The Black Company in Equestria

We survived, most of us.

Egg and Marsuf are dead. They held the breach until the end. I record their passing here.

Brother Egg, rest in peace. We who remain salute you.

Brother Marsuf, rest in peace. We who remain salute you.

The rest of us are more or less cut up. Jacky Boy is worst off. Touch and go whether he'll pull through.

I'll live. Hard to write left-handed though.

Cirrus is dead, shot down while buying us time. He was a canny bastard, and I may have judged him too harshly. I should have known from the way the pegasi moved clouds around. The citadel was our escape.

Commander Storm Front died retrieving Cirrus' body. Stratus promoted Silver Streak in his place.

For now we drift south with the wind and lick our wounds. The one bright spot is Stratus. One of her first acts after the battle was to dispatch a messenger to the princesses requesting aid.

Too fucking late for my brothers.

I hurt all over. I haven't had a good night's sleep since the siege began. I'm going to lie here and not think about these clouds underneath me parting and dropping me hundreds of feet to the earth.

**

Please don't be angry with me, Marus. I just want to help you with the records. I know how careful you are with this book and I promise not to mess anything up.

Oh, this is Crystal, by the way.

I'm not hurt and neither is my foal, but a lot of ponies are. A lot of ponies have died. I didn't know all of their names, but they deserve to be remembered. I want to write down exactly what happened so that everypony will know how brave they were, even if I don't know all the right words like Marus does. I hope this is enough.

It was only three days ago when he first attacked, but it feels like a lifetime ago. I feel silly looking back. I had no idea what it would be like. What I was capable of.

I should start at the beginning.

On the first day I started off down behind the wall with the catapults. My job was to keep the magical barrier up over my assigned section to stop any arrows from hitting anypony. The hard part was opening a hole in the barrier every time a catapult launched a rock. That took some concentration. I was so nervous. I didn't know what to expect in a battle, although Lamb and Jackal had done a good job training us. I just tried to remember the training and not think about anything else. I think I did well, though. Nopony got hit in my section. Also, Cinder was on one of the catapult crews in my section. I felt better knowing he was nearby.

I didn't see any of the enemy on the first day. All I saw was the pegasi flying back and forth dropping things on the enemy outside while ponies on the wall stood and fired arrows. Sometimes they'd drop their bows and pick up their spears and stab with them over the wall. The humans ran back and forth on the wall keeping an eye on things. Whenever the guards on one part of the wall would pick up their spears, one or two of the humans would run over there too. They had spears like the guards, but bigger and longer. The only human that didn't run back and forth was the one that smiled all the time, Jackal. He stood on the wall over the gate and waved his hands around. Once I thought I saw what looked like colored ribbons or streamers float away from his hands and over the wall. Maybe he was doing magic tricks to keep the enemies distracted?

I asked Marus about it when he came by after the enemy stopped attacking. He looked funny with his face all red and sweaty. He just laughed and said something about cheap magic tricks being all Jackal was good for. I asked how the battle went and he said we did good. We hurt the enemy badly. I asked if they had killed him and he just shook his head. He said they hadn't seen him all day.

The enemy didn't attack that night, but Marus and the others kept watch all the same. I felt better with them out there, even if he was somewhere out in the dark too. I hugged Moonbright close and tried to sleep, but her nightmares kept waking her up. She had been getting better once we got to Windsoar, but now things were just as bad as they were back in Canterberry. I tried to be strong for her, but it was hard when there was nothing I could do for her.

That night a blizzard howled in from the north. When I walked outside the next morning, the ground was powdered with a thin layer of snow and I could see my breath in the air. Marus took me up on the wall to show me what the blizzard had done. The snow was thick on the field outside and there were huge drifts against the wall. Marus was happy. He told me that Lamb had gotten the pegasi to pull a snowstorm down from the north to slow the enemy down. I had never thought of using the weather as a weapon. Marus laughed and said that he had walked through enough mud and dust to think of the weather as just another enemy.

The enemy got over the wall on the second day. At first it was just like the first day. Then suddenly the air was so full of arrows that I couldn't open a hole to let the catapults launch their rocks. One of them launched anyway, but the boulder just bounced back off the barrier and rolled away. Everypony on the walls ducked down so they wouldn't get hit. Suddenly I saw heads start appearing over the wall from the other side. The humans ran over there and started fighting with them, but there were too many enemies and they started attacking ponies all along the top of the wall. Storm Front and the pegasi guards swooped down and attacked them from above. They worked together with the humans to kill the enemies or push them back over the wall.

I saw my first dead human up close that day. The big black human, Egg, picked up an enemy and threw him off the wall back towards the catapults. I was standing close to where he landed. He made a strange cracking noise when he hit the ground. I was scared, but I got ready to charge him like Marus had showed me. I stood and waited for him to get up, but he just lay there. I started inching closer but he didn't move. When I finally got up next to him, I noticed that his head was bent around underneath him. I realized he was dead, but it didn't seem real at the time. It seemed like it should be harder than that to kill a human.

The humans and pegasi drove the enemies away while I was staring at the dead human. Some pegasi finally came and took the body away.

I held my daughter for a long time that night before I could fall asleep.

The third day he came.

I had finished my turn keeping up the barrier and decided to visit Marus on the wall. It had been quiet so far that day. The enemies were keeping away from the wall. Every now and then they'd fire some arrows over at us, but the weren't trying to climb over the wall like they had yesterday. When I found Marus, he was curled up asleep. I was going to let him be, but then he shook himself and sat up. He had a bandage on his arm and a big cut across his cheek and nose. I asked him about it and he just smiled and said that ladies were supposed to like scars. I think he was joking. I told him about the human I saw die in front of me the day before. He nodded and said that getting used to seeing people die was never easy, but it was part of war. He started to tell me about his first battle but then there was a big commotion in the enemy camp. We looked across the snowy field and it looked like the whole enemy army was marching towards us. Marus and his brothers were all shouting back and forth at each other and Storm Front was calling up the guards to man the wall. I told Marus I wanted to fight. I thought he would order me off the wall, but he just looked at me for a second, then handed me a short spear and asked if I knew how to use it. I told him I was a fast learner.

The enemy army marched out onto the snowy plain and stood in front of the wall. Then he walked out between two rows of soldiers. He walked right up to the wall and stood there while all the archers and catapults and pegasi were firing at him. He just stood there while all the rocks and arrows just sort of missed. It must have been some kind of magic because I know Marus was a good shot and I saw him shoot an arrow right at him but he still missed.

Then he started speaking and I didn't know the words but they echoed and hurt my ears. I think Marus knew the words though because he grabbed me and dove down the stairs off the wall. We got to the ground and everypony was shouting and the pegasi were flying away from him and then the wall just melted. It sounds silly because everypony knows that stone can't melt but it did. It was like the wall was made of wax and somepony held a candle to it. A big section of wall flowed out and we had to jump back to avoid it. I saw him standing there in the middle of the gap and I thought he would walk through it and kill us all but he just smiled and turned around and walked away. Then his soldiers all shouted and charged through the opening where the wall used to be.

I had seen his soldiers burn Canterberry but that was a slaughter. I had seen Marus and his brothers kill his soldiers but that was a surprise attack. I had never seen how humans fought face to face. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

It was a little like dancing except you weren't supposed to kill your partner when you danced. Marus and his sword danced together and the bodies piled up in front of them. I was beside Marus stabbing with my spear and the other ponies were on the wall but they kept coming and we went back, step by step.

Then they were over the wall on either side of us and the pegasi were all flying and the angry human, Lamb, was yelling at them to fall back. The ponies all ran for the citadel but the humans didn't run, they put their shields together like a wall and walked backwards and kept facing the enemy. Their shields were like a wall the enemies couldn't get through. They killed any of his soldiers who got too close and I stayed close to Marus because I thought that was safer but I didn't know how to dance with the enemy like he did. I know I killed at least one enemy though because my spear went into his stomach and he fell over and my spear wouldn't come out even though I pulled on it and then another enemy ran up and swung his sword at me but Marus blocked it with his sword and kicked the enemy between the legs and then Lamb stabbed him in the neck with his sword. They were very quick. Lamb would yell and then Marus and his brothers would all turn and run for the citadel as fast as they could and then Lamb would yell again and they would turn and walk backwards and kill the enemies again.

We stopped for a little while in town because the streets were narrow enough for the eight of them to block from one side to the other and the pegasi threw spears from the rooftops. Then I saw enemies with torches come up and they started burning buildings and we had to move again because the pegasi couldn't fly through all the smoke.

We fought them all the way up the terraces and up the mountainside and they started shooting arrows at us again but I was able to block them with my barrier. I was tired from all the fighting and running but I didn't let my barrier go down because I didn't want Marus and his brothers to die and I wanted to hurt him and I wanted to be there when Marus killed him and more than anything I wanted to see Moonbright again and hug her and tell her everything was going to be alright. Then I saw the enemy shoot Lord Cirrus when we were halfway up the mountain and he fell out of the sky into the road in front of us and Storm Front dived into the middle of the enemies after him and Lamb yelled for them to save Lord Cirrus and they charged forward and I saw Storm Front buck two enemies right off the mountainside and then Marus and his brothers were killing the enemies and pulling Lord Cirrus and Storm Front out of the pile of bodies. Lord Cirrus was covered in blood and there were arrows sticking out of him and I thought he was dead but then he coughed and said something to Marus and Priest, the nice human who was a doctor, but I couldn't hear what he said because he sounded so weak. I think he died then because Priest closed his eyes and told two pegasi guards to get Lord Cirrus to the citadel. Storm Front was already dead but Marus said he died defending his lord. He said he died well but I'm not sure what he meant by that.

His soldiers fought us all the way up the mountainside and no matter how many of them we killed there were always more behind them. Then we were at the gate to the citadel and the pegasi collapsed the wall on his soldiers so they were flailing around in a fog bank while Marus and his brothers fought them off. Inkwell and the other unicorns were using their magic so we could walk around in the citadel but they needed more time so Marus and his brothers said they would get it for us. Marus told me to go with the others and I said I didn't want to but then he yelled at me to go to Moonbright and so I went. Humans can be pretty scary even when they're friendly.

We all got into the citadel as quickly as we could while the humans held off his soldiers. Inkwell stayed with them to cast the cloudwalking spell on them. The pegasi started to raise the citadel just as Inkwell and the humans came running back. Two of the humans were missing though. Marus was repeating a couple of words over and over. I didn't know what they were but I think they were bad words.

The guards and the humans shot arrows and threw things at his soldiers underneath us while the other pegasi steered the citadel into the sky. I don't know-

**

I've had a little talk with Crystal about Company property. She won't be touching the Annals again.

Fucking hells. We're stranded in an uncharted world with a pissed off wizard and a couple thousand of his thugs hot on our trail, and our only allies are a bunch of empty-headed ponies who wouldn't recognize a battle plan if it crawled out of their ass.

Its my own damn fault. I'm the godsdamn Annalist and I let some fucking civilian get her hands on the Annals. They're my Annals and my responsibility. Hooves, whatever.

Gods below, that was stupid. We should have run. We should have let Grayborn march on Windsoar while we ran. Maybe circled back and tried for the caves again. We couldn't have stopped him anyway. Hells, we didn't. He would have burned Windsoar whether we were there or not. If we could do it over again I'd give him Windsoar to burn if it meant Marsuf and Egg lived. Hells, I'd sacrifice ten cities to get all of us back to the Company.

We don't dwell on what ifs. We learn from the experience and move on. We honor our fallen and avenge them if we can. I still live, even if my right arm is mostly held together by stitches and bandages. While I live I can fight, and if I can fight I will.

I take it all back. These ponies are magnificent and I love them. They have some kind of liquid that they pumped directly into my arm through a hollow needle. It took away the pain almost instantly. I feel fucking incredible. Like a goddess reached down from heaven and shoved my face in between her tits. Can't write. Going to lie here and enjoy this.