Ace in the Hole

Chapter Twelve – A Failed Attempt

“Cause you had a bad day, You're taking one down, You sing a sad song just to turn it around…-Daniel Powter“

As Dead Eye promised, he was up early and appeared to actually be awake this morning.  He wasn’t groggy and I could tell that he was honestly looking forward to our journey.  I kind of assumed that the sand buildings weren’t the only reasons he was excited about going there, but I wasn’t going to try and force anything out of him.  Windstorm was also up bright and early and was eager to get away from the camp.  I would be too if they kept me cooped up here, always protected by guards.  Pearl was up at her usual time and seemed to reflect the happy mood that everypony was in.  I was grateful for the time we would spend going to the Sunfire Desert, which by Windstorm’s account, was approximately a good week’s walk away.  Since we would be continually traveling during the day, Dead Eye and I wouldn’t have as much time to train alone as we wanted.  Instead of learning how to use weapons and sneak around, I would be learning with Pearl and watch how my cloak was made.  Dead Eye hoped that I would be able to learn enough form nurse Night to be able to make some of my own poisons and that there would be enough time for Pearl to finish my cloak and a suit where I could store my multitude of weapons.  I was just glad for the opportunity to relax a bit and actually spend some quality time with my friends and learn a bit more about Windstorm.

Our caravan of carts was off about an hour after sundown.  We had six carts in total.  We had one cart of our trio and our teachers, one cart for each of the teachers training materials (one for weapons, one for medical supplies, and one for the tailor that we had brought along).  The other two carts were for the guards that had accompanied us and one was for the cooks that would be preparing the food.  The commander had come to wish us farewell and a safe journey to the Sunfire Desert.  I had a chance to look at her cutie mark and saw that it was an iron fist.  Even her cutie mark marked her as a pony that would never back down.  I guess one doesn’t come into command if they don’t have a strong will but I differ.  We headed off toward the west in hopes of eventually returning and restoring the monarchy to the way it was before things became corrupted.  I didn’t know whether things could ever return back to the way they had been before, but I knew that things were only going to get worse if they were left in their current state.

Windstorm, Pearl, and I were sitting in our cart.  We had the cloth roofing that covered the cart pulled off.  The beauty of the forest passing was interesting to all of us and we would make comments about things that we thought were interesting.

Windstorm would say something like, “Would you look at that tree?  We could fit all of the Resistance beneath its branches!”

Pearl would look around in wonder and make small comments like, “Isn’t that waterfall simply gorgeous?  I wish that more ponies could see beauty like this instead of spending all of their time in the city.”

Me?  I was too busy practicing what Dead Eye had told me about finding hiding places.  I would always be sure to look at whatever Pearl and Windstorm were talking about and give a small nod of my head or a grunt to acknowledge the truth of their statements.  I began so see dark underbrush on the side of the road before I would notice the large magnificent trees that everypony seemed to be unable to look away from.  I guess this is what Dead Eye meant by being able to unconsciously locate places that would be good for ambushes or just hiding from unwanted attention.  I figured that Dead Eye would probably ask me whether I had been paying attention later tonight and I did not want to disappoint him.

Around midday, our teachers all joined us on our cart and told us how our lessons would be split up.  Apparently, they had agreed that we would all take our lessons together and learn the basics of all three subjects.  We would have lessons with basic weapons with Dead Eye when we stopped for lunch and the guards would take their well-deserved breaks from pulling the carts.  Then, when we heading west again, nurse Night would give us instructions in medicine.  Lastly, we would all watch the tailor as he taught Pearl and we would help her by being her test subjects.  I was excited that Pearl was going to make me a cloak, but I hoped she was careful while fitting me and Windstorm for our clothes.  Needles made me a bit nervous.  I had seen the body of a pony that had been pricked to death by some of the hood ponies one night.  It’s hard to get messed up images like that out of your head.

After our teachers told us our schedules, we were ready to have lunch.  The cooks brought us all our own personal apple pies and told us that they would bring desert out once we were finished.  I was famished; I guess I was still catching up on food from the previous three days of training.  I finished my pie in record time and was ready for desert while the other two were still beginning their food.  Pearl was taking small careful bites out of her pie while Windstorm ate a bit and then stopped.  “My goodness, these cooks undercooked my pie.  It’s still cold in the middle.  Do they not know that they are serving food to their leader?”

I reached over and pulled the pie before me.  I took a bite out of it and found that it was the same as mine.  “What are you talking about Windstorm this pie is fine?  If you don’t like this, then how did you live with the food that we had back in the guild?”

“Well I had no other options then, now these cooks should know that I like my apple pies to be cooked longer but not burnt,” Windstorm said as he nodded at me to finish the rest of the pie.  I happily obliged.

“It’s just an honest mistake that the cooks made,” said Pearl.  “You can tell them that you like it cooked a bit more and I’m sure that they will make it that way.”

“But they should know what I like, I am their ruler after all,” Windstorm snapped.  “If they can’t even make my food how I like it, how am I supposed to know that they will follow my instructions correctly when I’m in power?”

I finished Windstorm’s pie and looked over at him, “Don’t you think you’re taking this a bit too far, I mean you always seemed fine with what you had when we knew you back at the guild.”

Windstorm finally seemed to be calming down, “Oh, I suppose you’re right.  It really irks me when they get it wrong though…”

At this point, one of the cooks came back and looked to be carrying a large covered dish.  I was delighted that it was finally time for desert.  The cook set down the tray on the table and began talking, “We heard you complaining about the quality of the apple pies we brought you earlier, good sir.  I’ve brought this dish to satiate your hunger before we bring out the special desert that we’ve made.”  Dang it, not more food for me.

“See I told you it was an honest mistake,” said Pearl.  “Look, now they are even making up for it.”

I was a bit sour that they weren’t bringing any more food for me when I noticed that something seemed a bit off about this cook.  I hadn’t seen this mare when the cooks came around earlier and I could have sworn I hadn’t seen her earlier when I had been snooping around the cook’s tent earlier (I got a bit hungry earlier today. Okay?).  I took a more careful reevaluation of her as she went to reveal what she had brought for Windstorm.  I noticed that her cooking apron had  a small bloodstain in the bottom left, which normally would have been normal for a cook’s apron, but I also noticed that the knife she held had blood on it.  It wasn’t a normal knife either, it looked like a knife that Dead Eye would have been training me with and not a knife you would cut up meat with.

All my alarms were going off in my head and I jumped out of my seat to apprehend her.  The cook had finally opened the dish to reveal a primed crossbow on the platter.  I jumped in front of Windstorm as the cook quickly aimed and fired the bolt.  I managed to stop the bolt from hitting Windstorm, but unfortunately, I had been hit.  The bold was firmly implanted into my right fore hoof where the bolt had hit me.  I looked up to see where the cook had gone and saw that she was pinned to the ground by two guards and there was a knife sticking out of her hind leg.  It was Dead Eye’s knife and I saw him approach to retrieve it.  Pearl was freaking out and was looking at the bolt that was inside of my fore hoof.  Nurse Night quickly came over to us and looked at the bolt.  She let out a low whistle and beckoned Dead Eye over.  She talked to Dead Eye in a hushed tone to prevent me from hearing.  Apparently, there was something wrong and they weren’t just going to pull the bolt out and wrap it up.

“Kid, that’s bolt has a barb on it.  We can’t pull it out or it will cause more damage than it did going in.  Nurse Night is going to kindly cut it out of your fore hoof.  You won’t be able to use it for a few days and it will be pretty sore for a good while after that,” Dead Eye said.

“Dead Eye!” exclaimed Nurse Night.  “You were supposed to break it to him softly.  Why did I think you would be sensitive to your own student?”

“What?” asked Dead Eye.  “I told him everything you told me to tell him.  I just did it in a time efficient manner.”  Dead Eye looked over at me.  “Son, you’ll be good as new in a few days and we can start seriously practicing again.  I’ve known Miss Night here for a good long time.  She’s the best we have.  You’ll be fine.”

Nurse Night got Dead Eye and a guard to carry me to her medicine cart and she began gathering all the supplies she would need to get the bolt out of my fore hoof.

Windstorm walked up to the edge of the tent and asked, “What about me.  Did everybody just forget that somebody just tried to KILL me?”

“Kid,” said Dead Eye in a disdainful voice.  “You’re friend just saved your life and the culprit has been captured, what more do you want?”

“Who was that, why did they try to kill me, and how did she get into the camp?  I thought this place was secure, but apparently my guards are a bit lacking,” Windstorm said, happy that somebody was listening to him.

“Don’t blame your guards, kid.  The assassin got in by killing one of the cooks.  The guards wouldn’t have known that she wasn’t actually a cook.  Any one of those ponies would have done what Surefire here did without a second thought.  I hope you think about that before you start calling them ‘lacking’.”  Dead Eye said with a hint of venom in his voice.

“Stop calling me kid.  I’ll have you know that I’m the one that can save Bastion by restoring the monarchy,” Windstorm said.  He was obviously put off by Dead Eye’s lack of reverence.

I couldn’t take it anymore.  “When did you turn into a little shit?” I asked.  “Is this how you treat everypony when you’re not around us or are you just on a period today?”  Windstorm was being a little bitch today.  He’s never acted this way before, or at least not around me.

“What did you say to me Surefire?” Windstorm asked, obviously agitated.

“You need to stop acting like this.  You ask me and Pearl to treat you normally, but yet you treat everyone else as though they are dirt beneath your feet.  Everypony makes mistakes sometimes, even you,” I said through gritted teeth.  Nurse Night was pouring something into my wound to disinfect it and numb it.  “Now please just leave me alone and go figure out why that pony was trying to kill you.”

Windstorm was finally calming down and decided it would be best if he followed my advice.  Pearl stayed behind with me to watch the nurse work on my fore hoof and learn.  She stayed close to me and gave me reassuring pats as nurse Night began her work.  Dead Eye remained within close to the medicine cart and sent dirty glances at Windstorm.

Nurse Night seemed not to notice anything besides the work that she was preforming on the inside of my fore hoof.  The preparation for taking out the bolt took around ten minutes of frenzied activity while she rummaged through all of her supplies to look for the things that she would need.  Once she was satisfied that she had a sterile environment, she called Dead Eye and another guard over to hold me down as she cut the bolt out.  I had promised her that I would keep still, but as soon as she began, I started screaming like a little filly.  Even though the wound and been numbed, I could still feel the pain from the sharp knife nurse Night was using to cut out the bolt.  I began yelling obscenities and banging my head, the only part of my body that wasn’t being held down, onto the table.  I could have handled it if she had been able to quickly remove the bolt.  That was just a lot of momentary pain that began to recede pretty quickly after the removal of the bolt.  Nurse Night was taking a much safer approach.  She was using her knife to carefully cut around the bolt so as to remove as little of my tissue as possible.  This meant that I had to feel like I was getting stabbed for around five minutes while she went about her work.  After she was satisfied that she could remove the bolt without doing any further damage to me she easily pulled it out and quickly began bandaging the wound and warped a poultice around it to help the wound heal more quickly.  After she was done, the two ponies released me and I was able to wipe the sweat from my body.  I found that I could still move my right fore hoof, but it caused me great pain.  ‘Looks like I’m not going to be exerting myself too much for the next couple of days,’ I thought.  With help from Dead Eye and Pearl, I was able to hobble over to the cart that was assigned to us.  I curled up on the floor of the cart and asked that I be left alone for a while so that I could take a nap.  The past hour had taxed me severely and I felt that all I needed now was some rest.  Dead Eye left to go see what had become of the would-be assassin and Pearl decided that she would stay close to me and also take a nap.  I was fine with that and quickly fell asleep.

When I awoke, Pearl and Windstorm were in the cart with me and the cart was moving.  I took a look at the sun and realized that I had taken a nap for almost six hours.  It was getting close to sundown and we would be making camp for the night pretty soon.

“Look who finally decided to wake up,” said Pearl teasingly.  “We were going to leave you back there because you haven’t moved for so long.  We thought you were dead.”

“Glad to see that you decided to give me a second chance on this whole living thing then,” I said, smiling.  I tried to move closer to the two of them, but the pain in my right fore hoof was just too much for me.  I stopped trying to move and just began looking around, trying to get a feel for our current surroundings.

“I’m sorry Surefire,” Windstorm said.  He appeared to be holding his head down in shame.  “I guess I’ve gotten used to being treated like royalty these past few days back at the Resistance.  I was getting used to all of the attention people were giving me, attention that I had been deprived from when we were back at the guild.  When that pony tried to kill me and you saved me, I was still thinking about the pie.  I didn’t like it when everypony started giving all their attention to you, and I felt like I was being ignored.  I felt like people should have been giving me attention, after all, somepony had just tried to kill me.”  Windstorm sighed, “All in all, I’ve acted like one of the stuck-up, rich ponies back in Bastion.  Forgive me?”

“Of course I forgive you.  I know you aren’t perfect and I don’t expect you to be.  I just hope that you learned your lesson today,” I said.  “Ponies follow you and look up to you. Most of them would give their lives for you to preserve the Resistance’s cause.  When you act like a snob, you make ponies question whether you would truly be better than the ones that run the Bastion right now.  You’re in a position of importance and you have to act like you’re always happy about things even if you have to fake it sometimes.  An unhappy leader makes unhappy followers.”

“I’m really sorry Surefire.  I should have stayed with you while they took that bolt out of you.  It seems that I would again owe you my life,” Windstorm said.  “I can’t believe that I was jealous of you right after you had just taken a bolt for me.”

“Well try not making a habit of having me there to save your life.  It’s not that pleasant for me and you’re going to pay for it if I fail,” I said with a smile.

“Thank you Surefire,” said Windstorm.  With that he fell silent and seemed to me to be thinking deeply.

“So Windstorm,” Pearl chimed in, trying to brighten the mood, “What did you find out about the assassin.  I stayed here with Surefire and haven’t heard anything about it.”

“Yeah, did they ever find out how the assassin got in here and who the assassin was?” I asked.

“They wouldn’t even let me close to her and they got a couple of guards to take me to the guard cart until they were sure that there weren’t going to be any more attempts.  Sadly I’m in the dark as much as you two are.  They let me come back here after a few hours, but Pearl told me to stay quiet while you were resting so we wouldn’t wake you. Hopefully Dead Eye will be able to fill us in on the details when we stop for the night.”

Almost as soon as he said that, our caravan of wagons pulled to a halt and I could see some of the guards bringing out some of the firewood we had brought with us to make a fire in the middle of the six carts which were arranged in a circular formation.  I could see our three teachers approaching: Dead Eye, Night Gale, and the tailor whom I had never seen before.  All three of them walked over to our cart and Dead Eye initiated the conversation.

“This here is Needler, the tailor pony.  We will start weapons practice tomorrow at lunch since we missed today’s lesson.  Tonight Miss Night and Needler will be teaching y’all.”

Windstorm spoke up.  “What of the assassin?  None of us have heard anything about it.  Please tell us Dead Eye.”

“Well I guess y’all deserve to hear what happened.  It wasn’t much.  Before we could interrogate the mare, she swallowed a poison pill and died before we knew what was going on.  We did figure out how she got into the camp though.  We did a quick search around the camp and came upon one of our actual cooks.  Her throat had been slit and her cooking aprons were missing.  The guards had let her out after they served your food and then they didn’t notice that it was a different mare that had come back in.”

We were all a bit disappointed.  We all wanted to know who the assassin was and who had sent him, but dead ponies don’t talk.  Apparently they had thrown the corpse into a small hole in the ground and moved on.

Our lessons with the nurse Night and Needler were much more relaxed than my lessons with Dead Eye.  Nurse night went and picked some herbs that were located close to where we had made camp and explained how each one could be used and in what doses.  She picked some of the plants that we should never use for medical purposes.

“Now these plants look like some of the other ones I’ve shown you today that can help ponies.  Be careful, these plants are actually poisonous if you look here – she said indicating some of the minor differences- these indicate that this plant is from the poisonous variety.”  If aid careful attention to these plants and made sure that I could differentiate between all of them.  After about thirty minutes of learning about the different plants, we moved on to tailoring.

Needler was a stallion with a pin cushion for a cutie mark.  He was very friendly and was great at explaining what he was doing.  I felt that if I had been the one he was teaching, instead of the one being taught upon, I could have easily picked up this whole tailoring thing.  Needler set up a few practice stations for Pearl and she began working her way through the different types of sewing methods.  Pearl worked diligently at her tasks while Windstorm and I watched.  I was glad to be in the company of my two friends and able to just sit and watch them.  I was slightly worried about how the wound would affect my shooting ability, but I was assured by Dead Eye’s promise that I would be fine in a few days.  Dead Eye wasn’t one to give ponies false hopes; he was much better at giving harsh truths.

After Pearl had finished her lesson, Windstorm retired to the cart while Pearl and I went to talk to our teachers personally.  Nurse Night had found a stretcher that the guards were using to lift me around until my fore hoof had a few days to heal.  I was taken to the weapons tent where Dead Eye was staying.  When I saw the inside of the tent I was impressed.  Dead Eye seemed to have procured enough weapons to outfit an entire army.  His tent was outlined with weapon racks which all seemed to contain different variations of every weapon.  Laid out in the back of his cart were a few books that appeared to be military strategy guides.  One looked to be open to a page depicting a scene where one battalion was being forced to fight on two fronts and appeared to be losing.

“Well kid, I hate to say it but this is kind of a good thing,” Dead Eye said.  “I’m sure there’s at least one spy in this camp and they know you’re injured.  The next time you shoot you have to pretend to be off.  You need to blame your shooting on your injury and nopony will expect that you are actually a viable threat to Smoothtongue.  All they will see is a broken pony who appears to have lost their special talent to an unfortunate incident.”

“Fine I’ll play along with your little scheme,” I said.  “So what are we doing tonight?  I don’t know what I can do without hurting my fore hoof.”

“We can talk about the future,” said Dead Eye.  “When we get to the Sunfire Desert and you get better, I will be introducing you to their local assassin’s guild.  There we are going to put in as much training time as we possibly can with their most experienced assassins.  That’s another reason I’ve been excited to get out here.  I was hoping I could pick up a few tips while I’m here.  These assassins are the best at camouflage and hiding.  Hopefully, training with the experts will rub off on you because, at the moment, you’re pretty hopeless at the whole moving without being seen thing.  You’ve gotten the hiding part down, just not moving and you’ll need to be able to do that if you’re even going to have a remote chance of killing Smoothtongue.”

“I knew you weren’t just interested in the architecture!  You seemed too excited about this trip,” I said.  “It’s always about killing and training for you isn’t it?”

“Of course, I thought you would have figured that out by now,” said Dead Eye.  He lifted up his cloak that he always wore to show me his cutie mark.  It was a chain of pony ears strung in a necklace.  “This is just another reason for me to wear the cloak.  It freaks ponies out too much and also gives away my less than harmless intent.  I’ll spare you the story of how I came to have this, but I can say one thing.  You’re going to have to start wearing a cloak.  I’ll ask Needler to rush teaching Pearl to make a cloak.  You’re cutie mark can only mean one of two things.  You’re either an amazing hunter or you’re an assassin.  Simple as that.  If you wear a cloak, ponies won’t know what you’re good at and be less suspicious when you disappear.”  It did make sense that I wouldn’t want my enemies to identify me for what I really was and showing off my cutie mark wasn’t the best way to accomplish that goal.

Dead Eye continued, “I want you to suggest some things that you think would help you with the cloak.  The suit will have to come second to the cloak though.  Well I think that’s enough for tonight.  Get some rest kid.  Heal up quick, because we have work to do and we can’t have this injury stopping us.”  With that, Dead Eye called another guard and they lifted me back to the tent where Windstorm was waiting.  He seemed to have already dozed off and I decided to do the same.  This had been the start of an interesting week of travel.  An assassination attempt on the first day of our travel and I was also already injured.  I hoped tomorrow would be a more relaxing journey.