Bloodwood

The Everfree forest, while normally shrouded in complete darkness under the cover of night, was a little less dark in one particular clearing thanks to the logging party. The wagons had been circled up in the clearing to form something of a makeshift barricade around the camp, identical canvas tents staked up wherever they would fit. And in the very center, three large fires burned in a triangle, each far enough away from the next to allow plenty of room to sit between them. One fire was never enough to fit the entire camp around, and one big fire was too hot and required too much wood to maintain. Hence, three smaller fires.

The thick scent of smoke and cooked vegetables wafted through the forest, though any wildlife that could have been attracted was kept at bay by the raucous laughter and unabridged shittalk as they settled in down for dinner.

“So, Crunch,” Rusty gruffed out, glancing over at the shorter stallion as they sidled along in the food line. “What’s your favorite flavor of beans?”

The orange pegasus blinked confusedly, then looked over at Rusty. “There’s different flavors? I honestly just thought that beans were... well, beans.”

Rusty cocked one eyebrow, then shot the stallion a sideways sort of grin. “Need to learn your food groups, kid.” He held out his tray as they passed a pot, and a green stallion who looked like he had better things to be doing slopped a ladle of black beans onto Rusty’s tray. “You know, beans. There’s all different kinds! Black, honey, baked, broiled, refried, hickory, pinto, smoked. You got your green beans, though those aren’t real beans, your lima beans, garbanzo beans, your beans beans.” Rusty reached the next pot just as Crunch received his own sloppy pile of beans, then held out his tray for a steaming pile of assorted veggies. “Oh come on,” he chimed, shooting the periwinkle mare with the ladle a lazy smirk. “Gimme’ a little bit more of that. I’m a big stallion, Ma.”

The periwinkle mare shrugged her burly shoulders, then dug in the pot for another scoop of veggies. “If it was anyone else, I’d tell you to pound sand,” she rumbled, her voice the very manifestation of a bottle of drain cleaner and ten packs of cigarettes. “But you sign my paychecks.”

Rusty chuckled as she slopped down the second scoop, then shot her a wink. “Thanks Ma.”

“Ma?” Crunch asked after they’d passed by to start towards the nearby fires, his tray held neatly against his side in the grasp of a wing.

“We call her Ma, you know, like mom. Don’t ask why—just go with it.”

Rusty picked his way towards the ring of ponies gathering around the fire pits, navigating between tents with a lackadaisical precision, humming a little tune to himself all the while. Reaching the closest fire, and the one with the least ponies around it, Rusty sat back and made himself comfortable, staring into the flames for a moment. Crunch sat as well, a foot or two away from the stallion, eyeing the food on his plate with something that resembled wariness.

There were a few others around the fire, Ratchet, for one, was sitting across from Rusty, digging into his food like veggies and beans were going out of style. A mud-brown stallion with an even darker brown mane sat to the right, boredly playing with a knife as he stared into the fire. Beside him, was a surprisingly lanky unicorn stallion with a cream coat and a cinnamon mane. He had a sharp face, gaunt eye sockets, though his body language and clean appearance really didn’t seem to suggest what his expression foretold about him.

Suddenly, Rusty reached over and gave Crunch a good pat on the back, knocking a carrot he’d placed into his mouth back onto the plate. “Anyways, that’s Ratchet!” he stated with a wave of his hoof towards the ravenous blue stallion. “Good colt. Fixes machinery and gets on your nerves sometimes, but who doesn’t?”

Ratchet looked up from his food to fire a tense look at Rusty, then rolled his eyes and went back to the tray.

“Anyways, meet Crunch everyone,” Rusty droned. He waved his hoof to the right, over the two other stallions. “The one who looks like a drug dealer’s best friend with an eating disorder and malaria is Spark. I don’t think that’s his real name, but he won’t confirm or deny that accusation.” His hoof jabbed towards the stallion with the knife. “And that’s Trailblazer. Call him Trail and he’ll whine like a bitch, so call him Blazer.”

Crunch peered at the two, then gave a short chuckle and rubbed the back of his neck. “So uh... why do they call you Blazer?”

The stallion glanced up from the fire, then sheathed his knife and shot the pegasus a crooked smirk. “Why do they call you Crunch?” he shot back, his voice low and gravelly. “Is it the sound your bones make when I fell a tree on you?”

Rusty closed his eyes for a second, grinning as Crunch leaned back a little and glanced away. “Blazer. Stop fuckin’ with the kid.”

The brown stallion blinked, then looked over at Rusty and rolled his eyes. Suddenly, that twisted smirk was gone, and he let out a sharp chuckle in a tone that was much higher and much cleaner than the voice he’d just used on Crunch. “Oh c’mon Rusty, can’t you let me have some fun with the new guys?”

“I can’t have you terrorizing my new accountant! And he’s the one filling out your timecards, so you best watch out yourself.”

Crunch looked between the two with a frown on his face, then rolled his eyes and scooped up a big forkload of food and stuffed it into his mouth. “You’re all terrible.”

“But nawww,” Blazer said with a dismissive wave of his hoof towards Crunch. “They call me Blazer ‘cause I’m the fastest damn tree cutter around this camp.”

“That’s debatable,” Spark droned from beside him, not even looking up from his tray.

Blazer shot him a glare, then shrugged and continued. “I was at the front of the convoy trimming branches all day. You can thank me for how far we got this afternoon!”

An uproar of raucous laughter from the next fire over drowned out the silence for a moment, a few stallions whooping and cheering at whatever had just been said. Rusty threw a small glance over his shoulder at the group, then chuckled and went back to his food. “Anyways, Crunch here is gonna be keepin’ track of our finances, doin’ our predictions and handlin’ the manifests for what we produce, an’ helpin’ with whatever the hell else we need that ain’t too physical for him.” He reached out and gave the stallion in question another rough pat, nearly choking him on his food this time. “So I expect you all to take good care of him. He’s a different breed, but he’s still part of the same family.”

“Don’t worry, Rusty!” Ratchet chimed in, holding up his tray up to the firelight before licking what little sauce remained off the smooth surface. “We haven’t had a greenhorn die on us yet. He might get a little roughed up, but we’ll keep him safe.”

Crunch glared at Ratchet, then glanced over to Rusty with a small glower. “Yet?”

Rusty just shrugged. “Respect is earned, kid.”

The surrounding laughter and chatter ceased, as if a blanket had been thrown over the whole mess, as a long, shrill howl sounded somewhere off in the trees. The five around the fire shared short, worried looks, then glanced out into the darkness of the forest. Something moved a couple of feet away, the dark figure appearing from behind a tent, and a collective flinch traveled through the small group around the fire.

“Timberwolves,” a mare droned casually as she stepped into the firelight. Sighing dramatically, she eased back onto her rump in front of the fire, then shook her purple mane out of her eyes, flexing batlike, leathery wings before folding them neatly to her sides. “Firelight confuses them—they think it’s the rising sun.” She glanced down at her tray, then prodded at a half a carrot with the tip of a purple-gray hoof. “You ponies don’t like your meats, do you? Anyways, they won’t approach—they hate light. So don’t worry about the howls. Just pretend they’re crickets. Big, flammable crickets.”

Rusty glanced at Crunch, then Ratchet, and Ratchet glanced at Rusty, then the others, then they all looked to the new arrival.

“...That’s an interesting comparison,” Spark said in deadpan, one bushy eyebrow steadily raising.

The batpony shrugged, the scabbard of the sword strapped to her right flank catching the firelight for a second or two. She wore a harness as well, with a small pack on her breast and a powder horn beside that. On her back, what appeared to the barrel of a rifle of some sorts protruded past her neck to the left. It certainly hadn’t gone unnoticed by the others; there was hardly an eye around the fire that wasn’t looking at it.

“What would you rather I call it?” she asked with a smirk and a small waggle of one eyebrow. “The bloodcurdling howl of a bloodthirsty, sapient treemonster that’ll eat you just because it can, because it thinks it's hungry? Some lost bastard of a magical creature that formed from fallen logs that thinks it's really a living thing, maybe a lost spirit of some wolf that once roamed these forests and died long ago, swept up by background magic and given consciousness?” The batmare flicked her tail and neatly adjusted her shoulders as she lowered her eyelids and gazed at Spark. The look was almost seductive, but not quite. “Have you ever seen a timberwolf eat anyone, Bonebag? Sometimes they chew, sometimes they don’t. You’re lucky if they chew. The blood pours out from between the woven branches and broken bits of wood that makes up their stomach. It stains their belly red. In the guard we had a word for red-bellied wood wolves. We called them rotters.”

Everyone around the fire had gone silent, the batmare temporarily entrancing them with a left-field tale of terror. Spark’s eyes widened a little as he gazed at her. “...Why?”

The bat locked eyes with him, a thin grin teasing her soft features. “Because they can’t digest food. It just rots in there, rots away until there’s nothing but bones, bones that eventually mix with the wood and add to the creature’s skeleton. You usually smell them before you see them, their stretched bellies filled with rabbits and mice and little lost housecats. Maybe a pony or two. If you get close you can see the congealed black, rotten gore seeping from between the branches, full of maggots and flies... Of course, if you’re close enough to see that, it’s probably about to eat you. Remember when I said you’re lucky if they chew?”

Crunch retched and turned his head to the side.

“Fuck you,” Spark said with a snort and a glare. “You’re full of shit.”

“Am I?” Shayne shrugged, popping a carrot into her mouth, languidly chewing it. “Maybe you’ll get to see for yourself.”

A pregnant, tense silence hung in the air.

Rusty finally broke it when he raised his hoof and motioned towards the weapon on her back. “You know those things ain’t very good for cuttin’ down trees, right?”

His comment earned a shared chuckle from the others, and a collective sigh of relief as the tension broke and drifted away.

She shrugged again, then shot him a grin. “You’re getting paid to cut down trees, and I’m getting paid to make sure nothing fucks you up while you’re cutting those trees down. Don’t worry, big guy, I’m on your side.”

Rusty quirked a brow at the batpony, and she nodded curtly, stuffing a carrot into her mouth. “Where’s our other babysitter?” he asked

She swallowed, then gave her chest a thump with a forehoof and nodded towards the back of a white stallion sitting at one of the other fires. He was wearing a similar harness with a rifle mounted to his back as well. “Lance is over there.”

Rusty glanced over his shoulder briefly, then nodded. “So... how much they payin’ you to babysit us?”

“A lot.” She narrowed her eyes at him, then glanced down at her tray and neatly scooped her beans into a little pile to lift with the fork, using the end of her right wing to manipulate it. “How much are they paying you to play lumberjack?”

Rusty glared for a second, a smirk threatening to break out near the corner of his mouth. “More than they’re paying you.”

“Unlikely.” She flicked an ear, the other one swiveling some atop her head. “Name’s Shayne,” she said with a crooked grin. “And I get a bonus if all twenty of you make it out happy and alive. Trust me—your wellbeing is in my best interest.”

Crunch perked up suddenly, pointing his hoof at the rifle on the mare’s back. “That’s a new model; where’d you get it? I thought they were illegal for civilians to own.”

“They are.” Shayne smirked, then reached back with a hoof and pulled the rifle over her shoulder, earning a sideways glare from Ratchet. It wasn’t a pretty thing—it looked heavy and bulky, the long, steel barrel cut in an octagonal cylinder that gave way to a large hammer near the stock. It was fitted for use by an earth pony or pegasus, a large, iron grip in place so that the rifle could be pulled back firmly against the breast and triggered, all with a single hoof in crunch. “We’re all alone out here. I doubt Celestia’s finest are gonna march out here and arrest me for it.”

Ratchet cleared his throat suddenly, then stood, levitating his tray beside him. The blue stallion hesitated long enough to catch Rusty's eye, then locked gazes with the larger stallion and nodded off towards one of the wagons. Rusty narrowed his eyes for a second, then gave a miniscule nod and raised a hoof to stifle a cough.

“So, Shayne,” Blazer asked with a sudden, toothy grin towards the batpony as Ratchet slinked away. “What did you have in mind when you signed up to spend six months in the forest with a group of big, tough stallions?”

Rusty snorted, then heaved himself to his hooves with a long grunt and looked out towards the wagon Ratchet had motioned to just as Shayne threw a leering smirk towards Blazer. “You know,” she hissed, returning the rifle to its holster on her back as she leaned in a little closer to the fire. “I was actually thinking about how much fun it would be to tie every unsheathed dick I see into a knot.”

Blazer blinked, then leaned back and raised a hoof in front of his face—a silent gesture of submission. “A simple ‘no’ would have worked.” He lowered his hoof a little, then winked his right eye. “But hey, even you mares gotta get frisky now and then. I’d understand; don’t worry, sexy, I don’t kiss and tell.”

Shayne started at him. She didn’t blink, she didn’t glare; she just stared. “You’re lucky I’m getting paid to keep you alive.”

A little flash of light appeared a short way off in the distance as Rusty struck his lighter, a quick motion that nopony seemed to notice or care about. As quick as it had appeared, the light was gone, leaving nothing but a miniscule, orange glow produced from the tip of the lit cigarette.

“What is it, Ratch?” Rusty rumbled as he leaned up against the wagon wheel, his form hidden from the firelight by a stack of crates strapped to the deck.

The shadowed figure of the other pony shifted a little in the dark, his ears swiveling towards the collective murmur of the others around the fire pits. “Those guards.” He motioned his head towards the camp. “Do you really think they're here to protect us?”

Rusty sighed and leaned even more of his weight against the wheel, the wood giving a dull creak under the strain. “What are ya' talkin' about, Ratch?”

“I’m talking about why they’re really here, Rusty!” The stallion folded his ears, then lowered his head and glanced around before continuing in a lower voice. “What do you think those rifles are for? Timberwolves? Timberwolves are made of wood; Hell, our chainsaws would be more appropriate for dealing with them.”

“There’s more out here in the Everfree than just Timberwolves.” Rusty craned his neck to peer over one of the crates towards the camp center, then groaned and seemed to slump even more. “You really think they’re here to watch us?”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

Rusty took a long draw on his cigarette, closing his eyes for the time being. “You’ve been wrong before.”

The stallion leaned back and propped one hoof up on the edge of the wagon. “Look, Rusty, I’m not saying we tie them to a tree trunk and threaten to cut them in half on the mill. I just... I don’t like it. Those guns could hit a pony from fifty yards.”

Rusty stomped a hoof in a quiet display of frustration. “If they are here to make sure we don’t talk, then we ain’t got nothin’ to worry about, cause we ain’t gonna talk.”

“That’s not a reassuring—”

The crack of a twig in the nearby bushes interrupted the two, and both stallions jerked to face the sound. Aside from darkness, and a soft sway in the branches, there was nothing.

“I’m done talkin’ about this,” Rusty growled, gnawing on his quarter-smoked cigarette as he turned away.

Ratchet bit his lip, then stood. “But—”

“I’m done! I’ll keep an eye out since you mentioned it, but talkin’ about it isn’t gonna make it any better.”

As Rusty headed back towards the fire, Ratchet sat back and leaned up against the wagon, breathing a long sigh as he looked out into the trees. Somewhere off in the distance, a timberwolf howled, and he shivered.

“Alright!” Rusty’s voice boomed across the camp, quickly pacifying the floating conversations. “I want this camp packed before the sun’s up tomorrow. Now, I ain’t tellin’ you to go to bed! You’re all big stallions and you all know to handle yourselves, but we’ve got about nineteen miles to cover tomorrow before we reach the site and there ain’t no naptime in the middle. So I’ll see you all at breakfast!”

Ratchet stood and made his way back to his tent near the edge of the clearing, absently weaving to and fro between others, almost tripping over a stake-line in the dark. The distant firelight flickering off the thick canopy above provided just enough light to make out the front of his tent. Exhaling slowly, he lifted one flap away with his hoof, then ducked his head and settled down inside, immediately sinking into the prepared bedroll with a low groan. Raising a hoof, Ratchet draped it over the top of his head and dragged it slowly down and over his face.

Out in the camp, the fires began to dim as ponies broke away one by one and headed for their tents. After about an hour, there were only six, then four, then three.

Shayne yawned and nodded her head towards a brown stallion with one hell of a beard as he stood and stretched, then headed off for his tent. Her ears perked as he trotted away, the right one swiveling to follow his path until the faint sound of a tent flap being brushed aside could be heard. Immediately, her ears swiveled back to their resting place, and the mare stood, giving a leisurely stretch before fixing her sights on the white stallion sitting some distance away at the embers of one of the other fires.

She approached him, hooves silent on the forest floor as she drew ever closer. He didn’t turn to look as she sat down beside him, but simply remained peering down at the glowing embers.

“How long do you think before they figure it out?” he asked, his barely-mumbled question cutting the silence like a knife.

“The two foremen already have,” she mumbled back. “Rusty doesn’t like it, but he seems content with just letting it go. I’d wager he’s too financially invested to back out even if he wanted to. Ratchet might be an issue.”

Lance cocked a brow and threw her a brief glance. “How do you know?”

She smirked and gave her left ear a small flick. “Batpony, remember? Right now I can hear about six different stallions snoring, and one whispering lewdly to himself about a mare named Lilly.”

He grimaced. “Remind me to never talk shit about you.” There was a short moment of silence before he spoke again. “So do you think he’ll cause problems?”

Shayne stared long and hard into the embers, the last licks of flame flickering in her eyes. “I’m not sure.”

Lance leaned back a little bit, the harness he sported creaking ever so softly as he gave his head a slow nod. “There’s a chance he’ll tell the workers. Loose ends—money talks. But if he tells the others and they have a problem with it...”

“We ditch and report back, and the company dissolves. No trail—just a rogue bunch of stallions out in the woods poaching endangered trees for profit.”

“Yeah, and you wanna know what else dissolves?” he said with a huff. “Eighty percent of our paychecks.”

“Nopony wins.”

There was another long silence before Lance spoke again, the chirping and humming of forest insects temporarily dominating the background. “Let’s hope nopony out here grows a conscience. I wouldn’t expect any of these hicks to be tree huggers, but you never know. Chainsaws, falling trees, creatures... It’s dangerous out here. Accidents can happen out in the woods.”

The two exchanged short glances, then looked back towards the fire. After a moment, Shayne spoke.

“They could. We’ll see.”