choices, for what seem to them excellent, but to us foolish reasons, Keen Trader reflected. That's something one learns swiftly out in the wide world -- especially leading trading ventures.

Keen went all the way forward, to stand on the foredeck by Heavy Hoof and Mark Gainer.

"Any sign of trouble?" he softly asked Heavy Hoof.

"No, Cap'n," replied the big brown bosun. His normal voice was close to a shout, but Heavy had cut it back to a half-strangled stage whisper. "All's quiet out there, fer now. But I don't like this, Cap'n, not one bit! I feel like we're bein' watched."

"I also," said Keen, nodding. "Heavy, I'm taking the bow. You take the post aft. Attack may come from any quarter."

"Aye, Cap'n," Heavy replied. He clopped off forward, his strong hoofbeats marking his passage back along the cat-walk.

Keen stood at the bow and watched as their headway slowed; then he said, in command tone but merely normal speaking volume: "Pass it aft -- ahead half, take us up the main channel."

Thirsty Blade, leading the port oarsponies, passed it aft -- a bit louder than Ken would have liked, but he knew that the Mare Mustang would soon be making plenty of noise anyway. Given the time, he would have muffled oarlocks, given the current in his favor he would have proceded more slowly, but the river kept trying to drive them back south, and he greatly feared that with a hostile weather-worker out there in the fog, they did not have very much time before the pirates fell upon them. Mare Mustang needed to get back underway as quickly as possible. Though that fog might prove a two-edged blade: it would blind the pirates as thoroughly as it blinded Keen.

They were out in the main channel now; Keen could see the current flowing evenly past the prow; he had to trust in the Talent and skill of his helmspony Brown Roarer, recent cub pilot or no. Keen was of course skilled enough, after two decades on the river, but he had not the instinct for piloting that was Brown Roarer's birth-right as one literally Marked for the profession.

"Pass it aft," Keen said. "Full speed ahead, up the main channel!"

The rhythm of the oars accelerated. This was an exhausting pace to keep up for long. Keen knew that he could reliably get only about a quarter-hour, at most a half-hour of this effort out of them; they were merchant oarsponies pulling a yawl upstream, not professional galley oarsponies, amply crewed and trained for battle. Especially in this fog, Keen's orders seemed reckless.

Yet, there was method to his madness. The fogbank, if weather-worked could not possibly be much more than a few hundred lengths wide; unless there was an impossibly powerful Pegasus working it -- a major-class wind-locker. Pirates generally rowed in small, fast light boats to chase their lumbering prey; if Mare Mustang collided at speed with anything matching that description, she would run the little boat down, roll it over, probably break its keel and certainly put the pirates aboard in the water. Mare Mustang was no ram-prowed river-galley, but she was a full-sized riverboat, not a slim little racing shell of a longboat. Mass and freeboard counted for something in a collision.

Keen knew that the faster and more decisively he maneuvered, the less accurate was the fix on Mare Mustang's position the pirates had gotten when they sent this fog. The faster the riverboat surged forward, the less the ability of the pirates to block, foul or grapple her and the more likely that the pirates themselves would be swamped in the attempt. And if he could move fast enough, he just might be able to make Saddle Lake, where the pirates might fear to pursue.

There was, however, a fatal flaw in Keen's plan. It was due to a fact he did not know and would not know until after this encounter was done, when it would be too late for his venture. He should not be blamed for this -- he had no way of knowing.

The existence, if not the precise nature, of this flaw in Keen's plans revealed itself soon after the Mare Mustang had made the main channel and was gamely working her way upstream at several knots.

Awareness of the error came when the first crossbow bolt hummed through the air past Keen's head.

Keen immediately and involuntarily ducked, a moment after it no longer mattered, and no further bolts immediately followed.

"They're shooting at me!" cried Mark Gainer, the leadspony. "Holy shit, they're shooting at me!" Hysteria rose in his voice; he suddenly seemed a lot younger than his nineteen years.

"Flank speed!" shouted Keen, dropping all attempt at stealth. The closeness of that bolt told him that the pirates knew where they were, though he still had no idea as to how they did. There was no chance now of evading the pirates. Mare Mustang's only hope now lay in flashing past with such momentum that the foe could do nothing to stop or board his boat; in running rapidly out of this accursed fog.

If they could do that, they would be in full view of Mount Avalon, and closing on the head where the River flowed out of Saddle Lake. Be the Day Guard ever so lethargic, they could not ignore a naval battle right on Saddle Lake -- there might even be a patrol operating on the lake itself. Surely they would intervene against a pirate attack this close to Canterlot and the foot of the Mountain! All he would then need to do would be to hold off the pirates long enough for help to arrive.

A second bolt hummed, this time through the air right between Keen and Mark. Now, Keen could plainly hear the sound of oars lashing the water in a different rhythm than his own, ahead and to starboard -- about 30 degrees off the bow, he estimated, raising and carefully angling his ears.

"Pass me another!" a surprisingly high-pitched voice cried. "I can hit him!"

Keen was about to warn Mark that there was no way that the pirate crossbowpony could possibly see them through this murk; that he had to be tracking them by sound, when Mark screamed like a little filly and flung himself toward Mare Mustang's waist.

Several things happened, very quickly.

Keen heard the unmistakable twang of a crossbow shooting, from the direction of the pirate.

A moment later, there came a meaty thwack, and the point of a crossbow bolt, encrimsoned with blood, suddenly protruded from Mark's throat.

Mark's shriek immediately turned into a hideous bubbling gurgle, and instead of running back along the cat-walk, as he had doubtless originally intended, the leadspony leaped into the port waist -- the side away from the source of his anguish, and the one toward which the impact of the bolt naturally pushed him ...

... right onto the port oarsponies his choking, thrashing form converted into a gruesome projectile -- their crewmate, whom most of them personally liked and all well knew; lashing out randomly with his hooves and spraying his life's blood all over them.

Two of the three port-side oarsponies were physically-incapable of rowing because Mark had fallen on them. The unfortunate leadspony had collided head-on with Thirsty Blade, knocking him about and causing him to reel back from his oar; he had then fallen with the length of his body onto the back of Strongburg Miller; his hooves flailing into the big burly oarspony, one catching him in the base of his skull, stunning him instantly. Strongburg slid off his bench and fell inboard, losing his grip on his oar in the process.

Meanwhile, in the starboard bank, the sight and sound and smell of Mark Gainer's fall had thrown the oarsponies of that bank into a frenzy of motion. The result, of course was that the thrust of the oars surged starboard as it diminished to port, causing the Mare Mustang to begin a turn to port, pointing her prow toward the shallows to port and exposing her vulnerable starboard beam to the foe.

Brown Roarer flung himself on the steering sweep to counter this unbalanced thrust, but his ability in this regard was limited. The keel-board was raised, so Mare Mustang could not well grip the water, so that instead of cleanly turning in any direction, the riverboat began crabbing toward her port bow, cleary incapable of any precise maneuvering.

For a very brief instant, Keen Trader merely gaped in frozen horror at what was hapening. Then reason, and the requirements of command, returned to him.

"Man the portside oars!" he roared. "Anypony! We're losing way!"

He need not explain that last shout. It was plain to the greenest hoof aboard the Mare Mustang just what would happen if they were caught dead in the water with pirates closing in. Thirsty Blade frantically resumed his grasp on his oar, and Hammer Free, the boat's carpenter, leaped up from the scuppers, shoved both the dying Mark Gainer and the collapsing Strongburg Miller aside; and seized the forward port oar.

For one glorious moment, Keen Trader believed that they were saved.

In the next instant the pirate boat -- emerging from the mist, knife-prow and slim beam; a little mastless demi-hemikonter with five oars flashing on each side; every bit as fragile and vulnerable as Keen had imagined -- seemed to form from the fog like a wraith-boat. But she was no ghost; she was all too real, as were the dozen or so pirates that crewed her, crowding her slim shape, working her oars to drive her upon the Mare Mustang.

Keen could plainly see two Ponies on the pirate's small bow deck. One was a gorgeously-dressed Unicorn stallion, a tall red-coated dandy with a long black flowing mane, wearing a feathered hat and a ruffled red-and-black shirt colored to match his coat and mane. The Unicorn had an unusually long horn, and in his right hoof he held a long steel rapier with an ornate basket-guard. He was clearly the captain of the pirate galley.

By his side crouched a small Pegasus, who was in the act of cranking a crossbow. The Pegasus was dappled gray, with a long lank untidy dark greenish-gray mane. Between the facts that he was both the only Peagsus and the only crossbowpony in sight, Keen was fairly sure that this was possibly the weather-warlock and the sniper who had felled Mark Gainer.

"Get the Pegasus!" Keen ordered. He leveled, aimed and shot his own crossbow. Unfortunately, Mare Mustang's chaotic maneuvers were causing her to rock violently in the water, and a sudden motion of the deck came just as Keen pulled the trigger. Heavy Hoof fired from the stern at almost the same instant. Their two bolts hummed across the intervening space toward the pirates.

The Pegasus yelped, giving a rather girlish shriek as he threw himself down onto the deck. Keen's bolt was wildly high -- it passed not only far over the head of its ducking target, but even far above the head of the black-and-red dandy, without causing that Unicorn to so much as blink. Heavy's bolt went low, thunking into the side below the Pegasus. Keen was disappointed, but not dismayed by the lack of result; shooting between two maneuvering boats was difficult, especially as the currents pulled and rocked both of the boats back and forth.

"Turn to starboard!" shouted Keen back at Brown Roarer. "Ram the bastards!"

The port oars thrashed up to flank speed, as best they could with the strong but inexpert Hammer Free substituting for the still-stunned Strongburg Miller; the starboard oars slowed from their frenzy to a more normal pace, and Brown Roarer plied his steering sweep, once again controlling the riverboat's course with precision. Mare Mustang turned to face the pirate boat, her crab to port reducing as her oars worked in proper harmony.

Keen tensed as the gap between the two boats closed rapidly. On what happened in the next seconds, the fate of his boat and all aboard her might depend.

"Slip port and diekplous!" snapped the pirate captain. It was an unavoidable consequence of combat this close that each captain could hear the other's orders.

Can he -- maybe he can! The diekplous was a maneuver by which one galley deliberately scraped the side of a foe, usually from a bow-to-bow approach, breaking the foe's oars and possibly the bodies of the oarsponies behind them. Keen was equally surprised by the fact that the pirate captain thought his crew capable of such a precision attack, and the fact that he referred to it by the Classical term rather than the 'dicky-plus' by which it was more commonly called by Equestrian galley-ponies.

"Ship starboard oars!" Keen bellowed aft. If his oarsponies could get the oars up in time, the diekplous would fail and the pirate be left heading in exactly the wrong direction to pursue Mare Mustang.

There was the twang of a crossbow from the pirate, and a bolt went far over Keen's head, tearing a small hole in a panel of the mainsail. After that glance to ensure that no real damage had been done, Keen ignored it -- the pirates had shot their bow, and wouldn't have time to reload until the two boats either rammed or passed, any more than would Keen or Heavy have a chance to shoot theirs.

Time Keeper and the other two Ponies on the starboard bank pushed down on their oars, lifting them out of the water and well clear of the oncoming pirate boat. The thrust now unbalanced to port, where Hammer Free had found his rhythm and Flying Needle the sailmaker and self-taught sawbones was fighting a losing battle to save Mark Gainer's life. Brown Roarer swung tiller and sweep the other way, and the Mare Mustang kept her bow pointed upchannel, but began slipping to starboard. That crab suited Keen just fine; it pushed the merchant yawl directly into the path of the pirate, threatening a bow-to-bow ram which the small galley would be unlikely to survive.

But the red-and-black pirate captain must have been anticipating some such move, for he cried "Belay that! Slip starboard and diekplous!!!"

With a speed that told that he must have drilled his Ponies in this maneuver, the pirate crossed Mare Mustang's bow ...

"Ship port oars!!!" bellowed Keen Trader.

The merchant captain and his crew were almost fast enough. Thirsty Blade's oar rose skyward, and a moment later so did that of the port after oarspony, Puller Safehome. But Hammer Free, who was a talented carpenter but an indifferent oarspony, in the port for'ard position, was just an instant too late.

The pirate's prow crashed into Hammer's oar, smashing it backward and cracking it in twain, an action which whipsawed the handle, first flinging the carpenter forward as he unwisely tried to hold on to the oar, then throwing him backward as the sudden release of pressure coupled with his own strength smacked him across the front with both handle and button. The hemi-dekakonter was a small galley, and at no point was its momentum transmitted fully to Hammer, which is what saved his life in that moment. Nevertheless, the carpenter fell stunned from his bench, the second casualty Mare Mustang had suffered, and the port for'ard oar was now useless.

"Grapple and board!" cried the pirate captain, and with dismaying suddenness two grappling hooks thudded against the yawl's port side; the first one thrown short and bouncing off to splash in the water, the second one, thrown from the after end of the galley, landing right at Keen Trader's feet.
s
With a surge of fear and an oath, Keen grabbed the grapnel and tossed it overboard before it could be tugged back and its flukes allowed to dig into the Mare Mustang's planking. The four-armed hook splashed somewhere below. He saw something faintly glowing flying toward him out of the corner of his eye and reacted swiftly, flinging himself down and lashing out with his hooves, kicking the object out of the air. The throwing knife, knocked out of the red-and-black unicorn's telekinetic grasp, thunked into the deck to land quivering not a foot from his head.

Keen heard the scraping of the galley down Mare Mustang's port side. He sneaked a peek over the side, and a crossbow bolt hummed over his head, a bit high and to the right. Both boats were losing way, and the pirates were pulling in their grapples to prepare for new throws, some grabbing at at the riverboat's sides.

"Fend 'em off!" Keen shouted. "Don't let them grapple us!"

Mare Mustang's crew picked up whatever long poles were handy and pushed at the pirate galley, an action which given that both were small, relatively shallow-draft boats, quickly increased the size of the water gap between them, making it impossible for anypony not a Pegasus to cross. The pirates did have at least one Pegsus on the crew, but that small Pegasus seemed to be cringing behind the galley's port side, only exposing as much of himself as necessary to shoot his crossbow.

Heavy Hoof responded by shooting his own weapon. The boats rocked as they slowly turned, the shot thunking into the deck to the left of the Pegasus. The pirates jeered his miss; Mare Mustang's own crew shouted defiance, and openly laughed at the pirates as they shoved the galley away. A grapnel snaked out, guided by the pirate captain's violet aura, but even with the aid of his telekinesis could not gain a lodgement against the active resistance of the yawl's crew, who batted it away with their own poles.

"Man the oars!" ordered Keen, seeing their chance. "Make for Saddle Lake, full speed!"

The crew of the Mare Mustang leaped to their oars. Strongburg Miller staggered to his hooves, grabbed a spare oar and pushed the broken one out of the tholes, setting the spare in place. The Ponies plied their oars without complaint, though they were breathing hard from their labors so far. They had seen what was chasing them, and they had already suffered losses.

Keen cranked his crossbow, then made his way aft to stand behind Heavy Hoof. He could just see the pirate galley falling behind as she began a turn to starboard, obviously hoping to catch them. Then, she vanished in the fog as Mare Mustang drew away from her.

"She's faster n'us, Cap'n," commented Heavy. "She can catch up afore we reach Saddle Lake." His voice was calm; he was merely stating a self-evident truth.

Keen nodded. "She'll have to board us, though, and that'll be hard bow to stern."

"Aye," said Heavy Hoof.

The air remained stubbornly still, save for the wind created by the yawl's own passage as they coursed through the murk. Somewhere astern of them, the pirate galley was on their trail. Somewhere ahead of them -- after all their maneuvering the distance was mostly a matter of guesswork, as they could see no landmarks in this fog -- lay Saddle Lake, and perhaps safety.

"Keep an eye aft," Keen told Heavy Hoof. He turned to Brown Roarer. "We have to make Saddle Lake as fast as possible. Are you still sure of your way?"

"Aye, Cap'n," replied the young pilot. "I can do it."

"Good," Keen said, clapping Brown on the shoulder. "I'll go for'ard and warn of snags and the like."

Keen made his way forward along the catwalk. He noticed that the sound of Mark Gainer's gurgling attempts at breath had stopped, and saw that a sailcloth had been draped over the corpse.

Poor lad, Keen had time now to think. He was so glad to be of our company. I didn't have time enough to get to know him as well as I should've. Keen was no stranger to sudden or violent death, but it always bothered him, especially when the victim was young.

Flying Needle was now bent over Hammer Free, bandaging a bleeding scalp wound and reviving the carpenter with a carefully-administered cordial.

"Slow sips," urged the delicately-built, brown-and-white sailmaker. "You don't want to cough it all up, you don't need that on top of that knock to the head."

"Ah," replied Hammer, "I've had worse hits to the noggin!" But the brawny carpenter followed his boatmate's advice.

Keen continued forward, stepping carefully. There was blood on the planks, and the last thing they needed now, for reasons both of tactics and dignity, was for him to slip and fall, and wind up Flying Needle's next patient.

He took station on the bow and watched the waters ahead. As near as he could tell from simply looking -- and a veteran of the rivers such as Keen could tell more than a novice might imagine, from such things as the flow of the water, about what lay beneath the surface -- they were plying the main channel. The oar-thrust was relatively even on both sides of the boat, and the only irregularities in their passage were small course corrections made by Brown Roarer at the tiller.

It was silent again in the swamp -- too silent for Keen's liking, because he knew that there was a pirate galley out there.

"There they are!" came a high-pitched cry from above. Keen turned and looked up, pointing his crossbow, but saw nothing but the fog. "To your starboard!"

The Pegasus, Keen thought with a sinking feeling. He's airborne and his eyes are better than mine for peering through this fog. And of course he's looking for a riverboat; that's much easier than spotting one flying dustmop.

He could now hear the creaking rhythm of a small galley's oars to port -- and nearly abeam of them, from what his ears could determine. How did they close on us so rapidly? Unless there are -- oh, no.

He made his way halfway back toward the stern, until he was close enough that he didn't have to shout loudly to be understood. "There's a second pirate," he called aft to Heavy Horse and Brown Roarer, "closing on us to starboard. The feather-duster's spotting us for them. Shoot him if you get the chance."

"Aye," said Heavy, looking up and trying to see the pirate Pegasus.

Keen turned to the oarsponies. "Flank speed! Let's make ourselves hard to catch!"

The rhythm of the oars increased, and Mare Mustang surged forward against the current. Keen's crew were sweating and gasping as they rowed. Keen would have liked to spell them, but he had only two live crew not manning either the tiller, a crossbow or an oar right now, and one of those was patching up the other. His was no war-galley, with deliberate redundancy in her complement. And changing an oarspony right now would throw off the stroke at the worst possible time.

Keen went back onto the bow deck.

"They're going all out!" the high pitched voice called from port and above. After a moment, Keen could hear the rhythm of the galley's oarstrokes increasing.

There was no strategem, no manuever which came to his feverishly racing mind. If they tried to ram this new galley they were apt to get tangled up with her, and then the original galley would soon be upon them. Their only hope was to make Saddle Lake.

It's a race, Keen thought grimly. And our lives are the prize.

It was at that moment that the galley appeared out of the mist to their port.

It was a second hemi-dekakonter, much like the first, but the figure standing on its bow calling orders back to the crew was one to make even Keen quail -- a big brute of a Minotaur, gray-coated and black-maned, with incongruous blue bows all through that mane. He bore a battle-axe and shield, and silver torcs and bracelets and other jewelry adorned his kilted form. Even were he not obviously foebeing, he would have been a fearful sight -- the epitome of un-Equestrian barbarism.

The Minotaur pointed at the Mare Mustang. "There they are!" he roared, in a voice every bit as fierce and gruff as one would have imagined from his appearance. "Bring us alongside and board 'em!"

The pirate galley's outline shortened slightly as she turned toward her prey, her superior speed enabling her to close the distance in a near parallel approach while maintaining the same headway on the yawl's own bearing. Keen understood their tactics full well -- they were not going to get ahead of Mare Mustang, where she might run them down, but instead attempt a survivable beam-to-beam collision. Both boats would be forced to ship oars at the last moment, which would knock them firmly against each other and allow the best possible chance of grappling.

"Get ready to ship port oars," Keen commanded. "Get ready to repel boarders!"

The orders were obvious, but it was all he could do. He could only hope that by fighting and fending they could win clear as they had against the first galley, then surge forward to make Saddle Lake. It was more difficult, because the second galley was on almost the same heading as themselves; hopefully, they might damage her when they collided.

The distance between the two boats shrunk alarmingly. Closer -- closer -- then they were alongside, and a lot of things happened all at once.

"Ship port oars!" cried Keen, and the port oars raised.

The pirate galley slipped under the raising oars, her own starboard oars raising and clattering against Mare Mustang's in an absurd parody of Ponies duelling with quarterstaves.

A crossbow twanged from above and Keen flinched aside. It was well that he did, because a bolt buried itself vertically in the deck almost exactly where he had been standing.

Heavy Hoof's crossbow twanged, as did another one from the pirate, but he had no idea if either side scored any hits.

Keen brought up his crossbow and started to pull the trigger, but in that moment the two boats collided with a crunch as side fittings on both boats broke, and Keen was staggered by the impact, his own bolt thus going wild above the galley.

And the Minotaur leaped across the intervening distance to the Mare Mustang's bow, even before any grapples had come onboard, jumping upward almost his own body length. The big biped's feet landed on the rail, and for a moment he tottered and seemed as if he would fall, but he grabbed a rope left-handed, the relatively small target shield on that arm not impeding him greatly. And there he was, standing right before Keen Trader.

Keen dropped his now-useless crossbow -- he would have no chance to reload -- and drew his personal weapon, a fine Bitsburg-forged longsword -- an extravagence he justified by two causes. It looked good at parties with formal dress, and it was extremely useful at moments such as this.

He got it out just in time.

The Minotaur cut down at Keen, a blow that if it had landed would have cloven the merchant captain's skull like firewood. Keen sidestepped, and the battle-axe continued in its arc, thunking into the decking. That was the great weakness of axes -- even in the hands of an expert wielder, once committed it was hard to very redirect their momentum. Their great strength, of course, was that in the hands of a brute like this Minotaur, they could kill even Earth Ponies with single blows.

Keen aimed a sideslash at the Minotaur as he tugged the axe free, but the barbarian blocked it with his targe, then brought the axe up unbelievably fast -- Tartarus, he's impossibly strong! Keen had to step lively to avoid either losing his sword to the axe in a disarming move, or losing his life to it in a disemboweling one.

He had no time to see anything that was going on elsewhere aboard Mare Mustang, only a confused glimpse of struggling Ponies. At least one grapple had obviously been successful, and the two boats drifted together like embracing lovers in the current, their way completely lost. At least the struggle seemed to be mostly at the port side; the pirates were not easily getting aboard.

The nightmare duel continued. Keen was just quick enough to keep the Minotaur from striking him with his battle-axe but likewise the Minotaur was skilled enough that Keen had to literally keep hopping to avoid that fatal strike. Keen was faster and well-trained in the use of the longsword; he not only kept the axe-blade from his flesh but managed to inflict minor wounds on the pirate captain; a slice to the thigh, unfortunately partly stopped by a leather legging; a stab to the lower side that might be nasty in the long run, but did not seem to even slow his foebeing. The Minotaur was forced to be wary, to abate the offensive rush that might have overwhelmed him, but also might have let Keen strike a decisive blow.

At last, Keen thought he saw his chance. The Minotaur attacked with a series of sweeping axe-arcs that forced the merchant captain to give ground, until Keen was standing on the rail. As the Minotaur cut low, Keen leaped over the stroke and landed on the deck before the barbarian. With all his might, Keen stabbed up ...

... only to find his blade deflected by one thick silver bracer on the pirate's right wrist. Keen tried to step back for another stroke -- the Minotaur's axe was out of position for that moment -- but the Minotaur slammed the target shield into Keen's head. Red and white stars exploded, and Keen found himself without memory of any transition on the decking, his face wet and eyes half-blinded by a red fluid that Keen realized was his own blood; his longsword drooping in his hoof.

Keen struggled to rise, to come to a fighting position, but the world was spinning and his muscles seemed to have all come unstrung. All he could do was twitch as the Minotaur raised his axe for the death-stroke ...
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... and Time Maker surged up from the waist, spattered in blood, yelling incoherently and pushing a half-pike at the Minotaur. The normally calm lead oarspony looked like a fiend from Hell, but at that moment no sight could have been more welcome to Keen Trader. Hope surged in his breast ...

... only to be dashed in the next instant, as the Minotaur, showing both tremendous strength and considerable skill, stepped back, slipping Time Maker's desperate rush. The pike-blade went under the raised axe, and sliced into the Minotaur's big leather belt, cutting fabric and bringing forth some blood, but from where Keen stood he could see it was but a surface wound.

Then, as Time Maker struggled to bring up his haft to parry, that Pony's own time ran out forever, as the axe descended in a flash of bright steel that ended in a terrible wet sound like a melon being chopped in half. Blood sprayed from Time Maker's bifurcated head, the axe sank into the lead oarspony's skull. Keen could not see Time Maker's face, and was glad of it. The Minotaur lifted a foot and tugged his axe clear of Time Maker's skull, kicking the corpse of the lead oarspony to slump at Keen Trader's side.

Keen desperately managed to struggle to his hooves, raising his longsword defensively. His head was pounding, but not as badly as poor Time Maker's must have at that last moment (he could not avoid that terrible thought), and his arm wobbled weakly. However he still had a sword; he was still dangerous, and the Minotaur must needs beware his blade.

The Minotaur looked at him speculatively, obviously trying to gauge the threat Keen still posed, and the best way to finish him without risking spitting himself on that blade. Then he briefly glanced at something over Keen's shoulder, and smiled.

Keen should have used that moment of inattention to lunge, but it was but a short moment, and Keen was unsteady from that blow to the head. So instead, Keen shifted position slightly, so that he could do this while still watching the Minotaur, and also looked.

He saw the other pirate galley, oars flashing, red-and-black Unicorn dandy still conning her from her bow, looming out of the fog off the Mare Mustang's starboard aft quarter. As he watched in sick horror, the pirate slipped up smoothly alongside Keen's riverboat, shipping her port oars and coming to rest with but a relatively slight bump.

"The other galley!" shouted Keen, or at least he meant to shout -- it came out as more of a hoarse croak. "Ware to starboard! They're going to board!"

But his warning was useless. What looked like half the crew of the Mare Mustang had already fallen. The pirates were swarming over the port side of the waist, and Heavy Hoof was leading the crew's survivors in a fighting retreat to the stern. Neither Heavy Hoof, nor Keen himself, could do a thing to interfere as grapnels sailed over the starboard side, pulled back, bit into the deck and railing.

The pirates from the other galley swarmed over the starboard side, and all Keen could do was to watch helplessly as they boarded his vessel.

"I'll handle this," said the red-and-black Unicorn dandy. With a leap, he vaulted to the bow deck, rapier and dagger held firmly in his violet aura.

Keen made a weak effort to lash out with his longsword as the Unicorn landed, only to have his thrust parried with contemptuous ease by the Unicorn's dagger. Keen's head was pounding, his throat terribly dry, and it was difficult to focus on anything. All the world around him was suffused with the stench of blood and voided bowels.

"Oh, dear," said the Unicorn sarcastically. "You imagine yourself equal to your betters. How droll." This close, Keen could smell the Unicorn's cologne -- an expensive variety,

Rage filled Keen's heart, that a pirate should consider himself the better of an honest riverpony. For a moment, strength surged back into Keen's sinews, and he launched into the attack, his longsword flashing in a series of cuts and thrusts. It was not any exact form he had been taught in a fencing-class -- one always had to adapt them to the circumstances, and this narrow, blood-slick deck, with a second enemy who was not attacking but could not be safely ignored, was not much like the floor of any salon d'armes. But it was an effective combination.

Or would have been against most foes. For, unfortunately for Keen, the black-and-red Unicorn was every bit as skillful as the social status he claimed might imply. The Unicorn easily parried or slipped every one of Keen's strikes.

"Is that all you have?" The Unicorn yawned. "Dear me, I suppose I should not expect sophistication from the master of a mere goods-hauler. Still, one takes one's diversions where one can." His eyes narrowed, and Keen thought they looked most deadly under that unusually long, sharp horn. "And you were a diversion."

Now the Unicorn went over to the attack, a flurry of thrusts with rapier and dagger, the Unicorn switching the latter weapon from defense to attack and back again smoothly and effortlessly, bespeaking long and careful training. He also did not slip on the bloody planks, which bespoke considerable sanguinary experience.

Keen could no longer attack. Instead, he parried and leaped and dodged, barely managing to avoid being spitted on the Unicorn's rapier -- an uncommonly fine one -- Keen incongruously noted, with elaborately scrolled metalwork and gemstones on the hilt and guard. In the process he took a number of slight cuts from the dagger, but scarcely noticed them in his struggle to survive.

Then Keen slippped on the deck, and fell heavily. He hit his head, and his senses reeled. Again he saw stars, then came out of it to find himself lying on his back on the deck, the longsword still in his right hoof, and the red and black Unicorn standing above him, sneering down at him contemptuously.

"As I said, a short-lived diversion," the Unicorn commented. "Now, as to your betters --"

"Thief!" spat Keen.

"Oh, it speaks." The Unicorn laughed thinly. "What have you to say, mud pony?"

"You put on fine airs," Keen said thickly, "but you're nothing but a thief! A leech, living off the labors of honest Ponies."

"Oh, my dear," said the Unicorn. "I'm being lectured at by a commoner. How very droll and Levelling."

Keen tried to bring up his sword, and the dagger flashed to impale the flesh around his right cannon, pinning that hoof to the deck. For a moment Keen could barely grasp what had happened, then he cried out as the pain started to hit him.

"As I was saying," the Unicorn continued, "in a Leveller play, this might have been the moment when the plucky common hero got up and fought to victory, so that the grubby Ponies on the floor might cheer him on against the nasty evil gentlecolt turned to pirating because he was unappreciated by his cowardly peers. And even the gentleponies in the good seats would have to approve, because the plucky common hero was such a likeable lad, perhaps with a sweetheart waiting home for him, or even a wife and several adorable foals, and so of course he has to beat the wicked pirate. And all the audience would be schooled in the important truths that Virtue Is Magic, and that Evil goes down to defeat before the purity of Goodness."

"But this isn't a Leveller play, now is it?" He smiled cruelly down at Keen. "This is real life, and the only one who is to be schooled is you. And here is the lesson." He floated the rapier over to place the point against Keen's flesh, just behind his breastbone.

"I am Red Longhorn, a Unicorn of the highest family, who has through certain misfortunes related to affairs of honor pursued perhaps a bit too far found himself exiled from the Court of Canterlot by the ungrateful cake-eating creature that sits the Throne. I am both a gifted and a well-trained swordspony, as you have discovered. And I am not to be defeated by some river-rat lout who imagines himself important because he has command of a glorified barge.

"You may have believed that I was an episode in the story of your life -- an exciting encounter, a victory over some dreadful bad pirates, after which you would return to your no doubt loving though ugly wife and horrid little foals. But it is quite the opposite. You are but an episode in my life, the comical attempt at defense of his pathetic little treasure by a jumped-up bargepony, slapped down in fine form by my superior skill, birth and -- dare I say it -- fashion sense.

"You will die unavenged, your wife and foals wail for you in vain, and you will matter no more to me than any of my prior victims." Red Longhorn smiled in a mockery of graciousness. "And here ---" he said "endeth the lesson." His face twisted.

Keen had been mesmerized by the mad and yet level look in those deep violet eyes. So captivated was he by that expression, and its sudden almost sexual intensity, that, when he felt a coldness deep within him, he at first did not know what it was. Then he looked at his chest, and realized that Red's rapier seemed shorter. He could not account for this at first, and then he realized that the point was no longer against his hide, but instead had penetrated far within his flesh.

But that can't be, Keen thought. If I had a rapier buried there, I'd -- oh. Oh.

He wanted to say something, but all that came out when he opened his mouth was a terrible gasp, one which he had heard before but never from any Pony who ever got up later to talk about the experience. And everything around him seemed to be fading out into insignficance.

No -- he thought desperately. It can't end like this. Mare -- the children -- they need me! It bothered him that Red Longhorn had mocked them, even though he had plainly been but guessing about their existence. I can't die!

But he very obviously was dying. There was a sudden sharp agony within him -- his whole frame quivered -- and then the pain slipped away. Everything was slipping away.

There was a light -- a warm golden light that flooded over everything, suffused his awareness, blotted out everything save for its Presence. It came from some source which was beyond his comprehension, but which he knew loved him.

He need to go into it. He had done what he could in this world, to the best of his powers, and the game was over, the venture done. Time to embark upon a new and greater one ...

No! The denial rang within him. No! Red Longhorn could not triumph! Mare and his children could not be left destitute. He must fight! He must remain! He would not give up!

There was a lesser Presence with him -- it was limned in the same sort of golden light as the greater one. He squinted, focused -- it was a mare, her coat a soft pink, her hair golden. She was very beautiful.

"You should not do this," she said to him. "Your time in mortality is done." She reached out a hoof to him. "Move on."

"My wife ..." he said.

"She will be along in her own time," the mare said. "Long by the standards of your past world. An eyeblink, on the scale of Eternity. You may wait --"

"No!" he said again. "I'm not done fighting! Red Longhorn will not wreck everything and then go off laughing! I will defeat him, and save my family!"

The mare looked sad. "I cannot make you come," she said, "not if you really wish to stay. But your life is over. If you stay all you will have will be an existence in the half-world, one you will not enjoy. And you must then let go your hate, if you mean to pass on."

"You don't understand," he told her. "I'm not hateful. But everything -- ruined --"

"I have seen more than you can imagine ruined once before. A whole world wrecked," the mare said. "And it doubtless will be again. Your love for your wife, though -- that was real, and a rare gift for both of you, something I never knew on Earth. You have touched my heart, Keen Trader. I will ease your passing on, when you have finished what remains undone."

She was fading out.

"Your hate, though. Let go your hate, or in the end it may damn you. I speak quite literally. You were a good Pony in life, Keen Trader. Remain one after. Farewell ... and may we meet again ..."

She was gone.

Everything went black.

Ruby Gift drifted under the leaves of the trees, feeling the occasional sting of sunlight as she approached the widening of the Avalon south of the swamp. Her Talent was telling her that her hoped-for treasure lay just ahead. She hurried as fast as she could, forming golden eyes with which to see the mortal world, flitting from one patch of shadow to the next.

Her way was getting easier, for she was entering a fogbank, one which had fortunately lingered in the shade of the trees, spread out somewhat onto the river. She had seen fog before, over the swamp; apparently it had moved down to the south shore of the Avalon, a bit east of where Riverbridge had been, in her breathing days.

She gratefully slipped into the mist, feeling its coolth shielding her from the harsh solar rays. She formed a thicker patch of mist, draining heat from the air to condense water into droplets that she swirled around herself.

She was getting closer ... closer ... there it was!

A box, its lid pried open, the furs within abandoned. She flitted over to them, formed her Life Aspect, materialized to gaze at and smell and caress the furs against her cheek. They were so nice! Obviously, some riverboat had been forced to jettison cargo -- no one would otherwise abandon such fine goods here. The wonderful thing was that they didn't seem to have been wetted; the box had been water-tight.

But why hadn't whoever opened the box taken its contents?

She looked around, and finally saw the many other boxes lying scattered over the strand. The grounded riverboat.

The still, bloody figures that had once been Ponies.

"Oh, no," Ruby whispered. "Not like this."

She had sought a treasure.

She had found a massacre.

Author's Note

The arrogant and aristocratic Longhorns of Canterlot come from Ask Pun Pony.

Red Devil's "rapier" is of course the heavy combat variety common in the 17th century, not the light sporting sort used today in fencing schools. It's a lot tougher and can also be used as a pummeling weapon in an emergency.

Starlight's (the one from My Little Pony: Tales, rather than G4 Starlight Glimmer) cataclysmic fate and post-mortem role as psychopomp is the idea of Alex Warlorn.

Appropriate music for the Mare Mustang ...

More appropriate than Red Devil knows, actually ...